Rare Currie display is a tasty piece of work
If you ever get the chance to stand in front of Ken Currie’s powerful big Three Oncologists painting in Edinburgh’s Scottish National Portrait Gallery, study the faces of those around you as they stare at the three ghostly cancer specialists on canvas. The chances are they will have stopped in their tracks.
Currie’s work has that effect. It’s as though he doesn’t just capture the life of a person. He captures their spirit. Dead or alive.
In a rare chance to see Currie’s work at scale, Glasgow Print
Studio is hosting an exhibition featuring new monoprints made at the studio. This is Currie’s first major solo show in Glasgow for several years.
Currie (inset) is one of the so-called New Glasgow Boys; a loosely affiliated group made up of fellow Glasgow School of Art (GSA) trained artists Steven Campbell, Stephen Conroy, Peter Howson and Adrian Wisniewski. All trained at GSA in the late ’70s and early ’80s.
The exhibition’s title, Chunnacas na mairbh beo (The Dead Have Been Seen Alive), is taken from Sorley MacLean’s famous Gaelic poem, Hallaig, written as a response to the Clearances on his home island of Raasay, in the Inner Hebrides.
The work is heavily influenced by Egyptian “Funerary” portraits, a type of painting with which Currie has long been fascinated. These vivid pictures of men and women date back almost 2,000 years to Roman Egypt.
Monoprinting is a perfect fit for Currie. The artist paints directly onto a plate and takes a maximum of three prints off the ink. A one-off print is made before the plate is wiped clean.
In between, there is the tension between success and failure. It is the eyes in Currie’s new monoprints – open or closed – which draw you in. John the Revelator, in all its bloodred glory, is a doozy.
The show, which runs until 26 November.
Details at gpsart.co.uk