CALLUM INNES: FROM MEMORY

13 February to 15 April 2007

Modern Art Oxford presents a major exhibition of paintings by acclaimed Scottish artist Callum Innes. From Memory brings together a selection of the artist’s most significant paintings and offers a rare opportunity to trace the development of the artist’s work over the past fifteen years.

The work of Callum Innes is absorbingly meditative, the result of repeated application and removal of paint from the canvas. Calm and authoritative, his paintings nevertheless bear traces of the controlled chaos of their production. Describing his process, Innes talks about a crucial moment when the whole surface starts to move and flow; it is his manipulation of this moment that gives his paintings their complex beauty.

Innes came to national and international prominence in the early 1990s, and the earliest works in this exhibition date from this time. He works in series. Examples of Identified Forms; Isolated Forms; Repetitions; Monologues; Resonances and paintings made with shellac are presented in the exhibition. The Monologues are monumental works made by brushing turpentine into a simply-painted ground and dissolving the paint into an expressive, associative torrent. In the shellac paintings Innes draws on the oppositional qualities of shellac and paint to make luminously associative imagery.

A major part of the exhibition is devoted to the series of Exposed Paintings, in which the canvas is divided geometrically into fields of dense and dissolved paint, and unpainted ground. The exhibition reveals how this series has diversified over time. In a majestic new sequence of paintings, Innes exploits the possibilities offered by dissolving violet into and against black in a range of differently proportioned horizontal bands.

A beautifully illustrated publication accompanies the exhibition, featuring essays by Fiona Bradley, Eric de Chassey, Michael Auping and Richard Cork and an interview with Callum Innes by Paul Bonaventura. Published by Hatje Cantz and The Fruitmarket Gallery. Special exhibition price £25.00.

Callum Innes: From Memory is organised by The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh. The exhibition travels from Modern Art Oxford to the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney in November 2007.

Callum Innes will be in conversation with Fiona Bradley, Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery, at Modern Art Oxford on Thursday 8 March 2007. Please contact the Gallery for details on +44 (0)1865 722733 or visit www.modernartoxford.org.uk

Ends

For information, images and to arrange press views please contact Sara Dewsbery, sara.dewsbery@modernartoxford.co.uk or call +44 (0)1865 813813.

NOTES TO EDITORS

BIOGRAPHY
Callum Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1962. He studied drawing and painting at Grays School of Art, Aberdeen from 1980 to 1984 and then completed a Post Graduate DIP at Edinburgh College of Art, 1984 to 1985. Shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1995, Innes was awarded the Natwest Art Prize in 1998 and the Jerwood Prize in 2002. In 2003 he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Aberdeen University. In 2004 he became an Associate Member of the Royal Scottish Academy.

Press contact

For further press information and images please contact Sara Dewsbery on 01865 813813.


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