Publications Launch

4 October 2008 2 - 5pm

‘Mistakes Made Away From Home’ brings together a selection of images of works by Karla Blackmade over the last three years with a new essay ‘A very important time for handbags’ by the artist.

While there are ideas about psychological and emotional developmental processes held within the work of Karla Black, the things themselves are actual physical explorations into thinking, feeling, communicating and relating. They are parts of an ongoing learning, or search for understanding, through a material experience that has been prioritised over language. 

Generally, the sculptures are rooted in Kleinian Psychoanalysis and Feminism; in theories about the violent and sexual underpinnings of both individual mental mess, as in neuroses and psychosis, and the formlessness of specific points in art history, i.e. German and Abstract Expressionism, Viennese Actionism, Land Art, Anti-form and Feminist Performance.

Materials that are formless even in their functions, like medicines for minor ailments, household cleaners, toiletries and make-up are used along with plaster, chalk, paper and paint, which have the capacity to be structural and are transformative in intention.

Born in 1972, Black lives and works in Glasgow. Recent exhibitions include solos at West London Projects, London; Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne and group exhibitions at Columbus Art Foundation, Leipzig and Art Now, Tate Britain, London. (all 2008). Forthcoming exhibitions include solos at Mary Mary in January 2009; Migros Museum, Zurich and Inverleith House, Edinburgh (all 2009).

Fourteen Drawings’ is a collection of fourteen black and white photographs made using a process of cameraless photography.  Created by a technique where the photographic paper is randomly crumpled and placed underneath the light of the enlarger, the images become two-dimensional traces of sculptural forms. The balance between blacks and whites in each image represents the chance play of light and shadow on the photographic paper, while the marks left by the hand on the paper are translated into creases printed on the pages of the publication.

These photographs relate to Macintyre’s interest in the laws of chance and the relationship between the controlled and the random. Using chance discoveries as a springboard for new ways of working, the artist effectively hands over a degree of the control in the making of the work, using chance as a tool against logic and towards a
more intuitive way of working:

“ When you follow chance you create real life” Jean (Hans) Arp; Quoted in Chance, a perspective on Dada; by Harriett Ann Watts. UMI Research Press, 1980.

Within Macintyre’s practice, a vocabulary of materials and reference points create a visual language through which the artist is able to explore the liminal space between the process of creating work and the finished object/image. An interest in language and natural forms underpins her practice alongside the historical reference points of 19th century Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism and concrete poetry.

Born in 1977, Macintyre also lives and works in Glasgow. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘ The Word for World is Forest’, Galerie Kamm, Berlin and Nought to Sixty, ICA (both 2008) Her second exhibition at Mary Mary will take place in late 2009.

Both publications have been supported by the Scottish Arts Council & Glasgow City Council.