Sorcha Dallas

Scottish art is at one of its most progressive moments and our chosen artists represent this position in the form of six highly individual talents. As with the heterogeneous character of the Biennale, the work of Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain is diverse, exciting and unpredictable. Each artist seems to share as part of their concern an interest in cultural similarities and differences, and the issues such differences present. Some on occasion use invented worlds to investigate their concerns; others make use of comparisons, real situations or look back into art and history. Each works with such ability and often with such surprising and new means that they have the power to alter perceptions. Working across a range of media, Charles Avery’s art is characterised by formal beauty, humour and a spirit of philosophical enquiry. Avery’s most high-profile work to date is his ongoing Islanders project, in which over a ten-year period he has described in drawing, painting and sculpture the topology and cosmology of an imaginary island, inspired by his childhood living in the Inner Hebrides. Avery was born in Oban in 1973 and is based in London. Henry Coombes’ work is concerned with investigating entrenched political, cultural and class issues. Film, oil paint and watercolour are used to produce apparently familiar and comfortable imagery, which on closer inspection reveals itself to be of dark and subversive subject-matter. Coombes was born in London in 1977 and is based in Glasgow. Using materials such as furnishing fabric, newspapers, song sheets, maps and comic strips as a basis for her work, Louise Hopkins’ art can at first appear playful and sensuous. Her primary intention, however, is not one of embellishment, but of disruption. Her use of paint to alter meaning is disorientating and at times disturbing, as for example in her map pieces, where her modification of boundaries and landscape changes our world perspective. Hopkins was born in Hertfordshire in 1965 and is based in Glasgow. Observation of people and their activity is the starting point for Rosalind Nashashibi, who uses primarily film, but also photography and printmaking. An experience of time passing and a layering of gestures and patterns are key recurring motifs, as is her interest in working across cultures, in Palestine, New York and elsewhere. Nashashibi was born in Croydon in 1973 and is based in London. Lucy Skaer makes public interventions, as well as paintings, sculpture and drawings. In the latter she frequently utilises imagery found in photojournalistic reportage. Working on paper – large stretches that resemble unfurled banners, flags or giant scrolls – she draws in graphite, adding enamel paint, ink and gold leaf to produce subtle imagery, fluid and shifting in appearance. Skaer was born in Cambridge in 1975 and is based in Glasgow. A sheet or cut section of newsprint provides the basis for Swain’s meticulously executed paintings, which offer a view into a complex and surreal private world. Using the disconnected images found across such a spread, Swain works over this, embellishing imagery, distorting and extending perspectives and introducing new figurative and abstract imagery to produce works which are mesmeric and intriguing. Swain was born in Lisburn (Northern Ireland) in 1967 and is based in Glasgow.