Outset Scotland was delighted to support Pieces of You Are Here at Dundee Contemporary Arts - Lorna Macintyre's first solo exhibition in a major UK institution.
Macintyre has long been interested in exploring the potential of the materials she uses, often pushing them playfully to develop in unexpected ways. This exhibition included silver gelatin prints, cyanotypes, digital prints on silk and paper, as well as new sculptural forms and installations.
In Pieces of You Are Here, Macintyre explored how photography and sculpture can intersect and overlap: how photographs can exist in space as tangible objects and how, like sculpture, they can communicate the physicality of the material world.
Certain compositions in the gallery also hinted at or made use of photographic processes. Macintyre grew crystals from the same chemistry used in the cyanotype paper coating process: some of these structures were grown during a summer heatwave and had a dense, spiky appearance whereas others grown during colder months were softer and less structurally developed. Here, she was interested in the overlap between substance and time – how an artwork can form a record of the conditions under which it was made.
At the heart of Macintyre's presentation laid a photograph of a terracotta tile, which was excavated from Carpow Roman Fort at the confluence of the rivers Tay and Earn and is now held in Dundee's McManus collection. Questions of time, historicity, touch, trace and domesticity were all brought to mind by the centuries-old paw prints visible on the fragment's surface, tying together many of the threads in Pieces of You Are Here.
ON VIEW: 8th December 2018 - 24th February 2019
Lorna Macintyre (b. 1977 Glasgow) is an artist based in Glasgow. Having studied for both a BA (1999) and MFA (2007) at the Glasgow School of Art, she now also works there as a visiting lecturer in Fine Art. Macintyre’s recent solo exhibitions include: Spolia, Cample Line, Dumfriesshire (2017); Much Marcle, Chapter, Cardiff (2016); Material Language or All Truths Wait in All Things, Mary Mary, Glasgow (2015); Solid Objects, Glasgow Project Room (2015); and Four Paper Fugues, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, part of GENERATION, 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland, (2014). She is represented by Mary Mary, Glasgow.
Dundee Contemporary Arts (DCA) is an internationally renowned centre for contemporary art that enables audiences, artists and participants to see, experience and create. With two beautiful large-scale gallery spaces, two thriving cinema screens, a busy print studio, an award-winning learning programme, and a packed programme of events, workshops, classes and activities aimed at all ages and abilities, DCA is one of the most successful arts organisations in the UK.
