Biography Publication In Conversation

Ged Quinn was born in in 1963. A substantial publication accompanies Saturday 30 November, 2pm He studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing the exhibition with texts by Michael Join the artist for an informal in Oxford, the Slade School of Art in Bracewell, Dr Brian Dillon and Sarah tour of the exhibition. , the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf Virtue as well as colour reproductions and the Rijksakademie, . of all works exhibited. The publication Book your free place in advance He has exhibited widely and his work is co-published with Stephen Friedman by calling 01922 654400 or Ged Quinn is represented in many collections. Gallery, London and generously by calling at Reception. supported by Walsall Museums and 9 October 2013 — 5 January 2014 Recent solo exhibitions include Bass Art Galleries Development Trust. Museum, Miami, Florida, USA (2012-13) and Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas (2012). His work was also the subject of Stephen Friedman Gallery’s annual solo presentation at the 2012 Frieze Art Fair. Other recent solo exhibitions include Stephen Friedman Gallery (2011) and Wilkinson Gallery (2010).

Recent selected group exhibitions include Looking at the View, Britain (2013), The Future’s not what it used to be, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance, Cornwall, UK (2013), Disaster/The End of Days, Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, France (2013), Beyond Reality, Rudolfinum, , Czech Republic (2012), Everywhere and Nowhere, Reydan Weiss Collection, Oberstdorf, Germany (2012), Restore us and Regain, Glasgow School of Art (2010), Newspeak:British Art Now, , London (2010) and , St Petersburg, The New Art Gallery Walsall Russia (2009) and Made Up, Liverpool Gallery Square Walsall WS2 8LG Biennial, (2008). 01922 654400 In 2014, his work will be included in a two thenewartgallerywalsall.org.uk person show with Victor Pivovarov at Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague, Czech Republic. Exhibition guide The New Art Gallery Walsall is delighted to present supporting structures. Revealingly, A further layering occurs in the intriguing portraits of these Viewers are not expected to be this major solo exhibition of paintings by Ged Quinn it now lies derelict, the graffiti on progression of the term into figures are loaded with broader able to recognise and identify the which surveys the artist’s practice over the last four its weathered and decayed surfaces pharmakon where it represents cultural and political references. key players and references within years. Paintings from private collections in the UK, referencing eugenics and alchemy. a drug, a spell-giving potion, a Quinn’s highly theatrical paintings. Europe and America are shown alongside brand new poisoner, a sorcerer or a magician. This pairing of portraits appears What we do encounter are beautiful, works created especially for this project. The exhibition The idealised image of a horse in Through a myriad of sources, Quinn distinct from other works due to compelling yet brooding and darkly testifies to the complexity and breadth of the artist’s water carries, as if across the Styx, juxtaposes rationality and ritualised their integral frames. The use of haunting paintings that draw us in to practice and includes landscapes, portraits and still lifes. the ghost of the exiled German spirituality, consecration and these frames serves to both isolate consider the relationships between writer Thomas Mann, whose de-consecration and the promise and highlight the individual portraits the various elements within the Although Quinn has shown extensively in Europe and work is known for its symbolic, of both salvation and failure. as well as evoking a devotional composition. A literal interpretation America, this is his first solo exhibition in a public epic and ironic qualities and for or icon-like presence. They also is not required yet the artist, like a gallery in the UK since in 2004 and Tate his supposed insight into the Quinn draws together exiles, resemble sound structures used for great film director, employs his cast Liverpool as part of the 2008 Liverpool Biennial. psychology of the artist and the outsiders, visionaries and ghosts listening or broadcasting and so add of characters, motifs and symbols to intellectual. A cross construction within the theatrical setting of a further conceptual dimension. create works of art that are emotive, lies in the abandoned boat Ruisdael’s landscape, creating poetic, intelligent, multi-layered but this is not the symbol of highly complex and thought- The still life genre is also and endlessly thought-provoking. Christian salvation but a symbol provoking dialogues and multi- appropriated and subverted for poison. It is accompanied layered narratives. Like many of by Quinn. Large-scale flower Deborah Robinson Quinn is perhaps best known space for an interrogation and by the hat of Francis Bacon, the his paintings, this work possesses paintings influenced by 17th century Head of Exhibitions for his large scale landscape critique of historical and cultural 17th century philosopher, poet, a powerful sense of drama and Spanish and Dutch still lifes offer a paintings. In earlier works, iconography fuelled by the scientist and mystic. Bacon is elements of the sinister. contemporary perspective on the intriguing and elusive narratives artist’s own unique perspective. renowned as a thinker for whom vanitas tradition with its underlying nestled subtly within their rural the rational and irrational coexist Also on display are much smaller reminders of the transience of life settings. However, in the more The richness of Quinn’s imagery and interplay with each other. works; enigmatic portraits and and the inevitability of death and recent paintings, these compelling and the complexity of his work can intense still lifes which are also decay. Quinn takes on this tradition scenarios have evolved significantly. best be explored through focusing The title itself is intriguing and resplendent in references to a but provides further layers of References to European history, on an example of his recent work. further indicates the complexity wide range of source material symbolism to reflect on concepts mythology and architecture On Behalf of the Pharmakon (2012) and sophistication of the work, and are equally as beguiling. of nostalgia and memory. These collide with artistic and literary employs a characteristic landscape referencing a range of influences Two brand new portraits are works are accompanied by smaller, references and acknowledgements setting drawn in this case from from the history and mythology inspired by the complex and exquisitely crafted compositions of to filmmakers from Walt Disney Jacob van Ruisdael’s Marsh in of ancient Greece through to the troubled relationship between cakes which are mutated into the to Jean-Luc Godard and Andrei a Wood (c1665). The scenario philosophy of Jacques Derrida. The poet Paul Celan, a Holocaust shapes of military bunkers, built by Tarkovsky. In the newest of the represented is dominated by the pharmakos is a cultural and social survivor, and Martin Heidegger, the Germans to protect the Atlantic paintings, traditional pictorial presence of a geodesic dome, scapegoat, a sacrificial purging of an influential 20th century coast during the Second World War. devices used to suggest depth designed in the 1950s by architect the ills of the social order by the philosopher. Celan struggled to Inspired by cultural theorist Paul or perspective, are playfully and visionary Buckminster Fuller expulsion and destruction of the reconcile his admiration for the Virilio’s book, Bunker Archaeology, challenged by the use of filmic text and utilised here as a symbol of the “useless” member of society. In writings of Heidegger with his published in 1975, Quinn combines and explicit engagement with the failure of the idealism of modernist Derridean terms, it is paradigmatic abhorrence of his sympathy for these ghostly reminders of flatness of the canvas. Contrasts thinking. The dome was intended of the breakdown of any imagined the Nazis. The two engaged in destruction and oppression and contradictions abound. Quinn’s as a streamlined, easy to assemble boundaries between the conceptual regular communication between with what might otherwise be paintings provide an intellectual dwelling requiring no internal construct of inside and outside. 1951 and 1970. Typically, Quinn’s comforting, domestic scenes.