GALLERY I & II
NWSP 12
CRAIG COULTHARD AND MICHAEL STUMPF
20 November – 18 December

Craig Coulthard’s work is inspired by heraldry, the military, religious symbols, and architecture. He intends to create a series of large commemorative banners, hand-sewn and made of felt, for ruined churches and chapels in his native Fife, tailoring each one individually for each site. The commemorative banners are not to people or events, but to the buildings themselves, all of the buildings are not “celebrated” churches or chapels, they exist in a kind of wilderness and once would have served their small local communities. Craig has chosen places which have clearly been forgotten, or neglected, a direct result of our societies changing stance regarding religion, worship, and sense of community.
After the exhibition, the banners are being taken to their respective churches, hung on the walls there open to the elements, and left for as long as they remain.

Michael Stumpf’s current works take language as a point of departure. Materials (denim, plastic, aluminium, found objects and paper) are used to formulate a material alphabet. This alphabet is used to create sculptural works that refer to film props and also to the cultural history of the materials themselves. As part of a broader linguistic system the sculptures function as semantic structures that suggest a narrative. The work employs film and literature references that are present as text fragments in the form of spray-painted posters or animated title sequences on video that repeat themselves. The display of the work captures a moment of an imagined narrative set in a fictional landscape; like a frozen frame from a film, or a torn out page of a book. The sculptures become protagonists bound in a system of invented places and events. Their presence, as part of an exhibition, creates scenes that reflect an imaginary utopian space, face to face with Lebensraum - the space we live in.
The reference points of Michael’s work are digested through a sculptural production process of transformation/mutation to refashion our sense of time and place.

PROJECT ROOM
Rose Tattoo
TOMMY GRACE

For Grace the question of historical authenticity and the thirst for (post-) modern day pastiche is an engaging pursuit for the viewer. He willfully quotes from the past and refracts this through practices and materials of today to produce an installation that spans differing eras of history and the mind.
Cornercopia mimics the cornicing favoured by The New Town of Edinburgh's most celebrated architect and town planner James Craig. However, in the hands of Grace it becomes even flimsier and more fragile than a B & Q polystyrene version, virtue of the fact that it has been constructed out of stationery.
Hung on the wall below Cornercopia, the painting O, Stone, be not so reconstructs the interior of a 15th century Sienese painting 'Presentation in the temple' by Giovanni Di Paolo. The disturbing fact is that although there is a strict adherence to the rules of architectural rendering, Grace has also mixed this process with the Rorschach Ink blot designs.
Tommy Grace provokes the viewer to question the fabric of our existence, the materials around us, the way the are used and how we read them in a century that continues to erode historical distance.