Artist Uncovered: Ade Adesina

Martine Foltier Pugh presents Art in Healthcare latest artist

One of the highlights of the Art in Healthcare calendar is the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) New Contemporaries annual exhibition, not only because of the concentration of emerging talents on display, hand picked amongst the best of Scotland’s recent graduates but also because they are able to purchase works for their collection with funding from the Hope Scott Trust. 

This year Art in Healthcare have been bowled over by the art of master printmaker Ade Adesina, who graduated from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen.

                                                                                                                                                                           

    RSA exhibition, image courtesy of the artist

It is easy to see why. The Nigerian born artist now based in the UK brings together technical virtuosity with thought-provoking themes. His highly detailed lino cuts and etchings showcase his dual Nigerian and British cultural heritage and his concern for environmental issues is delivered with a keen sense of humour. The accuracy of his drawings comes mostly from direct observation recorded through sketches and photographs while experiencing other cultures. Travelling is important as it helps him formulate the issues of cultural identity that are at the heart of his practice. 

                                                                                                                                 

RSA exhibition, image courtesy of the artist

The amount of details and repetitive marks that fill his landscapes is astonishing, each print taking him on average two months to complete.  He recalls the moment when, while visiting Paris as an undergraduate, he was awestruck by an impressionist painting by Claude Monet where tiny brush strokes filled up the large canvas. Adesina revels in labour intensive processes.

“I like to work hard and I like people that are hard working. Seeing the Monet painting, I felt the pain and sleepless nights.”

Mirage lino cut 112cmx76cm

image courtesy of the artist

There are echoes of Monet’s paintings in ‘Mirage’, one of the three acquisitions by Art in Healthcare, where almost every head of wheat stands out across the expansive field. The deep trenches carved by heavy agricultural machinery take the eye down to the myriad of ripples on the Firth of Forth and to flotillas of fish farm enclosures flanked by the rail and road bridges, with the city spread around Edinburgh castle in the far distance. The use of iconic imagery here makes intensive farming appear even more incongruous and unsettling.

Decline lino cut 112cmx76cm

image courtesy of the artist

‘Decline’ is a comment on the disappearance of the majestic and slow growing baobabs because of unsustainable logging. In the print, the trees seem to act as buffers between the restless and troubled sky and the ground. What will happen when they have all gone?

North East Safari  etching 100cmx70cm

image courtesy of the artist

 In ‘North East Safari’, where ‘North East’ refers to the Grampian region with Dunnottar Castle and the oil rigs in the distance, the punch is forceful and the argument is multi-layered. From the nesting grouse, that famous native bird game, in the foreground to the African endangered wildlife roaming the plain below, the peace in this Garden of Eden is about to be shattered by the hunt appearing on the left while the feigned naivety of the composition derides colonial perceptions of African culture. 

This satirical element transforms the work and places Adesina within the tradition of artists such as Chris Offili and Yinka Shonibare who both inspire him.

Adesina’s remarkable talent was rewarded during the RSA New Contemporaries exhibition by no less than three prizes. He has also now sold out a number of print editions. Altogether this is a highly deserved achievement that predicts a bright future.

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

Credits

With thanks to Ade Adesina for his information and images

Links

Ade Adesina website http://www.adeadesina.com

The Hope Scott Trust http://www.hopescotttrust.co.uk

Gray's School of Art http://www.rgu.ac.uk/about/faculties-schools-and-departments/faculty-of-design-and-technology/gray-s-school-of-art/gray-s-school-of-art

The Royal Scottish Academy New Contemporaries exhibition http://www.royalscottishacademy.org/pages/exhibition_frame.asp?id=392

And special thanks to Balfour Beatty Investments and Arts & Business Scotland for their financial support, which has enabled Art in Healthcare to produce 18 Artist Uncovered blog posts and accompanying video productions.

Artist Uncovered: Alastair Clark

Colour can provoke a powerful emotion in artists, Claude Monet called it an ‘obsession’, and it is this passion for colour that comes through first in printmaker Alastair Clark’s intense images.

Studio shot of work in progress
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

Glasgow born Clark graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in Drawing and Painting in 1990 and went on to specialise in printmaking. He is now Assistant Director of Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop where we meet early one morning before the start of his busy day.

  

He explains that his practice is about the transformative process of printmaking that gives him the freedom to edit images and experiment with tones and that unlike painting where every brushstroke is locked into an unbreakable sequence, printmaking allows him to go back a step or two or more to introduce a different hue or a different perspective.

It is the energy and the beauty of the forces of nature that inspire Clark. Working from satellite image sequences, he takes on those great swirls that permeate our everyday consciousness and shock us with their power for destruction and step by step constructs series of images which although still recognisable are now essentially abstract.

If you get close enough you will notice subtle and deliberate marks in pen
and pastel which are there to remind us that the artist retains manual control over the mechanical printing process.

Ammonite sky, lithograph, 30 x 84 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

He describes his method in his website:

“The prints Longwave and Ammonite Sky were inspired by the Tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, their long shapes originating from weather satellite imagery which I stretched and enhanced until they reminded me of a wave, notably the Japanese printmaker Hiroshige’s famous wave, which also represented a Tsunami.”

Art in Healthcare owns three of Clark’s prints, including this two-part screenprint / lithograph entitled Red Sky at night where the close up view on the left enables us to observe a detail from the bigger picture. Clark often uses this diptych format as a device to provoke our curiosity. For him art and science share the same purpose which is to make us question the world around us.

Red Sky at night, screenprint/lithograph, 83 x 57 cm
Art in Healthcare collection

For the Skylight series Clark worked with the Aurora Borealis which he describes as an elusive mystical phenomenon that few are privileged to witness. 

Skylight 2, pigmented inkjet print, 58 x 42 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

After a sighting in Edinburgh, he started by drawing on paper with pastel, he then scanned these drawings and combined them with digital images to reconstruct the display of pure energy he had experienced. With this process of altered reality, Clark certainly gives the series a multi faceted mythical perspective.

There is humour too as the skylight component is a reference to the small aperture near the magnetic poles through which the charged particles enter the earth atmosphere.

Borders and edges are of particular importance to printmakers and Clark’s more recent work plays around with this element. His 2011 ‘Skyshapes’ series, consists of assembled weather satellite scans printed on delineated MDF supports which seem to be floating off the wall. He is currently pushing this idea further still by meticulously creating fictitious islands constructed from pieces of Scottish islands. With these he intends to explore climatic change by showing the relationship between the land and the elements. 

Squall, laser cut archival inkjet print, 40 x 47 cm
image courtesy of Alastair Clark

 

Martine Foltier Pugh is a freelance writer and visual artist based in Edinburgh

Credits

Thank you to Alastair Clark for his time and for the use of his images.

Links

Alastair Clark's website http://www.aclark.org.uk/index.html

Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop http://www.edinburghprintmakers.co.uk/