P8558

© the Artist, courtesy the Artist, Nature Morte and the Green Art Gallery

Unit Object - Landscape 2013

Seher Shah (1975 – )

Details

Dimension
image size 355 x 535 paper size 460 x 635
Media
etching and aquatint
Accession number
P8558/1

Summary

Seher Shah (born Karachi, Pakistan, 1975) works with drawing, photographs, sculpture and print. Her work frequently exploresarchitectural Modernism and specifically the engineered social spaces and urban environments of new Brutalism as manifested in Europe and in Asia. Her works on paper break down and play with the iconic architectural structures associated with these movements, employing acute angles, block-like forms and the grid to create a new and personal interpretation of the Modernist landscape.

‘The seven ‘Unit Object’ etchings are a continuation of an ongoing series working with the geometries of the grid and the organic. Collaborating with Etching Master Stuart Duffin, the series uses both hand-drawn preparatory drawings and digital software as the basis for the seven works. Using the universal components of architecture such as the wall, grid and column, the geometries of the ‘Unit Object’ prints shift into various planes and folds. Shifting back and forth, the geometries are at times three-dimensional and at times planar. The two landscape bookend etchings in the series use the idea of a landscape vista as the entry into the geometric planes. Using single and double etching plates to produce the textured surface, the grid repeats itself through the series.’[i]

Below another sky was the first collaborative programme developed by the Scottish Print Network, a partnership between Dundee Contemporary Arts, Edinburgh Printmakers, Glasgow Print Studio, Highland Print Studio, Inverness and Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen.

10 artists from Scotland and 10 from Commonwealth countries were invited to undertake research residencies during 2013 and 2014. Artists from Scotland travelled to Antigua, Baffin Bay, Bangladesh, Canada, India, New Zealand and Zambia; artists from Australia, Canada, India and Pakistan were on residency in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.

Each artist worked with one of the five print studios on the development of ambitious and innovative new work in print, taking full advantage of the excellent range of resources, equipment and expertise available through each organisation.

Below another sky takes its name from the poem ‘Travel’, published in 1865 by the Edinburgh-born author Robert Louis Stevenson.

http://belowanothersky.org/

[i] Seher Shah