© the Artist, courtesy the Artist, Nature Morte and the Green Art Gallery
Unit Object - Curved Gate 2013
Seher Shah (1975 – )
Details
- Dimension
- image size 355 x 535 paper size 460 x 635
- Media
- etching and aquatint
- Accession number
- P8558/3
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.
[i] Seher Shah
Glossary
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Contemporary
Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.
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Drawing
The depiction of shapes and forms on a flat surface chiefly by means of lines although colour and shading may also be included. Materials most commonly used are pencil, ink, crayon, charcoal, chalk and pastel, although other materials, including paint, can be used in combination.
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Etching
An intaglio process whereby a metal plate (normally copper, zinc or steel) is covered with an acid-resistant layer of rosin mixed with wax. With a sharp point, the artist draws through this ground to reveal the plate beneath. The plate is then placed in an acid bath (a water and acid solution) and the acid bites into the metal plate where the drawn lines have exposed it. The waxy ground is cleaned off and the plate is covered in ink and then wiped clean, so that ink is retained only in the etched lines. The plate can then be printed through an etching press. The strength of the etched lines depends on the length of time the plate is left in the acid bath.
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Landscape
Landscape is one of the principle genres of Western art. In early paintings the landscape was a backdrop for the composition, but in the late 17th Century the appreciation of nature for its own sake began with the French and Dutch painters (from whom the term derived). Their treatment of the landscape differed: the French tried to evoke the classical landscape of ancient Greece and Rome in a highly stylised and artificial manner; the Dutch tried to paint the surrounding fields, woods and plains in a more realistic way. As a genre, landscape grew increasing popular, and by the 19th Century had moved away from a classical rendition to a more realistic view of the natural world. Two of the greatest British landscape artists of that time were John Constable and JMW Turner, whose works can be seen in the Tate collection (www.tate.org.uk). There can be no doubt that the evolution of landscape painting played a decisive role in the development of Modernism, culminating in the work of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists . Since then its demise has often been predicted and with the rise of abstraction, landscape painting was thought to have degenerated into an amateur pursuit. However, landscape persisted in some form into high abstraction, and has been a recurrent a theme in most of the significant tendencies of the 20th Century. Now manifest in many media, landscape no longer addresses solely the depiction of topography, but encompasses issues of social, environmental and political concern.
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Sculpture
A three-dimensional work of art. Such works may be carved, modelled, constructed, or cast. Sculptures can also be described as assemblage, in the round, relief, and made in a huge variety of media. Contemporary practice also includes live elements, as in Gilbert & George 'Living Sculpture' as well as broadcast work, radio or sound sculpture.
