The exhibition features the first major survey of the work of Bruce McLean (b. Glasgow, 1944). Tracing the career of an artist who was at the forefront of the development of Conceptual art in Britain in the 1960s, the exhibition will feature over 100 works across 5 decades including working drawings and photographs never previously exhibited. Sculpture, painting, photography, drawings, ceramics and film will be presented across seven galleries occupying 855 square metres.

Characterised by wit and an often ironic sensibility, Bruce McLean’s work has employed a range of media since the late 1960s. Often considering ‘the condition of sculpture’, McLean has explored the parameters of what a sculpture could be and tested conventional definitions, modes of production and display. These investigations have acted as a critique of social and academic hierarchies at work within the production and exhibition of contemporary art.

A student of Anthony Caro and Phillip King at St. Martin's School of Art, London, McLean was a leading Conceptual artist who challenged the formalist tendencies that were upheld by his tutors. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he adopted an unconventional approach that often involved working outside the studio or gallery to produce works in the natural or urban landscape. This exhibition will include key examples of his Street Works, Floataways, Shoreskapes and Rockskapesphotographic series, which placed process and production at the heart of his endeavour.

Other early works, including Mirror Work, Barnes Common (1969); Installation for Various Parts of the Body (1969) and Pose Piece for Three Plinths Work(1971), introduced the notion of ‘pose’ and an approach to using the body as sculptural material which he explored further through live action and performance in the 1970s, most notably as part of Nice Style, ‘the World’s first Pose Band’. The exhibition will also present a number of recent paintings alongside significant works from the 1980s and 90s, including Ambre Solaire and Going for God II (both 1982), two of the largest and earliest works on canvas, and Jaffa Jaffa Jaffa (1991), a four-metre long painting on steel panel.

The exhibition will feature one of McLean’s major public commissions, a 5.5-metre high steel sculpture entitled Ludgate Head (1992), originally sited on Fleet Place in the City of London. A selection of films will be shown in timed screenings in the auditorium in addition to gallery presentations ofUrban Turban (1994) and In the Shadow of Your Smile Bob (1971), a film that McLean made in response to a photograph of the artist Robert Morris that was published in the catalogue for the exhibitionWhen Attitudes Become Form (1969).

The exhibition draws upon public and private collections in the UK and Europe, including the Arnolfini, Bristol; the Arts Council Collection; the British Council; British Land; Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna; David Roberts Collection, London; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, Tate and Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. The exhibition builds upon renewed critical attention and follows a solo exhibition of early and recent work at Leeds Art Gallery, Bruce McLean: Another Condition of Sculpture (15 February – 11 May 2014). It is supported by the Henry Moore Foundation.

A 208-page monograph, edited by firstsite’s Senior Curator, Michelle Cotton, will be launched during the exhibition. It features new essays by Clarrie Wallis, Curator of Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain and Michelle Cotton and an extended interview with the artist. These are accompanied by over 100 illustrations including new paintings, previously unpublished drawings, posters and ephemera. Covering a period of almost 50 years, it will be the most comprehensive publication on McLean’s work to date.

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Collection Artist(s)

Glossary

  • Canvas

    A piece of cloth woven from flax, hemp or cotton fibres. The word has generally come to refer to any piece of firm, loosely woven fabric used to paint on. Its surface is typically prepared for painting by priming with a ground.

  • Ceramics

    Clay based products produced from non-metallic material and fired at high temperature. The term covers all objects made of fired clay, including earthenware, porcelain, stoneware and terra cotta.

  • Contemporary

    Existing or coming into being at the same period; of today or of the present. The term that designates art being made today.

  • Curator

    A person who creates exhibitions or who is employed to look after and research museum objects.

  • Film

    A transparent, flexible plastic material, usually of cellulose acetate or polyester, on which light-sensitive emulsion is coated, or on which an image can be formed by various transfer processes.

  • 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.

  • Painting

    Work of art made with paint on a surface. Often the surface, also called a support, is a tightly stretched piece of canvas, paper or a wooden panel. Painting involves a wide range of techniques and materials, along with the artist's intellectual concerns effecting the content of a work.

  • Photograph

    A permanent image taken by means of the chemical action of light on light-sensitive surfaces.

  • 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.