ken currie
5th August - 27th September

Ken Currie is another of the artists who burst onto the international scene in the 1987 exhibition ‘The Vigorous Imagination’, after studying at Glasgow School of Art. His early work took subjects from the political and industrial past of Glasgow, with crowd scenes painted in a linear, powerful style inspired by trade union banner art, Fernand Léger, Mexican mural artists and Otto Dix.

In the early 1990s, the political and humanitarian events in Eastern Europe greatly affected Currie. His response to what he felt was the sickness of contemporary society was dark paintings of decaying and damaged bodies. In recent years, Currie has further simplified his style, his figures becoming less linear for glowing, haunting evocations of the body. His social and political stance is combined with a philosophical questioning of an unbalanced, cruel world and the fragile nature of human existence. These ambiguous, almost impenetrable paintings gain their power from being situated at the edge of understanding, mirroring the condition of human consciousness. His haunting images are contingent, oscillating between here and not here, life and death, a constant process of becoming. His ability to transfer such philosophical ideas into paint means that Currie is undoubtedly one of the most powerful and evocative artists of our time.

Currie has completed special commissions for bodies such as Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. He is an artist of international reputation, exhibits widely throughout the world, and his work is in private and national collections as far apart as Tate Britain, the Yale Center for British Art, Boston Museum of Fine Art and the Cambelltown City Art Gallery, Australia.