Preserving and presenting artworks and artefacts which reflect the history and achievements of graduates of RGU

Object of the Week

This week’s object of the week is a series of prints by Pamela MacKay.

These artworks are Black and white images created using woodcut on mdf.

They combine flowers, plants, and natural shapes with hard straight lines and industrial forms, resulting in very striking images.

Pamela MacKay is still a practising artist. Too see more of her work, check out her website: https://www.pamelamackayart.co.uk/about

Want to select the next Object of the week? Check out our online database and our exhibition map, find something that deserves to be spotlighted!
To submit a piece, contact b.harkness@rgu.ac.uk. Tell me who you are, what you picked and why you picked it.

Object of the Week

This week’s object of the week is ‘Five Shark’s Teeth’ by Ben Veera. The piece is a Perspex case containing two lines of model teeth. The top line is titled ‘Veritas’; it is three variously sized sharks teeth modelled separately in ivory colour acrylic, silver colour metal and colourless glass. The second line is titled ‘Leviathan’; it is two shark’s teeth (one black, one white).

A self published book entitled “Amplifying the Real”, written by Ben Veera and printed by Blurb.com, accompanies the case as part of the Degree Show Purchase Prize 2010.

Front cover of Amplifying the Real, self published book by Ben Veera, 2010

Ben Veera’s degree show work included his research inspired by the worldwide sale of endangered shark species objects. He questioned whether product design and the production of replica Sharks teeth could assist in reducing the sale of genuine endangered shark species teeth and jaws. Having 3D scanned fossil Megalodon teeth he developed a manufacturing process and carried out market research, selling replica teeth to collectors, whilst gaining their feedback. In the long-term, Ben envisaged that an extension of this approach via museum collections could be used as a diversion from existing worldwide contraband markets.

Page of Amplifying the Real, self published book by Ben Veera, 2010

Object of the Week

This weeks object of the week is Archive 2, by Simon Ward. The piece combines elements of sculpture and installation. It consists of 3 slip-cast bronze boxes with hand modelled and wheel thrown elements made of various materials including porcelain, plywood, mdf and pine.

Simon Ward’s work has, at times, been concerned with challenging the rolls and contexts of porcelain in both the interior and exterior environments. This has occurred through cross-cultural exchange via residency programmes in japan and Europe, resulting in exhibitions in galleries, museums and restaurants, and permanent, site-specific large-scale sculptures.

Wooden box like construction. On the top sits three long dark coloured trays that contain various odd looking items with no obvious purpose. — Archive 2, Simon Ward, 2008

Artist’s Statement:
This piece of work titled ‘Archive 2’ is one of a series of works commissioned by the Dick Institute, Kilmarnock for my first major solo exhibition in Scotland. This work is representative of pieces of my work awarded prizes in the Korean Ceramics Biennale. The seemingly unconnected items contained in the porcelain boxes, suggestive of a past life/ function make reference to the collection of objects in the artist’s private collection. This work elevates the ordinary tool like qualities to a purely visual level.

DRAWn-INg

The aim of the recent Scott Sutherland School DRAWn-Ing connect and reflect event was to allow students the space to enjoy and develop their drawing practice, supported by their tutors and peers.

The following exhibition presented a selection of inspirational work that highlighted the beauty and utility of the hand made drawing – still an invaluable skill for an architect.

We’d like to thank all the staff and students from Scott Sutherland School of Architecture and Built Environment that took part in the DRAWn-ING event. We were very pleased to support the exhibition of these works alongside hand drawn pieces from the Art and Heritage Collection.

Please leave you thoughts and feedback in our exhibition guestbook!
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Object of the Week

This weeks Object of the week is Big Biology by Douglas Cocker. Hand constructed using a variety of woods and techniques, Big Biology is a lovely example of the artists creative process.

Artist’s Statement
As with most of my work, Big Biology evolved out of what had gone before; part of a continuum, a reaction to what I saw as shortcomings in previous works.

I had started making painted wall constructions during a residency in Norway in 2003. I used what I saw around me in terms of natural forms as source reference material.
Reconsidering this body of about 16 surviving works some time later, I was looking for a way to improve upon their dynamic and give this language a visual boost. Big Biology was the first work to come out of this.

I increased scale and reduced the colour component. I intensified the tonal range in the surfaces and increased depth to allow light and shadow to play a bigger
part in the composition. I also chose to use forms which also delivered a stronger sense of contrast through interplay of jagged and rounded shape.
That was my starting platform. What followed in making the piece was and instinctive playing with space and solid to achieve some kind of a satisfactory resolution.

This all probably sounds a bit dry, but it’s essentially the way I normally work; trying to solve formal relationships within the composition and continually trying to
be braver in decision making without entirely losing the plot.
Scale, proportion and the dynamics of a piece are enough to be going on with. Only seldom is there any conscious narrative

Object of the Week

Medal to Painters’ Apprentices for Excellence in Drawing. Stored in red box lined with purple velvet and white silk, this medal was awarded to Hugh Livingstone, who received a third prize for excellence in drawing whilst studying at the Mechanic’s Institute in Aberdeen.

Medal to Painters’ Apprentices for Excellence in Drawing, awarded to Hugh Livingstone.

The Institute was founded in 1824. In the 1850s, it offered classes in the arts and sciences as well as many courses in the trades. John Gray was a director of the Institute, a position that eventually would provide a link to the future Gray’s School of Art.

These awards were funded by James Smith, a native of Aberdeen who later became a resident of Buffalo, New York State. He bequeathed a sum of $10,000 to the Mechanic’s Institute of Aberdeen for house painters to be awarded bursaries and medals upon their qualification.

Smith also gifted monies for twenty bursaries for evening class graduates studying free-hand drawing, ten bursaries for evening class graduates of elementary classes and twelve bursaries for student graduates of the advanced section and life classes. James Smith is believed to have had a career in the United States painting river boats.