Main Gallery
Art First projects
27 March – 12 May, 2012
Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
A Line of Drawing, 1943-1993
Robert Rush
New Works
Art First is delighted to present 50 years of drawing by this most distinguished Scottish artist. Before she died in 2004, the gallery had exhibited Barns-Grahams' new, vibrantly coloured abstract paintings and prints throughout the final decade of her life.
Historical surveys at Tate St Ives presented a revelatory range of her work to great acclaim, but until recently there had been no real appraisal of what Mel Gooding's monograph on her drawings describes as 'one of the most brilliantly distinctive bodies of graphic work in twentieth century British art'.
An exhibition of new paintings and sculptures orbiting around the anxieties of life and death. Rush's overarching title for this new body of work - "Fuck You, Mr Death" - refers explicitly to the knowledge and certainty of mortality having a dual aspect in operating (potentially) both as a weight of despair and as a compelling mobilizing incentive. As such the characters and objects of the show find themselves in various states of composure and disarray, capitulation and defiance in the face of the inevitable.
Robert Rush (born 1978) trained at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy Schools. He was included in 2006 Bloomberg New Contemporaries and the 2008 John Moores 25 at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
