Alex Malcolmson: Full Fathom Five
After many years exhibiting individually at the Open Eye Gallery, this new exhibition brings Brita Granström, Mick Manning and Alex Malcolmson together to present a delightfully compatible combination of paintings, constructions and carvings, inspired by their own experiences of living with the sea in all its moods.
Alex Malcolmson (b.1955) creates box constructions, paintings and sculpture incorporating nautical and natural elements.
Malcolmson was born in Shetland in 1955 and studied drawing, painting and printmaking at Edinburgh College of Art. He worked in the Northern Isles for several years, teaching, painting and exhibiting before moving back to Edinburgh to work as a curator. For 25 years he ran Godfrey & Watt in Harrogate, a gallery which exhibited fine work by makers and artists from throughout the UK. Since 2009 he has concentrated on making box constructions, paintings and sculpture.
Frequently a construction will start with a discovery. This may be a piece of timber washed ashore, a rusty washer or perhaps an old sea chart. This catalyst for the work may even become integrated into the piece or equally it could be set aside having done its job in plotting the course a work will take. Some pieces, like the carved and constructed birds and the ship 'dioramas' are closely related to their folk art ancestors.
His work explores both figuration and abstraction, employs both art and craft and plays with the boundaries between these terms. Often the work is driven by a desire to create something that hovers in the area between the object itself and the illusion that is possible within a frame.
