With a nomination for the Turner Prize and now a solo show at the Venice Biennale, Karla Black is proving you don't always have to live in London or New York to turn the heads of the art world
A RENAISSANCE palace in Venice was transformed into a unique landscape of soil and highly-scented soap yesterday, as the Glasgow sculptor Karla Black unveiled her new show at the Scottish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
Eight rooms of sculpture, at the 15th century Palazzo Pisani, add up to a fragrant and unusual landscape, featuring teetering towers of plaster-dusted polystyrene, suspended cellophane sculptures, vast rolls of chalk-coated paper, sugar paper in pastel colours and even a small wire flower.
Black, who has also been nominated for the Turner Prize this year, described her work yesterday as "a big ball of contradictions". She uses traditional sculptural materials like marble and plaster, as well as more unusual ones like soil, Vaseline and soap, but she relates her work very strongly to the tradition of landscape and landscape painting in particular.
Black says she is celebrating creativity, individuality and a direct relationship with the world, like "a person alone in a landscape or an individual before God, although I'm not religious".
The Venice Biennale is the contemporary art world's equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival or the Olympic Games. There are 89 national participations and 37 more associated exhibitions in a city-wide festival that lasts until the end of November.
Scottish Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: "The exhibition reinforces Scotland's status as an international centre of excellence in contemporary visual art." Amanda Catto of Creative Scotland added: "This is a great moment. Karla has been working very hard. I think her profile is really high: we've had some very strong UK and international interest. We would like people to think of Scotland as a great place to live and work as an artist. A place that's very exciting in terms of its visual art scene."
The project has funding of £350,000 from Creative Scotland and £50,000 from other sources, including the Henry Moore Foundation.
Black is not the first woman artist to represent Scotland at Venice, but is the first to have a solo show under the Scottish banner. Fiona Bradley, director of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery, who has curated the exhibition, said: "People are looking at Scottish art and the way to show people is to show one of our absolute international stars. Artists don't need to move to London or New York, they can live in Scotland and we can give them the opportunity to show in Venice."
Many of the installation team and all of the information assistants are from Scotland. The latter are students at Glasgow School of Art and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. Black, 38, is a former journalist who studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art and completed her postgraduate studies there in 2004. She lives in Glasgow but also keeps a studio in Glen Quaich in the more remote reaches of rural Angus.
The current exhibition is the fifth in a series of Scottish Pavilions since 2003, when the then Scottish Arts Council and the British Council Scotland supported Scottish artists in Venice with a new vigour that reflected the country's growing international recognition in visual art and changed political state of play since devolution.
Current partners are Creative Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland and British Council Scotland. Officially the presentation has the status of a collateral event among the national presentations and associated exhibitions at Venice, but 25,000 people visited the last Scottish
presentation, Martin Boyce's exhibition in 2009. The British Pavilion in the Biennale's Giardini has been filled this year by Mike Nelson, who has taught at Edinburgh College of Art and had an early keynote show in the city.
Scottish artists have a varied presence at the Biennale since back in 1897 when Glasgow School of Art's legendary director Fra Newberry took some prominent names to the second Biennale. Scotland had a curated show back in 1990 and many Scottish artists have been invited to appear in some of the curated elements of the festival.
The only Scot ever to have made an appearance in the official British Pavilion in the Biennale's Giardini was Mark Boyle in 1978. This year the Edinburgh-born sculptor Hew Locke, who grew up in Guyana, is showing in the so-called New Forest Pavilion, organised by the Hampshire-based organisation ArtSway.
The Venice Biennale is visited by critics, curators and collectors from around the world. Bradley said: "We hope very much that some of the work here ends up in public collections both in Scotland and internationally."
Black's show comes hard on the heels of her recent nomination for the 2011 Turner Prize, the winner of which will be announced in December, bucking the trend for Scotland-based artists that a nomination follows a Venice appearance. Her fellow nominee this year is Glasgow's Martin Boyce, whose show at the Palazzo Pisani in 2007 was Scotland's first solo presentation.
Simon Starling and Jim Lambie, who represented Scotland in 2003, were both nominated for the Turner in 2005. Starling went on to win. Cathy Wilkes appeared in Venice in 2005 and was nominated in 2008. Lucy Skaer, one of five artists who represented Scotland in 2007, was nominated for the 2009 prize.
A common denominator is that they all have lived in Glasgow or trained at Glasgow School of Art. "People in the press now note that there are two centres for contemporary art in the UK, Glasgow and London," said Black. "We have known that for 15 years but it is seeping through now."
The logistical undertaking for Black's show has been considerable, The technical team were required to manoeuvre more than four tonnes of Black's signature materials on to the third-floor rooms of the 15th century Palazzo, including compost, sawdust, marble dust and 32 bags of sterilised topsoil.
The ten large cans of hairspray (extra strong hold) in the despatch list were not for reasons of vanity – Black uses them as a fixative. The high- street soap manufacturers Lush have provided five custom-poured blocks of soap, each weighing 100kg and created according to Black's specification. The artist has then carved by hand as though it were wood or marble.
Black has got her hands dirty at every stage of the process, from the hand-painted signs in the venue, to the cloth bag – one of the signature marketing devices of the Biennale – which she has hand-smeared with fabric paint.
The cloth was made for the event by the Victoria Linen works in Kirkcaldy and the bags were hand-stitched in Scotland by a team that included the wardrobe department of the National Theatre of Scotland.
Link to all other National Pavilions and corrosponding artists here.
Eight rooms of sculpture, at the 15th century Palazzo Pisani, add up to a fragrant and unusual landscape, featuring teetering towers of plaster-dusted polystyrene, suspended cellophane sculptures, vast rolls of chalk-coated paper, sugar paper in pastel colours and even a small wire flower.
Black, who has also been nominated for the Turner Prize this year, described her work yesterday as "a big ball of contradictions". She uses traditional sculptural materials like marble and plaster, as well as more unusual ones like soil, Vaseline and soap, but she relates her work very strongly to the tradition of landscape and landscape painting in particular.
Black says she is celebrating creativity, individuality and a direct relationship with the world, like "a person alone in a landscape or an individual before God, although I'm not religious".
The Venice Biennale is the contemporary art world's equivalent of the Cannes Film Festival or the Olympic Games. There are 89 national participations and 37 more associated exhibitions in a city-wide festival that lasts until the end of November.
Scottish Culture Secretary Fiona Hyslop said: "The exhibition reinforces Scotland's status as an international centre of excellence in contemporary visual art." Amanda Catto of Creative Scotland added: "This is a great moment. Karla has been working very hard. I think her profile is really high: we've had some very strong UK and international interest. We would like people to think of Scotland as a great place to live and work as an artist. A place that's very exciting in terms of its visual art scene."
The project has funding of £350,000 from Creative Scotland and £50,000 from other sources, including the Henry Moore Foundation.
Black is not the first woman artist to represent Scotland at Venice, but is the first to have a solo show under the Scottish banner. Fiona Bradley, director of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery, who has curated the exhibition, said: "People are looking at Scottish art and the way to show people is to show one of our absolute international stars. Artists don't need to move to London or New York, they can live in Scotland and we can give them the opportunity to show in Venice."
Many of the installation team and all of the information assistants are from Scotland. The latter are students at Glasgow School of Art and Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art. Black, 38, is a former journalist who studied sculpture at Glasgow School of Art and completed her postgraduate studies there in 2004. She lives in Glasgow but also keeps a studio in Glen Quaich in the more remote reaches of rural Angus.
The current exhibition is the fifth in a series of Scottish Pavilions since 2003, when the then Scottish Arts Council and the British Council Scotland supported Scottish artists in Venice with a new vigour that reflected the country's growing international recognition in visual art and changed political state of play since devolution.
Current partners are Creative Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland and British Council Scotland. Officially the presentation has the status of a collateral event among the national presentations and associated exhibitions at Venice, but 25,000 people visited the last Scottish
Part of her exhibiton at the Venice Biennale
Scottish artists have a varied presence at the Biennale since back in 1897 when Glasgow School of Art's legendary director Fra Newberry took some prominent names to the second Biennale. Scotland had a curated show back in 1990 and many Scottish artists have been invited to appear in some of the curated elements of the festival.
The only Scot ever to have made an appearance in the official British Pavilion in the Biennale's Giardini was Mark Boyle in 1978. This year the Edinburgh-born sculptor Hew Locke, who grew up in Guyana, is showing in the so-called New Forest Pavilion, organised by the Hampshire-based organisation ArtSway.
The Venice Biennale is visited by critics, curators and collectors from around the world. Bradley said: "We hope very much that some of the work here ends up in public collections both in Scotland and internationally."
Black's show comes hard on the heels of her recent nomination for the 2011 Turner Prize, the winner of which will be announced in December, bucking the trend for Scotland-based artists that a nomination follows a Venice appearance. Her fellow nominee this year is Glasgow's Martin Boyce, whose show at the Palazzo Pisani in 2007 was Scotland's first solo presentation.
Simon Starling and Jim Lambie, who represented Scotland in 2003, were both nominated for the Turner in 2005. Starling went on to win. Cathy Wilkes appeared in Venice in 2005 and was nominated in 2008. Lucy Skaer, one of five artists who represented Scotland in 2007, was nominated for the 2009 prize.
A common denominator is that they all have lived in Glasgow or trained at Glasgow School of Art. "People in the press now note that there are two centres for contemporary art in the UK, Glasgow and London," said Black. "We have known that for 15 years but it is seeping through now."
The logistical undertaking for Black's show has been considerable, The technical team were required to manoeuvre more than four tonnes of Black's signature materials on to the third-floor rooms of the 15th century Palazzo, including compost, sawdust, marble dust and 32 bags of sterilised topsoil.
The ten large cans of hairspray (extra strong hold) in the despatch list were not for reasons of vanity – Black uses them as a fixative. The high- street soap manufacturers Lush have provided five custom-poured blocks of soap, each weighing 100kg and created according to Black's specification. The artist has then carved by hand as though it were wood or marble.
Black has got her hands dirty at every stage of the process, from the hand-painted signs in the venue, to the cloth bag – one of the signature marketing devices of the Biennale – which she has hand-smeared with fabric paint.
The cloth was made for the event by the Victoria Linen works in Kirkcaldy and the bags were hand-stitched in Scotland by a team that included the wardrobe department of the National Theatre of Scotland.
Link to all other National Pavilions and corrosponding artists here.
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