Cooper Gallery (DJCAD)

Christmas Card, Knife Edge Press, 1985. Courtesy of the Artists

Knife Edge Press: The Complete Works (so far)

Bruce McLean and Mel Gooding

29 Aug  – 21 Sept, Mon – Sat, 12-4.30pm
Preview: 29 Aug, 5-7.30pm

Location:
Cooper Gallery,
Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design
13 Perth Road
Dundee
DD1 4HT

Knife Edge Press: The Complete Works (so far) will showcase the critically celebrated artists’ books produced to date by Knife Edge Press, the creative partnership of writer Mel Gooding and artist Bruce McLean. Alongside the artists’ books the exhibition will also present for the first time, prints, posters, correspondence, photographic documentation and other ephemera generated during their twenty-eight years of creative exchange and collaboration.

Christopher Andreae once described Knife Edge Press’ collaborative artists’ books as “ironically expressive mixes of conceptual wit, vivid colour, and kinetic unpredictability. They spark ideas like tinderboxes.” 1991, Art News.

Cooper Gallery will present the entirety of McLean and Gooding’s Knife Edge Press artists’ books to-date. This includes their premier Dream Work, launched in 1985, as well as A Potato Against A Black Background, 1988, with its potato prints on Japanese papers and their most recently published, Shadow, 2002. The Shadow installation encompasses a screen-printed book inspired by the play of light and shadow on architecture, which rests upon a specially designed shelf; all lit by Gooding’s text-based projection to be cast in shadow by the approaching viewer.

The exhibition also brings to attention prints, posters, correspondence and photographic documentation collected throughout their collaborative practice. One highlight, photographs of the Ladder book launch held in 1987, documents the jazz band that performed spotlit by projections of ladder images that interacted with the performers’ figures. The exhibition will also include an audio interview with Gooding and McLean by Cooper Gallery Curator, Sophia Hao.

Artists’ biographies:

Bruce McLean is one of the major figures of contemporary British Art. Born in 1944 he studied at Glasgow School of Art and at St. Martin’s in London, where he was taught by Anthony Caro. All his work brilliantly sent up the pompousness of the art world and mocked established art forms. He was given an exhibition at the Tate Gallery at the age of 27. From the late 1970s he has made paintings and prints in which humour remains central.
After St. Martin’s, McLean went on to teach at The Slade School of Fine Art. His early reputation arose from his activities as a sculptor involved in performance art. He has obtained international recognition for his paintings and prints, as well as his work with film, theatre and books. McLean’s bold and confident approach to print making proved influential to his contemporaries and also to a generation of younger artists.
McLean’s work is in private and public collections world-wide and he has had numerous one man shows in both Europe and North America. These include The Tate Gallery, the Modern Art Gallery in Vienna, The Museum of Modern Art Oxford and the National Galleries of Scotland. Bruce McLean was awarded the John Moores prize for painting in 1985, and was the Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade until 2010. He lives and works in London.

Mel Gooding is an art critic, writer and exhibition organiser. Gooding has written many catalogue texts 
and has contributed extensively to the art press, and to 
magazines and newspapers. His monographs on artists 
include Bruce McLean (1990), Michael Rothenstein’s 
Boxes (1991), Patrick Heron (1994), Gillian Ayres (2001),
 Ceri Richards (2002), Patrick Hayman Visionary Artist
 (2005), John Hoyland (2006) and herman de vries: chance 
and change (2006). He has also written on architecture, 
and on general art topics including William Alsop Architect
 (1992), Joze Plecnik: The National and University Library,
 Ljubljana (1997); Public: Art; Space (1998); Abstract Art
 (2001); Song of the Earth: European Artists in the 
Landscape (2002).

 www.dundee.ac.uk/djcad/exhibitions/exhibitions/knife-edge-press/