Janice McNab

Talbot Rice Gallery will show a major solo exhibition of new work by Janice McNab whose paintings epitomise isolation and stillness. Following from her keynote exhibition at Tramway in 2002, the artist continues to explore people, objects and interiors, transformed in her paintings through cropping and abstraction forcing the viewer to consider narrative and meaning.

Her subject matter will vary from discarded studio sets and props related to the leisure industry to the closed environments of floatation tanks.

The series of paintings of floatation tanks explore McNab’s interest in spaces that offer seclusion contrasting with imodernity's promise of freedom – the artist looks to spas and salons to investigate ways in which contemporary society searches for this freedom; recreation and escape. Floatation tanks offer temporary solace from the world, McNab highlights this in a series of stark depictions of floatation tanks which have an odd sense of monumenatlity and a sinister stillness.

‘’The shapes of the tanks inevitably brings forth allusions to sarcophagi. Is luxury in the west about escaping to nothingness?’ Janice McNab, 2003.

The floatation tanks will be shown with a series of depictions of abandoned aeroplane chairs. There is an immediate sense of foreboding about these images which might once have been read as motifs of escape, luxury and modernity. The depictions are in fact based on film props in storage which the artist disovered in a set hire company. The artist found the chairs stacked together haphazardly, and highlights this awkardness in the paintings; the chairs no longer represent comfort, security and freedom but seem displaced.

Janice McNab’s new series of works follows from her recent projects at doggerfisher, Edinburgh in 2001 and Tramway in 2002, which centred on almost politically driven documentary style studies of individuals allergic to modern chemicals - involuntary recluses unable to operate outside the safety of their homes.

The Artist was born in Aberfeldy in 1964, in 2000 she was awarded the Scottish Arts Council Amsterdam Studio residency and continues to live and work in Amsterdam. Since completing an M.F.A. at Glasgow School of Art (1995-97) McNab has exhibited widely.

Recent exhibitions include John, I'm only dancing, UH Galleries, St Albans & Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2000); Evolution isn't over yet, Fruitmarket Gallery - Edinburgh, Lugar Comum - Lisbon, The Dick Institute – Kilmarnock (2000); Anxiety, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh (2000); Sick Vitalists, Intermedia, Glasgow (2000); 45th Salon de Mont Rouge, Galleries Mont Rouge, Paris & The ICA, Lisbon (2000); Le mois de la photo, Galerie La Centrale, Montreal (2000)The Irvine Family, Project Room, Collective Gallery Edinburgh (2000);Janice McNab, doggerfisher, Edinburgh, (2001); The Greenock factory project, Tramway, Glasgow (2002); Friends and Enemies (touring) Galerie Volker Diehl, Berlin - Utrecht (2003) Janice McNab is represented by doggerfisher, Edinburgh.

The Talbot Rice Gallery will publish a catalogue for this exhibition available early February 2004.

Pressetext

Janice McNab