Photocall – 5.30pm, Thursday 27 April at Peacock Visual Arts with curator Thomas A Clark and print makers Michael Wade and Lindsay Croall
Print edition launch – 6pm, Thursday 27 April at Peacock Visual Arts
Exhibition runs from 13 May to 17 June
Today (Thursday, April 27) sees the launch of the most ambitious collaboration to date between Peacock visual arts and the WORD Festival. Word Order. Concrete Poetry and its influence will celebrate one of Scotland’s most interesting and unique arts movements.
Curated by Thomas A Clark from Cairn Gallery in Pittenweem, Word Order explores the historical and inspirational link between poetry and visual art through new work by four key Scottish artists, David Bellingham, Thomas A Clark, Julie Johnstone and Alec Finlay and a collection of notable historic publications. These will include illustrated picture poems by the late Ian Hamilton Finlay, one of concrete poetry’s greatest figures, and WORD Festival patron Edwin Morgan.
To accompany this, a series of new prints has been editioned by David Bellingham, Thomas A Clark and Alec Finlay at Peacock visual arts. They will be launched today (Thursday, April 27), 6-8 pm, at Peacock visual arts.
In addition to this remarkable exhibition, during the WORD Festival there will be a reading by poet, scholar and polemicist Tom Leonard in the exhibition at Peacock visual arts. This inspiring event will place Leonard’s poetry, much of which is experimental in form, in the context of Concrete Poetry which flourished as an international movement throughout the late 50s and 60s.
Now often overlooked, its influence continues to be felt in the work of some poets and in that of many artists using text. Concrete Poetry reduces poetry to its basic elements, dispensing with grammar, juxtaposing nouns and using the page as a space within which to build simple visual compositions.
Lindsay Gordon, director of Peacock visual arts, said:
We are delighted to strengthen our collaboration with Aberdeen University WORD Festival. It is truly exciting for us to connect visual arts and literature through our production facilities, in particular in printmaking. This year’s show combines a historical survey with new work, and we see it very much as a launch event for a series of contemporary art/literature projects to follow in years to come.
Elly Rothnie, WORD Festival Producer said:
The WORD Festival and Peacock visual arts have a great history of collaboration but this is our most exciting project to date and an inspired addition to the Word Festival programme made especially poignant by the death of Iain Hamilton Finlay earlier in the year. This celebration of Scotland’s Concrete Poetry tradition will inspire, inform and delight. Make sure you catch this wonderful exhibition.
WORD Order opens on Saturday 13 May at Peacock visual arts.
For more information contact Emma Henderson at Colman Getty PR on 0131 558 8851, email emma@colmangettypr.co.uk or Nina Eggens at Peacock visual arts 01224 639 539, e-mail nina@peacockvisualarts.co.uk.