Francesca Lowe and Alasdair Gray have created 'Terminus',
a padded-room of acrylic ink on canvas on the theme of the 'Fairground of Life'
with words on paper by Alasdair Gray - an exclusive new short story on the
same theme.
Man's obsession with personal geographies, self-improvement and codes of conduct is the theme of Terminus, a collaborative project between the painter Francesca Lowe (b. London 1979) and the experimental novelist Alasdair Gray (b.Glasgow 1934).
In September 2007, Riflemaker will play host to a series of acrylic ink paintings set edge-to-edge across the gallery’s uneven walls. Terminus fuses Victorian preaching-maps and art symbolism. It investigates the potential of a secret moral guidance system at work within the structure of a fairground. The exhibition encourages visitors to indulge visually and mentally in a game of symbolic unravelling, as they grapple with what it means to be human. Within this interior mural, Lowe presents the 'Tree of Life'; its roots weighed down by ego, deceit, vanity and corruption while its branches offer opportunity, compassion, forgiveness and good fortune.
Alasdair Gray's 1981 masterpiece Lanark established him as a major literary voice - "one of the finest writers ever to put pen to paper in the English language" (Irvine Welsh), "the greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott" (Anthony Burgess). Lanark is a satirical, subterranean novel, a coming-of-age story set within a world which re-echoes with Dante, Kafka, Blake and Lewis Carroll. Idealistic and fantastical, it is one of the key novels of the 20th century. Lanark takes a moral viewpoint as it performs its own unravelling but Terminus may not. Lowe's canvases depict a visually stimulating journey full of thrills and temptation while Gray will make his contribution via a series of specially written texts on the same philosophical proposition.
Terminus opens at Riflemaker for ten weeks on Monday 17 September.
A book which documents the making of this mammoth project is published to coincide with the exhibition. It features an essay about the work of Francesca Lowe by the critic Sarah Kent along with an interview with Alasdair Gray by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.
Man's obsession with personal geographies, self-improvement and codes of conduct is the theme of Terminus, a collaborative project between the painter Francesca Lowe (b. London 1979) and the experimental novelist Alasdair Gray (b.Glasgow 1934).
In September 2007, Riflemaker will play host to a series of acrylic ink paintings set edge-to-edge across the gallery’s uneven walls. Terminus fuses Victorian preaching-maps and art symbolism. It investigates the potential of a secret moral guidance system at work within the structure of a fairground. The exhibition encourages visitors to indulge visually and mentally in a game of symbolic unravelling, as they grapple with what it means to be human. Within this interior mural, Lowe presents the 'Tree of Life'; its roots weighed down by ego, deceit, vanity and corruption while its branches offer opportunity, compassion, forgiveness and good fortune.
Alasdair Gray's 1981 masterpiece Lanark established him as a major literary voice - "one of the finest writers ever to put pen to paper in the English language" (Irvine Welsh), "the greatest Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott" (Anthony Burgess). Lanark is a satirical, subterranean novel, a coming-of-age story set within a world which re-echoes with Dante, Kafka, Blake and Lewis Carroll. Idealistic and fantastical, it is one of the key novels of the 20th century. Lanark takes a moral viewpoint as it performs its own unravelling but Terminus may not. Lowe's canvases depict a visually stimulating journey full of thrills and temptation while Gray will make his contribution via a series of specially written texts on the same philosophical proposition.
Terminus opens at Riflemaker for ten weeks on Monday 17 September.
A book which documents the making of this mammoth project is published to coincide with the exhibition. It features an essay about the work of Francesca Lowe by the critic Sarah Kent along with an interview with Alasdair Gray by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist.
 Semblance 2004 Acrylic ink on canvas 183 x 275 cm |
 Bloom Nasty 2004 Acrylic ink on canvas 240 x 169 cm |
 Flurry 2004 Acrylic ink on board framed 187 x 125 cm |
 No More No Less 2004 Acrylic ink on board framed 200 x 122 cm |