The New Ingleby Gallery and Callum Innes' "Byzantine Blue, Delft Blue, Paris Blue"
Edinburgh, Scotland
10th June 2018
Nothing inspires me like spending time back in Edinburgh. While I first fell in love with contemporary art studying at St Andrews, it was Edinburgh where that love was first made real for me. Its galleries and museums where were I first saw it hanging on walls (or rather, first paid attention to it hanging on walls). It’s where I first encountered artists and forms of practice that I hadn’t studied in researched in a classroom. I’ll never forget the thrill of being in the city during the GENERATION exhibitions, seeing art everywhere, at the forefront of the culture.
It’s a thrill that Edinburgh always has. As a consequence, I can never bring myself to leave the city without seeing something, no matter how briefly I’m there. Often it’s merely a quick dip into the National Gallery while waiting to meet a friend or planning to get to Waverley Station a half hour early to spend some time in the Fruitmarket Gallery before my train.
This trip, however, I knew exactly what I had to see— the Ingleby Gallery’s new space. They’re truly an Edinburgh institution and represent so many artists that I love. They had only been in the new building for a month when I arrived and though I only had a few free hours to spare, I couldn’t miss this new chapter in the gallery’s history. 
Tucked away down a residential street, the building looks unassuming from the outside. Only the small signs and little buzzer by the door give away its true identity. Inside, however, the building is exquisite. It should be too— it has quite the history. Designed in the 1830’s, the building originally served as a meeting house for the Glasties, a presbyterian sect. It had lain empty for several years. Now, the main hall has lost its pulpits and pews and has been remade into the perfect exhibition space: a nice, white cube.
It has a trick up its sleeve however, a remnant of the room’s history. The room is lit brilliantly by a beautiful cupola. The coloured glass of the dome spills onto the walls, constantly shifting with the changeable Edinburgh light. With this small historical detail, the white room brims with life.
Not that it needed the help— the five canvases that comprise Callum Innes’s show “Byzantine Blue, Delft Blue, Paris Blue” are absolutely stunning. Examples of the ‘exposed paintings’ that Innes is best known for, the textures and layers of the paint are entrancing. One can’t help but spend time with them, wondering at the details and the process.
In the rest of the space, however, there’s more delights to be found. In celebration of their move, the gallery has opened up the office and meeting spaces for a second exhibition, “TWENTY,” focused on showcasing artists who have shown with the gallery during the last two decade. I was thrilled to see Alison Watt and Katie Paterson, two of my favourite artists, hung next to each other in the beautiful ‘feast room.’ I was even more thrilled to discover work by new artists; Roger Ackling’s wood-based art was stunning, and I adored the photography of Jonny Lyons and Garry Fabian Miller.
Really, it would have been a pleasure to even just have permission to explore the rooms themselves. From the offices to the meeting rooms to the kitchen filled with Ian Hamilton Finlay prints, the whole space was was beautifully restored and designed. There was pleasure to be found everywhere. Even running short on time as I was, I found myself almost unable to leave the little corridor library. It’s a building that feels alive. It’s a building that invites you to stay.
Indeed, I’m already planning a return visit. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to come back to Scotland during the Fringe Festival, but as soon as I learned of the gallery’s next exhibition, I knew that I needed to. From 26th July to 20th October, the gallery will show “Jacob’s Ladder,” a group exhibition focusing on our relationship with space from the 15th century to the present day. Including work a dozen artists including Katie Paterson and Cornelia Parker, I don’t think that I even need to explain how up my street this is.
While I was loath to tear myself away from the gallery, I had appointments to keep. Edinburgh, however, never runs short of gifts to give. Later in the day, Google Maps took me on a route past the Scottish Poetry Library. In all the time I had spent on the city, this was the first I had heard of it, and I couldn’t help but take five minutes to wander around its shelves, adding books to my goodreads.
Later in the trip, I found myself at Arthur’s Seat, another place I had somehow never been to. Looking over Edinburgh from the top, the wind whipping at my coat, the air cool and fresh, the water out before me the deepest blue, the grass of the hills a stunning green, I felt a thrill.
0 comments:
Post a Comment