Generously assisted by Edinburgh College of Art and the National Galleries of Scotland, this new programme invites leading international artists to spend between one to four weeks at Randolph Cliff, a 200sq meter Georgian apartment in the 18th century New Town of Edinburgh. Looking over the Dean Bridge, the Water of Leith, and forty miles out towards the estuary of the Firth of Forth, Randolph Cliff evokes the democratic intellectualism and generalist education of the “Athens of the North”.
Randolph Cliff is launched in the Centenary year of Edinburgh College of Art marking the building of the College of Art on its present site. To celebrate this important milestone in the College’s long and distinguished history, Randolph Cliff explores a new relationship with the National Galleries of Scotland.
Randolph Cliff’s inaugural Artist in Residence is Austrian conceptual artist Franz Graf (b. 1954; represented by Georg Kargl, Vienna). Graf’s practice exemplifies a deeply non-hierarchical approach to transmission, often working with liminal or disputed areas of knowledge and experience. The multiple calligraphic and visual languages that he articulates, the translucency of his graphite drawings and wall paintings, and the quasi-gothic references he brings to bare, render his artworks both legible and invisible at once. By coincidence, Graf’s historical neighbours in Randolph Cliff were leading Edinburgh optometrists and specialists of anaesthesia and claustrophobia. Randolph Cliff with its abrupt rockface has been the site of several dangerous landslips, the most memorable having taken place in 1881 when a mass of rock and earth fell down, choking the nearby river that powered the flourmill in Stockbridge. Graf has a fine understanding of “hidden, unspeakable tragedies” writes Austrian curator Brigitte Huck, and with his sentient approach to conceptual codes, Randolph Cliff offers the perfect location for the development of new ideas and signs.
During his stay, Franz Graf will work with postgraduate students from Edinburgh College of Art’s MFA in “Art Space Nature”, whose studies cross over art and landscape architecture. Together with eminent Scottish artist Alan Johnston, Franz Graf and his team will exhibit a transitory set of wall drawings at the Gymnasium of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on Belford Road. An Artist’s Talk by Franz Graf on October 30th will open this exhibition.
In addition, Franz Graf will have a solo show at Sleeper, the experimental chamber for new work housed below the architectural practice of Reiach and Hall in Darnaway Street, Edinburgh. Opening Event: 19th October 2007.
Randolph Cliff’s programme continues in November and December with the Residency of German artist Christian Flamm. Randolph Cliff is curated by Dr. Clémentine Deliss, publisher of Metronome, director of Future Academy and Senior Research Fellow at ECA, and Charles Asprey, former gallery director, collector, supporter of contemporary art and co-founder of ArtSchool Palestine.
For more information contact [email protected]
http://www.eca.ac.uk
http://www.nationalgalleries.org
Image above:
Photograph by J.W. McGregor
