Exhibition: The Language of the Body

Book Publication: The Language of the Body: Figure Drawings in Four Chapters by Alan McGowan.

The practice of Life Drawing has been almost completely eradicated from British art schools over the past twenty years. Alan McGowan’s work seeks to reinvigorate the form combining expressionistic draughtsmanship with a visceral approach to the nude and seeks to locate the discipline within the theoretical framework which is often lacking. In both the exhibition and accompanying book publication “The Language of the Body” McGowan identifies drawing with the concerns of epistemelogical enquiry and doubt of thinkers ranging from Michel de Montaigne and Marcel Proust to Michel Serres and John Gray.

Drawings often have an immediacy and accessability which is absent from more finished artworks which has lead to renewed interest in them as a form in recent years. These works on paper are clearly influenced by the long history of life study but also by contemporary concerns. McGowan’s work relates not only to the strong tradition of Scottish figurative art from Raeburn to Currie and Jenny Saville but also to a new wave of neo figurative artists emerging internationally such as Alex Kanevsky (USA) and Sophie Jodoin (Canada).

Alan McGowan was born in East Kilbride in 1964 and studied at Edinburgh College of Art. He has exhibited throughout the UK and internationally and taught drawing at Edinburgh College of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Dundee and Leith School of Art. He is based in Edinburgh.

Exhibition:

The Language of the Body. Gallery 3, Art’s Complex, 151 London Road, Edinburgh.

26th May to 2nd June 2012.

Preview Friday 25th May 6-8.30.

Book Publication:

The Language of the Body: Figure Drawings in Four Chapters by Alan McGowan.

80 pages. 65 illustrations full colour.

ISBN 9780957242807

Published by SATURATION 2012. Price £20

http://www.alibris.co.uk/booksearch.detail?invid=11274027347

Source: Alan McGowan