The Common Guild

Exhibition
Gerard Byrne
Images or shadows of divine things
16 April 2010 — 26 June 2010
Thursday & Friday 12-7, Saturday 12-5
21 Woodlands Terrace, Glasgow

‘Images or shadows of divine things’ is an on-going series of photographs accumulated since 2005 by Byrne. The modestly presented monochrome images of the United States share a distinct ambiguity; although made over the course of the last five years, the images appear to depict an earlier time. Whilst evoking vernacular photographic idioms of American mid-century photography, cumulatively the series points towards the complicated relationship between time, appearance, and the photographic document. Anchoring the project with a reference to a text by the 18th century American theologian Jonathan Edwards, the work shadows an American intellectual tradition stretching back to the Puritans which perceives the world as inextricably prefigured in the bible.

Gerard Byrne is an artist whose work regularly reconstructs found scenarios from the past, often drawing from television and magazine culture. Using video and photography, he explores how the future has been envisaged in the past. This exhibition accompanies and is a counterpoint to Byrne’s major new video work commissioned by and for Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art. Entitled ‘A thing is a hole in a thing it is not’, the project comprises four films that look at Minimalist sculpture as a pre-figuration of time-based artistic forms. The work is on show at 54 Miller Street during the Festival.

Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
(16 April – 3 May 2010).

Exhibition open Thursday & Friday 12 noon – 7 pm, Saturday 12 noon – 5 pm and by appointment and every day during Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art 16th April – 3rd May as follows: weekdays from 10 am – 5 pm and Saturday & Sunday 12 noon – 5 pm