Lorna Macintyre

Scottish artist Lorna Macintyre uses a broad spectrum of influential touchstones in her work, from poetry and literature to archaeology and symbolism. These references often create an oblique structure underlying her photographic and sculptural artworks, lending a form for a composition or providing the impetus behind her choice of materials. This exhibition marked Macintyre's first solo exhibition in a major UK institution, debuting a new body of work commissioned for Gallery 2 at DCA.

Macintyre has long been interested in exploring the potential of the materials she uses within her practice, often pushing them playfully to develop in unexpected ways. Pieces of You Are Here includes silver gelatin photographs, cyanotypes, and digital prints on silk, installed alongside new sculptural forms such as crystalline structures grown from cyanotype chemistry on ceramic surfaces.

A significant focal point within this exhibition was a photograph of an archaeological artefact housed within The McManus museum in Dundee: a small terracotta tile excavated from the nearby Carpow Roman Fort in Abernethy that bears a paw print made by a dog who, centuries ago, walked across this clay surface as it was drying. Macintyre has been drawn to this fragment of our past, intrigued by the way it draws on specific ideas about time and historical record. What does it mean for us to consider an object such as this in a museum or gallery? How are fleeting, accidental moments in time now captured by raw materials in the world around us? Macintyre draws as much upon poetic imagination as historical fact to explore these questions in Pieces of You Are Here.

Lorna Macintyre (b. 1977 Glasgow) is an artist based in Glasgow. Having studied for both a BA (1999) and MFA (2007) at the Glasgow School of Art, she now also works there as a visiting lecturer in Fine Art. Macintyre’s recent solo exhibitions include: Spolia, Cample Line, Dumfriesshire (2017); Much Marcle, Chapter, Cardiff (2016); Material Language or All Truths Wait in All Things, Mary Mary, Glasgow (2015); Solid Objects, Glasgow Project Room (2015); and Four Paper Fugues, Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute, part of GENERATION, 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland, (2014). She is represented by Mary Mary, Glasgow.