Join artist Jock McFadyen and composer Jem Finer for a special evening exploring art, music and the hidden layers of the city beneath our feet.
Presented in the Roman Amphitheatre beneath Guildhall Art Gallery and hosted by Will Gompertz, this conversation marks the exhibition Jock McFadyen with Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface).
Jock McFadyen with Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface)
Jock McFadyen and Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface) revisits McFadyen’s series of Underground paintings, first conceived in the late 1990s and reimagined now in collaboration with musician and artist Jem Finer. The series pairs McFadyen’s large paintings of London Tube stations with Finer’s layered soundscapes, which take field recordings of the underground as the starting point. The pairing was first shown at Grey Gallery in London Fields in 2023; this is a larger exhibition with works borrowed from collections and a new Underground painting.
The exhibition continues with an exploration of McFadyen’s depiction of London above the surface. McFadyen’s London stretches far beyond the canvas, vast, raw, and radiant. Standing before these works, the viewer is engulfed by an expanse that stretches beyond the limits of vision, capturing a city that is both familiar and strange, where beauty lingers amid decay.
The exhibition concludes with McFadyen’s paintings of people.
Made in Hackney 2 featured landscape paintings created in the artist’s London Fields studio.
Most paintings are made indoors, as were cave paintings 40,000 years ago. This suits McFadyen, whose canvases can reach 2 × 3 metres and are hardly portable. The works here are smaller, often domestic in scale. Like Canaletto, who relied on memory and notes rather than gondoliers holding still, McFadyen paints Britain: urban and pastoral views, empty beaches, fleeting scenes from a speeding train, or Scottish wilderness with city lights on the horizon.
On this island the sea is never far away, nor is the city.
Venue:
The Grey Gallery
4 Helmsley Place, London Fields, E8 3SB
EXHIBITION
26 Apr – 24 May 2024
Pariah Genius
John Deakin, Jock McFadyen, Anonymous Bosch & Iain Sinclair
Cheerio Publishing, in tandem with their April publication of the mighty Iain Sinclair’s Pariah Genius, announce a month-long takeover of the historic and beautiful Swedenborg House in Bloomsbury for an exhibition of John Deakin’s photographs, Sinclair’s notes and research for the novel, as well as paintings by Jock McFadyen, a film by anonymous_bosch23, and events and talks inspired by the great photographer’s work.
Underground is a two-person show pairing seven large paintings by Jock McFadyen RA with soundscapes by musician and artist Jem Finer.
McFadyen’s late-1990s Underground series draws on imagery from London tube stations. Works such as Bank and Elephant verge on abstraction, anchored by fragments of signage and iconography. Finer’s field recordings echo this approach, layering random sounds of the underground with recognisable notes from daily travel.
Venue:
The Grey Gallery, 4 Helmsley Place, London, E8 3SB
EXHIBITION
18 Mar – 14 May 2023
Red Yellow and Blue: Five pictures
McFadyen opened his studio in London Fields, East London, presenting for the first time together four recent paintings, including large-scale urban landscapes, along with figurative works.
Bringing together 20 works spanning almost 30 years, this free display in the Royal Academy of Arts' Weston Rooms explores Jock McFadyen’s fascination with London’s changing urban landscapes.
Venue:
Weston Rooms, Royal Academy of Art, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BD
A major retrospective displaying over 45 years of paintings from throughout McFadyen's life at The Lowry in Salford. McFadyen has also chosen a number of works from The Lowry Collection to feature in the exhibition alongside his own work.
Venue:
Lowry Gallery, The Lowry, Pier 8, The Quays, Salford, England, M50 3AZ
Listen or download via BBC Sounds
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EXHIBITION
11 Jun – 25 Sep 2021
Lost Boat Party
Scotland's Dovecot Studios, in partnership with The Scottish Gallery, celebrated the artist Jock McFadyen's 70th birthday year with Lost Boat Party, a major exhibition of over 20 large paintings, highlighting McFadyen’s understanding of the sublime landscape tradition, alongside the urban dystopia for which the artist is known.
The exhibition formed part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2021 programme.
Venue:
Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1LT dovecotstudios.com
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IN CONVERSATION
12 August 2021
Edi Stark Talks Art with Jock McFadyen
In this live, informal conversation, Stark delved into the consideration of landscape and environment that drives McFadyen’s work and his unique, unromanticised reflections on Scotland. An online event.
Edinburgh Art Festival Launch Event
with Jock McFadyen & Simon Groom
Dovecot is delighted to celebrate the opening of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2021 with a live interview between artist Jock McFadyen RA and Simon Groom, Director of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland. An online event.
Discover Jock’s approach to painting the contemporary landscape in this online conversation with Christina Jansen, Director of The Scottish Gallery. An online event.
Jock McFadyen collaborated with Dovecot Studios on The Mallaig Commission – a major new artwork that interprets the Scottish artist’s gritty, urban vision through the dramatic sensuality of fine art textile.
The Mallaig Commission Artist Proof was on display as part of the exhibition Jock McFadyen: Lost Boat Party. The work was created in a limited edition of three artworks plus the initial Artist Proof.
Jock McFadyen: Goes to the Pictures, an exhibition at the City Art Centre, Edinburgh. Teddy Jamieson from the Herald interviewed Jock about the background to this creative exhibition and the inspiration behind this new show.
Watch on YouTube
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Marking McFadyen’s 70th birthday, this exhibition pairs his paintings with works from the City Art Centre’s collection of Scottish art.
Unexpected connections emerge through witty and striking juxtapositions, placing both McFadyen’s practice and the collection in a fresh context. - Maeve Toal, Curator, City Art Centre
Venue:
City Art Centre, 2 Market St, Edinburgh EH1 1DE
The derelict 1970s post-war city is the backdrop to many of his paintings of place, its liminal spaces before the rash of high-rise glass and steel developments, the influx of young bankers to Canary Wharf and Limehouse.
Continue reading: artlyst.com
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ART UK Interview
30 Jun 2020
An interview with cityscape painter Jock McFadyen
by Ruth Millington
An exclusive interview undertaken by email between Ruth Millington and Jock McFadyen during lockdown...
Ruth Millington is an art critic and writer on modern and contemporary art. She has written for the i newspaper, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Sorbet Magazine and BBC Online, and appeared as an art expert on BBC Breakfast and ITV News. She also blogs about art and culture in Birmingham.
