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Hurricane Lamb flies in for Duff House summer show

An exciting new exhibition featuring work from eight contemporary artists opens at Duff House for the summer this weekend. (Saturday, July 9)

The show is a collaborative project between Aberdeenshire Council, which manages the five-star visitor attraction in Banff, Gray’s School of Art at Robert Gordon University and Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen.

The unusual title, Hurricane Lamb, was inspired by co-curators and artists Michael Agnew and David McCracken.

The exhibition explores the idea of fiction in pictorial terms, by telling stories and describing visually the connections made by artists and writers.

Hurricane Lamb artist Andrew Cranston said: “Macbeth is a play underwritten with visual trickery and illusion. No one can trust what they see. Fractured motifs appear, floating, moving or fixed, as projections of darkest thoughts. Sounds like painting …

“Hurricane Lamb is a group show taking place in similar terrain, geographically and philosophically.”

Duff House general manager Rachel Kennedy said she liked the interesting ideas behind the exhibition.

“The artists were invited to create works in response to the house and its history and of course, the wonderful collection of historic paintings and furnishings on loan to the house from the National Galleries of Scotland,” she said.

“The Duff family was very proud of its ancient Scottish roots and would have claimed links to the ‘Macduff’ in Shakespeare’s famous Scottish play.”

The group show includes work by Michael Agnew, Andrew Cranston, Adam Dant, Lennox Dunbar, Paul Housley, David McCracken, Georgia Russell and Donald Urquhart.

It envelops a diverse range of styles and different approaches to working within a fine art context.

All eight artists have strong links to Scotland and the north east and three of the creative minds behind the project are lecturers at Gray’s School of Art.

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring works by the artists and a series of essays which explore the nature of fiction in pictorial terms.

The exhibition also launches an on-going creative collaboration between the historic north east venue and Gray’s School of Art and work is already underway to produce a limited edition portfolio of the works in 2012.

Supporting creativity and arts education in the north east is central to this collaborative effort and a series of printmaking workshops and educational visits have been organised by Aberdeenshire Council and Gray’s School of Art for school pupils and students.

Duff House will also be running a programme of gallery talks during the course of the show.

The exhibition and accompanying publication have been supported by Aberdeenshire Council, the IDEAS Research Institute at the Robert Gordon University, Grays School of Art, Duff House, Peacock Visual Arts Aberdeen and the Cultures of Representation research group at Gray’s.