watermarks

Elizabeth Ogilvie & Robert Callender

Venues: The Fruitmarket Gallery, CCA Glasgow, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum, Stoke City Museum

Watermarks Publication (excerpt) | Hugh Adams

Ogilvie is among a very small number of British artists working exclusively in graphite and on a large scale. She is unique in the range of problems she manages to tackle successfully by means of what, superficially, would seem to be an extremely limited method of working. She is quite clear about the reasons for confining herself to graphite and thus monochrome. In depicting her subject, the sea, she wishes to convey its physical property which most concerns her – its movement – and to this end applies graphite in a way analogous to the ceaseless ebb and flow of the tides. Ogilvie’s work appears unemotional, she in fact expresses the hope that the physical demands her method of working makes and indeed the great excitement the subject evokes in her, remain alike hidden. There is a tremendous duality in the work and enormous tension between its concrete and its metaphysical aspects. She has forged a twentieth century metaphor behind which lies very modern concerns. She too is aware that what she holds precious is beleaguered and that the threat of ecological disaster is an ever present reality.