DONALD URQUHART, 'BI' AT MAUREEN PALEY AND HERALD STEET IN LONDON

It is most unusual - if not unique - to be represented by two galleries in the same city. Met with amazement and bafflement I frequently find myself having to explain this situation. Now for the first time I am exhibiting at both galleries simultaneously so here I will relate how this has come to pass.

Originally (from 2003) I was represented in London by Magnani gallery. Nicky Verber (of Herald St) worked there, and when Gregorio Magnani decided he was calling it a day Nicky left to set up Millers Terrace gallery with Ash L’ange. I showed at Millers Terrace in 2004 ("Listen To The Wine") and the same year at Maureen Paley in a group show, “The Black Album". During that show I found out I had been shortlisted for the Beck’s Futures Award. In a further twist of fate Nicky and Ash thought it was time they moved from Millers Terrace and settled at Herald Street (same street as Maureen). In that period of fast transition and high pressure it seemed practical that I have dual representation. This is an arrangement that has worked very well and it is in part a celebration of this that I am showing at both galleries in April.

I am treating this as one show in two separate spaces, not two different shows at different galleries. The title “Bi “refers to this union; a joining of two elements rather than a separation or division. The show will feature biographical works as well as an array of bitter pieces, instructional wall charts and studies in style.

I am also examining my own body of work and exploring my visual language as it has developed. My dissertation for my Scottish Certificate of Sixth Year Studies (English) was on recurring motifs and imagery in the work of Sylvia Plath. My own work has recurring themes, motifs and imagery and this is something that I thought was circumstantial, perhaps mere happenstance. Looking deeper I realise that my visual language is an expression of my response to my life; my history. From dead birds to glamorous movie stars, gore and horror, spite and sorrow; my past is present in my work.

Donald Urquhart 2010

Donald Urquhart was born in Dumfries in 1963. Previous solo exhibitions include Jack Hanley Gallery, Los Angeles and White Columns, New York, as well as Maureen Paley and Herald St in London. His work has been seen in recent group shows such as Newspeak: British Art Now, The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg, 2009, 50 Moons of Saturn, The Second Turin Triennale, Turin and The Wizard of Oz, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, both in 2008, Das Kapital: Blue Chips and Masterpieces, Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt am Main, 2007, and in 2005 he was nominated for Beck’s Futures. A new edition of Thackeray’s Vanity Fair featuring Urquhart’s illustrations will be published by Four Corners Books in September 2010. Urquhart Lives and works in London.