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The Pyramid
Works on Paper
Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan

Offsite:
The Watchie, Catterline, Aberdeenshire
19th - 28th February 2006, view by appointment 01569 750369
Opening Sunday 19th February, 2pm - 4pm

In January 2005, Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan embarked on a period of open ended research activity commissioned by Studio Voltaire. This research was intended as a kind of supplement, or response, to the artists project at Studio Voltaire, Oh we will, we will, will we.

Oh we will, we will, will we consisted of a large scale patterned pyramid, with a crudely cut out face, constructed in Studio Voltaire's exhibition space. This was shown together with a series of framed picture works that offered possible stories that might account for this work. The exhibition was an opportunity for the artists to frame and re-present particular motifs from within their practice, re-appropriating their own work to create some sort of other system for meaning or for thinking about meaning. The exhibition at Studio Voltaire presented a particular narrative spectacle that offered the viewer no easy resolution of understanding.

The research activity has given Tatham and O'Sullivan a further opportunity to re-think and re-frame the grammar of their practice. Since last January they have been involved in researching their own archive from the last ten years and re-considering the notes, collages and working drawings that are the residue of their working process.

These artefacts will be displayed in another studio context in the small coastal village of Catterline in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. 'The Watchie' was originally the studio of the East Coast artists Joan Eardley and Lil Nielson and retains a strong sense of their inhabitation. The exhibition of Tatham and O'Sullivan's works on paper at the Watchie is called The Pyramid. Through this juxtaposition of practices it is hoped The Pyramid will be a complex meditation on the construction of narrative of an artists practice, interlacing different times, geographies and imaginations.

A poster and text designed and written by the artist Fiona Jardine accompany The Pyramid. Jardine has been involved in the research activity since last January and has created a narrative and imaginative space through the construction of a composite fiction.

Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan are based in Glasgow. Their most recent solo exhibitions and projects are Oh we will, we will, will we, Studio Voltaire, 200, The Slapstick Mystics with Sticks, Frieze Art Fair Commission, London, 2004; and Think Thingamajig and Other Things, Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, 2003. Group exhibitions include Selective Memory, Scottish Pavillion, Venice Biennale, 2005 and My head is on fire, but my heart is full of love, Charlottenburg Museum, Copenhagen, 2002.

Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan are represented by The Modern Institute, Glasgow and Sutton Lane, London.

Oh we will, we will, will we was supported by
Arts Council England, London and The Henry Moore Foundation