Bourgeois and Inckle

Untitled: drypoint etching 1999

It's not often that Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) makes it north to the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery. This Hayward Touring exhibition (on show from 6 August to 10 September 2016 at the Main Gallery) featured two series of work - her Autobiographical Series (1994) capturing some of her earliest memories, and a set of 11 drypoints from 1999 which are more abstract. Although much of Bourgeois' work is associated with textiles and sculpture, between 1980s and her death she returned to printmaking. 

Freya liked the images of scissors 'giving birth' to small scissors - a wonderful image referring to Bourgeois' seamstress mother. The image which stayed with me was this one, of a tiny female figure balancing on the edges of what look like shards of glass, surrounded by darkness. It is powerful. I love the way Bourgeois is so present in her work, so vital, and seems to transform personal pain into something much more uplifting. 

Untitled: drypoint etching 1999

Alongside the Bourgeois exhibition in the Main Gallery were sculptures and prints by Caroline Inckle, a 2012 graduate of Moray College in Elgin. Her work explores a material relationship with the world, both through images and sculpture. These intriguing 'spears' of pared wood painted in ochre and blue attracted Freya and Kai. I did not feel such a close connection with the sculptural work as with some of the prints, in which landscape seemed to be imbued with the sense of geological time and the creative process.