GRAHAM DURWARD (SCOTTISH B. 1956)
Untitled (Incense Positive)
2007
oil on linen
121.9 x 106.7 cm
ARR

Provenance:
Maureen Paley, London
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 2008

Exhibition History:
London, Saatchi Gallery, NewSpeak: British Art Now, 30 May – 17 October 2010
St Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, Newspeak, 25th October 2009- 17th January 2010
Adelaide, Art Gallery South Australia, Newspeak, 30th July - 23rd October 2011
London, Maureen Paley Gallery, The Hidden, London, 19 January – 24 February 2008

Literature:
Patricia Ellis, NewSpeak: British Art Now: From the Saatchi Gallery, Booth-Clibborn Editions, London, 2010, pp.83 (illustrated in colour)

Artist Description:
Graham Durward’s paintings explore the power of images. He develops his paintings from photographs that he finds or takes himself. Attempting to capture a sense of sublimation, his works suggest both sensuality and distance and his muted tones and ephemeral brushwork describe the intangible with a fixation or longing.
Though Durward’s Untitled paintings appear abstract, they are representations of burning incense and its immateriality and association to ritual. These ideas are echoed through his painting style. In Untitled, the billows of smoke are retraced with the artist’s brush, the gestures replicate both what the vapour looks like as well as its ‘real’ properties of non-physicality and movement. “I like to stress the documentary aspect in relation to seductive painting,” Durward says. “It’s important to me not to give too much information about the works. I construct them to be experienced in an unmediated way. They don’t enter into an artwork dialogue. Where the image comes from should be made as immediate to the viewer as it was to me.”