Andrew Grassie: New Hang 22 April 2005
Supported by Diesel

5 May – 19 June 2005
Tate Britain, Level 2. Open every day 10.00-17.50, first Friday of every month open until 22.00
Admission free

Andrew Grassie has made a new site-specific work for Art Now at Tate Britain. Entitled New Hang, the work consists of thirteen small paintings made in egg tempera on paper. Each painting depicts a different view of an imaginary exhibition in the very space in which Grassie’s paintings are exhibited, the Art Now room.

Andrew Grassie’s starting point for his beautifully-crafted work is a re-examination of the fundamental question of what to paint. To make New Hang Grassie selected, at intervals, well-known British and international works from the Tate Collection - by artists from George Stubbs and JMW Turner to Pablo Picasso, Henry Moore and Bridget Riley - and hung them in the Art Now room. In his studio, Grassie was then able to piece together a set of images of the ‘complete’ exhibition - an implausible event – and then, working from these photographs, paint the pictures that make up the current exhibition. The resulting works are positioned corresponding to the view of the room that they depict. So, if a viewer stands in front of one of Grassie’s pictures they will be looking at a view of the space in which they are standing. In this way they question the viewer’s sense of reality, presence, space and illusion.

Grassie was born in Edinburgh in 1966. He studied at St. Martin’s School of Art in 1984-88 and the Royal College of Art in 1988-90. Recent solo shows include those at the Mobile Home Gallery, London, in 2003, and the Paul Morris, Gallery New York in the same year. Recent group shows include Realistic Means, Drawing Center, New York, in 2002, Yes! I am very far from home Wolverhampton Art Gallery and tour 2003, Tonight, Studio Voltaire, London, 2003 and Edge of the Real, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London 2004.

Art Now Lightbox
The next Art Now Lightbox programme opens on 7 May. The programme then runs for 5 weeks until 12 June and features films by four artists. Changing every Monday, the programme shows new and recent single-screen film and video works by artists working in Britain today and presents them in Tate Britain’s Lightbox space. Each artist's work is shown as a solo presentation for one week and in the final week a compilation of all four will be presented. The programme is as follows:

7 May – 15 May Matt Calderwood
16 May – 22 May Steven Claydon
23 May – 29 May Inventory
30 May – 5 June Damien Roach