Join us for the Vernissage of Scottish screen print artist John Atherton for Nostalgia of Distance, his first solo exhibition in Scandinavia.

Nostalgia of Distance is a body of work developed through John Atherton’s interest in a series of found school year books from the 1970’s, where the individual portraits are being used as a catalyst, evolving into a layered abstract portraits of screen printing, paper and paint.

John Atherton’s latest exhibition presents a series of formal abstract works that are unequivocally in the tradition of modern abstract art. At first sight, they are to be appreciated entirely in the realm of pure visual abstraction and the pleasures of viewing carefully composed colour and form.  

However, counter-intuitively to this tradition, Atherton’s work emerges not from the lineage of abstract art but from that of portraiture through the commemorative representations found in the yearbook. 

Historically a distant landscape depicted in a portrait painting informs the viewer of a sense of nostalgic contemplation in the sitter. It is with this in mind that Atherton suggests a perceptual shift, that his abstract works could be interpreted by the viewer as a scene through a picture frame window. The nostalgic contemplations of the sitter are inventions conceived by the viewer, as they unravel the abstract ambiguity of the work.

Drinks, art and conversation in the gallery from 17:00