Lot 72
JIM LAMBIE (SCOTTISH B.1964) §
UNTITLED (SID VICIOUS)
Auction: 16 March 2016 at 11:00 GMT
Description
Oil on canvas collaged on paper
Dimensions
46cm x 30cm (18in x 12in)
Footnote
Note: The Scottish contemporary art scene is thriving, a fact long recognised on the international stage. Glasgow was recently named one of the top five centres for contemporary art worldwide and has contributed no less than six winners to the prestigious Turner Prize and countless nominees. In acknowledgment, the city hosted the 2015 awards. Edinburgh remains the country's commercial centre and is of course also home to the world's largest arts festival which takes place in August.
'The New Glasgow Boys' Peter Howson, Steven Campbell and Ken Currie claimed the spotlight in the 1980s and were swiftly taken up by London and New York-based collectors. In the 1990s, the likes of Douglas Gordon, David Shrigley and Christine Borland influenced much of the artistic dialogue in the UK. This was largely off the back of the success of Glasgow School of Arts innovative and highly regarded Environmental Art course, the focus of which is to create art for a public - be it urban or rural - environment, as opposed to a traditional institutional space.
Turner prize nominated artist James 'Jim' Lambie is one of the stalwarts of the burgeoning Scottish art scene and a Glasgow man born and bred. His work, perhaps more so than any of his contemporaries, encapsulates the best features of the Scottish art scene: it is inclusive, unpretentious, pleasurable and energetic. He revels in the sensory and emotional impact of his artworks as opposed to playing intellectual games, and this makes his work populist (in the very best sense of the word) and accessible to all.
The piece represented here for sale is emblematic of one of Lambie's core themes: his love of music and his interest in conveying what he sees as the symbiotic relationship between both artistic mediums. Collage and embellishment play a recurrent role in his practise and he takes pleasure in exposing the mechanics of his process to his audience. The work is part of a series which juxtaposes images of famous rock stars with anachronistic, finely painted floral motifs in oils. Here we see them figuratively blossoming out of the mouth of Sid Vicious, the ill-fated punk musician of the Sex Pistols. Iconoclastic but light-hearted; it is a thing of beauty, black humour and a sincere homage to a rock'n'roll idol.