Iain Patterson
www.posiv.cz ǀ 73
STYLE
on my work, though I do admire his very
original compositional sense in his plant
watercolours.
My wife Helen had worked on Tiree as
a student in the 60’s and had a great
fondness the the island and its people.
In 1992 we bought a neglected croft house
at the east end of the island, 150 metres
from the sea called in its original Gaelic
name “Taigh Bean Iain” (translated as
“Iain’s Wife’s house” !) Everything needed
to be done to make it remotely habitable
since there was no running water, no
electricity and a ‘shoogly’ (unsafe) roof.
Many summers later, with great physical
effort, the cottage was finally safe
and habitable and we could take delight
at being inside, beside the fire, with a gale
force wind whistling outside.
At the beginning of next year, you should
present your previous cycle called OUT
WEST in Prague and, in part, the current
one, called BALANCE. Tell us something
about your exhibition activities.
My introduction to exhibiting in Europe
was through the gallery owner, Richard
Demarco. in 1981 he planned a big
exhibition of Polish Art and Theatre
during the Edinburgh Festival the following
year. After visiting Prague, Demarco gave
me some artist’s addresses in Wrocław
and the first door we knocked on was
that of Barbara Kozłowska and Zbigniew
Makarewicz. They made us very welcome
and were to stay with us in our Edinburgh
flat in 1982. Zbiggy was keen to see
my work and had invited some fellow
artists and critics one evening to see my
slideshow. It was a certain shock - Polish
Style - for me. After slide number two or
three, Zdzisław Jurkiewicz said “What are
you doing? This is rubbish! What? Trying
to tell a little story? One nice colour next
to another?” It was a hard introduction
to Polish Conceptualism.
As a lecturer at the Edinburgh College
of Art, I helped to organise student
exchanges between ECA and Wrocław.
Significant collaborations were
the exhibitions “Dialog” (BWA Awangarda
Galeria 2000) and “Dialog” (Edinburgh
College of Art 2001).
After the “Out West” exhibition
in Wrocław, and thanks to the curatorship
of exhibitions initiated by friends
from the Cabinet of Architecture,
the exhibition moved to the House of Arts
in Ostrava and beyond. My curator has
the main body of the work in Ostrava –
which I add to during my visits – and when
I suggest to him that the tour has surely
come to an end, he replies… “Yes, … but!
And so the Central European adventure
continues!
Read the full interview by scanning
theQR code. Interview for POSITIV
Business & Style magazine prepared
by Tadeáš Goryczka as part of the Cabinet
of Architecture, an independent project
for architecture, art and design.
I’m making a series of “half
painngs” that my master
drummer friend, Han Bennink
will complete. We’ll have
a show and concert together
in the near future.
Pohled do ateliéru Iaina Paersona v East Lintonu, 2022