Curated by Andrew Mummery

Graeme Todd’s exhibition ‘Street Hermit’, is the first significant survey of the artist’s work to be presented in Scotland since his solo show at the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh in 2000.

Since 1989 Todd has produced a compelling body of work employing a distinctive combination of drawing and painting to explore the subject of ‘landscape’ in its broadest sense. The exhibition at Summerhall will feature work from key periods in the development of Todd’s practice, including paintings from the ‘Street Hermit’ series – from which the exhibition takes its name – produced in 2016 while on a residency at the Eremo Santa Maria Maddalena on Monteluco in the Appennine Mountains of Umbria, and as a guest of the Sol LeWitt studio in nearby Spoleto.

Todd’s work is inspired by a tireless curiosity. He has looked at and assimilated an enormous variety of different material from Western and Eastern art history and popular culture – including nineteenth century Northern European Romantic painting, Chinese and Japanese prints, found photographs, picture postcards, tourist books and comic strips – and has developed his own cursive, notational graphic style, which he combines with drawing that he translates from these art historical sources. His work is also characterised by his use of materials which include paint, coloured pencils, pastels, Indian ink and varnish, all of which are utilised for their different opacities or transparent effects. Although Todd is happy for his paintings to be described as landscapes they are perhaps better described as quiet reflections of how fragmented memories may coalesce and metamorphose into a new and cohesive whole.

As part of his exhibition Graeme Todd has designated one of the rooms at Summerhall the Hermit House and has invited fellow artists Dr Norman Shaw, Eddie Summerton and Liz Adamson to exhibit there. These artists have had a long term working dialogue with Todd and each will inhabit the room in turn, working with Todd to create three micro exhibitions.

Graeme Todd was born in Glasgow in 1962 and studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. He has exhibited internationally since 1991 and has work is in public collections including the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; the City Arts Centre, Edinburgh; the McManus Gallery, Dundee; the Arts Council of England collection; the UK Government Art Collection; the Kunsthaus Zurich and the Kunsthaus Glarus. He lives and works in Dunbar.