The 11th in our series of 26 exhibition pairings was a new site specific installation by Tommy Grace and Kate Owens.
Owens & Grace (b. 1979) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2002 and are two of Scotland's most exciting emerging artists. The pair are founder members and curators of influential artist-run gallery The Embassy in Edinburgh and alongside their individual practice, over the past 2 years they have also made work collaboratively. Long-listed for the Beck's Futures Award in 2006, their recent exhibitions include In-Residence, at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh (2006), The Garden at Castlefield, Manchester (2005) and Young Athenians at the Royal Scottish Academy (2006), now showing in Greece as part of the 1st Athens Biennial till November 2007. Both have also held solo exhibitions at Collective Gallery Project Room, Edinburgh.
Their installation made playful reference to art history and classical architecture, exploring current visual culture through that of the past. The gallery's elegant Georgian window underwent a temporary transformation to stained-glass, filtering the autumn sunlight and bathing the gallery in a synthetic pool of colour. This hue will illuminate a new triptych of photo-etchings hand-tinted with a palette of E-numbers. These works juxtapose ancient architectural features with the disposable detritus of our everyday, consumer-driven lives, exploring ideas of anonymous authorship, and the legacy and lifespan of things.