Michael Craik: The Space in Between

&Gallery is pleased to present Scottish artist, Michael Craik's third solo exhibtion with the gallery.

 

The space in between is a place that often passes unnoticed, a zone of stillness, offering an opportunity to recalibrate before ones attention is redrawn. Such spaces may be physical or temporal, a gap separating two buildings or a momentary silence linking two passages of music. It could be short-lived, as in the turning of a page or continue for days or weeks between two connected actions. It could manifest as something physical, caught in our peripheral vision, unconsciously seen, yet informing our experience. Or a sound that encourages the mind to briefly wander from the task in hand. These spaces frame our focus and give it structure. They enable us to shift our view, see things afresh and take stock.

Craik’s exhibition The Space In Between will also present a series of small scale works that recently came to fruition. The idea for this new body of work was conceived in 2016 when he presented a solo exhibition in Kyoto. These sculptural, wall-based artworks are constructed with sustainably-sourced, native timbers combined with painted surfaces and resin. Each work constitutes a reimagined fragment of an encounter with the traditional architecture and gardens of Japan. Craik describes them as visual compartments, fashioned by the recollection of geometry, material, form and colour from the recesses of memories. To the viewer they could be interpreted as either representations or abstractions of remembered places but in Craik’s mind they occupy the space in between.