Alasdair Gray

Throughout his career, Alasdair Gray’s work in art and literature have been interwoven paths, overlapping in form and content. Born in Glasgow in 1934, he has worked as a teacher, painter, illustrator, playwright, scene painter, essayist, poet, novelist and muralist (the latest being the monumental decoration of Glasgow’s Oran Mor), among other roles. A prolific writer, with 18 published books to his name, and a winner of the Whitbread and Guardian book prizes, Gray is currently completing his biography ‘A Life in Pictures’, to be published by Canongate in 2010. In his books, word and image are juxtaposed and combined to form epic narratives that have been compared to the work of fellow artist-writers, such as William Blake.

This exhibition focuses on 2 series of work: illustrations for his own poems in Old Negatives first published in 1989; and The Scot’s Hippo print series Gray’s adaptation of the TS Eliot poem The Hippopotamus from 2007.