David Eustace | Still • Landscape • Life

DAVID EUSTACE STILL • LANDSCAPE • LIFE

DAVID EUSTACE STILL • LANDSCAPE • LIFE 5-29 SEPTEMBER 2018

FOREWORD

David Eustace is a photographer of international practice and repute who has worked across continents for over twenty-five years. The world through his camera lens is on occasion abstract; at times melancholic; always authentically seen and felt.

In this exhibition, Eustace has brought together four portfolios of work – made in different places and at different times. What links them is indeed the overarching theme of time.

In Bridge, seen in an instant and realised photographically over the course of one day, Eustace has found, in its accidental, painted, abraded, rusted and weathered surfaces, abstract art.

In the series Mar a Bha, he responds intuitively to the tranquillity and timelessness of the landscape on the Isle of Harris, through the medium of a bygone age – photogravure.

Polaroids comprises a single wall in New York observed over time, a subject constantly changing as layer is laid upon layer. Posters, notices and graffiti are to be seen added and removed and created is a palimpsest of disconnected fragments of words and images; the Babel of our times.

Desert Lines continues to explore the theme of transience, the ancient but everchanging mountains cut through by roads are understood in one single unified vision.

Eustace says that his photographs emerge ‘when, for a moment all that is in front of you just feels connected, balanced and right… As if the soul is content.’

The resulting images are beautifully and meticulously crafted, without artifice and with a directness and sincerity of vision that is the hallmark of his work.

JULIE LAWSON Senior Curator, Scottish National Portrait Gallery Editor of Studies in Photography

Portrait by Iga Gozdowska 2

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BRIDGE 2017

All printed on 300 gsm Archival Pigment Paper Paper size 81 x 106 cm, image size 42 x 60 cm Edition of 8 Also available as a limited edition box set with complete portfolio of 20 images 4

“These are the photographs I would have hoped to paint.”

DAVID EUSTACE An iron bridge, exposed to acid rain, frost, graffiti, repair, vandalism, pollution and wear becomes a paradigm for human experience but also for a painter’s technique. The scouring, building up and removing of material, dripping and throwing of paint and even the chance or ‘automatic’ so welcomed in dada practice, are all in the armoury of the painter who recognises that texture is part of the abstract.

Eustace’s discovery of such a bridge in West London led him to make a series of abstract, painterly images in one day which are no less about time passing than the Harris works, but whose creation cemented for the artist a deep connection with painting. His subsequent ‘discovery’ of a parallel aesthetic in aspects in the work of Keith Vaughan and Morandi proved charming and confirmatory: the elegy of time passing, of emerging change, tonal subtlety and layering of texture could be constructed of captured.

1/ Bridge xiv

GUY PEPLOE 5

2/ Bridge xi 6

3/ Bridge ii 7

4/ Bridge iii 8

5/ Bridge v 9

6/ Bridge vi 10

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7/ Bridge xii 12

8/ Bridge iv 13

9/ Bridge ix 14

overleaf 10/ Bridge xiii

11/ Bridge vii 15

12/ Bridge i 18

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13/ Bridge x 20

14/ Bridge viii 21

Harris, “MAR A BHA” (English: “AS IT WAS”) An idea of Harris had haunted Eustace for over twenty years. The wild nature and remoteness would lend a clarity of mind, a possibility of reconsideration alongside the direct inspiration of the landscape.

This was a place where time has stood still, as the season turns immutably; an island facing the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean, life lived in the lee of the storm, senses sharpened, tuned to the drama of each day. The artist’s response was to use slower shutter speeds, the longer exposures symbolic of a pause, an inward breath to allow the experience to persist and lending a grainy truth and mineral sparkle to the rocks and sand. All senses are engaged (the blast of ozone is palpable). And yet what might be called the unconscious will of the artist is at play and while the photographs are compellingly true to place, Eustace’s painterly, abstract aesthetic is present and this suite of works is linked physically and emotionally then to the three other themes of the exhibition.

GUY PEPLOE

MAR A BHA 2018

All printed on 250 gsm Japanese Bamboo Paper Paper size 40.6 x 50.8 cm, image size 23 x 30.7 cm Edition of 12 Also available as a limited edition box set with complete portfolio of 20 images 22

15/ Mar a Bha vii 23

16/ Mar a Bha xi 24

17/ Mar a Bha ii 25

18/ Mar a Bha iii 26

overleaf 19/ Mar a Bha xiv

20/ Mar a Bha xii 27

21/ Mar a Bha iv 30

overleaf 22/ Mar a Bha viii

23/ Mar a Bha x 31

24/ Mar a Bha vi 34

25/ Mar a Bha xiii 35

26/ Mar a Bha ix 36

27/ Mar a Bha xv 37

28/ Mar a Bha v 38

29/ Mar a Bha i 39

30/ Mar a Bha xvi 40

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Made in 2004, around Soho in New York, these sixteen unique polaroid photographs seem at first quite separate from the other three themes.

Eustace’s decision to use polaroid, to forgo the possibility of refinement: the choices of paper, scale and tone, to allow instead the photograph to be absolutely immediate, takes them closer to drawing.

In the era before the smart-phone, of digital ubiquity, polaroid was expensive and operating the shutter was akin to pulling the trigger on a moving target.

The results are objects, archive on the move, a chronical of the streets the artist had come to know: posters, graffiti, boards, the accretion of transience, more Basquiat than Diane Arbus. However, even in this small scale when the consideration of the subject was at its most instinctive, the abstract elements of line and tone feed back and forward into the artist’s canon, his aesthetic as recognisable as a painter’s mark.

GUY PEPLOE

POLAROIDS 2004

Sixteen individual unique Polaroids offered as one body of work 42

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31/ Polaroids 44

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A series of photographs made in Southern California and Arizona between 2010 and 2012. He became beguiled by the calligraphy of movement, of worn painted markings on dark tarmac, of roadside desert drying in natural, honeycomb patterns, of how a straight, marked road relates to a far-off mountain profile. The artist exposes the changes in surfaces, naturally and intentionally engendered, moderating appearances “man lays tarmac, nature changes it and man lays another layer. Eustace recognised an affinity with the Buddhist aesthetic of wabisabi which embraces the concept of asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, austerity, intimacy and ‘the ingenious integrity of natural objects and processes.’

From this the happenstance of visual links allowed him to recognise the essential consistency in his own work: drying sand on a Harris beach and the black pitch repairs of heat cracks on a dead-flat highway linked by a common aesthetic and the artist’s decision to make them permanent.

GUY PEPLOE

DESERT LINES 2010-12

All printed on 320 gsm Hahnemühle Fine Art Archival Paper Paper size 24 x 30.5 cm, image size 13 x 18.1 cm Edition of 20 52

Desert Lines iv (cat. 33) (detail)

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32/ Desert Lines i 54

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33/ Desert Lines iv 56

34/ Desert Lines v 57

35/ Desert Lines viii 58

overleaf

36/ Desert Lines ix

37/ Desert Lines vi

39/ Desert Lines iii

38/ Desert Lines vii

40/ Desert Lines ii 59

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41/ Desert Lines x 62

42/ Desert Lines xi 63

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CURATED ROOM

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Guy Peploe and David Eustace in conversation When were you first aware of the idea of individual taste?

Taste I guess is just an opinion, and everyone’s is valid. It’s just something I became aware of: what appealed, something beautiful that sparked the imagination, not necessarily something that was meant to be beautiful but something that clicked and felt right. I’ve always known what’s felt right as it comes from within, but still it’s only ever my opinion.

How would you describe your overarching aesthetic?

For me there’s an unspoken voice from within that for a moment when all in front of you just feels connected, balanced and right. It’s as though the soul is content. Something made with love or the result of an industrial process, or quite simply by chance. It can be natural or man made it’s all about what fits and feels matched without trying too hard.

It can be an ancient piece or something created only moments before. What matters is the balance, like a pair of bricks, side-by-side looking like a little house alongside a finely crafted piece of timeless Japanese porcelain. As a visual artist I see little difference between filing a camera frame or an empty room in a stately hall. It’s creating balance and connecting spaces.

Would you call yourself a collector?

Yes. But it’s not a collection as such; that’s too finite, its just stuff; but each object and picture become a part of you, adopted and personal. Sometimes things are found, or cost pennies; other times you shell out a great deal of money and make a sacrifice, but value to me is not measured by money. It might be worth a fortune or indeed very little but that leads us down another road in terms of what we measure as being of real value… for me it’s often walking past a simple little object and it making me stop and smile for all the right reasons and that’s rarely pounds and pennies.

Have you ever regretted buying something or not buying either?

No not really. There’s been times I wished I could have afforded something but I’ve tried to be realistic about it and understanding that for some reason it wasn’t meant to be at that time. I remember looking at an Irving Penn photographic (four section platinum “Cigarette”) print back in the mid 90’s.

I think it was being offered (from a gallery in London) at £7,500. I saw the same print edition recently for sale in NYC for around $465,000 (US).

But as I say it’s all relevant as in the mid 90’s £7,500 was worth far more than it is 20 years on; just look at house prices in Edinburgh, London or NYC in that time… it’s all relevant. There are perhaps some things I wouldn’t buy these days that I bought yesteryear, but that’s very rare. I try not to regret anything I’ve bought in the past that today I may question.

I simply try and look upon anything like that as both me maturing and equally learning from what we refer to as experience. I’m not a dealer, I’m an artist who collects other’s works, objects or things that move me, and sometimes I sell to feed the habit and give me the funds needed to collect other work and support more artists.

Portrait by Iga Gozdowska 67

DAVID EUSTACE (HON) DR OF ARTS

Leaving school at 16 I undertook various jobs.

At 19 I served on a Royal Navy Minesweeper and at 21 I became a prison officer, serving at HM Prison Barlinnie in Glasgow. At 28, I decided to return to full time education as a mature student and travelled daily from Glasgow to Edinburgh to study at Edinburgh Napier University. I graduated three years later with a BA Distinction in Photographic Studies.

For the following eight years I was primarily based in London and a masthead contributor at GQ, Vogue and Tatler. During this time I also worked for most other London based magazines and a list of international advertising clients. In 2001 I based myself in NYC and over the following 15 years was fortunate to work, collaborate and be inspired by some of the most creative minds and environments I've ever experienced. In 2008 I was the only non-US citizen asked to participate in USA Networks high profile “Character Project” where I decided to travel from the Pacific to the Atlantic on the last remaining non freeway route, Highway 50. This personal initiated project resulted in the inspiration for Tom Brokaw Along Highway 50 the following year and my work featured as the largest and opening spread in the accompanying book. One of my images was also selected for the books cover. In 2009 I was invited to launch Anthropologie’s “Who Inspires Us” online arts initiative. This was an idea / project that hoped to reflect an insight into who and what inspired Anthropologie, a company that inspires so many others in turn. I decided to go on a road trip with my daughter, Rachael and create a joint journal that would celebrate love, family, hope, inspiration and a personal family bond. On the success of this project I was asked again the following year to create another portfolio and so I returned to Scotland to produce the body of work Highland Heart. This was also chosen in 2013 to launch Scotland Week celebrations

in NYC with an exhibition at Hudson studios and opened by Scotland's First Minister at the time, Alex Salmond. In 2011 I was honoured with an Hon Dr of Arts for my contribution to photography from Edinburgh Napier University. In 2012 Panasonic based their national Lumix TV and print campaign around my work and had me star in their cinema and TV commercial. This had me visit Yosemite National park where the campaign was filmed. Due to this campaign’s success I was asked again to be part of the 2014 campaign. We filmed this all over Indonesia including Bali, Western Sumatra and Nias Island.

I've exhibited my work in both private galleries and national museums, including a 70 print solo show in Cork Street, London, sponsored by Deutsche Bank, and which was the subject of a 30 minute BBC documentary. I was the first photographic artist to host a solo exhibition (60 portraits) at The Glasgow Art Club. My work is held in both private and public museums and collections. In 2015 I was the first photographer to have an exhibition in The Scottish Gallery’s 173-year history. In the same year I became Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University, a post I’ll serve for five years. In 2016 I decided to base myself back in the UK and in my role as Chancellor of Edinburgh Napier University I decided to launch The Chancellor Talk Series. This launched in 2016 with the NYC based legendary graphic designer Milton Glaser, creator of the I ❤ NY logo. This talk was followed by a personal insight into the world of the UK's most successful independent film producer and Oscar winner Jeremy Thomas. I’ve travelled the globe extensively and have seen my work recognized both locally and internationally in terms of commissions and awards.

DAVID EUSTACE

Jacques-Eugène Caudron (1818-1865) anatomical figure from the Curated Room 68

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SELECTED PORTRAITS Eve Arnold • Alec Baldwin • Iain Banks • Daniel Barenboim • Alan Bates • Jack Black • Sir Peter Blake • Ozwald Boateng • Jimmy Breslin • George Mackay Brown Duke of Buccleuch • Gerard Butler • John Byrne • Steven Campbell • Jane Campion • Peter Capaldi • Robert Carlyle • Emilio Coia • Robbie Coltrane • Billy Connolly • Sir Terence Conran • Steve Coogan • Brian Cox • Sheryl Crow • Alan Cumming • Willem Dafoe • Jack Davenport • Jack Dee • Dame Judi Dench • Duke of Devonshire • Colin Dexter • Tracey Emin • Sir Alex Ferguson • Bryan Ferry Colin Firth • Tommy Flanagan • Jason Flemyng • Dexter Fletcher • Isabelle Fokine Ken Follett • Lord Norman Foster • Dick Francis • Sir David Frost • James Gilchrist Milton Glaser • Andy Goldsworthy • Hugh Grant • Alasdair Gray • Robert Hardy Rafic Hariri • Clare Henry • Ciarán Hinds • Peter Howson • Sir John Hurt • Eva Jiricna • Scarlett Johansson • James Earl Jones • Tibor Kalman • Roy Keane AL Kennedy • Philip Kerr • Jude Law • Mike Leigh • Liz Lochhead • Sophia Loren Kelly Macdonald • Ewan McGregor • David Mackenzie • Jay McAnelly • Sir Paul McCartney • Kevin McKidd • Bernard MacLaverty • Sam Mendes • Mads Mikkelsen Sir John Mills • Juliet Mills • Anthony Minghella • Edwin Morgan • Duke of Norfolk Jamie Oliver • Earl & Countess of Peel • Lynda La Plante • Ian Rankin • Vic Reeves Yasmina Reza • Alan Rickman • Guy Ritchie • Mickey Rourke • Jonathan Saunders Ian Schrager • Ed Sheeran • Tina Sinatra • Harry Dean Stanton • Jason Statham Dave Stewart • Alexander Stoddart • Trudie Styler • Tilda Swinton • Matthew Vaughan • Albert Watson • Alison Watt • Duke of Wellington • Irvine Welsh Duke of Westminster • Vivienne Westwood • Ronnie Wood • Susannah York Radiohead • Sting

CLIENTS Billboard • Condé Nast Traveller • Elle • Elle Decoration • Esquire • Golf Magazine GQ UK (Contributing Editor) • GQ USA • Hemisphere • In Style (UK) • In Style (USA) • Interview • Masthead • Red • Slave • Tales Magazine • Tatler UK • The Guardian • The Herald • The New Yorker • The Observer Magazine • The Scotsman Magazine • The Sunday Times • Vanity Fair • Vogue UK

COMMISSIONS ABC Network • Anthropologie • Anti Drugs Council • Belhaven Brewery • Bell South • Dewar’s • Disney Publishing • FIFA • Glenmorangie • HBO Films • Kellogg’s Louis Verdad • Marks & Spencer • Motorola • Panasonic • Paramount Pictures Procter & Gamble • QVC • The Coca Cola Company • The Northern Bank • The Royal Bank of Scotland • The Scottish Executive • The Weir Group • Universal Music • US Powergen

SELECTED COLLECTIONS The National Portrait Gallery, London • The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh • Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow • Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow • Deutsche Bank • Standard Life Aberdeen

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DAVID EUSTACE I WRITE TO TELL YOU OF A BABY BOY BORN ONLY YESTERDAY…

Published by Clearview Books, 2014 (256 pages, large format 29 x 37 cm) Price £60

SATURDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2018 An Audience with David Eustace 11am-12noon RSVP

I Write to Tell You of a Baby Boy Born Only Yesterday… is the first ever monograph on the work of David Eustace, one of the world’s leading photographers. The title of this book is the first line of the agency’s letter to David Eustace’s parents, informing them that a baby boy had been born and was available for adoption. It represents the beginning of his journey. David Eustace’s subjects read like a Who’s Who in the world of art, cinema, music and design: Tracey Emin, Sophia Loren, James Earl Jones, Radiohead, Paul McCartney, Milton Glaser to name a few. His work is held in both private and public collections, and Tom Brokaw’s television series Along Highway 50 was inspired by David’s portfolio for NBC’s art based project. This art book is an eclectic selection of his portraiture, landscape, and social observation.

This book is a snapshot, a rather long exposure perhaps, covering many events and encounters that I’ve been fortunate enough to experience these past two and a half decades. Some of these moments took place only weeks ago, while others were recorded, almost 25 years ago, at the very early stages of my love affair with the medium.

CLEARVIEW BOOKS

My hope is that this work, be it the entire book or a certain portfolio, a single frame, character, look or a landscape might encourage or inspire you. Even the smallest detail in a single frame may provoke or arouse. If any of these images can do this then, in my view, they have no greater value or purpose.

Moments are all we have. Our past is gone and our future not yet here. I am fortunate to be able to photograph my moments, my world, the way I see it and would now invite you to enjoy part of my journey so far… that of the baby boy born only yesterday.

DAVID EUSTACE 71

Published by The Scottish Gallery to coincide with the exhibition DAVID EUSTACE STILL • LANDSCAPE • LIFE 5-29 September 2018 Exhibition can be viewed online at www.scottish-gallery.co.uk/davideustace ISBN: 978-910267-86-8 Designed by www.kennethgray.co.uk Printed by J Thomson Colour Printers, Glasgow All rights reserved. No part of this catalogue may be reproduced in any form by print, photocopy or by any other means, without the permission of the copyright holders and of the publishers.

front cover Mar a Bha xiv (cat. 19) (detail) inside front cover Mar a Bha ix (cat. 26) (detail) inside back cover Bridge viii (cat. 14) (detail) 72