Will Maclean
Different Meridians
7th May - 5th June, 2008

Maclean explores concepts of measurement in new and surprising ways in key works for this exhibition. While the meridian may position us externally through instruments of measurement and navigation, it can also position us internally, rather like acupuncture and Chinese medicine, where located pathways in the body are conduits for the flow of vital energy.

A metaphorical approach has been central to Maclean's visual thinking over decades. The surfaces and complex materials of his enigmatic box constructions resonate with the burying and partial recovery of a narrative. More and more the mark-making reads like traces carefully gathered to inform or to evoke something amounting to more than their physical existence.

Motifs of surrealism infuse the constructions with a playful but formal ingenuity, keeping references to the sea and to its exploration through astronomy and other means, always in evidence. The white, salt like, bone-dry appearance of the new work, some of it substantial in scale, takes us into a new kind of space. Maclean asks us also to look up at the stars and to consider newly available information that constitutes a 'cosmic writing', capable of informing us beyond all our hopes and expectations.

A catalogue with an essay by Dr Richard Holloway accompanies the exhibition