UNION GALLERY CELEBRATES FIFTH ON THE FOURTH

The Union Gallery on Broughton Street will mark five years in business next week with a mixed exhibition featuring some of its regular artists.

Philip Braham, Annette Edgar, Kenneth Low, Patsy McArthur, Dylan Lisle, Norrie Harman, Joyce Gunn Cairns MBE and Audrey Grant are among those whose work will be on show. 

'I know what genuine/earnest work takes out of an artist,’ says Alison Auldjo. ‘It's like putting your heart and soul on the walls for public scrutiny. It's excruciating, and so I try to be beside them at every step of the way.

'A bit of grit and tunnel vision in something you believe in wholeheartedly helps too. You need to have energy, much like the artists' studios where the work is made.'

It’s a nurturing role which Union Gallery has prided itself on from the start. Since its launch in 2009, the gallery has championed contemporary artists, treading a fine line between established figures and those just setting out.

Its success has come in striking a balance between: outstanding works catering for the ‘mainstream’; edgier, more controversial pieces which risk frightening off the timid; and those pieces which simply appeal to curious passersby, some of whom may be entirely new to the art world.

Samantha Boyes’s ‘High Tea’, for example, was not an obvious choice, and certainly wasn’t to everybody’s taste. But, to many people’s surprise, it finished up as a major success, attracting public and media interest and – not unimportantly for artist or gallery – a great many buyers.

To have stuck to its creative principles and survived would be an achievement at any time, but to have done so and prospered during a recession speaks volumes for the nerve and acumen of those at the helm.

Artist Audrey Grant says Auldjo has been instrumental in helping her to build her career, with the gallery providing significant exhibiting opportunities: 'As a result, I now have a London gallery, and a second solo show with the Union Gallery during the Edinburgh Festival in 2015.'

Below is one of the works which will be on show next: Annette Edgar’s enormous ‘Runner’, chosen here for its particular relevance to enormous, naked, pink, athletic events at the forthcoming Commonwealth Games.

'Now We Are Five' will run at 45 Broughton Street from 4–29 July. A review will appear here in due course.