Robert Powell is a longstanding studio member of Edinburgh Printmakers and in 2016 was commissioned to produce a body of work for his solo show, Species of Space. This print was published by Edinburgh Printmakers and was exhibited as part of the show.

The exhibition was a meditation on the city as an idea and as a physical artefact, its construction and its conservation. It was both about the universal city and about Edinburgh in particular and it is about their citizens, the lives and stories of those who live within them. As well as his prints the exhibition featured intricate cardboard sculptures of an idealised walled city and a cross section of a house, High Rise. Through Powell’s cut away facades the viewer sees the city’s inhabitants restaging their daily lives as scenes from history, art, literature and mythology.

Biography

A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, Robert Powell has exhibited widely at home as well as throughout Europe, North America and the Far East. In his career thus far he has been the recipient of several awards including the 2008 John Watson Award, the 2011 Benno Schotz Award from the RSA and the 2013 SSA Engramme Printmaking Exchange prize.

Powell has undertaken a number of residencies, including at the Akiyoshidai Art Village and the Yamaguchi Society for Contemporary Art in Japan in 2013, and was the contributing artist to the University of Glasgow symposium and subsequent publication Anti-Tales: The Uses of Disenchantment in 2010.He has recently been the painter in residence at Timespan in Helmsdale as part of their Paradigm North program.

Powell’s own publications include Shadow Bestiary (2008) and Macpherson’s Cave: Shadow and Enlightenment and Praise of Folly (both 2011).  In his review of a recent show at the RSA, Duncan MacMillan talked about ‘the dark humour of Robert Powell’s brilliant comic print...is a delight.’

Powell has exhibited in the past year in Japan, Canada, Switzerland as well as the UK.