Edinburgh Printmakers will present a new solo exhibition by artist Jamie Fitzpatrick this summer from 18 July to 25 October 2026. Memorials to Sausage Politics sees the artist fill the 8 metre high gallery space with monumental sculptures reflected in 1:1 scale prints. With design elements sourced from existing statues and monuments around Edinburgh, the resulting sculptures created at an ambitious scale invite the audience to navigate around them, enhancing the immersive experience. Taking elements of statues across the city to use in these artworks this exhibition is rooted in the city it is presented in.
The artist's thought-provoking style has gained him international attention and a multitude of prestigious exhibitions including Kunsthall Trondheim, UK/Raine at the Saatchi Gallery and the 'New Contemporaries' at the ICA, London. In a new departure, elements of printmaking will also be incorporated into the sculptural works presented in the gallery. The commissioned culptures have been created using techniques new to Jamie's practice acquired during residencies at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and Edinburgh Printmakers.
Described as holding a finfair mirror up to reality, Jamie Ftizpatrick's work as an artist operates as a social critique, examining how authority, power, and historical memory are constructures and destabilised over time. Turning the volume up on figurative representations to the point of ridiculousnness his sculptures have been described as comic monstrosities, designed to magnify and explore social ideas and social contracts. Working in clays, polyurethane foam and rubber to create scuptures, the studio process remains visible. Footmarks and other imprints are left on the surface giving the viewer a sense of impasto and capturing a raw energy and immediacy in the work.
Speaking ahead of the exhibition, artist Jamie Fitzpatrick said: "This city is rammed full of these towering Victorian monuments of idealised men in immortal materials that, over time, we start to pass every day without even noticing them. The exhibition asks: What is it telling us about who were are to be surrounded by these objects? Those who commissioned these statues, what do these elites thikn that we should be thinking of them and of ourselves? These works address the drive - both personal and cultural - to make such objects and invest them with totemic authority, highlighting the performative force and systematic choices behind giving shape to one body and not another in a world where only white-male-heterosexual-abled figures are deemed worthy to portray the heroic and fetishised national body. The works aim to undermine the idea that the power of statues derives from the fact that they are representations that do not look like us, that they are idealised figures aimed towards the representation of the normative political body; a stand in for values and embedded in a space of the city with durable materials that defy erosion.
For this exhibition I will scale up proesses developed during my residency at Edinburgh Printmakers in which images of statuary are printed with bronze pigments and collaged and painted into new extravagant and grotesque forms. The show is a chance to respond to the scale of the gallery, enabling me to match the monumental size of the city's statuary, using the 8-metre high wallsto create monumental forms.
I've been curious too to explore the link between civic sculpture and printmaking, both visual forms that have been used as statecraft to promote ideologies. You have this image making as propaganda."
Janet Archer, Chief Executive, Edinburgh Printmakers, said: "Jamie Fitzpatrick was awarded an RSA Residency Bursary to work at Edinburgh Printmakers studio in 2022. His practice in dealing with the rhetoric of image making and his strong desire to explore the relationship between printmaking and sculpture chimes well with Edinburgh Printmakers' commitment to present work underpinned by a strong research methodology, by artists pushing boundaries to contribute towards the evolution of expanded interdisciplinary print practices. We are deeply grateful to the support from the Henry Moore Foundation for the production and documentation of this exhibition. Seeing Hamie's unique voice fill our triple height gallery promises to be one of the highlights of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival."
Jamie Fitzpatrick: Memorials to Sausage Politics is part of the Edinburgh Art Festival 2026 (14-30 August 2026) and is supported by Henry Moore Foundation and Creative Scotland.
Running concurrently in Gallery 2 at Edinburgh Printmakers is Etchingroom1: Unexpected Trip, a new exhibition from the Ukrainian Printmaking duo Kristina Yarosh and Anna Khodkova. Etchingroom1 tap into their own experiences and imagination to create a new body of work to create an agglomeration of stories and encounters. The stories are heartfelt, like the series of dog stories and sculptures taken straight from their own experience and reflections on love and death.
About Jamie Fitzpatrick
Jamie Fitzpatrick (b. 1985, Southport) is an Edinburgh-based artist. He received his undergraduate degree in Fine Art, Philosophy & Contemporary Practice at Duncan Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee (2009). He later went on to do his Masters in Sculpture at Royal College of Art (2015). His thought-provoking style has gained him international attention and a multitude of prestigious exhibitions including UK/Raine at the Saatchi Gallery and the ‘New Contemporaries’ at the ICA, London (2015). He has won many awards including the UK/Raine Saatchi Gallery Sculpture Award (2015) and Visitor Vote Catlin Art Prize at Londonewcastle Project Space (2016). His residencies also include Fonderia Artistica Battaglia (2026), Hospitalfield (2024), Edinburgh Printmakers (2023) & Biruchiy contemporary art project with the British Council (Ukraine, 2016). Recent exhibitions include shows at St Chad’s & Vitrine Gallery, London and Deborah Bowmann Gallery, Brussels.
