Memorials to Sausage Politics is a new exhibition by Jamie Fitzpatrick that
looks closely at the monuments, statues and architectural decoration
embedded in Edinburgh’s streets.
A key part of the exhibition is a series of wall-based prints developed from
Fitzpatrick’s research into the city’s statues and civic buildings. Using
screenprinting, including bronze pigments, the artist draws on the material
language of monuments while challenging their authority. The printed
elements are layered, cut, rearranged and disrupted, creating figures that
seem to shift between image and object and express the power and
strangeness of monumental imagery.
Sculptural works occupy the gallery alongside these prints, extending
Fitzpatrick’s image-making process into the physical space. Built with
energetic handling and visible material traces, they resist the polished finish
often associated with civic memorials.
The exhibition builds on processes and research developed during
Fitzpatrick’s residency at Edinburgh Printmakers, where he explored the
relationship between printmaking and sculpture, and tested how printed
imagery might be embedded into sculptural surfaces. This connection is
important to the exhibition’s wider thinking. Print has often been used to
circulate images, messages and ideologies, while public sculpture has fixed
particular values into the built environment.
Memorials to Sausage Politics offers a way to look again at the city beyond
the gallery walls. Through print, sculpture and scale, the exhibition invites us
to reconsider not only the monuments of Edinburgh, but also the stories,
bodies and values that are given space in public view.
Jamie Fitzpatrick’s Memorials to Sausage Politics has been generously supported by
Henry Moore Foundation, with thanks to Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop in the
realisation of this work. The exhibition is part of Edinburgh Art Festival (14 August - 30 August 2026).
Photographs of Jamie Fitzpatrick by by Ross Fraser McLean, Studio Ro Ro.
