Andy McIntosh was born in Perth, Scotland in 1969. Growing up in Perth, Andy first exhibited at the Perth Art Festival aged 16. Having sold half of the works exhibited, he felt he was destined for a career in art. However, he decided to take the “sensible” route after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 1991, and became a graphic designer rather than taking the fine art route. In the end, it wasn’t a bad decision – he embarked on a successful 20-year career working in digital design and production, as well and film and television.
In 2005, Andy decided that he had waited too long to move fine art into centre stage in his life and started working on the first of many exhibitions. Since then, he has exhibited widely in Edinburgh, showing regularly with the Scottish Society of Artists, and as part of the Royal Scottish Academy’s Open Exhibitions. In 2014 he exhibited at the Yosifu Contemporary Arts Centre in Taiwan. In 2015, graduate filmmaker Michal Korzonek made a short film about Andy’s career (link: https://goo.gl/Byt967). Earlier this year, he exhibited in the Talented Art Fair in London. His next exhibition is in the Dundas Street Gallery 4-6 May. During this year’s festival, his work will be shown in Gallery 23’s ‘Reuse, Reinvent, Re-imagine’ exhibition. Also, he hopes to exhibit in the Clio Art Fair in New York City in October.
Statement
Inspired by artists like Kurt Schwitters, Marcel Duchamp and Joan Miró, Andy McIntosh explores the possibilities for recycling and renewal in found objects and scrap. His work presents the “readymade” landscape from a 21st century perspective.
Andy launched his Art career as a conventional landscape painter. In 2005 he made the decision to give himself a new, challenging set of parameters – without brushes, paint or canvases. Approaching the problem of commercial waste culture with postmodern humour, Andy began to comb scrap yards and beaches. Exploring the relationship, between natural and unnatural, he discovered objects and remnants that suggested narratives, and thus his unique sculptural language was created.
Seeing beauty in nature as well as in the man-made, Andy’s work does not seek to represent that beauty in a literal way. With some of his chosen materials, he challenges the audience to see what he sees and, in doing so believes that he has access to a far deeper conversation about life in this age.
While Andy’s work isn’t directly political, one can’t escape the allusion to the 20 million tonnes of commercial waste that are generated each year in Scotland alone. While some of his works allow the inherent appeal of a pre-used material to shine through, others, like cubic bales of crushed coke cans (see ’Fields’), are there to make us think about the sheer volume of rubbish that we produce and are being forced to take responsibility for.
Still working with technical materials, Andy has invented new techniques including one he calls Concrete Printing (see ‘Cactus’ and ‘Under The Bridge’). This process, discovered partly by accident, involves images printed onto acetate transferred onto a concrete surface, which absorbs the ink. This results in a printed impression which is something of an industrial fresco for the 21st century.
The majority of his back catalogue are wall mounted works but his latest offerings are free-standing. Using a fine balance of natural and unnatural materials, he is exploring anatomy and the human form with a unique series of sculptures.
More recently, Andy has turned his focus on modern landscapes and urban scenes. Reminiscent of the early 20th century abstract landscape painting, these works take the Cubist baton and portray modern city and country scenes.