Tombs of thought

Brook Andrew’s sculptures play with the forms and functions of museum cases, reflecting the artist’s ongoing exploration and subversion of museum display conventions, such as the labelling of displaying objects. A selection of etchings from the Art Gallery’s collection by the American born artist James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834–1903) is presented in Tombs of thought: metal and Tombs of thought: fire.

Whistler was the most important printmaker of the British etching revival in the second half of the 19th century and his work had an enormous impact on generations of etchers to follow. Through letters, publications, lectures, and his own work as printmaker, he tirelessly asserted the importance of etching as an original work of art and championed the pure etched line for its unambiguously autographic appearance. Whistler became obsessed with the printing of his etchings, and he would leave atmospheric films of ink on the surface of the plate during the wiping stage to produce a variety of tonal effects. Thus, no two impressions would be identical.