Martin Boyce: Storage and Baggage; the Interiority of Interiors

Glasgow-based artist Martin Boyce, reworks and references the textures and forms of the built environment. Using the iconography of the everyday alongside the formal and conceptual histories of modern architecture and design, his sculptures often form poetic landscapes which merge interior and exteior spaces. In an extended act of homage and deconstruction Boyce has most notably referenced Jan and Joël Martel’s concrete trees of 1925. From these structures Boyce developed a typography and a consistent lexicon of shapes which feed into his sculptural practice. Alongside his large-scale, site-specific installations, Boyce’s output also encompasses the reimagining of more modest utilitarian objects. Vents, screens, telephone booths, fireplaces and lanterns are incorporated into a wider body of work imbued with the language of urbanism and punctuated with moments of unexpected tenderness and beauty. 

Boyce won the prestigious Turner Prize in 2011 and since 2018 has been professor of sculpture at HFBK Hamburg. Boyce was one of the first artists to show in the Fruitmarket’s Visions for the Future strand of programming for Scottish artists in 1999 and we can’t wait to welcome him back to the Gallery in our 50th year.