Callum Innes was born in Edinburgh in 1962. He studied drawing and painting at Gray’s School of Art from 1980 to 1984 and then completed a postgraduate degree at Edinburgh College of Art in 1985. Exhibitions quickly followed, with two foundational shows taking place in 1992 at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, cementing his position as one of the leading British abstract painters of his generation. In 1995 he was shortlisted for the prestigious Turner Prize (won by Damien Hirst), which is indicative of his status.
Other than a beautiful and highly personal aesthetic, it is through his technical methodology that Innes truly created his own path. To quote the artist, it centres around ‘the interplay between the additive and subtractive process, making and unmaking, presence and absence’. Photography, which freezes moments in time, plays an important role in Innes’s creative process.
Although various approaches punctuate his process, they have evolved gradually and organically, feeding off each other. A core element, however, remains the use of turpentine to remove layers of paint, pigment and material. Through this removal, Innes confers a materiality and texture to his compositions, while always cultivating a ghostly atmosphere, where the carved-out sections scream presence through absence, hence the term ‘unpainting’.
Shortlisted for the Jerwood Prize in 1995, he eventually won it in 2002.
2016 was marked by two complementary milestones, a retrospective show entitled I’ll Close My Eyes at the De Pont Museum in Tilburg and an eponymous monograph published by Hatje Cantz that accompanied the exhibition.
Recent solo exhibitions include: In Position, Château La Coste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, (2018); Callum Innes, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2017); I’ll Close My Eyes, De Pont Museum, Tilburg (2016); Callum Innes, Malerei-als-Prozess, Neues Museum, Nurnburg (2013); Callum Innes, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2013); From Memory, a major touring exhibition visiting Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Modern Art Oxford, Oxford; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (all 2007–2008); Callum Innes, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (1999); Callum Innes, Kunsthalle Bern (1999); Callum Innes, the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1992) and Callum Innes, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (1992).
Innes lives and works in Edinburgh.
