In the Fruitmarket Gallery’s latest warehouse exhibition, Edinburgh-based artist Andrew Gannon presents Impressions, an exhibition mixing sculpture, sketches and live performance. 

As an artist with congenital limb difference, Gannon has describes the prosthesis he wears on his left arm as ‘near me, but not part of me’.  He uses the plaster casts attached to his prosthesis as the building blocks of the sculptures and sketches in Impressions, to question the role of prostheses in creating functional and cosmetic ‘normality’. 

Bound together in clusters, the increasingly unwearable casts create curious, organic looking shapes that are dotted about the large warehouse space, accompanied by loosely drawn sketches of the sculptures hanging around the surrounding walls. 

The sketches are drawn using a long bamboo stick attached to Gannon’s left arm, a technique inspired by the practice of French artist Henri Matisse when he drew large scale murals. In live endurance performances titled Drawing Limb taking place throughout the exhibition’s run, audiences can witness Gannon sketching pieces for the exhibition in real time (Friday 16 December, Thursday 3 January, 2–6pm).

^{Andrew Gannon Drawing Performance / Picture: Chris Scott}

‘This new work comes from a decision to centre my own disability in my practice,’ explains Gannon. ‘That is not to say that it is ‘exclusively about’ disability, but that it comes from a position of lived experience of a particular disability’.

Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley adds: ‘It is exciting for the Fruitmarket to be able to show Andrew Gannon’s work as it moves beyond performance to incorporate sculpture. I am interested to see how our audience respond to these intriguing, material presences.’

See Impressions until 8 January, 2023 for free at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh.