Melancholia

About

This exhibition takes the duel nature of the Melancholic temperament to explore the creative aspects, romantic and euphoric, alongside the negative indulgent and destructive elements. Thought of as a state of dark humour, black bile and madness in the Medieval world, during the Renaissance melancholy became an introverted or self reflective state necessary for artistic creativity, later embodied by the Romantics aesthetic reaction to the natural environment.

Contrasting elements are combined in David Stewart's exhibition that explores the contradictory nature of Melancholia; organic, geological forms surrounding more grounded architectural and geometric objects. Sculptures that look like towers and reliquaries stoically safeguarding values and beliefs are beset by upheaval and doubt in the irregularly proportioned rock fall suggesting a more saturnine state of emotion.

The drawings depict places or spaces inhabited by abandoned or overlooked objects and materials that combine with their environment to create a world of both system and confusion. Together these drawings and sculptures attempt to recognise the melancholic temperament where opposites attempt a balance, the creative and destructive, euphoria and depression.