Prime

20 March - 9 May 1999

Prime was a celebration and exploration of the power and immediacy of contemporary art. The exhibition included painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation by fourteen artists of international standing from Callum Innes to Andy Warhol.

The title of the exhibition came from the idea of ‘priming’ or preparing something for action, whether it be an artist’s canvas, a bomb, or the pristine space of empty exhibition galleries.

Prime is about the enjoyment and acuteness of experiencing art at first hand. Works in the exhibition share an approach to materials and processes which is both open-ended and exhilarating. This is art that is positively interested in strangers, new viewers who bring to interpretation their own thoughts, feelings and imagination. 

Presented across the walls and floors of the two galleries, Prime juxtaposed work by some of the most highly regarded artists of our time.

The exhibition included new paintings by Callum Innes and Louise Hopkins; photographic lightboxes by Catherine Yass revealing the view from under Dundee’s Victorian railway bridge over the Tay, original film footage of a 1974 performance by Joseph Beuys in the old Poorhouse in Edinburgh and eight of Andy Warhol’s ‘Jackie’s’ (1964), depicting Jackie Kennedy before and after the assassination, lent to the exhibition by the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.

Among works especially made for Prime are a series of porcelain bowls by Sarah-Jane Selwood and a ‘curtain’ of flowers created by Anya Gallaccio, installed from ceiling to floor in the larger gallery and slowly decaying over the period of the exhibition.

In Cinema 2, there was a rare opportunity to see a selection of Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests. Made between 1963 and 1966, these short film portraits are among the earliest films Warhol made at his famous ‘Factory’.