Ryan Gander
Talbot Rice Gallery 13 February – 8 May

Ryan Gander’s shape-shifting practice is grounded in his habit of compulsive collecting: ‘not just physical stuff,’ he explains, ‘but words and pictures and descriptions of situations.’

For British Art Show 8 in Edinburgh, Gander presents Fieldwork (2015), a series of objects and assemblages that are by turns funny, macabre or banal. Revolving on a vast concealed conveyor belt, these assemblages can be glimpsed – one at a time through an aperture in the gallery wall. As they pass, the viewer is invited to speculate on the stories they tell, their relationship to one another and their significance to the artist. In the accompanying publication, Fieldwork: An Incomplete Reader, Gander provides a series of largely autobiographical texts that respond to or provide a context for his idiosyncratic collection.