Grave (Annae Craig)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Government Art Collection

This work is one in a series of five photographs by Catherine Yass of the graves in Greyfriars Churchyard in Edinburgh. Greyfriars features in Robert Louis Stevenson's "Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde", and was first photographed by Octavius Hill, a pioneer of the medium. The melancholy air of the subject is made almost unearthly by the intense, heightened colours, produced by superimposing positive and negative transparencies onto one another. Catherine Yass discovered the creative potential of working in this way simply by chance, when an incorrectly loaded film was developed. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2002.

Catherine Yass was born in London and studied at the Slade School of Art (1982–1986) and at Goldsmiths’ College (1989–1990). Yass is an artist who uses film and photography to document time and space, using her work to explore the psychological and formal properties of architecture and built environments. In 2002 she was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and she has participated in the judging panels for both The Jerwood Photography Prize and The Citibank Photography Prize. Her work, which has been widely exhibited internationally, is represented in public museum collections including the Tate, London; the Biblioteca Albertina, Leipzig; and The Jewish Museum, New York. Yass lives and works in London.

Places

Scotland, Edinburgh

Subjects

topography, gravestone, gate, churchyard

Materials & Techniques

light-box, photograph (as object name), transparency, colour transparency

Artist

Catherine Yass (1963 - )

Title

Grave (Annae Craig)

Date

1997

Medium

Colour transparency and light-box

Dimensions

height: 89.00 cm, width: 72.50 cm, depth: 12.80 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Laure Genillard Gallery, September 1997

Inscription

verso bl: GRAVE / Annae Craig / C. Yass

GAC number

17269