Ken Currie

KEN CURRIE (b 1960)

Ken Currie is renowned for his unsettling portrayal of the human figure. The artist's rich, luminous paintings depict mysterious rites, rituals, and quasi-medical practices, offering a meditation on violence in its many guises. 

Currie studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1978-1983 and rose to attention within a generation of painters known as the "New Glasgow Boys" in the 1980s. In 1987, Currie completed a powerful series of large scale History paintings for the People’s Palace in Glasgow, commemorating the massacre of the Calton Weavers. Through the 90's deeply affected by humanitarian events in Eastern Europe Currie's works evolved, his focus shifting to confront ideas of mortality and corruption, both physical and moral. Over the last 10 years Currie's work has addressed the horrors of the contemporary world, without shying away from their brutality or grotesque nature. In 2009 Currie was commissioned to paint the theoretical scientist Peter Higgs following his receipt of the Nobel Prize, the painting now hangs at The University of Edinburgh. 

Ken Currie has exhibited widely internationally, including a 2013 solo exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery which also commissioned his painting Three Oncologists. Currie's work is held in many major public collections including Tate, London; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; New York Public Library; Imperial War Museum, London; Campbelltown Arts Centre, New South Wales; Yale Center for British Art, New Haven; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon; and the British Council, London.