Troglodytes: Talk with artist Fiona Jardine

Troglodytes — Fiona Jardine uncovers links between the Enlightenment enthusiasms of industrial magnates and their beneficiaries, Victorian-era taxonomical obsession and the founding Modernist dictum that ‘Ornament is Crime’.

Fiona Jardine was born in Galashields in 1970. She gained a BA (Hons) Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee in 1998 and a MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 2003. Jardine has exhibited in group shows at Transmission, Glasgow, Centre d’art Mira Phalaina / Maison Poulaire, Montreuil, France, Tramway Glasgow and The Changing Room, Stirling. In 2007 she had a solo show at Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow and forthcoming projects include a solo at the ICA, London in October 2008. Jardine lives and works in Glasgow.

The exhibition Troglodytes takes its name from the Paisley drinking club of the same name and links the Victorian enthusiasm for creating taxonomies to
Paisley’s collection of studio ceramics. The name evolved as a humorous reference to the dark, underground circumstance of the Terrace Tavern where the group met during the mid — later years of the 19th century. The exhibition will principally use Paisley’s collection of Victorian portraits in juxtaposition to its collection of studio ceramics, the idea being that a poetic connection between the portrait and the vessel might be felt.