Out of the Darkness

Out of the Darkness 2016 continues Kate Davis’s interest in making site specific artworks that respond to British stately homes with their particular histories and rarified architecture and landscapes. Out of the Darkness is a five part site specific work made in collaboration with the Scottish artist David Moore and made exclusively for the exhibition Allied Antagonists at Newhailes , a neo-Palladian villa at Musselburgh, Edinburgh – one of the Scottish Enlightenment’s “mansions of the mind”. The exhibition was part of the National Trust of Scotland ‘s continuing commitment to site contemporary art work within the house . The exhibition was curated by Kenny Hunter sculptor and programme director at University of Edinburgh and Mark McLean, on site Learning Officer for the National Trust of Scotland. It brought together artworks by noted alumni, current under-graduates and tutors of Edinburgh College of Art. The exhibition Allied Antagonists was only open to view by guided group tours of the house and was included in the entry price. Out of the Darkness was inspired by Miss Christian Dalrymple, who in 1792 inherited Newhailes House and was one of the few women at that time to inherit a whole estate in her own right. However there are no known portraits of her . She allegedly thought herself “unattractive” and only a small silhouette survives by the noted French artist Augustin Edouart . It was this cut-out and the story of Miss Christian Dalrymple’s life that inspired the installation by Davis and Moore. Out of the Darkness included a text work in stone, a bronze cast branch and three life-size silhouettes representing three phases of her life that were sited at the front of the house ,in the dining room and in garden to give the impression that Miss Dalrymple was present