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Having first opened in 1895, the Biennale has a rich and varied history and has evolved into a truly international event. It has strived to be at the forefront of trends in the visual art movement and over the years has featured many of the world’s best known and coveted artists including: Picasso, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauchenburg, Jackson Pollock, Dali, Francis Bacon and Gerhard Richter.

This year over 89 countries are represented at the Venice Biennale with exhibitions taking place in the famous country pavilions as well as at a host of smaller venues scattered throughout the historic city. One such venue is the Palazzo Pisani where this year the Scotland + Venice partnership will host the work of Scottish artist Karla Black.

Scotland + Venice is a partnership between Creative Scotland, British Council Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland and since 2003 they have presented a showcase for Scotland at Venice Biennale. This year, as the partnership look to build on the success of 2009’s Martin Boyce exhibiton curated by the DCA, Karla Black has been chosen to represent Scotland and will present a solo exhibition of new abstract sculptures.

As one of Scotland’s top independent arts spaces Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery have been tasked with curating this year’s showcase. You can listen to gallery director Fiona Bradley talking about Karla Black in the context of Scotland + Venice below.

“The Scotland + Venice partners look forward to presenting the work of Karla Black, one of Scotland’s most remarkable artists. Drawing on the curatorial expertise of The Fruitmarket Gallery we aim to build on Scotland’s growing reputation as a centre of excellence in the visual arts.” – Andrew Dixon, Creative Scotland CEO

Karla Black lives and works in Glasgow and has attracted attention over recent years for her expansive floor works and hanging sculptures. Created from materials that suggest both a sensory recollection of childhood: powder-paint, crushed chalk and sugar paper; and a distinct feminine association: lipstick, nail varnish and body cream, her works are currently on display at some of the top international galleries including the Tate in London and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

In Venice, Black will present a solo exhibition of abstract sculpture that hover between energy and mass – pulverised, atomised, piled, layered, supported, suspended and spilling out onto the floor. The intention is for the mass of colour and material to fill the 15^th century Venetian Palazzo Pisani and for these almost objects to be worked in situ by the artist into their final intricate, detailed aesthetic forms.

“The work is, to a certain extent, site specific in that I respond, albeit vaguely, to a gallery space or at least think about where the objects will end up before and during making them. The sculptures are never really finished until they are in place, and are often unavoidably destroyed or broken when an exhibition is over, then remade slightly differently elsewhere.” - Karla Black

For more information on the Scotland + Venice partnership and to see more examples of Karla Black’s unique floor works and sculptures, visit the Scotland + Venice website.

Both Karla Black and Martin Boyce are nominated for this year’s Turner Prize.