Nicola Atkinson Artist & Curator Beautiful Materials
Beautiful Materials Publishing | Nicola Atkinson
Beautiful Materials VESSELS
Beautiful Materials book can be purchased for £10
Published by Beautiful Materials Publishing, a publishing company founded by Nicola Atkinson, it is a pocket-sized book, with beautiful reproductions of the artwork featured in the exhibition Beautiful Materials at Linlithgow Burgh Halls Gallery Space.
It contains a collection of the vessel's paintings and an insightful interview with the artist by Lynsey Moyes, who is a radio producer who has created audio arts content for BBC Radio Scotland, BBC Radio 4 and the Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art. An essay by the writer Michael Wilson who is the author of How to Read Contemporary Art: Experiencing the Art of the 21st Century and his writing has featured in Artforum, Art Monthly and Frieze.
Nicola is an internationally acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist and designer whose career has been influenced by time spent on the West Coast of America, in Sweden and living in Glasgow.
She has had numerous exhibitions in international venues including Long Beach Museum of Art, CA, USA, Tramway and The Lighthouse, Glasgow, Scotland, Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales, Havana, Cuba, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands, The Museum of Modern Art, NY, USA and the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, UK. ©2025
Supported by West Lothian Council & Far From the Madding Crowd Bookshop
Linlithgow Burgh Halls, The Cross,
Photographer© Nicola Atkinson©: The Beautiful Materials Publishing books.
Price: £10 retail price
Title: Beautiful Materials VESSELS
Artist: Nicola Atkinson
Authors: Nicola Atkinson, Lynsey Moyes & Michael Wilson.
Editor: Nicola Atkinson
Design: Nicola Atkinson
Curatorial Continuity: Spencer Dent
Photograph of Nicola Atkinson by Harrison Reid
Paintings Credits & Copyright: Nicola Atkinson
Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing
Pages: 87
ISBN: 9781836881292
DRIP
At a moment when the role of art in society has never been more hotly debated, artist Nicola Atkinson and artist Basharat Khan take art in the streets in this new book ‘Drip’.
Beautiful Materials Publishing is proud to present this limited edition, featuring the complete set of paintings from the Drip series and the public beautifully modelling the translucent georgette scarves in Glasgow.
‘It is important to bring colour and expression to everyday life. Taking the art out of the control of the planned set space such as a gallery or a museum. Where the individual can easily take ownership, have self expression and the perfect happenstance of it all while going about their business as usable’.
Nicola Atkinson
Price: £10 retail price
Author & Artist: Nicola Atkinson
Editor: Nicola Atkinson
Design: Nicola Atkinson
Dimensions:210mm x 210mm
Pages 54
Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing
First Edition 2023
ISBN: 978-1-80517-071-6
Thank you: Ben Fletcher, Basharat Khan, Barbara McCarren, Lorna Swinney, Victoria Lee, Harrison Reid, Chris Walker, Barrington Reeves, Amanda Blackwood & the amazing public who model the scarves in Glasgow.
SLICE OF COLOURS, Dennistoun, G31
Marking the Glaswegian artist’s most ambitious public project to date, Nicola Atkinson’s Slices of Colour, takes place on nine gable ends in her local neighbourhood. Interrupting the neutral grouping of flats, units and streets of Dennistoun the artwork presents rich, bold colours painted with energetic, expressive brush strokes that erupt and cut across the roughcast façades. The series includes nine sumptuous still life paintings of flowers, hanging on opulent cloth velvet, that are both irresistible to touch and full of deep, shimmering colour. The alluring velvet artworks are presented with the original gestural paintings on canvas. The showing is intimate and tactile and challenges viewers again to slow down, look and carefully observe the materials. Atkinson’s Slices of Colour takes the concept of the still life painting of flowers being a universal symbol of beauty and domestic living and draws connections to the ideals of our dream interior and the disparities of the built environment. The work challenges us to reframe something as ubiquitous and mundane as flowers into a point of entry to the larger concerns of liveable beautiful neighbourhoods.
Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-80068-721-9
Price: £10 retail price
Dimensions: 297mm x 210mm
Pages 24
Design: Beautiful Materials Design Studio
Artworks: Nicola Atkinson
Photo Credits: Nicola Atkinson
PORTABLE RETROSPECTIVE BOOK
Portable Retrospective book is a tactile object containing two sections: a physical documentation of the 54 Paintings virtual gallery, and a retrospective of Nicola Atkinson’s artistic career featuring 125 projects. It is an art exhibition in your hands and continues the theme of reimagining spaces for art.
It is a culmination of an approach, of a dedication to public art and engagement. These interventions have been both large and intimate in scale and have changed community identities and formed active relationships with the built environment. Never fixed to one place or one institution and within it lies the blueprint for new ideas in art-making.
Nicola Atkinson’s globally successful career has taken her from the underground art scene of Hollywood, the Museum of Modern Art New York art collection, the cutting edge of the Havana art scene, to the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia & Herzegovina, establishing a new art practice in Lidköping, Sweden and to the streets of Dunfermline. All the while showing work with David Hockney and Bill Viola, sharing the stage with Henry Rollins, curating with artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and David Shrigley, performing and making music with Stevie Jackson from Belle & Sebastian, collaborating with Hanna Tuulikki and Harry Shearer and exhibiting with fellow designers, architects, and artists representing Scotland in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, at the V&A Dundee.
Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-80049-763-4
Price: £20 retail price
Dimensions: 210mm x 210mm
Pages 206
Design: Fourtwentyseven
Editor: Ben Fletcher & Nicola Atkinson
Essay: Staying Home by Iain Irving.
Portable Retrospective Book
PORTABLE RETROSPECTIVE BOOK
Portable Retrospective book is a tactile object containing two sections: a physical documentation of the 54 Paintings virtual gallery, and a retrospective of Nicola Atkinson’s artistic career featuring 125 projects. It is an art exhibition in your hands and continues the theme of reimagining spaces for art.
It is a culmination of an approach, of a dedication to public art and engagement. These interventions have been both large and intimate in scale and have changed community identities and formed active relationships with the built environment. Never fixed to one place or one institution and within it lies the blueprint for new ideas in art-making.
Nicola Atkinson’s globally successful career has taken her from the underground art scene of Hollywood, the Museum of Modern Art New York art collection, the cutting edge of the Havana art scene, to the Mostar Bridge in Bosnia & Herzegovina, establishing a new art practice in Lidköping, Sweden and to the streets of Dunfermline. All the while showing work with David Hockney and Bill Viola, sharing the stage with Henry Rollins, curating with artists Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard and David Shrigley, performing and making music with Stevie Jackson from Belle & Sebastian, collaborating with Hanna Tuulikki and Harry Shearer and exhibiting with fellow designers, architects, and artists representing Scotland in the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale, at the V&A Dundee.
Publisher: Beautiful Materials Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-80049-763-4
Price: £20 retail price
Dimensions: 210mm x 210mm
Pages 206
Design: Fourtwentyseven
Editor: Ben Fletcher & Nicola Atkinson
Essay: Staying Home by Iain Irving.
PORTABLE RETROSPECTIVE BOOK
PRBMBook2021 (pdf)
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