The Trick Brain (2012-13)

Ed Atkins practice explores digital media’s apparent immateriality in relation to its possibilities for precise representations of the physical and corporeal world through high definition video, sound, writing and drawing. He graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art in 2009 and has since received the Jerwood Projects / Film and Video Umbrella Award (2012) and been nominated for the Jarman Award (2013).

Atkins’ 2013 film The Trick Brain features archival footage from the DVD that accompanied the infamous auction for the André Breton estate sale in 2003 from which The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art bought a number of items. The film meditates on the immediate effects of the sale and distribution of Breton’s collection and its wider implications for historical artefacts.

The gallery is home to Scotland’s outstanding national collection of modern and contemporary art. Its two buildings, Modern One and Modern Two, house work from the beginning of the 20th century including superb holdings of expressionist and modern British and Scottish art, an outstanding collection of international post-war work and the most important and extensive collection of modern Scottish Art. The gallery’s Surrealist collection is one of the largest anywhere in the world. It also holds a substantial number of prints, archival material, periodicals, books, letters and other important publications in the gallery’s dedicated Keiller Library.

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