Mark Leckey

There is a dimly lit room with four thin metal grey columns and wooden floors. We can see a brown sculpted figure in the middle with a warm light spotlight illuminating it from above. The figure is sitting down with their hand holding their head, in a reflexive pose. They have circular carvings all over their body. This is part of an art installation in Tramway, Glasgow International 2018.

Close-up of the brown sculpted figure with a warm light spotlight illuminating it from above. The figure is sitting down with their hand holding their head, in a reflexive pose. They have circular carvings all over their body. This is part of an art installation in Tramway, Glasgow International 2018.

Big screen with a picture of the brown sculpted figure with a warm light spotlight illuminating it from above. The figure is sitting down with their hand holding their head, in a reflexive pose. They have circular carvings all over their body. This is part of an art installation in Tramway, Glasgow International 2018.

Diagonally view of a dimly lit room with four thin metal grey columns and wooden floors. We can see a brown sculpted figure in the middle with a warm light spotlight illuminating it from above. The figure is sitting down with their hand holding their head, in a reflexive pose. They have circular carvings all over their body. This is part of an art installation in Tramway, Glasgow International 2018.

Tramway

For his solo exhibition at Tramway, Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Leckey took as his starting point an 18th century wooden figurine of Job held at the Wellcome Collection in London. Leckey enlarged the object to human scale. This single forsaken biblical figure occupied alone the vast space of Tramway.

The title Nobodaddy is taken from the poem by William Blake, a name that for Blake is a play on the idea of God the father of no one, but also the man with no body. In Leckey’s sculpture this body is expanded and infiltrated by technology. Man’s limbs are hollowed out, the organs removed, and filled with speakers that give voice to his state. Opposite the sculpture a large video projection mirrors the figure as it is toggles through different scenarios.

The original figurine was deployed as a vessel for various attributes or shifting identities. Initially thought to be a syphilitic man, it was later identified as a depiction of Job. Here he is represented as a narcissistic 'Thinker' figure - part statue, part cyborg; a confluence of allegories and histories that in Leckey's words has become “metalized, gauzified, vegetalized and petrified, a medieval gnostic gone septic, its body now merely a thing amongst things - the Spirit has departed the flesh.”

This exhibition was co-commissioned and co-curated by Glasgow International and Tramway. It was made possible with support from the Henry Moore Foundation and the Wellcome Collection, London.