Norman McBeath: Exceptional Subjects

5th April - 3rd May 2025

Image credit: Norman McBeath, Exceptional Subjects V, Exceptional Subjects

Announcing our exhibition of new work by the photographer and printmaker Norman McBeath RSA, in collaboration with the writer Melissa McCarthy. 

The way our perception flexes and makes new meanings depending on the circumstance is a phenomenon that Norman McBeath explores in this work. In 'Exceptional Subjects' he has made a photographic study of items selected from a private collection built up over a number of years. While the objects are all connected to the process of looking - with many linked to the early stages of photography - they are no longer tied by their name or defined by context. They become subjects in their own right.
The theme of perception also underpins Melissa McCarthy’s lateral and imaginative responses to the photographs, 'Back in Time and Round in Circles' in the editioned set  and 'Delta, Ditto, Darkness' in the Artists' Book. She considers objects in a new light, exploring changing senses of perspective and distance - whether stepping back in time or voyaging far away.

Artist's Biography

Norman McBeath is a photographer and printmaker. His work is guided by an interest in the individual and our immediate environment, in particular the often overlooked elements of the commonplace. His portraits are held in the National Portrait Galleries in London, Edinburgh and Canberra. Collections which have acquired his work include the British Library, National Library of Scotland, Harvard University of Texas, Emory University, Special Collections University of Edinburgh and University of St Andrews, Fitzwilliam Museum, Royal Scottish Academy and Yale Center for British Art. 

His previous major work was Perdendosi, in a collaboration with Edmund de Waal (2021). In 2021 he was elected a member of the Royal Scottish Academy.

Author's Biography

Melissa McCarthy is a writer, looking at the places where literature, images, and history swirl together. Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro (Sagging Meniscus, 2023) considers flowers, photography, and explosions. Sharks, Death, Surfers: An Illustrated Companion (Sternberg, 2019) examines the precarious balance between who’s moving over the face of the water, and what’s lurking underneath.

She is interested in spoken as well as written story-telling: in her radio series, The Slipping Forecast and All That Flow, she thinks about friction and motion, and travel through time and space, over the airwaves. She lives in Edinburgh.