Richard Wright: The Stairwell Project

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Turner Prize winner Richard Wright (b. 1960) was commissioned to make a painting in the west stairwell of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for the Edinburgh Art Festival 2010, with support from the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Festivals Expo Fund. Commissioned by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, The Stairwell Project was conceived as a permanent in situ addition to the national collection and unveiled last July.

Usually Wright’s wall paintings are strictly temporary phenomena, created for exhibitions or special events. The artist has only made a few permanent paintings, mainly for private houses, and very few have been for public buildings. This is the first substantial one in Scotland.

Richard Wright, The Stairwell Project, 2010

photograph © Antonia Reeve

For this commission, Wright painted thousands of small organic shapes – black on a white ground – filling the whole of the top of the west stairwell. Part flower, bud, leaf and bird, the myriad shapes create varying patterns in response to the architecture of the light-flooded tower, with its four inward-leaning windows, its massive cornices and its ceiling rose that takes the form of a honeysuckle. Each form is painted individually – no stencils are used – and its size, orientation, direction and exact positioning are dictated by a complex and unseen set of force lines radiating out from key focal points, such as the corners. The effect is both dizzying and spectacular, not unlike a black on white version of the webs of stars in the night sky.

Mon–Sun, 10am–5pm (6pm during August)