Restoration!

Lady and the Fan is a sculpture by Gareth Fisher, created in 1983. The work was originally exhibited at the Fruitmarket Gallery in 1986, and has subsequently been held in a private collection. The artist was very keen to include the work in the catalogue that I designed for his exhibition at Summerhall Lab Gallery, 8 March – 6 April 2025 but, because of the delicate fragility of the sculpture, the owner was (understandably) hesitant about lending the work to be photographed or included in the exhibition. 

Above is a scan of a large format negative of the sculpture, photographed by Duncan MacQueen, sometime in the 1980s – the negative is scratched in places and the background is discoloured, possibly due to the scanning process. Gareth wanted to use this image on the back of the catalogue and asked me to attempt to restore it. All the other photographs in the catalogue are by John McKenzie and were photographed at the same time, in the same space and light for consistency. 

To match this photograph with the others, I removed the background from the image then replaced it with a background taken from one of John’s photographs. Once the edges of the cut-out image of the sculpture had been tidied up and softened in places, and the scratches and blotches on the scanned image had been removed, I was surprised and pleased with the result – an image that doesn’t look too out of place alongside the excellent photographs taken by John McKenzie in the catalogue.

The owner of the sculpture finally agreed to the Lady and the Fan being included in the exhibition (in one of the glass cabinets of the Lab gallery) and it is interesting to see how the sculpture has changed over the last twenty-two years: the plaster has darkened, and the paper fan has yellowed and decayed. Unfortunately, there is no Photoshop filter that can restore the ravages of time in real life! 

Below is the restored photograph on the back of the catalogue along with the exhibition caption for the sculpture that I designed.