Visual Art, Exhibition

Alasdair Gray

24 Apr 2008

Sometimes it’s more fun to ignore the explanatory gallery text and have a good look at the work. This seems an obvious enough way of dealing with art objects, but usually makes for lazy viewing and reviewing on the part of the critic. But it is…

Street + Gallery

National Gallery Complex, until Sun 4 May

10 Apr 2008

We walk past them everyday. Some of us slow down briefly and spare a few coins. But how many of us slow down and spare a thought for their hopes, dreams and concerns. For the ‘Street + Gallery’ outreach exhibition The National Galleries of Scotland…

Go west: Print The Legend

13 Mar 2008

The idea of the American West once stretched out like a great virginal expanse of prairie, a fantasy only limited by imagination and the Pacific Ocean. This myth is not only an American obsession, but one that the whole western genre film-viewing world…

GROUP SHOW, Doggerfisher

13 Mar 2008

Doggerfisher, Edinburgh, until Sat 26 Apr Doggerfisher’s annual group show brings together work by recent graduates and more established artists. Refreshingly, the gallery unites the six artists via an interest in formal concerns with space and…

Ansel Adams: Celebration of Genius

31 Jan 2008

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY The name Ansel Adams is virtual shorthand for landscape photography at its finest. A shy child prodigy, home-schooled and self-taught to read and play music at the age of 12, the teenaged Californian first experienced…

Anthea Hamilton and Thomas Kratz

4 Jan 2008

INSTALLED PAINTINGS AND SCULPTURES Mary Mary, Glasgow, until 26 Jan There is a history of sexed-up artistic collaborations in 20th century art, a long line of cosy twosomes that come together for occasional aesthetic satisfaction. The work on show by…

Carol Rhodes

4 Jan 2008

Carol Rhodes’ meditative, repetitive approach to landscape painting could be linked to artists such as Friedrich, Corot, Monet or Cezanne, each in their own way sharing an obsession with the genre, though, as the artist Merlin James points out: ‘Rhodes…

Joan Eardley

4 Jan 2008

PAINTING Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until Sun 13 Jan The peculiar psychology which leads many notable artists’ works to only truly be appreciated after they have died is hard to explain, with the premature passing of an artist lending an…

Openended Group: Moves

4 Jan 2008

INSTALLED DIGITAL FILMS CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 12 Jan After a spate of uninteresting exhibitions that have attempted to turn the CCA into a ‘major platform for electronic and digital work’, we are faced with another technologically interesting but…

Quentin Blake

29 Nov 2007

ILLUSTRATION Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, until Tue 1 Jan When you take an illustration away from the text it was created for, the lone image can quickly become a very dire prospect or can leave the viewer scratching their head…

Convulsive Illustration

29 Nov 2007

An exhibition of work that creates a ‘creeping feeling of the sinister and scabrous . . . in an attempt to keep the conventions of commercial art at pox-ridden arm’s length’. Twelve artists exhibit their work, including Georg Barber, Silvia Battista…

Jason Nelson

29 Nov 2007

PRINTMAKING, FILM The Collective Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 22 Dec The Collective Gallery’s annual New Work Scotland exhibition this year showcases, among others, the work of Dundee-based artist Jason Nelson. Born in the ex-mining town of Kelty…

Monika Sosnowska: Display

29 Nov 2007

INSTALLATION / SCULPTURE Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sat 8 Dec Stripping architecture of its purpose and concentrating purely on the aesthetic possibilities of public space, the work of Monika Sosnowska plays games with the formalities of…

Roman Signer - Action man

29 Nov 2007

Since the 1970s Swiss artist Roman Signer has been making eccentric kinetic art, enlivening both himself and found objects with elemental forces such as wind, fire, water or explosives. At first glance, Signer’s clowning around seems to lack substance…

Ten Decades

29 Nov 2007

PAINTING AND SCULPTURE City Art Centre, Edinburgh, until Sat 19 Jan Like a weighty history text, this commemorative retrospective, celebrating the centenary of Edinburgh College of Art, is exhausting. While seepage thankfully dapples its linear…

The Openended Group: Moves

29 Nov 2007

FILM INSTALLATION CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 12 Jan In response to the CCA’s ethos of promoting electronic and digital work, the OpenEnded Group exhibits a series of ‘moving image’ works exploring the relationship between choreography, space and…

Thomas Houseago

29 Nov 2007

SCULPTURE The Modern Institute, Glasgow, until Sat 5 Jan LA-based, Leeds-born Houseago makes his Glasgow debut at the Modern Institute with slashed and scraped figurative works, sculptures that amalgamate stylistic elements from Cubism…

Tom Phillips: A Humument

29 Nov 2007

An exhibition depicting how Phillips transformed an obscure Victorian novel (A Human Document by WH Mallock) into a postmodern masterpiece. A Humument is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential artist’s books of the last 50…

Spanning the void

1 Nov 2007

Think of post-war Eastern European modernisation and what comes to mind? Invariably, it is the drab, rashly executed housing blocks, service pavilions, train stations and shopping centres that inspire Monika Sosnowska, leading the Polish artist to…

Roman Signer: Works

1 Nov 2007

Roman Signer’s sculptural happenings, devoid as they are of nostalgia, reference or history, are usually received with a marvellous grin. Conventional narrative is displaced by simple Signer happenings such as a floating plastic bag, a rolling barrel.

Duncan Marquiss: The Clay Wall

4 Oct 2007

To see our insides on the outside disrupts our idea of self. Blood and vomit repulse us because they muddy our notions of the self/other split, and expose the fragile nature of our subjectivity. It is this state of troubled subjecthood, and most…

Gary Fabian Miller & Edmund de Wall

4 Oct 2007

Repetition, when performed by the human hand, will always be peppered with tiny differences. This is evidence of man’s failing against the machine, yet there is, of course, unexpected pleasure to be found in human error. It is a subject of fascination…

Hitlist - The best exhibitions

4 Oct 2007

Duncan Marquiss: The Clay Wall Marquiss has quickly become a respected and influential artist working in Scotland, and has recently received a Scottish Arts Council/Scottish Screen Artists Film and Video Award to continue working in the medium of film.

Beyond the Surface

20 Sep 2007

California-based photographer Andrew Printer’s work explores issues of queer identity in relation to intimacy, risk and suspicion in a post-Aids environment (his ‘Touch Me’ series), and takes a sideways glance at the notion of queers being accepted by…

Bridge artwork bought for exhibition

7 Sep 2007

The National Galleries of Scotland has bought a photographic artwork of the Forth Rail Bridge, which will become the centerpiece of a new exhibition in Edinburgh. The work by German artist Dieter Appelt, Forth Bridge – Cinema.Metric Space (2002), was…

Touching the void

6 Sep 2007

There’s something about the term ‘the void’ that grates ever so slightly. The mention of it conjures up, at best, the Jungian notion that we humans are empty vessels into which experience is poured. The term is so overused that when you meet it in the…

Art-felt gesture for Glasgow galleries

4 Sep 2007

A collection of contemporary art is to go on public display in Glasgow after BBC Scotland donated its collection to the city council’s museums service. Consisting of more than 100 works, mainly from the 1980s, the collection includes contributions…

Andy Warhol

9 Aug 2007

Andy Warhol is 20th century America. It is impossible to decide which came first. Did he create that nation’s brash, shiny, sexy yet sickening materialism, or is he a product of it? The exhibition of his work at the National Gallery makes it impossible…

David Batchelor

9 Aug 2007

David Batchelor has been a busy man of late, scouring pound shops in London and Scotland for pegs, combs, cutlery, clothes pegs, children’s toys, girly hair accessories and a whole manner of other cheap plastic objects in preparation for this new site…

David Batchelor and Nikolai Suetin

9 Aug 2007

Now in its tenth year as one of Edinburgh’s established independent galleries, the Ingleby has chosen to mark the occasion with a series of 26 small-scale shows which present a work by a well-known contemporary artists alongside another ‘complementary…

David Rokeby

9 Aug 2007

The CCA continues its exploration of the relationship between technology and art, with the first major show and retrospective of Canadian-born artist David Rokeby. The exhibition brings together five of his award-winning installations, new media…

Picasso: Fired with Passion

9 Aug 2007

The crowd puller/money spinner for this exhibition is its heavy emphasis on Picasso’s ceramic work, running from his later years of 1947–1961 and all produced whilst living and working in the South of France. And indeed they are fascinating, ranging…

The Comic Book Project

9 Aug 2007

In a brave move, the curatorial team at the Collective have chosen to lighten the mood and go against the fashion for dry, high concept work that has clogged Scottish galleries for the last ten years or so. The Comic Book Project is the first leg of a…

William Kentridge

9 Aug 2007

One of South Africa’s most highly-regarded artists, it seems somehow appropriate that this first Scottish collection of William Kentridge’s print works should fall in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. Although this show concentrates solely on his…

Naked Portrait

1 Aug 2007

In contrast with the ‘nude’ figure in western art history, the naked portrait still manages to present a sometimes shocking and raw view of the sitter’s personality that reaches beyond their public façade.

Picture perfect

1 Aug 2007

From international stars like Andy Warhol and Picasso to Turner Prize winners and home grown talent, Alexander Kennedy finds rich pickings in the Edinburgh Art Festival

Museums reap £25.3m in treasures

27 Jul 2007

British museums received a windfall worth more than £25.3 million in precious objects as a result of inheritance tax last year, with calls being made to give tax breaks to donors who pledge treasures to the state after their death. The government will…

Richard Long

3 Jul 2007

When art exited the gallery in the 1960s, the street outside became a theatre for performances and an arena for installations - a move that simultaneously questioned the sanctity of the art object and the white cube that protected it. Some artists opted…

Tender Scene: Group Show

3 Jul 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND INSTALLATION After a successful exhibition at Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice as part of the third leg of his 2005 Venice Biennale contribution, Alex Pollard exhibits his work again, taking over as curator at Stirling’s Changing Room…

Alex Pollard

White lines, black marks

23 Apr 2007

If the 70s were the era that fashion forgot, the 80s were the decade that fashion had a gushing aneurism. There was something for everyone, with David Bowie managing to embrace almost every genre and fashion. Thankfully he lost it in the 90s and we got…

Nan Hoover and Nina Könnemann

Sex, Art and Videotape

9 Apr 2007

Early experiments in film by artists remind us that the birth of psychoanalysis and cinema happened at almost exactly the same time, with surrealists adding hermetically sealed packages of poetic and suggestive images to narrative cinema.