Visual Art, Painting & Drawing

Luca Frei

8 Jan 2009

Entrenched in a Dadaist slipstream of playful bemusement, Swiss-born, Swedish-based artist Frei is usually as mad, bad and fun as a bag of rainbow painted spiders. His contrived installations, which have graced cutting edge galleries in Paris, New York…

Alasdair Gray & Alasdair Taylor: The Two Alasdairs

11 Dec 2008

Mackintosh Gallery, Glasgow School of Art, until Sat 10 Jan REVIEW PAINTING AND DRAWING Underrated for many years, Alasdair Gray is now rightly hailed as an artist of note. This exhibition will bring him further plaudits, but what about the…

Charles Avery, The Islanders: An Introduction

11 Dec 2008

REVIEW DRAWING, PAINTING AND SCULPTURE Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, until Sun 15 Feb In 2004 artist Charles Avery began charting the creatures, topology and cosmology of an imaginary island. This exhibition presents his…

Gerhard Richter: Paintings

11 Dec 2008

Time is running out to catch the first retrospective in the UK for 20 years of Gerhard Richter’s work (his first ever exhibition in Scotland). The stunning show reflects the zeitgeist of Richter’s native Germany between World War II and the early Cold…

Gerhard Richter

Man for all seasons

30 Oct 2008

When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last…

Steven Campbell: Wretched Stars, Insatiable Heaven (new work 2006-2007)

4 Sep 2008

Steven Campbell's work may not be to everyone's taste, but it's certainly powerful and affecting. Large-scale paintings assail the viewer with bright colours; paisley patterns merge with abstract designs and motifs borrowed from art history while…

The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: The Renaissance

Treasure trove of Italian masters

31 Jul 2008

You wonder what Prince William was thinking when he switched courses at university – when your Grandma owns art like this, studying Art History must have been a doddle. This exhibition, the first of two from the Royal Collection’s holdings of 16th and…

Quiet revolution - Scottish Impressionism

17 Jul 2008

Liz Shannon considers the enduring appeal of work by the ground-breaking French Impressionists and the Scots they inspired

Altered States of Paint

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING (GROUP SHOW) DCA, Dundee, until Sun 7 Sep DCA’s excellent new exhibition manages to assail you before you even enter the gallery, thanks to Rabiya Choudhry’s vibrant wall painting that presents the show’s title across the blade…

Au Fil D’Ecosse

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY, INSTALLATION Institut Français, Edinburgh, until Fri 29 Aug This collaboration between artist Cyril Barrand and poet John Hudson leaves no thread untied, no thematic ambiguity unresolved, with the result that our…

Harry Smith Anthology Remixed

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING, DRAWING, PHOTOGRAPHY, MUSIC CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 26 Jul Artist, filmmaker, musicologist: just a few of the labels attached to Harry Smith, the great American polymath of the 1950s. This exhibition celebrates the chain-smoking…

Karin Christiansen and Lys Hansen: The Other Side – A Dialogue

17 Jul 2008

REVIEW PAINTING & SCULPTURE Collins Gallery, Glasgow, until Sat 16 Aug (closed Fri 18–Mon 21 Jul) Lou Reed had never been to Berlin before he wrote his doomed rock opera named after the then divided city. If he had, it might have been even…

Visual Art - List picks

17 Jul 2008

Mark Neville With Fancy Pictures (which features Neville’s new 16mm film and audio-slide installation of still photographic work) the artist captures 21st century Bute in wonderful living, breathing colour. See review, page 87. Mount Stuart, Isle Of…

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…

Lotte Gertz

14 Feb 2008

PRINTING, PAINTING AND DRAWING Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 1 Mar Narrative of sorts emerges through the manipulation of formal elements in the printed, painted, drawn and collaged works of Lotte Gertz. In this, her first exhibition at Mary Mary, the…

Split Personality - Alan Michael

31 Jan 2008

Rosie Lesso creates an imaginative map of associations as she considers the work of painter Alan Michael Like many artists before him, Alan Michael’s first point of reference is the sea of visual information we encounter as by-products of…

Kendall Koppe and Douglas Morland: The Great Release

31 Jan 2008

PAINTING, SCULPTURE AND PRINT The Intermedia space is a slippery fish, but it is usually worth trying to land the thing. The exhibition by Kendall Koppe and Douglas Morland is a case in point. The work on show deals with aspects of subjectivity that…

Spencer Sweeny

31 Jan 2008

PAINTING There’s less shtick and more confidence in this exhibition of paintings by New York-based artist Spencer Sweeney. The freewheeling, almost accidental approach to image-making that the artist employed in his previous exhibition in the space…

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…

Bacon and Koons wow at art auction

16 Nov 2007

Two paintings by Francis Bacon have sold for more than £34 million at Sotheby’s, in a record-breaking sale of contemporary and post-war art for the auction house. The artist’s Self Portrait and his Study for Bullfight No 1 (second version) sold for…

Export ban imposed on £2m Turner

13 Nov 2007

A watercolour painting by Turner, considered by experts to be one of the finest in its medium, has been banned from going on sale abroad until next year to give the UK a chance to retain it. The painting is a view of Lake Lucerne in Switzerland and…

Music hidden in da Vinci’s Last Supper?

12 Nov 2007

A computer expert claims to have discovered music hidden in Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece The Last Supper. By superimposing the five lines in sheet music over the painting, Giovanni Maria Pala said a 40-second composition then becomes…

Art collection sells for £188m in New York

8 Nov 2007

A collection of art works, including paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, have sold for £188 million after going under the hammer in New York. Matisse’s 1937 painting L’Odalisque, Harmonie Blueue, set a new record fetching £16 million at…

Tom Phillips

Big picture

1 Nov 2007

Tom Phillips Widely considered a touchstone of postmodernism, Tom Phillips’ artistic project, ‘A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel’, has achieved cult status since its initial publication in 1970. One day, Phillips went into a book shop with the…

Feral Kingdom

18 Oct 2007

DRAWING, PAINTING, FILM AND SCULPTURE CCA, Glasgow, until Sat 10 Nov There seems to be little or no relationship between the works showing at Feral Kingdom in the CCA – all conceptual and aesthetic decisions seem almost arbitrary. It is true that…

Artist reveals hidden initial on Che artwork

9 Oct 2007

The artist behind the iconic artwork which immortalised Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara in black, white and red has revealed a secret initial in the picture to identify the work as his own. Irish artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who created the image from…

Final Van Gogh painting expected to fetch £17m

9 Oct 2007

A Van Gogh painting has gone on show in London before being auctioned in New York next month. Thought to be the artist’s last painting, the vibrant masterpiece The Fields (Wheat Fields) was painted 19 days before Van Gogh’s suicide. The picture is…

Monet painting damaged by intruders

8 Oct 2007

A group of intruders punched a hole in a painting by Claude Monet after breaking in to the Orsay Museum in Paris. The French culture minister Christine Albanel said that four or five people, who appeared to be drunk, had broken through a back door at…

Stolen da Vinci painting recovered after police raid

5 Oct 2007

A painting by Leonardo da Vinci worth around £25 million, which was stolen from the Duke of Buccleuch four years ago, has been recovered after a police raid. The 16th century Madonna of the Yarnwinder had been put the FBI’s list of 10 most wanted…

Alasdair Gray - art review

4 Oct 2007

To cherry pick from one’s own oeuvre sounds delightfully painful, a self indulgent task requiring sticky fingers and a good eye. It should be someone else’s enviable job, especially when the artist in question is Alasdair Gray, one of Scotland’s most…

Freud painting of pregnant daughter to be auctioned

26 Sep 2007

A painting by Lucian Freud which took more than a year to complete is expected to generate excitement amongst collectors when it goes on sale next month. Painted in 1992, Ib and Her Husband is a portrait of the artist’s daughter Isobel while…

Major Bacon exhibition set for Tate calendar

21 Sep 2007

A collection of Francis Bacon’s artwork will be the highlight of a host of exclusive exhibitions lined up for Tate Britain next year. It will be the first large exhibition of the artist’s work shown in Britain for 25 years, showcasing around 60…

Dan Miller: Stockade

20 Sep 2007

DRAWING, SCULPTURE AND PAINTING Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, until 24 Sep One has to wade through the familiar sophomoric references to modernist architecture, ‘dazzle’ camouflage and death to arrive at the germ of what is an interesting talent, in the…

Bacon rent set to reach £9m in auction

4 Sep 2007

A painting by Francis Bacon is expected to fetch £9 million when it is put up for sale by the Royal College of Art. Bacon had given a painting to the RCA to rent one of the college’s studios in 1969, after his own had burned down. The original…

Lennon portrait attracts £45,000 bid

3 Sep 2007

A portrait of John Lennon by Scottish artist Peter Howson has received a bid of £45,000 – 50% higher than the painter’s valuation. The portrait will go on show at the John Lennon Northern Lights Festival in Durness in Sutherland at the end of…

Hirst skull sold for £50 million

31 Aug 2007

Damien Hirst’s diamond-encrusted skull is officially the world’s most expensive piece of contemporary art, after it was bought for £50 million. An unnamed investment group bought the skull, which is covered with 8,601 diamonds, in a cash-only deal…

Anonymous Hirst work auctioned for £200

29 Aug 2007

An anonymous auction surprised art dealers when it transpired that a bidder who offered £200 for ‘lot 15’ had actually bought a little-known Damien Hirst painting. The auction saw art connoisseurs eagerly await the painting, which was being sold…

Vettriano works to go under the hammer

29 Aug 2007

Some of Jack Vettriano’s earliest works are to go under the hammer at a Sotheby’s sale in Gleneagles. The seven pictures, considered to be those which propelled the Fife-born artist into the big time, are expected to fetch more than £1.2 million.

LS Lowry painting rediscovered

23 Aug 2007

A painting by LS Lowry rediscovered after 57 years in a private collection could fetch as much as £1 million when it is auctioned at Sotheby’s in London. Experts claim the work, entitled A Fairground, is a “new and momentous addition” to the artist’s…

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…

Stolen Picasso paintings recovered in Paris

8 Aug 2007

Two Picasso paintings stolen from the Spanish painter’s granddaughter earlier this year have been found, officials have confirmed. The works, which featured Picasso’s daughter Maya and his second wife Jacqueline, were discovered in Paris yesterday, as…

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…

Tender Scene: Group Show

17 Jul 2007

SCULPTURE, PAINTING, PHOTOGRAPHY AND DRAWING TENDER SCENE - GROUP SHOW The Changing Room, Stirling, until 11 Aug (Image: Gregor Wright) Maybe it’s the red and white gaffer-taped maze of scaffolding in the Victorian shopping arcade that…

Hanneline Visnes: Sleepshapes

18 Jun 2007

DRAWING, PAINTING Within Hanneline Visnes’ intricately layered drawings and paintings one finds a multitude of mysterious broken and distorted references, where stories begin yet lead us nowhere. As an artist interested in the long history of…

Hanneline Visnes

22 May 2007

PAINTING (Picture: Possessions) Belgian-born, Glasgow-based artist Hanneline Visnes’ paintings record the tension between abstraction and representation, pattern and spontaneity - a play of opposites that has come to characterise a slightly…

Neil Clements: Paranoid

SouthSide Studios, Fridge Gallery, Glasgow (viewing by appointment Sat 14-Sun 29 Apr)

23 Apr 2007

PAINTING AND INSTALLATION The small, dimly lit Fridge gallery acts like a mausoleum for Glasgow-based Neil Clements to create a painting, light and sound installation that takes an image of Op Art heroine Bridget Riley and the emergence of the…

Opt In For Art Exhibition

The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Fri 20 Apr - S

9 Apr 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY, VIDEO, INSTALLATION, DRAWING, PAINTING

Kate Dove & Victoria Morton

Light and Dark

13 Mar 2007

Kate Dove is a sculptor turned animator, who paints. Victoria Morton avoids representation but insists she does not paint abstract canvases. Luckily, this slightly confusing cross pollinated bouquet of disciplines cannot be felt in their work shown at…

Simon Carroll

Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgo

13 Mar 2007

CERAMICS, PAINTING AND PRINTS The alchemy and leap of imagination that’s involved when throwing, decorating and firing a humble pot is not to be underestimated. Each glaze - whether ice-cream pink or emerald green - begins life as inert grey swill…

Trenton Doyle Hancock: The Wayward Thinker

Trenton Doyle Hancock:

13 Mar 2007

PAINTING DRAWING SCULPTURE Trenton Doyle Hancock is a storyteller and mythmaker - a highbrow comic book artist struggling with a complex psyche and an unruly inner child. His conviction is admirable, developing a narrative based on characters that…