Visual art and Reviews

Scott Myles: This Production

Dundee artist and former skater reclaims DCA building’s interior

23 May 2012

It makes sense that the site of DCA used to be Scott Myles’ playground. Back then he was a skater boy and it was a bricks-and-mortar garage re-imagined as the sort of makeshift skate-park for local heroes and future high-flyers, which, under the…

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gunderson Collection

Extended introduction to troubled Norwegian painter

23 May 2012

Perhaps the greatest surprise for casual viewers of this high-profile new exhibition from the Scottish National Galleries is the discovery that Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had a whole catalogue of work besides ‘The Scream’. One of the most famous…

Tony Swain: Drowned Dust, Sudden Word

Using materials of newsprint as starting point for abstract painting canvasses

23 May 2012

There’s a deliberately seductive art to the design of a newspaper page, but only within the uniform rigour of the reader’s expectations. Northern Irish artist Tony Swain subverts these norms by using the materials of newsprint as the starting point for…

Callum Innes - Works on Paper 1989–2012

Demonstrates tension, richness and depth already familiar in Innes’ paintings

23 May 2012

Callum Innes’ explorations of material processes are well demonstrated in this first exhibition dedicated to his works on paper. Abstract images of colour familiar from his paintings on canvas fill the space, each one creating particular tensions…

Paul Thek: If you don’t like this book you don’t like me

Candid close-up of Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor

23 May 2012

‘I will now call to mind our past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul’ goes one missive culled from the now opened pages of almost a hundred notebooks left behind by Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor Thek, which came to light following his…

Karla Black

'Giant tiramisu' is breathtaking and ludicrous in equal measure

25 Apr 2012

Between Karla Black’s work and its viewer, the tension is unbearable. Rarely can inert sculptural work have exerted such a gravitational pull upon its audience, and the effect of ‘art vertigo’ it inspires just can’t be understood unless it’s seen live.

Jeremy Deller: Sacrilege

Stonehenge reimagined as a bouncy castle celebrates creative power of play

25 Apr 2012

If you’re feeling down in the dumps, there are few things more rejuvenating than jumping up and down like an idiot for a few minutes. If you can do so without bursting out laughing like an even bigger loon, chances are you’re dead. As a child of the…

Lorna Macintyre: Midnight Scenes & Other Works

Intriguing and apparently unrelated pieces across various media

25 Apr 2012

An exhibition which speaks most eloquently only when its creator’s intentions have been read and understood, Midnight Scenes & Other Works at first appears to be a series of intriguing but unrelated pieces across various media. There’s a video work…

Emory Douglas: Seize the Time

Imagery of Black Panther party’s minister for culture still high in insurrectionary power

25 Apr 2012

The imagery of the Black Panther party’s first and only minister for culture has lost none of its insurrectionary power over the last half-century. At a time when the Arab Spring and Occupy movements have reintroduced a generation to often violent…

Wolfgang Tillmans

Visually stunning and technically excellent mix of photographic works

25 Apr 2012

Wolfgang Tillmans’ new installation at the Common Guild is composed of an eclectic mix of photographic works, both visually stunning and technically excellent, with a disconcerting disregard for continuity of imagery. This diverse collection includes…

Folkert De Jong: The Immortals

Dutch artist references Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh

25 Apr 2012

A gaudily attired couple sit astride some scaffolding watching the debris-ridden legacy of the best minds of their generation. Or at least that’s the sense you get of Dutch artist Folkert De Jong’s site-specific sculptural intervention, which looks to…

Teresa Margolles

Photographic archive of the now decaying Mexican border town

25 Apr 2012

Life’s a riot in Teresa Margolles’ work for Glasgow Sculpture Studios’ new space in Glasgow’s old whisky bond building, which sources a photographic archive of the now decaying Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez alongside a new piece mined from…

Richard Wright: Works on Paper

Small and delicate lesser-known works are enigmatic and unassuming

25 Apr 2012

Buried in the back corner of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery, Richard Wright exhibits some of his lesser-known works on paper. They are unassuming, enigmatic and predominantly abstract as with most of Wright’s work. However, in contrast to his more usual…

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary

Valuable retrospective of the Whysman's work

28 Mar 2012

Environmental art may be all the rage these days, but, as with the soon to be mothballed Collins Gallery, George Wyllie was way ahead of the curve. While best known for huge public spectacles The Straw Locomotive and The Paper Boat, as well as a…

Alison Turnbull

Constrained pieces exploring ideas of order and chaos

21 Mar 2012

Order and chaos, Alison Turnbull’s work implies, are both simple functions of human perspective, with her seemingly very precisely constrained pieces actually subject to no more than the artist’s own arbitrary designs for them. In large part that’s a…

Pádraig Timoney – Shepard Tone

Deceptive and frustrating mixed media show with no clear theme

14 Mar 2012

Shepard Tone offers an eclectic mix of painting, photography and mixed media wall-based work, seemingly with little in common. The title describes an auditory illusion of continually descending or ascending pitch. As expected, the exhibition is…

Construct

Group show of work by Barbara Kasten, Alan Michael, Daniel Sinsel and Ricky Swallow

29 Feb 2012

Construct brings together four artists, Barbara Kasten, Alan Michael, Daniel Sinsel and Ricky Swallow, in a study of manipulation and alteration as the method for constructing new images. Swallow’s quirky sculptures, which open the show, display…

Jane and Louise Wilson

Major new film installation of surveillance-related work

27 Feb 2012

Jane and Louise Wilson are no strangers to going behind closed doors. In ‘Face Scripting – What Did the Building See?’, a major new film installation that forms the centrepiece of this body of surveillance-related work, they cast themselves as…

Luke Fowler (with Toshiya Tsunoda and John Haynes)

Film installation references RD Laing

17 Feb 2012

‘We are actors in a play... whose plot we don’t know... and whose end I dare not imagine.’ These words, delivered by iconoclastic Glasgow-born ‘anti-psychiatrist’ RD Laing, not only form the opening gambit of ‘All Divided Selves’, Luke Fowler’s latest…

Roger Ackling

Assemblage of garden tools from alumnus of late 1960s St Martin’s School of Art scene

17 Feb 2012

It’s hard, at first, to see just what Roger Ackling has created here. An alumnus of the late 1960s St Martin’s School of Art scene that also produced Richard Long, Ackling’s ideas of what constitutes sculpture are unique to say the least. In this case…

Alex Dordoy

Overarching sense of the mutability of physical objects

3 Feb 2012

Alex Dordoy’s new body of work mixes the digital and the analogue, the abstract and the real, in a search for new means of perception. Three bright and eye-catching panoramic canvases – meticulously painted reproductions of digitally abstracted figures…

The Sculpture Show

Well-managed and educational group sculpture show also contains big impressions

1 Feb 2012

Those who find their attention can escape the orbit of this show’s central spectacle – Ron Mueck’s striking ‘A Girl’, a life-like model of a quite grumpy-looking newborn baby girl rendered as a vast monolith many dozens of times the size of nature…

Allan Sekula: Ship of Fools

Large-scale images explore shipping industry’s role in exploitation of labour

1 Feb 2012

Now that capitalism is a sinking ship with assorted captains scrambling for the lifeboats, Allan Sekula’s ongoing photographic exploration of globalisation in motion is the perfect metaphor for a world all at sea. This most recent series by the…

Anna Barriball

Sculpture show from the Plymouth-born artist contains a relaxed humour

1 Feb 2012

There’s a certain fascination in concealment within the work of Plymouth-born Anna Barriball, a tension between what the works appear to be and what they actually are. Is a framed, full-sized pencil rubbing of a door a drawing of said door, or are its…

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

Stunning exhibition of post-punk music photography

19 Dec 2011

Harry Papadopoulos is the great unsung documenter of post-punk, who, between 1978 and 1984, captured a crucial era in pop history in all its geeky glory. Having started out taking snaps for Bobby Bluebell’s fanzine, The Ten Commandments, and orbiting…

Alasdair Gray: City Recorder

Fantastic exhibition of drawings chronicling Glasgow's past

19 Dec 2011

For one year in 1977, at a time when many of Glasgow’s famous old industries were closing, Alasdair Gray was commissioned to capture the life of the city in ink, watercolour, acrylic and oil on paper. Glasgow’s local history museum, the People’s Palace…

Alison Watt – Hiding in Full View

The artist's paintings are good, but suffer in comparison to the photography of Francesca Woodman

19 Dec 2011

‘All rooms will hide you, if you stand just so – ghosts know this, that’s really all they know,’ declares one of the poems by Don Paterson (a credited collaborator in this show), which are printed in fluid lower case type just below eye level on the…

Andrew Kerr – So Ensconced

Over 70 new paintings in this debut solo exhibition from the Glasgow-based artist

19 Dec 2011

Absence makes the heart grow fonder in Andrew Kerr’s first major solo show in Scotland. Almost 70 new paintings discreetly dominate both floors, only interrupted by the odd smattering of drawings or sculptural intervention. Most of the mainly…

Beholder

Gloriously disparate jumbled-up wonderland of art for art’s sake that’s a joy to wander through

9 Dec 2011

‘Beauty’, according to that man David Hume, whose tercentenary year is almost up, ‘is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’ So it goes in this bumper grab bag of some 50 works, each subjectively…

Torsten Lauschmann: Startle Reaction

Explores tangled-up mess of interconnectivity

9 Dec 2011

You don’t immediately notice the quieter, more domestic pieces in Torsten Lauschmann’s biggest box of tricks to date. The subverted digital clock above the DCA box office and the wired-up chandelier that hangs in Gallery One, where two of Lauschmann’s…

Hidden City

Edinburgh Printmakers members’ show a mixed bag

9 Dec 2011

In compiling their latest, largest annual members’ show, Edinburgh Printmakers have imposed an unwitting watermark of quality with their decision to give it a theme. ‘Edinburgh Uncovered’ is the subtitle, and the collection claims to offer ‘an intimate…

Henrik Håkansson: The End

Video installation centres around death of several flies

9 Dec 2011

Its body cracks under the whip. Wings tear apart, legs fall open, torso flinching, and its head flops lifeless to one side. The momentous instant of the death of the fly is elongated, scored and played back on a grand scale. Then another appears. The…

Bill Bollinger

The contemporary of Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse et al gets his own well-deserved retrospective

15 Nov 2011

Onscreen in black and white, a man is attempting to stand a log upright of its own volition. Time and again the man methodically lifts the log off the ground, moving it from horizontal to vertical before it topples as though felled with some invisible…

The Scottish Colourists series: FCB Cadell

Retrospective of the early 20th century colourist's work displays a life-long development of talent

15 Nov 2011

To modern eyes this retrospective of the work of early 20th century Edinburgh colourist FCB Cadell might appear a little staid, a procession of chintzy New Town interiors and still life compositions involving china crockery and the distinctive white…

Thea Djordjadze - Lost Promise in a Room

A considered display of sculpture and objects in effective, minimalist setting

15 Nov 2011

Strange objects roughly sculpted in plaster, propped up against walls, placed in corners and laid out in unusual places, are contrasted against minimalist lines of steel and smooth mirrored cubes. A lump of chicken wire is securely contained in a…

Transmission Gallery Group Show

Sam Derounian, Graham Kelly and Conor Kelly shine in local artist showcase

15 Nov 2011

A commendable group show brings together new work by nine Glasgow-based artists at the Transmission Gallery. Without a didactic theme to tie the exhibition together the viewer is free to contemplate works individually and to make subtle links with…

The Writing On Your Wall

Rob Tufnell-curated group show chronicling the history of radical print

28 Oct 2011

When Jeremy Deller put Rupert Murdoch’s walnut face on a sky-blue ‘Vote Conservative’ poster to raise funds for the Labour Party, it looked like satire. Given the ongoing phone-hacking saga, it now feels like prophecy. The ‘Murdoch Doesn’t Give A XXX…

Ciara Phillips: The only rule is work

Exhibition the result of a three-month residency at Kendall Koppe, inspired by Sister Corita Kent

21 Oct 2011

‘The only rule is work’ is one of ten accommodating rules for students and teachers developed by artist and educator Sister Corita Kent. Ciara Phillips’ exhibition is the result of her three-month residency in the gallery space where she shared a…

Lucy Roscoe - The Beach House

Collection of sea-themed prints and paper sculptures in convivial deli setting

21 Sep 2011

Edinburgh-based artist-illustrator and founder of the Book Tree Press, Lucy Roscoe, brings a body of new work to Edinburgh’s Broughton Deli. The Beach House is the tenth in a specially curated series by Nicola Brooks and fills the space with delicate…

Graham Fagen: Missing

Moving video installation running parallel to the Tramway's Andrew O'Hagan-penned theatre production

21 Sep 2011

Graham Fagen’s moving video diptych Missing explores the experience of going missing, and what it is like for those left behind. Commissioned by the Scottish National Portrait gallery, it is produced in partnership with the National Theatre of Scotland…

Nick Sargent: A Scottish Land

Bold and charming celebration of the Scottish landscape

16 Sep 2011

With A Scottish Land, one-time set and costume designer and Edinburgh resident Nick Sargent returns to Oliver Chapman Architects in-house gallery space for the first time since their inaugural exhibition. Inspired by a photograph of a generic…

Alan Reid: Boudoir Concrete

Delicately balanced clashing of art and design

16 Sep 2011

Looking for all the world like propaganda posters for Nazi leisure organisation Kraft durch Freude, Alan Reid’s representational drawings of lissome young bodies appear to promote healthy living and sexless appeal. Lithe bodies are interrupted by…

Gary Rough - Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc. . .

Meshing of conceptual ideas that leaves no lasting impression

16 Sep 2011

Running at Sorcha Dallas for the next month is Gary Rough’s latest Glasgow exhibition Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, etc..., a meshing of two conceptual ideas, the ongoing collection of 1,984 copies of George Orwell’s classic, 1984, and the attempted…

Paul Muzni: Configure

Versatility found among abstracted oil and pastel pieces of Edinburgh artist

30 Aug 2011

Edinburgh artist Muzni treats the eyes in this collection of life works focusing on the female nude, constantly striving to keep his approach as fresh as the colours that make up his delicately abstracted oil and pastel pieces. The use of pastel is a…

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Breathtaking exploration of both photography and science

25 Aug 2011

To say that Sugimoto's contribution to the Edinburgh International Festival is striking would be an understatement. This is the first time these works have been displayed in Europe. The Japanese photography pioneer’s huge analogue 'Lightning Fields…

Futureproof 2011: New photography in Scotland

Cross section of work by recent graduates

24 Aug 2011

As the third in a series of exhibitions initiated by Street Level Gallery, Futureproof profiles a cross section of work by graduates from the five Scottish university photography departments. The pictures on show are taken by nimble-fingered light…

Smile

Feeble collection riffing off ill-conceived ideas

24 Aug 2011

Between the Spangles wrapper psychedelia of its poster to the feeble collection of art in the gallery, Smile does nothing to live up to its name. Riffing off ill-conceived ideas honed from (a misunderstanding of) the Fluxus movement and the writings of…

John Byrne: Moonlight and Music

Major exhibition of works by much-loved Scottish artist

17 Aug 2011

So recent are some of the pieces in this show – timed to coincide with the launch of a biography of the artist by Lund Humphries – that self-portrait ‘Chop Suey’ and Byrne’s children’s book Donald & Benoit: A Story of a Cat and a Boy arrived close to…

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys

An art world friendship under a Scottish sky

17 Aug 2011

A single rose can make a garden; a single friend can make a world. Writer, artist and philosopher Richard Demarco’s friendship with the humanistic artist Joseph Beuys was something special. These two passionate, occasionally obtuse men were drawn to…

Mystics or Rationalists?

Elegant conceptual works bend associations of the ordinary

17 Aug 2011

Stealing the show, Susan Hiller’s new levitation works are exemplary of the conceit at the heart of this group exhibition. Having infused conceptual and minimalist strategies with the influence of psychoanalysis and pop culture since the late 1960s…

Peace at Last!

Photorealist style of Kate Davis focuses on political history with feminist narratives

16 Aug 2011

This small collection of works by Kate Davis is a response to the Glasgow Museums’ collection. The show focuses both on political history with feminist narratives and the archiving process mixed in with her own interventions. In the first room is the…

Early Relativity: Karen Cunningham and Zara Idelson

Good pairing of Glasgow-based artists

16 Aug 2011

Every year for their summer show The Duchy pairs a recent graduate with a more established artist. This year Glasgow School of Art graduate Zara Idelson shows paintings and interventions alongside the work of Glasgow-based Karen…

Stephen Sutcliffe: Runaway, Success

Biography-obsessed artist hides behind his heroes

11 Aug 2011

It’s been a while since Yorkshire-born Glasgow resident Sutcliffe has trotted out his curious wares in Scotland, and it’s not difficult to see why. His work is moody and peppered with arch cultural references to complex arty prima donnas Joe Orton…

Carmen Sylva

Established artists take on a new and exciting identity

11 Aug 2011

A procession of odd assemblages punctuates the centre of Sierra Metro’s exhibition space. They are Katharina Stoever and Barbara Wolff’s latest artistic response to Peles, a late 18th Century Romanian castle that has inspired their practice for over six…

Chris Drury - Land, Water and Language

A man, his boat and some nice scenery

11 Aug 2011

Life’s a journey not a destination and other such homilies. God preserve us from the travelogue artists. Chris Drury is one such artist. This exhibition, which was initially created for Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in North Uist, takes its…

Norman McBeath & Robert Crawford: Body Bags / Simonides

Mournful collaboration between photographer and poet

11 Aug 2011

Scots translations of epitaphs by the ancient Greek poet Simonides, coupled with black and white photographs, adorn the high-rising walls of two lofty Edinburgh College of Art studios. Joined by tall vases of white lilies, classical casts from the…

Live Your Questions Now

Group show featuring Alasdair Gray, Ana Jotta, Colin McCahon, Rainer Maria Rilke and Sam Ainsley

10 Aug 2011

As a triumphant call to the graces of old age and experience Live Your Questions Now is a survey show reacting to the art world’s obsessive youth fads. The show’s title is derived from a letter seeking guidance from poet Rainer Maria Rilke: ‘live your…

First of the Summer Wine

Group show featuring Joan Eardley, Vanessa Bell, George Leslie Hunter and Donald Clark

10 Aug 2011

Now at their new location on West Regent Street, Cyril Gerber’s annual summer show, First of the Summer Wine, is full of variety, placing artists from different generations alongside one another. A mix of modern British and Scottish masters includes…

Tamsyn Challenger: 400 Women

Stunning artistic memorial to victims of gender violence

8 Aug 2011

What unites the collection of heterogeneous portraits in 400 Women is the fate of each subject depicted. All are the victims of rape, abduction and murder, devastating crimes which have taken place on the Mexican border region of Ciudad Juàrez. In…

Katri Walker: North West

Intriguing exploration of Scottish/Wild West links

8 Aug 2011

This triptych of work by Edinburgh-born artist Katri Walker recasts the landscape of Scotland as the wilderness of the American old west, quite literally in the case of the titular central work. Projected over three connected screens, the rocky cliffs…

Ingrid Calame

Water water everywhere with only a doodle to drink

5 Aug 2011

A river runs through Ingrid Calame’s work. But this river has been drained and all that remains are detritus and old stains. Somewhere between Google Earth screen grabs, weighty childhood nature books with their own illustrative key codes and fey…

David Mach: Precious Light

Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition of biblical proportions by Fife-born artist

5 Aug 2011

Without doubt, Methil-born artist David Mach’s work ‘Golgotha’ will stand out as the defining image from the artistic strand of this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Three enormous figures of threaded steel nailed to metallic crosses, which take up the entire…

Anton Henning: Interieur No. 493

Curious and bemusing conceptual art salon at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

5 Aug 2011

If, as critic and writer Cyril Connolly once noted, ‘vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life’ German artist Anton Henning might just have halitosis. Henning’s first solo show in Scotland is just about as curious and bemusing an exhibition as you…

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it

5 Aug 2011

Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…

Urs Fischer and Georg Herold

Sculpture exhibiition examining the art-making process

3 Aug 2011

On a red divan a reclining nude has settled into a classical pose. She appears completely still, her milk white skin wraps serenely around her hyper-real body, her glassy blue eyes complete the life like sculpture. Upon closer inspection the rise and…

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Sparkling post-industrial dance on gleaming surfaces

3 Aug 2011

Inverleith House has long carved a niche for itself as a champion of late 20th century American icons, and for the gallery’s British Art Show contribution has gathered up a grab-bag of 37 works made between 1982 and 1998 by Abstract Expressionism’s…

Hayashi Takeshi: Haku-u (White Rain)

Impressive hand-carved sculptures

3 Aug 2011

Once upon a time, Japanese artist Hayashi Takeshi looked out over a paddy field in the rain, the texture of the water’s surface as each inverted wet plop rose and fell clearly ingraining itself on his memory. With the primary and titular work on display…

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

3 Aug 2011

There’s something of an inky-fingered Dürer overload in the ‘burgh just now. Following on from Dürer’s Fame over at the National Galleries, this 16th century compendium of more than 100 works uses his output as a springboard for the burgeoning of…

Gina Glover – Playgrounds of War

Evocative photography exhibition concerning militarized landscapes

3 Aug 2011

A small child kitted out in wellies and a windbreaker stands with her hands covering her ears between large truck tracks in a desolate, barren, concrete landscape. This black and white photograph forms part of a 1980s series that shows the artist’s…

Tony Cragg

Stunning showcase of sculptor’s poetic, monolithic output

3 Aug 2011

From Scouse lab technician to director of Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Cragg’s prolific artistic journey has been one of inspiration and rejection, absorption and a will to move beyond. While the works of Max Ernst, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys and Henry…

Elizabeth Blackadder

Brilliant retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s major artists

3 Aug 2011

Elizabeth Blackadder is a Dame, a Royal Academician and arguably Scotland’s most popular female painter and printmaker. A major retrospective of her work at Scotland’s biggest gallery space was only ever going to draw sighs of resignation from art snobs…

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

21 Jul 2011

German handball star Pascal Hens gazes out from a black-and-white poster, his torso naked, gaze serious, his pose one of self-deification. This is enhanced further by a tattoo on his stomach of two disembodied hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Gravity's Rainbow

Pynchon-inspired group show explores different representations of colour

21 Jul 2011

The acid house smiley face on the sunny yellow ball of Peter Liversidge’s shelf-load of single-hued detritus speaks volumes about this colour-focused group show of eight artists that takes its title from Thomas Pynchon’s baroque noir. It begins with a…

Breaking the Renaissance Code

Exhibition exploring emblems, taking place at The Hunterian Gallery, Glasgow, until Tue 4 Oct

21 Jul 2011

Depending on whether you are a critic or an avid fan of the bestselling Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown both heralded and slew the art of emblematic thinking. This small yet punchy exhibition puts examples of Dürer, Rembrandt and Holbein’s use of symbolic…

Alistair Frost & Gerda Scheepers

Group show at Mary Mary, Glasgow, until Sat 6 Aug

21 Jul 2011

With works that deal with painting as their surface connection, but later reveal a linguistic undercurrent, the latest show at Mary Mary is an exploration of symbols and signs. Gerda Scheeper’s minimal figurative paintings focus on both the sensual and…

You Seem The Same As Always

Group show of work based on the human hand

23 Jun 2011

In 1966 Yvonne Rainer made her first film, ‘Hand Movie’, while her body was confined to a hospital bed and unable to dance. She used only her right hand, each finger itself a performer moving gracefully. Since then a number of artists have captured the…

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read Thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Mixed media from Glasgow and Berlin

23 Jun 2011

If the world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends (‘laa-la-laaa-la’), as a zenned-out Hal David once wrote to a Burt Bacharach choon, then both Nina Rhode and Cara Tolmie’s worlds seem to be on a permanent loop in these…

Thomas Houseago: The Beat of the Show

Sculptures that 'suggest a society getting back to basics'

14 Jun 2011

The relationship between the title of the first museum-based show by Leeds-born sculptor Houseago and the work itself may not be immediately apparent. It’s taken from Transmission, the urgent post-punk anthem released in 1979 by Joy Division, who…

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Two art films from a Berliner and a Glasweigan

14 Jun 2011

If the world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends (‘laa-la-laaa-la’), as a zenned-out Hal David once wrote to a Burt Bacharach choon, then both Nina Rhode and Cara Tolmie’s worlds seem to be on a permanent loop in these…

Narcissus Reflected

The David Lomas-curated Fruitmarket exhibition is an effective reflection of the nature of vanity

27 May 2011

Don McLean got it right in his 1972 song ‘Narcisissima’: ‘Narcissima, Narcisissma is the pride of Pomona/Pomona, Pomona says she looks like me/But she will look like you when I’m set free.’ Narcissus of Greek myth and his Freudian descendant have long…

Art Extraordinary

Group show arranged by Joyce Laing demonstrates the healing power of art

27 May 2011

When French sculptor and painter Jean Dubuffet set out to identify art that could be viewed as free from aesthetic norms he labelled it L’Art Brut. This new exhibition at the Collins Gallery showcases works gathered on the same basis from The Art…

Martin Boyce: Night terrace – lantern chains – forgotten seas – sky

Sculpture exhibition from the Glasgow-based Turner Prize nominee

27 May 2011

Triggered by fragments of colliding locations, a set of objects and textures in low light convey a dislocated landscape. Rust drips down like tears of blood from obsolete steel park benches. Table top surfaces and hanging wall panels are covered with…

Victoria Clare Bernie: Slow Water

Scottish landscape photography exhibition by the Edinburgh-based artist

27 May 2011

A scientific orderliness contains Slow Water. Photographs, videos, digital drawings and animation made during a residency post at the Scottish Association for Marine Science Research Laboratory based near Oban are meticulously placed in contrast to the…

Ulla von Brandenburg: Neue Alte Welt review

The German artist's 'Chorspiel' provides a mesmerising centrepiece to this exhibition

20 Apr 2011

German artist Ulla von Brandenburg’s exhibition Neue Alte Welt (New Old World) consists of three parts: a short film, a wall painting of a theatre hall, and a collection of objects that act as theatrical props. ‘Chorspiel’ is part-opera…

Jonathan Owen's print and sculpture exhibition is a beguiling game of hide and seek

20 Apr 2011

The nutcracker suite of small carved figures that form the modest centrepiece of Jonathan Owen’s discreet boudoir of a show appear to be hiding from themselves. The top half of one’s head is a fragile cage with a perfectly centred nut where the brain…

Grier Edmundson's ‘Sometimes I am content’ is an effective combination of print and sculpture

13 Apr 2011

There’s a new gallery in town. Located on Dixon Street, and overlooking the Clyde, Kendall Koppe’s gallery is situated in a beautifully converted space. The renovation acknowledges some of the interior’s original features in contrast to its sleek new…

The Artist Rooms: Jeff Koons exhibition displays the artist's conceptualism, but is at odds with the age of austerity

13 Apr 2011

Stockbroker-turned-mass-media-manipulator Koons has always been a contentious figure in the apolitically voyeuristic world of pop art. A Brooks Brothers outfitted amalgam of Warhol and Duchamps, Koons is only ever as interesting as the times he lives…

Marcus Adams: Royal Photographer

Handsomely displayed archive is stately, regal and beautifully shot

21 Mar 2011

The best Royal portrait ever was a line drawing gracing the cover of post-punk zine City Fun in 1981 to commemorate the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Di. A classic image of the happy couple was waggishly reconfigured so the…

Claude Cahun / Sue Tompkins

Female artists bridge last two centuries in contrasting but complementary shows

21 Mar 2011

Two female artists bridge the last two centuries in these contrasting but complementary shows. Cahun’s all-angles black and white photographs on the top floor of the gallery captures the artist’s striking singularity via a series of portraits that look…

August Sander: People Of The Twentieth Century

Exceptional body of work captures Germany between 1910 and 1940s

21 Mar 2011

Anyone with an interest in art or history should immediately go see an exceptional body of work by the photographer August Sander, currently on display at Edinburgh’s Dean Gallery. Sander’s life’s work was an epic project entitled ‘People of the…

Rearrange Your Face - Michael Bauer, Charlie Hammond and Gabriel Hartley

Varied and painterly show exploring the theme of abstracting figuration

21 Mar 2011

Rearrange your face, with its simple, punchy title, is a varied and painterly show exploring the theme of abstracting figuration as a common starting point for contemporary art. With comical disproportionate chairs made from wheelie bins and skilfully…

Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz: Rape Me

7 Mar 2011

With such an aggressive and punky title it can be assumed that Maximilian Zentz Zlomovitz is looking for some attention with his dirty attack on aesthetics. Aptly named, Zlomovitz’s latest UK exhibition makes abundant references to BDSM culture through…

John Cage: Every Day is a Good Day

A testament to Cage’s philosophy on art and sound

24 Feb 2011

With a title derived from a 300-year-old Zen Buddhist proverb Every Day is a Good Day is a testament to Cage’s philosophy on art and sound. As previously exercised by the curators at the BALTIC Centre, Newcastle, the show’s large collection of some 50…

Jean-Marc Bustamante: Dead Calm

Toulouse born artist’s debut Scottish show

24 Feb 2011

Toulouse born artist Jean-Marc Bustamante’s debut Scottish show carries with it the weight of Dickens’ sentiment that, ‘There are dark shadows on the earth, but its lights are stronger in the contrast.’ Bustamante’s ‘thing’ is incongruity in technique…

Craig Murray-Orr Ingleby show a hymn to power of nature

New Zealand artist's work suggests an unspoilt land before colonialism

24 Feb 2011

There are many painted works in this new exhibition by Kiwi artist Craig Murray-Orr, but the first item that catches the attention is the large rifle mounted on the wall. It’s not a rifle at all, but a mahogany carving in the rough but unmistakeable…

Craig Murray-Orr documents self-imposed exile in the wilderness

New Zealand-born artist captures magnificent isolation

18 Feb 2011

There’s a sense of magnificent isolation as you go walkabout in New Zealand-born Craig Murray-Orr’s first show for a decade, that says much about self-imposed exile in the wilderness. Both Henry David Thoreau’s novel Walden and the sprawl of Jack…

Provocative exhibition from Rosemarie Trockel both haunting and unnerving

Drawings, collages and book drafts makes for powerful show

11 Feb 2011

This provocative exhibition of Rosemarie Trockel’s works on paper is at once haunting and unnerving; the German artist’s handling of dark and sometimes uncomfortable subject matter successfully challenging the viewer through the blurring of reality and…

The Inventors of Tradition profiles traditional garments and social histories

Exhibition charts history of textile industry in Scotland

26 Jan 2011

That ubiquitous ‘Scotland with Style’ byline invented by city marketing in Glasgow gets renewed historical validation in this exhibition that is many things woven into one. Inventors of Tradition is an archival show of the Scottish textiles industry…

Dirk Bell - Powerful exhibition plays with imagery of magick and mysticism

Works invoke old-fashioned ideas of belief systems, ritual, myth and healing

26 Jan 2011

There is something otherworldly about the energy that Dirk Bell has conjured up in this space: a droning sound reverberates, the inorganic steel structures are sanded down to a holographic shine, and devoid of human presence, technology will sustain…

Seeing Ian Hamilton Finlay's work indoors proves claustrophobic

Exhibition of work by polymath behind Little Sparta garden is hymn to nature

26 Jan 2011

There’s something slightly claustrophobic about seeing Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work indoors. As anyone who’s basked in the glories of the radical polymath’s Little Sparta garden in Dunsyre near Edinburgh will be aware, Hamilton Finlay was so at one with…