Visual art

Nick Evans: Solar Eyes

Monumental sculpture show is genius in its conception and meticulous in execution

One enters the exhibition through a dusky and dramatic pyramid passageway. The suspense of discovery hangs thick in the air before a big volcanic hall is reached. Inside, stories of a distant past echo with predictions of the future. Nick Evans has set…

Audrey Grant solo show at Edinburgh's Union gallery

Atmospheric new work from the Edinburgh-based painter

Edinburgh artist Audrey Grant’s painted portraits are a voyage of discovery for the artist as much as the viewer, a series of figures who have been uncovered by Grant as she follows what’s now a defined process. ‘I intend a figure, then apply paint to…

David Galletly: Wee

Idiosyncrasies and faux folk art with bleak humour from Scottish illustrator

The first solo exhibition of David Galletly’s work at Recoat, Wee, showcases the highly peculiar drawing work of this Scottish illustrator. The show comprises impeccably detailed and disconcerting ink drawings, with bizarre and darkly comic characters…

Massimo Bartolini: Studio Matters + 1

Large scale sculpture and miniatures from Italian artist

Like a moth to a flame, the habitual party-goer will always be drawn to Kraftwerkian big-city neon. So it goes in ‘La Strada di Sotto' (The Street Below), the toytown-style installation that maps out the whole of the Fruitmarket’s main downstairs room…

Songs of Innocence and Experience

Debut showing of work by outsider artists Frank Walter, Forrest Bess and Alfred Wallis

A debut showing for the work of Frank Walter, the decidedly eccentric 20th century Antiguan artist, writer and philosopher who fancied himself a descendant of European nobles, provides a jumping-on point to exhibit the work of a trio of outsider…

Spring culture preview 2013

Nick Evans: Solar Eyes Evans' forthcoming solo show features a new set of his striking amorphic white plaster sculptures. The most ambitious is a large architectural complex which mimics the geometry of an Aztec temple. Evans' fascination with motifs…

John Bellany: A Passion for Life

Biographical exhibition charting the life of the great Scottish painter

The curation of this welcome large-scale retrospective exhibition of the Scottish painter John Bellany’s work must have been, in one sense, an easy task. Lending itself to far more than merely a dry recollection of influences and periods of note…

Lauren Gault's Sweet Ensilage is an ambitious collection of found objects

The Glasgow-based artist creates pieces that explore theories around sight and seeing

The Glasgow-based artist creates objects that explore theories around sight and seeing Lauren Gault’s exhibition title Sweet Ensilage is in a strange way seductively suggestive of a particular state of being: a state of ‘sweet ensilage’. The show draws…

The Seventh Street Level Open

A showcase of Scotland's finest photography talent, including Jen Wilcox and Chris Leslie

Street Level’s Open exhibition has become something of a staple event and as usual the standard is extremely high. The show this year has 19 photographers displaying their works, giving a broad and disparate overview of current approaches to the…

Zoe Beloff: A History of Dreams Remains to be Written

Two-part mixed media show examining Coney Island's psychogeography and Occupy Wall Street

Libido and revolution are not so strange bedfellows in New York-based Edinburgh expat Beloff’s first solo show in Scotland, in which imaginary worlds collide in two complementary takes on utopia. In ‘Dreamland’, Beloff mines the archive of the Coney…

Slovakian Master Printers

Group show highlighting the works of Karol Felix, Igor Benca, Robert Jancovic and Marian Komacek

There’s a muscular gloss to much of the work on show in this showcase of four Slovakian printmakers that forms part of an ongoing international exchange initiated by the Scottish Society of Artists. Much of this is to do with the mezzotint techniques by…

Central Station: Jamie Johnson

The printmaker is the co-founder of Harvest Skate Co

Jamie Johnson is an experienced printmaker, bookmaker and a member of Edinburgh Printmakers. He is art director/co-founder of Harvest Skate Co, a new skateboard and apparel company which creates artist-designed skateboard decks, produces videos…

Glasgow Film Festival 2013: Entre Chien et Loup

Mysterious arts patron Randolph Kemp Potter invites you to his Gold Ballroom Party

One of the most eye-catching events on the programme for this year’s Glasgow Film Festival is a decadent party themed around the Gold Ballroom scenes from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. The event - part performance, part party - is hosted by colourful…

A preview of the Edinburgh Iranian Festival 2013

The festival brings together film, music, visual art, and comedy in the shape of Patrick Monahan

When you mention Iran in the current climate, most people think of the politics of the country. But there is of course more to the place than what we see in the news – and the 2013 Edinburgh Iranian Festival is our opportunity to learn more about…

Preview of 2013

We look ahead to some of the hottest events in the next 12 months, including GTA V and Lana Del Rey

Massimo Bartolini Magical Italian artist set to take over the Fruitmarket One of the most eagerly anticipated exhibitions to arrive in Scotland in the new year is a show of new sculptural work by the Italian artist, Massimo Bartolini. Bartolini is…

The York painter Harland Miller explores the art of fiction in Overcoming Optimism

Cock-snooking obscenities with darkly subversive intent

If the Obscene Publications Squad are on the case of this first solo exhibition in Scotland by a York-born painter with a name like a pulp fiction hack, rest easy. Miller’s monumental depictions of dog-eared Penguin book designs down the decades may…

BP Portrait Award 2012

Work from Aleah Chaplin, Ignacio Estudillo, Alan Coulson, Jamie Routley and Carl Randall

Should the viewer have taken the lift rather than the stairs, the first image which greets them in this year’s BP Portrait Prize has been, they will find, deployed for maximum effect. Athenian artist Antonios Titakis’ ‘Silent Eyes’ is a large-scale…

George Wyllie: In Pursuit of the Question Mark

Fabulously upbeat mix of sculptures, drawings and paintings from Scottish scul?tor

Perhaps best known for his public sculpture depicting a clock on running legs outside the Buchanan bus station in Glasgow, the late George Wyllie has become a household name in Scotland. His work has always been populist, accessible and life-affirming…

Joep Van Liefland

Spartan, dilapidated installation imitates decaying disused video shop

Joep Van Liefland’s Video Palace #34 is a spartan, dilapidated and easily missed installation. The work hides the entire gallery space under a mimicry of a disused video rental store; the gallery walls are roughly covered with half torn-up wallpaper and…

Carpets of Distinction

This cross-disciplinary collaboration between seven artists and Glasgow-based designers Panel, working with Dovecot Studios, explores the practical and historic relationships between art, craft and industrial design, creating contemporary narratives on…

Mathew Cerletty, Sean Kennedy, Mateo Tannatt

Great example of all the things that are wrong with contemporary art in Glasgow

With a self-avowed aim of redressing our experience of images, notions of representation and referencing in making objects, this show has lofty ideals to say the least. The works themselves, though, are flat, fake and rubbish (in the most literal…

Central Station: Flannery O’Kafka

Darkly comedic and intentionally sentimental photography

Glasgow-based photographer Andrea uses the alter ego flannery o’kafka for what she terms ‘melancholy merry-making’. Her work is darkly comedic and intentionally sentimental – often likened to stills from a film. Largely self-taught, her portraits are…

Hogmanay 2012: The Cult of Fortuna

Artists Walker & Bromwich tell us about their large-scale installation, part of Edinburgh's Hogmanay

This Hogmanay the Romans are coming. The invasion will be led by a huge inflatable goddess. Bringing up the rear will be two grinning and garrulous performance artists. Battle headquarters will be at the National Museum of Scotland. Zoe Walker, one half…

The best visual art exhibitions of 2012

Featuring Glasgow International, Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Peat, Susan Philipsz and Studio 58

1 Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art Glasgow International returned for its fifth edition with the usual impressive city-wide programme of Scottish and international artists. Highlights included new work by Karla Black, whose layer cake of…

Hot 100 2012: 10-2

John Tiffany, Andy Murray and Luke Fowler among Scotland's hottest cultural contributors in 2012

The Hot 100 is our list of Scotland’s 100 hottest individuals and groups who’ve made a splash this year, from comic book writers to comedians, artists to actors. If they've contributed to Scotland's cultural landscape in 2012, you'll find them here.