Alexander Kennedy

Scott Myles - Askit

20 Sep 2007

SCULPTURE AND PAINTING It would be wrong to immediately dismiss the new work on show by Scott Myles at the Modern Institute at first glance, as your initial aesthetic reaction will be incorrect. It may seem overly dramatic to say that the painted…

Picasso on Paper

Edinburgh International Art Festival

19 Jul 2007

Alexander Kennedy explores the enduring mass appeal of Pablo Picasso as two major new exhibitions of the great 20th century artist’s work come to Edinburgh

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

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…

Roman Signer

17 Jan 2008

A mini-retrospective of work by the Swiss artist. Signer’s sculptural installations and film work that records the straight-faced slapstick actions the artist has undertaken throughout his career. The Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 27 Jan.

Review of the year - visual art

13 Dec 2007

In a year that’s brought the best work by Picasso and Warhol to our doors, this has otherwise been a relatively quiet one for Scottish visual art. Everybody got on with what they did best. In the capital the first Edinburgh Art Festival took place under…

Radiance

15 Nov 2007

LIGHT INSTALLATION Various locations, Glasgow city centre, Fri 23–Sun 25 Nov As the nights draw in, Glasgow City Council is flooding the dark skies with light, filling the streets with large-scale light installations by some of the most successful…

Hitlist - The best exhibitions

18 Oct 2007

• Raphael Danke: Seventh Heaven After recently being taken on as one of the gallery’s roster artists, Raphael Danke’s exhibition of sculptures and collaged photographs at Sorcha Dallas examine abstruse theological ideas and psychoanalytic theories in…

Graham Fagen: Downpresser

GoMA, Glasgow, until Mon 28 May

9 Apr 2007

PHOTOGRAPHY, SCREEN PRINTS, FILM INSTALLATION It’s difficult to discern exactly what Graham Fagen is getting at with his new installation of photographs, screen prints and DVD projections at GoMA. The exhibition, entitled Downpresser, is a personal…

Pick of 2006 - Hot 100

Top 50

12 Dec 2006

The List’s Hot 100 celebrates the people who have made the biggest impact on cultural life in Scotland over the past 12 months.

Kalup Linzy

24 Apr 2008

FILM, PERFORMANCE AND PAINTING Washington Garcia, Glasgow, until Sun 27 Apr New-York based Kalup Linzy is more Vaginal Davis than a ‘Paris is Burning’ starlet, more Judy la Bruce (Bruce’s alter-ego) than Hedwig. But it cannot be denied that all of…

Isle of Harris

28 Feb 2008

To someone who, as a child, often prayed for the kind of harsh weather that kept the rest of the world at bay and provided an excellent excuse for ‘coorieing in’ and contemplation, the idea of staying on an island on the Outer Hebrides during the winter…

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…

Gillespie, Kidd and Coia: 1956–1987

15 Nov 2007

ARCHITECTURE The Lighthouse, Glasgow, until Sun 10 Feb It’s always difficult to review an architecture exhibition. Do you focus on the realised buildings or the sketches, blueprints and models on show and the way they are presented? At first…

Alasdair Gray

18 Oct 2007

A compelling selection of drawings, prints and paintings by one of Scotland’s most successful authors and illustrators of the late 20th century. The work on display spans 50 years or more, and includes designs from some of the front covers of Gray’s…

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…

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.

Callum Innes - From Memory

Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 19 Nov

11 Nov 2006

PAINTING Let’s just get it out the way quickly - there are some bad paintings in this mini-retrospective of Edinburgh-based Callum Innes at the Fruitmarket Gallery. Well, two at a push. This exhibition continues to receive such high praise (he’s both…

Lucy McKenzie

Alexander Kennedy examines the temporal loops, sty

28 Sep 2006

Eternal return The recent programme of exhibitions at the Talbot Rice has dished up some of the strongest and most memorable shows in Edinburgh of late. Pat Fisher, the curator, has managed to create an environment that most artists thrive in. Now…

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…

Group Show: Run 'Run'

24 Apr 2008

SCULPTURE, FILM AND DRAWING The Collins Gallery, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, until Sat 3 May There has always been an indubitable relationship between art and science. A charcoal mark made on a cave wall is the result of various scientific…

Alex Frost

10 Apr 2008

‘I was asked to do a solo exhibition at the Collins gallery for Glasgow international,’ says Glasgow-based sculptor Alex Frost, ‘but the idea of putting a group show together just seemed more interesting.’ Frost and Sorcha Dallas have brought together a…

EJ Major: Try to do things we all can understand

10 Apr 2008

PHOTOGRAPHY, PRINTS AND FILM Street Level, Glasgow, until Sat 10 May Photographs capture nothing. Portraits are even more successful at framing the absence at the core of subjectivity and how this can be signified through the image. This is neither as…

Kathryn Williams & Neill MacColl

10 Apr 2008

COUNTRY FOLK Classic Grand, Glasgow, Wed 26 Mar You can hear the smile in Kathryn Williams voice, an almost effortless, laconic talent that soars high, floats and then falls down to a blusey bellow. Williams sings about the simple but ineffable…

Torsten Lauschmann

27 Mar 2008

PHOTOGRAPHS, INSTALLATION AND SCULPTURE GoMA, Glasgow, until Mon 26 May It’s difficult to pin down Glasgow-based Torsten Lauschmann’s work. All attempts to create a narrative or to find some kind of justification or single intention fail. This is the…