Artmag | June 9 2023

These porcelain urchins by Red Earth Designs can be found at Potfest Scotland.

SUBJECT MATTER

ART & TRAVEL

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ON THE COVER

Potfest Scone Palace, Perth Jun 9-11

At Scotland’s largest ceramic art event you can buy direct from over 90 makers, among the best in the UK and beyond, showing the wondrous objects, both practical and decorative, that they can create from a lump of clay. Visitors can spend the day browsing the show, speaking to the artists about their work and watching a demonstration. Exhibitors are invited to enter a piece into competition, this year based on the theme of nursery rhymes, and visitors can vote for their favourite. Entry to Potfest includes access to the beautiful Scone Palace grounds and gardens, including the pinetum (pine grove) and the famous star maze. potfest.co.uk

Edge Textile Artists Scotland: Edging West Lillie Art Gallery, Milngavie

May 20-Jun 29

This new exhibition celebrates the fabric of the West Highland Way, which stretches for 96 miles from Milngavie to Fort William via Rannoch Moor and the Devil’s Staircase, through contemporary embroidery and sculptural textile work with varied individual interpretations and recollections of this iconic walk in stitch and fabric. You won’t find any rain or wind in the gallery, but you will come across some alternative walking boots, a fanciful rain hat, richly imagined landscapes, flora, fauna, pebbles and perhaps even a midge or two.

Edge Textile Artists Scotland is a group of contemporary textile artists whose work values the traditional skills of embroidery while dispelling the myths around its image. Their work ranges from historical hand-stitched techniques to creative textile sculpture and machine embroidery worked in a variety of media.

edlc.co.uk/heritagearts/lillie-art-gallery edge-textileartistsscotland.com

Nichol Wheatley: Stravaigin’ Glasgow Gallery

Jun 3-Jul 1

Inspired by his meanderings in Scottish landscapes (the exhibition title is borrowed from an old Scots word for rambling), Nichol Wheatley’s latest paintings capture scenes focusing on his ongoing fascination with light, specifically during the period from dusk into early night. Stravaigin’ is his first solo exhibition at the Glasgow Gallery since joining the roster earlier this year.

Best known for his large cycle of murals of the Tam o’Shanter story hanging in Glasgow’s Oran Mor and his work with his artistic hero, the late Alasdair Gray, Wheatley has also acted as arts consultant for infrastructure projects and worked for Oscar-winning film designers. His next project will be a 120 metre-long sculpture made of concrete and mosaics at Stockingfield Bridge in northwest Glasgow. glasgowgallery.co.uk

Porcelain urchins by Red Earth Designs

Shan

Nichol Wheatley, And We Stood, Revised

Glasgow School Of Art Degree Show

Garnethill Campus

Jun 2-11

Launching a new generation of talent, Glasgow’s largest public exhibition of graduate work by over 600 students from the GSA’s five schools addresses many of the contemporary challenges they will face as they start their creative careers - from community and collaboration to gender identity, from climate emergency to adaptation and reinvention, from landscape to health and well-being.

The physical show will run alongside an expansive digital showcase, which launches on June 1, enabling graduates to add to their digital portfolios for up to 12 months and present their developing professional practice post-graduation. gsashowcase.net

Summer Exhibition

Velvet Easel Gallery, Portobello

Jun 3-Oct 1

New work by gallery regulars such as Sophie McKay Knight, Ian Neill, Jackie Henderson, Lynn Hanley and Garry Harper is joined by work by a number of artists who are exhibiting with the gallery for the first time, making up a wide-ranging selection of paintings, prints, ceramics, glass, jewellery and gifts. velveteasel.co.uk

Debbie Lee: Time Well Spent Resipole Studios, Acharacle, Argyll

May 28-Jul 7

This solo show of textile and collage works is the result of time Debbie spent walking along the west coast of Scotland over two separate days, months apart. Working from her studio in Caithness, she creates multi-layered artworks inspired by the Scottish scenery, particularly the Highlands, where she has spent most of her life. resipolestudios.co.uk

Debbie Lee, Streaming, Fionaven, textile & collage

Sophie McKay Knight, Mama Bird

Katie Smith (Communication Design), High Fashion Flyers, digital image

Gaston Welisch: A New World The Alchemy Experiment, Glasgow

Jun 2-12

Gaston Welisch’s work captures everyday people in moments of joy and sorrow. He uses cinema-style framing to suggest a larger narrative beyond the captured moment, creating empathy and contemplation at the intersection between viewers’ own lives and the experience of this “new world”. alchemyexperiment.com

Ffiona Lewis: Harris Machair

Sheila McInnes: Simple Pleasures

Open Eye Gallery, Edinburgh

Jun 2-24

Ffiona Lewis’s body of oil paintings and works on paper in her debut solo exhibition with the gallery are the culmination of four years of repeated wanderings in the Outer Hebrides observing the intricacies of machair, rock pools, bird life and weaving workshops and mills.

Sheila McInnes’s new paintings celebrate finding beauty in everyday life: walking the dog, the Scottish coastline, the sea, the company of loved ones and our connection with the natural world. openeyegallery.co.uk

William Gillies RSA, PRSW, RA (1898-1973): The Visionary Painter

Oliver Cook: Momentary Flow

Donnie Munro: On The Bay

Various artists: White/Gold/Pearl

Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh

Jun 1-24

A special anniversary exhibition on the life and practice of Sir William Gillies (125 years since his birth and 50 since his death) features over 50 works by the artist and art educator who was one of the key figures of the Edinburgh School.

In his latest body of work Oliver Cook continues to explore the translucent properties of carved alabaster and introduces Carrara and Egyptian marble.

In his first solo exhibition with the gallery, former Runrig front man Donnie Munro’s body of work combines still life and landscape.

The richness of gold, the timelessness of pearl and the colour white found in the natural world are brought together in a selection which includes glass, ceramics and jewellery. scottish-gallery.co.uk

William Gillies, Still Life with Shell, c.1950, oil on canvas

Ffiona Lewis, Silver Birch on Granite, oil on gesso board

Gaston Welisch, A new world

Philip Braham RSA: A Whispering Wind City Contemporary Art, Perth

Jun 3-Jul 5

Presented in The Room, the gallery’s dedicated solo show space, this group of new oil paintings reflects the northern European tradition in which landscapes act as a metaphor for the human condition. Braham says: “Painting enables me to make sense of the world. Not just of the natural world around me, but also my psychological response to experiences that influence my perception of the world. My paintings are crafted with care to accurately depict a particular place at a particular moment, while simultaneously carrying an emotional charge. They are realistic, but not merely rational or mechanical representations. Rather, their fidelity is to the range of sensory impressions stirred by the scene and realised through the slippery material of oil paint on canvas.” ccart.co.uk

The Scottish Gallery

NT Art Month

Various Edinburgh galleries

Jun 8-30

This inaugural event celebrates the art quarter in Edinburgh’s New Town as ten galleries join forces to highlight the importance of supporting local commercial spaces as platforms for nurturing new artistic talent and mounting world class exhibitions. The programme also includes discussions with artists and gallery directors and live painting sessions.

Pick up a map from one of the participating galleries, which are: &Gallery, Birch Tree Gallery, Harvey & Woodd, Heriot Gallery, the Fine Art Society and the Scottish Gallery (Dundas Street); Open Eye Gallery (Abercromby Place), the Atelier Gallery (Howard Street); Watson Gallery (Queen Street); and Powderhall Bronze Editions (Summer Place). nyart.org

Pam Thorburn: Still Life Explorations

Art & Craft Collective, Edinburgh

Jun 10-Jul 15

Working in multi-layered acrylic paint, Pam Thorburn’s process is one of play and experimentation. She says: “I paint because it makes me happy. It brings me joy and contentment.” This is her first solo exhibition. artcraftcollective.co.uk

Pam Thorburn, Life’s Too Short For A White Tablecloth

Philip Braham RSA, Trees in Fog, oil on board

Wayne Antony: Old & New Coburg House Art Studios, Edinburgh Jun 16-25

In his debut exhibition Wayne Antony presents a collection of recent paintings showing two contrasting and distinctive styles: reproductions of works by Old Masters and original artwork inspired by them. Drawing on his screenprinting training, he has also produced vivid pictorial juxtapositions of local landmarks bathed in sunshine. coburghouse.co.uk

Artist Rooms: Diane Arbus

Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries Until Jul 29

Diane Arbus (1923-71) was one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century. Widely considered to be a pioneer of the social documentary method of photography which blurred the line between art and reportage, she captured moments which personified the variety of attitudes, cultures, lifestyles and appearances across society. Her images emphasise the importance of trust and respect between photographer and subject.

On loan from the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland, this selection of work is part of a touring collection which makes exceptional works of international post-war and contemporary art available to institutions across the UK for use in high profile monographic exhibitions. Since its launch in 2008, some 40 million people have visited Artist Rooms exhibitions.

Also showing is Galloway to Gracefield: A Landscape Meets Artworks (until Jun 24), a multimedia exhibition showcasing some of the art projects supported by the Galloway Glens Landscape Partnership. dgculture.co.uk

RSA 197th Annual Exhibition Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh Until Jun 11

The highlight of the RSA’s year-round exhibition programme, the Annual Exhibition is the largest and longest running exhibition of contemporary art in Scotland, providing a platform for painting, sculpture, film, printmaking, photography and installation alongside work by some of the country’s leading architects.

This year the exhibition encompasses both the physical and digital, combining the exhibition of artworks on display in the galleries with those shown online, some exclusively designed as such and others as companions to work in the galleries.

The RSA participates in the Own Art scheme, which enables collectors to purchase artwork in 10 monthly, interest-free instalments. royalscottishacademy.org

Wayne Antony, copy of F.C Cowper’s Vanity

Jim Lambie RSA (Elect), Sunburst (Silver Glow)

Photograph of Diane Arbus around 1968

Photo © Roz Kelly/Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images

Clive Ramage: Paintings & Prints From Scotland To The Moon Inverness Creative Academy Jun 10-Jul 15

Clive Ramage showcases his interests as a landscape painter and printmaker with around 30 works, including large, dramatic oil paintings of Neist Point in Skye, the Bell Rock lighthouse and Dunnottar Castle alongside mixed media cityscapes of Edinburgh and smaller watercolours and limited edition etchings of Scottish coastal villages, castles and mountains, many inspired by his camper van travels around the country. In addition his Glitter Moon limited edition prints hang together for the first time in three different colours. He says: “Everything I do is about creating a kind of atmospheric beauty. More than being purely decorative, I want my pictures to be like a well-loved poem, in that the more you look at them, the more you get from them.”

Clive exhibits regularly at annual shows at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts and the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and with several leading commercial galleries throughout Scotland. waspsstudios.org.uk/space/inverness-creative-academy cliveramage.com

Tea Green Marketplace Bowhouse, St Monans

Jun 10 & 11

This pop-up platform showcases the wealth of independent artists and designers in Scotland. Over the years Tea Green Events have hosted hundreds of eclectic fairs showing high quality, hand-crafted products in beautiful locations around the country, giving visitors the opportunity to browse and buy work direct from a wide range of craftmakers. teagreen.co.uk

Alan Richmond Flat Cat Gallery, Lauder

Jun 3-Jul 30

Featured artist Alan Richmond’s abstract paintings are inspired by his love of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. He works in acrylic, spreading, scraping, layering up paint and experimenting with colour. The gallery is now part of the Own Art scheme which enables collectors to make ten interest-free monthly payments on original artwork from £100 to £2,500. flatcatgallery.co.uk

Gles Jewels make elegant pieces inspired by the treasures of Peru.

Alan Richmond, Autumn in Harris

Clive Ramage, The Bell Rock, oil on wood panel

Jonathan Sainsbury:

A Classic Series Retold

Frames Gallery, Perth

Until Jun 17

In 1959 Ladybird Books published four volumes in the children’s series What To Look For In – namely, Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. These books nurtured in the young Jonathan Sainsbury a love of nature which has inspired him throughout his life. In tribute to them he has embarked on a project to reinterpret the illustrations in his own style and with an understanding that country life has changed. The exhibition includes 70 sepia watercolours alongside some of the original illustrations. framesgallery.co.uk

134th Paisley Art Institute Open Annual Exhibition

Maclaurin Art Gallery, Ayr

May 20-Jun 25

The PAI show always covers a huge range of styles and media and this year is no exception with some 400 works on display. There are also 20 prizes to be won, chosen by either award sponsors or a panel of invited judges, including hotel owner, artist and collector Bill Costley, convenor at Glasgow Art Club Mike Leonard and Chair of the Maclaurin Trust John Walker. The exhibition’s spiritual home, Paisley Museum, is currently undergoing a £42 million revamp as part of the town’s regeneration. themaclaurin.org.uk paisleyartinstitute.org

Ashley Cook, Claire Paterson & Karen Strang: Renewal

Kilbirnie Studio and Gallery

Jun 3-27

In their first group show together, three Glasgow School of Art graduates explore processes of psychological transformation with works populated by mysterious figures who embody mythological and archetypal energies. The unique location of the exhibition has also served as inspiration. The Kilbirnie Studio and Gallery is run by writer, publisher and artist Adam McLean, one of the world’s foremost authorities on alchemical texts and symbolism. In keeping with the spirit of the gallery, the artists aim to harness the creative process in an attempt to transform – or alchemise – some of the dark, bleak energy of recent years into a sense of hope, rejuvenation and renewal.

studioandgallery.co.uk

Ashley Cook, The Life Giver, print

Liz Knox, Trios

Jonathan Sainsbury, The Bead Bonny Ash, watercolour & charcoal

High St. Gallery, Kirkcudbright

The High St. Gallery has a large collection of Georgian to mid-century retro art glass, pottery from the Arts & Crafts, Art Nouveau, Art Deco and mid-century periods and new paintings by James Macaulay, Davy Brown and Hazel Campbell.

The gallery, which doubled as May Morrison’s Sweetie Shop in the cult film The Wickerman, has seen an increase of visitors in the movie’s 50th anniversary year. highstgallery.co.uk

Barbara

CBE RA: East and West Callendar House, Falkirk May 20-Sep 10

The renowned, Falkirk-born artist returns to her home town with a new exhibition of paintings inspired by Leith Docks and the Atlantic coastline.

Barbara Rae is one of Britain’s outstanding contemporary painters and is one of three Royal Academicians from the Falkirk area along with Alan Davie (1920-2014) and Elizabeth Blackadder (1931-2021). She holds a number of honorary doctorates from various Scottish universities and a Fellowship from the Royal Society of Edinburgh and is an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy. falkirkleisureandculture.org/venues/ callendar-house

Rae

Barbara Rae, Forsay Night

Rare Britannia Pottery vases

Saira Acosta Diaz: The Curiosities of Life Artisanand, Aberfeldy

Jun 10-Jul 21

In 2009 Saira Acosta Diaz began working with a charity teaching art to those experiencing mental health difficulties. This experience of how

Curiosities of Life

practising art can unlock deep emotion has been key to her creating art expressing human emotions and life’s complexities, with her focus recently moving towards printmaking. Her work often culminates in a series of images on the same subject, which can be appreciated as stand alone pieces or as a group. artisanand.co.uk

Ewan McClure:

Painter Kirkcudbright Galleries

Until Aug 13

Combining townscapes, life-like portraits and still lifes, McClure’s love of paint and his astute observation provide a common thread to this diverse new crop. A long-standing artist-in-residence at Broughton House in Kirkcudbright, his work is in private and public collections, including the Robert Fleming Collection, Princeton Theological Seminary and the Royal Scottish Academy. Following his appearances as a finalist on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, his realist portraiture has been in steady demand. kirkcudbrightgalleries.org.uk

Saira Acosta Diaz, The

1

Ewan McClure, Low Sun, Castle Street, oil on linen laid on board

Chippendale International School of Furniture 2023 Graduate Exhibition and Fine Furniture Sale Myreside Grange, Gifford

Jun 14-17

Following nine intensive months on the flagship Professional Course, graduating students unveil their fine furniture designs to the public. The nine-month course attracts aspiring furniture-makers from around the world and has an international reputation as a training ground for exceptional woodworkers, providing students with the essential skills and knowledge to successfully establish and run their own business. chippendaleschool.com

Surfacing

Edinburgh Palette

Jun 14-24

Prior to their inaugural final show in Dundee in August as the first graduates of the new course run by Professor Tania Kovats, the MFA Drawing students at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design are briefly coming up for air – or ‘surfacing’. edinburghpalette.co.uk instagram.com/weare_ surfacing

Collage of works by participating students

Bench in sapele and brass by Daphne Kipreos (Chile)

Canvas & Clay II Whitehouse Gallery, Kirkcudbright Until Jun 24

Following on from last year’s exhibition of the same name, this second offering of Canvas & Clay focuses solely on paintings and pottery, finding harmony between the two media.

Newcomers include: painter and ceramicist Ian McWhinnie, whose work features anonymous figures; Angelo Murphy, whose still lifes are a nod to the Baroque painters of the 17th century, but with a more contemporary twist; and Jan Munro, who combines colours, shapes and mark-making to create semi-representational works which look beyond reality. Returning artists include: Ben Brotherton and June Bell with striking new figurative paintings; Suzanne Stuart Davies, whose abstract paintings are interpretations of her surrounding landscapes; award-winning children’s illustrator Catherine Rayner; and Ann Armstrong with a collection of Scottish landscapes. There are also new collections of ceramics by a range of potters. whitehousegallery.co.uk

Falu Studios, Dumfries

Ongoing

Artist and craftmaker respectively create original artworks, including acrylic landscapes and still lifes, mixed media art, unique ink and perspex designs, and wood and resin furniture, lamps and other works. They also offer a range of affordable prints and smaller, original pieces to bring a burst of colour to a small room or adorn limited wall space. falustudios.com

Tricia Barna & Andy Philpott

Step Lamp

Suzanne Stuart Davies, Wind chill

Stephen Redpath: An Inner Place Clashnettie Arts Centre, Strathdon Jun 9-16

Stephen Redpath explains: “These watercolour paintings have grown out of my relationship with Scottish landscapes. Over the last year I have sketched, observed and walked in landscapes from Aberdeenshire to Orkney to Mull. I have absorbed these places deep inside me and then let them emerge onto paper as and when they want. These paintings are therefore as much about me and my emotional response to place as they are about this amazing country.” clashnettie.co.uk

When the Apple Ripens: Peter Howson at 65 – A Retrospective City Art Centre, Edinburgh May 27-Oct 1

Spanning four floors, this first major retrospective of Howson’s work brings together over 100 paintings from public and private collections tracing his career from his student days to the present. Many of the works have never been seen in public, having been privately commissioned from the artist. The exhibition includes Howson’s early work, which is dominated by depictions of working class Glasgow men –dossers, boxers, body-builders – with the huge Heroic Dosser from the National Galleries of Scotland, a key painting from this period, hanging alongside images of army life and nightclubs. In 1993 Howson was appointed Official War Artist in Bosnia by the Imperial War Museum and a section of the exhibition is devoted to this traumatic and harrowing experience.

The exhibition also explores Howson’s more recent work. While in the depths of despair and his life at a very low ebb, he turned to religion, and many of the works are inspired by his ongoing faith journey. edinburghmuseums.org.uk/venue/city-art-centre

Stephen Redpath, A skylark over the Deskry

Peter Howson with his painting Wagner (2023, oil on canvas) © The artist

Photo: Greg Macvean

Eduardo Paolozzi: General Dynamic F.U.N. Baird Institute, Cumnock Until Aug 26

This new Hayward Gallery touring exhibition of screenprints from the Southbank Centre in London showcases one of the great pioneers of the Pop Art movement in the UK.

Born in Scotland, Sir Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) was a compulsive collector and a jumbler of icons. He is equally revered for his mechanistic sculptures and his kaleidoscopic print projects. Describing himself as “a wizard in Toytown”, he transformed the mundane, the derelict and the mass-produced into images which zap with electric eclecticism and impress with their graphic complexity. This series of 50 screenprints and photolithographs created between 1965 and 1970 features household names and familiar faces of consumer advertising, high fashion and Hollywood. eastayrshireleisure. com/culture/thebaird-institute

Hazel McAllister

Larks Gallery, Ballater

Throughout June

Featured artist Hazel McAllister draws her inspiration from nature and her surroundings, and living on the Aberdeenshire coast offers ample access to dramatic seascapes and landscapes. She works in a variety of media and across a wide range of subject matter, from flowers, trees and still life to landscapes and seascapes. She also produces boldly colourful abstract and semi-abstract pieces. larksgallery.com

Eduardo Paolozzi, An Empire of Silly Statistics...A Fake War for Public Relations, 1970 © The Paolozzi Foundation

Hazel McAllister, Peachy Peach

of the BEST

By Susan Mansfield

Eardley Explored: The Art of Joan Eardley

with Photographs by Audrey Walker Kirkcudbright

Galleries

Jun 17-Oct 1

Joan Eardley’s work always presents new aspects to explore. This exhibition not only presents fine examples of her paintings of children in Townhead, Glasgow and the landscapes and seascapes she painted in Catterline, but also introduces a third location, a farm in Ettrickdale in the Borders where she spent holidays with friend Audrey Walker and her family.

Walker was a gifted photographer who recorded Eardley at work, and her photographs, many of which were gifted by Walker’s family to Dumfries and Galloway Museums after her death, offer an insightful accompaniment to the paintings. kirkcudbrightgalleries.org.uk

Monster Chetwynd: Moths

Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute

Jun 10 - Aug 20

Moths occupy an intriguing space with regard to art. In art history they are a resonant metaphor for short life and dangerous attraction, while in conservation they are a potential nightmare. Today their well-being is an important indicator of a healthy ecosystem.

Artist Monster Chetwynd, this year’s recipient of the artist’s residency at Mount Stuart, the Marquis of Bute’s neo-Gothic pleasure palace, has long championed moths. At Mount Stuart she has worked with the volunteers who use the grounds for regular moth counts, created an exuberant, moth-related performance with hand-made costumes and props and has brought into the house a series of sculptural papier-mache moths to be “in conversation” with Mount Stuart’s collection of Old Masters. mountstuart.com

Joan Eardley, Little Girl with a Squint © The Eardley Estate

Andrew Cranston: Never a Joiner Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh

Jun 17-Sep 16

Andrew Cranston has been described as a “painter-storyteller”. Born in Hawick and trained at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, he has works in collections around the world. Not one to join movements or follow fashion, his paintings weave narratives, typically painted on the linen-bound covers of old books. The stories take shape as he paints, working instinctively, layering, lacquering, bleaching, collaging. They combine elements of his own life experience with memories and references to literature, art or film and have been compared to the intimate works of Vuillard and Bonnard. This exhibition presents a new sequence of large scale works as well as new “book cover” paintings. inglebygallery.com

Margaret Mitchell: An Ordinary Eden Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Until Jul 16

Working on social issues, Margaret Mitchell is one of Scotland’s leading documentary photographers. Her new solo exhibition looks at themes of home and belonging through the eyes of people who have experienced, or are currently experiencing, homelessness.

Mitchell began the project in 2019, photographing subjects from across Scotland and looking at “the need for safety and security which accompanies a need to belong”. Her images are both compassionate and hard-hitting, asking questions about how a lack of a home affects a person’s well-being and whether society is doing enough to support people in need. streetlevelphotoworks.org

Margaret Mitchell, from the series An Ordinary Eden

Andrew Cranston, All the world is green

Photo by John McKenzie

Art Night

Various venues, Dundee

Jun 24

The art world is preparing to converge on Dundee for the first full iteration outside London of this one-night festival of contemporary art. Described by Art Night director Helen Nisbet as “the best house party you’ve ever been to”, Art Night premieres ten new commissions by a range of artists, including Emma Hart, Maria Fusco, Margaret Salmon, Lucy McKenzie and Turner Prizeshortlisted artists Heather Phillipson and Tai Shani. Not content to remain in art galleries (though it will occupy spaces like DCA, Cooper Gallery and V&A Dundee), Art Night ranges across the city, presenting performances and film screenings on HMS Unicorn and RRS Discovery, at Arthurstone Library and Baxter Park Pavilion, celebrating the way the city has embraced contemporary art as an element of its regeneration. artnight.org.uk

Mary Quant: Fashion Revolutionary Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, Glasgow

Until Oct 22

Few have changed the face of everyday fashion as much as Mary Quant, who died in April this year aged 93. This show, created by the V&A in London and glimpsed at V&A Dundee between lockdowns, tells Quant’s story from when she opened her shop, Bazaar, in Chelsea in 1955 to being at the helm of an international brand.

After the austerity of wartime, Quant’s colourful, fun clothing lines were perfectly suited to a generation of young women moving into the workplace in large numbers for the first time. The show not only celebrates the clothes, from the pinafore dress to the mini-skirt to the playful imitations of gents’ tailoring, but also explains the strategy which made Quant a household name who changed the way women dress. glasgowlife.org.uk

Twiggy modelling waistcoat and shorts ensemble, 1966, Courtesy Terence Donovan Archive

Musician Nabihah Iqbal will stage a “musical takeover” at RRS Discovery.

When Rebecca Russell was ten years old, she used her first digital camera to photograph the stalls and traders at Glasgow’s famous Barras market. (The term “barra” is Glasgow dialect for barrow and relates to the market’s early years when traders sold their goods from handcarts.) More than a decade later, and inspired by street photographers such as Vivian Maier, the Napier University BA Photography student returned to the marketplace to work on her project The Great Glasgow Bazaar. That is when she learned that her great grandparents ran a jewellery stall at the Barras in the 1930s. An extra connection between Rebecca’s recent degree show exhibition was hidden in plain sight in the display: the photo frames came from one of the market stands.

rebeccarussell.co.uk/folio/the-great-glasgowbazaar

PHOTO - SPREAD

Dunedin Consort: Out of Her Mouth

Findhorn, Glasgow & Edinburgh

Jun 23-25

Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre’s biblical cantatas are extraordinary historical jewels. Written by a woman about women and for women, they tell bold, unflinching tales about love, marriage, tragedy and adultery. Championing the ability of women to tell their own stories and narrate their own experiences, these mini-operas receive their UK premieres more than 300 years after they were composed. dunedin-consort.org.uk

Soundhouse

Traverse, Edinburgh

Jun 12 & 19

Traditional music promoters Soundhouse continue their summer season of intimate concerts in the spacious bar of the Traverse in Edinburgh. Coming up: Americana from Wayward Jane (Jun 12), who feature fiddle, clawhammer banjo, double bass, guitar, wooden flute and close vocal harmonies: and songwriter Jemima Thewes (Jun 19), whose tales in the folk ballad tradition are told with warm, powerful vocals carried on a bed of playful percussion and strings. traverse.co.uk

The Stamping Ground Scottish tour

Until Jun 24

Built around the music of Scottish folk-rock band Runrig (and in the year of their 50th anniversary), this uplifting new musical features Euan and Annie, who return home for a ‘fresh start’ for their teenage daughter. But a heatwave in the Highlands finds them lost in this once familiar place now filled with more tourists than residents.

The heart of their community, the local pub, is for sale and tensions are rising about the future of this place they call home. As relationships ignite and smoulder, Euan and Annie find themselves swept into a battle to save the heart of the community. But can they save each other? (Winner, Best Music and Sound, 2022 CATS Awards) rawmaterialarts.com

Jemima Thewes

Photo: Ewen Weatherspoon

Scottish Chamber Orchestra Throughout Scotland

June 7-30

The SCO is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a variety of Scottish dates and an equally varied programme which includes Bohemian Dances, in which the wind soloists take audiences on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe, and Mozart Serenade, with the strings continuing the tour on a night-time theme, and Vaughan Williams’ timeless The Lark Ascending, which ranges from the haunting to the life-affirming. sco.org.uk

Scottish Ensemble return with Concerts for a Summer’s Night

Scottish Ensemble: Concerts for a Summer’s Night Rossie Byre, Strathpeffer, Aberdeen, Edinburgh & Glasgow

Jun 19-23

Premiering last season to sold-out venues, this immediately popular series returns as a counterpart to the ensemble’s other seasonal treat, Concerts by Candlelight. The hues of a long Scottish summer evening and the atmosphere of a variety of unique, light-filled venues will ease you into a musical journey ranging from much loved string pieces such as Debussy’s Clair de Lune and Chopin’s dreamy Nocturne Op.55 No.1 to music by the jazz legend Chick Corea. Tickets include a complimentary welcome drink and you will have a chance to chat to musicians afterwards. scottishensemble.co.uk

Glasgow Jazz Festival Var. venues

Jun 14-18

Some of the biggest names in jazz, blues, soul, funk and R&B from around the world converge on Glasgow to perform alongside Scottish talent. Highlights include Scottish pianist Fergus McCreadie, whose unique blend of jazz and folk music won him the 2022 Scottish Album of the Year Award. He also made the coveted Mercury Prize shortlist, was crowned Jazz FM Instrumentalist of the Year and became the only non-classical musician to be selected as a BBC New Generation Artist. There will also be a hotly anticipated appearance by the Nigerian-born, Londonbased nu-jazz saxophonist, composer and bandleader Camilla George, known for her sound inspired by African, Western, hip-hop and jazz music, while American soul legend Geno Washington and his Ram Jam Band will deliver the kind of barn-storming show which has wowed audiences since the 1960s. jazzfest.co.uk

Trombone (and conch shell) master Steve Turre performs at the Glasgow Jazz Festival.

St Magnus International Festival Orkney

Jun 16-23

Set in Orkney’s beautiful landscape during the light nights of midsummer, the 47th edition of this unique festival spans venues from the Pier Arts Centre to St Magnus Cathedral, churches nestled scenically on the coast, Stromness Town Hall, the Writing Room at Kirkwall Hotel and the Pickaquoy Centre.

The many music highlights include: a first-time pairing of young Scottish stars, accordionist Ryan Corbett (BBC New Generation Arist) and trumpeter Aaron Akugbo; the Hebrides Ensemble performing Ravel’s orchestral works in new arrangements; the Dutch pianist Nikola Meeuwsen, the youngest winner of the coveted Amsterdam Grachtenfestival Prize; the all-female Ragazze Quartet performing Winterreise (Winter Journey), Schubert’s emotional journey of lost love; and the period instrument group Florilegium, who specialise in music from the 17th and 18th centuries.

The strong music line-up in the multi-art form programme also encompasses theatre (the world premiere of Thora, a play based on the mother of St Magnus), dance (a specially created performance of The Nutcracker and A Streetcar Named Desire by Scottish Ballet), poetry, literature and the festival’s first major outdoor installation in the form of inflatable structures by Architects of Air. stmagnusfestival.com

Brief Encounter Pitlochry Festival Theatre

Jun 16-Sep 29

In Noel Coward’s romantic drama echoing Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, respectable housewife Laura and idealistic doctor Alec meet by chance at a railway station. Although they are both married, they continue to meet every Thursday in the station cafe. Their friendship soon develops into something more emotionally fulfilling and they wrestle with the potential havoc on their lives and of those they love. pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com

Photo: Sussie Ahlburg

Hebrides Ensemble

StagEHd Festival Ross Bandstand, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh Jun 10 & 11

The first day’s programme in the return of this community theatre festival includes Momentum Performing Arts with Musical Mania, a mash-up of musicals new and old, and The Forth Act with a taster of their debut production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, while the Sunday programme includes all-female mumming troupe, The Meadows Mummers and the Resilience Theatre Movement previewing their 2023 Edinburgh Festival Fringe productions. stagehdfestival.com

The Mousetrap

His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen

Jun 12-17

Now celebrating 70 years in London’s West End, Agatha Christie’s genre-defining murdermystery is the world’s longest running play. As news spreads of a murder in London, a group of strangers find themselves snowed in at a remote countryside guesthouse. When a police sergeant arrives, the guests discover that a killer is in their midst. One by one, the suspicious characters reveal their sordid pasts. Which one is the murderer – and who will be their next victim?

aberdeenperformingarts.com

Musical Mania

Photo: Louise Montgomery

Hand-made

Inspired by the natural world, basket weaver Anna Liebmann uses traditional techniques and skills handed down through the generations. She weaves functional forms from willow she grows herself or sources from suppliers in Scotland and Somerset. annaliebmann.net

Gillian Stewart of Juju Books is a prize-winning bookbinder and artist. She creates fine bindings, undertakes commissions for individuals and businesses and teaches the craft to students across the UK. Her work is held in private and public collections in the UK and USA. jujubooks.co.uk

All the featured makers are selected from the directory of Craft Scotland, the national development agency for contemporary craft and the ‘go to’ destination for anyone looking for beautiful, hand-made objects and who are passionate about supporting Scottish craftmakers. craftscotland.org/craft-directory

Ceramic artist Hannah Spicer creates both decorative and functional work inspired by the shapes and textures found around the Scottish coastline. She uses moulds to capture the organic forms of stones and has recently been adding textured glazes. No two pieces are exactly alike. spicerceramics.co.uk

Photo: Gillian Stewart

Photo: Yeshen Fenema

With an emphasis on sustainability (no felling without replanting), furniture-maker Jonathan Rose designs contemporary furniture combining form and function, with experimentation at the heart of his process. He works to commission as well as designing for small batch production runs. Pictured: Attentive chair jonathanrose.co.uk

Orkney-based Hilary Grant is a textile design studio specialising in knitted patterns for blankets, wall hangings and wearable accessories. All their knitwear is made in Scotland by specialist mills utilising both state of the art technology and time-honoured skills. hilarygrant.co.uk

Stefanie Cheong designs and makes jewellery and art objects with Scottish found rock and repurposes waste materials such as plastics, glass and ceramics paired with recycled and Fairtrade metals. Her work explores geology and rock formations and brings a contemporary aesthetic to traditional lapidary processes. Pictured: Interchangable ring stefaniecheong.co.uk

The Graduates

As hundreds of emerging artists and designers prepare to take their first steps into professional life, Susan Mansfield selects some highlights from this year’s crop.

Maia Smyth (Textile Design, Glasgow School of Art)

Glasgow School of Art

Scotland’s biggest art school, GSA has over 600 students graduating from five schools: Fine Art, Architecture, Design, Innovation and Simulation & Visualisation. Best known for conceptual art and for encouraging students to work across disciplines, GSA also has a strong showing of painters, Cat Tams’ still lifes exploring colour, form and light to Lucy Olsen’s large scale, atmospheric works hinting at narrative in a manner reminiscent of Peter Doig to Molly Best’s poised, quiet watercolours.

This is also a strong year for Fine Art Photography. Haneen Hadiy investigates her relationship with Iraq, her parents’ homeland, with a body of work focussing on the date palm, Hannah Turner, one of a handful of students making film, has made an impressive, two-screen film about the impact of a local factory closure in the Lanarkshire town of Shotts and Luka Windsor makes sumptuous prints reminiscent of Dutch still life paintings.

For many students, there is a deep interest in materials. Felicity White makes sculptures from sisal rope, having explored its links to colonialism and the suppression of the Mayan people in Central America. April Lannigan started with an interest in leatherwork in Scotland, and her ideas have evolved into a strong series of casts and prints in white, orange and black.

The graduates of GSA’s celebrated MFA course are hosting their degree show in the former Florence Street School, making the most of this Victorian building by showing their work in its classrooms and atrium. Always an international group, these artists have clearly developed a high degree of skill in their chosen fields. Highlights include: painter Naomi Garriock, who depicts the faces of children and adults quietly absorbed in art-making; James Epps, who has created a sculptural language of three-dimensional letters of the alphabet; Ali Farrelly’s kinetic sculptures, fitted with CCTV cameras so they can watch us; and Nanjoo Lee’s exploration of what gets lost between languages.

In the School of Design, Maia Smyth (Textile Design) makes impressive sculptural objects using knitting and steam-bent bamboo, while Charles Stewart (Fashion Design) explores the history of masculinity with a striking menswear collection. Megan Vischer (Silversmithing & Jewellery Design) makes jewellery inspired by a small beach on the east coast of Scotland and classmate Miren Docherty explores her bittersweet relationship with sweets (she is a

Type 1 diabetic) in a quirky series of wearable pieces. In Product Design, Xintong (Mia) Guo looks forward to a time when human beings live symbiotically with nature, with her speculative designs for devices which allow us to communicate with bees. Until June 11 (MFA show until June 10 June), Garnethill Campus and Florence Street School, online showcase available for a year at gsashowcase.net.

Luka Windsor (Fine Art)

Cat Tams (Fine Art)

Megan Vischer (Silversmithing & Jewellery Design)

Photo: Alan McAteer

Edinburgh College of Art

Despite having over 550 graduates, the ECA show feels much more manageable in size, contained within the main art school building. Here again, painting is very much in evidence.

Megan Owen has developed a colourful geometric pattern which she uses in paintings which explore architectural spaces. Remi Jablecki makes vigorous, semi-abstract works exploring queer spaces and gardening. Martha Cooke paints quiet realism, adeptly capturing mood and tone.

Caitlin Whitaker’s prints are evocative of moments in ordinary Edinburgh lives. Sarah Shepherd paints the Scottish landscape in fantastical colours. Niamh Shaw makes evocative drawings of abandoned spaces. Photographer Hector Hilleary has a keen eye for place and people.

Imogen Lee Allen’s impressive metal structure adorned with signage is provocative and angry (‘Give way to privately educated individuals’, ‘Permission to scream’), while Angeni PerezJamieson has recreated a corner of Iceland’s lava fields with plaster dust, blown glass and expanding foam.

Tabi Hull has looked at historic lace work, bringing it into a contemporary setting with delicate, laser-cut forms. Emily Kelly’s sculptures explore ideas of innocence and danger by juxtaposing soft, knitted forms with the hard lines of wire and metal. Charlene Scott makes delicate, precise work using folded paper and natural pigment dyes.

George Duggan (Product Design) has created furniture which explores the relationship between the different parts of the UK in A British Family. Emily Rose Criddle (Textile Design) has printed fabric using natural dyes, proposing a more sustainable future for the textile industry. Louisa Thomson (Jewellery and Silversmithing) has made a body of work

inspired by her family’s connections to the “Herring lassies”, who once travelled down the east coast following the great shoals of fish, and Hester Aspland (Illustration) has created Eilean, a collection of folk tales from Lewis and Harris, interwoven with her fine ink drawings. Until June 11, Lauriston Place, online at graduateshow.eca.ed.ac.uk

Agnesi Perez-Jamieson (Sculpture)

Louisa Thomson (Silversmithing & Jewellery)

Megan Owen (Fine Art)

Photo: Neil Hanna

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design

Dundee’s Art School is smaller than either of the Central Belt schools, but regularly punches above its weight in the skill and ambition of its students. Painting is often strong in Dundee and this year is no exception.

Vlada Popescu is an excellent painter in a realist tradition, presenting a series of cityscapes and a series of paintings which capture passengers lost in their own thoughts on the London underground. Kirstin Mackinnon is an accomplished figurative painter, even installing one of her works on the ceiling. Thomas Hope’s figures in black, white and gold owe something to the German Expressionist tradition, while Mathieu Cardosi paints landscapes, particularly the haunting beauty of abandoned spaces. Morgan Barnett explores family connections to Orkney in accomplished prints.

Ryan Cairns is a self-declared working class artist using the nom de plume Ned Baguette, whose confident, streetsy style expresses itself in collages, large scale painting and ceramic trainers used as plant containers. Tom Fairlamb makes clever kinetic sculptures which combine ordinary household objects and technology.

Lana Ferguson is a talented ceramicist who uses her bottles and jars to encourage viewers to play in a series of sand trays. Gail Neckel makes striking photographs of ice. Dilal Singh digs deep into what it means to be an artist, while energetically making paintings, prints and sculptures.

In a strong year for Jewellery and Metal Design, Maxine Rene makes stained glass lighting containers, Lily Smith uses the technique of metal spinning to make a series of chalices which cannot be used to drink from and Laura Cruikshank presents a fine series of jewellery

inspired by natural forms. Kara Sanders (Textile Design) uses acid dyes on silks and chiffons in a fine collection inspired by her mother’s wardrobe. Showcase now online at dundee.

ac.uk/graduate-showcase/2023

Kara Sanders (Textile Design)

Vlada Popescu (Contemporary Art Practice)

Kirstin Mackinnon (Contemporary Art Practice)

Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen

The smallest of Scotland’s big four art schools, Gray’s is known for its close community and supportive staff. Over 150 graduates are presenting their work in a show titled Neon Futures

Painting student Lucy Gibb is engaged with the subject of women’s craft, making installations using natural dyes, wax and cement which explore how female roles have been restricted by expectation and tradition.

Esther Helfer (Contemporary Art practice) walked the length of the River Dee from its source in the Cairngorms to Aberdeen (it passes the Gray’s campus) and has created sculptural works inspired by its suspension bridges. Jai James also works on a large scale, in wood and metal, exploring how size can impact the viewer.

Miriam Foy’s work is both visually impressive and challenging to read. She is deliberately setting her audience a challenge as a neurodiverse woman whose mother and grandmother both struggled with undiagnosed autism.

Annie Dyer (Photography) used Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) in her striking images

of flowers, while classmate Hannah Aitken has documented churches which have been earmarked for closure and the impact this has on their congregations.

Jessica Reid (Communication Design) has made two projects: a virtual reality experience about marine life around Arran and a children’s book about a washing machine which loves to eat socks.

Weronika Turowska (Three-Dimensional Design) has grown her own biomaterials in the form of bacterial cellulose “leather” and foam from aquafaba, the waste water found in beans. She then used them to make Symbi, a calming ball which could help those living with chronic pain.

June 10-17, rgu.ac.uk/events/events2023/5934-gray-s-school-of-artdegree-show-2023

Lucy Gibb (Fine Art)

Annie Dyer (Photography)

Jai James (Contemporary Art Practice)

Building for the future?

Susan Mansfield reports from the Venice Architecture Biennale

A rare model building by David Adjaye Associates

THE ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE may be the younger sibling of Venice’s celebrated Art Biennale, but it is no less ambitious. In the alternate years between art festivals, architects take over the same iconic spaces in the city’s Arsenale and Giardini for the biggest showcase of their work in the world.

This year’s curator, Scots-Ghanaian architect and academic Lesley Lokko, is determined to take the event in a new direction. Gone are the celebrations of big, shiny buildings. In their place are voices rarely heard and hard thinking about what it means to build in an era of climate crisis. In her curated exhibition in the Arsenale and Giardini, more than half the participants are from Africa or the African diaspora, there is a 50/50 gender balance and exhibitors’ average age of 43 is positively youthful in the architecture world.

Lokko describes the twin pillars of her show, The Laboratory of the Future, as “decolonisation and decarbonisation” – concepts she believes are intimately linked. At a press conference she

“We’re trying to widen and explode what architecture is.

said: “The black body was Europe’s first unit of energy.” This Biennale digs deep about resources and exploitation as well as adaptability and problem-solving – something at which, Lokko says, African nations are already adept.

This Biennale is rarely about buildings. This is architecture expressed in installations and films, in research, investigation and activism. From Olalekan Jeyifous’ glorious make-believe departure lounge for the transport hub of an independent Africa to Ibrahim Mahama’s Parliament of Ghosts built from pieces of

Ghana’s defunct colonial railway or from Thandi Loewenson’s work about the extraction of graphite for lithium-ion batteries to Alison Killing’s investigation into Chinese internment camps for Uyghurs, the work looks and feels more like contemporary art than building design. It is surprising to walk into a show by Ghanaian-British architect David Adjaye and find meticulous scale models of his major buildings.

Many of the pavilions created by individual nations are in harmony with Lokko’s themes.

Olalekan-Jeyifous, Silver Lion Award for Promising Young Participant

Denmark looks at rising sea levels, Canada at the crisis in affordable housing, the USA at plastics. The British pavilion looks at rituals within non-white British communities and seems to have picked up some of the party ethos from the French next door, who are hosting dancers and singers on a stage which looks like a giant glitterball.

Some of the best displays propose inventive solutions. Germany has gathered and catalogued the disposable infrastructure from last year’s Biennale and set up workshops where it might be repurposed. The Nordic pavilion is a welcome oasis of timber, reindeer hides and books, showing the itinerant library of Sami architect Joar Nango. Finland devotes its small pavilion to the ‘huusi’, or compositing toilet. Belgium investigates mushrooms as a sustainable building material.

Brazil was named the winner of the Golden Lion for Best National Participation with Terra (Earth), a show which covered the floors of the pavilion with earth and plinths made of earth as a ‘connection with the architectural traditions of Brazil’s indigenous people’.

The Golden Lion for Best Participation in the curated exhibition went to the architectural practice DAAR, led by Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal, for a deconstructed building facade exploring ‘the subversion of fascist colonial architecture and its modernist legacy’. There was a special mention for the British Pavilion and a Silver Lion (for most promising young participant) for Olalekan Jeyifous.

Scotland has a strong presence at this year’s Biennale with Skye-based practice Dualchas taking part in Lesley Lokko’s curated show in the Arsenale and an exhibition as part of the collateral programme at the same venue used by the Scotland + Venice partnership since 2019.

This show has been curated by three architectural organisations which work with ideas rather than buildings. Architecture Fringe, —ism magazine and /other, which is a collective of young architecture graduates of colour. The show is a journey across Scotland pausing at three locations: Loch Ness, where the focus is on sustainable forests; Orkney, looking at lost

languages and rising sea levels; and the site of the once gargantuan steelworks at Ravenscraig near Motherwell, a place where nature is now re-establishing itself.

Andy Summers, co-founder and co-director of Architecture Fringe, said: “Like a lot of the work in Venice this year, we’re trying to widen and

explode what architecture is. It’s not just about designing and building buildings, it’s about people and systems, landscape, ecology and materials.”

The 18th International Architecture Biennale runs until Nov 24. labiennale.org

MZO (Great Britain)

Clockwise from top left: Germany Pavilion, repurposed materials from the 2022 Art Biennale; USA Pavilion, recycled plastics; French Pavilion; Ibrahim-Mahama, Parliament of Ghosts (curated exhibition)

Designs on Weimar

The provincial town with ‘charming

By Ian Sclater

Henry van de Velde’s Haus Hohe Pappeln (House of High Poplars)

worldliness’

Home to no fewer than twelve UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the German city of Weimar has an enormously rich cultural history. The list of artists and designers whose former homes are dotted around Weimar –Henry van de Velde, Walter Gropius, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Laslo Moholy-Nagy and more – attests to the city’s attractions in the early 20th century as a place to work and create.

Five hundred years before this group, Lucas Cranach the Elder, who made Weimar his final home, became the foremost German artist of the Middle Ages. His house on Market Square is now a theatre. Nearby, the Hotel Elephant, at some 300 years old the oldest in Weimar, has its own art collection. Signatures in the guest books include writer Thomas Mann (Death in Venice), Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev and film-maker Wim Wenders.

Set in the state of Thuringia in the green heart of Germany, Weimar’s biggest attractions include the homes where the two giants of German classical literature, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller, lived and died, while the city’s most famous musical residents included Franz Liszt and Johann Sebastian Bach, who was organist at the Weimar Palace Chapel (destroyed by fire in 1774), where he was required to compose a cantata every month. He wrote 25 in all and is celebrated in the annual Thuringia Bach Weeks.

Weimar is best known as the birthplace of the most influential design school of the 20th century, Bauhaus (literally, ‘building house’). Combining minimalist aesthetics with functionality, the movement’s influence reached into furniture, household appliances, ceramics, graphic design, interiors, theatre sets costumes, lighting and even children’s games.

On a rise above the vast Ilm Park (named after the river which runs through it), the Haus am Horn was built as a show house for the first major Bauhaus exhibition in 1923. A milestone in 20th century domestic architecture, its pioneering design by Georg Muche was a prototype for modern living. It is the only original Bauhaus building in Weimar.

All the furnishings, textiles and light fittings in what critics thought looked like a “house for Martians” were products of the Bauhaus workshops.

Nearby is the Goethe Garden House, the first home in Weimar of the eminent writer. Original furnishings, including a standing desk, give it a ‘lived in’ feel and evoke the atmosphere of an author’s workspace. A keen botanist, Goethe designed the garden himself.

On the opposite side of the park, the Roman House commands a sweeping view. Modelled after ancient temple architecture, it was built by Duke Carl August as a personal retreat and he took up residence in 1797. The Duke’s friend Goethe supervised the construction, inspired by his visits to Italy.

Beyond the park is another forerunner of modern design, the Haus Hohe Pappeln (the House of High Poplars, although the trees are no longer there), which the Belgian architect Henry van de Velde built in 1907 for himself and his family while appointed to the court of the Grand Duke as a modernising artistic consultant.

Not so concerned with the building’s exterior (it is asymmetrical and the facade was left rough, which was considered unfashionably

“

Where else can you find so much that is good in a place that is so small?”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

rustic at the time), Van de Velde built his house from the inside out based on a ‘rational’ (plain and functional) approach. It is also subtly ornamental right down to the screws. In the garden, which Van de Velde also designed, is a fountain by the Belgian sculptor George Minne. Van de Velde’s time in Weimar is considered the most productive and successful phase of his career, when he also designed part of the Nietzsche Archive and the main Bauhaus University buildings.

Back in the city centre, a few minutes from one another are two complementary museums which link the emergence of early Modernism with the full-blown development of Bauhaus.

One of Germany’s first purpose-built museums, opening in 1869 in its neoRenaissance building, the Museum Neues Weimar (New Weimar Museum) is dedicated to art developments from 1860 to 1918. Like much else in Weimar, the idea for a museum can be traced back to Goethe, who as early as

Home of Lucas Cranach, Germany’s foremost Middle Ages painter

The Goethe National Museum includes the writer’s sculpture collection.

Haus am Horn

The kitchen in the Haus am Horn

1809 advocated a public exhibition of artworks from the ducal collection. After suffering WWII damage and being threatened with demolition during the GDR time, the building was restored for Weimar’s year in the limelight as the 1999 European Capital of Culture.

The permanent exhibition uses examples of realist, impressionist and art nouveau works from its collection to trace the emergence of the Modernist movement and its role as a precursor of Bauhaus. Says curator Sabine Walter: “The Bauhaus didn’t come out of nowhere.”

The many highlights include: Monet, Rouen Cathedral; Max Liebermann, The Artist’s Wife at the Beach and Woman Gathering Potatoes; Max Beckmann, Young Men by the Sea; and Moritz Schwind, The Glove of Saint Elisabeth

The colour scheme in each room is inspired by its contents – for example, light grey for the Weimar School room to reflect the mood of the paintings or dark green for the room of furniture from Wartburg Castle to match the salon where the items were located in the 19th century. The main staircase was designed by the French conceptual artist Daniel Buren.

Goethe Garden House

Roman House Museum Neues Weimar

Nearby, the suitably stark, cuboid Bauhaus Museum holds temporary and permanent displays from the world’s oldest Bauhaus collection, augmented by more recent acquisitions. It moved into its new building in 2019, the Bauhaus centenary year.

In the 1919 Bauhaus Manifesto, founder Walter Gropius declared: “Together let us conceive and create the new building of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity.” It is an example of ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, or total work of art.

Based around Gropius’ question, “How do we want to live?”, the centrepiece is a display of 170 objects he personally selected as the finest examples of the marriage between design and functionality. He directed that they be left in Weimar when the Bauhaus institution moved in 1925 to Dessau, a more industrial city with better workshop facilities.

Bauhaus Museum

Tecta cradle by Peter Keler, 1922 (Bauhaus Museum)

Wassily chair by Marcel Breuer, 1925-26 (Bauhaus Museum)

The view from the museum’s staircase takes in the rolling countryside and the memorial tower which marks the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp, the gates of which were designed on the orders of the camp commandant by prisoner – and former Bauhaus student – Franz Ehrlich, who was interred as a Communist. As an act of resistance, he designed the lettering on the gate (‘To each his own’, referring to the Nazis’ power of life or death over the inmates) in a Bauhaus style, which the Nazis had denounced as ‘degenerate’.

For info on all these attractions go to klassik-stiftung.de/en

FURTHER INFO weimar.de

An ensemble of furniture by Henry van de Velde in the Museum Neues Weimar

The gates of Buchenwald, designed by prisoner Franz Ehrlich – ironically, in the Bauhaus style deplored by the Nazis

Lucas Cranach the Elder’s massive altar in the Church of St Peter and St Paul shows him and his friend Martin Luther attending the crufixion of Christ, with Cranach himself bathed in Christ’s blood. The explosive message: No priest need stand between the common man and God.

Open Call

The “Wow!” effect that you are likely to feel when entering the Grand Hall of the Kunstmuseum Den Haag (‘Kunst’ is Dutch for art), considered by many to be the most beautiful in the Netherlands, explains why H. P. Berlage’s 1930s masterpiece of rationalist architecture is itself considered part of the permanent collection.

As part of this year’s celebration of The Hague as the city of Maurits Cornelis Escher (better known as M. C.), the Netherlands’ most famous graphic artist who was born on June 17 exactly 125 years ago, you can step into his impossible universe in Escher: Other World (until Sep 10), a three-dimensional immersive experience for which the Belgian contemporary art/ architecture duo Gijs Van Vaerenbergh have represented Escher’s seven main principles in 3D with a separate room dedicated to each.

Escher’s work explores the boundaries of space, landscape, perspective and illusion. While

By Ian Sclater

he worked on paper, for this exhibition Gijs Van Vaerenbergh have devised space-filling interventions based on the notions of light and heavy, temporary and eternal, impossible architecture and infinity and juxtaposed them with Escher’s work. For example, a room entitled Impossible Architecture is based on the Escher print Relativity. This double exhibition is divided into two sections representing night and day, a contrast which fascinated Escher.

Elsewhere in the museum highlights from the permanent collection are displayed in special sections such as Discover the Modern (including Monet, van Gogh, Bacon, Kandinsky and Bourgeois), Delft Wonderware (one of the world’s best collections of these beautiful decorative objects) and Mondrian & de Stijl (including the world’s largest Mondrian collection). kunstmuseum.nl

The Hague is inviting art-lovers with new major exhibitions.

Gijs Van Vaerenbergh, Impossible Architecture and prints by M.C. Escher (Kunstmuseum)

Kunstmuseum

The largest painting in the Netherlands (nearly 115 metres in circumference by over 14 metres high) is on proud display at Panorama Mesdag, one of the few remaining giant dioramas which wowed late 19th century audiences before motion pictures grabbed the spotlight. Vincent van Gogh attended the opening in 1881.

Created by one of the most famous painters of the Hague School, Hendrik Willem Mesdag, this 360-degree installation, a unique piece of cultural heritage, stills resonates with contemporary visitors.

In the sweeping view of Antwerp and the coastal suburb of Scheveningen look out for Mesdag’s wife Sientje painting under a parasol, rows of cavalry performing their exercises on the beach and in the distance the first steam train in the Netherlands, which ran from the centre of The Hague to the coastal suburb of Scheveningen. Thanks to a balloon skirt-shaped canopy which filters natural light from above, the scene constantly changes, as it does in ‘real life’.

As well as an impressive collection of other works by Mesdag and Sientje (many of which are also on view in the nearby Mesdag Collection), there is a regular programme of special exhibitions by artists who also work with perspective and illusion. Currently showing is Ulrike Heydenreich: Longing for the Distance (until Nov 19), in which the German artist expresses her fascination with maps and panoramic mountain landscapes in drawings, collages and fan-like objects created using meticulous folding techniques. panoramamesdag.nl

Panorama Mesdag

Ulrike Heydenreich, Fundstück 19, Historic Panorama (Panorama van Pizzo Centrale), paper © Markus J. Feger

Did you know that The Hague is a seaside town? A short tram ride from the city centre brings you to the lively coastal suburb of Scheveningen, where cafes and restaurants line a bustling promenade on one of the finest (and longest) beaches in northern Europe and a modern pier juts out into the North Sea.

Nestled in the dunes is Museum Beelden aan Zee (Images by the Sea), the Netherlands’ only museum dedicated to sculpture and one of the earliest examples of a private collection

outgrowing the owners’ home and becoming the basis of a public museum.

The permanent collection, which focuses on the human form, has temporarily made way for Henry Moore: Form and Material (until Oct 22), featuring works inspired by the legendary sculptor’s fascination with nature and expressed through his unique visual language which found balance between figuration and abstraction.

The works represent the handful of themes which Moore settled on for much of his career – reclining figures, mother and child, the relationship between internal and external forms – and also explores his use of a wide variety of materials beyond traditional stone.

The show is the latest in a long line of collaborative exhibitions in the museum which have also included Pablo Picasso, Louise Bourgeois, Niki de Saint Phalle, Jaume Plensa and others. beeldenaanzee.nl

Some of the works in Henry Moore: Form and Material at Museum Beelden aan Zee

Madje Vollaers of Studio Vollearszwart claims to have first coined the term “city dresser” to describe those artists whose work interacts with the urban environment. Her studio is helping to turn The Hague into a public work of art to celebrate Escher with several projects around the city. The Town Hall is among the buildings being used as a palette. vollaerszwart.com

Studio Vollearszwart’s Escherinspired work on the Town Hall

Also in the Hague

Who’s That Girl? at the Mauritshuis (Jun 8-Jan 7, 2024) is a foyer exhibition resulting from the latest scientific analysis of Girl With a Pearl Earring. Using state of the art imaging, researchers have produced images comprising over 100 billion pixels, enabling on-site – and online – viewers to zoom in and see enormous detail. mauritshuis.nl

The Escher in the Palace Museum is home to almost the entire oeuvre of the perspective-bending graphic artist. You’ll learn everything there is to know about his primary method of tessellation and have fun in the interactive exhibition Through Escher’s Eyes. escherinhetpaleis.nl

Directly next to the Kunstmuseum, the Fotomuseum Den Haag is showing School – In Love, Bored & Overslept (until Aug 6), a photographic trip down memory lane back to everyone’s own school days. fotomuseumdenhaag.nl

Technically in neighbouring Wassenaar, but very much part of The Hague art experience, Museum Voorlinden houses the world class modern art collection belonging to the Dutch chemical tycoon Joop van Caldenborgh. Up To Here And Beyond (until Sep 24) is the current collection exhibition, showing how artists are exploring other avenues. voorlinden.nl

For further info on The Hague: denhaag.com

For further info on art museums in The Hague: artandtravelguide.com/hague

Mauritshuis

François Morellet (1926-2016), L’Avalanche, 2006, Photo: Antoine van Kaam (Museum Voorlinden)

Fotomuseum Den Haag

Fun with Escher

Robert Doisneau Paris pub. Flammarion

The legendary French photographer Robert Doisneau’s black and white photographs immortalise the magic of Paris with their combination of nostalgia and modernity. Fascinated by his city, Doisneau had an uncanny ability to capture poetry in ordinary moments and his eye for humour and poignancy infused his work with enduring appeal. From the jubilation of the ‘Liberation’ in 1944 to a gaggle of schoolchildren crossing the street to the famous kiss in front of the Hotel de Ville, the 560 photographs in this definitive volume are enhanced by witty and revealing quotations from the photographer’s personal notebooks.

See What You’re Missing by Will Gompertz, pub. Penguin/Viking

Artists have learned to pay attention. The rest of us spend most of our time on autopilot, rushing from place to place, our overfamiliarity blinding us to the marvellous, life-affirming phenomena of our world. But it doesn’t have to be this way. BBC’s Arts Editor and former Tate Galleries Director Will Gompertz takes us into the minds of artists, from emerging talent to Old Masters, to show us how to look at and experience the world with their heightened powers of perception. We learn, for example, how Rembrandt can help us see ourselves, how David Hockney helps us to see nature and how Frida Kahlo can help us see through pain. Each artist has their own unique way of looking, which when applied to our own lives stimulates our senses.

To purchase any of these art titles and many more visit artmag.co.uk

Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective ed. Thyago Nogueira, pub. Prestel

Widely considered Japan’s most influential and prolific photographer, Daido Moriyama (b. 1938) has been challenging conventions of the art form for more than a half century. One of a generation of post-war Japan’s ground-breaking artists, he has continually established his own visual grammar. This book features almost 200 chronologically arranged images, from his early editorial work of the mid-1960s to his ongoing exploration of cities. It also includes over 400 spreads from Moriyama’s rarely seen publications, all accompanied by texts by the editor and leading Japanese scholars, a personal essay by the artist and a full chronology of his life and work in what is certain to become the definitive publication on his oeuvre.

Thomas Girton: The Forgotten Painter

by

Oscar Zarate,

pub. Self Made Hero

Part historical narrative, part modern fiction, this substantial graphic novel consists of two interlinked stories. The first focuses on the 18th century painter Thomas Girtin and his relationship with his friend and rival J. M. W. Turner, while the second tells the tale of three amateur artists in the present day united by a shared interest in Girtin’s art. Through this dual narrative this unjustly forgotten artist, whose work has been almost entirely ignored despite his huge influence on British painting, is restored in modern eyes. At the time of his death at just 27, the watercolourist had already established himself as a pioneer and a master, but the brevity of his career, coupled with his chosen medium (compared to oils, watercolours were a humbler and less easily exhibited form) meant that his work came to be overshadowed by that of Turner, who famously remarked, “If Tom had lived, I should have starved.”

Anatomy OF A PAINTING

Sir Henry Raeburn, Isabella Gregory (nee Macleod), c. 1738, oil on canvas

Marking the 200th anniversary of artist Sir Henry Raeburn’s death, a new exhibition of portraits from the National Trust for Scotland collection, at the Georgian House in Edinburgh’s Charlotte Square, offers new perspectives on the painter’s career, his subjects’ experiences of sitting for portraits and life in Enlightenment Scotland.

For the first time the exhibition brings together 18 portraits and engravings, including a selfportrait, from six National Trust for Scotland properties. Each portrait is a study in human expression and uniqueness of personality conveyed with an expressive brushstroke and creative play of light.

Says exhibition curator Dr Antonia LaurenceAllen: “Many people are familiar with Raeburn’s work, through portraits such as The Skating Minister – or, to use its official title, Reverend Robert Walker (1755-1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch – which is on show in the Scottish National Gallery. But there’s so much

more to Raeburn and his world.”

“Raeburn was very much a man of the moment during one of the capital’s most vibrant periods, painting everyone from astronomers to aristocrats. Each of the portraits we have chosen for the exhibition has a unique Edinburgh connection and an individual story about Raeburn, providing a fascinating picture of the city.”

The portrait of Isabella Gregory, which is normally displayed in Fyvie Castle in Fife, hung with that of her husband James in their Edinburgh New Town house at 2 St Andrew Square. The Gregorys were close friends of Raeburn and were among the first sitters in his new studio around the corner in York Place.

Professor Dr James Gregory taught at the University of Edinburgh and ran a successful medical practice. He invented the popular indigestion tonic Gregory’s Powder, using ingredients such as rhubarb that he grew at the couple’s country residence, Canaan Lodge, in

Henry Raeburn (1756-1823) was born into a milling family in Stockbridge, then a rural village on the outskirts of Edinburgh. Orphaned by the age of eight, he was sent to Heriot’s Hospital, a charitable boarding school, and then apprenticed to a goldsmith. His artistic talents were quickly spotted and his reputation and clientele grew rapidly during the late 1770s and early 1780s. His success was greatly aided by Edinburgh’s urban expansion, which brought new, wealthy residents eager to fill their modern townhouses with art, including portraits of themselves.

what was then the village of Morningside.

One feature of the exhibition is a series of imagined audio recordings voiced by actors in which sitters discuss why they commissioned their portrait, how they paid for it, how they chose their outfit and what they felt about the experience. These short stories also offer insights into Raeburn’s working practices.

Covering one wall of the exhibition is a map of Edinburgh dating from 1821 which pinpoints key locations in Raeburn’s life, including his studios and locations where his sitters lived and worked. The map is available as a takeaway leaflet which visitors can use to explore Raeburn’s Edinburgh.

Raeburn’s Edinburgh continues at the Georgian House at 7 Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, until November 26. Adult £12, Conc. £10, Family £33, 1 adult family £22, Children £7, U-5s & Trust members free.

nts.org.uk/visit/places/georgian-house

However, due to unsuccessful business activities outside portraiture he was declared bankrupt in 1808. Records show that he owed at least £36,000 (roughly £4 million today) and for the rest of his life painted furiously to pay off his debts. Some portraits were hastily finished, as seen in a roughly painted hand here or an out of proportion arm there.

Raeburn was knighted by King George IV in 1822 and a few months before his death he became the first Scottish artist to be appointed ‘limner’ (court painter). By his death he had painted hundreds of portraits.

Sir Henry Raeburn, Self-portrait, c. 1815, oil on canvas (National Galleries Scotland)

What’s the first work of art you remember seeing?

When I was very young and at school in Spain, we were taken to see a Kandinsky exhibition in a gallery in Madrid. I remember it really well because I had no idea what I was looking at, and I felt really excited by that.

When did you decide to pursue a career in art?

I didn’t become really interested in art until I was in sixth form. I think I ended up wanting to be an artist partly because I was terrified of doing anything else! I share that with a number of artists of my generation: going to art school was nothing to do with wanting to learn to paint or sculpt, it was an alternative to a more orthodox [career] path.

How did you get your present role?

I worked as an artist and art critic until I was about 30, then got a job teaching at Goldsmiths [College, part of the University of London]. My first leadership role was director of Liverpool School of Art in 2008, then I went to the Royal College in London where I was Dean of Arts & Humanities. I came to Edinburgh College of Art in 2019.

Just in time for the pandemic, then? Yes, and it was really difficult, particularly being relatively new. I had brilliant support from my colleagues and I think, as a staff team, we became very close. But it was incredibly tough on the students, who were used to having studios and workshops. Without taking away from the difficulties, it amazed me how resilient they were.

What’s a normal day like?

I don’t think there is one! The only typical thing is that I walk across the Meadows every morning. ECA is part of the largest school in the University of Edinburgh with 3,500 students. A lot of my time is spent in meetings interfacing with ECA staff, with the wider university, and the city. The diary is always full.

What are the best parts of the job – and the worst?

Every day I try to have a walk round some of the studios, to see the amazing creative work the students and staff are doing. I feel very fortunate to be working in this environment.

As is the case in any big organisation, tragic things happen to people sometimes, and dealing with these things can be quite challenging.

Can art be taught?

Yes… I guess I would have to say yes doing the job I do! I think it can be taught as long as you remain open to the idea that you can’t control what someone learns. The last thing you want to do when you’re teaching artists is to control or influence what they do. It’s about radical innovation, self-authorship, and if you get in the way of that, if you’re teaching something too prescriptive, you’re not really teaching the subject.

What do you look for in prospective students? Can you spot talent? What we’re really interested in is trying to enhance the diversity of our student body, trying to make this available to as many as possible from as many backgrounds as possible. We appreciate and value the backgrounds the students bring to us, and our job is to help them use that to distinguish themselves, rather than look for a specific ability in someone.

How do you find time for your own art practice?

I’ve become quite good at learning how to fit the art in around other commitments. In the past, I’ve made films, worked with text, done performance, installation, but in the last couple of years I’ve started making paintings again. Like many people in the pandemic, having spent so much time in front of a screen, I craved the chance to make something more material. Even if I don’t have a deadline for a show I feel it’s really important to continue to make art – it helps me recognise myself.

If you could have a work of art from any art collection anywhere in the world… That’s really hard! Sometimes I see an exhibition where I’d like to take something away with me to spend a bit more time looking at it. Take the current exhibition by American painter Alice Neel at the Barbican –I’d love to take a painting home, spend some time with it, think about it.

Professor Juan Cruz Principal of Edinburgh College of Art

Have you ever changed your mind about a work of art?

I think our sense of what’s important fluctuates. When I was a student, I was quite interested in minimalism, the art of the 1960s and 1970s in the USA. It seemed very urgent, with a very political dynamic to it. Looking at that work now from a different perspective, it starts to feel slightly heroic, arrogant, all made by men. It’s the same work, but times change, one’s perspective changes.

Has a work of art ever changed your life?

Daily. I think works of art, whether one is seeing them or remembering them, impact my life all the time.

Who or what inspires you?

I’ve got three children, aged 22, 19 and 16, all at different stages of education and life. I’m constantly amazed and inspired by them.

What do you like about the Degree Show?

This time of year is amazing, there’s such a surge of energy. Paul Thompson, ViceChancellor at the RCA, would say the Degree Show was “the RCA in bloom”, I love that, it’s the flowering of the college, letting everyone see what we do. Also, there’s been a degree show every year of my working life for about 24 years, so it would be really weird not to have one!

What are you looking forward to?

Apart from the Degree Show? We have a big capital programme happening at the moment to refurbish the whole campus. We have a really amazing campus, and this is going to enhance what we do, both for students and staff.

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show runs until June 11. For more information and events, see eca.ed.ac.uk/event/eca-graduateshow-2023