28 July 2022
This month we will be heading to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for their new exhibition Counted: Scotland’s Census 2022. We will be joined by the curator of the show Louise Pearson. Louise is curator of photography at National Galleries of Scotland. She has previously worked for Royal Collection Trust and the National Library of Scotland. Louise is currently working on a collecting project funded through an Art Fund New Collecting Award based around Scotland’s 2022 census with the aim of diversifying the National Galleries collection.
In the year of Scotland’s Census, NGS are exploring who lives in Scotland today, who came before us and who will come after us. Inspired by the questions asked in the census, Counted: Scotland’s Census 2022 considers the complex notion of identity. How is this shaped by our religion, occupation, health, ethnicity?
New acquisitions by photographers working in Scotland today including Kieran Dodds, Arpita Shah and Danny North are presented alongside 19th-century photographs by Thomas Annan and Hill & Adamson, offering comparisons between past and present generations of Scots.
28 April 2022
This month we will be making our way to Inverleith House to discuss their new exhibition Rhododendroms: Riddle, Obsession, Threat. We will be joined by Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Programmes.
Coinciding with the peak flowering period of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s rhododendrons, this exhibition reveals our significant history of collecting, researching and cultivating this genus.
Work by contemporary artists Simon Starling, Alison Turnbull and Yan Wang Preston is presented alongside historical botanical illustration, photography and objects from RBGE’s Archive. The exhibition also features newly commissioned work, Rhododatum: a collaboration between artists Stefanie Posavec and Ray Interactive, with RBGE Biodiversity Conservation Network Manager, Alan Elliott. This digital project brings to life RBGE’s expansive Rhododendron data sets and looks at contemporary concerns such as the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species and how that relates to our collections.
Rhododendrons: Riddle, Obsession, Threat is supported by Players of People’s Postcode Lottery and the Sibbald Trust. The exhibition sits within RBGE’s Climate House project, supported by Outset Contemporary Art Fund’s Transformative Grant.
25 January 2018
For our first event for 2018, we will be exploring NOW – the second in a series of exhibitions which highlight the range of quality of work being made by artists associated with Scotland and across the globe.
The centrepiece of NOW is new and recent sound installations, paintings and photographs by the Turner Prize-winning artist, Susan Philipsz. Born in Glasgow in 1965 and now based in Berlin, she is renowned for her installations and how sound can trigger memory and heighten perception.
Seven Tears (2016) features seven synchronized record players each playing a single note taken from the baroque lament, Lachrimae or Seaven Teares Figured in Seaven Passionate Pavans (1604) by the English composer, John Dowland (1563-1626). The original composition was written for viol and lute and is based on the motif of a falling tear. Philipsz has isolated individual tones from the original song, making it less recognisable. Each note was produced by running a wet finger around the rim of glasses filled with water. These recordings have then been rendered onto transparent vinyl records.
To complement Seven Tears, Philipsz has made a series of salt paintings, produced by submerging painted canvases into a bath of salted water.
Other featured artists include paintings by Michael Armitage, a newly commissioned installation by Sarah Rose, photographs by Yto Barrada, video installation by Hiwa K and a display pairing 19th-century dolls with drawings by Kate Davis.
A key thread woven through the exhibition is storytelling and ideas around collecting, play, legacy, memory and loss.
28 July 2016
For our July Spin event, we will be meeting at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to discuss the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2015 with photographer Robin Gillanders.
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is the leading competition to celebrate and promote the very best in contemporary portrait photography from around the world. The selected images explore both traditional and contemporary approaches to the photographic portrait whilst capturing a range of characters, moods and locations. Some photographs present ordinary people in their everyday realities around the world, whilst other show us famous faces, from the actors Peter Capaldi and Benedict Cumberbatch to the artist Yayoi Kusama. The exhibition makes a strong case for the value of large-format portrait photography in the age of the ‘selfie’.
For our July Spin event, we will be meeting at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to discuss the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize with photographer Robin Gillanders.
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize is the leading competition to celebrate and promote the very best in contemporary portrait photography from around the world. The selected images explore both traditional and contemporary approaches to the photographic portrait whilst capturing a range of characters, moods and locations. Some photographs present ordinary people in their everyday realities around the world, whilst other show us famous faces, from the actors Peter Capaldi and Benedict Cumberbatch to the artist Yayoi Kusama. The exhibition makes a strong case for the value of large-format portrait photography in the age of the ‘selfie’.
26 May 2016
For this month’s event we will be visiting Dovecot Gallery, where curators Andrew Patrizio and Bill Hare will meet us to discuss their exhibition THE SCOTTISH ENDARKENMENT: Art and Unreason | 1945 to the Present.
This is a thematic group show that explores the darker side of Scottish art. Standing in contrast to the Scottish Enlightenment, this exhibition proposes a ‘Scottish Endarkenment’, suggesting that artists working in the post-war era have taken more inspiration from the darkness than the light. The show engages with a broad range of challenging topics: ever-escalating communal and international conflicts, social inequalities and consumer materialism, threatened gender identities, filial traumas and sexual prejudices. These issues are also related to the tensions which seethe within the Scottish psyche – moral struggles between good and evil, Self and the Other, Jekyll and Hyde. On show is work from over forty Scottish modern and contemporary artists from Joan Eardley and Eduardo Paolozzi to Christine Borland, David Shrigley, Katie Paterson and Kevin Harman.
25 February 2016
For our February Spin event, we will be meeting in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to discuss current our exhibition The UNTITLED: Bad Entertainment. Over the last two years, our colleagues in the National Galleries’ Outreach Team have invited ‘the next generation’ to make the kind of art that they would want to see, inspired by the work of contemporary artists. Working in response to the 2014 GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland programme of exhibitions and events, young people from Alloa, Irvine and Edinburgh have made artworks and films that show their lives caught between the actuality of everyday experience and the fantasy world of media culture. Join us and Richie Cumming, NGS Outreach Officer, for what promises to be a lively discussion.
24 September 2015
For our first post-festival Spin event we will be meeting at Ingleby Gallery to talk about their major solo exhibition of new work by Charles Avery entitled The People and Things of Onomatopoeia. The exhibition was a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival and included a temporary tree sculpture by Avery sited in Waverley Station during the festival (now relocated to the Parasol Unit gallery in London).
We will be joined by Susan Mansfield, The Scotsman’s Arts Correspondent who will join us to discuss the exhibition. In Avery’s work, the Island is located in the middle of an archipelago of innumerable constituents, and its heart is the port of Onomatopoeia. This town was once a stepping off point for pioneers and travellers, then a bustling boomtown, then a slum in a state of extended decline, and now in the fictional present, it is reborn as a regenerated city of culture and a tourist destination. This exhibition presents a new series of drawings alongside furniture, sculptures and all manner of imported artefacts that come together to describe the culture of Onomatopoeia’s inhabitants.
Elements of The Islanders project have previously been exhibited at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Parasol Unit, London and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. In 2007 Avery represented Scotland at the 52nd Venice Biennale. The exhibition runs until 3 October 2015.
30 April 2009 at 6pm
This month we will be visiting the long-awaited ARTIST ROOMS exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art to see the work of Vija Celmins, Ellen Gallagher, Damien Hirst, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol and Francesca Woodman.
ARTIST ROOMS is an extraordinary collection of international contemporary art recently acquired jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate through the donation of over 700 works from Anthony d’Offay which will tour a wide range of museums and galleries across the UK. At the heart of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists, so that their work can be seen and appreciated in depth.
Highlights of the exhibition on show at the Gallery of Modern Art include Celmin’s beautiful, delicate images of seas, deserts and the night sky; a complete series of landscape and portrait paintings by the American painter Alex Katz; Francesca Woodman’s intimate, surrealist-influenced photographs; and Damien Hirst’s iconic Away from the Flock – an early example of Hirst’s animals in formaldehyde.
Joining us to discuss the works will be Keith Hartley, Chief Curator at the Gallery of Modern Art. Keith was instrumental in negotiating with Anthony d’Offay to secure this important acquisition so it will be a fascinating insight into how it all came about.
16 January 2008 at 6.30pm
Before The Modern Institute was set up in 1998, there were no commercial galleries in Glasgow representing the contemporary artists who were helping to make Glasgow one of the most interesting and dynamic contemporary art scenes in Europe. The Modern Institute’s contribution to this over the last ten years has been crucial, and they now represent many international and UK-based artists including Turner prize winners Simon Starling and Jeremy Deller, Toby Paterson, Victoria Morton, Jim Lambie, Monica Sosnowska and Martin Boyce.
Well have a look at the Spencer Sweeney exhibition and will talk to the gallery managers about, amongst other things, how someone might go about buying something from a gallery like The Modern Institute.
