30 March 2023
In March we will be joining Stills Director, Ben Harman as he introduces us to their new exhibition, Johny Pitts: Home is Not a Place.
In 2021, photographer and writer, Johny Pitts, and poet Roger Robinson circumnavigated the British Coast in search of an answer. The resulting project, Home is Not a Place, presented as an exhibition supported by Photoworks, and book published by Harper Collins, reflects on Black British culture, people and geographies, exploring the notion of home.
‘My photographic practice involves trying to celebrate Black spaces, capture them while they’re still here and give them a home. If not in a literal sense in a figurative sense, for me home is somewhere that you take with you.’ – Johny Pitts
A self-taught photographer, working in the tradition of British documentary photography, Pitts was supported by the inaugural Ampersand/Photoworks Fellowship working closely with the Photoworks team for twelve months to allow him to develop this new series.
Home is Not a Place is currently on display at Graves Gallery in Sheffield, before coming to Stills in March 2023.
26 January 2023
We start the new year with a visit to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for the second iteration of their colleague exhibition, Artists at Work 2. The exhibition was co-curated by artists Aitor Moncho Tudanca, Darren Duddy, Silvia Barlaam and Victoria Gazeley.
Artists at Work 2 is an exhibition of art created by staff who work at the National Galleries of Scotland. Many talented artists work across the organisation and this exhibition celebrates their creativity. Following the popularity of the first Artists at Work exhibition in 2018, the exhibition highlights a wide range of artistic disciplines, from painting, drawing, illustration and photography to sculpture and jewellery making. The artists introduce their own work and share insights into their creative process through varied perspectives.
27 October 2022
This month we will be joined by NGS curators Emma Gillespie and Leila Riszko who will introduce us to Conversations with the Collection – a changing programme of displays which offers a new way to experience the national collection.
Each room bring to light rarely displayed yet fascinating artworks and stories. Works have been selected to create bold juxtapositions and visual similarities between artworks, styles and movements to offer a fresh take on how works of art can be presented and share the stories they tell. The aim is to unearth evocative stories and unexpected connections between artists and encourage a sense of openness and discovery.
Talking points are encouraged and explored by covering a wide mix of techniques, processes and approaches, ranging across sculpture, painting, photography and more. Iconic works by famous artists such as Anish Kapoor, Sarah Lucas, Jackson Pollock, Tracey Emin and Cindy Sherman are on display alongside those by brilliant but lesser-known figures including Carole Gibbons and Catherine Yarrow.
Each display explores a unique theme or topic with the thematic displays placing conversation at their heart in a bid to inspire conversations with the collection.
29 September 2022
This month we will be heading to Stills for their exhibition Ishiuchi Miyako, where we will be joined by Stills director Ben Harman.
Coinciding with the Edinburgh Art Festival, Stills presents a solo exhibition by Ishiuchi Miyako – an influential post-war Japanese photographer. It is the first time her work has been exhibited in Scotland. The show consists of a selection of work from some of her most celebrated series including, Mother’s, the series with which she represented Japan at the Venice Biennale in 2005; work documenting the belongings of victims of the atomic bomb which are kept at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum; and photographs from the series Frida, made at The Frida Kahlo Museum in Mexico City where Miyako photographed Kahlo’s garments such as corsets, cosmetics and shoes.
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.
26 September 2019
We kick-off our autumn programme with a return visit to Stills Gallery to view their new exhibition, Cindy Sherman: Early Works, 1975-80.
Co-curated with Sebastian Montabonel, founder of Montabonel & Partners, the exhibition has been timed to coincide with a major retrospective of Sherman’s work at the National Portrait Gallery, London on show until 15 September.
Cindy Sherman has been making work for the past 40 years and this intimate show at Stills showcases some of her most important early works. These include work from her series Untitled (Murder Mystery People), 1976 and Untitled Film Stills (1977-80). As well as these self-portrait photographs, the 16mm film Doll Clothes (1975) is also on display. These early works give a glimpse into workings of a young artist that would go on to become one of the most influential artists of our time.
25 April 2019
We pay a return visit to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to discuss three of the 20th century’s most influential photographers: Francesca Woodman, Diane Arbus and Robert Mapplethorpe.
Drawn from the ARTIST ROOMS collection jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate, Self-Evidence brings together a selection of work by the these three American photographers to explore the idea of a self-portrait.
Curated by Annie Lyden, international photography curator at the NGS, the photographs date from the 1960s to the 1980s and cover a period of profound societal change and shifting attitudes towards issues such as women’s rights and homosexuality.
Each of the photographers have explored portraiture in different ways; Woodman’s images are experimental and address an inner mental state. Arbus chose not to represent herself but those around her in her portfolio, A Box of Ten Photographs, 1969-1971. And Mapplethorpe portrays himself in varying guises as well as recording the final ten years of his life.
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 September 2017
For our autumn programme, we will be exploring the work of Glasgow-based artist Kate Davis, in this her first solo exhibition in Edinburgh. Nudes Never Wear Glasses brings together a new photographic series with drawings and two film works on the subject of women’s domestic labour. The title of exhibition refers to a comment made by the photographer Jo Spence.
The film work Weight (2014, 11mins) takes John Read’s 1961 BBC documentary about the artist Barbara Hepworth as its starting point. Replacing references to art with references to housework and childcare, this clever satire explores how televised depictions of creativity have constructed our understanding of artistic production and other forms of labour.
Also on show is the first gallery presentation of her Margaret Tait Award film, Charity (2017, 16mins). This is a witty, filmic essay on the subject to women breastfeeding told through a variety of art historical still imagery, interlaced with moving images of the artist undertaking household tasks and a narration recited by Gerda Stevenson of extracts adapted from the writings of Margaret Tait (1918-1999). Tait was an Orcadian filmmaker, poet, artist and writer whose film poems, hand-painted animations and documentaries were pioneering in the field of experimental filmmaking.
