23 February 2023
This month we will be making our way to the City Art Centre for their new exhibition Glean: Early 20th century women filmmakers and photographers, where we will be joined by the exhibition curator Jenny Brownrigg.
This ground-breaking exhibition presents the work of fourteen pioneering women photographers and filmmakers working in Scotland during the early 20th century. The women are Violet Banks (1886-1985), Helen Biggar (1909-1953), Christina Broom (1862-1939), M.E.M. Donaldson (1876-1958), Dr Beatrice Garvie (1872-1959), Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990), Isobel F Grant (1887–1983), Ruby Grierson (1904-1940), Marion Grierson (1907-1998), Isobel Wylie Hutchison (1889-1982), Johanna Kissling (1875-1961), Isabell Burton-MacKenzie (1872-1958), Margaret Fay Shaw (1903-2004) and Margaret Watkins (1884-1969).
These women present different accounts of Scotland, covering both rural and city places and communities. The exhibition will show the breadth of their photography and filmmaking, offering a critical analysis of their work and how these informed the work they made, and the different narratives we see emerging from their work in Scotland. It is the first time their work will have been seen together, and it uncovers a previously untold story within the history of Scottish photography. Exhibits will be drawn from a broad selection of private and public collections.
Jenny Brownrigg is Exhibitions Director at The Glasgow School of Art. Her research interests include modern and contemporary Scottish women artists.
27 September 2018
In our September session, we will be exploring the work of Indian artist, Ravi Agarwal, whose work is currently on show at Edinburgh Printmakers.
Ravi Agarwal is an artist, environmental activist, writer and curator and has shown work across the world, collaborating with artists on a variety of ecologically focused art projects. His practice looks into contemporary questions around ecology, society, urban space and capital.
For his first solo show in the UK, Ravi presents Nàdar / Prakriti a body of work including prints, photography and film, created as part of a research residency in the Scottish Highlands in the summer of 2017. Looking at the Scottish landscape from his unique perspective, Ravi draws parallels between eco systems and landscape management in India and Scotland. The work reflects on the human impact on nature and how different types of pressures are managed. The result is a thoughtful portrait of Scotland, and includes new prints commissioned and published by Edinburgh Printmakers.
With Edinburgh Printmakers moving into their new location in 2019, this is a great opportunity for Spin to visit before the move and hear all about plans for the future.
29 October 2015
This month we will be exploring the work of the photography collective, Document Scotland comprising Colin McPherson, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard and Stephen McLaren. The Ties that Bind is a compelling exhibition of documentary photography by these four Scots-born photographers. The exhibition takes place one year after the Scottish Referendum and features 75 photographs of and about Scotland and its people. While the work touches on the political landscape around the Referendum, the images do not affirm any one position, but seek to present a multiplicity of views that portray the complex changes and subtle nuances surrounding the larger debate.
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert’s Unsullied and Untarnished focuses on the Scottish Borders area and its traditional summer festivals, known as the Common Ridings. Drawn to the Land is an on-going exploration of contemporary Scottish landscape in which Sophie Gerrard explores the lives of six women farmers working in Argyll, Perthshire, Scottish Borders and the Isle of Mull.
A Sweet Forgetting by Stephen McLaren revolves around the involvement of Scots in the sugar economy of Jamaica in the 18th and 19th centuries which was built on the back of slave labour from Africa. Colin McPherson’s When Saturday Comes explores non-league and grassroots football, looking at the rituals, sense of belonging and the commitment shown by supporters, players and those charged with running clubs from Berwick Rangers to Fraserburgh.
We are delighted to be joined by two of the artists, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and Sophie Gerrard, who will give us a valuable insight into their work and the photography collective.
25 September 2014
Our September Spin event will meet at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art One for the second part of our discussion of GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland. We will be joined by Lucy Askew and Julie-Ann Delaney, curators at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art who will join us to discuss the works on show.
The extensive exhibition, presented across three venues, celebrates the richness and diversity of contemporary art that has developed in Scotland over the last 25 years. Artists working in Scotland have achieved international acclaim and the vibrant art scene in this country continues to flourish. Over 30 artists will be represented, with significant works made at key moments in the last quarter-century shown alongside new pieces and installations.
At the Gallery of Modern Art, there are new installations by Claire Barclay, Ciara Phillips and Alex Dordoy as well as immersive large-scale works re-visited by artists including Ross Sinclair, Graham Fagen, Torsten Lauschmann and Simon Starling. The continued vitality of painting and drawing will be seen in the work of Victoria Morton, Lucy McKenzie and Charles Avery. Douglas Gordon’s celebrated 24 Hour Psycho will be among the video installations on show, as well as Smith/Stewart’s Breathing Space and Roderick Buchanan’s Sodastream.
19-23 October 2007
A weekend trip to the oldest and most prestigious contemporary art festivals in the world, the Venice Biennale. Held every two years, the Biennale is an excellent opportunity to see works by leading, international and up-and-coming contemporary artists. Over 65 countries take part, and an estimated 900,000 people are likely to visit in 2007.
There are two main strands to the Venice Biennale: the Giardini which houses 30 permanent national pavilions. Tracey Emin will be representing Britain in the Giardini, only the second female ever to represent the UK at the Biennale with a solo exhibition (the first was Rachel Whiteread in 1997). There is also a large, international exhibition curated by the Biennales director which takes place in the buildings of the adjacent, formal naval dockyard, known as the Arsenale. This years director is the American Robert Storr, the Rosalie Solow Professor of Modern Art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York.
Other Biennale exhibitions take place in venues spreading across the city of Venice. Scotland will be presenting the work of six artists, in an exhibition curated by Philip Long, Senior Curator at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The selected artists are Charles Avery, Henry Coombes, Louise Hopkins, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer and Tony Swain. The works will be housed in the Palazzo Zenobio, home to the Armenian Cultural Institute in the Dorsoduro district of Venice.
Northern Ireland’s presentation will feature the work of Willie Doherty in a show curated by Hugh Mulholland, and Wales will show the work of Richard Deacon, Merlin James and Heather & Ivan Morison, curated by Hannah Firth.
We will visit the best of what the Venice Biennale 2007 has to offer.
26 May 2005 at 6pm
Amber Roome’s gallery in Cumberland Street opened a few months ago, and since then everyone has been watching with interest as a vibrant programme of exhibitions has unfolded. Amber currently works with nine painters and photographers, and often shows the work of other artists who have caught her attention in her downstairs space (including the likes of Andrew Mackenzie, who was our guest speaker in March).
It is a particular pleasure to visit Amber Roome Contemporary Art for this latest exhibition. Shadows and Tall Trees brings together a new body of work by Alan Kilpatrick that is drawn from his experience of two different cultures. Alan spent part of his early life in India, and continues to be fascinated by the relationship between post-independence India and Scotland. As Amber explains, this show ‘chronicles the fusion of the two cultures by examining the landscape, industries, people and artisan culture of the north east frontier region of Assam where he once lived.’
Alan has been an important painter on the Edinburgh art scene since 1991. He shows internationally, and his works are owned by The Fleming Collection, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bank of Scotland, Turcan Connell, Hans Rausing, The Bonham and further collections in Italy, USA, France, Eire, Australia and Germany. For this exhibition, he has been given the run of the entire gallery and so has been able to explore some new strategies in his work. He is addressing the figure here for the first time, with a number of portraits and also clay and resin figures arranged in two related installations. Alongside these are enigmatic landscapes, which literally ‘use elements from the artisan culture,’ incorporating turmeric, paprika and henna into the painting. Alan is also rather good at telling stories, so I anticipate illumination and entertainment in equal measure.
