Press office
The main aim of the National Galleries of Scotland’s press office is to achieve positive coverage for the Galleries' art collection, exhibitions and activities in the widest range of media. The press office team works with a range of press, broadcast media and public body contacts in pursuit of constructive and informed public debate about the National Galleries.
The press office is the first point of contact for journalists seeking information. As a result, the team are in regular contact with all departments so as to maintain a constant awareness of current events.
The department holds regular press views for new exhibitions, liaises with journalists to achieve favourable and sometimes exclusive coverage of exhibitions, events or people within the Galleries, commissions and works with film-makers for specific projects and publicises new acquisitions. The press office also provides press releases, images and interviews for exhibitions and events.
Press releases
The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to announce the acquisition of Encounter (1959), by world-renowned Surrealist artist Remedios Varo (1908-1963). Extremely rare and sought-after, this is the first oil painting by Varo to enter a public collection in Europe. Encounter is on display and free to view at Modern One from today, 12 March.
The work was acquired in time to mark the centenary of the publication in Paris of André Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924, which effectively launched the movement. A significant and exciting acquisition for the people of Scotland, Varo only completed about 100 paintings in her lifetime, with most in public collections in Mexico. Only able to dedicate herself fully to creating art in the last decade of her life, Encounter was produced in 1959, at the height of Varo’s career.
The concept of the encounter – especially the chance encounter – was a subject favoured by the Surrealists for its mysterious potential. In this striking composition, a seated figure carefully lifts the lid on a tiny casket to find her own eyes staring back at her. Several similar boxes sit on the shelves in the background, suggesting that there are more “selves” to be discovered. Many of the figures that Varo painted resemble the artist herself, and this work is believed to be a self-portrait.
Varo said of the work: “This poor woman, full of curiosity and expectation as she opened the little coffer, encounters her own self; in the background, on the shelves, there are more little coffers, and who knows whether on opening them she will find something new.”
Born in Girona, Catalonia, in north-east Spain, Remedios Varo was a Surrealist painter and poet. Her father, an engineer, recognised her artistic talent from a young age and encouraged her to copy his technical drawings, which would influence her compositions for the rest of her life. She was one of the first female students to attend the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid, where she enrolled at the age of 15, and later received her diploma as an art teacher. In 1935, after moving to Paris, Varo encountered artists engaging with Surrealist concepts, and was later introduced to the poet and founder of the Surrealist movement, André Breton. After fleeing Nazi-occupied France in 1941, Varo settled in Mexico, where she was one of a small but important group of Surrealist poets, painters and photographers. These artists include Kati Horna and Leonora Carrington, with whom she forged a creative alliance but also an enduring, life-long friendship.
Using a combination of chance and planned techniques, Varo produced work that was influenced by science and the occult in equal measure. The resulting images are as mysterious as they are technically brilliant, often depicting enchanted domestic scenes and strange encounters with otherworldly beings. Playing with the magical and spiritual potential of interior spaces, Varo sought power in ordinary rooms — in dusty corridors, and creaking doorways — transforming them into fantasy realms that overflow with possibility.
In the last ten years, the National Galleries of Scotland has made efforts to acquire major works of art by female artists. This latest unique acquisition will help to expand the collection and give a more comprehensive view of Surrealism as a diverse, international movement, rather than one simply centred in Paris. Other recent acquisitions include major artworks by Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning and more recently, archival material related to Edith Rimmington.
Simon Groom, Director of Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “We’re thrilled to have acquired this incredibly rare and important painting by Remedios Varo. Her career as a full-time artist lasted little more than a decade. She worked slowly and meticulously, completing only about a hundred paintings, many of which are now in museum collections in Mexico and the USA. They are breathtaking gems which one seldom sees outside books. There’s not a single painting by her in a public collection outside the Americas. Or rather that was the case until now. Moreover, Encounter is a key work in her oeuvre, a self-portrait which deals with self-discovery and identity. It cements the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection of Surrealist art as one of the very finest in the world.”
Jenny Waldman, Director, Art Fund, said: “Artist Remedios Varo’s haunting painting, ‘Encounter’ into the Scottish National Galleries’ collection will captivate visitors from Scotland and across the UK. This painting is a key addition to Scottish National Galleries’ growing collection of major works by women artists. I’m delighted that Art Fund has been able to support this important Surrealist work to enter the permanent collection, thanks to our generous donors and National Art Pass members.”
The acquisition was made possible thanks to the Walton Fund, along with support from Art Fund and Gallery Wendi Norris, San Francisco.
A vibrant and captivating portrait of the newest Doctor Who star, Ncuti Gatwa by photographer Robert Wilson joins Scotland’s spectacular national collection of art. This charismatic photograph of the famed actor joins other notable Scottish figures in the National Galleries of Scotland’s permanent collection, including former Doctors, Peter Capaldi and David Tennant. The artwork is on display and free to view at National Galleries Scotland: Portrait from today 5 March.
Ncuti Gatwa is instantly recognisable from his engaging performances in Doctor Who, as Eric Effiong in the Netflix comedy series Sex Education (2019–23) and in Greta Gerwig’s record-breaking film Barbie (2023). Gatwa has been nominated at the BAFTA TV Awards for Best Male Comedy Performance three years in a row and has won a BAFTA Scotland award (2020). Made in March 2020, Wilson described Gatwa as ‘a photographer’s dream to work with; friendly, expressive and giving’. Photographed in a colourful yellow suit, mid-laugh, the portrait captures Gatwa’s magnetic personality.
Born in Rwanda, Gatwa arrived in Scotland at just two years old in 1994 with his family as a refugee fleeing a genocide, as Rwanda was embroiled in a civil war. He grew up in Edinburgh and Dunfermline and went on to graduate from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in 2013. It was his award-winning appearance as queer teenager Eric Effiong in the Netflix comedy series Sex Education that firmly launched his career and quickly cemented his position as an audience favourite. Having spoken out about how powerful and necessary representation is, Gatwa’s role in Sex Education explored complex issues around Black, queer and religious identity. In May 2022, he was announced as the next lead in the cult BBC series Doctor Who, with the New York Times calling him ‘a Doctor Who for the 21st century’. Gatwa is the fourth Scottish, and the first Black and openly queer, actor to star in this role.
Robert Wilson (born 1969, London) is an acclaimed commercial and portrait photographer whose sitters have included major figures in a wide range of fields, including actors Dames Judi Dench and Joan Collins, sport stars Mo Farah and Venus Williams and Nobel Peace Prize winner Kofi Annan, to name a few. His work has evolved to lifestyle, sports and documentary style projects and is recognised for its accessibility and depth for revealing humanity. Wilson was also a war artist for the British Army, firstly documenting the people and places within Helmand Province, Afghanistan, and later the withdrawal of the British troops and the deconstruction of the war machine. His unique and emotional portraits are exhibited in galleries across the UK, with this portrait the latest to join a national collection.
Anne Lyden, National Galleries of Scotland Director-General, said: “It is exciting to see this dynamic portrait of the hugely talented actor and style icon Ncuti Gatwa enter the national collection. Gatwa joins the ranks of previous Doctors already in our collection, and we look forward to welcoming fans of the new Doctor Who when they visit to see this stunning photograph by Robert Wilson on our Portrait gallery walls.”
Robert Wilson, said: “Ncuti was an absolute joy to photograph. We were shooting several of the nominated candidates for the BAFTA awards that day, which happened to be the second to last day before the country went into lockdown due to Covid. The atmosphere on set was a little strange due to the various health precautions that were taking places and the impending thought of a lockdown. But, despite the slightly surreal atmosphere, Ncuti gave me a complete range of poses and expressions, from humorous, to serious, to melancholic. Within 15 minutes I had shot 224 beautiful frames, any one of which could probably have been used for the feature. He is a true professional, and I think we managed to capture his warm personality brought to the shoot that day.”
Visit the National Galleries of Scotland to mark the centenary of the birth of one of Scotland’s most well-known artists, Eduardo Paolozzi. Opening on Saturday 27 January, Paolozzi at 100 is a tribute to the father of Pop Art. Taking over the ground floor of Modern Two in Edinburgh, this free exhibition takes visitors on a journey through some of Paolozzi’s most popular artworks, including his collages, prints, textiles, ceramics and sculpture.
Of Italian descent, Paolozzi was born in Edinburgh’s Leith in 1924, and is a much-loved son of the city. He studied in Edinburgh and London before spending two years in Paris. There he produced enigmatic, bronze sculptures and dada and surrealist-inspired collages that combined magazine advertisements with cartoons and machine parts. Returning to London to teach at several art schools, Paolozzi continued to develop his printmaking and sculpture techniques, with a particular interest in the mass media and in science and technology, developing a style that would become known as Pop Art. Paolozzi was knighted in 1989 and gifted a major bequest of his works to the National Galleries of Scotland in 1995.
In Paolozzi at 100 at Modern Two, visitors can explore 60 vibrant artworks across two rooms and a special display in the Keiller Library. Discover the colourful life of a cultural icon through a selection of works drawn from Scotland’s national collection. The exhibition begins with the years following Paolozzi’s first visit to Paris in 1947 and travels through his life. Learn about his eclectic take on popular culture and the machine age. Examine the highly detailed Mickey tapestry made with Dovecot Tapestry Studio and marvel in vibrant graphic and gold ceramic plate collaborations designed for Wedgwood. Don't miss the kinetic energy of the Calcium Light Night and Moonstrip Empire News screenprints. Complete the tour with a look into Paolozzi’s epic public art projects, including the vibrant mosaics designed for Tottenham Court Road Underground Station. In the Penrose Gallery, a large projection will focus on Paolozzi’s 1971 collaboration with fashion house, Lanvin.
All this can be seen alongside the recreation of Paolozzi’s London art studio, the towering Vulcan and the Cleish Castle Ceiling Panels, all permanently on display at Modern Two for visitors to enjoy all year round. Indulge in a coffee at Paolozzi’s Kitchen, named in tribute to the artist himself, then take a stroll through the grounds and see if you can spot Paolozzi’s imposing sculpture Master of the Universe. Visitors can also delve deeper into the artworks with an eight stop free audioguide on Smartify.
Anne Lyden, Director-General at the National Galleries of Scotland said: “Eduardo Paolozzi is one of Scotland's best-known artists and was an Edinburgh icon. His powerful influence can still be seen across the city today in everything from sculptures and architecture to fashion to food and drink brands. The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to be celebrating his 100th birthday with an exhibition that brings together 60 key Paolozzi works from Scotland’s national collection. We hope everyone will take the opportunity to enjoy this free glimpse into the phenomenal art that is Paolozzi at 100.”
Paolozzi at 100 opens at National Galleries Scotland: Modern Two on Saturday 27 January 2024. Join us at Modern Two and discover how high art became part of the everyday; from towering sculptures and chaotic prints to luxurious textiles and iconic collages, it’s time to celebrate the city’s favourite artist in style.
Immerse yourself in the imagination of one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, Do Ho Suh (born 1962, Seoul), at the National Galleries of Scotland in early 2024. Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time will be the largest European exhibition to date of the artist’s work on paper, with artworks spanning 25 years of Suh’s career.
This major solo exhibition by the South Korean-born, London-based artist will be free to visit, taking over the entire ground floor of Modern One in Edinburgh from 17 February 2024 – 1 September 2024. With over 100 works on display, many never seen before, the artist poses questions such as ‘Where and when does home exist?’ and ‘What defines our sense of place?’.
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time explores the integral role that drawing and paper play in Suh’s work, focusing on his collaborative methods, experimental techniques, and innovative use of materials. Drawing is the foundation of the artist’s multidisciplinary practice. It acts as a springboard that propels ideas formed on a blank page into creations of astonishing variety and ambition. The exhibition will travel forwards and backwards in time, organised according to the artist’s transformative approaches to drawing as a toolkit with endless possibilities.
Visitors will discover Suh’s compelling and technically innovative thread drawings, in which multicolored threads are embedded in handmade paper to create sewn images of some of the artist’s most iconic motifs. Thread takes on a new form as a mode of drawing, mirroring the use of fabric in the artist’s sculptures. The thread drawings are created at STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore, where Do Ho has been working collaboratively with the Creative Workshop team for over a decade; experimenting together to produce his works on paper. Works on display from this series include the dazzling, multicolored Staircase/s (2019); a seemingly impossible vertical stack of colour, winding and repeating the communal staircase from Suh’s New York apartment building, the embroidery process creating a cloud of loose threads in its wake.
These monumental thread drawings will be exhibited alongside animations, architectural rubbings, paper sculptures, printmaking and watercolours, including works such as A Perfect Home (1999); a simple, even childlike, drawing of a tiny home and garden, perched in an impossible location. This watercolour was the starting point for the artist’s longest running research project, The Bridge Project, which explores the concept of his ‘perfect’ home. The project considers what form this home might take and questions whether such a thing exists.
For Suh, it’s located in the centre of a bridge that connects Seoul, New York and London, the three cities he has called home. The Bridge Project demonstrates that a rudimentary sketch has the power to develop into something far greater. A selection of the artist’s sketchbooks will also be shown publicly for the first time, giving visitors an insight into the personal, unconstrained spaces in which Suh explores his past, present and future.
Using both practical problem solving and imaginative sketching, drawing helps the artist to envision new relationships between architecture and the body, and new ways of challenging and re-defining shared public spaces. The exhibition also includes an immersive installation of Suh’s famed ‘hubs’; life-size sculptures that recreate transitional spaces – thresholds, corridors and doorways – from sites meaningful to the artist in colourful fabric. Visitors to the exhibition can enter and move through these innovative installations, giving a real-scale sense of the places which hold significance to the artist. The translucency of the fabric expands on the subjectivity of memory, and the rigidity of Western architecture in comparison to traditional Korean buildings. Suh’s Fabric Architecture can be packed down and transported; a means of carrying home with you.
Paper is also treated as sculptural material. Tracing Time includes a series of Suh’s ‘rubbings’; works made using a physically challenging process of coating the entire interiors of rooms in paper, which is then carefully rubbed in pencil and chalk to create an impression of the original spaces.
Suh’s engaging and imaginative artworks collectively ask questions about home and identity, inviting visitors to consider their own answer. Individual experiences of what home is on a personal level can create a fundamental part of who we are, often influenced by day-to-day life and deepest memories. Drawing is Do Ho Suh’s way of navigating the world, capturing overlooked details, and making sense of how we relate to one another. Tracing Time gathers many threads of the artist’s work and its celebration of human collaboration and creative networks.
Do Ho Suh said: “I am thrilled to be presenting my first exhibition in Scotland at the National Galleries. Paper has been a foundational element of my practice for as long as I’ve been working. It’s more than a medium for me and I’ve sometimes felt that in the West, paper’s strength – literally and symbolically – is underestimated. For me, it has sculptural, architectural and bodily qualities. It works in part because of its mercurial capacities – the ways in which it can absorb, and integrate with, other materials, rather than merely providing a surface for them to sit on. It’s exciting to have this element of my practice engaged with so sensitively and I cannot wait to share this body of work at Modern One.”
Sir John Leighton, Director-General at the National Galleries of Scotland said: “It’s with great excitement that we begin 2024 at the National Galleries of Scotland with the remarkable work of Do Ho Suh, exhibited for the first time in Scotland. Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time will not only bring creative flair, ingenious thought and wondrous curiosity to Modern One, but also a sense of reflection and understanding through his universally binding questions about home and what this truly means for us all. The National Galleries of Scotland are proud to host the work of an artist continually leading the way in his practice and invite the people of Scotland and beyond to join us in this unique opportunity to engage with his exceptional drawings.”
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time opens at National Galleries Scotland: Modern One on Saturday 17 February 2024.
Scottish film star Graham McTavish dives into the dramatic seascape that is William McTaggart’s The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship in the newest film in the Perspectives series by National Galleries of Scotland. Released today (6 February) the Outlander actor explores how the painting resonates with his own personal experiences of emigration and shares his research into the passage of Scots to New Zealand during the Highland Clearances.
McTavish has long been engrossed in the extraordinary history of Scotland, exploring the heritage of his birth country and its people. Together with Outlander co-star Sam Heughan, the intrepid Scotsmen recently published a book on their adventures journeying across New Zealand, Clanlands in New Zealand: Kiwis, Kilts, and an Adventure Down Under. While exploring the new Scottish galleries at the National in Edinburgh, which is home to the nation’s historic collection of Scottish art from 1800 to 1945, McTavish became gripped by the work of McTaggart and the significance of the moments captured in his paintings.
The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship, painted in 1895, depicts a ship of Scottish emigrants moving off under a stormy sky, with a glimpse of a hopeful rainbow in it. On the shore, other members of the clan have been left behind. In the Perspectives film, McTavish discusses the painting with the National Galleries of Scotland’s Outreach Co-Ordinator, Robin Baillie, detailing his research. McTavish admits that Outlander has played some part in romanticising these landscapes, but that it is important to remember the historical significance of what these people went through.
‘I don’t think we can imagine it now, what it must have been like for Scots in the 1800s. Wearing big woollen coats and getting on the boat knowing it could take about 120 days on average to get to New Zealand. The rainbow in the painting is showing this idea of a promised land, but a lot of them were sold a lie. Those people were told there were beautiful plots of land for them to farm on, but when they arrived it was thick bush down to the shoreline and precipitous cliffs. They must have got there and thought “we have been robbed” but they didn’t have the option to turn back, they had to get off the ship.’
McTavish has spent years discovering Scotland’s torrid history and is fascinated by how this has changed Scotland’s landscapes and how the country is viewed worldwide today. The Sailing of the Emigrant Ship is one of very few 19th-century paintings which explore this topic directly ̶ the wider topic of the Highland (and Lowland) Clearances is also addressed in the new Scottish galleries through the interpretation and in landscape paintings.
‘I speak to many, many people, Americans in particular, and when they talk about that Scottish landscape, I try to explain they are experiencing a landscape which has been decimated. The emptiness of those glens and straths, that wasn’t how they were. And now they talk about the great vistas and beautiful views across the mountains, views that would have been populated by people living and having their own communities. But the absence of those people is what tells the story of those clearances.’
Having moved around from a young age, McTavish was born in Scotland, then his family relocated to London before emigrating to Canada, and then (several years later) to New Zealand. Exploring his experience, McTavish shares his own resonance with the painting.
‘In the book Sam and I just published, Clanlands in New Zealand: Kiwis, Kilts, and an Adventure Down Under, I became particularly interested in the emigration of Scots to New Zealand and what that experience would have looked like. I was an emigrant, first of all I left Scotland to go to England, then I left there to go to Canada. You feel very alone, I think is one way of describing it. I felt this enormous pressure to speak in a Canadian accent, it sounds silly, but I was 8 and I wanted to fit in. So, to think of all these people that are portrayed here and what they left behind and the unknown they were going to – it really is amazing.’
‘There's a courage involved in stepping off the shore of your home and knowing you may never return. It takes a particular type of person or a particular type of circumstance that takes you there. Many of them would have had no choice.’
In the recently released Perspectives film, McTavish explores how McTaggart’s painting evokes his own memories of emigrating throughout his life and the emotions it sparks.
‘I have made choices in my life that have moved my family across the world but that was nothing compared to what these people did. I made the decision to move to LA from London, with my wife and child. I remember telling friends at the time and they’d say “what, you’re moving to America? When am I ever going to see you”. And that’s in the 21st Century. It would have been a knife in the heart for a lot of these people in the painting, doing that in the 1800s and never seeing many of your loved ones again.’
‘It would have been this tangle of emotions that they would have felt. There would be some sort of feeling of hope, along with the desperate need for change. So desperate that it would force them to leave the place they loved and grew up in.’
‘To me the artist’s choices, of how McTaggart depicts the people, in the painting shows this. They look like they are disappearing, they are fading, they are not fully fleshed out and you can see through them. It is that sort of sense that the world is just dissolving. For the people looking back that is what they are seeing, their world as they know it disappearing.’
Throughout his travels and living in locations across the world, McTavish notes that the Scots he has met along the way have a strong pride in their heritage. McTavish himself admits he feels lucky that he always has Scotland to come back to. Reminiscing about one particular line by his character Dougal in the hit TV show Outlander, he says it was a significant line for him to say, not just for the character but for himself.
‘Catriona Balfe’s character, Claire, talks about Dougal’s narcissism and how he is self-obsessed. He stands there and he takes the insults and then he says, “you’re right, it’s true I do love myself, but I love Scotland more”. It meant so much for me to say that and to give him that grounding. We can all look at people like Dougal and think “what was he thinking?” But during that period of the second Jacobite rebellion, they really thought they could win, they absolutely did.’
‘Starting in Scottish theatre, I was constantly moving I didn’t have a sense of rooted home, wherever I was I made it home. But it is strange whenever I come back to Scotland there is a deep feeling of relief when I get here. It’s just a sense of real belonging, I don’t have a home in Scotland but when I am here, I feel at home.’
There is even more Scottish art, history and stories to discover at the new Scottish galleries at the National. Dive into dramatic landscapes, encounter iconic images and be wowed by colour. A free experience for everyone right in the heart of Edinburgh’s city centre.