Press releases 2015
RISE AND FALL: THE EARL OF MAR AND THE 1715 JACOBITE RISING
CALUM COLVIN: JACOBITES BY NAME
14 November 2015 – 27 March 2016
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission Free | 0131 624 6200
#ScotPortrait
The 300th anniversary of the 1715 Jacobite Rising will be marked by two fascinating new displays at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this winter. A key player in the rising, John Erskine, 6th Earl of Mar, will be the focus of Rise and Fall, while Calum Colvin, one of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists, will explore the visual imagery and legacy of the Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745 in Jacobites by Name.
Responsible for initiating and subsequently ending the Rising, the Earl of Mar (1675–1732) was an extraordinary individual, passionate about both politics and the arts. Born in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, he was a Member of Parliament and later Secretary of State for Scotland, before being deprived of office by the new Hanoverian king, George I, in 1714. Mar raised the standard of rebellion against the Hanoverians, and from September to December 1715 he was effectively ruling Scotland.
The 1715 Rising is a key date in the power struggle between the Protestant Hanoverians and of the exiled Stuarts. It was a major attempt by the Jacobites - the supporters of King James VII (of Scotland) and II (of England) and his heirs - to regain the throne for the Stuart claimant, James Francis Edward Stuart. However victory eluded Mar and he ultimately fled to France with James Stuart in 1716, where he remained until his death in 1732.
At the centre of Rise and Fall will be two large and impressive portraits of the Earl and his wife, Frances Pierrepont (of around 1714), by Sir Godfrey Kneller, the leading portrait painter in England of the time. These imposing paintings usually hang at the National Trust for Scotland property Alloa Tower – the ancestral home of the Earls of Mar and Kellie – and were commissioned by Mar himself. Although he is often defined by his political and military career, Mar was a man of fine taste and an enthusiastic patron of the arts, with a talent for amateur architecture and garden design.
Prints, drawings and miniatures also on show in Rise and Fall bring alive this cataclysmic episode of Scottish history and shed light on the life and interests of the Earl of Mar. Key loans have come from the collection of the current Earl and Mar of Kellie and the National Records of Scotland.
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery’s outstanding Jacobite collection has been used to inspire a contemporary intervention which complements Rise and Fall by the renowned Scottish artist Calum Colvin. His Jacobites by Name inventively combines photography with painting and installation. The result includes new works such as Lochaber no More (2015) which links two images of Charles Edward Stuart, commonly known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, the second Jacobite pretender to the throne and instigator of the failed 1745 Jacobite Rising. The first of the images shows Charles as a young man and the other much older.
To make his photographic works, Colvin constructs a set in his studio, using furniture and ornaments, and then paints images on to these three-dimensional objects. When seen through the lens of his camera, a two-dimensional image is formed, a blend of reality and illusion. Lochaber no More is a powerful evocation of the passage of time and the melancholy of lost Jacobite hope, while fragments of burned tartan hint at the tragic outcome of the last rising.
In his work, Colvin also alludes to the tradition of secret symbolism and optical illusionism in Jacobite-related art; because support for the exiled Stuarts was dangerous and could lead to accusations of disloyalty to the Crown, ‘secret’ portraits of the Pretenders were to be discovered on folded fans, sewn discreetly onto articles of clothing, or concealed inside the lid of a closed box.
Colvin was born in Glasgow and studied art in Dundee and London, before coming to prominence in the mid-1980s. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and the United States and has worked on commissions for the National Galleries of Scotland.
Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery said: “The Jacobite struggle remains potent and romantic 300 years after the key events that defined it. These complementary displays connect powerful portraiture of the 18th century with contemporary responses, and remind us in an engaging and inspiring way of a turbulent period in Scottish history. We are especially grateful to the National Trust for Scotland, the Earl of Mar and Kellie and the artist Calum Colvin for their generosity and commitment to the project.”
Calum Colvin commented “This new body of work investigates the traces of Jacobite material culture, portraiture and visual illusion to be found in Scottish museums up and down the country. I wanted to take a fresh look at this material with a view to re-interpret the matrix of symbols and allusions that they carry and, through a range of different types of contemporary making, bring them into the digital age. The works are contrasted with the existing collection in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and question the role of this familiar iconography in Scottish national culture.”
The exhibition has been made possible with support from the National Trust for Scotland.
Supported by the Leverhulme Trust.
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Notes to editors:
For more information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6314 / 6332 / 6247 or at [email protected].
The exhibitions are on display in galleries 2, 3 & 4 (top floor of the Portrait Gallery) from 14 November 2015 to 27 March 2016.
About the National Trust for Scotland
One of Scotland’s leading conservation charities, the National Trust for Scotland cares for some of the nation’s most important heritage sites, from grand castles to humble homes and wild coastline. With more than 100 properties packed with paintings, textiles, ceramics, sculpture and fine furniture, the Trust holds Scotland’s biggest collection of in-situ artworks. Amongst its gems include many fine pictures by artists including Raeburn, Batoni and Peploe to name a few. Some of Scotland’s finest contemporary works, including pieces by Ken Currie, Julia Douglas and Julie Roberts, are on currently on display at Drum Castle in Aberdeenshire while Aberdeen Art Gallery undergoes a major refurbishment.
About Alloa Tower
Alloa Tower is the ancestral home of the Erskine family, the Earls of Mar and Kellie. The tower is the largest, oldest keep in Scotland and was originally built to guard the nearby ferry crossing on the River Forth. The Erskines were aides to the Stuart monarchs and guardians to the royal children – Mary, Queen of Scots and James VI both spent part of their early lives at Alloa Tower. It was Mary who granted the earldom to the Erskines in 1565.
Since its construction around 1368, Alloa Tower has been altered many times and provides a rich variety of architectural styles and historic collections. Once part of a much larger mansion, with extensive gardens modelled on those of Versailles, among the features within the tower are a sweeping, eighteenth-century Italianate staircase, a medieval oak beamed roof, a dungeon and a well. It also houses collections of important paintings, on loan from the Erskine family, including the two full length portraits by Sir Godfrey Kneller on display here.
In 2015 the fourteenth-century Alloa Tower in Clackmannanshire was acquired by the National Trust for Scotland (NTS), having previously been managed by NTS working in partnership with the Clackmannanshire Heritage Trust, with financial support from Clackmannanshire Council. From 1988, Alloa Tower was restored from a semi-derelict state and first opened to the public in 1996. It is this partnership, and the philanthropic endeavours over many years of the current Earl of Mar and Kellie and his father, that have enabled NTS to secure the tower’s long-term future.
About the Leverhulme Trust
The Leverhulme Trust was established by the Will of William Hesketh Lever, the founder of Lever Brothers. Since 1925 the Trust has provided grants and scholarships for research and education. Today, it is one of the largest all-subject providers of research funding in the UK, distributing approximately £80m a year. For more information about the Trust, please visit www.leverhulme.ac.uk.
RARE LANDMARK CUBIST COLLAGE BY PICASSO ACQUIRED FOR THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is delighted to announce the acquisition of a ground-breaking and exceptionally rare Cubist collage by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). This landmark purchase was made thanks to an enormously generous legacy made by Henry and Sula Walton and joins a large Cubist drawing by Picasso, acquired last year through the Walton Fund.
Bottle and Glass on a Table (1912) depicts a stylised glass and bottle standing on a table. The bottle is composed of a piece of French newspaper, Le Journal of 3 December 1912 (a pre-War French publication). The cutting features part of an advertisement for Quaker Oats, and another for cherry brandy. Stencilled letters in Indian ink spell out ‘OLD / JA / R’ – shorthand for Old Jamaica Rum. Charcoal, ink and pencil compose the rest of this schematized work.
Collage, in which real objects are stuck onto a picture, is perhaps the single most radical and important development in twentieth-century art. Rather than painting or drawing or copying something, an artist could instead simply cut it out of a newspaper or magazine and stick it on a picture. In one step, collage revolutionised the practice of art. The collage technique has been central to the work of many of the most celebrated modern artists, and modern movements, including Dada, Surrealism and Pop Art.
Late in 1912, Georges Braque – the French painter who, along with Picasso, developed Cubism – made a few drawings which incorporated collaged pieces of printed paper. His great friend Picasso saw these and in December 1912 made a group of collages, mostly involving newspaper. About thirty of these pasted paper collages survive, almost all of them in major museum collections such as the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and the Musée Picasso, Paris. Only two or three remain in private hands. These works – which in themselves have been the central subject of books and exhibitions – mark the start of what has been called the ‘pasted-paper revolution’.
The work marks a landmark in Picasso’s career: it is the only newspaper collage by the artist to feature such stencilling, and indeed seems to be his first ever use of stencilled lettering. Like collage, the use of words in pictures signalled a major revolution in art: instead of copying an image, an artist could instead write its name on the picture.
Bottle and Glass on a Table is part of a small group of newspaper collages by Picasso which are landmarks in the history of modern art. Instead of the Renaissance ideal of creating an illusion of depth, collage offers a new approach to the presentation of space and reality. Picasso’s cubist work dates from about 1907 to 1915. Part of the impetus behind Cubism comes from the desire to view an object from different sides, and re-compose these different views in a single picture. Cubism is arguably the most important development in art since the Renaissance, and its influence on art and design can hardly be over-estimated.
Henry Walton (1924-2012) was Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of International Medical Education at the University of Edinburgh; Sula Wolff (1924-2009) was the author of internationally acclaimed books on child psychiatry. Not only did they bequeath their art collection to the Gallery, but they also established the Henry and Sula Walton charitable Fund, specifically to help the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art make new and important acquisitions. Henry and Sula Walton were particularly passionate about Picasso’s work, assembling a collection of more than a dozen prints by the artist.
Simon Groom, Director of the Gallery of Modern Art, commented: “Henry and Sula Walton were particularly passionate about Picasso’s work, assembling a collection of more than a dozen of his prints, which they bequeathed to us. This is a stunning new acquisition, the kind of work that any of the world’s great museums would love to have. In this small group of newspaper collages, Picasso turned centuries of tradition upside-down, and the reverberations are still being felt in the art of today. Together with the drawing we acquired last year, a collage of 1913 and a painting of the same period, we now have a superb collection of Picasso’s Cubist work.”
Bottle and Glass on a Table was acquired at auction earlier this year, having been in a private collection in Sweden for more than forty years. It is now hanging in Room 16 at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One), alongside other Cubist works from the collection. The Gallery now boasts a world-class group of works by Picasso. The collage relates to several works by Picasso already in the collection: a collage Head, 1913; the large Weeping Woman etching of 1937; and the charcoal drawing Head, 1912, acquired by the Gallery in 2014.
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BP PORTRAIT AWARD
10 October 2015 – 28 February 2016
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY,
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JD
Free admission | 0131 624 6200
#BPPortrait
The annual BP Portrait Award goes from strength-to-strength with the highest number of entries ever recorded and submissions from over 92 countries. The Award is firmly established as one of the most prestigious international portrait competitions in the world and has a first prize of £30,000 - one of the largest for any global art competition. Organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London, the exhibition of the top 55 entries, travels to Edinburgh and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this autumn, opening on 10October.
This year, for the first time, artists were asked to submit their work digitally, a move which resulted in a record-breaking 2,748 entries up from 2,377 entries from 71 countries in 2014.
The BP Portrait Award is now in its 36th year and 26th year of sponsorship by BP. This highly successful annual event aims to encourage artists to focus upon, and develop, the theme of painted portraiture within their work.
Winner of this year’s first prize was 35-year-old Israeli artist, Matan Ben-Cnaan. His striking allegorical portrait, Annabelle and Guy, features his friend and step-daughter and is partly inspired by the biblical story of Jephthah, who in the book of Judges, vowed to God that in return for victory over the Ammonites, he would sacrifice the first thing that greeted him upon his return from battle - to his horror, it was his daughter who rushed out in welcome but he upheld his vow and sacrificed his child.
The competition judges: “were struck by the engaging filmic narrative of this neo-Realist painting and the unnerving atmosphere that surrounds it. The painting’s setting and the treatment of intense light and deep shadow was much admired.”
At the judges’ discretion the winner also received a commission worth £5,000 to be agreed between the National Portrait Gallery and the artist.
The second prize of £10,000 went to Leicester-based artist Michael Gaskell, 51, for Eliza, a portrait depicting his niece, who agreed to sit for him last year at the age of 14, having first sat for her uncle when she was a very small child. Gaskell has been selected five times for the BP Portrait Award, winning second prize on three occasions.
The judges felt that this was: “a highly accomplished portrait, revealing the influence of Vermeer and Dutch seventeenth-century paintings while also a having a seemingly modern, timeless quality.’
The third prize of £8,000 went to Spanish artist Borja Buces Renard, 36, for his poignant portrait, My Mother and My Brother on a Sunday Evening, depicting his mother Paloma and his brother Jaime, and made in the living room of his parents’ house.
The BP Young Artist Award of £7,000 for the work of a selected entrant aged between 18 and 30 has been won by New York-based artist Eleana Antonaki for J.
The judges were: ‘intrigued by the enigmatic, futuristic narrative of this painting, which was quite unlike any other in the competition.’
The BP Travel Award is given to an artist to enable them to experience working in a different environment on a project related to portraiture.
In 2014 the Award was won by Edward Sutcliffe for his proposal to document the Compton Cricket Club in Los Angeles. The club was formed to help encourage and empower the disaffected youth of an area synonymous with poverty and crime. By spending time with the team, either on the pitch or in their everyday lives, and seeing the impact that playing cricket has had, Sutcliffe has produced portraits that show a fusion of two very different cultures and how the game of cricket, with its ethos of fair play and respect, has been embraced by this community.
This year the £6,000 BP Travel Award prize was awarded to Magali Cazo, who won for her proposal to travel to a community of bronze-smelters in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, West Africa. There she will live with and represent the artists, apprentices and labourers whose lives revolve around the foundry. The resulting work will be displayed in next year’s BP Portrait Award.
Scottish artist Alan McGowan, who studied at Edinburgh College of Art is included with an expressive self-portrait.
McGowan says: ‘It was painted from life using a mirror so is an exploration of the fictions of painting. The stationary image is a fabrication of what was actually in motion, especially the hands, and is left-handed, whereas I am not.’
Artist Benjamin Sullivan, who studied at Edinburgh College of Art, has had work selected regularly in the BP Portrait Award. His selected entry this year depicts the artist’s friend Julian. Sullivan is reflected in the mirror in the background and a current work-in-progress can also be seen.
Speaking of the exhibition, Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “The BP Portrait Award is a global celebration of the status of contemporary painted portraiture. It is quite rightly immensely popular and we are delighted it’s returning to Edinburgh. The award and exhibition succeed in advancing artists’ careers and provoking discussion about the evolving nature and power of portraiture. Come and see and enjoy it in Scotland this autumn!”
For further information please contact the Press Office at the National Galleries of Scotland on 0131 624 6325/6314/6247/6491 or [email protected].
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Notes to Editors:
Artists Michael Gaskell (second prize winner), Edward Sutcliffe (travel award winner 2014) and Scottish artist, Alan McGowan will be in attendance at the press launch.
The BP Portrait Award 2015 competition was judged from original paintings by: Pim Baxter, Deputy Director (Acting Director at the time of judging),National Portrait Gallery, London(Chair); Sarah Howgate, Contemporary Curator, National Portrait Gallery, London; Kim Mawhinney, Head of Art, National Museums Northern Ireland; Peter Monkman, Artist and First-Prize winner of BP Portrait Award 2009; Simon Schama, Historian; and Des Violaris, Director, UK Arts & Culture, BP.
TOUR: The exhibition will tour the Ulster Museum, Belfast (11 Mar –12 Jun 2016.)
PUBLICATION: A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition and features an essay by Neil Gaiman and over 55 colour illustrations, price £9.99 (pbk).
BP PORTRAIT AWARD: NEXT GENERATION isa dynamic project inspiring 14–19-year-olds about portraiture through the BP Portrait Award.
Taster Sessions – Saturday 31 October
10:00-13:00h or 14:00-17:00h
Experimental taster sessions in drawn portraiture with past BP Portrait Award-winning artist Owen Normand and artist Fraser Gray.
2-day Winter School – Saturday 28 & Sunday 29 November
11:00-16:00h
Explore portrait painting techniques with past BP Portrait Award-winning artist Gareth Reid and artist Fraser Gray.
More information: www.npg.org.uk/bpnextgeneration
#BPNextGen
This project has been developed in collaboration with National Portrait Gallery, London.
BP PORTRAIT AWARD 2015 – OVERALL FIGURES Total entrants 2,748 (UK Entries 1,390, International Entries 1,358)
BP PORTRAIT AWARD 2015 – EXHIBITION FIGURES (55 selected from total entry): England (21), Australia (1), Belgium (1), Canada (1), Czech Republic (1), France (2), Ireland (3), Israel (2), Italy (1), Netherlands (1), Northern Ireland (1), Romania (1), Scotland (1), Spain (8), Turkey (1), United States (9)
BP support for UK Arts & Culture: In the UK, BP is a major supporter of the arts with a programme that spans some 40 years. BP’s investment in long term partnerships with the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the Royal Opera House, Tate Britain and the Royal Shakespeare Company represent one of the most significant long-term corporate investments in UK arts and culture bp.com
DOCUMENT SCOTLAND: THE TIES THAT BIND
26 September 2015 – 24 April 2016
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission Free | 0131 624 6200
#NGSTiesThatBind
Four of Scotland's most prominent documentary photographers will come together to show new and recent work in a fascinating major exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this autumn. The Ties that Bind is the brainchild of the photography collective Document Scotland, and has been inspired by the period of intense debate and self-examination among people in Scotland, in the run-up to, and aftermath of the Referendum in September 2014. Each of the collective's four internationally acclaimed photographers - Stephen McLaren, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Colin McPherson and Sophie Gerrard – has created a body of work which considers a different strand of Scotland's culture and heritage, and in the process explores very timely questions of personal, community and national identity.
For The Ties That Bind, McLaren, Sutton-Hibbert, McPherson and Gerrard have created four groups of work that consider legacy —Scotland’s role in the slave trade and sugar plantations of Jamaica in the 18th century; tradition —the centuries-old celebration of Border towns in the Common Ridings festivals; engagement —the devotion and commitment from football supporters in small towns and communities across the country; and the land itself —focusing on contemporary farming through the experiences of six women.
“A Sweet Forgetting”, Stephen McLaren’s project, 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. McLaren spent a month in Jamaica looking for the sites of plantations owned by seven Scotsmen of that era, before coming back to Scotland to trace how these men spent their wealth, and what is left of this legacy today. McLaren’s photographs largely concentrate on the mansions and estates purchased with funds from the slave trade. One of the plantation owners McLaren studied was the politician and poet Robert Cunninghame Graham (1735-1797), who owned several estates in Scotland as well as a Jamaican plantation at Roaring River and made his fortune from slave plantations.
“A Sweet Forgetting” suggests that Scotland has perhaps largely forgotten how much of its economy was dependent on slave labour in Jamaica. McLaren’s subtle, but provocative work considers Scotland’s past and how it shapes the present, as well as how we choose to remember the past.
For “Unsullied and Untarnished”, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert focused on the Scottish Borders area and its traditional summer festivals, known as the Common Ridings. During the Common Ridings, riders chosen as representatives of their communities symbolically survey the boundaries of the town’s and burgh’s common lands. Participating in the yearly ritual is considered an honour for the local youths; the Common Ridings are an opportunity to represent their community by carrying the standard around the neighbouring borders of the common land, before bringing it back “unsullied and untarnished”. During the festivals, “exiles” return home to partake in events and greetings are often sent by those unable to make the journey, while bonds are re-established with neighbouring towns. Intrigued by the history of the festivals Sutton-Hibbert visited various towns, including Hawick, Selkirk and Jedburgh among others and made portraits of the riders and other participants in traditional outfits. By looking at how the history and sense of community is kept alive, Sutton-Hibbert explores traditions and their legacy in modern society.
Colin McPherson’s contribution to The Ties That Bind is entitled “When Saturday Comes”, after the eponymous football magazine which has commissioned McPherson over the last 10 years to photograph football culture both in Scotland and further afield. An ardent football fan himself, McPherson has used the opportunity to explore the game at all levels, although for this exhibition he has focused on lower-league football and the rituals associated with the sport; his photographs explore the sense of belonging and commitment shown by supporters, players and those charged with running clubs – from Berwick Rangers to Fraserburgh. For a lot of people football is an experience first encountered at the community level of village youth clubs and small town teams. As a weekend ritual it draws people together on the stands or grassy verges in all weather and seasons to celebrate or commiserate over the game at hand. This sense of engagement and loyalty is one that is echoed around the land every Saturday.
The fourth project in The Ties That Bind, “Drawn to the Land”, is Sophie Gerrard’s ongoing exploration of women in the contemporary Scottish landscape. Gerrard’s photographs offer a glimpse into the lives of six women farmers in a variety of Scottish settings (Argyll, Perthshire, the Scottish Borders, the Isle of Eigg and the Isle of Mull), and how they shape, and are shaped by, their surroundings. Working as hill farmers with responsibility for remote and diverse parts of the land, these women identify as custodians rather than as landowners, and often talk of being drawn to the hill. For “Drawn to the Land”, Gerrard set out to understand her own connection with the Scottish landscape, which is often seen as a symbol of national identity and nostalgia. To explore the topic she chose to focus on female farmers, often under-represented in the UK despite the number of women in farming increasing significantly in recent years. Through each of these women’s compelling stories, “Drawn to the Land” presents an emotional response to this country’s rugged mountains and remote lochs and islands and a wider story of Scotland’s national identity.
While the work touches on the political landscape around the Referendum, the images do not affirm any one position, but seek to portray a multiplicity of views that portray the complex challenges and subtle nuances surrounding the larger debate. Together these images create a compelling dialogue about Scotland, its people, diversity and culture, and reveal the subtle nuances that shape a nation’s identity.
Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “Document Scotland has impressively addressed through The Ties That Bind some key themes about belonging and history, the resonance of Scottish heritage and diversity of community life across the country today. Their work demonstrates the outstanding quality of contemporary documentary photography and its ability to provoke us to think about issues of individual and collective identity.”
Document Scotland: The Ties That Bind is part of the IPS (Institute for Photography in Scotland) 2015 Season of Photography, a series of lively exhibitions and events taking place across Scotland from April to September 2015.
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Notes to editors:
For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office on 0131 624 6247 / 6322 or at [email protected].
About the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery:
Document Scotland: The Ties That Bind is being shown in the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery and is part of a continuing series of photography exhibitions (including Lee Miller & Picasso and Viviane Sassen: In and Out of Fashion) in the refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery, named after the renowned American photographer, is supported by a very generous donation from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. This is being used over three years to produce innovative displays, exhibitions and research. The Gallery is the first purpose-built photography space of its kind in a major museum in Scotland.
About Document Scotland:
Document Scotland is a photographic collective formed in 2012 by Colin McPherson, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Sophie Gerrard and Stephen McLaren—four Scots-born photographers, each exponents of documentary photography. They each have lived and worked extensively both at home and abroad and their work has been published in various international magazines and newspapers, in addition to featuring in exhibitions around the UK.
www.documentscotland.com
About the photographers:
Stephen McLaren
McLaren started out as a television producer and director working on documentaries for several UK channels, and has worked as a freelance photographer, writer, and curator since 2005. His work has been published in several international newspapers and magazines including The Guardian, New York Times, San Francisco Magazine, Der Spiegel and Internazionale. He has also taught photography and regularly writes about the medium for several publications including the British Journal of Photography, BBC, and IMA Japan.
McLaren is the author of Street Photography Now (with Sophie Howarth, Thames and Hudson, 2010) and Photographers Sketchbooks (with Bryan Formhals, Thames and Hudson, 2014). His new book about contemporary family photography will be published by Thames and Hudson in Spring 2016. He currently lives in San Francisco.
Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert
Sutton-Hibbert received a camera as a gift for his thirteenth birthday; a few years later he became a UK-based freelance photographer for editorial, corporate and NGO clients. His work has appeared in magazines such as Time, National Geographic, Italian Geo, Le Figaro, The Guardian, and The Sunday Times. For the past decade Sutton-Hibbert has been one of the principal photographers for Greenpeace International. His work has taken him to over 80 countries, as far flung as Antarctica and Outer Mongolia and his personal and commissioned work, for which he has been the recipient of photojournalism awards, has been widely published and exhibited in Europe, Asia and USA. Sutton-Hibbert was based in Japan in recent years, but has now relocated back to Scotland. A book featuring photographs from the “Unsullied And Untarnished” project will be published to coincide with the exhibition.
Colin McPherson
McPherson has been photographing in Scotland and abroad for over 25 years. He undertakes long-term projects alongside commissions and assignments for a number of newspapers and magazines and is represented by the Corbis agency. His work is published internationally and held in archives and collections including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Special Collections of the University of St. Andrews. His photographs have featured in more than 30 solo and group exhibitions.
Sophie Gerrard
Gerrard began her career in environmental sciences before studying photography at Edinburgh College of Art and then London College of Communication. Gerrard’s work frequently combines contemporary social stories with environmental themes, and has been featured in publications such as Esquire Magazine, The Guardian Weekend Magazine, Financial Times Magazine, The Telegraph Saturday Magazine and The Independent on Sunday.
A recipient of a number of awards including the prestigious Jerwood Photography Award (which identified the most innovative artist photographers emerging in the UK) Gerrard was shortlisted for the 2015 Remote Photo Prize. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at The Jerwood Space, The Photographers' Gallery in London, Streetlevel Photoworks in Glasgow, Paris Photo and a solo show in The Arbetes Museum Sweden. Gerrard currently lectures in photography at Edinburgh Napier University. She is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery, London.
About the 2015 Season of Photography:
The 2015 Season of Photography is an initiative of the Institute for Photography in Scotland (IPS), and is a series of lively exhibitions and events taking place at multiple venues throughout Scotland from mid-April to the end of September 2015.
The Season illuminates the wealth of activity around photography in Scotland. This includes exhibitions and events at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, Stills, Edinburgh, the National Galleries of Scotland, University of Glasgow, University of St. Andrews, and the National Museums of Scotland as well as exhibitions taking place across the country, from Fife FotoSpace to regional museum venues in Linlithgow, Kirkcaldy, Clydebank, Irvine and Hamilton.
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) and National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) are delighted to announce the joint acquisition of Lorenzo Bartolini’s marble sculpture The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz, made in Florence in about 1821. This exceptional work was subject to a temporary export bar in 2014 and has now been saved for the nation. The purchase price of £523,800 was raised with £275,000 from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) and £98,800 from the Art Fund, with the remaining contributions from the V&A and NGS.
The acquisition ensures that The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz will remain in the United Kingdom on public display. It will be shown for the first time at the V&A in London this week in the Dorothy & Michael Hintze Sculpture Galleries, where it will remain until 20 November. It will then return to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh, where it was on long-term loan between 1991 and 2013.
The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz will be on display in Edinburgh until 2020 and thereafter it will be shown at each institution for a period of 7 years, alternating with the display of Antonio Canova’s remarkable sculpture The Three Graces (c. 1817), which is also jointly owned by NGS and the V&A. Until November, visitors to the V&A will have the only opportunity to see these two great sculptures in the same museum.
Lorenzo Bartolini (1777 – 1850) was trained in Florence and Paris and became one of the leading European sculptors of his day. Showing two women in graceful movement, The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz is unusual in being a full-length, life-size group by an artist primarily known for his portrait busts. It is an exceptional piece which suggests the youth and vibrancy of the sisters, breaking away from traditional sculpted portrait conventions of the time. It also represents the only figure group made by the artist under commission by a British patron.
Beth McKillop, Deputy Director and Director of Collections at the V&A, said, “We are excited that we have the opportunity to display The Campbell Sisters Dancing a Waltz at the V&A. Bartolini’s sculpture is a delightful work and an outstanding addition to the national collection of sculpture housed at the Museum”.
Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, added, “We are thrilled that Bartolini’s masterpiece, which was sculpted in Florence and depicts two Scottish sitters, can continue to be seen in Scotland. For nearly two centuries it was on view in Inveraray Castle, Argyll, and most recently in the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh. Now it will return to the Gallery, where it links beautifully to many other great works of art in the national collection.”
Sir Peter Luff, Chair of NHMF, said: “This is an excellent example of how public and private partnerships, supported by the government-funded National Heritage Memorial Fund, can effectively safeguard our most precious heritage. The Campbell Sisters hasbeen in the UK ever since it was completed by Bartolini in the early 19th century and it’s wonderful that it will now remain here for future generations to enjoy.”
Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: “We are delighted to have given a major grant towards the purchase of this important and accomplished work. It exudes both charm and technical virtuosity, and will surely be widely enjoyed by the visiting public at both institutions in the years ahead.”
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For further PRESS information please contact Lucy Hawes in the V&A press office on
+44 (0) 20 7942 2502 or email [email protected]; or Michael Gormley in the National Galleries of Scotland press office on +44 (0) 131 624 6247 or email [email protected]
Notes to Editors
Purchased jointly by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Victoria and Albert Museum, with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, and a donation in memory of A. V. B. Norman, 2015.
The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) was set up in 1980 to save the most outstanding parts of our national heritage, in memory of those who have given their lives for the UK. It will receive £20m Government grant in aid between 2011-15 allowing for an annual budget of £4m-£5m. www.nhmf.org.uk.
The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. In the past five years the Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. The Art Fund also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013-18 Aspire tour of Tate’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators.
The Art Fund is independently funded, with the core its income provided by 117,000 members who receive the National Art Pass and enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibition. In addition to grant-giving, the Art Fund’s support for museums includes the annual Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year, a publications programme and a range of digital platforms. Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org. Please contact Madeline Adeane, the Press Relations Manager, on 020 7225 4804 or email [email protected], for more information.
The V&A is the world’s greatest museum of art and design with collections unrivalled in their scope and diversity. It was established to make works of art available to all and to inspire British designers and manufacturers. Today, the V&A’s collections, which span over 5000 years of human creativity in virtually every medium and from many parts of the world, continue to intrigue, inspire and inform. Designated the National Collection of Sculpture, the Museum’s collection concentrates on Western European Sculpture from the 4th century to the end of the 19th century. Highlights of the collection include masterpieces from the Italian Renaissance, ivory carvings of all periods, Northern European wood and other sculpture, commemorative medals and plaster casts. The sculpture collection contains approximately 22,000 objects.
The National Galleries of Scotland comprises three galleries in Edinburgh: the Scottish National Gallery, the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, as well as two partner galleries – Paxton House and Duff House, in the North and South of Scotland. The collection of Scottish National Gallery, which covers the period from the early Renaissance to the end of the nineteenth century is regarded as one of the finest in the world, and includes masterpieces by Raphael, El Greco, Velázquez, Rubens, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne and Degas.
THE LARGEST COUNTRY HOUSE GALLERY IN SCOTLAND IS ENRICHED WITH NEW LOANS FROM THE NATIONAL GALLERIES
A vibrant group of over 30 paintings on loan from the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland is now on display in the Picture Gallery at Paxton House in the Scottish Borders, near Berwick upon Tweed. Works by celebrated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Scottish artists Sir Henry Raeburn, William McTaggart and Sir William Allan can be enjoyed alongside modern paintings by the renowned Scottish colourists Samuel John Peploe and George Leslie Hunter, and artists with local connections to the Borders, Anne Redpath and Sir William Gillies.
The Picture Gallery at Paxton is the largest private gallery ever to be built in Scotland and one of the most ambitious in any British country house. It was designed in 1810 by the Edinburgh architect Robert Reid for George Home, as an addition to the neo-Palladian mansion which had been built by John Adam for George’s cousin Patrick between 1758 and 1763.
Originally conceived to display the now-dispersed collection amassed by Patrick Home, the gallery has showcased paintings from the national collection since 1992, when Paxton first became a partner gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland. This is the first time that the displays there have been re-hung since 2003, and the first time that they have included works from the twentieth century.
The new selection of works presents an overview of Scottish Art and includes portraits, still lifes, landscapes and history paintings dating from the early eighteenth century to the twentieth century. The inclusion of modern paintings makes for some fascinating juxtapositions and also gives the visitor the opportunity to consider what type of art may have been collected if Paxton House still functioned as a family home.
The National Galleries of Scotland houses one of the finest collections of art to be found anywhere in the world, ranging from the thirteenth century to the present day. The selection of new paintings at Paxton House demonstrates the diversity of the NGS collections and in particular its exceptional holdings of Scottish Art.
Highlights in the new loan include Sir Henry Raeburn’s stunning portrait of Professor John Wilson (c.1805-10). Both in mind and body, Wilson was a larger-than-life character. An essayist and sportsman, and one of the founders of the right-wing Blackwood's Magazine, he was Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh for over 30 years. Raeburn’s portrait depicts Wilson, who frequently wrote under the pseudonym 'Christopher North', as a dashing young horseman in yellow jodhpurs.
Another stand-out painting among the new loans is William McTaggart’s, Quiet Sunset, Machrihanish (1870s). From 1876 McTaggart returned each summer to his native Kintyre in the west of Scotland to ‘court the sea’, lured by the ever-changing light, the remarkable translucency of the water, and the sense of vastness produced by the unbroken horizon of Machrihanish Bay. With its exquisite colour harmonies, this tranquil picture probably dates from the late 1870s when the artist was preoccupied with a quest for overall tonal and textural unity in his work.
The new display also features Sweetest eyes were ever seen (1881), a fascinating work by one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, Sir John Everett Millais. Many of Millais’ sentimental or fancy portraits focus on children and in this instance the model is the child actress Beatrice Buckstone (b.1869), who is depicted at the age of 12. The painting has an interesting Scottish connection, as its first owner was Everett Gray, the youngest brother of Millais’s wife Effie, and it originally hung at the Gray family home, Bowerswell, near Perth.
The modern works in the display include Anne Redpath’s beautiful Still Life with Teapot (1945). Redpath, who was born in Galashiels and studied at Edinburgh College of Art, followed the tradition of artists such as Henri Matisse and Edouard Vuillard in creating intimate depictions of her own domestic setting. Still Life with Teapot was painted at her home in Hawick, which was described by a reporter in 1947, ‘Immediately on entering her sitting room I felt as though I had stepped into one of her pictures. There was a tea tray standing on a little table as I had so often seen it, and, as on the painted tables, the cups did not match!’.
John Leighton, Director-General, at the National Galleries of Scotland, commented: “We are delighted to be able to enrich the display at Paxton in this way, and hope the new loan, which can be enjoyed in the house’s splendid early nineteenth-century gallery and features an impressive and diverse selection of works, will be enjoyed by many visitors.”
Ian Marrian, Chairman, The Paxton Trust, added: “On behalf of the Paxton House Trustees, we are grateful to the National Galleries of Scotland for updating and refreshing our splendid Picture Gallery with 30 new pieces of art work. This was a significant undertaking and to see it all come to fruition makes it an exciting prospect for future visitors to Paxton House.”
VINTAGE PHOTOGRAPHS BY RENOWNED AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER ACQUIRED FOR THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
Nine photographs by Paul Strand (1890-1976), one of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, have been acquired by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where they will go on public display until 20 September. Taken from Strand’s series of Hebridean photographs from South Uist in 1954, the works are the first examples of his Scottish work to enter into a public collection in Scotland.
This major acquisition, supported by the Art Fund, is composed of nine vintage black and white portraits of Scottish lives and landscapes in South Uist, an island in the Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland. The works will be hung in the current exhibition Collecting Now, which focuses on the Gallery’s growing collection.
The American photographer Paul Strand is ranked among the most important artists within the history of photography, and his work has influenced generations of photographers. In 1954, upon hearing a radio programme on the Gaelic songs of South Uist, he decided to travel there along with his wife, Hazel Kingsbury Strand. Having been introduced to the islanders by the local doctor, Strand spent three months taking over a hundred photographs of the island and its people for his book, Tìr a’ Mhurain (1962). Taken from a traditional Gaelic song, the title translates as ‘Land of Bent Grass’.
Strand photographed many of the people in and around their homes, often posing them before a weathered wall. Within the group of nine works going on display, there are four striking portraits that show the sitters looking directly at the camera, exuding strength and dignity. Strand was keen to understand his subjects, their environments and the forces that shaped their lives, and spent his first few weeks on the island observing the people he would photograph – fishermen, crofters, their wives and children. Nine years after the end of the WWII, South Uist was still an impoverished community and the vast majority of families depended on the produce from the land and sea. The remaining five photographs within the new acquisition group show the evocative landscapes of South Uist, for instance a loch and lilies, a croft, and ropes and a buoy used by the local fishermen.
In the 1950s, during the Cold War, Uist was announced as the future site for a rocket launch facility, and many of the photos Strand took during his time on the island reflect a concern amongst many artists and folklorists to ‘salvage’ oral Gaelic culture amid the thread of a militarised modernity. He believed these islanders represented the universal struggle of humanity and sequenced the images within Tìr a Mhurain in such a way as to evoke the heroic, yet remote lives of the dwindling population: when he visited South Uist in the mid-1950s the population was 3764; at the last census in 2011 it was 1754.
The completed publication came out in 1962 and featured an introductory essay by British historian Basil Davidson, who explained the precarious existence of the islanders against a backdrop of history, geography and social anthropology.
One of the greatest photographers of the twentieth century, with a career that spanned sixty years, Paul Strand was born in New York in 1890 and received his first camera at the age of 12. Whilst a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis W. Hine in New York, from 1904-08, Strand visited the 291 Gallery which promoted pioneering photographers and introduced some of the most avant-garde European artists to American audiences. By 1916, Strand had a solo show at 291 Gallery, whose owner Stieglitz declared the images "pure" and "direct". In 1945 Strand was given a solo show at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, but having become more political he now came under scrutiny as McCarthyism swept America, and he went into exile in France. During this time period he began working on a series of photo essays in search of an ideal community or village that espoused certain moral values he wanted to record with the camera, which eventually led to his visit to South Uist in 1954. His breakthrough, abstract experiments in the 1910s heralded photography’s importance as a modern art form, but it was his portraits of ordinary people that increased his popular appeal. Strand died in 1976 at Orgeval, France.
Speaking of the acquisition, Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery said: “These works are an important contribution to broadening our international holdings of photography, while the distinct Scottish subject matter relates to the larger mission for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in representing the people and topography of Scotland.”
Stephen Deuchar, director of the Art Fund, said: “Paul Strand was a photographic pioneer but he is under-represented in UK collections and not at all in Scotland, so we are very pleased to support this acquisition for the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. This series of remarkable images from the Hebrides has an especially important resonance for the Gallery’s collections, and furthermore will sit well alongside works in the permanent collection by photographers influenced by Strand.”
The nine photographs can be seen on the National Galleries of Scotland’s website: nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/s/artist/paul-strand
The Art Fund
The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art. In the past five years the Art Fund has given £34 million to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. The Art Fund also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013-18 Aspire tour of Tate’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators.
The Art Fund is independently funded, with the core its income provided by 117,000 members who receive the National Art Pass and enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibition. In addition to grant-giving, the Art Fund’s support for museums includes the annual Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year, a publications programme and a range of digital platforms.
Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org.
Please contact Madeline Adeane, the Press Relations Manager, on 020 7225 4804 or [email protected]
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
For more information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland’s press office at [email protected] or on 0131 624 6314 / 6332.
The nine photographs will be on show as part of Collecting Now at theScottish National Portrait Gallery, from 20 June to 20 September 2015:
Collecting Now
Admission Free | 0131 624 6200
#NGSCollectingNow
This exhibition of nearly 50 paintings, drawings and photographs celebrates some of the modern works which have recently entered the Gallery collection, many of which are being shown for the first time.Highlights include works by influential photographers Eve Arnold, Viviane Sassen and David Peat, and portraits of key Scottish figures like poet Edwin Morgan and actor Alan Cumming.
ARCHIVE GAMES: CARSON & MILLER
11 July – 25 October 2015
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART
(Modern Two), 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DS
Admission free
#CarsonandMillerArchiveGames
Games played between artists and visitors in the Archive at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will be showcased in a new display at Modern Two. Archive Games, which opens on 11 July 2015, is the culmination of 16 rounds of artistic interactions, or ‘games’, organised by artists Carson & Miller, to find new ways for Gallery visitors to explore the collections that make up the Archive and Special Books Collection.
Carson & Miller, a collaborative partnership formed by artists and academics Jonathan Carson and Rosie Miller, frequently use game-playing in their work as an alternative way for visitors to discover and engage with art, and as a means to make art themselves. Over the past year and a half, Carson & Miller have played games with the Archive, with a focus on chance and serendipity and inspired by the Gallery Archive’s significant collection of Surrealist material.
Some of the games took place in the Paolozzi Studio, an area in the Gallery which recreates the studio of Scottish sculptor Sir Eduardo Paolozzi and is very popular with visitors thanks to the numerous artefacts on display, including books, toys, machine parts and sculpture casts. Carson & Miller invited visitors to select items in the Studio which corresponded in some way to a letter of the alphabet; for example, a little girl, given the letter “A”, chose a plaster cast of a frog – “A” for “amphibian”. The object was retrieved by the Archivist who then discussed Paolozzi and his work with the child and the artists. The objects selected during this game will be on display in Archive Games.
Another game took place in the Keiller Library, a room which holds the book collection of British Surrealist painter Roland Penrose and where Archive Games is located. Carson & Miller invited visitors to select a book from the shelves, retrieved the publication and discussed it with the visitors and Archivist. Other games, similarly offering visitors the opportunity to select items for this exhibition, were played in the Archive Store which is located directly below where the exhibition is located and which is generally not open to the public.
Carson & Miller use game-playing for its potential to trigger chance encounters: the Archive functions with a systematic approach to classification and organisation, and games offer Gallery visitors an opportunity to look at the artworks in a different light. The artists’ focus on serendipity is a link to the Surrealists’ exploration of logic and the notion of order. Chance was indeed a crucial creative strategy for a many artists associated with Surrealism: it represented a release from the constraints of the rational world, and they saw it as a way of liberating imagery from convention.
Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “This is a fantastic way of opening up the archive collections to visitors and tapping into the spirit of Surrealism. There will be chances to interact and take part in archive games throughout the exhibition, which really brings the individual artists, writers and collectors to life through their personal photographs, diaries, letters and artworks.”
The new display has been helped made possible by players of People’s Postcode Lottery. National Galleries of Scotland have so far been awarded £891,513 from players.
Clara Govier, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery, said: “We’re really thrilled that players’ support has helped to bring this fascinating display to the National Galleries of Scotland. Through supporting this year’s programme of displays at the Keiller Library, we have discovered so much about the amazing archive held at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art – a real gem that often goes unnoticed. We’re particularly looking forward to seeing the fun visitors will have uncovering this spectacular collection for themselves.”
Carson & Miller are supported by University of Salford.
ENDS
Notes to Editors:
For more information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's Press Office on 0131 624 6314 / 6325 / 6332.
About the artists
Jonathan Carson and Rosie Miller form the collaborative partnership of Carson & Miller. Their work uses play and the game, exploring dialogue and exchange. Carson & Miller have produced a series of artists' books which have been acquired by a number of collections. In 2009 they curated The Story of Things for Manchester Metropolitan University Special Collections. Other work has featured in exhibitions in the UK, Finland, Argentina and Germany.
Carson & Miller have played a series of games in galleries and other settings in Liverpool, Manchester, Berlin, Edinburgh and Nicosia. Carson & Miller have spoken and written about their work in a number of contexts, including presentations in Belgium, Canada, the USA and the UK, and texts in publications including the journal Image [&] Narrative (2011), the books The Photograph & the Album and The Reflexive Photographer (both MuseumsEtc, 2013) and Not a day without a line: understanding artist’s writings (Academia Press, 2013). Just published by Carson & Miller is the article Negotiating the Archive in the Journal of Writing in Creative Practice (volume 7, number 3, Intellect Journals), which reflects on their game-playing in SNGMA’s archive. Forthcoming is Here […] There: A Game of Childhood for a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education (Taylor & Francis).
Both are academics in the School of Arts & Media at University of Salford (UK), where Jonathan is Associate Dean Academic (Enhancement) and Rosie is Acting Director of Art & Design and Critical & Contextual Studies Area Leader.
About the Keiller Library and the Archive
The Library consists of around 50,000 items (including monographs, exhibition catalogues, ephemera relating to modern and contemporary art etc.) and its great strengths are a world-class resource of material relating to Dada and Surrealism. Artists’ books and special books are held in the Archive and Special Collections, which contain over 120 holdings relating to 20th and 21st century artists, collectors and art organisations.
PHILL JUPITUS COMES BACK TO THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND THIS SUMMER
Sketch Comic
7 – 27 August 2015
NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
Admission free
0131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org
#SketchComic
The celebrated, award-winning stand-up comic, performance poet and broadcast personality Phill Jupitus will return to the National Galleries of Scotland this summer with Sketch Comic. Part of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the show highlights his deep love of art and follows on from the success of a hugely popular run last summer.
From 7 to 27 August, Phill will spend his mornings at the National Galleries of Scotland, sketching some of his favourite works on his iPad and encouraging visitors to watch, join in, and share their own sketches. During those weeks Wednesday mornings will be dedicated to Sketch Comic for Kids!, sessions designed for under 12s to come in and sketch with Phill. On Thursday evenings, Phill will host a free special talk about his love of painting and the experience of sketching in the Galleries; special guests, including artists, will join him onstage for each talk.
The National Galleries of Scotland comprises three galleries in Edinburgh and looks after a world-famous collection, ranging from the sixteenth-century to the present day. One of the artworks to be sketched will be Roy Lichtenstein’s In the Car (1963), a favourite of Phill’s and one of the most popular works amongst our visitors. The Pop Art painting is currently on show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art as part of the free ARTIST ROOMS: Roy Lichtenstein exhibition.
Perhaps best known as a team captain on the popular BBC Two pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Phill Jupitus is a multi-talented artist whose repertoire includes poetry, acting, radio DJ and drawing. Phill will use his iPad and the “Paper” app, which works as a sketchbook and allows artists to capture drawings and illustrations with a stylus, to sketch one work a day at each Gallery.
Sketch Comic will take place from 10am-12pm at the Scottish National Gallery from 7 to 13 August, followed by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from 14 to 20 August, and a final week at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art from 21 to 27 August. The lectures will take place at the Hawthornden Lecture Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, from 7-8pm on 13, 20 and 27 August. The lectures are free and unticketed. Phill will be joined onstage by ‘mystery guests’ – artists and art specialists – with details will be announced closer to the date.
Sketch Comic was held in August 2014 and proved hugely popular with gallery visitor of all ages, who joined Phill for sketching sessions across the National Galleries of Scotland, and a joined audience of over 300 spectators for his Thursday evening talks.
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HEAD TO HEAD: PORTRAIT SCULPTURE
6 June 2015 – 10 January 2016
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission Free |0131 624 6200
#NGSHeadtoHead
A rich and inspiring exhibition of portrait sculptures, drawn from the extraordinary breadth of the National Galleries of Scotland collection, opens in Edinburgh this week. Head to Head, at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from 6 June, brings together around 50 sculpted works in a huge variety of styles and media, dating from antiquity to the present day.
Head to Head explores the many ways in which sculptors have treated and re-imagined that most engaging and most primal subject, the human head. The exhibition creates an arresting dialogue between works which range in size from less than 3 cm. wide (a portrait gem by James Tassie, c.1780) to more than and 3 m. tall (Stephan Balkenhol’s Grosser Mann (Large Man), from 1988). It includes Scottish and European works and examples from a staggering range of traditions – Antique, Renaissance, Baroque, Neo-classical and Modern. The exhibition is spectacularly staged in the Portrait Gallery’s contemporary space on the ground floor, and is the first National Galleries show to feature sculptures drawn from all three collections for many years.
Head to Head illustrates how sculptors continue to work within the tradition of the portrait bust as well as seeking to break free from it, and starts by considering definitions of what a sculpted portrait is. Works here range from conventional to more abstract representations of the model, such as Scottish Pop Art artist Gerald Laing’s bronze head Galina 3 (1974). Part of a series of busts depicting the artist’s wife, this futuristic-looking head replaces facial features with a smooth, reflective metal-like surface.
Laing’s stylised portrait echoes John Duncan Fergusson’s Eástre (Hymn to the Sun) (1924). For his brass portrait of Eástre, the Saxon goddess of Easter, the Scottish Colourist chose a highly polished, golden surface; the work is placed among a selection of sculptures illustrating the various materials available to artists and the different ways they have been used.
Also part of this group is John Davies’ striking Figure on a Swing, made in 1981-1984. Cast in fibreglass, it shows a naked male figure whose ghost-like form was inspired in part by Davies’ memories of a circus he was taken every year to as a child. It will be directly suspended from a beam on the ceiling so as to catch the eye of visitors as they walk into the exhibition.
A third group of sculptures will encourage visitors to consider the function of portrait busts, whether they were created to convey a message or were made for a particular purpose other than being a directly identifiable portrait. This is for instance evident in Nancy Grossman’s Head (1968), which was carved in wood and trussed up in leather to conjure feelings of claustrophobia and vulnerability. Grossman, one of the leading feminist artists of the period, has stated that her head sculptures were a response to restrictions she felt during her childhood.
The oldest sculpture in the show was made around the late 1st century BC - early 1st century AD. Head of a Young Man, a marble bust found in the Greek city of Thebes, is from the Scottish National Gallery’s collection. The most recent work will be Untitled, another marble bust, but one created in 2013 by Edinburgh-based artist Jonathan Owen and recently acquired by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
For Untitled Owen carved directly into the head of a nineteenth-century portrait, turning it into a cage formed from an intricate three-dimensional star pattern, with a marble sphere trapped inside. Owen’s transformation of the original bust into a new object illustrates one of the ways artists continue to reference the tradition of the sculpted portrait, while also seeking to re-invent it. This theme will be further explored by Cesar’s Pouce (Thumb) (1965-1968), a bronze based on a cast of the French artist’s own thumb which conveys his individuality and identity, but without making reference to his head and face at all.
Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “’Head to Head’ represents a fresh and dramatic way of making us think about figurative sculpture and the endless, rich variations artists have brought to its forms – whether traditional or radical. It provides an introduction to the wealth of the Galleries’ sculptural collections and many of the fascinating issues around the creation and viewing them.”
The National Galleries of Scotland wish to express their gratitude to Walter and Norma Nimmo whose generous support has enabled them to mount this exhibition.
ENDS
STUNNING SELF-PORTRAIT BY RENOWNED COLOURIST ACQUIRED FOR SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
A stunning self-portrait by the renowned Scottish Colourist painter F C B Cadell, has been acquired by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, where it will go on public display for the first time since its acquisition this week. Painted in 1914, it was a highlight of the hugely successful retrospective exhibition of Cadell’s work held in 2011-12. The painting has been purchased with a very generous grant of £100,000 from the Art Fund and significant support from the Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland. It will be hung in the Gallery’s Great Hall, to complement the current exhibition Collecting Now, which focuses on the Gallery’s growing collection.
Like his fellow Colourists, J D Fergusson and S J Peploe, Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell (1883-1937) spent time living in Paris in the early years of the twentieth century and was influenced by direct contact with avant-garde artists working there. In the period immediately before the First World War Cadell was based in a grand studio in the centre of his home city, Edinburgh. He revelled in the northern light of the Scottish capital, the beauty of its architecture and the elegance of its inhabitants, making them the subject matter of his art.
This seminal self-portrait is an early, personal artistic manifesto. Following a trip to Venice in 1910, Cadell’s handling of paint became looser and his use of colour bolder. He developed a palette based on white, cream and black, enlivened with highlights of strong colour, and applied with feathery, impressionist brushstrokes. The self-portrait was rapidly and thinly painted so the texture and tone of the neutral ground is visible, creating a foil for the pulses of colour on the still life, palette and face.
In this bravura performance Cadell declares his allegiance to artists such as Whistler, Lavery, Sargent, and in particular Manet, placing himself in the line of descent within the European painterly tradition. The picture demonstrates his self-confidence and conviction in his chosen profession, and captures the qualities for which he became so well known – his charisma, affability and stylishness.
The year that the portrait was painted was of great significance to Cadell. He volunteered for active service immediately after war was declared in 1914, and spent the summer that year getting himself fit for battle. Here his palette is carried on his arm like a shield; there is the suggestion of brushes held in his right hand, but it could be a more martial object, like a rifle. He stands in front of one of his own richly coloured pictures, his brushes upright in a jug, his pipe clenched firmly between his teeth and his gaze directly engaging the viewer.
It seems particularly appropriate one hundred years after the portrait was painted, on the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, that the picture is acquired. It will make a very significant contribution not only to the early twentieth-century collection at the SNPG, but also to the Gallery’s outstanding collection of Scottish artists’ self-portraits, which includes examples by Peploe and Fergusson. This is the first portrait of Cadell to enter the Gallery’s collection, and indeed the first work by Cadell’s hand.
Speaking of the acquisition, Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery said: “The Cadell self-portrait is a major addition to the Gallery’s collection, which we are confident will prove immensely popular. The artist is seen here at the height of his powers; he has created a scintillating, defiant and celebratory image, a great statement about the pleasure and vocation of painting and a work that places Scottish achievement within a European setting. We are very grateful to the Art Fund and Patrons of the National Galleries, without whom this outstanding acquisition would not have been possible.”
Stephen Deuchar, Director of the Art Fund, said: “We are so pleased to be supporting the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in acquiring its first work by F C B Cadell, one of the most ambitious and important Scottish artists of his generation. It’s an arresting self-portrait, perfectly suited to the SNPG’s collection, and promises to be hugely popular amongst visitors.”
ENDS
Notes to Editors
The Art Fund
The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art, driven by the belief that everyone should have access to great art. In the past 5 years the Art Fund has given £34m to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections. The Art Fund also helps museums share their collections with wider audiences by supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including ARTIST ROOMS and the 2013–18 Aspire tour of Tate’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows by John Constable, and makes additional grants to support the training and professional development of curators.
The Art Fund is independently funded, with the core of its income provided by 117,000 members who receive the National Art Pass and enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions. In addition to grant-giving, the Art Fund’s support for museums includes the annual Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year (won by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 2014), a publications programme and a range of digital platforms including a website and the Art Guide app, promoting a network of over 650 museums and galleries across the country.
Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org.
Please contact Madeline Adeane, the Press Relations Manager, on 020 7225 4804 or [email protected]
The Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland
The NGS Patrons provide invaluable support for the work of the Galleries, including generous financial assistance for our acquisitions, exhibitions and major projects.
Collecting Now is at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, from 8 May to 20 September 2015.
Admission Free | 0131 624 6200
#NGSCollectingNow
This exhibition of nearly 50 paintings, drawings and photographs in celebrates some of the modern works which have recently entered the Gallery collection, many of which are being shown for the first time. Highlights include works by influential photographers Eve Arnold, Viviane Sassen and David Peat, and portraits of key Scottish figures like poet Edwin Morgan and actor Alan Cumming.
The Amazing World of M. C. Escher
27 June – 27 September 2015
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DS
Admission: £9/7 | 0131 624 6200
#NGSEscher
The National Galleries of Scotland is set to host the UK’s first ever major retrospective of the work of Dutch graphic artist Maurits Cornelis Escher (1898-1972), more commonly known as M.C. Escher.
The Amazing World of M.C. Escher will explore the work of an artist of astonishing ingenuity and originality, a one-man art movement who created some of the most famous and popular images in modern art whilst operating quietly at the fringes of the art world.
Escher created fascinating and often impossible worlds, such as staircases with no beginning or end (Ascending and Descending, 1960), landscapes with illusory dual perspectives (Still Life and Street, 1937) and scenes where both two-and three-dimensional planes seamlessly meld into each other (Reptiles, 1943).
Over 100 works, including original drawings, prints, mezzotints, woodcuts and lithographs, will go on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, having been lent by the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague in Escher’s country of birth, The Netherlands.
Escher remains one of the great conundrums of modern art. Tightly-woven into the fabric of twentieth-century visual culture, Escher’s work is as instantly recognisable as anything by Surrealist artists such as René Magritte (1898-1967) or Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), yet his name has retained relative anonymity with British audiences.
He was not affiliated with the Surrealists, but his work has much in common with Magritte and Dalí; all three created fantastic worlds in eye-fooling detail, making the impossible look believable; all three were fastidious about technique, became immensely popular in the 1960s and produced iconic artworks. Yet the Dutchman – having opted for a life of calm and privacy – had nothing to do with either artist or the Surrealist group.
Escher’s work brought him considerable fame, though unlike Dalí, the reserved Dutch artist lamented his celebrity status, even raising his prices in an unsuccessful effort to dampen sales, since re-printing earlier works meant diverting his attention from new work. He reluctantly accepted a knighthood from the Dutch Crown but refused to wear the medal and famously turned down a plea from Mick Jagger to design a Rolling Stones album cover.
Despite his ingenuity and continuing popularity – an Escher exhibition held in Rio de Janeiro in 2011 was the most popular art show in the world that year – there seems to be only one Escher print in a British public collection.
Throughout the decades Escher’s work has become truly ubiquitous, pervading popular culture in a way few other artists have achieved. His images have appeared on album covers (Mott The Hoople), his concepts in films both classic (Labyrinth) and contemporary (Inception), and countless homages to the artist have surfaced on television (The Simpsons, Family Guy) and in video games (Lemmings).
Yet while familiar from reproductions, a British audience rarely has the opportunity to view Escher originals ‘in the flesh’. The exhibition, which has been realised thanks to the generosity of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, offers an unprecedented opportunity to rediscover a giant of twentieth-century art, juxtaposing some of his most-celebrated prints with his lesser known lithographs and woodcuts.
Escher flourished under the mentorship of artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita, at the School of Architecture and Decorative Arts in Haarlem. With their bold lines and striking contrast of black and white, in Escher’s early monochromatic woodcuts White Cat (1919) and Portrait of a Man (1920) can be seen his mentor’s creative influence.
Travel also proved important, with impactful visits to Italy and Spain, particularly the Alhambra in Granada, where Escher became enraptured by the Moorish fortress’ tiled walls of tessellated mosaics. The artist would go on to master this difficult and intricate form, with most of his work revealing a strong yet seemingly-intuitive understanding of mathematics and geometry.
This is no more evident than in Metamorphosis II (1939). Nearly four metres in length, this highly imaginative woodcut has tessellations both simple and complex effortlessly merging into each other; from fish to birds; from hives to bees; from simple blocks to stretching panoramas which then morph into chess pieces. Itself an enormous and cyclical tessellation, Metamorphosis II is a masterpiece of graphic know-how and artistic dexterity.
While there is little correspondence with other notable artists, Escher often communicated with – and absorbed much from – academics, most notably British-born geometer H.S.M. Coxeter (1907-2003) and mathematician Sir Roger Penrose (b. 1931).
After a fortuitous series of events at the International Congress of Mathematics held in Amsterdam in September 1954, both Coxeter and Penrose were quick to grasp the complexities and originality of the artist’s work.
Coexter played a small part in the artist’s series of Circle Limits, a sequence of works which are clear evidence of Escher’s stunning intuitive grasp of symmetry, geometry and complex mathematical principles.
Astonished by House of Stairs (1951) and Relativity (1953), through correspondence Penrose went onto become hugely influential in the creation of two of Escher’s most celebrated works, Ascending and Descending (1960) – which depicts figures locked in a staircase without start or end – and Waterfall (1961), where Penrose’s “impossible triangle” was thrice-slotted into the picture to create a flowing yet physics-defying water structure.
Exploring a unique artist whose imagery has become part of our common visual language, The Amazing World of M.C. Escher will also feature a selection of Escher archive material, including preparatory sketches, the tools the artist used and documents showing the influence of Coexter and Penrose.
After its showing at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, the exhibition will travel to the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London.
Patrick Elliott, Senior Curator of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “There are two qualities an artist needs to become a great artist: imagination and technique, and Escher had both in spades. There aren’t many artists whose work makes your jaw drop, but he’s one of them. The odd thing isn’t that we are showing Escher’s work, it’s that few people thought of showing him before”.
Benno Tempel, Director of the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, said: “The beautiful thing with Escher is that people of all ages – from children to grownups – immediately appreciate his work. For many people he is their first acquaintance with art.”
The Edinburgh exhibition has been generously sponsored by Aegon. Adrian Grace, Chief Executive Officer of Aegon UK, said: “We’re delighted to be supporting this fascinating exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Escher created unique and fascinating works and we’re sure visitors to the exhibition will enjoy the experience of seeing these mesmerising prints and drawings first-hand. This is the first time that we have sponsored the arts in Scotland, and we’re thrilled that our new relationship with the National Galleries of Scotland has been successful in receiving additional support from Arts & Business Scotland through their New Arts Sponsorship Grant scheme.”
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Notes to Editors
The exhibition includes over 100 prints and drawings stretching across Escher’s whole career, and is drawn in its entirety from the collection of the Gemeentemueseum in The Hague in the Netherlands, which holds an almost complete set of Escher’s prints.
It is also mounted in collaboration with the Escher in Het Palais, a museum of Escher’s work which opened in the centre of The Hague in 2002.
Further support to the exhibition has been kindly given by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
The New Arts Sponsorship Grants scheme incentivises businesses to sponsor the arts in Scotland. It is funded by the Scottish Government and administered by Arts & Business Scotland. An arts organisation receiving an eligible business sponsorship can apply for £1 of funding for every £1 of sponsorship. The funding goes towards additional arts activity, for which the sponsor receives additional business benefits. www.aandbscotland.org.uk
LEE MILLER AND PICASSO
23 May − 6 September 2015
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission £9/£7 | 0131 624 6200
#NGSMillerPicasso
The friendship between Pablo Picasso and the world-renowned photographer Lee Miller will be the subject of a stunning new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this summer. This fascinating relationship, between the greatest artist of the twentieth century and the beautiful model, who became a skilled and highly influential photographer, spanned 36 years, from their first meeting in 1937 to Picasso’s death in 1973.
Over the course of their friendship Miller photographed Picasso more than a thousand times, and the artist, in turn, created a remarkable series of portraits of Lee. Lee Miller and Picasso has been organised by the Lee Miller Archives, and will include 100 photographs, as well as Picasso’s striking Portrait of Lee Miller as l’Arlesienne, painted in 1937.
Highlights will range from intimate snapshots taken on the beaches of the South of France in the late 1930s, to memorable images of the Picasso’s famous visit to Britain in 1950, when he stayed with Miller and her husband Roland Penrose at their Sussex farm. A touching photograph taken on the liberation of Paris in 1944 when Miller, a war photographer with the US forces, was reunited with Picasso, is one many images in the exhibition which capture the artist amidst the chaos of his studio. Miller continued to make regular trips to visit Picasso until the early 1970s, and her studio shots offer a fascinating insight into the working methods of this restlessly creative genius.
Lee Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, New York in 1907. Interested in photography from a young age, she became a fashion model and found fame as a cover-girl for magazines such as American Vogue. On moving to Paris in 1929 she sought out the photographer Man Ray, and became involved with the Surrealist movement with which he was closely associated. Miller spent three years working alongside Man Ray as his muse, model and studio assistant, quickly becoming an accomplished photographer in her own right.
Lee left Man Ray in 1932, and established her own successful studio in New York. She first met Picasso in the summer of 1937, when she travelled to Mougins in the South of France with Penrose, the British Surrealist artist. The pair had recently met in Paris and become lovers; they would marry ten years later. Picasso painted Miller six times during her stay, creating works such as his Portrait of Lee Miller as l’Arlesienne, which Penrose bought for Lee for £50. Picasso also featured prominently in Miller’s photographs of the trip, along with Man Ray and his new partner Ady Fidelin, and other Surrealist friends such as Eileen Agar, the poet Paul Éluard and his wife Nusch. Intimate photos show the group, who were all staying at Picasso’s villa, enjoying a relaxed picnic lunch, smiling on a sunny terrace, as well as Picasso playing in the sea with his toddler son Claude.
In 1942 Miller became one of only six accredited women war correspondents, and the only woman photo-reporter active in European combat areas during World War II. She contributed war documentary stories and photographs to Vogue, including photos of the London Blitz, dispatches on the battles in Normandy and the liberation of Paris. Arriving in the city with American troops she found herself outside the studio still used by Picasso, whom she had not seen since before the war, and immediately visited him. The remarkable photograph, published in Vogue in October 1944, with the title “Lee Miller, Vogue photographer, arrived, went to see old friends”, shows Miller in uniform, and the pair smiling at each other in delight at their unexpected reunion. Picasso had declared “This is marvellous, this is the first Allied soldier I have seen, and it’s you!”
In 30 April 1945, on the day that Hitler committed suicide, Miller was with some of the first forces to enter the death camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. Later that day, she and fellow war photographer David E. Scherman found themselves in an empty flat in Munich which turned out to be Hitler’s. Scherman captured Miller washing off the horror of the day in Hitler’s bathtub, her muddy combat boots on the bathmat, in a shot that has since become iconic. The traumatizing experience of photographing the death camps would haunt Miller for the rest of her life.
Miller and Penrose married in 1947 and their son Antony was born a few months later. In 1949 they moved to Farley Farm in Sussex, where they were frequently visited by friends and key figures in the art world, including the artist Max Ernst, Alfred Barr (director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York), and of course Picasso. During his 1950 stay the artist developed a particular bond with the three-year-old Antony, which is evident in a remarkable series of photographs taken by Lee.
Lee Miller and Picasso will also feature a selection of rare archival material, including telegrams sent by Miller to Penrose from Germany in May 1945, and the couple’s wedding photo.
Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “This engrossing exhibition allows us to explore the intimate and creative friendship between two extraordinary figures: the greatest painter of the twentieth century and one of the most inspiring and adventurous photographers. Providing insights into their private and public lives, it will, we hope, enrich appreciation in particular of Lee Miller’s achievement and her amazing career. The exhibition is a major contribution to the increasingly ambitious programme of photography projects at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.”
Antony Penrose, Director of the Lee Miller Archives and son of Lee Miller and Roland Penrose, said: “My parents’ friendship with Picasso was a central part of their lives. Beginning from the camaraderie and ideals shared on the beaches of the Côte d’Azur it developed rapidly into a love and creative collaboration. Roland Penrose became Picasso’s biographer, the curator of key exhibitions and regarded as “The Picasso Man”. Lee Miller lovingly chronicled the men and their achievements. It is fortunate she loved them both as much as she did. A lesser devotion would not have allowed her to tolerate Penrose’s obsessive passion for Picasso. My family’s connection to the National Galleries of Scotland goes back many decades, and this exhibition gives me a particularly deep satisfaction. Its inclusion of brilliantly chosen objects from The Roland Penrose Archive, situated in Modern Two, brings us much of the intimate back story behind Miller’s photographs in a way never shown before, and takes both Picasso and Miller’s work to a new level of understanding.”
Lee Miller and Picasso is part of the IPS (Institute for Photography in Scotland) 2015 Season of Photography, a series of lively exhibitions and events taking place across Scotland from April to September 2015.
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Notes to editors:
For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's Press Office on 0131 624 6314 / 6332 / 6247 or at [email protected].
About the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery:
Lee Miller and Picasso is being shown in the Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery and is part of a continuing series of photography exhibitions (including Jitka Hanzlova and Viviane Sassen:In and Out of Fashion) in the refurbished Scottish National Portrait Gallery. The Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery, named after the renowned American photographer, is supported by a very generous donation from The Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. This is being used over three years to produce innovative displays, exhibitions and research. The Gallery is the first purpose-built photography space of its kind in a major museum in Scotland.
About the Lee Miller Archives:
The Lee Miller Archives is a small privately run archive which is dedicated to conserving and publishing the work of Lee Miller. It supports itself entirely on the sale of rights and photographs produced from the original negatives printed by Carole Callow. Penrose Film Productions Ltd are the managing agents for the Lee Miller Archives.
The archive holding includes some 60,000 negatives, mainly black and white, most of her manuscripts, captions, notes, letters and ephemeral material, her cameras, and some of her personal effects such as her US Army uniform. A selection of prints may be viewed at dealers galleries in London and New York.
The viewing of the material at the Lee Miller Archives in East Sussex, England is limited and strictly by appointment only. Searches are done by the Archives staff, who can also undertake research projects by arrangement.
About the 2015 Season of Photography:
The 2015 Season of Photography is an initiative of the Institute for Photography in Scotland (IPS), and is a series of lively exhibitions and events taking place at multiple venues throughout Scotland from mid-April to the end of September 2015.
The Season illuminates the wealth of activity around photography in Scotland. This includes exhibitions and events at Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, Stills, Edinburgh, the National Galleries of Scotland, University of Glasgow, University of St. Andrews, and the National Museums of Scotland as well as exhibitions taking place across the country, from Fife FotoSpace to regional museum venues in Linlithgow, Kirkcaldy, Clydebank, Irvine and Hamilton.
ROCKS AND RIVERS: MASTERPIECES OF LANDSCAPE PAINTING FROM THE LUNDE COLLECTION
From 3 April 2015
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission FREE | 0131 624 6200
The Scottish National Gallery is to host an exhibition of masterpieces from one of the world’s finest private collections of 19th-Century Norwegian and Swiss landscape paintings. Thirteen stunning works, by artists such as Johan Christian Dahl, Alexandre Calame and Thomas Fearnley, will be lent by American collector and leading expert Asbjörn Lunde, and thanks to this long-term loan, are being shown in Scotland for the first time.
Rocks and Rivers will showcase an important but little-known chapter in 19th-century landscape painting. The artists represented, who include Caspar Wolf, Robert Zünd and Giuseppe Camino, travelled extensively, producing expansive views and intimate nature studies of locations in Scandinavia, Italy and Britain, as well as renowned sites in the Alps, such as Lake Lucerne and the Bernese Oberland.
Works by these masters are extremely rare in British public collections, and, for the duration of the loan, the Scottish National Gallery is set to be the only gallery in the UK where visitors can explore such a variety of their paintings.
The history of Norwegian landscape painting can be largely traced back to Dahl (1788-1857) and Fearnley (1802-1842). Born in Bergen and trained in Copenhagen, Dahl settled in Dresden, the cradle of German Romanticism, in 1818 and befriended the German artist Caspar David Friedrich. However, he returned to Norway five times thereafter and this is where he found inspiration for the three outstanding paintings included in the exhibition; View at Skjolden in Lyster (1843); Shipwreck on the Coast between Larvik en Frederiksvern (1847); and Study of a Rock from Nystuen on Filefjell (1850). They demonstrate the artist’s breadth and superb skills, with View at Skjolden in Lyster a perfect example of Dahl’s ability to capture the atmospheric Norwegian landscape.
Fearnley is regarded as Dahl’s outstanding pupil. He travelled widely, and in 1836-38 visited England, from where his grandfather had emigrated to Norway. Fearnley’s Fisherman at Derwentwater (1837) is a sublime depiction of the Lake District. Himself a keen fisherman, Fearnley included a figure carrying his catch and rod, the latter’s bold sweep dominating the composition.
Widely regarded as Switzerland’s greatest landscape painter, Alexandre Calame (1810-1864) created striking views of expansive mountains, dense forests and rushing torrents, which are indebted to the work of 17th-century Dutch landscape artists such as Jacob van Ruisdael. Calame trained in Geneva with François Diday, setting up his own studio in 1834 and soon becoming his teacher’s rival. Calame’s grand alpine landscapes were highly successful and he sold pictures to clients across Europe, Russia and the United States. Exhibited is Calame’s impressive A View of the Jungfrau Massif seen from above Interlaken, of about 1854-60. This iconic view is dominated by the Jungfrau (4,158m / 13,642ft), flanked by the Mönch, with the Eiger just visible top left. The heart of the Bernese Oberland, this region has been listed UNESCO World Heritage since 2001. Studies such as the mesmerising The River Lütschine near Lauterbrunn (1862), however, were exercises and records from his travels and Calame kept them in his studio.
Asbjörn Lunde, the son of Norwegian émigrés to the United States, began collecting in 1968. The first works he acquired were by Fearnley and fellow Norwegian Knud Baade. Now one of the world’s leading experts and collectors in this area, Lunde has since lent and gifted works to prestigious cultural institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum (New York), the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (Williamstown, MA), and The National Gallery of Australia (Canberra).
Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, said: “It is a privilege and a pleasure for the Scottish National Gallery to show these outstanding paintings from the Lunde Collection. We are delighted to present to our audiences the stunning works of these landscape masters, highlighting an important yet little-known chapter in nineteenth-century landscape painting”.
ENDS
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) is delighted to announce that the major redevelopment project for the Scottish National Gallery has passed the first crucial stage of the Heritage Lottery Fund’s (HLF) application process.
The £15.3 m renovation, entitled Celebrating Scotland’s Art: The Scottish National Gallery Project (SNG Project), will triple the Gallery’s exhibition space and radically improve access to its world-class collection of Scottish art. An application to the HLF for £4.94 m has now received Stage 1 approval.
This project will mark a fundamental change in the way the Gallery presents historical Scottish art. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery and the Project’s Director, said: “We are thrilled that this proposal has been passed to the next stage by the Heritage Lottery Fund. As holders of the world’s foremost collection of Scottish art, which includes such incomparable artists as Ramsay, Raeburn and Wilkie, our focus has always been on showing its significance and making it accessible to as wide a public as possible. Extending the Gallery space will transform the entire visitor experience."
Colin McLean, Head of the Heritage Lottery Fund in Scotland, said: “This collection of art is one of Scotland’s most precious belongings. It has the potential to delight, inspire and inform audiences from Scotland and across the world. We are delighted to give our initial support to a project which will allow many more of these outstanding paintings to be displayed and accommodate many more visitors. We look forward to seeing the plans for the transformation of the Scottish collection galleries develop.”
Designed by the Scottish architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857) and situated at The Mound in the centre of Edinburgh, the Scottish National Gallery is the most popular UK art gallery outside of London, attracting over 1.295 million visitors in 2014.
The ambition is to have the world’s most important collection of Scottish art realise its full potential, thus helping the public understand both the history and impact of Scottish art nationally and internationally.
The new presentation of Scotland’s art will combine a historical narrative, which will range from the 17th to the mid-20th century (including the Scottish Colourists), with dynamic and changing displays drawn from the riches of the collection.
The redevelopment will enhance visitor circulation throughout the Gallery and will take full advantage of advances in digital technology, to extend the reach of the collections to new audiences across the world. The project will also include an extensive programme of activity providing a wide range of opportunities for visitors, including digital, to engage with the Gallery and its collections.
Set to commence in 2016, the project will include the creation of a new landscaped public pathway and terrace, from the Princes St Gardens level, which will increase public access to the different parts of the NGS complex.
Gareth Hoskins Architects (GHA) – one of Scotland’s leading architectural practices – will oversee this major refurbishment. The practice has established its reputation for its design of arts and cultural schemes, and the SNG project follows recent major GHA developments, such as the RIAS Doolan Award-winning redevelopment of the National Museum of Scotland.
During the renovation, the Scottish National Gallery will remain open to the public with access to the spaces not affected by these plans. Construction is planned to commence in 2016, with works expected to be completed in the summer of 2018.
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Notes to Editors:
Gareth Hoskins Architects - Further Information
The practice has worked with a wide range of cultural organisations including the Victoria & Albert Museum, National Museums Scotland and the National Theatre for Scotland and is currently working with the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Strawberry Fields in Liverpool and Bird College of Arts in London. Further afield the practice designed Scotland’s pavilion for the Venice Biennale in 2008 and recently won the international competitions for the Landesmuseum in Schleswig Holstein, the redevelopment of the Berlin State Library and the World Museum in Vienna.
Brief history of the Scottish National Gallery
Designed by the architect William Henry Playfair (1790-1857), the Scottish National Gallery and the adjacent Royal Scottish Academy building stand in the heart of Edinburgh. Although originally built as separate structures, their histories have long been intertwined, and since the completion of the Playfair Project in 2004, they have been physically joined by the underground Gardens Entrance.
The National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) cares for, develops, researches and displays the national collection of Scottish and international fine art and, with a lively and innovative programme of exhibitions, education and publications, aims to engage, inform and inspire the broadest possible public.
Architecture
Playfair was Scotland’s leading architect of his era and was responsible for a number of Edinburgh buildings, although histwo galleries on The Mound are generally regarded as his finest. These two classical temples to the arts achieved a picturesque harmony with the dramatic backdrop of Edinburgh Castle.
The latest phase in The Mound’s history saw the completion of a link between the Royal Scottish Academy Building and the National Gallery of Scotland. Award-winning architects John Miller and Partners rose to the challenge of developing the two grand architectural pedigrees for modern use. The newly refurbished RSA is now a world-class exhibition space, while the underground Gardens Entrance houses a range of new visitor facilities, including the Clore Education Centre, a 200-seat lecture theatre and cinema, an IT Gallery and a 120-seat restaurant.
Other NGS redevelopment projects
The Scottish National Gallery underwent a transformation with the Playfair Project completed in 2004. This £32 m project included the complete refurbishment of the Royal Scottish Academy and the creation of an underground link between the SNG and the RSA, with additional visitor facilities such as a lecture theatre, café, restaurant and shop. The transformation allowed the site to become one of the key visitor attractions to the city.
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery reopened to the public on 1 December 2011 after a major £17.6 m refurbishment project. This was the first major refurbishment in the Gallery’s 120-year history and restored much of the architect’s original vision, opening up previously inaccessible parts of the building and increasing the public space by more than 60 percent.
SCOTLAND TO HOLD ITS FIRST INSTAGRAM #EMPTY EVENT AT THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will be the first museum or gallery in Scotland to host an Instagram #empty event this weekend. On the evening of 21 March, the Gallery will give 35 Instagrammers exclusive access to explore the building and its exhibitions after-hours, and share their photos with the wider social media community, using the #empty hashtag.
Instagram is an online mobile photo- and video-sharing app with over 300 million active users. Its #empty movement aims to provide access to iconic cultural institutions once they are closed to the public, providing avid Instagrammers with a rare opportunity to engage with these beautiful spaces in a unique way. Previous #empty events were held at Tate Modern, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Musée du Louvre, Paris; The Guggenheim, New York and The Royal Opera House, London.
Among the Instagrammers invited to the #empty event are @wilde_oates and @jemmacraig, whose hugely popular feeds are followed by over 220,000 combined users. From 6pm on 21 March, photos from the #empty event will be shared on Instagram with the hashtags #empty, #emptyscotmodern and #WWIM11_Edinburgh. Additional images will be available on the National Galleries of Scotland’s own Instagram feed @natgalleriessco.
The #empty event will coincide with the Worldwide InstaMeet 11 (#WWIM11), taking place on 21 and 22 March where Instagrammers from across the world organise events to meet and take photos.
Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art said: “We are delighted to open our doors to the Instagram community. Visiting the Gallery and our exhibitions outside of our opening times is a rare opportunity, and we hope it will be an inspiring experience. I look forward to seeing their photos.”
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NOTES TO EDITORS
Exhibitions currently on show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) are:
ARTIST ROOMS Roy Lichtenstein
A special three-room display dedicated to works by renowned American artist Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997), one of the most radical and influential artists of the twentieth century.
20th Century: Masterpieces of Scottish and International Art
A historical overview of some of the most remarkable art made during the last century, the display shows the best of Scottish art alongside modern European masters including artists like William Turnbull, FCB Cadell, Steven Campbell, Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon and Oskar Kokoschka.
REFLECTIONS: A series of changing displays of Contemporary Art
A dynamic and changing set of displays showcasing the work of a diverse range of internationally-renowned contemporary artists, including works by Louise Lawler, Taryn Simon, Cathy Wilkes, Martin Creed, Grabriel Orozco and Abraham Cruzvillegas.
SURREAL ROOTS: FROM WILLIAM BLAKE TO ANDRÉ BRETON 28 March − 5 July 2015 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART(Modern Two) 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh EH4 3DS Admission free | 0131 624 6200 Rare copies of publications by revolutionary writers and artists William Blake, Lewis Carroll and the Marquis de Sade will go on show at Modern Two this spring, as part of a new display exploring the roots of the ground-breaking Surrealist movement. Surreal Roots: From William Blake to André Breton will combine 18th and 19th century publications, rarely shown to the public, with 20th century publications by key Surrealist figures such as Salvador Dalí. The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), Blake (1757-1827) and Carroll (1832-1898) were controversial figures whose writings challenged the religious and sexual taboos of their time. Some of the Marquis de Sade’s most controversial texts, including 120 Days of Sodom (1785) and Justine (1791), will be on display as part of the selection of boundary-pushing works that inspired the Surrealists. Surrealism started in the 1920s in Paris, led by the French writer André Breton. The movement included artists Salvador Dalí and Rene Magritte, and was partly characterised by the scepticism of the generation that experienced the First World War. Surrealists drew on Freud’s work with psychoanalysis, specifically his theory that our memories and most basic instincts are stored in a layer of the human mind he called the unconscious, and looked to explore these through writing and art. The poet and printmaker William Blake is another key figure whose visionary imagination appealed to the Surrealists. Surreal Roots will feature a rare 1797 copy of fellow poet Edward Young’s The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, for which Blake produced striking engravings based on his delicate watercolours. Blake produced a series of 537 watercolours, of which only 43 were selected for publication; the Surrealist poet André Breton described Young’s Night-Thoughts as ‘surrealist from end to end’. Two additional works on paper by Blake, on loan from the Scottish National Gallery collection, will compliment this rare first edition. Other rare works included in the display will be Lewis Carroll’s original publications from the 1870s, such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. Carroll helped popularise the genre of literary nonsense with his use of other-worldly situations, and riddles which defy logic and language conventions. His writing appealed to a number of writers and artists in the Surrealist group, and these books will be shown alongside writing and illustrations by André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Hans Bellmer and Max Ernst. The works on show draw primarily from the library of Roland Penrose (1900–1984), artist and patron closely involved in the Surrealist movement. Penrose forged friendships with writers and artists including Max Ernst, Paul Eluard and Joan Miró. Coming from a wealthy Quaker banking family, he inherited a number of antiquarian books from his grandfather, Baron Peckover, including works by William Blake, Milton, Dante and Oscar Wilde. Penrose built upon this literary foundation, adding to the library works by those writers and artists who inspired the Surrealists, as well as publications by the Surrealists themselves. Simon Groom, Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “Surreal Roots will showcase some of the highlights of our special books collection, with publications by subversive writers such as William Blake, the Marquis de Sade and Lewis Carroll, shown alongside the revolutionary texts and illustrations by the Surrealists which they inspired.” Clara Govier, Head of Charities at People’s Postcode Lottery, commented: “We’re delighted that support from players of People’s Postcode Lottery has been used to enable the National Galleries of Scotland to bring so many exhibitions and activities to life, and we’re particularly looking forward to Surreal Roots – a very rare treat. The special books collection at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is a world-class resource, and we are thrilled that players’ support is helping the Galleries showcase some of these truly enchanting works.” – Ends –
REFLECTIONS: A SERIES OF CHANGING DISPLAYS OF CONTEMPORARY ART 14 March 2015 − 10 January 2016 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART (Modern One) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR Admission FREE | 0131 624 6200 #NGSReflections The work of a diverse range of internationally-renowned contemporary and modern artists is to be showcased throughout 2015 in REFLECTIONS, a dynamic new series of displays at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Major works from the Gallery’s permanent collection will be shown alongside important loans to highlight the many ways in which artists engage with, and reflect upon, the world around them, raising questions about society, the human form, materials, image-making and art itself. REFLECTIONS includes recent work by British artists such as Cathy Wilkes and Martin Creed, the Americans Louise Lawler and Taryn Simon, and Mexican artists Gabriel Orozco and Abraham Cruzvillegas. The exhibition’s title was suggested by a number of large-scale prints by American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, which feature in a new ARTIST ROOMS exhibition, as part of the programme At the heart of REFLECTIONS will be a selection of almost 50 drawings, prints and photographs of the human head, drawn from the National Galleries of Scotland’s historic, modern and contemporary collections. This fascinating display shows the incredible variety of approaches that artists have used in reflecting upon our sense of being in the world, and how we reflect ourselves to other people. Among the highlights will be two outstanding works by Pablo Picasso, including a recently-acquired cubist drawing, Head (1912). The display also includes works from many different periods and styles to explore how ideas around the head have changed. It includes, for example, traditional portraits, such as Lorenzo Lotto’s 480 year-old Portrait of a Bearded Man and Edvard Munch’s Self-Portrait 1895, as well as more experimental treatments by Karl-Schmidt-Rottluf (St Francis, 1919); Francis Picabia (Subtlety, 1928); Eduardo Paolozzi (Head, 1946); Andy Warhol (Jacqueline Kennedy II, 1965); and Douglas Gordon (Monster, 1996/1997). Other highlights of REFLECTIONS include a newly-acquired work by the acclaimed American photographer, Taryn Simon, A Living Man Declared Dead and Other Chapters (2008-11). Produced over a four-year period, these photographic prints were made after Simon (b.1975) travelled the world researching and recording family lineages and their related stories. Each chapter contains a sequence of portraits and a central text panel containing narratives and footnote images. Absences, as a result of factors including imprisonment and military service, are included as ‘empty portraits’ to powerful effect. The work on show here, Chapter VIII, one of 18 chapters in the larger project, maps the devastating effects of foetal Thalidomide absorption through generations of one Scottish bloodline. Martin Creed (b.1968) will be unveiling a newly-commissioned wall drawing made in response to Modular Structures (Sequential Permutations on the Number Five) 1972, a ‘structure’ work by the American minimalist artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). Employing a patchwork of over 170 different colours, this bright and expansive new wall painting will be shown alongside a series of Creed’s drawings and a recent work on canvas. REFLECTIONS also marks the first time the work of influential American artist Louise Lawler will be shown in Scotland. Lawler is primarily known for using photography but her practice encompasses a range of media. The works on display at Modern One are part of a series of ‘tracings’ Lawler first made in 2013. For these, she selected a number of her own photographs and collaborated with a children’s illustrator to transform her compositions into line drawings, like those found in colouring books. Printed onto vinyl then pasted onto the gallery wall, the resulting images show the work of other artists, captured in a range of locations, from collectors’ homes to museum stores. Focusing on how objects have been arranged, and with domestic furniture, crates and trolleys given as much emphasis as the artworks themselves, these works explore how the specific context affects how we see and experience an artwork. Also on display is a room devoted to work by two Mexican artists, Gabriel Orozco (b. 1962) and Abraham Cruzvillegas (b.1968). The Pinched series by Orozco features three beautiful abstract sculptures cast in highly reflective aluminium, which are scaled-up versions of shapes created by the artist pinching together a small piece of wax between his thumb and forefinger. Accompanying these works is a sculpture by Abraham Cruzvillegas entitled El Travieso (An Emotional Craft) 2012. Composed from a diverse range of materials primarily sourced by the artist in Mexico City and California, the work draws on the culture, music and dress of the Parisian Zazou, Californian Zoot Suiters and Mexican Pachuco movements. The display will also feature We Are Pro Choice (2007), an important installation by the Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes (b.1966), as well as video works by the French artist Aurélien Froment. In Fourdrinier Machine Interlude (2010) – one of two featured videos by Dublin-based Froment – focus is turned to the intricate inner workings of the industrial paper machine. The camera follows back and forth the paper stock from the small tank, through the rotating grid of the machine in action, to the presses and dryers until it becomes a roll of paper. Overlaid is the voice of a child reading a text that takes the viewer back to the invention of paper making, through the shift from craft to industry, and ending with the invention of large-scale mass production. Rooms will change over the course of the year, and details of upcoming rehangs will be advertised through our website and social media channels. Simon Groom, Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “REFLECTIONS promises to be an extremely popular series of displays covering a wide range of subjects and styles, offering a really good insight into the diverse ways in which artists from around the world reflect upon and construct images of the real”. ENDS
ARTIST ROOMS: ROY LICHTENSTEIN 14 March 2015 − 10 January 2016 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART (Modern One) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR Admission FREE | 0131 624 6200 #ARTISTROOMS / #RoyLichtenstein A fascinating new exhibition devoted to the ground-breaking American Pop artist Roy Lichtenstein is to open at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh this spring. Part of the ARTIST ROOMS collection and touring programme for 2015, this first presentation of newly-assembled works is made possible by the great generosity of the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation, New York. ARTIST ROOMS: Roy Lichtenstein will be complemented at SNGMA by a group exhibition entitled Reflections, which takes the American artist’s work as a point of departure. Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) is among the most influential artists of the post-war period. He was a pioneer of Pop Art, the movement which came to prominence in New York in the early 1960s and ushered in a new era in art history. His instantly recognisable style, particularly his signature version of the Benday dot technique used in commercial printing, mimicked the mechanised, industrial look of mass-produced images. Drawing on commercial advertisements, comic books and cartoons for source material, Lichtenstein’s blurring of the boundaries between high and low culture would profoundly influence future generations. The exceptional scope and richness of Lichtenstein’s work continues to provoke questions about the ways that images permeate our lives. This major three-room display will have at its centre 16 large-scale prints made in the 1990s which were recently placed on long-term loan to ARTIST ROOMS by the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. These will be shown alongside iconic works dating from the 1960s, including the important early comic book painting In the Car (1963), from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s collection; and a bold, painted steel relief, Wall Explosion (1965), on loan from Tate in London. These works explore some of the major themes that preoccupied Roy Lichtenstein throughout his career, with a particular focus on his fascination with reflections and mirroring. Reflections: Art (1988), an important large oil painting on loan from a private collection, will be complemented by five prints from the eponymous Reflections series. Made in 1990, these look back to the artist’s Pop Art period and feature images based on comic book stories of romance and war. Represented as though seen through glass, the images are partly obscured by abstract bands of colour, collaged elements, parallel lines and Lichtenstein’s trademark dots, which cleverly evoke the play of light across a glazed surface. The exhibition also highlights Lichtenstein’s engagement with the history of art, evident in his playful reworking of the imagery of the giants of modern art such as Picasso and Monet. His two Modern Art prints from 1996 present Cubist-inspired portraits of comic book beauties. Shown beside these are examples from his Water Lilies series, which pays homage to Monet’s famous, late Nymphéas paintings. Lichtenstein’s large-scale versions are produced on steel, using complex printing processes that produce reflections and suggest the pattern of shimmering light as it hits water. Late in his career Lichtenstein took up one of art history’s primary subjects, the female nude, as well as a series of Compositions expressing his lifelong appreciation of music, improvisation and composition. These witty visualisations show musical notes floating free from the stave and breaking out beyond the picture frame. For further information about the ARTIST ROOMS collection, and about the touring programme please visit www.nationalgalleries.org/artistrooms and www.tate.org.uk/artistrooms ENDS Notes to editors ARTIST ROOMS ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions are from the collection assembled by Anthony d’Offay. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate and was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is a partnership with Arts Council England, the Art Fund, and in Scotland, Creative Scotland, making available the ARTIST ROOMS collection to galleries and museums throughout the UK. Intended to inspire audiences, particularly young people, there have been more than 130 ARTIST ROOMS exhibitions, seen by over 31 million visitors since the touring programme was launched in 2009. Creative Scotland Creative Scotland is the public body that supports the arts, screen and creative industries across all parts of Scotland on behalf of everyone who lives, works or visits here. We enable people and organisations to work in and experience the arts, screen and creative industries in Scotland by helping others to develop great ideas and bring them to life. We distribute funding provided by the Scottish Government and the National Lottery. For further information about Creative Scotland please visit www.creativescotland.com.Follow us @creativescots and www.facebook.com/CreativeScotland Arts Council England Arts Council England champions, develops and invests in artistic and cultural experiences that enrich people’s lives. We support a range of activities across the arts, museums and libraries – from theatre to digital art, reading to dance, music to literature, and crafts to collections. Great art and culture inspires us, brings us together and teaches us about ourselves and the world around us. In short, it makes life better. Between 2010 and 2015, we will invest £1.9 billion of public money from government and an estimated £1.1 billion from the National Lottery to help create these experiences for as many people as possible across the country. www.artscouncil.org.uk The Art Fund The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art, helping museums to buy and show great art for everyone. Over the past 5 years we’ve given over £26m to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections and placed hundreds of gifts and bequests, from ancient sculpture and treasure hoards to Old Master paintings and contemporary commissions. We awarded £1 million towards the original acquisition of the ARTIST ROOMS collection and have been instrumental in ARTIST ROOMS on Tour since its inception in 2009. We are independently funded, the majority of our income coming from over 107,000 members who, through the National Art Pass, enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic houses across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions. Find out more about the Art Fund and the National Art Pass at www.artfund.org Follow us @artfund and www.facebook.com/theArtFund
DAVID ROBERTS: DRAWINGS FROM THE HELEN GUITERMAN BEQUEST 6 February − 14 June 2015 Scottish National Gallery, The Mound, Edinburgh EH2 2EL Admission free | 0131 624 6200 A selection of outstanding architectural drawings and watercolours by the famous Edinburgh-born artist David Roberts (1796-1864), most of them previously unseen, will go on show at the Scottish National Gallery this week. David Roberts: Drawings from the Helen Guiterman Bequest will showcase Roberts’ sketches and elegant watercolours of Scottish scenery, including views of well-loved Edinburgh landmarks such as a stunning panoramic view from the ramparts of Edinburgh Castle and a dramatic watercolour of the interior of Rosslyn Chapel. Most of the 30 works on show, from the Gallery’s prints and drawings collection, have recently been conserved, revealing the vibrancy of Roberts’ fresh and vivid colours. David Roberts was one of the most adventurous, prolific and successful British artists of the first half of the nineteenth century. Best known for his intrepid travels, he was among the first British artists to make extensive tours of the Near and Middle East. He was born in Edinburgh and first found success as a painter of theatrical scenery in Edinburgh and Glasgow, before settling in London in 1823, where his social circle included Charles Dickens, the painters David Wilkie and J M W Turner, and great critic John Ruskin. From London Roberts began to travel extensively to France, the Netherlands and Spain, followed in 1838 by the Middle Eastern adventure on which his popular reputation is still founded. Both an easel painter and a draughtsman, Roberts is particularly celebrated for his treatment of architectural subjects; his sketches and watercolours exhibit great verve and accuracy, and his interiors are infused with spectacular, dramatic light effects. His early experience as a painter of theatrical scenery informed his skill in conveying the vast proportions and intricate detail of cathedrals, churches and panoramic landscapes, as seen in The Interior of Seville Cathedral (1837) and Dunfermline Abbey (1848). Roberts returned often to Scotland, retaining strong links with friends and colleagues in Edinburgh. He was made a Freeman of the City of Edinburgh in 1858. His interest in architecture and particularly the buildings of his native city extended to campaigning for the preservation of John Knox’s house and Rosslyn Chapel and to submitting design proposals for the Scott monument. Additional works in the display will include a calotype photograph of Roberts by the Scottish pioneers of photography David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, and the celebrated portrait of Roberts by Robert Scott Lauder (1803-1869) from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, which shows the artist as the ultimate Oriental adventurer, wearing a flamboyant costume he had bought in Cairo. Michael Clarke, Director of the Scottish National Gallery, said: “We are delighted to be celebrating one of the great Scottish artists with this exhibition of Roberts's work. Like Sir Henry Raeburn, he was born in Stockbridge, so it is very fitting that both men's achievements can be viewed here in our National Gallery.” - ENDS - Notes to editors: For more information and images, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland's press office at [email protected] or on 0131 624 6314 / 6332. The drawings and watercolours in this exhibition are part of the Scottish National Gallery collection, with the majority drawn from the Helen Guiterman Bequest to the Gallery, which was mediated by the Art Fund in 2008. From the 1960s Helen Guiterman (1916-1998) became the leading expert on Roberts, undertaking over 30 years of intensive research to re-establish his artistic legacy and, aged seventy, masterminding a major exhibition at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, in 1986. Helen Guiterman was born in Bournemouth in 1916. She gained a diploma in Fine Art from the Slade School of Art in London, before studying textile design in New York. She spent most of her career as an interior designer for the architect’s department of Middlesex County Council and the London Borough of Haringey until her retirement in 1978. Helen Guiterman discovered Roberts when she bought two drawings by him for £3 in 1961. These inspired her to pursue ‘everything about Roberts’. She discovered that Roberts was a prolific writer of letters and journals – she began to trace and transcribe these. Thanks to her research, many of the drawings in her bequest to the Scottish National Gallery can be dated and related to specific incidents to Roberts’ journals and letters.
20th CENTURY: MASTERPIECES OF SCOTTISH AND EUROPEAN ART From 21 February 2015 Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR Admission: Free Following the huge success of GENERATION, the nationwide celebration of 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland which took over the whole of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art for much of 2014, the Gallery is now planning a major rehang of masterpieces from its impressive permanent collection. The display will include four works by William Turnbull which were recently acquired by the Gallery through the Henry and Sula Walton Fund, with support from the Art Fund. 20th Century: Masterpieces of Scottish and European Art will feature important works from both British and European artists, and is set to explore the role of creativity as artists adapted and responded to events of the most rapidly-evolving and tumultuous century in human history. Demonstrating the vital links between artistic communities across the UK and mainland Europe, the display will trace and celebrate the major developments in twentieth-century art, from expressionism and cubism, to abstraction and Pop Art. Crucially, some of the best of modern Scottish art will be placed alongside the work of modern European masters in an effort to examine the importance of international and local contexts. For example, in the first room work by French artist Édouard Vuillard shares space with the Scottish Colourists JD Fergusson, Samuel Peploe and FCB Cadell, as well as Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh’s The Mysterious Garden (1911), while the final room will feature both Glasgow-born artist Steven Campbell’s Elegant Gestures of the Drowned after Max Ernst (1986) and Silenzioso Sangue (1979/85), by Italian painter Mimmo Paladino. Major mainstays of the collection – such AS Pablo Picasso’s The Soles (1940) and Figure Study I (1945-46) by Francis Bacon – will be on show, as will Oskar Kokoschka’s Self-Portrait as a Degenerate Artist (1937), a long-term loan from a private collection. They will be joined by a number of new and recent additions, including For Sale (1961), the first work by New Zealand-born Pop artist Billy Apple (b.1935) to enter the collection. There will also be a memorial display celebrating the work of the Scottish sculptor, painter and printmaker William Turnbull, who died in 2012. Turnbull was born in Dundee in 1922 and, like other artists of his generation, spent a number of years in Paris, where he met some of the century’s greatest artists, including Fernand Léger, Alberto Giacometti and Constantin Brancusi. Turnbull’s work ranges from delicate bronzes such as Heavy Insect (1949) to the large, totemic sculpture Night (1962-63), which combines carved rosewood and cast bronze elements. These will be shown alongside a group of important works, including the paintings Untitled (Aquarium) (1950) and 15-1958 (1958), and two bronze sculptures, Aquarium (1949) and Acrobat (1951), acquired by the Gallery in 2014 through the Henry and Sula Walton Fund, with assistance from the Art Fund. Also on show for the first time will be 23 works on paper – ink, watercolour and chalk drawings – which have been presented by the artist’s family through the Art Fund. In addition the Gallery has recently been gifted three significant paintings by the Scottish Colourist painter FCB Cadell (1883-1937). They have been presented by members of the Ford family, in honour of Sir Patrick Ford (1880-1945), who supported the artist’s visit to Venice in 1910. All three works were painted during this trip, which proved to be a pivotal moment in the artist’s career. It was in the north-eastern Italian city that Cadell’s handling of paint became looser and more expressive, and he experimented with increasingly vivacious colours, a decision which influenced much of his subsequent art. The new acquisitions, all flooded by intense sunlight, are On the Canal, Venice, Santa Maria della Salute, Venice and From the Calcina Hotel. Keith Hartley, Deputy Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “The display of the Gallery’s permanent collection will show the range, depth and quality of what has been collected over the last 55 years, enabling us to tell some of the key stories of modern art and its development. Scottish art has played a distinguished role in these stories and it is fitting therefore that it should be shown in a truly European context.” - ENDS - Notes to Editors: The Art Fund is the national fundraising charity for art, helping museums to buy and show great art for everyone. Over the past 5 years we have given over £26m to help museums and galleries acquire works of art for their collections and placed hundreds of gifts and bequests, from ancient sculpture and treasure hoards to Old Master paintings and contemporary commissions. We also help museums share their collections with wider audiences through supporting a range of tours and exhibitions, including the national tour of the Artist Rooms collection and the 2013–18 Aspire tour of Constable’s Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows. Art from Elswhere, a 2013– 16 Hayward Touring exhibition, supported by the Art Fund and curated by David Elliott, showcases work from the six collections awarded over £4m through the Art Fund International scheme. Our support for museums extends to the Art Guide app — the comprehensive guide to seeing art across the UK, promoting a network of over 650 museums and galleries throughout the country, and the £100,000 Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year — an annual celebration of the best of UK museums, won in 2014 by Yorkshire Sculpture Park. We are independently funded, the majority of our income coming from over 117,000 members who, through the National Art Pass, enjoy free entry to over 230 museums, galleries and historic places across the UK, as well as 50% off entry to major exhibitions.
WORKS BY FIVE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS ACQUIRED BY THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is delighted to announce the acquisition of works by five artists from the landmark exhibition GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland, which will draw to a close on 25 January 2015. Works by Claire Barclay, Henry Coombes, Alex Dordoy, Torsten Lauschmann and David Shrigley will enter the Gallery’s collection as part of its on-going commitment to developing a world-class collection of contemporary Scottish art. Claire Barclay’s major installation Trappings (2014) will be the first substantial work by the Glasgow-based artist to enter the SNGMA collection, and will be one of the most important and significant works by Barclay to be held in a public collection in the UK. Similarly, Alex Dordoy’s installation Sleepwalker (2014) will be the first major work by the artist in the collection. Henry Coombes’s film The Bedfords (2009) and Torsten Lauschmann’s Growing Zeros (Digital Clock) (2010) are the first works by these artists in the SNGMA collection. Two print portfolios by David Shrigley, which were shown in the UK for the first time in GENERATION, will be the first woodcuts by the artist to be acquired by a UK public collection. The acquisitions build on the success of the nation-wide GENERATION programme, showcasing some of the best and most significant artists to have emerged from Scotland over the last 25 years, and have been made possible thanks to the generosity of several key supporters. Among these are Outset Scotland, who have kindly gifted Torsten Lauschmann’s Growing Zeros (Digital Clock), and Walter Scott & Partners Limited who have made possible the acquisition of Alex Dordoy’s Sleepwalker. Simon Groom, director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “We are delighted that we have been able to acquire some of the great works that were highlights of GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland. This was the largest exhibition that NGS has ever staged, and has been enormously popular with audiences across the whole of Scotland. To secure works of this quality for the national collection is of huge importance in terms of the legacy of GENERATION, and in the ambition to continue to capture the imagination and interest of as wide a public as possible, and to inspire generations to come. We are extremely grateful to those partners who have helped us in our commitment to developing a world-class collection of contemporary Scottish art.” Kirstie Skinner, director of Outset Scotland, said: “Outset Scotland is delighted to present Digital Clock (Growing Zeroes) by Torsten Lauschmann to the National Galleries of Scotland. Outset Scotland is committed to supporting Scotland’s public collections by making gifts of significant works of contemporary art. This is a mesmeric work, which invites repeated encounters, and it will undoubtedly become a vital part of the national collection. Outset Scotland is proud to be instrumental in ensuring that the GENERATION project will continue to resonate, and find new audiences in the future.” About the works Claire Barclay creates prints and sculptures, and typically produces works in response to a specific space. Trappings was commissioned for GENERATION by the SNGMA, and made especially for the room in which it was shown, in the Gallery’s Modern One building. The work comprises three wooden structures, which act as a frame for objects and materials that have been manipulated in different ways: wool pulled taught to create tension; leather straps hanging loosely; and bulbous ceramic and brass objects placed alongside printed fabric. Trappings derives from Barclay’s interest in the physical and psychological properties of materials, and the ways in which we experience the objects and matter that surround us. Henry Coombes’s work includes painting, collage, drawing and sculpture, but he is also known for his short films – character portraits for which he creates intricate sets that allow him to explore historical themes. The Bedfords is a brooding film which reimagines the relationship between the celebrated Victorian painter Edwin Landseer (1802–73) and the Duke and Duchess of Bedford who was a great patroness of the arts. Landseer, known for his landscapes and animal portraits, had a long-standing love affair with the Scottish Highlands. It is in this landscape that Coombes has set a romantic encounter between Landseer and the Duchess of Bedford – a tryst which leads to his subsequent psychological breakdown. Alex Dordoy’s Sleepwalker, which comprises three acrylic paintings and a number of painted sculptural objects made from oyster shells, was also commissioned for GENERATION by the SNGMA. The paintings depict a catamaran at different times of the day – night-time, dusk and dawn – and, as the viewer passes along the corridor in which they are hung, the changing lighting effects in each canvas acts as a reminder of the passage of time. Dordoy sourced the image of the boat from the internet before manipulating it using Photoshop and then meticulously rendering it as a large-scale painting. Torsten Lauschmann’s Growing Zeros (Digital Clock) is both a 24-hour-long film and a functioning clock. In this signature work by the artist a series of wooden blocks, which mimic the seven-segment displays widely used in digital clocks and calculators, are animated by the artist’s hands, furiously moving the seconds, minutes and hours in order to keep up with the progression of time. Exhibited within the foyer of Modern One for the duration of the GENERATION exhibition, Growing Zeros has proved to be a huge hit with audiences. As with many of his works, the subject matter in David Shrigley’s two portfolios of woodcuts is diverse. Darkly humorous images that point to profound questions of life and death are balanced by prints that present absurd problems and scenarios. Shrigley’s work is popular with a wide audience thanks to his sharp observations and ability to highlight the absurdity of our everyday fears and aspirations. - ENDS - Notes to Editor: GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art is at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) until 25 January 2015. Further information about GENERATION exhibitions is available at generationartscotland.org. About the artists: Claire Barclay (b.1965) Barclay was born in Paisley and lives and works in Glasgow. She studied Environmental Art and a Master in Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1993. Henry Coombes (b.1977) Born in London, Coombes studied at the London International Film School and Central Saint Martins before completing a degree at the Glasgow School of Art in 2002. He has continued to live and work in Glasgow since then. Alex Dordoy (b.1985) Born in Newcastle, Dordoy studied on the painting and printmaking course at the Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 2007. He moved to Amsterdam in 2009 to undertake a two‑year residency at the independent artists’ institute, De Ateliers. He currently lives and works in London but retains close links with Scotland. Torsten Lauschmann (b.1970) Lauschmann was born in Bad Soden, Germany and studied Fine Art Photography at The Glasgow School of Art, graduating in 1997. He gained his MA in Media Art from ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2001. In 2010 he received the inaugural Margaret Tait Award at the Glasgow Film Festival, and in 2013 Lauschmann was awarded a Paul Hamlyn Foundation artist’s award. He lives and works in Glasgow. David Shrigley (b.1968) Shrigley was born in Macclesfield and graduated from the Environmental Art course at the Glasgow School of Art in 1991. He was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2013. Shrigley lives and works in Glasgow. About Outset Scotland: Outset Scotland is a philanthropic organisation dedicated to supporting new art by bringing private funding from its patrons, partners and trustees to public museums and art projects. It augments Scotland's public collections of contemporary art with gifted artworks and enables selected artists' commissions, exhibitions, residencies and education programmes. Outset Scotland was launched in March 2013, joining Outset Contemporary Art Fund's international network of chapters in England, Germany, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Greece, and the United States.
REDISCOVERED SHINTY PAINTING EXHIBITED FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FIFTY YEARS AT THE SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY The painting A Highland Landscape with a Game of Shinty is the most famous depiction of the world-celebrated Scottish sport and one of the treasures of the game. Last seen in 1962, the painting disappeared from public view for over fifty years, although it has frequently been used in books and articles to highlight the provenance of the game. After a three-year search triggered by the Playing for Scotland exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the picture was eventually uncovered in a private collection belonging to a descendent of the last-known owner. A Highland Landscape with a Game of Shinty, attributed to the artists Daniel Cunliffe and A.Smith of Mauchline, is now on long-term loan to the Galleries and will join the many other works in Playing for Scotland, which explores the rich history of Scottish sporting traditions. To celebrate the painting going on public display for the first time in half a century, shinty’s greatest ever goal-scorer Ronald Ross, MBE and the sport’s noted BBC commentator and historian Dr Hugh Dan MacLennan will be at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for a press call, with the premier prize in shinty: the Scottish Hydro Camanachd Cup. The only man to have scored more than 1000 goals in the sport, Ross has earned the eponym ‘Ronaldo of the Glens’, after the Brazilian footballer. He recently announced his retirement from active play for Kingussie Camanachd, officially the world’s most successful sporting team of all time, according to the Guinness Book of Records. Ross recently crowned a stellar career with a man-of-the-match performance as led Kingussie lifted the Camanachd Cup in 2014 for the twenty-third time. The game depicted in the painting quite possibly took place on the Cluny estate near Newtonmore. Sticks (camans) are raised in frenzied action; the presence of pipers, dancers and refreshments implies this match is a festival game, perhaps enjoyed at New Year. The Badenoch and Strathspey Shinty Heritage Project believe the scene almost certainly depicts one of the famous shinty ball-plays organised by Cluny Macpherson, Chief of Clan Chattan. The setting and painting are probably the source of many depictions of shinty which followed from the mid-nineteenth century. Shinty has been described as the oldest-known Celtic sport. The Camanachd Association (CA) was founded in 1893 to lead the development of the game by ensuring there was one set of rules and a framework for organising competitions nationally. Currently based in Inverness, the CA remains the governing body for shinty across the world. Jim Barr, President of the Camanachd Association said: “The Camanachd Association is delighted that the iconic painting A Highland Landscape with a Game of Shinty has been located, and will be on display at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. We would like to thank the owner of the painting and the National Galleries of Scotland for displaying one of Scotland’s most iconic and most important sporting paintings. The scene very much embodies the spirit of the game, which is still played in some of the most attractive settings in the world”. Commenting on this new long-term loan, Christopher Baker, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, said: “After a three-year search, I’m delighted that A Highland Landscape with a Game of Shinty is now on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and will be on display in Playing for Scotland. Our visitors can enjoy it amid many iconic artworks, brought together for the first time, which depict the nation’s sports”. Ends Notes to Editors Playing for Scotland: the Making of Modern Sport is on show at the Gallery until Spring 2016. A selection of the iconic sporting artworks on display in Playing for Scotland: the Making of Modern Sport: Sir Henry Raeburn, Dr Nathaniel Spens of Craigsanquhar painted in 1793. On loan from the Queen's Body Guard for Scotland (Royal Company of Archers) Alexander Carse, The Doonies versus the Croonies on New Year’s Day by Alexander Carse painted around 1810. On loan from a private collection Charles Lees, The Golfers: A Grand Match played over the Links of St Andrews on the Day of the Annual Meeting of the Royal and Ancient Golf Club painted in 1847. Bought with the assistance of the Heritage Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and The Royal and Ancient Golf Club in 2002 Charles Lees, The Grand Match of the Royal Caledonian Curling Club at Linlithgow 1848 painted in 1853. On loan from the Royal Caledonian Curling Club William Reed, Leith Races painted about 1859. On loan from the City Art Centre: City of Edinburgh Museums and Galleries