Scottish Art News: November 2015
This month sees Luc Tuyman's first Scottish exhibition and a foregrounding of important Scottish women artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as open call shows from Embassy and the RSA.
Throughout this month until 19 December, influential Belgian painter Luc Tuymans presents his first exhibition in Scotland in the Talbot Rice Gallery. Widely credited as one of the artists responsible for the revival of painting in the 90s, Tuymans is known for a certain cynical acidity in attitude, as well as his muted palette and aloof remove from his subject matter. These new paintings take significant Scottish Enlightenment portrait painter Henry Raeburn’s images of 'sombre black-robed academics' as their subject, combined with images of canaries and silkscreens of crowds.
On 7 November, Generator open their brand new multi-functional artist hub from 7-9pm. As a new part of the physical space, it opens out the organisation to the community, and is designed for talks, screenings and workshops. It will also hold a number of contemporary publications and afford access to the gallery’s archives. A week later, on 14 November, Generator open their new exhibition Small Gate, Infinite Field. For this show, emerging artist Christopher Macinnes presents new work using sound, moving image and script to create an immersive environment of industrial substation transformers, contrast with growths of 'vital matter'.
In David Dale Gallery, painters France-Lise McGurn and Matthew Musgrave exhibit a two-person show, put together on their shared fragmentary, esoteric and abstracted misquoting of images, and making thoroughly extrinsic the suggested points of reference. Both work in painting styles that often leave the bare canvas showing, with an emphasis on linearity, pushing their large scale works towards a technical execution associated with drawing while retaining a very painterly dragging of a brush until it’s dry.
Titled Only With A Light Touch Will You Write Well, Freely And Fast (in reference to texts on alternative alphabets to Latin), McGurn and Musgrave’s show previews 6 November (7-9pm), then continues until 12 December.
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In Modern Two in the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, from 7 November, there is Modern Scottish Women Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965. During the 80 years specified by the show, there was an unprecedented rise in women artists in Scotland. There is a wry comment on the operation of the usual canon, with a deliberate emphasis in part on rarely exhibited works. Also included is an appreciation and discussion of the material conditions and difficulties that these particular artists faced during this point in history. Entry is £9 (7), and the exhibition continues until 26 June 2016. You can also read our extended preview at theskinny.co.uk/art.
Also from the 6-8 November, Embassy are screening the submissions received during a call out to members for artists' moving image works. On Friday there will be a free screening of all the works from 7-10pm in the gallery, then during the following two days the works will be available to be viewed from 12-6pm – free admission again. This is is in advance of their Artist Moving Image Event in December for the inaugural Edinburgh Artist Moving Image Festival.
For those who prefer their images still, on the wall in rows and on top of one another, the salon hang of the 2015 Royal Scottish Academy Open Show will be an exciting event. Annually, the Edinburgh-based RSA invite through an open call artists from Scotland and beyond to submit their work to be exhibited in their Open Show. Generously using the available space, usually with an emphasis on painting, the show makes for an experience of pleasurable overload and an exercise in finding the parts you need to see. After their usual marathon hanging session, the Open Show commences on Saturday 28 November.