This important exhibition Scottish Women Artists - 250 Years of Challenging Perception celebrates the work of women artists who have challenged and shaped the contemporary art scene in Scotland. In an era when women lead Scotland’s government, galleries and art schools, it is easy to forget the prejudices and barriers their predecessors have faced.
Embracing key artistic movements and developments, the exhibition is organised with The Fleming Collection, one of the finest private collections of Scottish art in the world. It features significant ‘firsts’: Catherine Read (1723–78), who was the first formally trained Scottish woman artist in the 18th century; The Glasgow Girls, the first generation of Scottish women to be formally and professionally trained in the arts and Dame Elizabeth Blackadder (1931 –2021), the first woman elected to both the Royal Academy and the Royal Scottish Academy.
20th century highlights include the radical post-war artist Joan Eardley (1921–63); Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912–2004); and Anne Redpath (1895–1965). These outstanding painters are widely recognised today. Yet, the story of Scottish art is incomplete without the innovative and experimental art of women working in design, illustration, applied and decorative arts. Dovecot’s ground-breaking artworks with 21st century artists Christine Borland (b.1965), Victoria Crowe (b. 1945), Rachel Maclean (b.1987), Alison Watt (b.1965) and Alberta Whittle (b.1980) are the subject of a specially commissioned film. The exhibition also features a new Dovecot tapestry with award-winning Glasgow-based artist Sekai Machache (b.1989) on display for the first time.
The Colourist paintings have been at the heart of the Fleming Collection since its inception. Thanks to the depth and range of the collection, the Colourists’ careers are charted from their early experimentalism under the sway of Whistler and Manet to the breakthrough moment of their exposure to the Fauves – the ‘wild beasts’ of contemporary French art - in Paris in 1905 to the mature works of the 1920s which saw a prodigious stream of Colourist painting fusing a Scots sensibility with a Continental palette.
In this new exhibition in partnership with Berwick Visual Arts, works by Anne Repath, one of Scotland's finest mid-20th century artists, will hang alongside fellow 'Edinburgh School' artists to revive the achievements of the now largely forgotten group.
The Glasgow Girls and Boys were a group of radical young artists, who rebelled against the jaded Victorian passion for highland scenes and story-telling pictures. With thanks to additional loans from private lenders, this display of the pivotal, late 19th century group of artists will highlight their talent and breadth of work.
This breakthrough exhibition by the Fleming Collection of Scottish art, staged in the sublime Coventry Cathedral, focusses on a group of veteran artists who were ahead of their time in responding to the threat of climate change. Until now, these artists, although well known to one another, have never been perceived as a group with common artistic goals. Only when reviewing their distinctive individual careers does a common thread appear, which is their shared response to the beauty and fragility of the planet, often expressed as early as the 1970s and 1980s. For some this response was triggered by finding artistic inspiration in the High Arctic; for others it was in response to the threats to Scotland’s own ecology and the destruction of traditional working communities that that has entailed. The resulting work, often on a monumental scale, provides both a precious record of icescapes now irretrievably lost, as well as symbolic and figurative expressions of anger at the urgency of their cause.
The Glasgow Girls and Boys were a group of radical young artists, who rebelled against the jaded Victorian passion for highland scenes and story-telling pictures. With thanks to additional loans from private lenders and the Ferens Art Gallery, this display of the pivotal, late 19th century group of artists will highlight their talent and breadth of work.
This new exhibition will bring together significant works that explore the history of Scottish Art. A Window into Scottish Art will shine a spotlight on the character, inspiration, and talent of Scottish artists and provoke new ways of defining their achievements.
The works will include paintings, drawings, sculpture and collage by artists such as George Jamesone (1587-1644) known as ‘the Scottish Van Dyck’, through to the Glasgow Boys and Girls and the Scottish Colourists (Peploe, Fergusson, Hunter, and Cadell). Twentieth-century figures such as Eduardo Paolozzi and John Bellany will join contemporary artists such as Caroline Walker, Barry McGlashan, and Iman Tajik who will further explore the contrasting sides of the Scots psyche.
The exhibition is drawn from two collections that complement one another: The Ingram and Fleming Collections. The Ingram Collection is now recognised as one of this country’s most significant, and publicly accessible, collections of Modern British Art, and the Fleming Collection is considered the finest collection of Scottish art outside public institutions.
Developed in partnership with the Sainsbury Centre, the exhibition brings together exciting historical, modern and contemporary works from the Fleming Collection and additional lenders, spanning over one hundred years of social transformation, innovation and individualism.
With works by mid-twentieth century greats, such as Joan Eardley, Margot Sandeman and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, shown alongside contemporary artists including Caroline Walker and Sekai Machache, Scottish Women Artists aspires to serve as a ‘curatorial corrective’ for the historic absence of women artists in academic narratives and artistic institutions.
To complement Eardley’s paintings from the permanent collection held in Perth, the exhibition will bring together some of her most iconic works from the National Galleries of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy, City Art Centre, Edinburgh, the Fleming Collection and the University of Dundee. The exhibition will offer visitors the opportunity to see some of Eardley’s most significant works, including her bold atmospheric paintings of the sea and her iconic paintings and sketches of children in the Townhead area of Glasgow.
Dislocations is a group exhibition featuring the work of contemporary artists, with loans of work by Ian hamilton Finlay from the Fleming Collection. The artists included here reframe the ways we inhabit, perceive and represent the natural world. They direct our attention to sites, spaces and experiences often overlooked in traditional landscapes and question what belonging in or to such places might look like beyond attempts at mastery or idealisation.
Featuring 27 works from the Fleming Collection, this exhibition celebrates work from the four key Scottish Colourist artists, alongside artists who were early influencers of their work.
The only festival to celebrate biography and memoir, the Boswell Book Festival is one of the most prestigious cultural events in Scotland. This year, a series of short talks under the theme of Scottish Portraits as Biography, will be presented throughout, partially hosted by Fleming Collection Director James Knox, along with James Holloway, former Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and David Eustace, internationally acclaimed Scottish photographer.
The Glasgow Girls and Boys were a group of radical young artists, who rebelled against the jaded Victorian passion for highland scenes and story-telling pictures. With thanks to additional loans from private lenders and the National Galleries of Scotland, this display of the pivotal, late 19th century group of artists will highlight their talent and breadth of work. Kirkcudbright, the Artists' Town, was itself a home and inspiration to a number of the Glasgow Girls and Boys, including E A Hornel, Jessie M King and George Henry.