Exhibitions

This Fragile Earth

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.

Exhibitions

The Glasgow Girls and Boys

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.

Exhibitions

A Window into Scottish Art: The Ingram & Fleming Collections

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.

Exhibitions

Scottish Women Artists | Transforming Tradition

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.⁠
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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.⁠

Loan

Joan Eardley

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.

Loan

Dislocations: Territories, Landscapes and Other Spaces

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.

Exhibitions

The Scottish Colourists

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.

Online Lecture

Scottish Portraits as Biography

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.

Exhibitions

The Glasgow Girls and Boys

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.

Online Exhibition

Darkness into Light: the Emotional Power of Art

Art has rarely been more needed than during this time of a global pandemic. Presciently, in 2018, the Sheffield Millennium Gallery staged an exhibition of works from the Fleming Collection, the Ingram Collection and the Jerwood Collection, which explored, largely through work chosen from the 20th century, art’s capacity to stir our emotions from deepest despair to unbridled joy. Its title, 'Darkness into Light', summed up today’s febrile mood, which is why the Fleming Collection has reprised an online version of this exhibition.