2025 is set to be a stellar year for Scottish art, with many exciting exhibitions already announced for the months ahead. Patricia-Ann Young rounds up some of the most anticipated shows of the year, as well as a few hidden gems.

Kasia Molga, 'How to Find the Soul of a Sailor'. Courtesy of the Artist

How to Find the Soul of a Sailor

Inspace, Edinburgh 6th January 2025 – 11th January 2025 (closed Sunday)

In this exhibition, interdisciplinary artist Kasia Molga blends her artistic practice with AI technology to explore the vanishing footprints of her father’s life, who passed away 17 years ago.

Molga’s father Tadeusz was a sailor who kept meticulous diaries documenting his time at sea. The exhibition explores the evolution of both the seas and the working conditions of sailors and uses AI to discern Tadeusz’s personality and imagine his thoughts on the future of our oceans and climate change.

While the use of AI remains controversial, this thoughtful and immersive exhibition poses interesting questions about our digital afterlives and how emerging technologies may be used – or abused – to preserve memories and assuage grief.

Bet Low, 'In the Hoy Hills (Orkney)', 1977, Bet Low oil on canvas © Bet Low Trust

Bet Low – An Island On Your Doorstep

Reid Gallery, Glasgow and Pier Arts Centre, Orkney mainland. 11th January – 8th February 2025 (Glasgow), March 1st - June 7th, 2025 (Orkney)

The centenary of the birth of the Scottish artist Bet Low is to be celebrated in two areas that hugely influenced her work – the murky streets of Glasgow and the shimmering landscapes of the Orkney Islands.

Low was born in Gourock and came of age as an artist in 1940s Glasgow, emerging as a talent who used expressionism to bring the gloomy, everyday rhythm of an industrial city to vibrant life. In the late 1960s, she bought a holiday cottage on Hoy and was deeply influenced by the atmospherics of the island’s wild landscapes and everchanging lighting.

The exhibition will first show in Glasgow before moving to Orkney in the spring.

The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives

Dovecot studios, Edinburgh 7th February 2025 to 28th June 2025

Often presented as a quartet, the Fleming Collection's exhibition aims to place the Scottish Colourists in the context of their time and European contemporaries. By examining the artists on a broader scale, the show can examine, for the first time, how an international generation of artists transformed the use of colour in art forever.

The show follows the avant-garde art movement from the early 20th century to the outbreak of World War I and explores the influence of these earlier artists on the Scottish Colourists in the 20s and 30s. The exhibition will explore the wider Celtic influence on avant-garde art of the time by including the works of Welsh and Irish artists too.

Image detail of Patricia Shone's 'Township Bowl'. Photo by Shannon Tofts

Hag. Knowledge, Power & Alchemy Through Craft

Dunfermline Carnegie Library & Galleries, Dunfermline 8th March 2025 to 8th June 2025

For centuries, the talents of women who craft have been underestimated. This new exhibition aims to spotlight the inventiveness and creative impact of women craft artists from across Scotland.

“Provocatively titled but thoughtfully curated,” the exhibition aims to challenge the historic dismissiveness of women’s work and to celebrate their knowledge, skill and creativity. The show will feature tapestry, basket weaving, and work in paper and textiles, as well as glassmaking and clay sculpture.

Hag is shaping up to be an excitingly empowering show, championing years of women’s knowledge and challenging old-fashioned perceptions about women’s creative ingenuity.

James VI and I, 1566 - 1625. King of Scotland 1567 - 1625. King of England and Ireland 1603 - 1625. National Galleries of Scotland collection. Photo, National Galleries of Scotland

The World of King James VI and I

National Galleries of Scotland – Portrait, Edinburgh 26th April 2025 – 14th September 2025

Much of what we have left of monarchs of yore is the arts and craftwork they left behind. Often overshadowed by his more famous mother, a new exhibition will gather relics from James VI and I’s court to understand the man and his reign, 400 years after his death.

Son of Mary Queen of Scots, James united the crowns of Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland when he came to the English throne in 1603. He was a keen patron of the arts and artists and craftspeople flocked to his court seeking royal favour. The exhibition will celebrate and use these remarkable works to trace the life of a complex, but often maligned, Scottish king.

Stefano Boeri, Bosco Verticale, Milan, 2014 © Stefano Boeri Architetti, Photo credit The Blink Fish, 2018

Garden Futures: Designing With Nature

V&A Dundee, Dundee 17th May 2025 – 22nd February 2026

The humble garden is getting its day in the sun at Dundee’s V&A Museum this summer. Garden Futures: Designing With Nature has travelled across Europe and will arrive in Dundee in May.

The exhibition examines how gardens tell us more about humans than nature, exploring how the garden has always been a political space. From colonisers transporting Indigenous plants to their homes and irreversibly damaging their local ecosystems, to the overuse of tools and pesticides to make our lawns unnaturally orderly, the garden reflects our unnatural human behaviours.

Yet the exhibition is ultimately hopeful, imaging gardens as a space for innovation and experimentation for a more sustainable future. Scottish community-led projects will be showcased alongside the exhibition’s original artwork.

Andy Goldsworthy, Rain Shadow. RSA, Edinburgh. 10 June 2024. Photo courtesy of the artist

Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years

Royal Scottish Academy building, Edinburgh 26th July 2025 – 2nd November 2025

The renowned land artist Andy Goldsworthy is celebrating his 50-year career with a large exhibition in Edinburgh this summer.

The exhibition will showcase over 200 works such as photographs, sculptures and expansive new installations built in situ, and it will take over upper and lower galleries in the Royal Scottish Academy building.

Goldsworthy creates his work from materials he finds outside, like sticks, stones and foliage. His work is often temporary and thus retaken by nature, so he uses photography to document his work before it disappears forever.

Early sketches of Goldsworthy’s vision for the show look hugely spectacular, with the exhibition looking to be one of the most talked about of the year.

Lauren Gault, C I T H R A, 2020. Installation view. Commissioned by Gasworks. Courtesy of the artist. Photo, Andy Keate

Lauren Gault

Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee 25th Oct 2025 - Sun 18th Jan 2026

Lauren Gault blends the border between art and science, with her work pushing at the edges of reality as well as critical thought. She is based between Glasgow and Magheramorne in Northern Ireland, and this will be her first solo exhibition in Scotland for over 10 years.

Meticulously research-driven, Gault approaches the realm of ideas with the shrewd eye of a scientist. This exhibition will explore relationships between palaeontology, agriculture and mineral cycles, and Gault will collaborate with the University of Dundee’s School of Science and Engineering to uncover information about the area’s geological history. This information will lead her as she creates and shapes her new work.

Inverness Castle Experience Inverness Castle, Dates TBA

Inverness Castle is set to reopen this year after a long renovation process. The long wait seems to have been worth it – a visit here will be nothing like your typical historic building walkaround.

The Inverness Castle Experience will be extremely immersive and bursting with installations, visual storytelling and artwork, created by talented Highland artists. The experience will touch on many different parts of Highland culture, including music, craftsmanship and history. There will be plenty to enjoy no matter your age, but it will be an especially great place to bring children, helping to inspire in them a life-long love of art and creativity.