Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Now — Royal Scottish Academy

3 August – 8 September 2024

After many months of planning, selecting artists, studio visits and discussions, Frontiers: Painting in Scotland Nowfinally opened in the Lower Galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. I was delighted to co-curate the exhibition with Flora La Thangue, bringing together work by 31 artists at different stages of their careers, from emerging painters to established practitioners and Royal Scottish Academicians.

The exhibition grew out of a question that has interested me for much of my career as both a painter and an art educator. In a world where artists can work in almost any medium, and where digital imagery is everywhere, why does painting continue to attract so many artists, particularly younger ones?

In my introduction to the exhibition catalogue, I reflected on the changing fortunes of painting in Scottish art education. For much of the twentieth century, the four historic Scottish art schools maintained strong and distinctive painting departments. By the 1990s and 2000s, however, traditional disciplinary boundaries were being dismantled, and students were encouraged to explore emerging technologies and new ways of making art. Quite rightly, too.

Yet painting never really went away. Indeed, I suggested that it had almost become a subversive activity, pursued by students and recent graduates with a renewed sense of freedom and rebellion, often unencumbered by the weight of its own traditions. The generations that followed have continued to reinvent what painting might be.

We deliberately avoided organising Frontiers around a particular theme, movement or style. Nor did we pretend to offer a definitive survey of Scottish painting. Instead, we wanted to bring together artists whose work might challenge, contradict and occasionally surprise one another, and hopefully provoke some lively conversations about the state of painting in Scotland.

It was a considerable undertaking, but enormously rewarding to see the exhibition come together, and particularly enjoyable to work with so many artists whose paintings I admire. I was also pleased to contribute two of my own large paintings, The Launch and The Mound.

The exhibition was accompanied by a substantial illustrated catalogue, with a foreword by Flora and my introduction, alongside images and contributions from the exhibiting artists responding to the question: In a time when an artist can work in any media, why choose painting?

The exhibition attracted over 68,000 visitors during its five-week run, which was enormously encouraging. I also chaired Other Worlds: A Conversation about Contemporary Painting in Scotland, a symposium bringing together four of the exhibiting artists to discuss their practices and the continuing possibilities of painting. It was a fitting way to extend some of the conversations that had prompted the exhibition in the first place.

Many thanks to everyone at the RSA, my fellow curator Flora, and all the participating artists for helping make it happen.

Links

Explore the exhibition and artists’ work at the RSA

Frontiers exhibition catalogue — Royal Scottish Academy

My 2024 Frontiers and Houston Blackadder project page