The Royal Scottish Academy’s 199th Annual Exhibition offers a compelling fusion of tradition and innovation in sculpture, printmaking, photography and installation. The showcase represents the Academy’s commitment to promoting excellence in visual art and is the largest and longest-running exhibition of contemporary art in Scotland. This year, the hybrid exhibition (incorporating art and architecture) encompasses nearly 600 artworks displayed around the galleries as well as further digital images available to view on online.
‘The 199th RSA Annual exhibition is my first as Convenor, and it is a great honour to have been invited by the members of the Academy and entrusted with this role. I decided that I wouldn’t invite any guest artists, to create more opportunities under the Open section. The number of quality submissions, diversity and high quality is clearly evident throughout these magnificent galleries.’ – Lennox Dunbar RSA, Art Convenor.
Let’s take a browse around this year’s inspirational, distinctive and dynamic selection across every genre, starting with portraiture.
The theatrical pose of the sitter in profile, her face half-turned, in Ayomide Feyijimi by Martin Stevenson, is reminiscent of Whistler’s rather stern portrait of his mother. Combining classical mood with contemporary realism, her sombre demeanour, black velvet dress, red shoes, décor and shadowy light balances stillness, formality, and subtle psychological tension; the pears and apple symbolise fertility, temptation and knowledge. Lost in thought, Ayomide evokes elegance and dignity, while the juxtaposition with the still life connects life and art.
The quirky portrayal of Jemima by Claire Roberts is a poignant exploration of emotion and identity. This woodcut has an energetic blend of folk-art and decorative richness, using bold colour, shape and pattern as storytelling tools. With elaborate hair, Jemma’s face is like a mask – cool detachment in her blank expression. Floral wallpaper explodes with 1970s psychedelic motifs, while the sleepy cat adds a sense of companionship and mystique. Claire Roberts skilfully bridges the personal and the symbolic, both comforting and quietly strange.
Living in Shetland, Janette Kerr works at the interface between land, sea and climactic experience: ‘I don’t mind whatever the weather throws at me, the dramatic changes from one moment to the next. These immersive encounters with the natural world form the starting point of my paintings.’ Istek Sky, Brindister Voe is an immersive expression of raw elemental forces, depicting the liminal space between abstraction and seascape: you can almost feel the atmospheric, sonic power and imagine the roar of surf and moaning wind. With an ink black, dove grey and aqua blue palette, Kerr’s gestures are loose, urgent and layered, the brushstrokes seem to emulate wind shear, sea spray, and cloud drag, each mark breathing with the movement and mood of this thundery storm.
From Shetland to the Isle of Mull and a stroll on the beach at Calgary Bay by John McKechnie, who uses his own photographs for etchings and screenprints. With extraordinary clarity, Calgary Bay illustrates the crystal-clear, translucent water lapping over the sand, reflected in the soft Hebridean light. McKechnie eschews horizon or sky entirely in this seascape, to focus on the foaming surf, scatter of seaweed and floating marks – the visual effect is hypnotic: such a tranquil, serene scene of this deserted shoreline, transporting us to the edge of the tide.
Ade Adesina is visual commentator on ideas of ecology, referencing cultural narratives within a socio-political context. In his screenprint Revolver II, the intricate patterns and symbols create a surreal visual language that characterises much of his work. The large compass suggests navigation or change of direction, and the recycling motif implies the importance of sustainability. Cowrie shells – historically used as currency – an anchor and blue water droplet convey the fragility of natural resources while the cracked, dry seabed illustrates climate change. This dramatic image is a powerful political message on the current ecological crisis and our fight to save the oceans and natural world.
The rose is perhaps the most celebrated flower in art, from the Dutch Golden Age to Van Gogh and Dali, symbolising youth, love, beauty and mysticism. Derrick Guild develops ideas around nature and art history for still-life, botanical and animal paintings. A series entitled Dew Drops captures the soft velvety texture of three crimson rose petals, floating in a void, disconnected from time and place. Flecked with tiny water droplets, the falling petals express the decay and fleeting nature of life. With meticulous, realistic detail, the simplicity of the composition resonates with notions of emptiness, silence and fragility.
On a similar theme, Dawn Shadows in a Garden by Sheila Mitchell illustrates the delicate designs of blossoming flowers in the quiet beauty of the early morning sunlight. The palette is suffused in a floral fragrance of luminous pinks, lavender, pale yellows, emerald and sky blue, in a gestural abstraction of lush colour and contour – a peaceful, poetic reverie, rooted in the natural world of petals and leaves, yet filtered like a faded, nostalgic memory of a half-forgotten garden.
Bursting with kinetic joy, Landscape II by Sam Shendi conveys a sense of energy, reflecting the dynamic nature of the environment. Exemplifying his characteristic fusion of industrial materials with minimalist abstraction, the looping, tubular structure is like a 3D doodle drawing – free and unrestrained, yet engineered with precision. It coils and balances precariously, illustrating tension and movement, akin to a child’s climbing frame. Shendi uses vibrant glossy colour and the language of play in his unique sculptures to explore human experience, past, present and future.
Paul Furneaux is a master in the artistry of Mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese woodblock printing technique which involves printing watercolour onto handmade Japanese paper. ‘There are underlying themes to my work – my concern for the ever-changing landscape and global warming is often there, if not always obvious’. Burnt Orange Earth Blue is a diptych, the two birch panels closely connected yet with contrasting geometric architectural blocks in warm, earthy tones. Designed with proportion, balance and harmony, this is crafted with such elegance in form, surface, texture and the meditative beauty of pure abstraction.
Jake Harvey carves in basalt, granite, marble and porphyry to design Zen-like sculptured work with reference to cairns and ancient standing stones. In Two Forms, he demonstrates the spatial balance of a cracked black ball resting on the other flat, oval stone, presenting an interaction between their shape and texture. It is the kind of tactile artwork – a natural touchstone, honed and smoothed – that reflects how the elements sculpt the geology of the Scottish landscape.
Roland Fraser uses reclaimed materials to combine the architectural and archaeological remnants of former structures. Crafted in salvaged, distressed timber, the title Pentecox is derived from the name of a long-lost village in Midlothian, in eastern Scotland. Composed of interlocking geometric rectangles and squares, it’s strongly asymmetrical, yet retains balance in colour, line and texture. The weathered, worn surface evokes derelict houses and sheds of a community which no longer exists – a visual narrative of memory, heritage and transformation.
In 2024, Maurizio Cattelan’s provocative installation of a banana duct-taped to a wall, was sold for $6.2m at Sotheby’s, New York. At the RSA, Mark Purves also presents a banana within his enigmatic, conceptual work The Thing – a witty 3D trompe-l’œil subversion of a traditional still-life, as a study of a banana, avocado, egg and olives. Still-life historically reflected abundance and decay, beauty and vanity, and Purves reinvents this by injecting humour as the sculpted fruit breaks through the picture plane as if escaping its classical confines.
The art historian Nicholas de Ville commented that ‘the more minimal the vocabulary an artist chooses… the more significant the raw essentials of painting’. Likewise, Alison McWhirter focuses on the creative process itself in a quest for ever-greater abstraction. Journey to Love is vividly exuberant in its fearlessly bold palette – fuchsia, cadmium orange, cerulean blue and stark white crash against each other in a vivacious dialogue; oil paint is often transferred directly from the tube, smeared or swirled across the surface in a thick, buttery impasto. McWhirter uses warm colour to express emotion with a spontaneous, rhythmic, musical flow: a lyrical landscape of feeling more than place.
The full range of artworks can be viewed online.
The RSA partners the Own Art scheme, allowing artworks to be purchased in 10 monthly interest-free instalments.
With thanks to Vivien Devlin for this review.
