VISUAL ART
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THE SCOTTISH ENDARKENMENT: ART AND UNREASON 1945 TO THE PRESENT
Exploring the dark side of our divided self ‘If there is such a thing as the Scottish Enlightenment then consequently, even if we prefer to ignore it, there must also be a dark shadow,’ says Bill Hare of Edinburgh University, co-curator of this exhibition with his colleague Andrew Patrizio. ‘For every Dr Jekyll there’s a Mr Hyde, that’s the nature of what the psychiatrist RD Laing called our “divided self”. Yet it wasn’t until after the horrors of the Second World War and the wide ranging impact of the Cold War on western society that Scottish artists began to face up to and address an array of disturbing subjects from the increasingly anxious and unsettling times they lived in.’ and Patrizio are looking at in exploring these themes, with work from Alan Davie, Joan Eardley, Eduardo Paolozzi, Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Bellany, Joyce Cairns, Steven Campbell, Alison Watt, Douglas Gordon and David Shrigley on display, as well as specially commissioned new pieces from Beagles & Ramsay, Louise Hopkins and Shona Macnaughton. Plus, there’s a Christine Borland piece which has never been seen in Scotland.
It’s an exhibition which is large in scale as well as thematic ambition, and this stretches beyond its spring opening. It will be the Dovecot Gallery’s showpiece Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition, and there will also It’s this post-war period which Hare
be a selection of related i lms showing at the Filmhouse throughout July and August.
‘We’ve been struck from the outset how Scottish artists immediately “get” the phrase “Scottish Endarkenment”,’ says Hare. ‘Their work expresses a range of themes, from ever-escalating communal and international conl icts, social inequalities, consumer materialism and threatened gender identities. It’s a shifting and elusive affair in which the visitors are encouraged to make thematic connections freely for themselves.’ (David Pollock) ■ Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, Fri 13 May–Mon 29 Aug.
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7 Apr–2 Jun 2016 THE LIST 99