Annual Review 2011-12 - National Galleries of Scotland

12
S C OT T I S H N AT I O N A L
GALLERY O F M O D E R N A RT
Tony Cragg
30 July to 6 November 2011
Sponsored by Holtermann Fine Art and
the Henry Moore Foundation
Above left Bent of Mind, 2002 by
Tony Cragg. © The Artist.
Photo: Charles Duprat
Above right Portrait of a Lady
in Black, c.1921 by F.C.B. Cadell,
Scottish National Gallery of
Modern Art. Bequest of Mr &
Mrs G.D. Robinson, through the
Art Fund, 1988
Opposite Lightning Fields 168,
2009 by Hiroshi Sugimoto.
© The Artist
An artist of high international acclaim
and immense energy, Cragg has developed
more possibilities in the making of sculpture
than any other sculptor since Henry
Moore discovered the ‘hole’ as positive
space. Early works of the 1970s were
mostly made with found objects through
which Cragg questioned and tested
possibilities. Later pieces demonstrate
Hiroshi Sugimoto
4 August to 25 September 2011
In partnership with Edinburgh
International Festival
This was a major exhibition of works from
the renowned Japanese photographer
Hiroshi Sugimoto. Featuring twenty-six
large-scale works from two of Sugimoto’s
recent series, Lightening Fields and
Photogenic Drawings, the show included
dramatic photographs produced through
the play of violent electrical discharges
on photographic film. The Photogenic
Drawings series was inspired by the
innovative techniques of the nineteenthcentury
photographer Henry Fox Talbot.
a shift of interest to surface quality and
how that could be manipulated, and
a play with unlikely juxtapositions of
materials. Results vary from the exquisite
to the grotesque, from the refined to the
crude, in bronze, steel, plastic, rubber,
glass, wood, plaster and more. This
exhibition showcased his work to great
critical reception.
F.C.B. Cadell
22 October 2011 to 18 March 2012
Sponsored by Dickson Minto
This major retrospective was the first
solo exhibition of Cadell’s work in a
public gallery in almost seventy years. Of
the four Scottish Colourists, Cadell was
arguably the most elegant painter of the
group, known for his stylish portrayals
of Edinburgh New Town interiors and
the society that occupied them, as well
as for his landscapes of the Scottish
west coast and the south of France. The
show brought together eighty paintings,
including iconic works such as The White
Room and The Orange Blind.