The Scottish Gallery turns 175

WBG showing two paintings in Scottish Gallery celebration

3 May – 3 June 2017

The Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh is marking its 175th birthday with a celebration that takes in the work of a considerable number of artists it has worked with over that time. The two paintings by WBG included in the show focus on 1981, a year where she first exhibited the Expanding Forms and Movement in Space series. A photograph from the exhibition, which took place during the 1981 Edinburgh Festival at the Scottish Gallery when it was originally part of Aitken Dott & Son, can be found below.

The Movement in Space paintings emerged from a series of Mirage pictures which in turn can be considered an evolution of Things of a Kind, an extensive body of work that featured for much of the 1960s and 1970s. In Movement in Space the disk spheres suggest planetary/moon forms floating in an ethereal space that is dividied into two distinct light and shady background areas. Some of the disks have been split/subdivided with brighter colouring on their left edges, suggesting that they are being lit by an unseen sun off to the left of the canvas. Whether or not it is intended for the viewer to interpret the images in a literal way is uncertain and yet much of WBG’s initial ideas come from direct obervation of natural events.