By the time Ken Currie graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1983 his work was steeped in politically driven socialist realism. The acquisition of two of Currie’s works from that time - Union Organiser (1987) and The Calton Activist (1987) – highlight the significance of such early pieces. Currie is probably best known today for paintings such as Three Oncologists (2002), a study of three doctors at Ninewells Hospital in Dundee. More recently, Currie’s fascination with mortality and the body saw him paint Unknown Man (2019), a portrait of forensic anthropologist Dame Sue Black. Many of Currie’s works are set against dark backgrounds full of foreboding that suggests his figures are spotlit as if for a film. Currie’s early career saw him became part of a generation of artists – Steven Campbell, Stephen Conroy, Peter Howson and Adrian Wiszniewski were others – brought together in 1985 for the New Image Glasgow exhibition at the Third Eye Centre, now the site of the C...
Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars Happy endings don’t come easy in Elizabeth Newman’s new adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s twentieth century jazz age American classic. Produced for the 100th anniversary of the novel’s publication in this co-production between Pitlochry Festival Theatre and Derby Theatre, Fitzgerald’s ennui laden yarn of vaulting ambition lays bare how money may talk, but it also corrupts. As with the book, the story is told by Nick Carraway, here a wannabe writer observing the scene he accidentally falls into with an eye for myth making where everything and everyone becomes material. And what a gift Jay Gatsby is, a self-made nouveau riche socialite with a murky background who only wants to impress his former lover Daisy. She may have sold her soul to marriage with nasty Tom, but is tempted back into Gatsby’s social whirl with devastating results. Sarah Brigham’s production sets out its store on Jen McGinley’s neon tinged set of s...