Coffee-Table Notes

Since 2008 or thereabouts, MuseumsEtc has published more than 100 titles that fuse photography, social history and politics in a series of beautifully bespoke editions. This month sees the publication of three new books that sum up the quietly radical ethos of the Edinburgh based but avowedly internationalist independent imprint.   Jo Spence: The Unknown Recordings compiles transcripts of tapes made by the feminist writer and photographer that reveal an unflinching and at times painful look at Spence’s life and work as a low paid working class artist. The texts are accompanied by images taken in her cramped Islington flat that make for an intimate and unsettling self-portrait of one of the late twentieth century’s most singular of artists.   The Erasure of Palestine collects more than 80 images taken over three years by photographer Ahmad Al-Bazz of what remains of the hundreds of towns and villages depopulated and destroyed during the creation and expansion of Israel from 194...

The Pavilion, Glasgow Four stars   If ever an unsung Scottish heroine was crying out to be reimagined in a high-end historical drama it is the figure of Flora MacDonald. Here, after all, was a young woman living in eighteenth century Skye who stumbled into the history books after aiding and abetting the Jacobite cause when she helped smuggle Bonnie Prince Charlie out of the reach of government troops after he and his party were trounced at Culloden. Other than a 1948 film and a more recent appearance in an episode of Outlander, alas, Flora has remained an oddly neglected figure.    Cue Belle Jones’ suitably heroic musical romp, which arrives in Glasgow this week to reclaim Flora and give her the due she deserves after opening in Inverness last weekend. Here we see Flora across the decades, with Karen Fishwick embodying the younger woman, while Annie Grace watches over Flora’s place in history with a wizened eye. What follows in Stasi Schaeffer’s big-hearted production for...

Òran Mór, Glasgow Four stars   If we all have our crosses to bear, say a prayer for Alice Lockwood in James Reilly’s new play that makes up the latest incarnation of A Play, a Pie and a Pint’s lunchtime theatre season at Òran Mór. Alice is a primary school teacher in a Catholic school, or was before she was suspended for reasons yet to be made clear. In order to get to the bottom of the incident, Alice has been seconded for a session with ex GP turned secular therapist Dr. Freer. When Father Mackin shows up to hear Alice’s story, truth becomes stranger than fiction.    Alice, you see, has been seeing saints. Fifteen of them have shown up in her classroom, proffering suitably saintly advice, with St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things and souls, even helping her find a missing ear ring under the fridge. Trouble is, she is the only one who can see her new spirit guides, and the wonderland of ecclesiastical encounters is occupied her alone. Even worse, while ...

King’s Theatre, Glasgow Four stars    When senior public figures publish a warts and all memoir, it is customary for them these days to go on a high profile promotional tour. Some enjoy meeting their public so much that the stars in their eyes get the better of them, and they join the showbiz sleb set, with everything they might have previously achieved lost in the razzmatazz.    So it goes with Scottish Police Chief Commissioner Cameron Miekelson, the hapless breakout star of comic cop mock doc, Scot Squad. As brought to life by veteran comedy auteur Jack Docherty, the Chief, or Cam the Bam, as he is known disaffectionately among what he might call his online community, has penned No Apologies. This tome is based on the befuddled Commissioner’s terminally unreconstructed way of saying the wrong thing on a public platform.    As the title implies, Miekelson manages to bluster his way into an ever-deeper hole with every utterance. This shows off an...

The shock of the new stands firm in this exhibition by Simon Phipps, whose long-term documentation of Brutalist architecture has given already dramatic constructions a sense of era defining largesse from what may or may not have been a golden age of town planning.   Throughout the gallery’s two rooms, a panoramic display resembles production stills from the opening credits of a late 1960s/early 1970s TV drama about sharp suited urbanists intent on creating new worlds made out of concrete and glass. In actuality, Phipps has mapped out a space age psychogeography already predicted by Fritz Lang and mythologised by J.G. Ballard as it transformed the post Second World War built environment in monumental fashion.   Here, Phipps presents a travelogue of civic spaces designed for a brave new world beyond the tenement slums of yesterday to the clean line abstractions looking out onto tomorrow. This comes in the solid form of office blocks, car parks and cathedrals, shopping ...

Yield Strength is an engineering term that defines the amount of stress a material can take before it is permanently changed. It is also the name given to the 2026 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art by this edition’s curator, Ellie Buttrose. Rather than impose a theme from the start, the name was chosen after the twenty-four artists who make up the showcase were selected.   With the Biennial spread across the Art Gallery of South Australia as well as the Samstag Museum of Art and Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Yield Strength seems to capture the spirit of some of Buttrose’s discoveries during her selection process.   “As I was travelling, I noticed that there was kind of a general return to artists really playing with materials,” says the Curator of Contemporary Australian Art at the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art. “There seemed to be a lot of push and pull going on in the work, and this sense that things cannot go back to the way they were after you've pushed...