When Vasile Toch was elected President of the Scottish Society of Artists in March 2023, the Romanian born émigré decreed to give Scotland’s oldest and largest artist led organisations a shake up. The first fruits of this are to be found in the SSA’s annual exhibition, which, for only the third time in its 125-year existence, moves out of its regular venue at the Royal Academy Building in Edinburgh to take over the Maclaurin Gallery in Ayr. Here, the SSA show will feature some 175 artworks across all forms by its members. The exhibition will also feature work by fifteen recent graduates from Scottish art schools. These young artists are all recipients of SSA awards following visits to degree shows by SSA selectors. A series of moving image works will be staged by artist collective, CutLog, while the exhibition will feature new work by the Maclaurin Gallery’s patron, Peter Howson. Outwith Ayr, an SSA satellite exhibition, Connect and Grow, will run at Cass Art in Glasgow. While ther
Pitlochry Festival Theatre Four stars The lights of Leith are very much on in the cityscape diorama that sits at the top of Adrian Rees’ set for this revival of Stephen Greenhorn’s long lauded Proclaimers jukebox musical. Sixteen years since Greenhorn’s concoction was first seen, and eighteen months after Elizabeth Newman’s production took the Pitlochry stage by storm, the show is as joyous and as heartbreaking as it ever was. Much of this, of course, is down to Craig and Charlie Reid’s songs, which give Greenhorn’s yarn about ex squaddies Davy and Ally’s prodigal’s return to Leith and their respective romances with Yvonne and Liz its emotional heart. As sung and played live by Newman’s brilliant cast of twelve, musical director Richard Reeday’s renderings of David Shrubsole’s arrangements lay bare the heart on sleeve narratives of each song. Just hearing the show’s main quartet divvy up stripped back interpretations of Letter from America, 500 Miles and many more is enough to have