Coffee-Table Notes

Summerhall, Edinburgh until January 27th 2019 Four stars When the 2002 Cowgate fire destroyed the Edinburgh site of Andrew Brown’s 369 Gallery which, following its closure in 1991, became artist’s studios and home to the Gilded Balloon Comedy club, it seemingly wiped out all remnants of one of the then few bastions of artistic autonomy in a city which, then as now, preferred a more respectable institutional facade. Arriving at a time when artist-led activity in Edinburgh is thriving, this first of two retrospectives reveals Brown and the 369 as pioneers, embracing the misfit sensibility of recent graduate artists with an anything-goes attitude that flirted with the establishment it stepped away from. This is evident, both in the evocative written reminiscences from many of the artists pinned to the wall beside their work, as well as from the glorious archive of images and newspaper cuttings from the era. Decadent-looking fund-raising balls, the much-arrested Furbelows living

Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh until June 2nd 2019 Four stars When Charles II was restored to power in 1660 following the demise of Oliver Cromwell, the new king on the block made up for his nine years in the wilderness inbetween reigns by becoming a good time boy who put himself about a bit. He also did his best to buy back all the art Cromwell’s parliament had flogged off on the cheap. Whether these events influenced Charles’ taste in art isn’t on record. Judging by some of the restoration era riches gathered here to show off the original merry monarch’s relationship with art on a personal, professional and aesthetic level, Charles certainly had a darker side. Beyond the self-deification, propaganda and pure glamour-chasing pleasure, the presence of no less than three paintings of biblical beheadings suggests a fondness for grand gestures of a decapitatory kind. Elsewhere, Sir Peter Lely’s ten portrait series, The Windsor Beauties, show off Charles’ assorted rosy-cheeked mistresse

Orla O’Loughlin may have stepped down from her role as artistic director of the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh after seven years in post, but her presence is never far away. Her final production, of Kieran Hurley’s play, Mouthpiece, is still running, and a trailer of it plays on a loop in a TV monitor in the bar. As part of Scotland’s new writing theatre’s just announced Spring 2019 season, O’Loughlin’s Herald Angel winning production of Cora Bissett’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe hit, What Girls Are Made Of, is about to head out on tour. Apart from anything else, even though she’s preparing to start her new job as vice principal of drama at Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, she only lives ten minutes away, and can’t keep away from the place. “We’re neighbours,” O’Loughlin beams, “and it’s a nice place to be.” With Mouthpiece as her parting shot, to say O’Loughlin and the Traverse are parting on good terms is something of an understatement. “I think it’d been a go