Coffee-Table Notes

  John Byrne – 6 January 1940 - 30 November 2023  “I was brought up in Ferguslie Park,” painter, playwright and all round polymath John Byrne told Scottish Art News in 2014 of the Paisley housing estate he grew up in. “And I remember thanking God when we moved there, because I knew then that I had all the things I needed for whatever it was that I wanted to do.”   Ferguslie Park was never far away in everything that followed, right up  to Byrne’s death aged 83 following a long and maverick career that saw him renowned as an artist of vigorous imagination, be it as a painter, playwright or stage set designer.    As the 2022 retrospective at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum –  John Byrne: A Big Adventure  - showed, Byrne’s output was a vast and deeply personal affair. The exhibition was also recognition for an artist whose first experience of Kelvingrove came as a child, when he saw works by Titian and Salvador Dali's ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’ for the first time. Byrne’s

2023: WTF is going on? As The KLF come into view once more by way of the BFI’s forthcoming DVD collection of assorted videos and films from the self styled ‘Stadium House’ duo of Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, you might well ask. Cauty and Drummond, after all, aka Rockman Rock and King Boy D, gatecrashed the pop charts in the 1980s with their epic brand of conceptual rabble rousing before self-destructing at the 1992 BRIT Awards. As The K Foundation, they rebooted late twentieth century pop culture as we knew it, burning a million quid as they went.    23 Seconds to Eternity – The Collected films of The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The KLF and The Timelords (1988-1992) brings together video clips for assorted smash hits including 3 A.M. Eternal, What Time is Love? and Justified and Ancient. The collection also features rarely seen ‘ambient road movie’ The White Room (1989), plus restored or previously unreleased shorts, all directed by Bill Butt.   For long-term K watchers, this is a t

Summerhall, Edinburgh Four stars Love, apparently, is not only the true meaning of Christmas. According to less than sharp suited corporate wonks Warren and Stew, love is the driving force behind crypto currency, that curiously intangible online exchange that has apparently made some who buy into it exceedingly rich. Once the emperor’s new currency becomes worthless, alas, they become very poor indeed.    Warren and Stew’s hapless evangelical spiel comes with a bargain basement alternative to the bells and whistles power point presentations beloved of the regular corporate lecture circuit where many of their ilk tout their wares. To whit, a more interactive exchange - read that as audience participation - involves life size block chain choreography and anti banking escapology. There is a lo-fi re-enactment of a couple of Christmas crackers - sorry, classics - and a chocolate coin chucking competition that has shades of 1970s kids TV riot, Runaround. The retro feel is heightened even mo

Dundee Rep Five stars One could be forgiven for thinking the mountain of flight cases piled in the centre of an otherwise empty stage is for an impending rock concert. Especially as Dundee Rep’s  troupe of actors are milling about the auditorium in standard issue front of house apparel before this new musical adaptation of Charles Dickens’ festive classic by Scott Gilmour and Claire McKenzie, aka Noisemaker.   Don’t be fooled, however, because while the cast eventually get to the story of Scrooge’s wake up call from miserdom after they channel a dressing up box of story books past, best keep an eye on those flight cases. As designer Emily James’ ingenious construction morphs into everything from a flying bed to a grave to something a lot more seasonal, the tower becomes integral to the show’s action.   The monumentally arranged pile is pretty much the only thing that stands still in Andrew Panton’s non-stop burl of a production, first seen in 2022. As Ewan Donald’s Scrooge faces up to

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

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh Four Stars Winter is coming in Morna Young’s brand new take on Hans Christian Anderson’s evergreen folk tale, brought home here to a frosty Victorian Edinburgh in Cora Bissett’s musical production, with Young’s script steeped in Scotland’s fantastical mythology.  Things open quietly, with Wendy Seager’s Seer setting out the show’s store by way of oral storytelling and projected shadowplay. Meanwhile, in the city, young Gerda and her best pal Kei tend to their roof garden as they wait for a solitary rose to bloom. As they bond over the loss of their respective parents, they can barely imagine the adventure they’re about to embark on after Claire Dargo’s Snow Queen kidnaps Kei.  Befriended by Samuel Pashby’s keytar wielding crow Corbie, Gerda is whisked off on a grand tour that takes in a talking fairy garden in Perth, a gang of Highland robbers whose market for overpriced tartan tat has gone bust, a pantomime unicorn, and a wise old king at sea. Even the