SSA – 118th Annual Exhibition

At one time, in the late 19th century, the Society of Scottish Artists was considered an upstart organisation, in contrast to the older, more respectable Royal Scottish Academy. Both are now venerable institutions and the gap between the type of art and artists that forms their respective memberships has closed significantly.

This year both organisations are exhibiting side by side, in the same building, so it’s easier to compare their approaches. By and large, the SSA is the more adventurous, favouring a greater variety of media, younger artists and, often, bigger and bolder work.

There’s a diversity in the current SSA show (236 artworks were chosen from 1,254 entries) that ranges from large installations occupying entire walls to small, delicate prints, drawings and paintings that take up only a few centimetres. Between these extremes there are powerful graphics, inventive technologically-oriented installations, and sculpture that is made, literally, from shadows.

As in previous years (a tradition which stretches back to the origins of the SSA) the work of a number of invited foreign artists exerts a powerful attraction.

Lise Vézina from Quebec is a well-established printmaker, who has also worked as a designer of women’s clothes. Her installation Tendre Le Tissu du Temps (Soft Tissue of Time) explores female histories from an autobiographical perspective.

Found historical photographs (as well as those of the artist as a young woman) have been printed on sets of linoleum squares. There is something poignant, magical and melancholy about this tribute to unknown women from across time and generations.

Koralia Maciej’s photographically derived graphic installation Cities and the Sky is spread over an entire wall and consists of interconnected composite images of architecture and construction. The philosophical basis and inspiration for Maciej’s work is Italo Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities, in which the writer imagines numerous cities as described from Marco Polo to Kublai Khan.

The Minnesota-based art collective Rosalux has been invited to show a number of works following an exchange with SSA members last year.

Here artists such as Ute Bertog and Jack Dale demonstrate strong compositional and pictorial skills. There are quieter moments from talented voices such as Annie Woodford and Philippa Drummond, who have created, in their respective works Merisis and Archipelago, sensitive, delicate imagery derived from natural forms.

Andrea Geile’s Level the Field No 8-No 12, a vast sculpture fabricated from rusted Corten steel, contributes an imposing monumentality while retaining an intrinsic sense of the organic.

Once again, the SSA demonstrates the health of the nation’s art scene and its outward looking approach. By showing cheek-by-jowl with the RSA Open, the SSA allows the visitor to ponder its expansive, exciting dynamism and the rather more reserved, but highly polished, approach of its older cousin.

The exhibition runs until Jan 18