Then and Now: 100 years of VAS review — a tour de force of talent

With more than 300 exhibits, drawn from a membership of 1,200, this show is the biggest in VAS’s history. Although it occupies most of the Royal Scottish Academy’s voluminous galleries, it manages to retain an uncluttered feel. With such an eclectic mix of material ― ceramics, furniture, sculpture, tapestry, painting, prints, glass, and installation ― there’s always a presentational dilemma.

The choice here is neither thematic nor by medium but, rather, by colour, tone and texture. Each gallery has a discrete feel and aesthetic, and this works, as if by magic.

One gallery, for example, focuses mainly on smaller works and crafted objects of wood and found material. You’ll find unframed paintings and prints in a 30x30cm format, where there are bargains to be had ― for example Frances Innes’s acrylic East Coast Winter Storm and Jenny Smith’s botanical cyanotype drawings.

There’s a big, colourful, arresting explosion of greens and yellows in Andy Harper’s oil painting, Mellifluous, which seems to underline one of the unintended themes in the show ― nature. Another example isValley Section by Gillian Adair McFarland ― a palimpsest on silver birch bark, where cartographic contour lines have been lightly etched onto the surface.

It’s disappointing but no surprise, given the prominence of other organisations, that the “craft” element (“applied art” is a better term) is somewhat diminished, but there are still several skilled exponents who use clay, wood and other media to fashion their work. Adrian McCurdy’s Embers ― an oak stool that is part-sculpture, part-painting and part-utilitarian object ― defies traditional pigeon-holing.

Of note for its crafted ingenuity is the collaboration Chester Drawers, an upcycled combination of oak and plywood, by Christopher Britee-Steer, which has been covered with mysterious glyphs and ciphers by Gosia Walton.

Nearby there’s a huge, watery, blue-grey ink drawing on paper by Mary Walters entitled Ilulissat [Iceberg] that explodes with a natural energy. It’s neither landscape nor seascape, but mindscape, augmented by scrawled words in the Kalaallisut language.

The central gallery, always a difficult space to fill, mixes intensely coloured, wall-hung work with sculpture, freestanding and on plinths. Unmissable are the outsized, elongated and totally non-functional chairs by Martha Williams and a multi-coloured coracle by Jenny Pope, Buoyancy in unprecedented times ― certainly, an apt metaphor.

This centenary exhibition by one of Scotland’s foremost art organisations is a tour de force of artistic talent and curatorial intelligence. Congratulations to the exhibitors and curators. Its energy is badly needed.

     Until March 13