Verve, vigour and style of the 369 men stands test of time

In December 2002 a fire swept through Cowgate in Edinburgh, destroying homes and businesses.

It signalled the end of an important era in Scottish art. The 369 Gallery, set up in the late Seventies by Andrew Brown, was engulfed. The gallery had specialised in the work of younger figurative artists riding a wave of popularity; among them luminaries such as June Redfern, Pat Douthwaite, Fiona Carlisle, Gwen Hardie and Caroline McNairn. A recent show (in the same venue) focused on the work of the women who helped to establish the gallery as an important player in the world of Scottish art and the international scene. Now, it is the turn of the men.

Looking back four decades or more it is difficult not to be impressed by the verve and vigour of Alan Watson, Geoffrey MacEwan, Rob McCarthy, Hock-Aun Teh, Graham Durward, Paul Furneaux and Martin Churchill. Brown is a flamboyant character and his stable of artists reflects his proclivities. His work is included and, although surprisingly traditional when set alongside that if his peers, it is nevertheless powerful and delicate: rural landscapes and historic buildings.

The Eighties in Scotland were dominated by the reinvigorated Glasgow “school” represented here by Adrian Wiszniewski, whose essentially European sensibility shines through in every stroke, gesture and abstracted form.

Even more dramatic are the bold and virile woodcuts by Jonathan Gibbs. The series is dominated by a vast tableau of imagined narrative, created as whole from a single slab of wood hewn from a large tree, which acts as the original woodblock. The block is at least as impressive as the images it has been used to create and is a powerful sculptural form.

Work by Keith McIntyre shows his sense of large-scale narrative, illustrated here by an impressive trilogy, The Trembling Land. Like McIntyre, Watson’s work employs narrative techniques, here based on his sea-faring ancestry. Graeme Swanson’s seascapes and landscapes are more about an emotional response to shape, form and light.

Many of these works still look fresh and vital today, proving the maxim that good art endures the test of time.

Until March 17. Box office: 0131 560 1580