Home Culture Exhibitions to Open at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One)

Exhibitions to Open at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One)

March 23, 2017 5:36 pm

NOW – A series of six, modern art exhibitions opens this week

A dynamic new three-year programme of contemporary art exhibitions opens at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) in Edinburgh this week. The entire ground floor of the Gallery’s Modern One building is to be given over to NOW – a series of six major exhibitions, showcasing the work of some of the most compelling and influential artists working today.

At the heart of each exhibition will be a significant presentation devoted to the work of a single artist, around which group displays and room-sized installations by a range of other artists will be selected to explore common themes and ideas.

The opening exhibition, which will be on show from 25 March, will include major three-room exhibition by Glasgow-based, Turner Prize-shortlisted artist Nathan Coley. It will also include significant works by world-renowned Lebanese-born artist Mona Hatoum and the influential Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander, a recent installation by Glasgow-based artist Tessa Lynch, and a display pairing the work of painters Louise Hopkins and Tony Swain.

Central to the exhibition will be The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh 2004 by Nathan Coley, which will be on show for the first time since it underwent a major restoration by the artist in 2016, after sustaining accidental water damage while on loan in 2015. This iconic installation comprises 286 scaled-down cardboard replicas of every building listed as a place of worship in the 2004 Yellow Pages telephone directory for Edinburgh.

As part of the process of restoration, a new replica was made for every building, and the original replicas recycled. Revisiting one of the key works of his career after 13 years has been an extraordinary experience for Coley.

Coley’s exhibition will also feature two recent large-scale sculptural works, being shown in Scotland for the first time: a depiction of St Paul’s Cathedral in London, titled Paul (2015), and Tate Modern on Fire (2017). Both works take the form of an architectural scale model, and in each, the back is left open to reveal a cabinet of curiosities.

The first NOW exhibition will also feature Mona Hatoum’s complete Performance Documents 1980-1987/2013, which presents rarely seen texts, photographs and videos, highlighting the significance of performance and actions in the artist’s early career, and two major works by Rivane Neuenschwander. This major international artist will be showing her installation Harvest (2013-14) – a compendium of discarded shopping lists, collected from trolleys and baskets in London supermarkets – for the first time in the UK. There will also be a rare chance to see the artist’s beautiful film, The Tenant (2010), which follows the perilous journey of a simple soap bubble as it moves slowly through an empty apartment.