An exhibition by the leading Scottish painter Peter Doig is to open in Venice at the same time as this year's Biennale in the Palazzetto Tito, Venice, curated by Milovan Farronato and Angela Vettese.

The artist will present large paintings and several smaller works, all of them new and being shown for the first time.

Peter Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959 and raised in Trinidad and Canada before settling in London in 1979 to study painting. He has continued his peripatetic lifestyle, dividing his time between London, New York, Trinidad and Düsseldorf, where he maintains a professorship at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.

Doig was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and has been the subject of important museum exhibitions worldwide, including a mid-career survey organized by Tate Britain in 2008.

In 2013 the Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, organized No Foreign Lands; the critically lauded exhibition focused on recurrent motifs in Doig's paintings, which later travelled to Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montreal.

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Scots chanteuse Emma Pollock (pictured) will become the latest UK-based artist to participate in a new touring scheme run by British and American expats in China later this month.

The solo artist and pillar of the Chemikal Underground empire in Glasgow will fly to China in 10 days' time and rehearse with her Shanghai-based backing group for a week before commencing an eight-date tour of seven cities such as Beijing, Zhengzhou and Wuhan across six provinces.

Among the musicians backing the former Delgado are guitarist Mike Herd, originally from East Kilbride and now a maths teacher and gig promoter, British drummer Danny Abbasi and New Yorker EJ Swider, who will take a break from teaching music at a primary school to play bass for Pollock. Completing her band will be piano teacher Xi Chen.

Pollock, who is putting the finishing touches to her third solo album this week, follows in the footsteps of Paul Collins from California pop-rock outfit The Beat in visiting China to tour under the guidance of Herd and co. Besides the creative buzz, she's looking forward to getting a taste of Chinese transport.

"It's a lovely idea," she says. "I hop on the plane with a guitar and join them after they've got to know the songs. We then rehearse for a few days and jump on the train. Not just any train - magnetic levitation trains and some of the fastest in the world."

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