Damian Shields
The Outside Inside
Gesso Coffee Lounge
24 Charing Cross Mansions, Glasgow
077320 12765
www.damianshields.com
Until June 6
Many of the images you see in the weekend arts pages of The Herald and Sunday Herald look good enough to eat thanks to the sterling efforts of group multimedia journalist, Damian Shields. By his own admission, he spends a lot of his time in a "wee darkened room working with images on digital platforms". In his spare time though, Shields, who studied fine art photography at Glasgow School of Art, has been travelling the length and breadth of Scotland photographing landscapes.
In the last eight years, his work has been exhibited at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, the National Theatre in London and Glasgow Print Studio. Last year, he was shortlisted for the 2014 Landscape Photographer of the Year award. Now Shields has brought a collection of these stunning images together for his first major solo exhibition called Outside Inside at Gesso, a brand new exhibition space and coffee lounge in Glasgow's Charing Cross.
There are almost 40 photographs in this new show and the work includes scenes from the Isle of Eigg, the remote highways and byways of Argyll, the Trossachs, and in and around the Glasgow area. Seeing these photographs 'in the flesh' is so much more satisfying than viewing them online and this is something which Shields has thought long and hard about before putting this show together.
"It's difficult for an audience to appreciate the sense of scale and detail when you're looking at images on tablets, computer screens and phones," he explains. "But now I'm dragging some of my favourite views of Scotland out into the light. This is a portfolio in living print. The work on the walls at Gesso is a carefully selected cross-section of landscape captured over the past eight years."
This is an excellent opportunity to sit back and enjoy Scotland's landscape with a fine cup of coffee in one hand and your eyes trained on the detail of Shields's very fine photography.
127th Annual Exhibition
Paisley Art Institute
Paisley Museum and Art Galleries
www.paisleyartinstitute.com
From May 24 until June 28
Scotland's art societies have long nurtured emerging talent while at the same time showcasing the work of more established artists. Paisley Art Institute (PAI) is no exception. Next weekend its annual exhibition opens to the public and presents an array of artwork from artists both known and yet-to-be discovered.
This year, a cache of 26 prizes, open to all artists who submit work, will be awarded at the opening event. This includes the Arnold Clark Award and the House For An Art Lover Award, both worth £1000 each.
For PAI's 127th annual exhibition, the guest artists are writer and artist Alasdair Gray, and Sculptor in Ordinary to Her Majesty The Queen in Scotland, Alexander Stoddart. Gray, who celebrated his 80th birthday with a major retrospective at Kelvingrove in Glasgow last year, has exhibited several times over the years with PAI. This is Stoddart's first showing at an Open Exhibition. As a neat postscript, Gray's portraiture has inspired school pupils who took part in the PAI Schools' Competition, which opens on June 6 in the gallery.
An exhibition is planned for October this year which celebrates PAI's legacy as a powerhouse of art collecting outside London. For the first time in 42 years, work from PAI's unique collection, built by members over its 127-year-long history, will be shown to the public. This includes work by the Glasgow Boys, the Barbizon and Hague Schools, as well as members who came to national prominence. It will also be showing the work of those who are no longer household names.
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