A fresh look at the writer

The Scottish National Portrait Gallery has clearly come to an equitable arrangement with Scotland's writers. Two new exhibitions - Writers Of Our Time and Wish I Was Here - strike the balance with permanent visual display minus the public intrusion. Writers Of Our Time is a tribute to the literary talents who have, says curator Duncan Forbes, ''coloured the way we see the world and helped form the world's view of Scotland''. Those considered ''original and excellent'' by the gallery include Alasdair Gray in a wild-haired, unhinged portrait by Oscar Marzaroli. A louche John Byrne reclining amidst the daisies in Greyfriars Kirk, a beaming Iain Crichton Smith on settee with tumbler of drink, and a robust Ian Hamilton Finlay rowing in Little Sparta are memorable. In fact, these simple black-and-white photographs from the gallery's collection hold far more intrigue and classic status than the

unsubtle colour snaps of contemporary writers like J K Rowling, Irvine Welsh, and Duncan MacLean.

Far more gratifying are the gallery's newly commissioned works. David William's meditative photographic diptych of A L Kennedy is a delight while prize-winning Jennifer McRae's apparently straightforward portrait of Robin Jenkins invokes both a sense of this wonderful writer's subject matter and quirky fun in the fuscia cushion the dignified man of letters is seated upon.

Dominating this section is Calum Colvin's imaginative and bold photopiece titled The Kelvingrove Eight. Despite infamous criminal gang connotations, ''the Eight'' are from left to right Janice Galloway, Alasdair Gray, Tom Leonard, Bernard MacLaverty, Liz Lochhead, Alan Spence, Jeff Torrington, and Agnes Owens. Notable omissions James Kelman and A L Kennedy are served by black-and-white photographic portraits.

Those observing an uncanny similarity to Sandy Moffatt's Edinburgh-based Poet's Pub, significantly juxtaposed on a neighbouring gallery wall, are not mistaken. The Colvin portrait is meant as a West Coast riposte to the 1980 literary gathering of Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCraig, Sorley Maclean, Ian Crichton Smith, George Mackay Brown, Sydney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garrioch, and the only surviving member, Edwin Morgan.

Gazing at this colourful figurative work of an earlier generation is Calum Colvin. Explaining his magpie technique, Colvin says that despite the plethora of individual photographic portraits he took, the composition evaded him. ''I messed about on my computer for ages on groupings till one night I saw the Moffat painting and thought I'll just nick it! I slid Alasdair in where MacDiarmid was and Janice in where MacCraig was. It just worked.''

The almost life-sized portrait is a classic Colvin. A blend of illusion and reality via the 2-D image of a 3-D structure. Innovative with a streak of humour and a sheaf of subtle imagery to investigate should the viewer choose to unpick the composition. Figures are painted on to the stage-set in black demarcation outlines then photographed. A strong palette fills in the washes of colour. Three-dimensional objects form a live stage while the room ''window'' shows a view of Kelvingrove Museum. In keeping with the rest of his work it is the ''clutter'' as much as the portrait that intrigues the viewer. Personal photographs, writers' books, and odd items like a mini Mickey Mouse and Ganesh figure litter the floor.

''A portrait is an exchange between the person being portrayed and the portrayer,'' says Colvin. ''So it's nice to have a mystery or involve them in the process. My work is self-reverential so the whole image is about the creation of the image. The clues to the beginning of it are always in the finished work. Therefore I included the original photos I took of the writers, my palette and paintbrushes and a half bottle of Bells.'' The latter is part of the reference to Glasgow's coat of arms with bell, bird, fish, and tree while the ''unity and strength'' banner refers to his impression of the writers' socialist and supportive feelings towards each other.

Colvin has obviously been inspired by the literary gurus. His next project is to make use of the Creative Scotland Award granted last year. He is planning a series of works based on James MacPherson's Ossian Cycle and Scotland's identity and history.

Also staring up at The Kelvingrove Eight is one of the West Coast gang resident in Edinburgh. Declaring Colvin's work ''fantastic'', Alan Spence marvels at Colvin's unique 3-D portrayal. ''My face is on the back wall, my lap is on the physical chair, and my feet on carpet. It's incredulous!'' The purgatory land of reality and illusion, Spence feels, imbues the work with a ghostly appearance. ''It gives a transient feeling that we are only here for certain period in time then it will be an empty room afterwards,'' he muses. Ready for the next generation of literati to enter the composition, perhaps.

Complementing this exhibition is Wish I Was Here. A beautifully evocative and largely poetic collection of photographs and images exploring the eternal questions of identity and experience among contemporary Scottish writers who inhabit twin-culture backgrounds. Uniting six lens-based artists and 24 poets of mixed cultural, linguistic, and published experiences, the exhibition is part of a multistranded project including a Pocketbook by Morning Star publications, a CD Rom, a Travelling Gallery exhibit, and educational programme.

Drawing upon Gaelic, Shetlandic, Asian, African, and New Zealand cultures are featured poets Irfan Merchant, Jackie Kay, Aonghas Machneacail, Christine de Luca, and Hamid Shami. As organiser Alec Finlay explains, this is not an exhibition of author photographs. ''Some of them you can tell very little what the author looks like,'' he says. ''They are more about exploring identity so it's a way of taking it beyond poetry.''

This is obvious in the stunning vibrancy and sheer joyousness of Chila Kumari Burman's work. Her multicoloured collages of dazzling and bleeding photocopied colours explode against the wall. Her A4 composition laid out in the shape of a human body on the wall obliterates her subject Hamid Shami completely in a blur of colour and written scribbles. Elsie Mitchell's also tips into the graphic arts with handwritten poems and imagery superimposed on her subjects' photographs. Craig Mackay's very spiritual abstract images capture both a fragment of the poet's identity as well as a feeling for their respective work with a main sepia shot supplemented by smaller ''insight'' shots. Despite their polar styles, David Williams's straightforward black-and-white portraits of his subjects are also complemented by companion snapshots of poet's possessions and interior shots of their homes. Head of Photography

at Edinburgh College of Art, Williams summarises the entire exhibition when he describes his own work's intention to serve as ''visual poems''.

n Writers Of Our Time and Wish I Was Here are at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery until January 2001. Admission is free.