Art reviews: SSA Annual Exhibition | Hope/Dòchas

The energy and skill on display in these two shows is testament to the creativity which goes on even in uncertain times, writes Susan Mansfield

Installation view of the SSA's 126th Annual Exhibition | Stewart Attwood

The 126th Annual Exhibition of the SSA, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh ★★★★

Hope/Dòchas: Edinburgh Printmakers Members’ Exhibition, Edinburgh Printmakers ★★★★

It’s been a tough year for the arts in Scotland, and it’s not getting any easier, with many organisations uncertain of future funding even a few months hence. What’s also true, however, is that down at the grassroots, artists are continuing to make art with as much energy and application as ever, as evidenced by these two group exhibitions.

The Society of Scottish Artists has a long history of embracing the contemporary and providing a platform for artists at all stages of their careers. They have a membership of 1,700, and received some 2,000 submissions for this year’s Annual Exhibition (from members and non-members). The 200 works currently in the RSA’s Upper Galleries have won out in a tough selection process. In addition, all members are entitled to place work in the 30cm x 30cm section, where pieces the size of an LP sleeve can be browsed in record-shop-style units.

Having committed to showing its members’ work around Scotland, the SSA held last year’s annual show in the Maclaurin Gallery in Ayr, and organised two satellite exhibitions this summer at opposite ends of the country, in Gairloch and Galashiels. Now back at the RSA, they are as committed as ever to offering an open platform to artists which doesn’t depend on being well known.

In fact, familiar names are in the minority in this most eclectic of shows which includes painting, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics and installation, much of it done to an impressively high standard. Even more impressively, the installation team have found a way to weave all this together - all these artists, subjects, approaches - in a way which makes sense, using subtle connections of colour and theme.

The SSA has selected work from 12 of this year’s graduates from across Scotland’s five art colleges, and they have a big presence in the show. Amy Odlum has even been named as joint winner of one of the most prestigious of the show’s prizes, the W Gordon Smith and Mrs Jay Gordonsmith Award, for her remarkable portraits of her father.

Meghan Josephine’s monumental figurative work, Touch II, looks great on the walls of the RSA, and Jillian Adamson’s beautifully woven webs of thread make a play of light and shadow in one of the curved alcoves. Kristina Gondova does something fresh with ceramics, connecting pots to a journey through the landscape of the Cairngorms. Keith Massey and Duncan May, both from Moray School of Art, University of the Highlands & Islands, make monumental sculptures by putting a fresh spin on ordinary objects.

Installation view of the SSA's 126th Annual Exhibition | Stewart Attwood

The largest single work in the show is The Winston Smith Library of Victory and Truth, by Hans K Clausen, the winner of an SSA Award in 2022. His library of 1984 copies of George Orwell’s 1984, collected all over the world in different languages and editions, can be freely browsed. It marks the 75th anniversary of the novel’s publication, and was launched in August on Jura, where the book was written.

There are some impressive figurative works, not least by the youngest contributor, 17-year-old Ruby Mitcham, with a wonderful portrait of a classmate called A Scottish Lass. Also well worth seeking out are Vlada Popescu’s painting of people on the underground, Angela Repping’s exquisite pencil drawing Old Jumper and Luke Vinnicombe’s depiction of unbridled middle-class rage, Angry Knitting.

Joyce Gunn Cairns paints a woman whose beads match her orange cat. Iain Black’s painting of four women taking tea is made unsettling by its title, They Know. And a fresh, bold figurative work by Nils McDairmid, from the Garvald Community in the Borders, is deservedly included after being chosen at open selection.

Interesting work is happening at the intersections of different media: Susan Pearson’s Becoming Island weaves together wool and ceramics; Chris Brook’s painted collages of wood share the W Gordon Smith Award with Amy Odlum; MaryAnne Hunt’s magical kinetic sculpture makes paintings on old wooden panels circle like lantern slides while haunting music plays.

Kate Bell has attached butterflies and moths to silverware in Moth Soup; Kate Cameron Reid’s sculpture of broken glass stitched together speaks of raw, jagged emotion; Catherine Sergeant’s A Wave of Reflection is a concrete poem in the shape of a wave. Olivier Julian’s video pastiches Peter Lilley’s hateful “I’ve got a little list” speech to the Tory Party conference in 1992.

There are too many more to mention: a lovely, mysterious painting by Pen Reid; a mesmerising pastel by Fiona Clasen, In a Green Shade; expressive landscapes by Astrid Leeson and Alasdair Wallace; and fine printmaking by Cynthia Dinan-Mitchell, Jodi Le Bigre, Rachel Duckhouse and Kirstie Behrens.

Meanwhile, another masterpiece of installation has been going on at Edinburgh Printmakers, where organisers have received the highest number of submissions yet for their annual Members’ Exhibition, and have managed to install more than 100 in the two galleries without giving any sense of overcrowding.

Work by Sue Shields at Edinburgh Printmakers | Alan Dimmick

The theme of Hope/Dòchas feels resonant at this difficult time for the arts - and for the world - but again the productivity and skill of artists is undimmed. Some address it more directly than others: Cat Outram and Jenny Powellaine with babies; Frances Richardson with pigs foraging for apples; John Heywood with an allotment (”To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow”).

June August, who hails from Boston, gives us Kamala Harris as president, her hope for 2024 - and surely that of many others. Writer Dilys Rose explores the idea of Prisoners of Hope with her affecting drawing of three figures. For Shelagh Atkinson, hope is a splendid red hare.

Scott Baxter has printed newspaper stories about the migrant crisis from the right-wing press on sheets of paper and folded them into paper boats to make a flotilla. Lindy Furby has printed phrases (”Hostile Environment”, “Hope not hate”) onto silk garments and hung them on a washing line, vulnerable, domestic and poignant.

A number of artists are drawn to nature and the environment: Linda Kosciewicz’s Holding nature in the palm of your hand, Val Leckie’s beehives, Anupa Gardener’s Keeper of Plants, Masha Tiplady’s tiny and beautifully detailed linocut of a figure walking a dog. One of the highlights is surely the combined force of Nicky Sanderson’s ocean-themed banners with Mary Walter’s cyantypes made using light and the ocean on Portobello beach, which float free in the upper gallery.

And there’s more: Jenny Martin’s work inspired by travels in Moorish Spain; Jenny Smith using Gaelic words and Hebridean flowers; Doreen Boogert, who somehow captures the exact waddle of a line of Canada geese; Yasmeen Khan’s atmospheric imagined landscape; Eleanor Buffam’s luminous cyanotype of a flower head.

The energy and skill on display in both shows, by artists known and unknown, whether or not they are able to make a living from their work, is testament to the creativity which goes on even in uncertain times. Perhaps it is even a response to them. Either way, picking up the paintbrush or the pencil or the engraving pen is an act of hope.

SSA Annual Exhibition until 11 December; Hope/Dòchas until 16 March