Roger Cox: Compass points to Scotland's most promising art graduates

For more than 40 years, the gallery has made a point of providing a showcase for the latest crop of young Scottish artists in its New Generation Show. The gallery’s director Jill Gerber says: “Visitors to these end-of-year shows recently have commented on how little painting there is, but Compass has had the opportunity to invite and include many paintings, drawings and prints that were not on show in the art schools.

“Also included in the exhibition, Cate Newton from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art has cast bronze anti-medals, a tribute to those anonymous victims of war, and Hannah Halliday from Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen very effectively knits her daily journal with powerful messages.”

Catriona Newton, Duncan of Jordanstone School of Art

Entitled Textures of War, these bronze medals created by Catriona Newton are intended as a memorial to the anonymous victims of conflict. Rather than bearing monarch’s heads or other patriotic imagery, their surfaces are instead intended to reflect “the semi-abstract imagery of melting, burning and strafing to convey the moment at which stability turns to chaos.”

Hannah Halliday, Gray’s School of Art

Hannah Halliday’s work is concerned with notions of time, history and tradition, and also issues surrounding mental health and the idea of keeping your hands busy. Her Knitted Journal takes a typically private, typically monochrome activity and gives it a vibrant, tactile and – when exhibited – very public spin.

Camille Bernard, Glasgow School of Art

Part of a series of works entitled Harvest, at first glance Camille Bernard’s painting The Fall seems as if it might be about the abundance of nature. Look closer, however, and it becomes clear that all is not well in this particular garden: what harvest there is seems oddly inaccessible, and several of the human figures seem to be locked in a violent struggle to reach it.

Alexander Haywood-Smith, Edinburgh College of Art

Alexander Haywood Smith describes his paintings as “an imaginative fusion of landscapes based on various visited locations and archetypal symbols found in ancient mythology”. In his watercolour, Untitled (Moon), a snake winds its way down the trunk of a fleshy, organ-like tree.