Scottish Art Events & Exhibitions: July 2023

At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Sebastian Thomas has created a site-specific installation which draws inspiration from the golem, a human-like, shape-shifting being which features in Jewish folklore. Created over a number of residencies at the workshop, A New Face in Hell will be viewable from the street when the gallery space is closed. Returning to the National Portrait Gallery on Edinburgh’s Queen Street, the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2022 features 51 portraits by 36 artists. Highlights include Frederic Aranda, Cian Oba-Smith and Haneem Christian. 

At Edinburgh Printmakers, opening 28 July, Christian Noelle Charles will present a new body of work exploring the rhythms, movements and body languages of women of colour, deploying printmaking, performance and video. WHAT A FEELING! | ACT I is part of the 2023 Edinburgh Art Festival (11-27 Aug) – the exhibition starts on 28 July and continues past the end of the festival until mid-September.

Inspired by the rogue traffic cone that adorns the Duke of Wellington Statue outside its doors, the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow has opened the first exhibition of Banksy’s work in 14 years. Cut & Run: 25 Years Card Labour features the artist’s original artefacts and stencils: catch the exhibition before it closes at the end of August. At Tramway, in Glasgow’s Southside, a new body of work by Jala Wahid explores the relationship between Kurdistan and Britain through oil – as metaphor for nationalism, colonialism and contested identities. Conflagration continues until 10 September. 

At Timespan in Helmsdale, a new exhibition explores the ecological, economic and social impacts of the oil industry, using the recently decommissioned Beatrice oil field in the North Sea as its inspiration. Featuring works by Tanja Engelberts, Oliver Ressler, and Sue Jane Taylor, Beatrice: Transition Under Petrocapitalism continues until 30 September.