Victorians, Sculpture and Degree Shows: Scottish Art news for June 2015

Degree show month is already well underway, with Dundee’s just passed. Just now it’s Edinburgh College of Art (May 30-June 7), with the mid-month bringing the Glasgow School of Art’s (13-20 June), then last it’s Aberdeen’s Gray’s School of Art (20-27 June). There will be coverage of the shows on the website, along with the pick for the Skinny Showcase 2015.

Looking back to last year’s degree shows, Generator continues its annual exhibition They Had Four Years until 14 June. Now a mainstay of Generator’s programme, the committee present the pick of the 2014 crop from across the Scottish art colleges.

Opening its first show of the year, the Common Guild present the work of Anne Hardy from 6 June until 9 August. This exhibition will be Hardy’s first in Scotland, and her most ambitious project to date in the UK. Hardy’s practice spans photography, sculptural installation and audio, and she describes her interest in “the kind of space that is just there, next to you, and you don’t see it.” Within “controlled interiors,” Hardy gathers “found and made objects – remainders of interrupted actions that conjure an ambiguous parallel space at the cusp of everyday life.”

On Friday 12 June from 6-9pm, in Glasgow, Mary Mary presents a painting show, a solo exhibition of the work of Aliza Nisenbaum. Over the last ten years, Nizebaum has moved from abstract painting to almost entirely figurative works. In the content of her work there is a political bent, with her representation of the indigenous people of Mexico, as well as undocumented immigrants in New York. As well as these more charged subjects, her work also depicts flowers, open books and piled letters. Patterns often overwhelm the depth of the image, and while there may be bodies in the foreground, the space of the work is brought close up to the front of the picture plane, and the rendering of faces and forms is heavily stylised.

In the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street in Edinburgh, from Friday 19 June there is a major exhibition on the Victorian craze for photography, A Victorian Sensation. Covering the period from 1839-1900, the exhibition will showcase the National Museum's collection of early original photographs and objects. There’s an emphasis on quirk, with the inclusion of a cast iron headrest to keep subjects still during long photographic processes, memento jewellery which had locks of hair combined with pictures of loved ones and ornate stereoscopes, which allowed Victorians to enjoy 3D images from around the world, from Egypt to Australia.

Saturday 27 June sees Edinburgh's Fruitmarket opening their exhibition of the work of Phyllida Barlow. Well-known for making huge, often anti-monumental, deceptively hulking sculptures from simple materials like plaster, paint and cardboard, Barlow is now in her seventies, and receiving recognition after a career of teaching the likes of Martin Creed and Rachel Whiteread. Barlow’s work can appear malformed, but in its scale often involves more of a bodily physical encounter, and interruption in space. The exhibition continues until 18 October.

Until 5 July in the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, the Moving Image Festival continues with Stephen Hurrell and Ruth Brennan’s Clyde Reflections. Conducting interviews with individuals from three different islands, the film explores seven unique perceptions of this marine environment and looks at the diverse relations of people and place against the backdrop of the culturally significant marine environment, which has in the past repeatedly been altered by different people. Clyde Reflections has been described as 'a meditative, cinematic experience.'