Scottish Art Events and Exhibitions: April 2022

Opening the art calendar this month on 7 April, artist Corin Sworn gives a performance lecture as the second event in her series Moving in Relation, working with The Common Guild. Reference will be made in part to the stunning sunset performance that Sworn created with artist Claricia Parinussa in a Hamilton business park last year. 

On 9 April, CCA in Glasgow open their new two-person show by artists Annalee Davis and Amanda Thomson. Each of the artists' work comes from experiences of living in, walking around and mapping their respective landscapes in Barbados and Scotland. 

We last caught up with artist Andrew Sim during Glasgow International 2021 when they hinted that some new motifs of "full-size horses and aliens" were emerging in their figurative and landscape pastel drawings, which explore queer love, relationships and community-building. Making good on this promise, Sim's exhibition Four Horses and a Sunflower (Actual Size) is open in The Modern Institute's Airds Lane gallery until 7 May.

Also running through this month and until 21 May, there is the Talbot Rice Residents' group show Meet me at the threshold. The exhibition offers an insight into the works developed by ten of the artist cohort who have been in receipt of significant mentorial and material support from Talbot Rice for the last few years. The show doesn't have a single set of thematics, but contains 'moments of grief, joy, resistance, intimacy and fracture'. 15 April marks the seasonal reopening of the vast contemporary art sculpture park Jupiter Artland, between Edinburgh and Glasgow.

For Scottish art trips further afield, there are two exciting events on Bute and Mull, if you've got the time and money to make it to either. The first is by Abbas Akhavan, a Montréal-based artist whose exhibition in Mount Stuart on Bute opens on Saturday 30 April. Akhavan's site-specific, multimedia installation addresses 'social, economic and political concerns through the lens of ecology, animal and plant life.'

Secondly, there's a blockbuster weekend art festival happening on Mull from 29 April-1 May curated by artist Bobbi Cameron with An Tobar. Named after the tarot card, Daughter of Cups of the North brings together ten artists including some of the most exciting international contemporary artists working presently, whose practices share 'themes of ancestry... and breaking down barriers between worlds.'