Scottish Art Highlights: September 2025

If, like me, you’re on an Edinburgh Art Festival comedown, then don’t fret. September will keep you busy with plenty of new exhibitions, pop-ups and curated events. 

There’s time to recover before Art Walk Porty launches in Edinburgh. SHOWGROUND (6-14 Sep) celebrates the Portobello’s seaside variety entertainment era, which involves a series of site-specific performances spanning acrobatics, dance and film, as well as collaborations with Nobles Amusements and Moving Images Cinema Caravan. 

Over to Glasgow, Cryptic Nights takes over The Art School. Cryptic Nights are known for their audio-visual experiments which platform emerging, Scotland-based artists. On Thursday 11 September, from 8pm, artist Shankar Saanthakumar presents Sail, a sound sculpture and a kinetic replica of his body which explores 'mind-body (dis)connection.'

Back to Edinburgh for In Consideration of Our Times, Matthew Arthur Williams’ solo exhibition at Stills: Centre for Photography. The show, which opens on 12 September, features haunting self-portraits and landscapes that Williams describes as being “in a state of constant loss”. 

From 13 September, Lindsey Mendick transforms a vacant high street shop in Dundee into an 'imagined estate agency.' Known for her provocative and deeply personal clay sculptures that lay it all bare, Mendick last exhibited in Scotland with SH*T FACED at Jupiter Artland. In this new, off-site collaboration with the sculpture park, Growing Pains promises to explore class, social mobility and the teenage experience.

On the Isle of Bute, artist Thomas Abercromby stages Recovery Island. Across Mount Stuart, Abercromby presents a multisensory installation which follows personal stories about recovery from addition, grief, trauma or physical illness. The artist has been working with a local recovery group to develop the exhibition, which he describes as “rooted in abolitionist thought” for its ambition to dismantle old systems of harm. The show runs from 13 September.  

Heading West again for Glasgow Southside Art Weekend, which celebrates independent art activity in, well, the southside of the city. Happenings include an exhibition in tribute to writer and critic Marina Vishmidt and performances by Single End Collective. Organised by Glasgow Art Map, Glasgow Southside Art takes place from 18 until 21 September.