Pen Reid - New Works, Union Gallery ****
By Susan Mansfield
Thursday 22nd April 2021
The notion of limitation, freedom and the unexpected runs through Pen Reid’s extraordinary show at Union Gallery. While the domestic realm is her central subject, it becomes a broad realm of exploration in the light of her sprightly imagination.
At first glance, her paintings are beautiful, full of colours and patterns with a mythical, fairy tale quality. But fairy tales are often darker than they seem, and so are these paintings. Often set at dusk, at night, or in the bewitching light of a snowfall, they are quietly unsettling, and surprisingly serious in the questions they pose.
Jenny Matthews: Rainbow, Union Gallery ****
By Susan Mansfield
Monday 22nd March 2021
Many of the rainbows stuck up in windows at the start of lockdown have faded after a year, but there is nothing faded about the rainbow colours in Jenny Matthews’ new show. Matthews is a watercolourist, and though she is a fine portrait painter and began painting landscapes, too, during a residency in Italy in 2017, this show takes her back to her core subject: flowers.
Flower painting was once thought to be one of the few quarters of art appropriate for women, but Matthews’ work is a long way from the watercolour painting once considered a “feminine accomplishment.” She continues to push her skills in new directions, from Deep Purple Cornflower, which sets flowers against a densely patterned background, to From Sue: Impression which uses collage and is close to abstraction.
Alison Auldjo: The Last Giraffe, Union Gallery, Edinburgh ****
By Susan Mansfield
Friday, 5th February 2021
The new body of work by the gallerist and painter Alison Auldjo began to take shape last spring, in the early days of the pandemic. A painting of a giraffe took on an apocalyptic quality, becoming an emblem for a world under threat not only from covid-19 but from climate change, wildfires and environmental destruction. The Last Giraffe, imbued with a quiet, long-suffering dignity, is the centrepiece of her new show.
Auldjo's paintings of animals are not enslaved to realism, but they capture the essence of a sheep, a hare, the precise way a cow holds itself or a horse lowers its head to crop grass. Her favourite subject is the donkey, perhaps the most used and abused of beasts. Her animals are not metaphors or personifications, they are entirely themselves, but they embody qualities we recognise: maternal pride, playfulness, vulnerability.
She paints fluidly, combining oils and acrylics. Some pictures are studies, but others are fully worked with finely wrought backgrounds: swans with the curve of a lake behind them and the evening lights of distant dwellings; sheep in a snowy field with the moon in the sky.
While the titles have an element of fun about them (Swan Lake, Dark Horses) these are serious pictures. They are about an animal world on the brink of catastrophe. Hares dance, kangaroos copulate, the last giraffe stands stoically quiet, and a donkey lets out an immense braying laugh, as succinct a comment as I've seen on the state of the present world. These animals have little power, but they understand our world better than we do.
How many people can say that their lives were changed by a swimming pool?
Rosemary Kaye, 23/3/19 The Edinburgh Reporter
A few Olympic swimmers? The participants in a strange water-based romance?
Not many artists, I imagine – but for Damian Callan a visit to Leith’s Waterworld proved transformational. It was there, while he was supervising special needs adults, that he saw people moving through waves and realised that movement was precisely what his paintings lacked. He had come to art late, not beginning his studies at Edinburgh College of Art until the age of thirty, but he was never completely happy with his work;
Deep human emotions laid bare through natural world
Alison Auldjo at Union Gallery, Edinburgh
Giles Sutherland, 21/2/19 The Times
“More and more it feels like the world is... an increasingly sad, violent, hostile and intolerant place... and yet there’s still beauty and hope to be found... it’s all around us for now... perhaps we should all pause for breath, regain a bit of kindness and humanity and revel in the brilliance and majesty of the natural world.”
Summer Garden Party
Yes, it’s all sunshine and roses for the Summer Garden Party at the Union Gallery, an exhibition of regular, favourite artists, including Patsy McArthur, James Newton Adams, Megan Chapman, Lucy Jones, Colin Brown and Sophie McKay Knight and Joyce Gunn Cairns. Expect a distinctively diverse showcase of amazing abstracts, fabulous flowers, posed portraits, lavish landscapes, architectural artwork, galloping horses, punchy Pop Art and comical Caricatures.
On the dove-grey painted wall to the left as you step inside, is a row of five stunning Abstract Expressionist “landscapes” by Megan Chapman, under a series title, “Echoes and Memory.”
“The foundation of my work is in the balancing of shape and line with colour, texture, and atmosphere. I enjoy creating meditative places to get lost in, such as how we dance between our inner and outer selves... to explore our connection to the world as we navigate the push and pull of life.”
Established to bring the very best of the contemporary art scene to the public view, and to offer the finest service to buyer and artist alike, UNIONgallery is a gallery with...
Unfortunately, UNIONgallery is unable to accept any new artists submissions at present
These are just a few of our forthcoming exhibitions. Click on the titles to find out more, or visit the Exhibitions page to see what else is coming soon.