EDINBURGH.- The Royal Scottish Academy began this past October 8th three new exhibitions to explore in the gallery and online - Outside Edge; Ade Adesina: Parallel; and William Wilson: Paint / Print / Glass. The exhibitions will continue through November 13th.

Outside Edge

Outside Edge is a collaboration developed through a residency in Scotland between four artists with different backgrounds who first met in China. They each live, work, facilitate, teach and make art on opposite sides of the world: Xu Yun and Ju Hongshen between Kunming and Beijing, China, Kate Downie in Fife, Scotland, and Helen Goodwin in Brighton, England.

The connection began with Helen living in Kunming and Beijing for over eight years until 2007, meeting Xu Yun and then Ju Hongshen in Kunming. A residency in Scotland in 2009 introduced Kate and Helen, and Kate undertook a research trip studying contemporary and traditional ink painting in Beijing, completing the circle of practices. Their connections deepened through perceptions of environment and particularly a sensitivity to edges of landscape, both urban and rural.

Kate instigated the residency and exhibition. Her work has been influenced both technically and philosophically by the traditions within Chinese ink painting. The practices of Xu Yun and Ju Hongshen are extensive and varied, including modern Chinese ink painting, book design, calligraphy, while encompassing also traditional painting approaches and new technology. Helen’s work focuses on impermanence using local materials of place and people and their combinations.

On returning from a visit to China in 2015, Kate discovered a remote bay on the southern edge of the island of Mull off the west coast of Scotland, Carsaig Bay. To her it was like a dreaming place - rugged and remote, yet full of history, and steeped in a peopled narrative of myth and wild creatures.

Extremes of weather and geology shaped this place over deep time. To Kate it was like walking into a hanging scroll from the Qing dynasty - poetic, ancient and yet timeless. This was her vision – but one that resonates with many artists who explore the tension between romantic vision and a real place shaped by geology, weather and history. She vowed to return with artists of different traditions, to work collaboratively inspired by the place, each informing the other; exchanging knowledge and influence and a way of saying thank you for the learning and inspiration bestowed during her time in China.

These ideas, shared with Helen, with Xu Yun and Ju Hongshen, led to a collaborative residency in Carsaig, Mull, in September 2019, with support from the RSA Sir William Gillies Bequest Fund. This was an intense and exciting time, and a reciprocal residency and exhibition was planned to follow in China, in Qingdao, a coastal city on the Yellow Sea. Unfortunately the global Covid pandemic intervened, however, the four artists communicated and kept making work. Unable to go to Qingdao, in March 2021, they held their first virtual residency, working from home locations in Fife, Beijing and Brighton, meeting online daily, and creating over different time zones, with collaborative intention.

The work created in Mull and the subsequent virtual residency in Beijing, Brighton and Fife forms the content of this exhibition.

Ade Adesina: Parallel

Born in Nigeria in 1980, Ade Adesina RSA studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (2008-12). Continuing to live and work in Aberdeen, Adesina’s subject matter spans continents, metropolises and jungles, but the backdrop of the North Sea oil and fishing industries are often also visible.

Adesina’s work has been exhibited worldwide and he is the recipient of a host of awards recognising his achievements in printmaking. Becoming the first RSA New Contemporary to be elected a Royal Scottish Academician in 2017, and benefitting from several RSA awards and residencies including the John Kinross Scholarship, Adesina’s extraordinary success has been encouraged and recognised by the Royal Scottish Academy throughout his career so far.

Parallel is Adesina’s second solo exhibition in The Academicians’ Gallery. Approaching diverse subjects including climate crisis, industry, architecture, deforestation and Scottish culture, the exhibition is a visual compendium rife with finely observed detail and fantastical moments.

RSA Director, Colin R. Greenslade: ‘To attempt to encapsulate the breadth of meaning in Ade’s work is, perhaps, impossible. He has an uncanny knack of being able to distil and focus imagery yet pour it out into the most extraordinary juxtaposition imaginable. His eye is a camera, recording the simple and beautiful; the everyday and mundane; the terrific and terrifying; peaceful and prophetic.’




William Wilson: Paint / Print / Glass

William Wilson was a maestro across the mediums of printmaking, watercolour and stained glass design. To celebrate fifty years since his death, this exhibition is the first to survey Wilson’s diverse practice in nearly thirty years. Works drawn from our collections are complemented by loans from artists’ estates.

Born in Edinburgh, William Wilson OBE RSA (1905-72), Willie to his friends, followed in the footsteps of the stars of the Scottish printmaking revival. The 'edge to edge' style of his etchings, and their expressive power, established him as a prime talent. His visionary prints are as awe-inspiring today as when they were first made.

In 2017 the RSA was gifted eighteen copper plates for some of Wilson’s most significant prints. To celebrate this gift, we commissioned Academicians Stuart Duffin and Leena Nammari to create contemporary prints from the plates. These late impressions are of course distinct from Wilson’s originals, but since many plates from the significant period of Scottish 20th-century printmaking have not survived, these examples will serve as a valuable and striking record of the irreplaceable plates in our collections. The exhibition presents plates and prints together, along with originals by Wilson and studies which inspired them.

In the 1930s, Wilson began to move from print to paint. Exhibiting his first watercolour at the RSA in 1936, he was elected an Associate in 1939, becoming a full Academician in 1949. Wilson was adept with the free and loose approach that transformed the Scottish watercolour scene of the time. He exhibited 133 works at the RSA Annual Exhibition, many of them watercolours, and the exhibition features examples from across this period.

Wilson's etchings and watercolours brought him to artistic prominence, but it was stained glass that spanned his entire career. Wilson's style and approach created windows of special quality. The exhibition presents a small example of his rich output but gives insight into a key stained-glass artist of the twentieth century. Wilson began to go gradually blind in the late 1950s, due to diabetes. He exhibited his last watercolours in 1960 but continued his stained-glass studio for a further ten years, instructing his assistants to transform his ideas into new windows.

A unique artistic talent, fondly remembered by his many friends, Wilson had been actively involved in the arts, including roles with the RSA, Edinburgh College of Art, the Scottish Society of Artists, the Royal Scottish Society of Painters in Watercolour and The Society of Artist Printmakers. His early death was a great loss, but fortunately for posterity, his prolific career has left the legacy of a master in print, paint, and glass.

The RSA would like to thank the families of William Wilson and Carrick Whalen, and the Blackadder Houston Trust, for their generous support in lending works for this exhibition

PRINT | UK

Looking at Wilson’s prints, his acute sense of observation is obvious, making the tragedy of his ultimate blindness more poignant.

He was known for his speed; in walking round unfamiliar places to get his bearings and select his subjects, and in his art making. He is recorded as making 140 prints from 1925 to around 1946.

In 1935 Wilson enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London. He studied engraving under Robert Austin in his first year and wood engraving and lino cutting the following year. Engraving and etching were to remain his preferred printmaking techniques.

The plates executed by Wilson of British subject matter are a natural progression from his European prints, and inevitably the two overlap chronologically and stylistically. His Spanish plates included several larger than those of his contemporaries and he was to continue this in his series of Scottish Highland landscapes where etching and drypoint combine. Most of his plates feature figures; sometimes hard to spot, other times involved in everyday life, or other hints at human presence in the wider landscape.

With the younger, self-taught English printmaker Edgar Holloway, Wilson rented a cottage in Essex in 1936. They acquired a press and their work suggests the influence of English etchers including Joseph Webb, Charles Tunnicliffe and Frederick Landseer Griggs. The evidence of Breughel and other North European masters is also evident, not least in their handling of snow scenes.

The majority of his prints are faithful to the scene before him; however, Wilson was not averse to using artistic licence to create convincing views. Many of his British subjects display a looser more expressionistic approach to their draughtsmanship. The plates are more deeply etched and have a spiritual romanticism about them.

In 1958 Wilson was one of several artists involved with the Edinburgh printers Harley Brothers Ltd in producing editions of original prints. The two lithographs which he produced, an impression of one of which is included here, are not highlights of his graphic career and herald the on-set of his loss of eyesight.