EDINBURGH.- The Royal Scottish Academy is presenting A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past, a solo exhibition by acclaimed Glasgow-based artist Toby Paterson RSA, opening in the Academicians’ Gallery this October.

Spanning more than two decades of practice, the exhibition brings together a diverse group of works from a range of projects, including some previously unseen in the UK. With a particular focus on Paterson’s painting, the exhibition also includes a selection of reliefs, studies and prints, alongside a new wall painting created specifically for the Academicians’ Gallery. This latter component revisits a presentational methodology that seeks to render the gallery something of an analogue ‘landscape’ within which individual works sit, offering the opportunity for connections to be made between them without denying their autonomy and varied origins.

Paterson’s work always begins from a subjective experience of place. Whether expressed through painting, relief or print, his works begin from encounters with architecture and urban space, building on formal aspects such as colour and materiality into explorations of spatial qualities and ultimately towards the socio-political and historical considerations that shape all cities. The works communicate a fascination with the everyday, revealing the complexity that lies within the built environments we inhabit.

The exhibition affirms Paterson’s reputation as one of Scotland’s leading contemporary artists, while offering a rare opportunity to experience the breadth of his practice.

Speaking about the motivations behind his work, Paterson notes: ‘Cities have proved to be a source of limitless inspiration and my engagement with their physical qualities, their architecture and their social, political and economic origins and motivations not only underpins my practice but defines the very manner in which I engage with the world. I suspect this is largely due to my life-long experience of Glasgow, a city which seems to be in a perpetual state of flux, never achieving any sense of equilibrium let alone resolution, while simultaneously feeling vigorously alive in the face of entropy.’

Toby Paterson RSA is a visual artist born in Glasgow in 1974.He studied at Glasgow School of Art and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, graduating from the former in 1995. Paterson won the 2002 Beck’s Futures Prize and received a Creative Scotland Award in 2006. He is the recipient of the 2025 RSA William Littlejohn Award.

The forms and ideas inherent in architecture inspire Paterson’s work, as does the experience of place. He has a particular interest in the post-war reinvention of cities under the influence of Modernism. Paterson has developed a sophisticated artistic practice in the public realm, most notably through permanent large-scale projects commissioned by clients such as the BBC, the UK Government, the Municipality of The Hague, Transport for London and Islington Council.