-New Exhibit ‘Scottish Light’ showcases local artist’s oil paintings in Lobby 37-
Edinburgh born artist Madeleine Gardiner will be the next in a series of Scottish artists to showcase her contemporary landscape paintings in Gleneagles Townhouse this April.
The Townhouse’s exhibition space, Lobby 37, will play host to a selection of Madeleine’s recent oil paintings inspired by memories of childhood holidays in the Scottish Highlands and the soft hazy light of Scotland.
The Exhibition, entitled ‘Scottish Light’, will run from Saturday 1 April to Thursday 27 April and will be available to view daily between 9am and 7pm for the public, and for members and hotel guests throughout their visit to the Townhouse.
Wild spaces, memory and atmosphere are key areas of concern in the artist’s work.
While her early works reflect nostalgia of the rugged Scottish coast and lochs, over time this presence began to blend with images of her travels to places like Namibia, Arizona, The Canadian Rockies, Vietnam, and the Tyrolean Alps.
Her paintings represent composite landscapes built from memories connected through a shared aesthetic, and harnessing light and recreating the ways in which it alters depth is a primary focus in her process.
Madeleine Gardiner graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA degree in painting in 2015, and moving to London in 2017.
Two of Madeleine’s paintings are on display in the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder.
More information about the artist and her work is available at:
Edinburgh’s Gleneagles Townhouse partners with Aya Editions to celebrate IWD
New Exhibit Celebrating Scottish and West African female artist collective to open on International Women’s Day at the Townhouse
Throughout the month of March, West African female artists collective, Aya Editions, will be exhibiting ‘Our City’ at Gleneagles Townhouse’s Lobby 37 as its next exclusive cultural installation. The exhibition is available to view daily between 9am and 7pm for the public, and for members and hotel guests throughout their visit to Townhouse.
Aya Editions – a digital space that encourages and promotes West African female artists to showcase their work, combating inequalities in the creative industries – was co-founded by Carina Tenewaa Kanbi, an Edinburgh native of Scottish Ghanaian heritage, and Victoria Cooke in 2020.
Carina and Victoria recognised that women were underrepresented in West African visual arts so founded the collection to help female artists create, promote and sell their work. They believe women’s contribution to creating and safeguarding cultural heritage is so often obscured because of the social and institutional barriers they face to take part in creative industries. Carina and Victoria wanted to remove these barriers and encourage women to take part and continue to contribute to creative industries.
‘Our City’ captures the movements and moments of urban life across West African and Scottish cities and explores the real and imagined city through the lenses of seven young West African and Diasporan female photographers; Hady Barry, Keren Lasme, Clarissa Rötzel, ASK, Chantal Azari and Azumi. Final artist to be confirmed.
‘Our City’ follows each woman’s journey through their city and challenges the stories often told by men that came before them. In doing so, the images within the exhibit celebrate the female gaze, reminding us that among the chaos, there is calm. Through desperation, there is beauty; in mundanity, there is joy, play and patience.
Whilst firmly rooted in these women’s experiences, ‘Our City’ moves beyond representation to explore the varied and divergent photographic practices that take us through fashion, landscape, photojournalism and street photography, reminding us that cities are neither static nor linear and that they are as much imagined as they are real.
Gleneagles Townhouse is celebrating the exhibition’s opening and International Women’s Day on the 8th of March with a special event exclusive to Townhouse Members.
Aya Editions will host a panel discussion on the role of cultural and creative industries in promoting gender-inclusive cities and what we can do together to make a difference, as well as a DJ set from Emma Korantema to finish the evening.
Graeme Mortimer Evelyn brings ‘Relics from an Oasis of Good Luck’ to Lobby 37 at Gleneagles Townhouse.
The London artist’s first solo exhibition in Scotland will include pieces made over a 25-year period selected directly from the artist’s London home.
An exhibition featuring Graeme Mortimer Evelyn will run until the 27th February at Gleneagles Townhouse. Made of up of pieces created over Graeme’s long and successful career, the exhibit is titled ‘Relics from an Oasis of Good Luck’.
Many of the works are completely realised studies created during many major commissions and artist-in-residence projects during Graeme’s expansive career, and range from collages, prints, paintings, graffiti stencils, drawings, and painted relief sculpture. Evelyn has exhibited his work across the world, but this will be his first solo exhibition in Scotland.
Graeme Mortimer Evelyn is a musician and curator as well as a multimedia artist. The art he creates comments on cultural social identity, politics, belief, and language. He has created work for major municipal buildings, sites of national memory, and places of worship – subverting the settings and their philosophies to attract new audiences and democratise public spaces by opening them up to more people.
His works have also been exhibited, collected, and displayed internationally by Princeton University Centre for African American Studies, Cornell University, Kensington Palace, The Royal Commonwealth Society, Museum in Docklands, Gloucester Cathedral, Bristol Museums, The Royal Collection Trust, The Church of England, and UNESCO.
One of Evelyn’s most notable works is The Eternal Engine for St Francis Church in Tottenham Hale. Completed in November 2017, it is the largest permanent hand-sculpted contemporary altarpiece in Europe.
St Francis Church sits adjacent to where Mark Duggan, a young black man, was fatally shot by armed police in 2011, triggering London-wide riots. The church was then built to aid to the community’s healing process. The Eternal Engine represents the unifying wonder of our vast Universe and the mystery of its Creator.
Evelyn currently works in his garden studio in South London, continuing to develop his varied and innovative body of works exploring automatic experimental drawing and sculpture informed by his synaesthesia reaction to music and sound, and how these responses then relate to contemporary religious and secular belief structures.
He has recently completed vinyl album cover commissions through this lens for world renowned Jazz Artists. In late March 2023, he will begin his six-week invited Artist Residency for the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts in Charleston, South Carolina.
Graeme Mortimer Evelyn’s works will be available to view until February 27th in Lobby 37 at Gleneagles Townhouse St Andrew Square to hotel guests, diners at The Spence and Townhouse members.
Gleneagles Townhouse, the 33-bedroom hotel, all-day restaurant and member’s club on St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, is delighted to announce it’s collaboration with Social Bite, one of Scotland’s leading homelessness charities.
Gleneagles has supported the work of Social Bite since 2018 as corporate partner for its hugely successful mass participation sleep-out and Break The Cycle events, and this new partnership will see their initiatives integrated throughout the Edinburgh Townhouse’s offering; from the restaurant, to staffing, to event support and hotel stays.
Gleneagles Townhouse is also donating a percentage of its joining fee for new members to Social Bite, helping the charity’s ongoing efforts to break the cycle of homelessness in Scotland.
Additionally, the Townhouse will be attributing a donation to Social Bite with every dessert ordered in The Spence, its all-day dining restaurant, and in time working with Social Bite on its Jobs First programme.
This will see the city centre venue employ individuals who have been affected by homelessness in the past. Social Bite provides meaningful jobs to people who have experienced homelessness as an extreme barrier to employment and part of its ongoing work as an organisation is to help those in a similar situation find steady and fulfilling employment, with the aim of 1 in 4 of their own staff to have come from this background themselves.
A £1 contribution per room, per night, will also be added to guest bills for each hotel stay. All proceeds will go towards Social Bite’s work to end homelessness through providing homes, jobs, and food; including support such as providing new furniture and necessary materials to make a house a home within the Social Bite village in nearby Granton.
These initiatives mark the continuation of a mutual collaboration that will be further cemented with a Burns Supper inspired event to be held at Gleneagles in January. The evening will comprise of a live auction, music from London Essentials, and an exclusive menu created by Gleneagles’ and Townhouse’s top chefs, including Simon Attridge and Jonny Wright respectively, as well as a few special guest chefs from Scotland’s vibrant culinary scene.
Commenting on the partnership announcement, Gleneagles’ Managing Director, Conor O’Leary, said: “We are delighted to be working with our friends at Social Bite once again and hope that together, through this new partnership in Edinburgh, we can support and empower individuals across the city to transform their lives.
“We’re really keen to involve Social Bite in as many aspects of our Townhouse offering as possible and look forward to introducing our guests and members to the work they do in our local community.
“Together with some colleagues from both properties, we were delighted to have taken part in the ‘Break the Cycle’ cycling events over the past two years, with collective efforts from our team helping to raise a combined £33,000 – proceeds of which will go towards building two new Social Bite villages.
“We are so proud to play a small part in helping the vital work of Social Bite in our local community and across the UK.”
Co-founder of Social Bite, Josh Littlejohn, said: “This is such an exciting partnership for Social Bite. We’re thrilled to be working with the team at Gleneagles Townhouse.
“It’s a partnership which will undoubtedly make a great impact across our various pioneering projects; raising vital funds to help us build two more Social Bite villages, helping us continue our free-food provision to people in Edinburgh experiencing homelessness and poverty, as well as providing meaningful employment with tailored support.”
Gleneagles Townhouse is the first ever outpost for the iconic Scottish country hotel in its almost 100-year history in Scotland. Based at 39 St. Andrew Square, Edinburgh, originally home to the British Linen Bank before later becoming the Bank of Scotland, this historic building has been reimagined to become Gleneagles Townhouse; a 33-bedroom hotel, all-day restaurant, rooftop bar, wellness centre and member’s club.
Scottish artist, Suzanne Taylor, is the latest in a series of artists to exhibit at the Townhouse. Her collection, “Visual Ticks”, will be available to view until the 4th of December.
“Visual Ticks” is a collection of hand-crafted collages which bring together unique elements of vintage nostalgia. The collages are made up of ready-made images Taylor found through countless hours spent in second hand bookstores searching for the perfect elements to put together.
Suzanne studied at Glasgow University and went on to gain her Masters in Fine Art from Glasgow School of Art where she now teaches. She began making collages as a way of formulating her final ideas and compositions for paintings. Taylor loved the medium so much that the collages then became the final piece, as she felt the idea she was trying to encapsulate in a painting was better conveyed within her collages.
Suzanne’s work follows themes of femininity, sexuality, consumption, and climate change and is Taylor’s ode to the glamour years. Her work certainly encourages a sense of nostalgia to the pre digital era and its aesthetics and culture.
The collages are made from a selection of images that may relate in some sense but contradict in others. Taylor describes them as “a visual oxymoron with uncanny tendencies”; some images are in complete opposition to one another whereas others somehow have a relationship to one another if you look close enough. Her pieces play with social ideas both current and past, such as one of a carefree dancer placed in a kitchen, which is symbolic of 1950’s female servitude. The size of the images she chooses is just as important as the image itself, and plays a huge part in how she puts together her final compositions.
Taylor recently exhibited at Saatchi as part of The Other Art Fair in London. Suzanne Taylor’s works are now available to view until the 4th of December at Gleneagles Townhouse, St Andrew Square for Townhouse members, hotel guests and diners at the Spence.
