The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Tayside artists help relaunch museum
CULTURE: Perth attraction to reopen today with new exhibition featuring ‘fantastic’ artwork
Prominent Tayside artists will help relaunch Perth Museum and Art Gallery when it reopens from lockdown today.
A new exhibition, New Ways Of Seeing: Scottish Art Schools, will feature work from well-known figures from Perth and Fife as well as former and current lecturers from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee.
The display focuses on major works from painters who studied at Scotland’s four art schools – Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee.
Amy Fairley, arts officer at Perth Museum, hopes the new 25-piece exhibition will draw back crowds following the shutdown.
Amy said: “We thought it was a really good opportunity to showcase the modern and contemporary Scottish artists we have in our collection. There’s some really fantastic work and some that haven’t been seen very often and haven’t been out in a number of years.
“There’s also some wonderful Scottish female artists and it is great to get them out.
“There’s a 1939 William Crosbie (La Vie Distraite) – it’s the largest known surrealist artwork by a Scottish artist – and there’s another quite beautiful surrealist artwork by Sandy Fraser who died this year.”
Also featured is Perth artist Derrick Guild, who studied fine art at Duncan of Jordanstone College.
Between 1992 and 2011, Guild also worked part-time as a lecturer at the art school.
Amy said: “He produces really quite realistic work that’s based on 15th-19th Century still life.”
Visitors will also be able to view the work of emerging Scone artist Paul Reid who Amy believes, “is really making a name for himself at the moment”, and Fife artist William Gear who was born in Methil and attended Edinburgh College of Art.
The exhibition will run until January. Amy said: “It’s got a long run and hopefully it will draw in a number of people.”