CRITIC’S CHOICE

Underneath the vast range of works holding court in the airy gallery rooms upstairs, Calum Colvin RSA gets the basement rooms to himself for this celebratory retrospective/ highlights show of the artist’s work. It coincides with the publication of a new book by Tom Norman, The Constructed Worlds of Calum Colvin: Symbol, Allegory,

Myth, studying Colvin’s photography, and celebrating 40 years of the artist’s working life. Known for its complexity, its range of references, its wit, Colvin’s photography takes centre stage in the exhibition, its subject matter ranging from the everyday to the art historical.

Born in 1961 in Glasgow, Colvin studied at Sculpture at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, before going on to the Royal College of Art in London, graduating in 1985, Colvin’s recent work looks at the issue of Scottish nationalism and identity, but also Scottish culture, contemporary society and the thrust of human ambition. If Colvin’s work is full of research, it is also often humorous.

Colvin is well know for his complex constructed photographs, which address the formal parameters of the image in asking the viewer to essentially construct the image themselves. The roots of this stage setting are partly to be found in his early interest in sculpture. Colvin overpaints his tableaux of household objects with ideas and gleaning from myth or popular culture, leaving a photograph of parts that requires attention and interpretation. Colvin might perhaps help with this on 22nd January, when he leads a gallery tour.

Calum Colvin, Royal Scottish Academy, Academicians Gallery and Finlay Room, Princes Street, Edinburgh, 0131 624 6110, www.royalscottishacademy.org Until 2 Feb, Mon – Sat, 10am – 5pm; Sun, 12pm –

5pm