Christian Hook, the winner of the 2014 series was awarded the chance to paint Alan Cumming and have his final piece join the permanent collection in the gallery. Christian Hook’s style had me interested right from the get go so naturally, I had to view his finished portrait in person.
The only issue was we couldn’t figure out which room the painting would be hanging in so we ended up looking at a lot more pieces than we originally anticipated.
The first exhibition we stumbled across was Beauty by Design: Fashioning the Renaissance. This has been advertised outside the Scottish National Portrait Gallery for lord knows how long so I was rather excited to see it. I wasn’t sure what to expect but what I was met with left me somewhat disappointed.
The idea behind this exhibition is to link fashion from the renaissance to the styles of today. The pieces shown were very intricate and beautiful and dare I say, ever so slightly gothic; if you made a few adjustments to each piece they’d sell incredibly well in the shops today.
It’s a great exhibition and perhaps I’m not appreciating it as much as it deserves to be. I just found the overall layout of the room to be awkward and mismatched which is what put me off in the end.
The next room we visited was arguably the busiest and my absolute favourite. This room contained the entries for the BP Portrait Awards 2014 and my lord were they breath-taking. There were a few paintings that didn’t really do it for me as the style was not to my taste but the hyper realism paintings were fantastic; Ben Ashton’s and Edward Sutcliffe’s paintings being particular favourites of mine.
The BP Award exhibit was probably the one that took up the most of our time. The majority of the other series of paintings were focused primarily on war and, although incredible in their own right, they just weren’t appealing to me. I think it is largely to do with the fact the paintings were created so long ago and were done in very similar styles that they became rather jaded after a while. One room of that style of paintings is fine but several rooms are too much for me.
A photography exhibition created by Mikhael Subotzky and Patrick Waterhouse had my other half and I very confused. Now that I’ve researched the photographs I understand the whole idea behind the exhibit but I really wish I had known what the concept was supposed to be on the day. It’s not a typical photography display but it is definitely thought provoking and well worth a visit (it ends on April 26th so be quick).
Despite all of the wandering around and admiring various pieces of artwork we never once stumbled upon the portrait of Alan Cumming. As it turns out the painting has been taken down temporarily as it will be moved into another exhibition beginning May 8th.
I guess we’ll just have to return to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to eat the delicious rolls in the café, be confused by more exhibitions and spend too much in the gift shop. Oh and finally see the painting of Alan Cumming of course.
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