Issue 16
In Issue 16 we welcome two new writers, Astrid Bridgwood and Isabella Nicoletti. Astrid draws on her professional experience cataloguing John McLean's work to focus on a little known aspect, his sculptural activity. Isabella offers new perspectives on identity, drama and meaning in Phoebe Anna Traquair's image making. Robert De Mey saw an old catalogue in an Inverness book shop and it has inspired an enquiry in to the woman who brought Surrealism to Scotland, Gabrielle Keiller.
The Dada and Surrealist collection at the National Galleries is one of the finest in the world, and Scotland owes gratitude to Gabrielle Keiller, whose donation forms its basis. Robert De Mey writes an appreciation of Keiller's life and picks out twenty-five objects to illustrate the breadth and depth of her bequest.
The bright coloured abstract shapes of John McLean's paintings are very familiar to Scottsh art enthusiasts of the last fifty years. Less so, his approach to three dimensional work. Astrid Bridgwood has spent months immersed in John-Mclean-land and she brings us up to speed.
Isabella Nicoletti asks us to look afresh at Traquair's work, beyond the surface wonder and the extraordinary decorative appeal, to a world where femininity and masculinity elide and merge; a world which can be still; a fluid world in which spirituality and meaning are quiet but powerful currents.