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Sitting Ducks exhibition is a Highland treat

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Familiar faces aplenty to be found at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery’s must-see new exhibition, writes Susan Welsh

 

There has been a steady and constant stream of visitors making their way up the slightly steep hill on which Inverness Museum and Art Gallery sits, all of whom have been rewarded for tackling the hill with a visual treat.

John Byrne: Sitting Ducks is an exhibition by the man regarded as one of Scotland’s most versatile and accomplished artists and writers. Born in Paisley and a student at Glasgow School of Art, he’s no stranger to the Highlands and has connections to Nairn.

A successful playwright, he has written and directed for stage and television, including the Bafta award-winning Tutti Frutti, which starred Emma Thompson, Robbie Coltrane and Richard Wilson.

Sitting Ducks explores and celebrates Byrne’s highly innovative and richly varied portraiture and includes a good selection of drawings, paintings and multimedia works from across his career. Along with numerous self-portraits showing him as a young and older man, there’s plenty of familiar faces to be seen, such as Tilda Swinton, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson and Robbie Coltrane, to name a few.

The exhibition demonstrates the technical skill, fun, versatility, inventiveness and also gravity of his work, during which he explores many facets of human nature, bringing out the distinctive qualities of each individual he portrays, many of whom are members of his family and close friends, and celebrating the warm relationship he has with them.

Spread across two rooms on the upper floor of the gallery, the portraits range in size from small to enormous. While some are a series of light lines, others are full of fabulous detail such as the first portrait you see, depicting the artist as a young man, complete with long curly hair and 70s-style flares.

Sitting Ducks was first shown at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh during the summer and is presented in Inverness in a collaboration between the National Galleries of Scotland and High Life Highland.

It runs until Saturday, November 29. Before it closes, there will be an evening with the artist himself when he will be in conversation with Gordon Brown, of Browns Gallery, Tain, at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery on Friday, November 28, at 6.30pm. Booking for this event is essential and demand is expected to be high for tickets.

The museum is open Thursday to Saturday, from 10am-5pm, with late-night opening on Thursdays until 7pm. Contact: 01463 237114.