This beautiful XVII century building hosted an encounter between Scottish and Spanish art.
The exibition proved that, despite the artists’ diverse cultural
background and geographical distance, a visual vocabulary can sometimes meet halfway.
Shoes, horses, bulls, dancers, musicians, castles...were some of the emblematic and powerful images that seem to survive the passing of time but are continually reinvented and reinterpreted through art.
It's all about bulls...reinvented.
Image on left: "Matador" by Elise Chisholm
"We love Elise’s “animal-friendly” bullfighting scenes. They still contain this emblematic, culturally-charged icon of Spanish culture, but animal and human are depicted in a much more balanced way than in traditional bullfighting scenes.
Bulls have always been present in Spanish art. From the bulls painted by pre-historic “artists” in The Altamira Caves, in Northern Spain; to those depicted by Goya; or Picasso’s Guernica and The Bull. Not to mention the oversized bulls logos of a well-known sherry brand, looming on the horizon of Spanish hills (as featured so memorably in Bigas Luna’s Jamón Jamón)
But these new take on an all familiar subject not only reflects the general British sensibility on the theme; but also an emerging voice among a generation of younger Spaniards who, while being proud of bulls, are not so proud of bullfighting"
Image above: "Bull Run" by Elise Chisholm.
We wrote this only 2 months before bull-fighting was forbidden in Barcelona as the result of public vote...
Below, the beautiful hand-painted ceiling of the exhibition space
In the center of the table, carnations and thystles representing the Spanish-Scottish connection.
And below, the view from the building
onto the Royal Mile
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