The Vigorous Imagination Revisited

O'Donnell, Ron

Abstract

The Vigorous Imagination revisited
This year marks the 30th anniversary of the ground-breaking exhibition ‘The Vigorous Imagination: New Scottish Art’ presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1987 as the lead Edinburgh International Festival art exhibition.
It showcased the work of 17 young artists who were making waves on the international art scene. These included the ‘New Glasgow Boys’: Steven Campbell, Peter Howson, Ken Currie, Adrian Wiszniewski; sculptor David Mach; photographer-installations artists Calum Colvin and Ron O’Donnell, and painters Sam Ainsley, Philip Braham, Stephen Conroy, Gwen Hardie, Ian Hughes, Keith McIntyre, June Redfern, Mario Rossi, Joseph Urie & Kate Whiteford. It was a proud pronouncement that visual art in Scotland was vibrant, intelligent and in touch with the zeitgeist which swept across Europe during the 1980s. Since then, many of the artists have become household names.

• Exhibition Performance Type: Exhibition
• Start Date: Oct 27, 2017
• End Date: Nov 18, 2017
• Publication Date: 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 23, 2021
• Publisher: Mark Allen Healthcare
• Keywords: Vigorous Imagination
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1154635
• Additional Information: To mark the show’s 30th anniversary, Roger Billcliffe Fine Art in Glasgow and the Fine Art Society in Edinburgh have collaborated on a two-part show. There is a slight difference of emphasis; the Fine Art Society has got some recent work by the artists involved, but their main objective has been to show works that, if not actually in the original show, were at least contemporary with it. To achieve this they have borrowed from both public and private collections.