Tighnabruaich Gallery

A gallery model built for artists. From internationally renowned artists to Scotland’s next generation.

Every £ of sales commission funds the Scottish Contemporary Collective — creating opportunity, developing talent and investing in what comes next.

10/10/2026

A huge thank you to Eva, Innes, Kirstin and Vlada.

This is completely your show.

Not just the work in it, but the way it has been curated and installed.

The development in each of your practices over the last year is so clear, and seeing all of that come together across painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and mixed media has been really special to observe.

The exhibition feels beautifully balanced, and that is down to all four of you.

Thank you for the work you put in, the care, the difficult decisions, the curation and for the ownership you took to make Second Glance the show it is.

And thank you to everyone who came along today. It was fantastic to see you all.

Second Glance
Tighnabruaich Gallery
10th October – 1st November
Thursday - Saturday: 10am–5pm
Sunday: 11am–4pm

Curated and installed by SCCOCO

09/10/2026

SECOND GLANCE — ONE YEAR ON:
VLADA POPESCU

A year on from the first group exhibition at Tighnabruich Gallery, Vlada’s practice has continued to evolve. Over the past year, she has worked on private commissions and continued to develop her own body of work.

She stayed curious and dedicated to learning, taking part in workshops where she explored new ways of painting, colour and composition.

Vlada continues to be inspired by cityscapes, interior figurative scenes and moments of everyday life. She is interested in the emotional weight and energy that lingers within a place or a moment. Her paintings consider human presence, fleeting thoughts and memories that she hopes most people can connect with.

Alongside her studio practice, Vlada has painted for events and has been invited to give a painting demonstration at Troon Art Club. She took part in the Tighnabruich Gallery residency, further developing and reflecting on her practice. This year, she exhibited at Lemond Gallery and was longlisted for the Scottish Portrait Awards.

For Second Glance, Vlada’s paintings focus on places and the stories they hold. She invites us to reflect on the quiet moments of everyday life, unspoken thoughts, fleeting emotions and exchanges.

Vlada Popescu
Second Glance
Opening Saturday 10th October, 12–5pm
Exhibition 10th October – 1st November
Tighnabruaich Gallery

Online Exhibition now live!

07/10/2026

SECOND GLANCE — ONE YEAR ON: KIRSTIN MACKINNON

A year on from our inaugural Scottish Contemporary Collective exhibition, Kirstin Mackinnon reflects on a year that has seen her establish herself as a full-time professional artist, develop new opportunities and continue to deepen her commitment to painting and drawing.

Since the inaugural Scottish Contemporary Collective exhibition last year, Kirstin has been working as a full-time professional artist.

She has connected with other artists, curators and organisations. This year, she was shortlisted for the Scottish Portrait Awards and won a grant with Association EBN to fund a new project.

Her work is currently featured in a prominent portrait exhibition at the McManus in Dundee.

Throughout the year, Kirstin has travelled. She visited notable exhibitions and galleries as far afield as Vietnam and South Korea.

In Scotland, Kirstin attended art residencies at Gargunnock House and Tighnabruaich. She has been invited to speak at events for Surgeons Hall Museum and DJCAD and has given painting demonstrations at local Scottish art clubs.

Kirstin’s recent focus has been on painting colour and form. She regularly attends life drawing and learns new techniques at painting workshops.

The work she has produced for Second Glance is a reflection of her commitment to painting and drawing.

Kirstin is an exceptionally accomplished painter, but what continues to stand out is the seriousness of her commitment — constantly drawing, studying, learning and pushing at what painting can do.

Second Glance gives us the opportunity to see where that commitment has taken her over the last year.

Kirstin Mackinnon
Second Glance
Opening Saturday 10th October, 12–5pm
Exhibition 10th October – 1st November
Tighnabruaich Gallery

04/10/2026

SECOND GLANCE — ONE YEAR ON: EVA HEWITT
When I first came to know Eva Hewitt’s work, much of it carried a strong religious theme.

Over the past year, that work has become increasingly autobiographical — drawing more directly from her own memories, experiences, objects and surroundings.
Her newest collection, Souls in Soles, is perhaps the clearest expression of that shift.

It is, in essence, a life told through shoes.
Shoes she has worn. Shoes connected to particular times, places and versions of herself. Everyday objects becoming markers of memory, identity and experience.

What has always impressed me about Eva is the creativity behind her ideas. She is incredibly inventive — always finding another route into a subject.

And it has been a significant year.

Eva became an elected member of The Glasgow Group, joined the Painters Painters collective with two works heading to London this autumn, completed another residency at Tighnabruaich, and had two works from our first SCCOCO exhibition selected for the onboard gallery of Saga’s Spirit of Adventure.

But like so many emerging artists, she is building all of this alongside full-time work.

The challenge is not ambition or commitment — it is finding the time, space and energy to keep making when everyday life is constantly competing for them.

That is one of the reasons SCCOCO exists: to provide sustained support, mentorship and opportunity while artists build towards a point where their practice can occupy more space in their lives.

Recently someone said to Eva:
“Eva, you know what, you’re doing it.”
And I think that captures where she is right now.

She really is.

Second Glance gives us the chance to see where Eva’s work is now — and where it might be heading next.

Eva M.V. Hewitt
Second Glance
Opening Saturday 10th October, 12–5pm
Exhibition 10th October – 1st November
Tighnabruaich Gallery

All Welcome 🥂

01/10/2026

SECOND GLANCE — ONE YEAR ON: INNES MACLELLAN

I first encountered Innes MacLellan’s work at the inaugural Scottish Prize for Fine Art in 2023, where I bought his painting Social Conscience.

It was also where the seed was planted for what would eventually become the Scottish Contemporary Collective.

Since then, Innes and I have become friends and developed a close mentor–mentee relationship, and I’ve had the privilege of watching his practice change enormously.

During his final year at Gray’s, I remember him falling out of love with painting. A year on, he has thankfully fallen back in love with it — but what has always struck me about Innes is how restless his practice is.

Painting. Drawing. Photography. Printmaking. Back to painting. He is constantly looking.

Since returning home to the Highlands, that restlessness seems to have found a centre.

The landscape he grew up in — its wildlife, seasons, beauty and occasional brutality — is increasingly pulling the different strands of his practice together.

Working across painting, drawing, printmaking and photography, Innes often uses old maps, weathered surfaces and existing marks, allowing the histories already embedded within them to become part of the work.

Over the past year he has spent time working in Tighnabruaich, undertaken a residency at Kilmartin Castle and returned to Aberdeen to develop new print work at Peacock & the Worm.

There is something particularly exciting happening now. The different parts of his practice no longer feel separate, but are beginning to feed into the same visual language.

I genuinely believe Innes is standing at the beginning of something significant, and Second Glance gives us the opportunity to see where the last year has taken him.

Innes MacLellan
Second Glance
Opening Saturday 10th October, 12–5pm
Exhibition 10th October – 1st November
Tighnabruaich Gallery

29/09/2026

The wait is almost over.

The Scottish Contemporary Collective returns to Tighnabruaich Gallery for its second group exhibition.

Eva Hewitt · Innes MacLellan · Kirstin Mackinnon · Vlada Popescu

Four artists developing very different practices, brought together again at an important point in the first SCCOCO cohort.

Second Glance is exactly that — an invitation to look again. At the work, at these artists, and at how their practices are developing as they move through the programme.

I’ve watched an extraordinary amount of work, experimentation and growth taking place behind the scenes over the last year, and I cannot wait to bring it all together in the gallery.

Opening Saturday 10th October, 12–5pm

Exhibition: 10th October – 1st November

Everyone is welcome.

Tighnabruaich Gallery
www.tiggallery.co.uk

SCCOCO

27/09/2026

And just like that, Surface Tension comes to an end.

But what a way to end it.

Today, on the final day of the exhibition, Lennox made it to Tighnabruaich with his family to see the show.

I’m not sure I can adequately put into words what that meant to me.

I have enormous respect for Lennox Dunbar — as an artist, of course, but even more so as a person. He is simply a joy to be around. There are some people whose company leaves you feeling slightly different afterwards. A little wiser. A little happier. Lennox is one of those people.

I’m incredibly grateful to him for trusting me with this extraordinary body of work and allowing me the privilege of bringing Surface Tension together at Tighnabruaich Gallery.

And thank you to everyone who came through the doors.

I’ve watched people spend hours with these paintings. Investigating edges. Looking around and behind them. Reading the marks, surfaces and fragments. Following Lennox’s thinking and finding their own meanings within them.

Again and again, people who had already seen the work online arrived completely unprepared for its physical presence.

That has been one of the great pleasures of this exhibition: watching people discover the work properly.

I’m genuinely sad to see it leave us.

I hope in some small way we have done justice to an artist for whom my admiration is difficult to overstate.

Thank you, Lennox. For the work, the trust, the conversations, the wisdom and, most of all, your friendship.

Surface Tension will remain available to view online for the next couple of weeks.

And then the gallery changes again.

On Saturday 10 October, 12–5pm, we welcome the Scottish Contemporary Collective back for Second Glance — the second group exhibition from four of the most exciting emerging artists we know.

So, as sad as I am to watch Lennox’s work leave these walls, I cannot wait to see what comes next.

Because ultimately, this is the whole purpose of the gallery.

To bring remarkable artists and remarkable work into this space — and to use what we build here to create opportunities for the generation coming behind them.

One extraordinary exhibition ends.

Another begins.

Thank you, Lennox. ❤️

16/09/2026

If only we could bottle his wisdom.

“Always leave a work at a stage you can’t wait to go back to.”

It sounds simple, but there is a valuable lesson in this from Lennox Dunbar RSA for artists at any stage of their practice.

Paint something out. Draw all over it. Splatter something across it.

Do whatever creates a response that makes you want to return.

But never leave the studio with a problem waiting to be solved.

Because, as Lennox puts it, you’ll never want to face it.

There’s something wonderfully revealing in that approach — keeping the work alive, allowing one action to provoke another rather than working towards a predetermined answer.

He touches on that in his own practice too. Lennox never simply squares up a drawing and transfers it into a painting. The drawing might begin something, but the painting has to find its own way.

We’re now heading into the second-last weekend of Surface Tension.

I’ve said throughout this exhibition that these works need to be experienced in person. The surfaces, fragments, layers, scale and physical presence simply don’t fully translate through a screen.

And, personally, I think this is the exhibition I am proudest to have curated at Tighnabruaich Gallery.

Lennox Dunbar RSA: Surface Tension

Open Thursday–Sunday | 10am–5pm
Tighnabruaich Gallery

Two weekends remain.

Come and spend some time with it.

11/09/2026

The archaeology of painting.

Lennox Dunbar talks about his paintings beginning as responses to pieces of information that cross his path.

An image. A shape. A fragment. Something noticed or encountered.

They enter the work, but they don't necessarily remain visible in the way they began.

Things are layered over. Interrupted. Rediscovered. Something disappears beneath the surface, only to emerge again later — altered by everything that has happened around it.

When I first encountered these works, I felt there was something almost archaeological about them.

Lennox recognises that too. Not an interest in archaeology itself, but in the archaeology of painting.

The idea that something can become buried within a painting, found again, obscured again — perhaps even rediscovered by someone looking at the work a hundred years from now.

There is something wonderful in that thought.

Lennox Dunbar RSA: Surface Tension
Tighnabruaich Gallery
Until 27 September 2026

Thursday–Sunday | 10am–5pm

08/09/2026

They are paintings — but they have the presence of objects.

In this short film, Lennox Dunbar RSA talks about the physicality of the works in Surface Tension — and why he has deliberately varied how they are presented.

Some sit unframed and structurally on the wall. Others are traditionally framed, contained within deep boxes or presented in glass cases.

People have even told Lennox, “I love your ceramics.”

But these are paintings.

Painted, constructed and layered, their fragmented surfaces are finally sealed beneath acrylic resin — an act which, for Lennox, somehow says: this work is done.

What struck me this weekend was the reaction from visitors who had already seen the exhibition online. Nothing quite prepared them for the depth, structure and almost architectural quality of these works in person.

There wasn't a single person through the doors who wasn't bowled over by them.

LENNOX DUNBAR RSA — SURFACE TENSION
Until 27 September
Tighnabruaich Gallery
Thursday–Sunday | 10am–5pm

Full exhibition online — link in bio.

Address

Seaside House
Tighnabruaich
PA212DR

Website

http://www.tiggallery.co.uk/, https://tiggallery.co.uk/exhibitions/, https://www.facebook.com/scottishcontemporarycollec

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