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Anyone familiar with Scotland will know the weather is at best mercurial, and at worst wet, grey and what we call “dreich” – a good Scottish word meaning drab. For an artist in the early 20th century suffering not just miserable weather but a cultural landscape of joyless, soul-sucking Presbyterianism, escaping to the sunlit uplands of the Parisian avant garde, where artists were experimenting wildly with new ideas and techniques, would have been deeply attractive.
Into this vivid world of colour and possibility stepped four Scottish artists who embraced everything this exciting new art scene had to offer, and in doing so, changed Scotland’s art forever. Inspired by the post-impressionist works of Van Gogh, Matisse, Cezanne and Derain, they often painted outdoors, revelling in nature, creating exceptional artworks that explored light, shape and colour.
Samuel John Peploe experimented with Cezanne-like geometric forms, while John Duncan Fergusson took on fauvist influences. George Leslie Hunter focused on blocks of colour, and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell explored bold shapes and impressionistic compositions.
Together they became known as the “Scottish colourists”, and their work is being celebrated at a new exhibition at the Dovecot in Edinburgh. As our reviewer Blane Savage points out, each brought back to Scotland new approaches to art that were reflected in their subsequent work. Take Peploe’s Green Sea, Iona from 1925, which perfectly captures the mesmerising colours of a Hebridean shoreline. Radiant and vibrant, here was art to lift even the dreichest Presbyterian Scot’s heart.
The Scottish Colourists: Radical Perspectives is on at the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh until June 28.
Read more: Scottish colourists exhibition: the painters who stood shoulder to shoulder with Matisse and Cezanne
Flowers, grief and reconciliation
Just as the Scottish colourists loved a nice vase of voluptuous blooms, the new Saatchi Gallery exhibition on the subject, named simply Flowers, explores the place of flora in contemporary art, as well as its wider cultural influence.
Reviewer Judith Brocklehurst describes the show as resembling a “supersized florist”, filled with bunches of blooms and hanging arrangements of dried flowers. The exhibition offers a wide perspective: from sculpture finding inspiration in Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, to William Morris’s much-loved floral designs, to the digital recreation of 17th-century Dutch paintings, and contemporary photography and video installations too.
This richly imaginative and engaging exhibition celebrating the importance of flora in our lives is well worth an hour of your time if you’re in London.
Flowers – Flora in Contemporary Art and Culture is on display at London’s Saatchi Gallery until May 5 2025.
Highly recommended cinema this week is the Japanese film Cottontail, a gentle and touching story about a middle-aged man grieving the loss of his wife after a long illness. Honouring her dying wish, he takes her ashes to be scattered in the Lake District in the north of England – a place that had special significance for her.
Woven through the tale is the man’s complicated relationship with his son, whom he has neglected for his career. Struggling to connect, they embark on the journey together, each dealing with their own grief and sense of loss. Chao Fang, an expert in ageing, death and dying, found this delicate film’s portrayal of grief realistic and relatable, and the journey to find peace by reconciling the past and present both absorbing and affecting.
Cottontail is in select cinemas now.
The Oscar-nominated I’m Still Here, released today, sees director Walter Salles adapt Marcelo Rubens Paiva’s autobiographical novel of the same name. The film follows the grief of a family whose husband and father is disappeared by the regime of Brazilian dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici in the early 1970s. The film is carried by a memorable performance from actress Fernanda Torres who plays Eunice, the wife of missing left-wing politician Rubens.
Relating the story from Eunice’s perspective as she desperately searches for her husband, the film details the breakdown of her relationship with her eldest daughters as they all seek to deal with their devastating loss and uncertain future. Professor of film Belén Vidal describes the film as a “clear-cut tribute to the ‘feminine’ politics of resistance”. Sad, moving and bittersweet in its conclusion, I’m Still Here, appropriately, lingers long after the credits have rolled.
I’m Still Here is in cinemas now.
Read more: I’m Still Here: a vibrant testament to female resilience that mourns Brazil’s dark past
Downfall of an Instagram darling
Often real life is stranger than anything created for our screens. Based on the true story of Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson, Apple Cider Vinegar follows the story of a social media darling documenting her “journey” as she rejects conventional medicine for alternative therapies to treat a rare form of brain cancer. But in 2015, Gibson was exposed as a financial fraud – and worse, was revealed as never having had cancer. The internet, understandably, went wild. But how was she able to perpetrate such an audacious and complex deception?
Apple Cider Vinegar dramatises Gibson’s story, documenting her meteoric rise to fame and her dramatic downfall, detailing some of the psychological issues that influenced her deceit. But, as sociology professor Stephanie Baker indicates, this shocking story also illustrates a wider point about the conditions that enable frauds like Gibson to gain credibility and influence online. Truly fascinating stuff, it once again reveals how the virtual nature of the internet deludes people when it comes to online behaviour, accountability and getting away with it.
Apple Cider Vinegar is now streaming on Netflix.
Read more: Apple Cider Vinegar: how social media gave rise to fraudulent wellness influencers like Belle Gibson
