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  • 24 September 2026, 6.30 pm RSA 200: Moving Image Programme Seeing and Believing Ronnie Forbes RSA & Ken Currie RSA...

    Rachel Maclean RSA (Elect), DUCK, 2023 (still) 

    24 September 2026,  6.30 pm 

    RSA 200: Moving Image Programme

    Seeing and Believing

    Ronnie Forbes RSA & Ken Currie RSA In Conversation 

     

    (Running time: 47 minutes) 

     

    Films that question our understanding of reality.

     

    It's particularly appropriate at this time, when there's wide concern about ideas of truth, fake news and the effects of artificial intelligence, that we contemplate and question our perceptions of reality. Here we have a programme of four films that deal with such questions. 

     

    Rachel Maclean RSA (Elect), DUCK, 2023 (16:00) 

    Wendy McMurdo RSA, Olympia, 2011 (5:12) (Also in Academicians: Part One)  

    Ronald Forbes RSA, Only Make Believe, 2014 (12:00) 

    Ken Currie RSA, Stone Circle, 2025 (12:00) (Also in Academicians: Part Two)  

     

    Rachel Maclean RSA (Elect)’s DUCK is a daring deepfake short that follows Sean Connery’s unravelling after he witnesses Marilyn Monroe’s return from the dead. All of this has been created using sophisticated AI technology. All parts are played by Rachel Maclean, but presented, through AI, to us as a range of our favourite film stars. 

     

    In Wendy McMurdo RSA’s Olympia, the camera glides balletically through an interior space observing the movements of a beautifully engineered skeletal humanoid robot. When we eventually see the separate fully realised head we circle around it to the sounds of the aria Olympia from Offenbach’s opera Tales of Hoffmann, creating an image that is full of both wonder and pathos. 

     

    In Ronald Forbes RSA’s Only Make Believe, a terrorist forces a couple, who bear a caricature likeness to members of the British royal family, to join another couple in their homely imprisonment in a war zone. Who do they think they are? Who do WE think they are? Throughout, TV clips of pro-war propaganda are interlaced with the absurdity of this mysterious scenario.  

     

    Ken Currie RSA asserts that in In Stone Circle he had nothing in mind other than to simply shoot film, and insists that the images are random, fragmentary and entirely improvised.  However, he uses many cinematic devices, which create dramatic tensions, and these cause the viewer to weave varying narratives around the perceived action.  We the audience are creating a shifting reality.

     
  • 27 June - 31 October 2026 Claire Barclay RSA b.e.i.n.g. b.u.o.y.a.n.t Claire Barclay RSA is the first artist commissioned to...
    Claire Barclay RSA, Grey Area (2025), relief prints on paper. Photo Alan Dimmick

    27 June - 31 October 2026

    Claire Barclay RSA 

    b.e.i.n.g.

    b.u.o.y.a.n.t

     

    Claire Barclay RSA is the first artist commissioned to make work in response to the context of the Wyllieum to be exhibited within the impressive main gallery space. She will bring together a number of conceptual strands, including revisiting the work of artist Joseph Beuys who George befriended in the 1980s.

     

    The work of all three artists share an obsessive interest in exploration, combining materials and objects in provocative and often absurd ways in order to draw attention to their wider imbedded cultural roles and meanings.


    Both Claire and George Wyllie share a strong connection to the Clyde and experiences that instil respect for the uncontrollable and changeable nature of the sea and prompt thinking about how we deal with patterns and unpredictability within our lives. A sense of switching of perspective from land to sea will be echoed within the work through spatial interventions and the use of the panoramic windows of the gallery space where looking out and looking in will have equal consideration. The title may also suggest that rise and fall of individual and societal optimism can provide potential for change and opportunity.

     
  • Previous Exhibitions
    From The Clyde to Sarajevo & The Venice Lagoon, installation view, credit RSA

    Previous Exhibitions

    21 February - 31 May 2026

    George Wyllie RSA (1921-2012)

    From The Clyde to Sarajevo & The Venice Lagoon

    An exhibition curated by RSA Past President Arthur Watson

     

    Best known for his performative sculptures The Straw Locomotive (1987) and The Paper Boat (1989), this exhibition shows how customs officer and artist George Wyllie, was embraced by the Royal Scottish Academy, and backed by some of Scotland’s most eminent sculptors. It was through Richard Demarco HRSA that Wyllie met Joseph Beuys, working with him in Scotland and Germany. He was also invited to the USA to make work in the studio of sculptor George Rickey.

    Work is included in this exhibition by four of George’s co-exhibitors at the first Scottish sculpture open exhibition, Kildrummy castle, Aberdeenshire and at Richard Demarco’s new Scottish art exhibition in Sarajevo. Large works by current Academicians Edward Summerton RSA and Arthur Watson PPRSA bring scale to the exhibition and documentation by Richard Demarco HRSA and Andy Dewar adds context.

     

    The exhibition includes work by Frank Pottinger RSA, Andrew Stenhouse RSA, Gareth Fisher PRSA, Jake Harvey RSA, Fred Bushe RSA and George Wyllie RSA, on loan from the RSA Collections.
  • 21 February - 31 March Antony Lucchesi Walking Routes Multidisciplinary Artist Antony Lucchesi presents his new solo exhibition, Walking Routes,...
    Antony Lucchesi, Artificial Dawn Chorus (2025), video still, credit to the artist

    21 February - 31 March

    Antony Lucchesi

    Walking Routes

     

     

    Multidisciplinary Artist Antony Lucchesi presents his new solo exhibition, Walking Routes, at the Wyllieum. The work stems from his time on residency at The Hugo Burge Foundation, blending playful, tongue in cheek installations with thoughtful material experimentations bringing together digital and material processes.

     

    Antony Lucchesi was previously selected for the RSA New Contemporaries, exhibiting in 2023, as well as having received the Open Exhibition Prize in 2021 during the RSA Annual exhibition.

     

     
  • About The Wyllieum
    The Wyllieum, photo Keith Hunter

    About The Wyllieum

    The Wyllieum, which sits on the River Clyde in Greenock housed within a Richard Murphy RSA designed building, showcases George Wyllie’s work and legacy and hosts a rolling programme of exhibitions and displays of art which connect to Wyllie by outlook or ethos alongside a permanent collection display of his work.


    The year-round visitor experience showcases Wyllie’s creative practice and places it in dialogue with his collaborators while also creating a platform for contemporary artistic responses to his work.

     

    Facebook - @The-Wyllieum

    Instagram - @the.wyllieum

     

     

    Banner image: The Wyllieum, photo by Keith Hunter