Kenneth Dingwall: Being

Preview: written before the show opened

At Edinburgh College of Art in the mid-1950s, Kenneth Dingwall was trained on the human figure and still life, in a city with no gallery of modern art. Then he discovered the National Museum of Antiquities, where abstract forms had been drawn onto and cut into stone, bone and ceramic, and it blew him away.

This retrospective covers the 60 years since: over 70 drawings, paintings, prints and constructions. Some come from his studio and have never been shown, and the newest, Melding, dates from 2026. You get a career of looking for what Dingwall's publisher calls a presence that can exist in its own right. That antiquities collection now sits in the National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street, so the prequel is free and ten minutes up the hill.

A £10 ticket, plus £2 online fee, includes Ade Adesina: Bard. Last admission is 4.30pm. Dingwall talks with critic Duncan Macmillan on 3 December and gives his own overview on 18 February; both talks are free.