Scottish Landscape Awards: Haunting depiction of Bass Rock picks up top prize

The winners of the inaugural Scottish Landscape Awards have been announced after nearly 3,000 entries.

Kate Davis and David Moore took home the top prize of £10,000 for their haunting and lyrical artwork BASS ROCK.

The winning piece was made by weaving musical scores selected from Songs of the North Vol 1.

The collection of 18th century traditional folk songs gathered from the highlands and lowlands of Scotland describe landscape, love and death. 

Selected titles legible in the artwork include Drown’d, The Weaving Song and The Twa Corbies.

The judges’ decision was unanimous and without hesitation due to the extraordinary way the collaborative duo literally composed the piece.

Kate is a tutor in Sculpture at Royal College of Art, while David is the head of sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art.

‘BASS ROCK is our largest woven music score work to date and took one year from inception to completion,’ they said.

‘It was the early announcement of the first Scottish Landscape Awards that gave us a much-needed deadline and reason to commit to embark on such a time-demanding work.’

The winning piece is one of 133 artworks selected from 2,800 entries currently on display, spanning two floors of the City Art Centre, Edinburgh.

Pictured is a visitor looking through Kenny Hunter’s As above so below. Credit: Greg Macvean

The resulting exhibition is the biggest and most ambitious survey of contemporary landscape art in Scotland today and includes emerging artists alongside established professionals. 

The works feature paintings, sculptures, drawings, miniatures, films, animations, audioscapes and virtual reality.

Lennox Dunbar picked up second prize and £5,000 for his mixed media piece Island Storm.

The piece is a reflection on recent storms and changing weather systems and the impact they have on our coasts.

Lennox, who is an Emeritus Professor of Fine Art Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen said: ‘Although this is a landscape award and a landscape exhibition, I don’t consider myself to be a landscape artist. 

‘Even though I have references to landscape in most of the work I make, each piece has a greater sense of connection to a place or a time rather than being a recognisable area or location, unlike traditional landscape painting.’

Kiera Walsh, a student at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen is the winner of the third prize and £1,000 for her sculpture L.U.C.A. 

The sculpture of felt, beads and thread was completed whilst she was studying an HND at West Lothian College, with the artwork submitted as her exam piece. 

Robbie Bushe won the City of Edinburgh Award and £5,000 for his painting Towards St James and Calton Hill. 

‘Towards St James and Calton Hill is part of an ongoing series that re-imagines Edinburgh had its 1949 ‘Civic Survey and Plan for the City & Royal Burgh of Edinburgh’ been realised,’ Robbie said.

‘It depicts a never built inner-ringroad slicing through Calton Hill. 

‘I take a non-critical, non-judgmental view of planning, simply imagining and presenting what the city might look like today if plans had been implemented – what kind of society would have been built around different parts, what communities would have become slums because of it, or what would have brought industry. 

Magi Sinclair is the recipient of the Scottish Landscape Award for Environmental Art and £3,000 for her work Flow Mist Rising. Using the Flow Country has been a theme in Maggi’s work since she was a student at Edinburgh College of Art 10 years ago. 

Judge David Mach in front of Island Storm by Lennox Dunbar. Credit: Greg Macvean

In her award-winning work the artist used carbon and the ashes from burned pieces of peat to convey an area transformed by changing seasons, weather and play of light.

‘As a landscape artist, I have an affinity for wild places in the north of Scotland, typified by the vast low landscapes and huge skies,’ she said.

‘Caithness, where I was born and continue to live is quite wild and open and drawing in carbon is my way of revealing the fragility of the land and the beauty of the area.’

Lindsay Robertson is the winner of the Scottish Landscape Photography Award for his dramatic work Dialbeag – Isle of Lewis taken in homage to his father who lived in Stornoway.

Lindsay said: ‘I was literally lying down with the camera just above wave level to capture this image. It’s one of my favourite images, I have it on my wall at home in pride of place. 

‘I can’t actually believe I’ve taken it so for it to be chosen as the winner of the first Scottish Landscape Photography Award is just wonderful and I am so honoured.’

Meanwhile Lorna Fraser has been named winner of the Scottish Landscape Sculpture Award and £2,000 commission to create the sculpture to be awarded as first prize for the 2025 Scottish Landscape Awards. 

Her work ‘Rising From The Cracks’ made from porcelain is a new work inspired by the tiny mosses and lichens that grow in abundance all around us, but largely go unnoticed. 

And a virtual reality work has earned Daira Ronzoni Young Landscape Artist Award.

A land of ethereal fruits, colours, and shapes – Corazón de Pachamama is a unique experience inspired by the Pachamama deity and the artist’s Mesoamerican and Andean heritage, described as an experience unlike any the judges had seen before. 

The Scottish Landscape Awards exhibition is free and opens at City Art Centre, Edinburgh unti 3 March 2024.

Read more on Scottish Field’s News pages. 

Plus, don’t miss the November issue of Scottish Field magazine.