Drouth Weekly
18th July 2025
Published by TheDrouth
The American founding fathers took classical Rome as the model for their new Republic. Huddled McMasses examines the development of that story in a tale of two films with classical, particularly Roman, avatars - Gladiator I and II. He sees American popular culture as a mirror held up to the current drift to greater authoritarianism and more rigid patriarchical political structures.
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The Drouth Review
13th December 2024
Published by TheDrouth
Scottish artist Maud Sulter (1960-2008) worked in multi-media as a photographer, filmmaker, poet, playwright and visual artist. Born of Scottish and Ghanaian parentage, she was raised in the Gorbals in Glasgow by her Scottish mother, and much of her work - including that now on show at the Tramway - is an exploration of of her sexuality, gender and identity as a black woman. Federica Giardino reviews the show and ponders on the cultural richness and the 'poignant questions' her work highlights.
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13th December 2024
Published by TheDrouth
Conceptual and provocative, but always with social conscience, the massive influence of Cedric Price as an architect and visionary of the new from his heydey in the 60s and 70s is seen not only in the host of unfinished and unbuilt ideas he left behind, but also in the massive pieces of fun civic kit others built under that influence, including the Pompidou Centre in Paris and the London Eye. Bruce Peter reviews an exhibition where you can catch up with the ideas and personality of the great maverick Price, and declares it '...elegantly curated by Ana Bonet Miro, Martin Brown and Maria Martinez Sanchez with design by Luca Brunelli.'
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29th October 2024
Published by TheDrouth
Dutch artist Jonas Staal's new book on the pending Climate Catastrophe continues his concerns about propaganda - the good and the bad of it; reveals who are the culprits planning to exploit and profit from it and what the rest of us can do about it. Johnny Rodger reviews and puts it in the context of Staal's broad politically-committed artistic oeuvre.
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29th October 2024
Published by TheDrouth
Since their first gig two years ago, Glasgow band The Tenementals have played solidly round the city and elsewhere to full houses and released several singles. With a line up of eight musicians, and sometimes more, they sing the history of Glasgow into being and conjure up the glories and the disasters, and the pride and the shame of it before the citizens. Norry Wilson of Lost Glasgow will introduce them on stage at the launch of the first album in Oran Mor on Wednesday 27th November. Here he tells us why he is delighted to present them on the occasion of the release of their first major recording. (plus free track!)
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1st September 2024
Published by TheDrouth
The film Orlando: My Political Biography only went into cinemas in general release here this summer, so, although it was first shown at the EIFF in August 2023, it seems to be up for discussion again. The gender issue(s) is/are, indeed, still way up on the social agenda - as Johnny Rodger puts it, 'We are all on our social stages ... all in our social cages'. Preciado's openly self-constructed cage is a particularly intricate one, and he inhabits it with his own peculiar and provocative panache.
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29th September 2023
Published by TheDrouth
For Greg Thomas, the music in Kim Moore's new release with Blackford Hill is at once a physical thing which moves, an image, and a word provoking profound affect. There is something 'urgent' here, he writes.
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9th July 2023
Published by TheDrouth
What cast of work is this, we might say of Peter Howson's new show at Edinburgh City Art Centre. He gives us a lot of matter to grapple with and a lot of things to ponder over. This is the first major retrospective of Howson's work with over 100 paintings over four floors. Arresting and compelling says Greg Thomas in review, and also grim and dark. Get along and make your own mind up is best.
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23rd January 2023
Published by TheDrouth
Billed as 'groundbreaking', the Edinburgh City Art Centre exhibition, Glean - curated by Jenny Brownrigg - gathers the work of 14 pioneering early 20th century women photographers and filmmakers. Sara Stevenson reviews it for The Drouth, and considers it an 'impressive achievement'.
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19th November 2022
Published by TheDrouth
'Sometimes it feels like all the possible takes on the independence debate have already been 'well rehearsed'. Can the debate be refreshed and also gain some new subtlety and complexity? Richard Finlay assesses Gerry Hassan's new book-length contribution and is optimistic about its possible influence.
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20th October 2022
Published by TheDrouth
Born and raised in Glasgow, the only child of a Russian emigre, painter Yusef Szafki was much influenced by literature in his visual artwork. In an endlessly creative life, he published two literary works, including one on engaging with the Russian/Ukrainian writer Nikolai Gogol (60’ N (1996) ). Arguably the bold dreamlike, exaggerated style of Szafki’s work is influenced heavily by Gogol’s character, and his writing in such famous stories as ‘Diary of a Madman’ and ‘The Nose’. Johnny Rodger reviews this retrospective as the first exhibition to attempt a survey across his life’s work, and appreciates Szafki's experimentation and his ever-developing concerns with form, tone and texture.
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3rd June 2022
Published by TheDrouth
The first book published in our 'Lost Institutions' series, it focuses on the early years of the legendary Glasgow theatre in the words of the actors who made it happen, collected and introduced by Raymond Burke. It was part of a thrilling scene says Folosa Melville in review.
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3rd June 2022
Published by TheDrouth
A new book 'Glasgow Cool of Art: 13 books of fire at the Mackintosh Library' takes a personal, artistic, intellectual and critical view of the two fires in Mackintosh's masterwork. It attempts to square the trauma that the fires caused by looking at the effect on a wide range of people -adults, children, citizens, academics, artists, architects, and as Murdo Macdonald notes in review, addresses the challenge of the international worth or otherwise of that great building.
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TENDING AN OLIVE TREE by Michael Mersinis