Fifteen miles outside Edinburgh, in the stunning landscape of East Lothian, Scotland’s oldest singularly inhabited house, Colstoun House is the location of a new series of exhibitions.
The ancestral home of the Broun (Broune, Braun, Brown, Browne) family, Colstoun has remained in the family since its first stone was placed nearly a millennia ago. A hidden gem set in woodland and farmland, the House is now the home of Colstoun Arts.
Grieve is the first artist to be selected to exhibit at the House from the Colstoun Artist Residency, which began in 2022. The residency offers artists space, time and access to the incredible countryside on its doorstep. In 2024, Colstoun Arts is set to welcome artists from Germany, Korea, China, France and the UK.
The plan is to develop a series of 3 to 5 exhibitions a year including a residency group show, an emerging artist solo show, an established landscape artist group show, and a new collaboration with RSA to show work by Scottish artists focusing on landscape and nature.
The Other Side, Grieve’s solo exhibition will comprise predominantly oil paintings, some involving a drawn figurative compositional charcoal underlayer, inspired by the landscape of East Lothian and featuring elements from the Bass Rock to North Berwick Law.
The large-scale paintings will fill the 100ft long space, which opens out onto the surrounding parkland and wild flower meadows.
Grieve describes his artwork as an exploration into the land that surrounds him and to which he is instinctively drawn. He is also interested in the social politics of land, and the fight for ‘right-to-roam’ laws in England. He described his residency at Colstoun House:
My time at Colstoun was peaceful and empowering. Being in a new and unknown thicket of nature allowed me to get lost in the rare magic that Colstoun offers. Being able to live and work in a totally new place with such vast lands to get lost in cleared my mind while painting. It opened me to this other side of life and creativity and was a marked contrast to city painting.
His work can be read as a modern interpretation of the Lebensreform movement of the mid-19th Century and the 20th Century back-to-nature movement. Grieve added:
I endeavour to explore the urgency of returning to more natural ways, responding to the consequences industrialisation has borne and the negative impact we are a race are having on the planet. There has never been a more vital time to understand the importance of nature.
Alongside the opening of The Coach House as the new gallery space, the House will open a café space serving teas, coffees and cakes.
Visitors will also be able to visit the beautiful Colstoun Gardens, which are in the process of long-term restoration and redevelopment, the Walled Garden which produce an abundance of seasonal fruit and vegetables, and the 100 acres of Victorian Parkland which surround the House, 50 of which have been progressed into wild meadow over the last 3 years.
And, as you walk around Colstoun you will notice Pears. The Brouns were given ‘The Pear’ by Hugo de Gifford who was reputed to be a wizard. The Broun’s have protected this Pear for centuries and the full story of The Pear is only ever told at the house by the Laird Ludovic Broun-Lindsay.
Mackie Sinclair-Parry, Director of Colstoun Arts said
Art has always been a part of Colstoun’s history. When you look at the walls and see hundreds of years of art collected through the generations, it becomes obvious why we should create a sustainable, progressive way in which to collect contemporary art and present it to the wider population. It started with the Colstoun Artist Residency but is now being expanded to include public exhibitions and collaborations with external galleries and museums.
Colstoun Arts will support the acquisition of artworks for the Colstoun Arts Collection which includes works from established contemporary artists such as Damien Hirst, Gavin Turk, Peter Randall-Page, Conrad Shawcross, Tracey Emin, Carolina Mazzolari, Robin Friend, Alina Zamanova and more as well as emerging artists Joe Grieve, Lara Cobden, Suhaylah H., James Dearlove and Marina Rennee-Cemmick.
On 1 May, Colstoun Arts will present its first exhibition, by London based landscape painter Joe Grieve.
The Other Side
Joe Grieve
Saturday 4 May – Sunday 19 May
Colstoun House, Haddington, East Lothian, EH41 4PA