One of Scotland's leading artists, and a former official war artist, Graham Fagen, is to represent the nation at the world's biggest visual art festival.
Fagen, a graduate of Glasgow School of Art, will create the show to represent Scotland at the 56th Venice Biennale next year.
The show, at a venue in the Italian city yet to be announced, will run from May 9 to November 22 2015, and will be curated by Hospitalfield Arts of Arbroath.
Fagen's art mixes media; combining video, performance, photography, and sculpture with text, live music and plants.
His recurring artistic themes include flowers, journeys and popular song.
Hospitalfield Arts is based in the early arts and crafts house and grounds of the 19th century artist and collector, Patrick Allan-Fraser.
Just to the south of Arbroath, the house, collections and estate were left in trust on Allan-Fraser's death and in 1901 Hospitalfield was established as a place of work and learning for artists and students.
The Venice Biennale is the largest and most prestigious visual arts exhibition in the world.
The seperate UK pavilion will have work by Sarah Lucas in 2015.
This will be the seventh presentation from Scotland + Venice, a partnership between Creative Scotland, the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Council in Scotland.
In 1999 Fagen was invited by the Imperial War Museum, London to work as the Official War Artist for Kosovo, and has exhibited widely both in the UK and abroad.
He was part of Zenomap, the first modern Scottish show at the Biennale in 2003.
Fagen studied at the Glasgow School of Art (1984-1988, BA) and the Kent Institute of Art and Design (1989-1990, MA).
Fagen said: "It is a fantastic honour to have been invited to represent Scotland at the Venice Biennale in 2015.
"The Biennale is one of the most important events in the international calendar for the visual arts and I hope that I can do justice to its history and Scotland's participation in it.'
Lucy Byatt, director of Hospitalfield Arts said: "We could not be more delighted to be offered this opportunity to commission Scotland's contribution to the Venice Biennale in 2015.
"It is an outstanding opportunity for Hospitalfield Arts to work closely with an artist such as Graham Fagen and to bring to Venice a project that emerges from our work in Arbroath in the beautiful region of Angus."
The last Venice Biennale in 2013 had a show by Duncan Campbell, Hayley Tompkins and Corin Sworn for Scotland + Venice.
Fagen's show will be the first solo show since 2011, when Karla Black represented Scotland + Venice.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article