Scott Lawrie Gallery

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Scott Lawrie Gallery

UK-based gallery practice that connects hearts and minds to the liberating power of art - via shows, public projects, and critical essays.

29/08/2026

It’s the last day to experience Jake Chapman’s Nicesis: The unwellness of Wellbeing. As well as being our most popular show ever (averaging 40 people a day) it’s been a transformative experience for many visitors; I think it’s pushed boundaries of what art can mean for them. That in itself is a brilliant and beautiful result.

Short essay link in bio (large one still to come, can’t find the bleedin’ time to finish it! Not long now…)

One day left - make it count. Gallery closes at 5.30pm See you at Chuckie Pend!

Scott x

26/08/2026

It’s the final week of the Festival and Jake Chapman’s show NICESIS: The Unwellness of Wellbeing. We’ve had over 600 people come to the gallery to see this snow, which for me is massive. In fact, in terms of visitor numbers, it’s my biggest UK show ever. So much so, I’m now losing my voice! (Yes, even me!)

There’s also a short 2-page essay (which is a condensed version of a talk I give to every visitor, if they want it) if you need help going to sleep. Link in bio. I’ve been brewing a bigger one - which I’m still working on but determined to release into the wild this week…

AND this Friday at 6.30pm we celebrate the last weekend of the festival with an acoustic set from Y.I.OT.A (Your Illegal Operations of Transgender Aliens) a 4-piece emerging band based in Edinburgh combining punk, metal, psych, and pop, they’ve created a set that simultaneously hits (and misses) all four genres! They’re fabulous and fun and a cool accompaniment to the free drinks I’m putting on. The perfect end to a busy week? I’d say so.

All welcome. See you then!

14/08/2026

ARTIST TALK NOW ONLINE! ‘Jake Chapman in conversation’ is now up on the Talks section of the gallery website - link in bio. It’s a really open and insightful conversation about life, art and ideas. Please ignore my feeble questions, but for once (!) I was keen to shut up and just listen. Jake is one of the most interesting artists working anywhere today - and this talk proves why.

I’m still wrestling with the essay btw, but think I’ve found my muse somewhere between Bataille and Trainspotting…

FREE GIG THIS SATURDAY!
I’m excited to have the artist play an acoustic set for us in the gallery as part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe - please join us for a night of songs, chat and maybe even a few drinks on the house as part of the show Depression Culture (it’s not depressing) 😉 Venue 560, 2 Chuckie Pend EH3-8BG, 6-7.30pm ish. All welcome, free drinks, bring friends.

📷 Hunted Projects 🙌

10/08/2026

FREE event this Saturday 6-7.30pm (ish) - music, drinks, chat and more with singer songwriter (and radical psychologist) Nilima Chowdhury! All welcome!

“What does living in the current moment feel like? And why? Who are we aspiring to be? What is the prototypical contemporary ‘mindset’? And what impact does this have on our psychological well-being?”
 As a social psychologist, Nilima has been exploring these questions in her research for the past eleven years. As the singer-songwriter , she has been writing songs about the ‘neoliberal experience’ since her participation in The Voice of Germany as a quarter-finalist in 2013.   Depression Culture is an attempt to bring the two together by interweaving theoretical reflections, improvised performance/rant, and music. Audience participation is highly encouraged!

Nilima holds a PhD in social psychology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and currently works as a senior research fellow in health psychology at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. In her research and writings, she explores how our cultural “common sense” shapes how we think, feel, and act. (Which riffs beautifully with the current show by Jake Chapman - incidentally our talk is now live on the website!)  Nilima has been active as a singer-songwriter for over 25 years, and is currently preparing for her concert tour in 2026.

See you there - it’s an open invite, so do bring friends - all welcome! Now I just need to find a guitar to borrow…

Scott

WHEN: Sat 15 August, 6-7.30pm ish. WHERE: VENUE 560, Scott Lawrie Gallery, 2 Chuckie Pend (lane behind Filmhouse), Edinburgh. EH3 8BG

01/08/2026

MOMA, Tate Modern, Serpentine, Royal Academy… and now Chuckie Pend. Jake Chapman’s exhibition history is pages long and his kaleidoscopic contribution to art indelible. He has no need to show in a tiny Edinburgh gallery still finding its feet. And yet, he gave this show everything.

Jake blows up even the most comforting of our ideologies, opening up new questions - if not possibilities - across the history of art and ideas.

But in a very real way, Jake IS the artwork.

He drove all the way up to Scotland to support a tiny independent gallery. He chatted away generously to people at the opening (from academics and artists to kids thinking about art school). Then went to the pub with a wee crowd and entertained everyone for the night. What a fu***ng legend.

You have a point of view. You start a thing. You grow a thing. And along the way there are the usual heartaches, breakthroughs, joys, worries, tears and successes. But it’s artists like Jake who make every second of it worthwhile.

Art remains the best way I know of to make us better humans. And we have a truly great one in the form of Mr Chapman.

Thank you Jake, you’re a real hero to many of us here in Scotland. We’re still buzzing from the experience of having you.

Scott

Ps. my subjective experience of living in a castle does not objectively make me bourgeois 💅

Jake Chapman

Pic by Alan Holligan

30/07/2026

Jake Chapman is in you Edinburgh, and he’s curated a beautiful, minimal-but-mighty show just for us. It’s a great start to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe season (venue 560) and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Kicks off this evening from 5-7pm - Jake is here and keen as ever to have a beer and a chat. Speaking of which, don’t forget the artist talk at the gallery tomorrow (Friday) 12-1pm here in Chuckie Pend.

All welcome. See you soon!

29/07/2026

JAKE CHAPMAN ARTIST TALK - this Friday 12-1pm. All welcome.

Jake’s talk and Q+A will now take place on FRIDAY 31 JULY from 12 Noon to 1pm at the gallery here at 2 Chuckie Pend, EH3-8BG. (Hopefully you can make it, but if not - I’ll do an audio recording anyway and post that during the show).

Jake’s show will open as planned on Thursday (tomorrow) from 5-7pm when NICESES: THE UNWELLNESS OF WELLBEING. It’s a beautiful, powerful, small show.

We can’t wait to see you all! Come and join us for a drink to give him a big Edinburgh welcome.

Image: Jake Chapman, Monument to Immortality, 2019. Cast and painted bronze su***de bomber’s vest.

Jake Chapman

25/07/2026

Today is the last day of Andy Leleisi’uao’s fascinating show ‘Seeking Homonoialand’ - which is open ‘til 5.30pm today. Thank you to everyone who has attended, it’s been a joy showing you all around.

It’s been a huge honour to show Andy’s work. It was Andy and Sefton Rani who first introduced me to a diverse group of Pasifika artists working mostly from South Auckland a few years back. I’m not sure if that community adopted me, or if it was the other way around, but my life will always be richer because of it.

There is so much we can all learn from the voices on the ‘fringes’ of the art industry; those who don’t easily fit into Western conventions of what art means, and how it might function in more interesting ways, outside of the boring ideologies that institutions everywhere are STILL fostering upon us.

Once again, thanks to Andy for his talent and presence, and also the team at Creative New Zealand Pacific Arts Strategy for funding the artists to attend while extending their reputations internationally. (Don’t get me started on Creative Scotland rejection of any minimal, basic funding for this project - I’m done with them forever now, a plague on their house!)

The gallery will remain closed until Jake Chapman’s show opening on Thursday 30 July (5-7pm, all welcome - Jake will be present!)

See you all soon.

Creative New Zealand

24/07/2026

OPENING EVENT NEXT THURS 30 JULY 5-7pm.

Having worked with hundreds of artists across four countries, if I had to nominate the bravest of them working anywhere in the world right now, it’s likely that Jake Chapman would sit at the top of that list.

This show, ‘Nicesis: The Unwellness of Wellbeing’ reveals why.

Jake returns to Scotland after his highly successful exhibition at Unlimited Corporation last year, and what a return it is!

It’s not necessarily easy work, mind you - there’s no sunshine and lollipops here, no gentle tickling of the balls of corporate sponsor benefactors. Instead, the work intentionally punches us in the eyeballs while having a quiet word with the various ideologies we bake for ourselves from a handful of musty headline ingredients usually sourced from crappy oligarch-owned media outlets. (All of them well past their Best Before dates.)

Jake’s audacious ability to repel and attract us simultaneously means that, at the very least, you’ll p**s yourself laughing at some of it. From collabs with Goya (not kidding) to the surreal snake oil peddlers of the ‘wellbeing’ industry, it’s beautiful, gnarly, dangerous, necessary, sensual work.

And timely.

Jake will be here for the Thursday opening, and we’re having a live Q and A session in the gallery with drinks, the following day on Friday 31st, from 6-8pm. You won’t want to miss it!

The Gallery in Chuckie Pend is Venue 560, and the show runs from 30 July to 29 August, Mon-Sat 11-6pm all through the Festival.

All welcome. We can’t wait to see you!

Jake Chapman

17/07/2026

Beautiful weather in Edinburgh today, and there’s instant sunshine in the gallery too, thanks to the work of Andy Leleisi’uao.

‘Seeking Homonoialand’ is open today and tomorrow 11-6pm. Pop in for a look, you won’t regret it!

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