Image: Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Edinburgh
Anne Bevan and Mary Bourne will present ‘Shimmering’, a new exhibition of work at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery from 22 August to 17 October 2026. The exhibition preview is scheduled for 21 August, followed by an artists’ talk on 22 August. According to the museum’s listing and launch invitation, the show forms part of the RSA200 programme marking the Royal Scottish Academy’s bicentenary year.
The exhibition brings together RSA Academicians Anne Bevan RSA and Mary Bourne RSA in a project shaped by their connections to the ecology of specific places in the north of Scotland. The museum describes the exhibition as one that links their practices through a poetic, subjective view of the sea. The source material cites Margaret Tait’s poem ‘Light’ in relation to the project, using the lines ‘Waves are what they are, / Shimmeringness, / Oscillation, / Rhythmical movement which is the inherent essence of all things.’
Bevan’s work in the exhibition is tied to her home in Orkney and to an ongoing exploration of environmental change. The museum says her current project involves a creative examination of the past, present and future situation of marine energy. It also notes that she has been working with marine scientists, engineers and geologists, and that her investigations consider tides, wave formations, hidden things and stories from the sea, as well as underwater forms explored through casting, constructing and moving image.
Bourne, who is based in Moray, works predominantly in carved natural stone. The museum says her new work is inspired by her late father’s ornithological research, and that it reflects on humanity’s relationship with the environment through themes of subjectivity, the passage of time and change. In the exhibition material, those ideas are tied to conservation, with Bourne’s work looking at how science and emotion together drive the need to conserve Scotland’s wild coastal fringes.
The RSA200 connection places ‘Shimmering’ within a wider national programme organised by the Royal Scottish Academy to celebrate 200 years of Scottish art and architecture. The academy says its bicentenary programme involves more than 100 partners, galleries and institutions across Scotland and beyond, presenting exhibitions, events, performances, talks and collection rehangs throughout 2026. Inverness Museum and Art Gallery is one of the venues participating in that nationwide programme.
At Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, the exhibition preview on 21 August runs from 6pm to 8pm and is open to all without booking. The artists’ talk on 22 August is listed as an informal exhibition tour in the art galleries from 2pm to 3pm, with donations welcomed. The exhibition itself runs in the Art Galleries at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery from 22 August to 17 October 2026.
