Mount Stuart Trust’s 2026 Contemporary Visual Arts Programme announced
A summer exhibition will launch the Contemporary Visual Arts season on Bute, with the largest solo show in Scotland by Veronica Ryan OBE, RA to date. Opening Saturday 30th May, with previews planned the following weekend to coincide with Glasgow International. The new work will include reflections on the materiality of Mount Stuart house, its contents and living collection and will also see Ryan interrogating lineage through the consideration of family histories. Her sculptural practice embraces the hand-made and domestic as conduits for memory as well as interrogating collecting practices and colonialism within natural, found objects. The work will also look at the context of the Isle of Bute, with its limits created by the sea.
Veronica Ryan, Spike Island, 2021; photo: Lisa Whiting. Courtesy Alison Jacques.
Bugarin + Castle, meanwhile, will represent Scotland at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2026, in a project curated by Mount Stuart Trust. The Glasgow based artist duo Bugarin + Castle (Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle), will present a multi-layered new project that uses the concept of the parade as a lens to explore complex emotional legacies of shame, pride and celebration. Drawing on queer histories, Scottish archives and Filipino cultural heritage, it will examine how sound and costume shape social control. The artists’ interdisciplinary art practice traverses cabaret performance and architectural methodologies, driven by queer and decolonial research. The Venice exhibition will return to Mount Stuart in Summer 2027, before further presentations in Scotland, to be announced. Forma, an arts charity working across the UK and internationally, are co-commissioning the film work and managing the production of the Venice exhibition. Dunoon Burgh Hall and BUZZCUT also form part of the project network, reflective of the interdisciplinary work of the artists and Scottish cultural sector.
Further projects at Mount Stuart include the Emerging Artist in Residence in Socially Engaged Practice 2026. This will be selected by an Open Call announced in the second half of the year. An Autumn Performance event will also be announced in early Spring.
Sophie Crichton-Stuart, Chair, Mount Stuart Trust and Founder of the Contemporary Visual Art
Programme said, “Exhibiting artists across our 25 year period have included Martin Boyce, Ilana Halperin, Sekai Machache, Monster Chetwynd, Nathan Coley, Abbas Akhavan, Christine Borland and Alberta Whittle and we are thrilled that for this very special year we will continue to work to develop new projects with some of the most exciting and innovative thinkers and makers currently making art. There will be so much to enjoy and engage with on Bute, as Veronica Ryan seeks inspiration from both the house and the landscape for a major body of new works. Meanwhile, we are thrilled that we have been appointed as delivery partners for Scotland + Venice in 2026. This is testament to the hard work and deep knowledge of our Curator Dr Morven Gregor, who has brought so many of our projects alive on the island, and I am in no doubt her work. with Bugarin + Castle in Venice will continue with similar vitality and energy in Venice. We are also excited to show the work ‘back home’ in 2027.”