Scotland + Venice returns home: UK and International tour announced
In 2025, the Scotland + Venice partnership announced Scotland’s highly anticipated return to the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. Glasgow-based contemporary artist duo Bugarin + Castle (Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle) were selected to represent Scotland in a new project titled Shame Parade, curated by the Mount Stuart Trust.
Following its Venice run (May 9 – November 22, 2026), the exhibition will return to Scotland as part of a UK tour supported by Art Fund. It will make its domestic debut at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute on 17th April 2027, opening the 26th year of visual arts programming at Mount Stuart before a tour nationally and internationally.
Alongside the homecoming exhibition, a satellite exhibition of expanded material from Shame Parade will travel across Scotland with the Travelling Gallery March to June 2027 and in summer 2027 the Travelling Gallery will host an exhibition of responses to Venice from participants of the Scotland + Venice Professional Development Programme (supported by a-n, City of Glasgow College, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, Edinburgh College, Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art, Grays School of Art, Outer Spaces and the Bute Family Charitable Trust with Mount Stuart Trust). The programme enables early-career visual arts practitioners to travel to Venice and support the delivery of the exhibition in Venice. 14 Exhibition Associates spent 4 weeks and 3 Senior Associates spent 10 weeks in Venice.
After Mount Stuart, the artworks will travel to Kunsthall Trondheim, Norway in October 2027, where they will be shown with a suite of new works in a distinct presentation. Shame Parade will then continue its UK tour supported by Art Fund. Venues will include Newcastle Contemporary Arts and Inverness Museum and Art Gallery and dates will be announced soon.
Artists Bugarin + Castle and curator Morven Gregor at Mount Stuart. Photo by Charlotte Cullen.
“This touring model means audiences across the country and beyond can experience Scotland's contribution to the world's most prestigious visual arts festival for themselves” explains Emma Nicolson, Head of Creative Arts, Creative Scotland.
Bugarin + Castle’s multi-layered project uses the concept of the parade as a lens to explore the complex emotional legacies of shame, pride, and celebration. Drawing deeply on queer histories, Scottish archives, and Filipino cultural heritage, the installation features a 20-minute film and two sculptural installations. It examines how sound and costume can be used as instruments of social control, as well as tools for liberation. More than 20,000 people have visited the exhibition so far, and it continues in Venice until 22 November 2026.
"In Shame Parade, we have been investigating what we call ‘auditory zones of shame’, questioning how spaces are controlled through sound and costume, drawing on Scottish, Filipino and trans perspectives. With these spatial dynamics central to our practice, we are excited to see how the work continues to evolve as it encounters new spaces and audiences in galleries across Scotland, the wider UK and Norway.
Returning to Mount Stuart is particularly significant. We are immensely grateful for their generosity and belief in our work every step of the way, and for encouraging us to think with curiosity and inquietude. Our sculptural and video works will coexist within the spaces at Mount Stuart where we filmed, from the gleaming ceilings to the darkness beneath its trapdoors.
We hope the work invites audiences to question who set the measurements of the spaces they inherit, and to imagine how they might redraw the plans laid out for them.”
Davide Bugarin and Angel Cohn Castle (Bugarin + Castle)
“In Venice, Shame Parade has touched and enthused diverse audiences. We look forward to sharing the exhibition, its energy and insights, with local, national and international visitors and offering a related programme of events and workshops throughout spring and summer.”
Dr Morven Gregor, Curator of Contemporary and Learning, Mount Stuart.