Willow Trust Illusion

Willow Trust Illusion
A solo exhibition by Brandon Logan

Opening Reception: 18 September 2025, 6-8pm

In collaboration with Tom Cole, Sid Motion Gallery is delighted to present ‘Willow Trust Illusion’, a solo exhibition by Brandon Logan.

Brandon Logan (b. 1996) presented a genuinely new way of making abstract art at his degree show at Edinburgh College of Art in 2019, and - just four years later - cemented his growing reputation with his first museum show at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, in the Orkney Islands where he grew up, and where he now lives and works.

Logan’s ‘paintings’, as he describes them, have a sculptural presence, hanging away from the wall on raised batons. They acknowledge the place that he’s from, finding their colours in the streets of Stromness and the Orkney landscape, and nodding to the islands’ rich traditions of weaving and tapestry, but as he says:

‘I always think of them as paintings because I have a specific interest in what paint can do. I’m obsessed with the simple transformation of fluid, liquid colour, to solid, that can take place in my hands. It is like magic to me every time’.

It is a distinctive process which involves the flooding, sealing and fusing of warps of string using the gradual application of layers of paint. The string support allows for colour to be suspended within, resulting in works with an open, fretted structure and an innate delicacy. They somehow connect the history of minimal abstraction with a sensibility born of, and belonging to, the Scottish islands.

Artist Biography

Brandon Logan (b.1996) lives and works in Orkney. He completed his MA (Hons) in Fine Art at Edinburgh College of Art in 2019. His selected solo exhibitions include: 'Brandon Logan: Little Low Heavens', Bard, Edinburgh, 2025; 'Dog Rose', Ingleby, Edinburgh, 2024; 'Skeleton Stories', Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, 2023; 'Instalments', Ingleby, Edinburgh, 2021 and 'Saved Phrases', Zembla Gallery, Hawick, 2019.

His selected group exhibitions include: 'Still Dancing…new adventures in non-representational painting & sculpture', Ingleby, Edinburgh, 2024; 'Akin', Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, 2024; 'Twenty-Five', Ingleby, Edinburgh, 2023; 'Scottish Landscapes: A New Generation', Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, 2023; 'RSA New Contemporaries', Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 2020 and 'VAS Graduate Showcase', Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, 2020.

Longan's selected awards include: RSA Carnegie Scholarship and Maclaine Watters Medal, 2020; The Fleming Collection and Scotland House, Emerging Scottish Artist of the Year, 2020; Visual Arts Scotland Graduate Showcase Award, 2019 and The Astaire Art Prize, 2019.

His work is included in the Public Collections of Pier Art Centre, The University of Edinburgh Art Collection and University of Stirling Art Collection.