Sophie Camu Lindsay, the woman changing the art landscape of Scotland

By Susan Mansfield, 28.08.2025

Space to Breathe, exhibition install photo, courtesy of Sophie Camu Lindsay

Of all the places one might see world-class art this summer, one of the more unusual is a converted barn near St Monans in the East Neuk of Fife. But Sophie Camu Lindsay, a former director of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby’s, is determined to play a part in changing the art landscape of Scotland.

“Somebody said to me, ‘Why do you do these great exhibitions in the middle of nowhere?’” she says. “And I said, ‘Well, why not?’ I think, all the better, because if you live in the city you have plenty of opportunities to see any number of shows. We’re keen on bringing something very special into this part of the world.” Camu Lindsay and her husband Alexander Lindsay, who is a photographer, moved to Fife in 2018 with their children and set up Space to Breathe in 2023, staging exhibitions at Bowhouse near St Monans, the home of a burgeoning farmers’ market and several local food businesses. This year, they have mounted their most ambitious show to date.

Since leaving Sotheby’s in 2009, Camu Lindsay has worked as a private art adviser, but wanted to find a way to work locally as well. “I started thinking about how to use my skillset up here. We went to Bowhouse for the markets, and thought, ‘Wouldn’t this space make a wonderful gallery?’”

They faced one major challenge: the big light-filled space has no internal walls, and no fixtures are allowed on the old stone walls of the barn itself. They solved this by suspending panels (and in some cases paintings) from the ceiling, retaining the open, airy feel of the space, and allowing sightlines through the whole room. “As you walk it’s like a forest of pictures, you see these connections and associations between the works. It’s actually become part of our identity - Space to Breathe in so many different ways.”

An initial exhibition of Lindsay’s landscape photography encouraged them to launch their own company, mounting exhibitions at Bowhouse every summer. The work is for sale, but the focus is on creating museum-style shows which offer a day out for families and art lovers. Children and dogs are welcome.

The first Space to Breathe exhibition in 2023 brought together work by Lindsay with three leading artists whose practice includes photography: Andy Goldsworthy, Susan Derges and Harry Cory Wright. The following year, they hosted a major centenary exhibition for Sheila Girling, the artist wife of Sir Anthony Caro, who had once been a neighbour of the Lindsays.

“It was such a privilege to do this unique centenary exhibition for an artist who we’ve known for a long time but who we realised needed to be better known,” Camu Lindsay says. “We had works by Sir Anthony Caro as well, but we wanted to put Sheila’s work front and centre, and we did. It looked gorgeous in the space, I was very proud of it.”

This year’s show is Making Waves, Breaking Ground, an ambitious group exhibition of 11 artists from Scotland, the UK and Europe, brought together through a partnership with London art dealer Purdey Hicks. “We wanted to do something different each year so that we keep surprising people, and this blend came about because of my love of nature photography and nature art. I wanted to show there is still space for contemporary nature or landscape photography. It doesn’t look old fashioned, it can still have something to say about the world and our place in it, it can be challenging, it can be just beautiful. I also love the combination of photography and painting, that they’re not just separate beings.

“We have three Scottish based artists, and all the others are international. That’s something I’ve always stood for, exhibiting world-class art in Scotland, looking outwards and placing Scottish art next to work from elsewhere in the world.”

The largest bodies of work in the show are drawings by Julie Brook, who is best known as a land artist making sculptural work outdoors, and has recently completed a commission,'Tide Line’, just north of Cellardyke on the Fife coast; Lindsay, who is exploring a new direction in his work with a studio-based series called ‘Smoke Nebula’; and Orkney-based artist Samantha Clark, who makes paintings of the ocean using a meditative practice of delicate gridwork and repeating marks.

Camu Lindsay says: “I’d seen her work and thought she was a remarkable painter, and I wanted her to be seen in a room with artists from all over the world, some of whom are very well known. I think she really holds her own in the space.”

There is a return visit to Fife for Susan Derges, the master of camera-less photography - “I’ve been a great fan of her work ever since I discovered it, age 22, at Sotheby’s” - and extraordinary rayograms by  French artist Anaïs Tondeur, studies of plants from within the exclusive zone around the nuclear power plant at Chernobyl.

“She works with the scientists who are studying the effects of the nuclear disaster. The images have to be made under very special conditions and the original rayograms are themselves radioactive and need to be stored in a lead box - these are prints made from them. The project is historical, political, environmental, and of course now it has become more difficult to get the samples because of the war in Ukraine. I think they’re very important works, and very, very beautiful.”

There are works by Jorma Puranen, one of Finland’s most celebrated photographers and a founder of the Helsinki School of Photography, which pioneered conceptually based landscape photography in Finland. One of his pupils, Santeri Tuori, is also in the show, along with another Finnish photographer, Sandra Kantanen.

The exhibition is completed by Sue Arrowsmith, whose painting practice begins with photographs of tree branches projected on to canvas; Jonathan Delafield Cook, whose hyperreal charcoal drawings are some of the most immediately arresting work in the show, and an extraordinary series of tulip studies by German artist  Kathrin Linkersdorff from Germany, who photographs dying flowers under water.

“People ask me my favourite works - they’re all my favourites, that’s why they’re in the show,” says Camu Lindsay. “I would only ever put works that resonate very much with me, personally.”

“We’re living in very turbulent times and these artists are saying something about how art can save us, in a way. As I put up this show, I thought, thank goodness for art and artists, keeping us grounded, making me question and giving me gratitude.”

Making Waves, Breaking Ground runs until 31 August at Bowhouse, St Monans