On the Everyday, the Humorous & Making a Scene | The Sunday Journals No.15

Quotidian is one of those words that sounds considerably grander than what it means.

It simply means everyday.

Constantine.., however, is not an artist inclined to leave the everyday alone.

 

Constantine.. at the opening of his solo exhibition, The Torrance Gallery.

 

On Friday evening, we privately opened A Collection of Quotidian Masterpieces, before welcoming the public into the exhibition yesterday. The timing feels particularly apt. The Torrance Gallery has a new frontage and Edinburgh has entered August and the city is beginning its annual transformation. Ordinary rooms become theatres, pavements become stages and people suddenly find themselves discussing mime, cabaret or experimental puppetry!

For a few weeks, everyday life becomes performance.

That same idea runs throughout Constantine..’s work.

The exhibition brings together paintings from several interconnected bodies of work. Certain figures and objects return again and again, but rarely in quite the same role. The familiar is rearranged, exaggerated and given new significance. A gesture becomes a ritual. A visual joke develops a slightly uneasy edge. An ordinary encounter begins to resemble a scene from a modern myth.

 

A stylized cartoon illustration on a purple background showing Batman in a dark cape and cowl facing a man in a cowboy hat and jacket who is smoking. Speech bubbles read 'SPARE A GIGARETTE?' and 'DON'T SMOKE FAL.
Heroes Ain't Beggars, Constantine.., 2026

 

At the centre of much of the work is Constantine..’s recurring protagonist.

He is recognisably drawn from the artist himself, but he isn’t quite a conventional self-portrait. He feels more like an actor that Constantine.. sends out into the world: sometimes hero, sometimes antihero, sometimes observer, fool or provocateur. As the surroundings and circumstances change, so does the role he performs.

 

A stylized portrait painting of a man in profile wearing a brown bowler hat and a cream high-neck shirt, rendered with geometric facial features on a warm beige background.
The Way I Walk, Constantine.. 2026

 

It made me think about how much of everyday life involves performance. Constantine.. takes those shifts in behaviour and enlarges them until they become theatrical, symbolic and occasionally absurd.

The humour matters. This is not an exhibition that demands solemn silence or prior knowledge of art theory. The colours are bold, the imagery is immediate and there is pleasure in the sheer oddness of Constantine..’s universe.

But the humour never feels entirely comfortable.

Look a little longer and questions begin to surface. Who holds the power in this scene? Is the protagonist in control, or simply acting as though he is? Are we looking at confidence, bravado, vulnerability or all three at once?

The work does not provide tidy answers. Its titles often complicate rather than explain, giving the viewer just enough of a nudge to start forming an interpretation before pulling the ground away again.

 

Constantine painting in Virgin Hotels Residency, 2025

 

Part of the exhibition continues ideas Constantine.. developed during his 2025 residency at Virgin Hotels Edinburgh, where his Vigilante series moved beyond painting into performance, intervention and film. Its masked antihero confronted questions of power, persona and control, turning the hotel into something more than a neutral backdrop.

Bringing that work into The Torrance Gallery changes it again.

Here, Vigilante sits within a much broader survey of Constantine..’s practice. Seen alongside quieter paintings, the character becomes one figure within a larger mythology that the artist has been building and rebuilding for years.

 

An abstract painting of a stylized face in yellow, brown, cream, and red on a pink background, with a visible artist signature on the right.
Vigilante #42, Constantine..

 

It also feels like the right exhibition with which to mark a new chapter for the gallery.

The Torrance has spent more than five decades showing contemporary art, and we are very conscious that taking it forward does not mean discarding what came before. But it does mean allowing the gallery to stretch occasionally - to make room for different media, unexpected voices and exhibitions that alter the atmosphere of the space.

Constantine.. has certainly done that.

The gallery feels bolder, stranger and more theatrical than usual. The works do not sit quietly on the walls waiting to be admired. They interrupt one another, repeat themselves, perform and occasionally misbehave.

That is exactly what we hoped this exhibition would do.

 

The Torrance Gallery, Exhibition Launch Party, 2026.

Our favourite piece is one which we asked Constantine to create for the exhibition, with the brief to create a painting in his unique style that felt rooted in Edinburgh. The result was ‘Gardyloo’ it’s title recalls Edinburgh’s old warning cry, but in Constantine..’s hands that piece of local history takes on his ‘dry’ sense of humour.


A stylized painting of a man in a beige trench coat and white t-shirt holding a black umbrella in the rain against a light blue background. The t-shirt has the text 'gardyloo' on it.
Gardyloo by Constantine.., 2026

 

The phrase quotidian masterpiece contains a deliberate contradiction. A masterpiece is usually understood as something rare and elevated; the quotidian is the material of ordinary life. Constantine.. brings the two together and asks us to consider whether the everyday might already contain all the absurdity, symbolism and drama we could possibly need.

During August in Edinburgh, that idea does not seem particularly difficult to believe.

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