To write, direct and take the lead role in your own play is a magnificent feat by anyone’s standards, but David K Barnes seems to cope with it amicably.

Until 21 Feb
Dean Gallery
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The BP Portrait Award excels again in bringing some shockingly well crafted, expressive and poignant images to the public eye. In our age of cameras there is something uncanny about experiencing this exhibition – it frightens us out of our habitual sense of visual reality.

The bad guys get the best bits. We all know this is true. True for books as for film, for Tarantino as for Disney – it is a truth that cannot be avoided even in the work of William Shakespeare.

Salon: Embassy Members' Show
Until 7 Feb 2010
Embassy Gallery
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'Salon' is the annual members’ show at the Embassy Gallery. With no restrictions on the theme and one piece of work accepted from every member, the exhibition is quite varied in media and content as well as quality.

When composing his operatic adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s epic novel in the 1940s, Sergei Prokofiev may well have envisaged a similar opening to that of director Irina Brown and the actors of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.