Inside Naboland: Step into artist's make-believe universe featuring marzipan penguins at The Scottish Gallery

Now The Scottish Gallery in Edinburgh is presenting a landmark retrospective – 50 Years of Naboland – that gives visitors the chance to glimpse inside the imaginative journey of artist Reinhard Behrens.

The immersive exhibition showcases Mr Behrens’ submarines, strange coastlines and dreamlike cartography of his Naboland make-believe world, which he documents as if it were both fact and fiction.

The displays will transform two floors of The Scottish Gallery into Naboland itself, offering audiences the chance to step inside the artist’s unique universe. They will encounter marzipan penguins created by his wife, artist Margaret Behrens Smyth, and a jewellery display case in which he will hang the plastic submarine that inspired his work.

Mr Behrens first moved to Scotland in 1979, when he took up an opportunity to study at the Edinburgh College of Art for a year on a grant issued by the German government. He now lives in Pittenweem, Fife, where he and his family regularly exhibit at the Pittenweem Art Festival.

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“The idea was I would just spend an interesting, inspiring year abroad and then return to Germany,” he said. “But the German funders didn't quite anticipate this, that I liked it so much. I just went native and never really returned to Germany.

“I just found Scotland very inspiring and beautiful - and awe inspiring.”

The idea of Naboland had come to Mr Behrens a couple of years earlier during a holiday in Turkey while he was suffering from heatstroke. It was the name of a cargo ship that had had an accident with a submarine in Turkey.

“It was in a slightly feverish state that I saw the word ‘Naboland’ in a Turkish newspaper,” he said. Having found a plastic submarine five years earlier on a previous trip to a North Friesan island, he put the two ideas together.

“I thought, maybe my little submarine could travel through Naboland, and would explore,” he said.

Now, the submarine has become a recurring avatar in his practice – as a symbol of human curiosity, displacement and naivety.

Mr Behrens had found Scotland an unexpectedly warm place to practice his art.

“I thought, it’s another northern country, they’re probably all quite grim and the weather’s always bad,” he said. “I didn't expect much sort of laughter, human exchange.

“But of course, it's the opposite, very warm hearted and always ready to appreciate the funny side of things. I liked it so much for those human reasons.

“But mostly probably I realised having had just an inkling of this Naboland idea, I don't think it would have come too much in Germany. In Germany, you could not just be an artist for the fun of it. I had the weight of the world on my shoulders.

“I think it [Naboland] needed that sense of the whimsical, the humour. There's a great readiness in Britain, I feel, to enjoy playing with possible alternatives. I felt there would be much more oxygen for this idea in Scotland. “

The exhibition will also be accompanied by a new publication from The Scottish Gallery, which will provide further insights into the mythology, imagery and enduring significance of Mr Behren’s creations.

Alongside Naboland, The Scottish Gallery will also present a showcase of Ms Behrens’ Smyth’s work, as well as that by the couple’s two children, David and Kirstie Behrens. The work of the Behrens family will span painting, sculpture, music, film and automata.