7 days ago
The 8 best shows to see at the Edinburgh Art Festival 2025
All human life is at the Edinburgh festivals (sometimes, walking on the Royal Mile, it feels as if that's literally the case). It has never been entirely clear to me why they all happen at the same time, the Fringe and the International Festival crashing into the film, book, TV and art jamborees every August, but one advantage for the Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) is that it can provide a welcome respite from the noise.
As a body that commissions work and provides an umbrella for exhibitions that would be happening anyway, the EAF can feel frustratingly disparate (and the website is maddening), but there is still much to enjoy. Of the commissions this year, Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahoney's delicate film about queer Scottish lives obscured through history is the strongest, and can be found in the festival pavilion at 45 Leith Street, a disused office building given over to artists' studios (some are open to visitors on certain dates).
• Edinburgh Festival 2025: the best shows to see this year
And as ever, slipping into a gallery and shifting your mindset for an hour or so, especially if you've spent the past few hours being aggressively entertained, is always worthwhile. Here are the top shows.
★★★★☆A fascinating exhibition that uses fabulous paintings, books, jewellery and other objects to reveal a man about whom English audiences at least may have a pretty fuzzy idea, overshadowed as he has been by the travails of his descendants (especially Charles I and II) and his mother (Mary, Queen of Scots). It reveals a complex, intelligent, devoutly religious king scarred by childhood trauma but given to breathtaking arrogance; a dog lover, fashion plate and patron of the arts who hated smoking almost as much as he hated witches, and who managed to hold together two fractious nations, but had a weakness for pretty young Galleries, Scotland: Portrait, to Sep 14,
★★★☆☆Curated by the IKEA Museum in Almhult, Sweden, this jolly exhibition traces the early development of the massive interiors brand's textile division and highlights the designers behind some of its most popular fabrics (such as Inez Svensson's banana print — a nice detail is that when she died in 2005 she requested her coffin be draped in it). It's really only mildly interesting, but it's enjoyable, and does make you want to buy new cushions. Dovecot Studios, to Jan 17,
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★★★★★It's rare to see Andy Goldsworthy's work inside a gallery — mostly he makes it in the landscape, out of natural materials, then leaves it to the mercies of nature, often to disappear altogether. This poetic, gently witty, quietly magical show includes photography and video documentation of some of his more ephemeral works, as well as objects and large installations that recognise and pay tribute to our integral relationship with the land. With works ranging from an elegiac room of stones displaced by human burials to vast paintings made by the muddy feet of hungry sheep, it's a strangely touching experience that makes you want to immediately tramp up Arthur's Seat, fires permitting, and hold your arms Scottish Academy, to Nov 2,
★★★★☆With their quiet clarity, soft palette and domestic focus, the paintings of the Philadelphia-based artist Aubrey Levinthal feel familiar in a way that is comforting yet disquieting. Revolving around life with her husband, son and friends, they are full of relatable detail that you rarely see in painting — a Tupperware containing the remnants of lunch; the startling black of a laptop screen reflecting an overhead light; a charger; discarded hoop earrings; an escapist scribble of spaghetti; drooping houseplants; children clustering around an iPad. She skilfully evokes, too, the solitude that comes with the territory of artist — and motherhood. Don't miss her prints in the hallway of the gallery, or the small exhibition upstairs of gorgeous canvases by Mia Kokkoni, a recent graduate based in Gallery, to Sep 13,
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★★★★☆The glorious sculpture park of Jupiter Artland is always worth visiting, but every summer a couple of new commissions are presented there, and the standout this year is the film-maker Guy Oliver's new piece, Millennial Prayer. Looking back at the day we briefly thought the clocks were going to stop, this hour-long, highly entertaining exploration of a cultural moment that was hugely significant and a complete damp squib wields deadpan humour to create a nonchalantly acute social Artland, to Sep 28,
★★★★☆Exquisitely made and totally compelling, this exhibition by the Egyptian artist Wael Shawky centres on two films about politics and history. The two-hour epic (part of a trilogy) Cabaret Crusades III: The Secrets of Karbala uses intricate glass marionettes, some of which are on display ('We are all like marionettes, manipulated by forces we cannot see,' he says), to give an Arab perspective on the context and motivation underpinning the Crusades. The strange but stunning Drama 1882 is an operatic rendition of Egypt's abortive nationalist Urabi revolution against imperial rule, undermined by the British to protect its interests in the region and leading to Britain's occupation of Egypt until 1956. Most visitors won't sit through them, but they're really worth your time. Talbot Rice Gallery, to Sep 28,
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★★★★☆At the heart of Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden, Inverleith House feels like an oddly appropriate location for this 50-year survey of work by the post-punk feminist artist Linder, who often draws on floral imagery to wittily subvert the tropes of femininity. Her scalpel-sharp, surgically executed photomontages critique conventional assumptions about gender and sexuality. From soft porn spliced with images of domestic appliances to photographs of the working-class drag clubs of 1970s Manchester, she kicks hard and precisely where it hurts. Inverleith House, to Oct 19,
★★★☆☆Mike Nelson creates immersive environments from salvaged materials that are stuffed with cultural references. They're not always easy to read, and this, a study in the politics of construction and destruction across all three gallery spaces, is no different — the short film upstairs, in which he reluctantly explains where he's coming from, is by far the most helpful place to start. Based on two sets of photographs — one of Mardin, a predominantly Kurdish city in Turkey that was at the time in a remarkable state of infrastructural redevelopment, and one of an unnamed London housing estate in the last silent days before its destruction — it's a cumulative experience that is more poetic and atmospheric than expressive. Make sure you visit the warehouse section of the gallery (through the café, then through a big metal door) or you'll be to Oct 5,
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