Latest news with #GardenFutures
The Herald Scotland
25-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Why Arabic art is everywhere in Scotland now – and why it matters
But the subject is bigger than that, and in its widest and most urgently modern form the study of Arabic culture – and in particular the art and artefacts it produces – is currently being propelled out of its once narrow academic silo and onto our streets and galleries. Yes, geo-politics has something to do with it. But that's not the whole story. Few will have missed the opening in Edinburgh last month of the Palestine Museum. Located on Dundas Street in the New Town, it is devoted to contemporary Palestinian art and is the first of its kind in Europe. And if you make the journey across the Tay to visit the excellent Garden Futures exhibition at V&A Dundee you'll find a chunk of the show devoted to garden design as a force of cultural expression in various places, including in the Israeli-Occupied West Bank. In the same show there's also a massive, wall-mounted mosaic panel in yellows and blues showing floral motifs and dating from the 17th century. It was originally sited in Isfahan, the ancient city in Iran renowned for its Persian-Muslim architecture. Elsewhere Iranian film director Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or for It Was Just An Accident, shot secretly in his homeland, and No Other Land, by the Palestinian-Israeli team of Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Yuval Abraham, won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature at this year's Academy Awards. The Middle East and its art is swirling all around us, if we care to look. Back in Dundee, meanwhile, the V&A is about to open a new exhibition titled Thread Memory. It uses textile design to tell the history of Palestinian dress and tatreez – the elaborate hand-embroidery through which women mark their identities and chart the ups and downs of their lives. Some of the textile exhibits are from the V&A mother-ship in London, though some have come from the Palestinian Museum in Birzeit in the Occupied West Bank. There's also a selection of jewellery, veils and archival photographs, and the show has been mounted in part to celebrate the 45th anniversary of Dundee's twin city relationship with Nablus, which has a population of 150,000 and sits just north of Jerusalem. That show opens on June 26. Still from a video work by Wael Shawky (Image: Wael Shawky) There's more. Heading south-west from Nablus and south from Dundee brings us to Egypt and Edinburgh. The first is the birthplace of artist Wael Shawky, who last year represented the country at the 60th Venice Biennale and whose video work uses puppetry to dissect the legacy of the crusades among other things. The second is home to the Talbot Rice Gallery, where Sawky sets up from June 28 in an expansive exhibition which promises to be once of the centrepieces of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival. Artistic events and innovations like these don't alter the day to day reality of life in the region. The bombs and missiles continue to fall. But enquiring minds willing to engage with the contemporary art and culture of the Arab world will find context and explanation in these places – and maybe even a dash of hope. Please do take up the offer. Egyptian artist Wael Shawky sets up from June 28 in an expansive exhibition at Talbot Rice Gallery (Image: Wael Shawky) Home time Its seven year refit must have tried the nerves and the patience of all involved, but no matter: Glasgow's feted Citizens Theatre finally re-opens on September 12 with the premiere of Small Acts Of Love, a major new work about the bonds forged between the people of Lockerbie and the American relatives of those who lost their lives in the bombing of Pan Am 103 over the town in December 1988. Now, full cast details have been announced for the 14-strong production which will be led by Blythe Duff. Featuring music by Deacon Blue's Ricky Ross in collaboration with playwright Frances Poet, the show will use a five-piece band including Louis Abbott, frontman of Mercury Prize-nominated Admiral Fallow, and Jill O'Sullivan, formerly with Sparrow And The Workshop and now performing as Jill Lorean. Also in the cast are Robbie Jack and Beth Marshall, who both appeared in BBC dramas Lockerbie: The Bombing Of Pan Am 103. Read more: 'To be announcing our cast for Small Acts Of Love is an exciting and pivotal moment in our journey home,' says Citz director Dominic Hill. 'Ranging from some of the most experienced and well-known actors in Scotland to newly graduated stars of the future, this cast and this production announce the ambition and quality of the new Citizens Theatre.' Lots to look forward to, then. And ahead of that, the Citz will be mounting a multi-day autumn Homecoming festival to whet the appetite for what promises to be a welcome re-awakening. And finally The Herald critics have sharpening their pens, filling their notebooks and – in the case of intrepid reporter Martin Williams – pogoing in the grass at Bellahouston Park, but each leaving the show with a surfeit of observations and opinions. At regular hunting ground Òran Mór, theatre critic Neil Cooper watched Gothic comedy-drama The Haunting Of Agnes Gilfrey, a co-production between Mull Theatre and the island's An Tobar art centre. He also visited Pitlochry Festival Theatre where he enjoyed a revival of Grease, strengthened he thinks by owing more to the original stage show than the blockbuster film version. The pogoing came courtesy of the throng of ageing punks who turned up to watch an outdoor Punk All-Dayer featuring The Stranglers, The Undertones, The Rezillos, Buzzcocks and Skids, and headlined by the Sex Pistols, with Frank Carter replacing you-know-who on vocals. Good fun. All that remains to be determined is what is the proper collective noun for a bunch of ageing punks moshing to Anarchy In The UK, No More Heroes and Into The Valley. Answers on a beermat, please. Finally, Gabriel McKay headed to a hot and sweaty King Tut's Wah Wah Hut to see Mallrat, aka fast-rising Brisbane-born indie pop challenger Grace Shaw. Plot the mid-point between Olivia Rodrigo and Lana Del Rey and you won't be far off a description of her winning pop sound.
The National
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
The events across Scotland you need to know about this June
GARDEN OF DELIGHTS Even those who recoil at the thought of weeding and dragging out the mower on a weekly basis can be inspired by the latest major exhibition at V&A Dundee. Garden Futures: Designing with Nature won't exactly provide inspiration for your next remodel but it will open your eyes to the possibilities of what an outdoor space can be. As well as looking at how garden design has developed around the world, often in the most unexpected places, it examines how important having an outside space is to us. This is Scotland's design museum and some of the ideas will be challenging – but looking at the future of gardens goes hand in hand with looking at a greener, more environmentally friendly future. There are examples of innovative garden design from around the globe and work by international designers and landscape architects. (Image: Howard Sooley) Artists have always been inspired by nature and the outdoors and Garden Futures also showcases visual art inspired by our green spaces. The exhibition also pays tribute to community garden projects across Scotland, from the Maxwell Community Garden, part of the Grow Dundee food growing and community garden network, and Oban's Seaweed Gardens. From William Morris to Derek Jarman, there are names with their own individual take on what a garden is and what it can be. There are also ceramics, fashion, painting, textiles, sculpture, interior design, drawings and photographs. Until January 25, 2026 ALL THAT JAZZ June is great month for jazzers. Not only do the hepcats roll into Glasgow, they also head south to Kirkcudbright. From June 18 to 22, Glasgow welcomes its jazz festival, from Santana at the OVO Hydro to the Colin Steele Quartet playing The Blue Nile (extra show added due to demand) to Marianne McGregor and favourite Brian Kellock. Kirkcudbright Jazz Festival is the place to be if New Orleans, Dixieland and Swing jazz is your favourite jam. Kirkcudbright: June 12–15. Glasgow: June 18–22 (Image: Nan Shephard) NAN SHEPHERD: NAKED AND UNASHAMED Whether you recognise Nan Shepherd from a Scottish £5 banknote or not, her story is unmissable and told in a play running at Pitlochry Festival Theatre's Studio until June 14. The Scottish naturalist was also a poet and writer and had an extraordinary life. She is responsible for the classic text The Living Mountain. But it almost stayed undiscovered – lying in a drawer for more than three decades. Writers Richard Baron and Ellie Zeegen bring all of that to life. Running until June 14 PORTRAIT: INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION This fascinating six-week long exhibition focusing on portraiture, currently running at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, ends on June 20. The High Street gallery offers some surprising takes on a familiar style and the good news is that the gallery offers all of this for free entry. Until June 20 HIDDEN DOOR FESTIVAL The Hidden Door Festival has spent the past 15 years championing new music, theatre, dance and art. It has also found increasingly interesting locations. It's a charity, fully run by volunteers, with everything funded through ticket sales. This year the site is a former industrial site. It's a huge former paper and cardboard box factory, spread over 15 acres and with warehouses, factory floors, offices and outhouses. Since Saica's relocation to Livingston, proposals are being developed for the site but Hidden Door has access right until the end of 2025. June 11–15 WESTFEST Valiantly flying the flag for real community-led events, Westfest Dundee has made a fabulous success from a one-day event, Westfest Sunday, which keeps the concept simple and local. It takes place on Magdalen Green, within site of the Tay and the rail bridge and centres around the Victorian bandstand. A music programme that always includes local schools and keeps the crowds dancing, it's a properly child-friendly event and gives local businesses and charities a high profile for the day. Westfest Dundee – Sunday, June 1 NEIGHBOURHOOD VARIETY SHOW – SAUCHIEHALL STREET The Neighbourhood Variety Show is a performance project, part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Project in North Glasgow. Essentially, the aim of the project is to take a closer look at how artists can collaborate with and enrich their neighbourhood – and it offers a range of artists willing to perform. The Neighbourhood Variety Show: Sauchiehall Street is created by Eoin McKenzie. The first show from the project was in Springburn last year, and the next show takes place on June 5 in association with The Garage. NTS and McKenzie are working in association with Sauchiehall Street: Culture and Heritage District, a 10-year plan to renew the famous street. The Garage. Thursday, June 5. (Image: Betty Boo) BETTY BOO Without doubt one of the most interesting and talented popsters of the late 80s and early 90s is heading out as her alter ego after Alison Moira Clarkson has spent so many years penning major pop hits for other artists. With the rerelease of her acclaimed and popular albums Boomania and GRRR! It's Betty Boo, the shows are sure to be eneregetic and 'pretty pop-tastic'. There will also be bigger shows later in the year but this is your chance to see her in more intimate settings. Glasgow: Wednesday, June 25, Hug & Pint Edinburgh: Thursday June 26 Voodoo Rooms
The Herald Scotland
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
The events across Scotland you need to know about this June
Even those who recoil at the thought of weeding and dragging out the mower on a weekly basis can be inspired by the latest major exhibition at V&A Dundee. Garden Futures: Designing with Nature won't exactly provide inspiration for your next remodel but it will open your eyes to the possibilities of what an outdoor space can be. As well as looking at how garden design has developed around the world, often in the most unexpected places, it examines how important having an outside space is to us. This is Scotland's design museum and some of the ideas will be challenging – but looking at the future of gardens goes hand in hand with looking at a greener, more environmentally friendly future. There are examples of innovative garden design from around the globe and work by international designers and landscape architects. (Image: Howard Sooley) Artists have always been inspired by nature and the outdoors and Garden Futures also showcases visual art inspired by our green spaces. The exhibition also pays tribute to community garden projects across Scotland, from the Maxwell Community Garden, part of the Grow Dundee food growing and community garden network, and Oban's Seaweed Gardens. From William Morris to Derek Jarman, there are names with their own individual take on what a garden is and what it can be. There are also ceramics, fashion, painting, textiles, sculpture, interior design, drawings and photographs. Until January 25, 2026 ALL THAT JAZZ June is great month for jazzers. Not only do the hepcats roll into Glasgow, they also head south to Kirkcudbright. From June 18 to 22, Glasgow welcomes its jazz festival, from Santana at the OVO Hydro to the Colin Steele Quartet playing The Blue Nile (extra show added due to demand) to Marianne McGregor and favourite Brian Kellock. Kirkcudbright Jazz Festival is the place to be if New Orleans, Dixieland and Swing jazz is your favourite jam. Kirkcudbright: June 12–15. Glasgow: June 18–22 (Image: Nan Shephard) NAN SHEPHERD: NAKED AND UNASHAMED Whether you recognise Nan Shepherd from a Scottish £5 banknote or not, her story is unmissable and told in a play running at Pitlochry Festival Theatre's Studio until June 14. The Scottish naturalist was also a poet and writer and had an extraordinary life. She is responsible for the classic text The Living Mountain. But it almost stayed undiscovered – lying in a drawer for more than three decades. Writers Richard Baron and Ellie Zeegen bring all of that to life. Running until June 14 PORTRAIT: INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION This fascinating six-week long exhibition focusing on portraiture, currently running at the Glasgow Gallery of Photography, ends on June 20. The High Street gallery offers some surprising takes on a familiar style and the good news is that the gallery offers all of this for free entry. Until June 20 HIDDEN DOOR FESTIVAL The Hidden Door Festival has spent the past 15 years championing new music, theatre, dance and art. It has also found increasingly interesting locations. It's a charity, fully run by volunteers, with everything funded through ticket sales. This year the site is a former industrial site. It's a huge former paper and cardboard box factory, spread over 15 acres and with warehouses, factory floors, offices and outhouses. Since Saica's relocation to Livingston, proposals are being developed for the site but Hidden Door has access right until the end of 2025. June 11–15 WESTFEST Valiantly flying the flag for real community-led events, Westfest Dundee has made a fabulous success from a one-day event, Westfest Sunday, which keeps the concept simple and local. It takes place on Magdalen Green, within site of the Tay and the rail bridge and centres around the Victorian bandstand. A music programme that always includes local schools and keeps the crowds dancing, it's a properly child-friendly event and gives local businesses and charities a high profile for the day. Westfest Dundee – Sunday, June 1 NEIGHBOURHOOD VARIETY SHOW – SAUCHIEHALL STREET The Neighbourhood Variety Show is a performance project, part of the National Theatre of Scotland's Project in North Glasgow. Essentially, the aim of the project is to take a closer look at how artists can collaborate with and enrich their neighbourhood – and it offers a range of artists willing to perform. The Neighbourhood Variety Show: Sauchiehall Street is created by Eoin McKenzie. The first show from the project was in Springburn last year, and the next show takes place on June 5 in association with The Garage. NTS and McKenzie are working in association with Sauchiehall Street: Culture and Heritage District, a 10-year plan to renew the famous street. The Garage. Thursday, June 5. (Image: Betty Boo) BETTY BOO Without doubt one of the most interesting and talented popsters of the late 80s and early 90s is heading out as her alter ego after Alison Moira Clarkson has spent so many years penning major pop hits for other artists. With the rerelease of her acclaimed and popular albums Boomania and GRRR! It's Betty Boo, the shows are sure to be eneregetic and 'pretty pop-tastic'. There will also be bigger shows later in the year but this is your chance to see her in more intimate settings. Glasgow: Wednesday, June 25, Hug & Pint Edinburgh: Thursday June 26 Voodoo Rooms
The Herald Scotland
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Review: I went to new V&A gardens show and was intrigued by what I saw
April is the cruellest month, at least as far as poet TS Eliot was concerned, but the one which follows in the calendar is just dandy for gardens and gardeners – which makes it the perfect time for an exhibition honouring both. But Garden Futures, opening at V&A Dundee this weekend, is far more than just a horticultural show in gallery form. The idea of the garden as idyll or sanctuary has deep roots in myriad human belief systems so that's explored. So too the proliferation of plant species through the forces of colonialism. We also learn about gardening as a political act in urban settings or as a balm for mental, spiritual and physical health. About how plants and gardens interface with arts, crafts and in particular science and design. And how cultivation and cultivation programmes can intersect with war and geo-politics in ways both good and bad. On that front there is a sizeable, timely and moving section on Israel-Palestine, and the deliberate and methodical displacement of Palestinians. Elsewhere there's a survey of new and radical philosophical approaches to the natural world, such as affording rights to plants and natural elements such as rivers. About low- and high-tech advances in plant propagation, some involving the University of California's wonderfully named Morphing Matter Lab. About how fashion and design continue to find new inspiration from the plant world, for instance through trainers whose soles catch and move seeds. A 17th century Persian ceramic at Garden Futures (Image: Grant Anderson) Helping launch the exhibition on the day I visit there's even a drag queen with a botanical bent – Daisy Desire, horticulturalist by day, drag queen by night. In other words there's far more to unpack here than you could fit in a wheelbarrow. So while the exhibition itself deserves a couple of hours, absorbing and processing it all will be the work of days or even weeks. Gardeners, of course, spend a lifetime thinking about plants and, by extension, the natural world. But they necessarily get their hands dirty too, so appropriately the exhibition opens with a room filled with tools. There are spades, forks, rakes, trowels, scythes, shears, saws and other items whose use I can only guess at. But that lack of knowledge detaches form from function and gives the objects a pleasingly sculptural quality. Other items here include a cat-shaped bird scarer from 1900 and – every home should have one – a glass cucumber straightener from the same period. Form and function meet in different ways elsewhere in this opening room with the inclusion of a range of garden furniture. You'll have seen similar items in your local garden centre though these are the original designs on which they are based. There's a Lloyd Loom wicker chair from 1931. A lounger made in 1938 from slats of lacquered birch by brilliant Finnish designer Aino Aalto, wife of architect Alvar Aalto. Another in chrome and vivid yellow plastic from a decade later, dubbed the Spaghetti Chair lounger and designed by Huldreich Altorfer. Moving into a room showing artworks inspired by gardens and plants there's some neat juxtaposition. Opposite a huge 17th century wall panel composed of yellow and blue ceramic tiles and originally sited in Ishfahan in modern-day Iran you'll find Requiem, a tall sculpture in walnut by Barbara Hepworth. An abstracted arboreal form, it once stood outdoors in the garden of her studio in St Ives. Read more In Room Six, politics intrudes with a display of 70 or so images from Garden State, photographer Corinne Silva's three year project to photograph private and public gardens in 22 Israeli settlements, some in the occupied West Bank. The images literally colonise the walls, presented in small clusters here and there around the room. There's also a selection of books, and among them you'll find Occupation Of The Territories. It's made up of first person testimony from Israel soldiers who served in Gaza and the West Bank between the start of the second Intifada and 2010. One chapter is titled: 'They would close the stores as collective punishment.' You can't miss the relevance. Here we also meet New York-based community activist Liz Christy, who as much as anyone birthed the guerilla gardening movement with a series of interventions in the 1970s which greened urban spaces in the Big Apple. Sadly there's less focus given to another female gardener of note, Victorian horticulturalist and all-round dudette Gertrude Jekyll – she's relegated to a panel in a corridor – but you can't have everything. And at least there are sections on two more recent figures who have folded a love of gardening into their radical creative practices: Antiguan-American author, essayist and activist Jamaica Kincaid, and film-maker and artist Derek Jarman. That accounts for gardens past and present. The gardens of the future which the show's title nods to take up the second half of the exhibition. When philosophy is discussed here it's untethered from religion and ancient belief systems and hitched instead to ideas borrowed largely from environmentalism and activism. The art is less about representation and more about association or out-of-the box thinking. Fashion is co-opted to the task of helping nature. And the digits involved tend to be zeroes and ones rather than fingers operating secateurs or seed dibbers. Céline Baumann's work Parliament of Plants (Image: Céline Baumann) For concrete examples check out The Parliament Of Plants, an unsettling work by artist and landscape architect Céline Baumann underpinned by the idea of giving plants democratic rights. Or Sanne Vaassen's Garden Journal Through Colour, a huge, wall-mounted work in paper which splits the year not into days and weeks but into the different colours present in the artist's garden. Or product designer Kiki Grammatopoulos's rewilding trainers, which use something called bio-mimicry to help wearers spread plants and seeds. Or how about Garden, a video game designed by Dundee-based company Biome Collective? It's set in a universe of singing plants threatened by a darkness spreading rot and decay. Dundee features elsewhere in the exhibition. There's also a section on the Maggie's centre, Frank Gehry's award-winning building at Ninewells Hospital for the support of people with cancer. And we see an artist's impressions of what the Eden Project proposed for the former gas works on East Dock Street might look like. Fingers crossed for that one. Kengo Kuma, the Japanese architect who designed V&A Dundee, was inspired in his design by the jagged cliffs of Scotland's east coast. I fondly imagine him knocking it together on a Scotrail service chuntering through Inverkeithing, Burntisland and Markinch. Who knows. Either way, for the rest of this year's it's not geology or topography which will occupy his building's interior but botany and horticulture – not stones and rocks but vibrant life. It's about as big a subject as you can find, but it's clearly and cleverly presented here. That's not to say you won't leave Garden Futures with your head spinning, though. Garden Futures: Designing With Nature opens at V&A Dundee on May 17 and runs until January 25, 2026
The Courier
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
How Perthshire B&B owner, 71, became Instagram gardening guru with 50,000+ followers
A Perthshire gardening influencer is 'flattered' to be a panel expert at an upcoming national show. Penny Kennedy has had a love for gardening for most of her life. The 71-year-old has accumulated almost 60,000 followers by documenting her horticultural journey on Instagram. The green-fingered influencer runs a B&B at Mouse Cottage in Strathtay, which sparked her to fall in love with gardening. She has been invited to the National Gardening and Outdoor Living Show in Edinburgh as a panel expert in July. Penny told The Courier: 'I started with a clean slate and years of reading about gardening. 'I'm a relative beginner and not as experienced as the other panel experts are. 'I think that's quite relatable to my followers. 'I got stuck into the garden and people like the fact that I'm not an expert and I make mistakes – I've made a lot of those! 'I originally started my little garden because I run a B&B and wanted to promote it. 'I'm the only amateur gardener on the panel, for everyone else it's their job. 'It was so flattering to be asked. 'When I'm in my garden, I'm in a world of my own. 'My cottage has wonderful vibes and the garden has really flourished.' Penny, who used to run a gift-wrapping business, has appeared on BBC show The Beechgrove Garden and is an ambassador for the V&A's latest exhibition – Garden Futures. She added that the garden offers her relaxation and gratification. 'You read about gardening, and then you go and see lots of other gardens,' she continued. 'I get total joy being in the garden – it's very thrilling. 'It's so healing, healthy and rewarding to see your hard work come together. 'Instagram changed my life in the best of ways. 'I have a tremendous community and I hope that I encourage people not to give up. 'I'm so grateful to my garden, it's got me through some tough times. 'I'm looking forward to learning more.' Penny's garden is open to the public by appointment, and will have an open day on June 6 and 7. The National Gardening and Outdoor Living Show runs on Saturday, 26 and Sunday, 27, of July in Edinburgh. Elsewhere in Perthshire, a swimming pool in Aberfeldy has closed again due to 'a release of faecal matter.'
