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Edinburgh Reporter
07-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Edinburgh Reporter
Edinburgh Art Festival 2025 – EAF Pavilion now open
Edinburgh Art Festival begins today, with a packed programme of commissioned works, special events and partner exhibitions. Themes of this year's festival include political shifts, environmental change and global social movements, all filtered through the painting, sculpture, performance, moving image and photography of local, national and international artists. This year the festival is based in the new EAF Pavilion hosted by Outer Spaces at 45 Leith Street. The Pavilion will be open 10am-5pm every day until 24 August, and will include a Welcome Space where you can find information about the festival, artists' research and the Festival shop. Bea Webster in who will be remembered here (c) Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony Several commissioned works will be shown in the Pavilion; Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony's who will be remembered here is a moving film in which four queer writers respond to Historic Scotland sites. Each writer employs a different language. Bea Webster's BSL contribution is especially touching, as they contemplate what might have been the experience of deaf, queer people inhabiting the land around the Machrie Moor Standing Stones long ago, and question what happened to those people's stories. Meanwhile, Trans Masc Studies: Memory is a Museum traces the history of masculine-leaning gender diversity in Scotland, Jj Fadaka and Ria Andrews' My Blood Runs Purple interrogates the subject of historically marginalised bodies and healthcare, and Alice Rekab's Let Me Show You Who I Am addresses themes of diaspora, migration and Irish and Black identity. As Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF25 opens today) Director of the festival Kim McAleese and Curator Eleanor Edmonson stand with a new billboard work created by Alice Rekab that delves into themes of diaspora, migration, and Irish and Black identity. Pic Neil Hanna Outer Spaces is a charity giving artists access to free studio space in empty office buildings across Scotland. 45 Leith Street is just one of their projects, with about 100 artists working in the building. This year the charity and EAF are together presenting HOST, a new artist residency giving early-career artists studio space in Edinburgh for six months. Visitors are invited to explore the HOST artists' practices every Saturday during the festival. View from the terrace on the fifth floor of Outer Spaces on Leith Street Jillian Lee Adamson is a HOST resident; often sewing for ten hours a day, she employs slow stitching to make intricate, beautiful embroidery cells. The delicate appearance of her work 'belies its true strength, symbolising the incredible resilience and inner strength within us all.' (c) Jillian Lee Anderson Jillian's studio has a spectacular view over the city and the Forth, with doors opening onto an airy terrace. The one downside of Outer Spaces studios is that tenants may be asked to leave at any time if the landlord requires the building for its own purposes, but the charity is doing everything it can to offer tenants an alternative space. The average stay in one studio is 9 months to 3 years. Another major EAF commission takes place at the Royal Botanic Garden. Inverleith House will host Linder's Danger Came Smiling, her first retrospective in Scotland, while on the evening of 7 August this pioneering feminist artist will perform A kind of glamour about me, reflecting on the transformative power of creativity to shape identity and social mobility. Seminal feminist artist and icon, Linder Sterling live pastes a new, large scale art work onto billboards to mark the launch of Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF25, 7-24 Aug) and this year's programme partnership with JACK ARTS part of BUILDHOLLYWOOD Scotland. Linder is performing within the EAF25 programme on Thursday 7th August as well as having her first major Edinburgh retrospective, both of which take place at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh as part of EAF25. Pic Neil Hanna Partner galleries, venues and public buildings offer a wide spectrum of exhibitions, installations and performances, from The Scottish Gallery's Decades, a celebration of Victoria Crowe's 80th year, to the Scottish National Gallery's acclaimed Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years, Fruitmarket's Mike Nelson installation, and the UK premiere of Raven Chacon: Voiceless Masses, performed by Scottish Ensemble at St Giles' Cathedral on 9 August. Chacon's composition explores the deliberate silencing of voices within colonial and institutional frameworks, in particular the complicity of the Catholic Church in the suppression of Indigenous voices, and the abduction and abuse of Indigenous children in residential schools in the Americas. The Garden (c) Sian Davey At Stills Centre for Photography, Sian Davey's The Garden documents the artist's and her son's transformation of their Devon garden into a wildflower haven and a community space. From 8 August Blackie House Library and Museum will host Ring of Truth, in which contemporary artists and musicians respond to the enigmatic Music of the Spheres manuscripts, believed to be Coptic compositions from 5th-6th century Egypt. At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop you can see Megan Rudden's Love in the Ecotone, exploring the relationship between sculpture and language, and Louise Gibson's Beachheads, a series of monumental sculptures crafted from discarded industrial and household materials, highlighting the excesses and wastefulness of consumer culture. Still in Leith, Customs Wharf presents Orcadian artist Brandon Logan's paintings; drawing from Orkney's environment and culture, Little Low Heavens channels a new queer take on minimal abstraction. Edinburgh Printmakers are presenting two exhibitions. Aqsa Arif's Raindrops of Raini, a multimedia installation encompassing film, textile screenprints and sculpture to probe themes of fractured identity, displacement and cultural synthesis. Hall of Hours, Robert Powell's multimedia exhibition, is inspired by mediaeval Books of Hours, inviting audiences to consider the passage of time and how humans relate to it. Artist Aqsa Arif is photographed at her exhibition Raindrops of Rani which opens at Edinburgh Printmakers on Friday 1st August and runs until 2nd November and is part of Edinburgh Art Festival. In the exhibition Arif weaves together lived memory, generational trauma and South Asian folklore into an immersive installation featuring reactive printed tapestry on velvet. Through film screenprints, photography and sculpture, the exhibition explores displacement not only as rupture but also as a site of resilience and reconnection. Pic Neil Hanna 07702 246823 The Art Festival's Civic programme involves year-round collaborations with artists, individuals and communities who find alternative ways to organise through art, providing the space for longer-term creative collaborations and aiming to make public spaces and the art world more accessible, engaging for those who have previously been excluded from them. The Community Wellbeing Collective in Wester Hailes is a socially engaged, community-led, art collective of 30+ people living in or connected to the area. On 16 August, CWC will host What We Make With What We Have, a shared meal and a discussion about ways in which communities and individuals can create possibilities in times of crisis. The Travelling Gallery will be out and about with its new group exhibition. SEEDLINGS: DIASPORIC IMAGINARIES, curated by Jelena Sofronijevic, explores ways to connect with our worlds through other-than-human perspectives, and seeks to destabilise systems that favour scientific theory and marginalise ancestral knowledge and indigenous cosmologies. Catch the gallery at Coburg Studios on 9 August, CWC in Wester Hailes on 11 August and The Ripple, Restalrig Road, on 14 August. At The People's Story Museum on the Canongate, EAF's first early career artist-in-residence Hamish Halley's installation narrates two stories; the cleaning of his grandparents' home after their deaths and the transition of Perth Museum's collection to a new space. As well as developing his practice, Hamish is working with local communities through discussions, events and workshops, inviting people to reflect on their own relationships with memory, place and transformation. Hamish will offer a tour of his work on 14 August. Sett Studios on Leith Walk will offer two unusual exhibitions. On 8-10 August FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS invites all supporters of the studio to run the space, bringing in their own work for a packed salon-style show. And from 22 to 24 August Get in Loser, We're Going to Sett Studios will feature an array of artmaking mediums, approaches and concepts from SETT studio residents. Climb up to Calton Hill to visit Collective, which will host Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill, Mercedes Azpilicueta's first solo exhibition in Scotland, a monumental tapestry exploring care and resistance, revealing overlooked female histories. There will be a special live performance on 22 August. Climb down again to visit Edinburgh College of Art at Inspace on Crichton Street for two exhibitions focusing on artists' responses to AI. Tipping Point features seven new works by artists including Rachel Maclean and Julie Freeman, while in Authenticity Unmasked: Unveiling AI-Driven Realities Through Art (note: this one ends on 17 August), three artists present works to prompt reflection on when authenticity matters and what shapes perceptions of human versus AI-mediated content. And if you need to get out of festival city, take a trip to Jupiter Artland in West Lothian to see their three current exhibitions, Jonathan Baldok's WYRD, Guy Oliver's Millennial Prayer and WORK BEGAT WORK, pairing the work of Ian Hamiton Finlay and Andy Goldsworthy, two artists central to Jupiter Artland's history. On the evening of 23 August, EAF's closing event will take place at Firststage Studios in Leith. Bornsick, co-commissioned with Serpentine, is a new performance by queer movement artist Lewis Walker. It will reflect the idea that we inherit illness, born into a system that shapes us before we can define ourselves. Finally, on 24 August at the EAF pavilion, the Festival's closing conversation Where Do We Stand? will include open conversation, film screenings, performance and shared food, all centered on the world we live in, how we shape it and how it shapes us in return. Some of these exhibitions and events are ticketed; many are free. For details, visit the Festival's website or pick up a programme from EAF Pavilion. Jj Fadeka in their studio at The Cube, 45 Leith St, Edinburgh. Photo credit Sally Jubb Like this: Like Related
The Herald Scotland
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
The Lord moves in mysterious ways in this rapid fire play
Theatre 118, Glasgow Everyone has their crosses to bear in Chris Patrick's new play, in which a couple of believers meet in the sort of outdoor venue where decidedly unchristian things might happen in order to curry favour with the big guy upstairs. Our hapless pair aim to do this by way of hammer, nails, some handy DIY and a lot of faith to muffle the screams. When an angel finally does turn up to show them the way, rather than some beatific saviour bathed in a holy glow, this winged wonder is a grumpy naysayer who keeps his halo in his briefcase and is in permanent dispute with his boss. The Lord moves in mysterious ways in Colin McGowan's rapid-fire production that sees Patrick's stream of one liners go beyond what initially looks like an extended routine into a scabrous comic look at the painful extremes of blind faith. Erin Scanlan's naive disciple makes a kooky comic foil to Ross Flynn's self appointed right hand man of God, played by Flynn as a kind of ecclesiastical middle manager. McGowan himself plays Angie the Angel as the sort of fly patter merchant with an attitude problem not seen since Peter Cook played the devil in his and Dudley Moore's groovy swinging sixties take on Faust in Bedazzled. Read More: Patrick's play forms the first edition of Play of the Week, a new venture set up by the recently formed Theatre 118, who have found a home in a former office block on Osborne Street in Glasgow's city centre. This is at the behest of Outer Spaces, the innovative organisation set up to fill empty shops and offices with artistic life as makeshift studios, galleries and venues. This has enabled Theatre 118 to tap into a necessary need for cheap grassroots theatre spaces in which artists can experiment without financial risk. With a background in scratch nights, play readings and other self generated developmental initiatives, Theatre 118's move into full productions looks promising. As the Play of the Week name suggests, this inaugural season of four short plays running each Thursday to Saturday showcases work that once upon a time might have ended up on TV. This follows in a tradition forged by the likes of A Play, a Pie and a Pint's lunchtime theatre institution in that it works from the ground up. The unseen saviour in Patrick's play might not approve, but the resurrection of grassroots Scottish theatre might just start here. Hallelujah to that.
The Herald Scotland
01-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
10 free art exhibitions to visit this weekend across Scotland
Artist Gabi Paterson showcases unique mosaics made with seaglass and ancient sea potter that has washed ashore onto the beaches of the Forth. This exhibition not only tells visitors how the glass is turned into sea glass but also surprises viewers by showing the wonderful mosaics made with their clean and expressive colours and patterns. CARBON 5-15 June. Entry free. Mazumdar Shaw Advanced Research Centre, 11 Chapel Lane, Glasgow, G11 6EW. As part of Glasgow's Science Festival, CARBON is an immersive and multi-disciplinary touring exhibition that explores our relationship with the element carbon. From medicine and machinery to architecture and art - the sooty fingerprints of carbon are visible on almost everything humanity has built and you can learn all about it in this display. Images of Research 2025: From Research to Reality 5-15 June. Entry free. Glasgow Central Station, Gordon Street, G1 3SL. Also part of Glasgow's Science Festival, visitors are invited to celebrate the scientific research that has evolved from ideas into solutions that transform lives, industries and communities. The images on display share a glimpse into the unseen world that lies behind research and innovation, demonstrating the real-world impact being created. Creme Fraiche 31 May-4 June. Entry free. Outer Spaces, 30 St Vincent Place, Glasgow, G1 2HL. A bold programme of newly commissioned works by artists Sooun Kim, Greer Pester and Jamie Fitzpatrick has presented the artists with an opportunity to make new and ambitious work in response to one of Outer Spaces most historic spaces. Responding the the former Clydesdale banking hall at 30 Vincent Place in Glasgow, the art on display explores the building's symbolic relationship to power, stability and prosperity. Resonance Resonance by Annan Sommerville (Image: anna sommerville) 7 June-2 July. Entry free. &Gallery, 3 Dundas Street, Edinburgh, EH3 6QG. Building on the themes of her 2022 exhibition 'Reminiscence', Anna Somerville has deepened her exploration of memory, place and the evocative capacities of paint for this latest display. She's worked predominantly on wooden panels, alongside a small number of linen surfaces, and has taken inspiration from the surfaces that have been weathered over time to reveal 'accidental painter compositions'. Craftex 5-7 June. Entry free. Trades Hall of Glasgow, 85 Glassford Street, Glasgow, G1 1UH. Head along to the Trades Hall of Glasgow and discover an incredible curation of the best work from Glasgow college students all in one place. It features a huge array of skills from talented students including glasswork, jewellery, floristry, design, tailoring and many more. Exposed 25 3-12 June. Entry free. Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 36 Dalmeny Street, Leith, EH6 8RG. Edinburgh College's graduating photography class invites visitors to witness the culmination of years of dedication, passion and artistic exploration as they come to the end of their degree. More than just a display of technical skill, this exhibition is a celebration of creativity, resilience and the power of visual storytelling where each photograph represents a unique journey, a personal vision and a bold step into the professional world. Helter Skelter 30 May-1 June. Entry free. Sett Studios, 127 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8NP. Helter Skelter is the first solo exhibition from Leith-based artist Pauly Pocket. Using reclaimed materials from the iconic Montgomery Street Helter Skelter, he's created a series of sculptural artworks that highlight the structure's transformation since its installation in the 1970s. Architecture Reassembled 31 May-21 June. Entry free. Upright Gallery, 3 Barclay Terrace, Edinburgh, EH10 4HP. This exhibition brings together two artists, Ros Lawless and Charles Young, whose interest lies in the built environment - both real and imagined. Lawless' practice is influenced by her immediate surroundings, in particular architecture, which she uses to organise pictorial space and form. Young on the other hand takes his basis from architectural model making and draws on the forms of the built environment, specifically focusing on the relationship between invented structures and the built history of the existing city. Linder: Danger Came Smiling 31 May-19 October. Entry free. Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, EH3 5LR. Linder's first retrospective in Scotland showcases 50 years of trailblazing artwork. It dives into her fascination with plants and invites us to see beyond traditional ideas about gender and sexuality. Linder remixes images from popular culture and this version of the exhibition spills out into the garden at the Botanics.
Glasgow Times
27-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Glasgow Times
Ambitious plan revealed for former Glasgow banking hall
Outer Spaces will present three new art commissions in the disused Victorian Clydesdale banking hall on St Vincent Place. Artists Sooun Kim, Greer Pester, and Jamie Fitzpatrick will use the space to explore themes of power and prosperity. Jamie Fitzpatrick, POP LIFE, City Art Centre, 2 November 2024 – 9 March 2025 (Image: Greg Macvean) Read more: 'A beautiful interaction': Glasgow Lush manager shares favourite customer moment This marks the first time the well-known structure will be used by artists. The programme was launched with Sooun Kim's "Resilient Chandelier" installation, and will continue with Greer Pester and Jamie Fitzpatrick's works in May and June. Late last year, Outer Spaces secured a temporary lease on the building, which was last open to the public in summer 2024. Sooun Kim, Resilient Chandelier, Outer Spaces Banking Commission, 2025 (Image: Sally Jupp) Shân Edwards, director of Outer Spaces, said: "The banking commissions mark an exciting moment for Outer Spaces, where we can offer both space to create and present to artists from our growing network. "By hosting work in such a large scale and central location, we are able to support and bolster the Scottish arts ecology in a positive way, and help artists make work in spaces suitable for their practice. "It's also fantastic to be working in the city centre as we can invite and host so many members of the public, both those passing by during their everyday lives or who are already engaged in the city's art scene." Greer Pester, Cuddle Puddle at Sensory Glisk, in collaboration with artist Salima Punjani, 2022 (Image: Augustina Isidori) Outer Spaces has supported more than 900 artists in 120 properties across 13 local authorities. Since 2021, they have used unused commercial spaces for public good by removing financial barriers for visual artists. Read more: Glasgow runner who survived cardiac arrest during race to compete in same event The artists were selected from the Outer Spaces network to present work at a pivotal moment in their careers. Greer Pester's "Mother Clyde" will be open from May 10 to 11 through bookable one-hour visits between 11am and 4pm. Jamie Fitzpatrick's "Crème Fraiche Amygdala Hummmm" will be open from May 31, to June 4, 2025, through bookable one-hour visits between 11am and 4pm.
