When: Wed 6 August
Time: 10am – 12pm (noon)
Where: The EAF25 Pavilion. Located at Outer Spaces, 45 Leith St, EH1 3AT and then across the city to visit partner venues and artists across the city including Linder, Mike Nelson, Wael Shawky, Andy Goldsworthy and Jonathan Baldock.
Save the date as the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art returns to Edinburgh this August (7th—24th) with a packed programme of exhibitions, events, and collaborations taking place across the city for the three week festival — the biggest of its kind in the UK.
More information on this year’s programme:
Opening EAF25 is Linder’s A kind of glamour about me at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a large-scale performance coinciding with her retrospective Danger Came Smiling at the same venue. Further new commissions include film work by CJ Mahony and Lewis Hetherington, and long-term research projects with Trans Masc Studies. Closing EAF25 is BORNSICK, a new performance co-commissioned with Serpentine by Lewis Walker, a London-born queer, non-binary artist working with the extremes of movement.
EAF25 will be based in a new central EAF25 Pavilion, supported by Outer Spaces, bringing together new works and residencies. Here, Lewis Hetherington and CJ Mahony’s installation will draw intimate connections between Scottish queer people across the span of the country’s history.
Memory Is A Museum, an EAF-commissioned ongoing research project by Trans Masc Studies traces the histories of masculine-leaning gender diversity in Scotland. EAF’s support of emerging artists continues with Hamish Halley, the first recipient of the new Early Career Artist-in-Residence Award, with an installation at The People’s Story Museum. The Pavilion will also host screenings of My Blood Runs Purple, an experimental short film by Ria Andrews and Jj Fadaka.
Alice Rekab’s Let Me Show You Who I Am unfolds across billboards, examining legacies of migration and strategies of survival within the family unit, with a focus on intergenerational experiences of Irish, Black and Mixed-Race life, co-commissioned with Liverpool Biennial. Brandon Logan presents Little Low Heavens, an intimate collection of paintings, curated for the domestic spaces of Bard in Leith. Más Arte Más Acción’s Around a Tree from EAF24 will return permanently for EAF25 activated by performance from trans-Indigenous artist and biologist UÝRA.
The UK premiere of Voiceless Mass by Diné/Navajo and composer Raven Chacon will take place at St Giles Cathedral as a collaboration between EAF and Fruitmarket.
JUPITER RISING X EAF will return for a one-night-only music and art festival, with line-up including TAAHLIAH, Florence Peake, Roxanne Tataei, and Ponyboy. At Blackie House Library and Museum’s RING OF TRUTH brings together visual artists, musicians, and writers in response to the enigmatic Music of the Spheres manuscript.
Fruitmarket will present a new body of work by Mike Nelson, known for his immersive, absorbing installations that entirely transform spaces. Talbot Rice Gallery will present a solo exhibition by Wael Shawky, following his representation in the Egyptian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 2024. At Stills Centre for Photography is an extensive collection of photos from Siân Davey’s series, The Garden. Jonathan Baldock is set to bring queer folklore to Jupiter Artland new sculptural work that combines earthly delights with surreal mythologies to bring together new stories. Alongside this, a new film by Guy Oliver traces social, cultural and personal histories and interrogating notions of masculinity.
Ingleby Gallery will present Mirror Matter, a first major UK show of work from Aubrey Levinthal. The Scottish Gallery will present Victoria Crowe at 80: Decades, an exhibition showcasing a powerful collection of new paintings, which reflect six decades of Crowe’s working career.
Sett Studios present FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, inviting the local artist community to participate in a salon-style exhibition, and Get in Loser, We’re Going to Sett Studios, showcasing the work of studio-holders as collaborators in a non-hierarchical art space. The Travelling Gallery will be presenting SEEDLINGS: DIASPORIC IMAGINARIES, a group exhibition exploring new ways to connect with our worlds through other-than-human perspectives.
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop presents Beachheads by Louise Gibson, an exhibition of monumental sculpture crafted from the detritus of late capitalism and work by Megan Rudden which explores the idea of the ecotone, a transitional space between two states. Edinburgh Printmakers will display work by Robert Powell, a multidisciplinary printmaker and the work of Aqsa Arif, whose printmaking, textile, sculpture and film explores elements of Pakistani folklore.
Collective presents Fire on the Mountain, Light on the Hill, the first solo presentation in Scotland by visual and performance artist Mercedes Azpilicueta. At Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh Fungi Sessions marks the première of Hannah Read’s albums The Fungi Sessions, and at Dovecot Studios, IKEA: Magical Patterns explores six decades of groundbreaking textile design.
At City Art Centre is John Bellany: A Life in Self-Portraiture which captures the span of an extraordinary life and career through the lens of the artist’s own eyes and Out of Chaos: Post-War Scottish Art 1945—2000, a range of artworks from the permanent collection. The National Galleries of Scotland hosts a major retrospective by sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and an exhibition conceived by acclaimed artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen, Resistance, which explores how acts of resistance have shaped life in the UK, and the powerful role of photography in documenting and driving change.
At Edinburgh College of Art, Tipping Point and Authenticity Unmasked explore how artists can help us more wisely respond to AI. The King’s Gallery will showcase Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography, an exhibition that charts the evolution of royal portrait photography from the 1920s to the present day.
