At Collective, on Calton Hill, and coinciding with their EAF performance, Tarek Lakhrissi presents I wear my wounds on my tongue (II), exploring desire, language and queerness.
Inspired by the work of the late poet, essayist and performance artist Justin Chin, the installation features newly commissioned sculptures and sound work. Also at Collective, Rabindranath X Bhose’s installation work, DANCE IN THE SACRED DOMAIN, is a bog made up of sculpture, poetry, performance and drawing, emerging from time spent meditating on bogland in Scotland.
Further into Leith, at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, a new presentation, tense, by Glasgow based Adam Lewis Jacob will be displayed alongside A New Face in Hell, in which Sebastian Thomas draws inspiration from the mythological fable of the Golem, a being constructed of inanimate material that often ends up becoming uncontrollable.
Travelling Gallery, a contemporary art gallery in a bus, presents a new exhibition by Gabecare, a collaborative art project between Rachel Adams and Tessa Lynch investigating the domestic mess of 21st century living, which will travel across the city for the duration of the festival.
Sierra Metro presents an exhibition of new work by award winning Australia-based artist, illustrator and animator, Haein Kim. For Kim’s first solo show PAIN2POWER the artist presents a series of prints exploring the modern woman’s psyche, materialism and puppies for a show that captures her unique use of colour, humour and honesty.
Initiated by The Common Guild, Edinburgh Art Festival will co-present an illuminated artwork by Rabiya Choudhry at Leith Library.
The design is based on a painting by Choudhry, part of the artist’s ongoing project Lost Lighting – a series of lighting artworks for public places intended to ‘act like a vigil in the dark’ Taking shape as illuminated signs, they repurpose Andrew Carnegie’s flaming torch motif; a feature found on many Carnegie library buildings
In Choudhry’s work, the torch is encircled with the words of African-American civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903–1986) who worked to instigate societal change. Baker’s words ‘give light and people will find the way’, are a manifestation of power for ordinary people. The public artwork runs across the full festival dates, visible 24 hours a day.
Initiated by The Common Guild, EAF will co-present an illuminated artwork by Rabiya Choudhry at Leith Library. The design is based on a painting by Choudhry, part of the artist’s ongoing project Lost Lighting – a series of lighting artworks for public places intended to ‘act like a vigil in the dark’ Taking shape as illuminated signs, they repurpose Andrew Carnegie’s flaming torch motif; a feature found on many Carnegie library buildings In Choudhry’s work, the torch is encircled with the words of African-American civil rights activist Ella Baker (1903–1986) who worked to instigate societal change. Baker’s words ‘give light and people will find the way’, are a manifestation of power for ordinary people.
The public artwork runs across the full festival dates, visible 24 hours a day.
National Museum of Scotland
E.Coli by Luke Jerram
5 million times bigger than the real bacteria, Bristol-based Luke Jerram’s inflatable E. coli sculpture will be suspended from the ceiling of the Grand Gallery.
Neil Hanna Photography
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A 90ft long inflatable sculpture by Bristol-based Luke Jerram has been suspended from the ceiling of the National Museum of Scotland’s Grand Gallery. The E.coli, which is 5 million times bigger than the real bacteria, is on display in Scotland for the first time.
Bacteria were the earliest form of life on our planet, and so this artwork could be considered as a curious portrait of our distant ancestors. If there is life on other planets (or moons) in our solar system, it may well look like this.
This artwork was also made to reflect upon the importance of bacteria in our lives. Although some forms of Escherichia coli (or E. coli) bacteria can cause illness and even death in humans, the use of the bacteria is vital in medical research.
Luke Jerram’s E.coli is part of the 18th edition of Edinburgh Art Festival which runs from 28 July – 28 August 2022 at venues across the city, as are the exhibitions Anatomy: A Matter of Life and Death and Japanese Contemporary Design, both of which are also on at the National Museum of Scotland during the Festival.
Luke Jerram said: “Making visible the microscopic world around us, the artwork was made as an experimental object to contemplate.
“When standing next to it, does the bacteria alter our personal sense of scale? Does it look scary, beautiful, comical or alien? Will audiences be attracted or repelled by it?”
Alison Cromarty, Head of Exhibitions and Design at National Museums Scotland said: “We’re delighted to be bringing this spectacular creation to Scotland for the first time.
“It’s great to have it on display during the festival period and particularly as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival.”
This giant inflatable E.coli sculpture was made for the KREBS Fest, presented at University of Sheffield.
The artwork was first displayed for a month in the Winter Gardens in and then in Firth Hall, Sheffield. The artwork has since been presented in other venues around the UK including the Eden Project.
It has been brought to Edinburgh with the support of the University of Sheffield and the and UKRI strategic priority fund “Building collaboration at the physics of life interface”.
Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) is the platform for the visual arts at the heart of Edinburgh’s August Festivals, which celebrate their 75th anniversary season this year
Many exhibitions and events are free to attend
Taking place across the city, and on the Union Canal from the Lochrin Basin to Wester Hailes
Commissions are inspired by the theme of ‘The Wave of Translation’, marking the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal
New commissions from Jeanne van Heeswijk, Nadia Myre and Pester and Rossi
Associate Artist Emmie McLuskey programmes new work by Hannan Jones, Janice Parker, Maeve Redmond and Amanda Thomson
Four early career visual artists based in Scotland will take part in Platform: 2022 – Saoirse Amira Anis, Emelia Kerr Beale, Lynsey MacKenzie, Jonny Walker
Partner led highlights include: retrospectives of work by Barbara Hepworth and Alan Davie, a rare Scottish showing of work by Ishiuchi Miyako and new work by Cooking Sections and Sakiya, Tracey Emin, Daniel Silver, Ashanti Harris, Kirsten Coelho, Studio Lenca, Ruth Ewan, and Celine Condorelli
Over 100 artists in 35 exhibitions.
Edinburgh Art Festival has announces the programme for its 18th edition – including three major commissions, the Associate Artist programme, Platform: 2022, the festival’s annual showcase of early career visual artists, and thirty-five exhibitions across its partner galleries.
A city-wide celebration of the very best in visual art, the festival brings together the capital’s leading galleries, museums and established spaces. From photography documenting Frida Kahlo’s wardrobe to carnival-inspired performance art, the programme features international artists alongside exciting new voices from Scotland, the rest of the UK and beyond.
The festival’s Commissions programme including their Associate Artist programme supports renowned artists to create ambitious new work. Marking the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal, the programme takes inspiration from ‘The Wave of Translation’ – a scientific phenomenon discovered in Edinburgh.
In 1834, engineer John Scott Russell watched as a horse-drawn canal boat came to a stop at Hermiston on the Union Canal. This abrupt stop created a single wave which continued along the waterway holding its shape and speed. Russell’s recording and research of this phenomenon influenced the development of modern fibre optic technology. He described the wave as his ‘first chance encounter with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation’.
The programmes unfold along the Union Canal, from the Lochrin Basin to Wester Hailes. In collaboration with local residents and WHALE Arts, Edinburgh Art Festival has been supporting new opportunities for art creation and learning since 2019.
For the festival, we present a major commission with a group of residents from Wester Hailes and local surrounding areas. The Community Wellbeing Collective present Watch this Space – a space for all to develop together and to experience what community wellbeing is and could be.
Throughout the festival the space will host activities and gatherings led by C.W.C. members, alongside weekend anchor events by invited guests expanding upon the context of community wellbeing, discussing its wider politics in relation to: democratising social care, healing through creativity, who wellbeing is for in an unequal world and collectively imagining the future of community.
Anchor events by Care and Support Workers ORGANISE!, Grass Roots Remedies, Jess Haygarth, The Spit it Out Project, and more.
The activity will take place in Westside Plaza and online at watchthisspace.online (live from 28 July), including short films capturing the essence of the project presented at the French Institute for Scotland and online. Follow @communitywellbeingcollective on Instagram for more.
Jeanne van Heeswijk – a renowned a visual artist who initiated the project – will also present this year’s Keynote Lecture – in partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland and British Council Scotland – as a highlight of the festival’s opening weekend.
The commission is supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Finding Buoyancy is produced through collaboration with groups and individuals in Wester Hailes, alongside Glasgow based artists Pester and Rossi. Exploring ways that we can connect to the natural environment to help us stay buoyant in uncertain times, the project began with a guided audio journey called Finding Buoyancy –Sound Meditations(2021) inviting group members from WHALE Arts to creatively share responses to the canal.
For the festival, three elements anchor the commission – a set of publicly sited sails at Bridge 8 Hub and Paddle Café illustrating the voices and ideas of those living, working and playing on the canal; a community raft (Float For The Future ) made collaboratively with artist Sarah Kenchington; and a canal-based performance produced with local people in collaboration with Rhubaba Choir.
Co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Printmakers, Montreal-based First Nations artist Nadia Myre will present Tell Me of Your Boats and Your Waters – Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? .
Across print, performance and sound, Myre explores reference points spanning Scotland and Canada, migratory routes starting on the canal, indigenous storytelling, archival research methods, pattern, prose and song lyrics. The work, which will be sited alongside the canal and in Gallery 2 at Edinburgh Printmakers, brings to the fore the decolonial impulse inherent in the artist’s practice.
This year’s Associate Artist, Emmie McLuskey, will lead a programme of artists to respond to the rich site of the Union Canal between Lochrin Basin and Wester Hailes, in a series of commissions that explore environment, translation and gentrification. The Glasgow-based artist, producer and writer has developed a programme of newly commissioned work which spans performance, sound, graphic design and dance. The invited artists aim to raise questions around history, land, water, trade, capitalism and redundant technology.
Each of the commissioned artists centres people and place within a deep desire to work responsively to site. Hannan Jones explores language, rhythm and origin in response to cultural and social migration through sound, installation, film and performance. Janice Parker’s work in choreography and dance is collaborative with people, place and context. Parker is known for her socially engaged practice across various art forms and media.
Amanda Thomson’s interdisciplinary work often concerns notions of home, movement, migration, landscapes, the natural world and how places come to be made. Designer Maeve Redmond’s research-led practice begins in the archive and attempts to unpack how the wider context of site informs how we aesthetically experience a place.
A print and radio project entitled Background Noise will accompany this series, featuring local and international contributions.
The Associate Artist programme will take place along the Union Canal and online, with further details to be announced.
At the French Institute for Scotland – the festival’s headquarters on the Royal Mile – Platform: 2022 will showcase another exciting cohort of emerging visual artists working in Scotland. This year, the annual showcase has been selected by artist Lucy Skaer researcher and curator Seán Elder, alongside Director of Dundee Contemporary Arts, Beth Bate.
In Saoirse Amira Anis’ (graduated Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, 2018) video and textile installation, she taps into her dual heritage by using materials and plants from Moroccan and Scottish cuisines to explore rituals of sharing, and the generosity of love provided by the hands.
Emelia Kerr Beale (Edinburgh College of Art, 2019) will take the speculative history of The Major Oak Tree as their starting point, as a metaphor for the ways in which disabled people are denied rights to speak as experts about their conditions.
Engaging with the materiality and physicality of paintings as objects, Lynsey MacKenzie (Glasgow School of Art, 2019) explores ideas of time, repetition, and memory, through shifting planes of colour, gesture, and scale. Jonny Walker (Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, 2017) considers impermanence and the body through the making of several lambs, placed across a large metal, patchwork blanket in varying states of erosion and collapse.
Platform: 2022 runs at the French Institute for Scotland from 28 July to 28 August.
Closing the festival, sculptor and contemporary artist Hew Locke will deliver the Endnote Lecture.
Locke’s Duveen Hall commission for Tate Britain, The Procession, opened in March this year, and in September 2022 his work Gilt will be unveiled as the Façade Commission for The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
He will be in conversation with Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani, Department of Art History, University of Edinburgh at St Cecilia’s Hall. The Endnote Lecture is presented in partnership with British Council Scotland.
Our Commissions programme and Platform: 2022 are made possible thanks to the generous support of the Scottish Government’s Festivals EXPO Fund; EventScotland; and the PLACE Programme, a partnership between the Scottish Government, the City of Edinburgh Council, and the Edinburgh Festivals, supported and administered by Creative Scotland.
Watch this Space is additionally supported by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
Platform: 2022 is additionally supported by Cruden and the L’Institut français d’Écosse.
Across the partner programme, the festival celebrates artists and collectives who paved the way for new ideas and looks towards future voices in the visual arts.
A number of major new commissions and exhibitions open with the festival. Representing Japan at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Ishiuchi Miyako (Stills, 29 July – 8 October) will present her first solo show of photography in Scotland. Ashanti Harris interlaces ideas of community and cultural identity with her research and long personal experience of West Indian Carnivals (Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 28 July – 28 August).
Visitors can journey across the Lammermuir Hills and see the marked traces of human presence in work from Barbara Rae (Open Eye Gallery, 2 – 27 August), and see the changing Clyde-valley landscapes of Duncan Shanks, which chart the constant cycle of loss and renewal, observed in his riverside garden (The Scottish Gallery, 29 July – 27 August).
Celebrating its 180th birthday in 2022, The Scottish Gallery also presents work rooted in art history by Australian ceramicist Kirsten Coelho (29 July – 27 August). The textural works of Rosa Lee, Shelagh Wakely and Barbara Levittoux-Świderska are brought together during the festival (Arusha, 29 July – 29 August).
Tessa Lynch considers feminist readings of the city in ‘expanded print’, which promotes alternative building techniques inspired by play and the natural world (Edinburgh Printmakers, 28 July – 18 September).
Influenced by the landscapes of the North American prairies, a series of abstract works by John McLean bring rhythmic expressions in paint to the festival (The Fine Art Society, 22 July – 27 August). New work by graduating students also takes place in Summer at ECA, showcasing work from the schools of Art, Design and Architecture and Landscape Architecture (Edinburgh College of Art, 19 – 26 August).
Opening during the festival, we abandon the microscope with Luke Jerram’s 90ft inflatable sculpture fruit titled E.coli, which is 5 million times bigger than the actual bacteria (National Museum of Scotland, 3 – 31 August).
In major surveys and premieres, Tracey Emin will present her second ever solo show in Scotland since 2008, featuring the unveiling of a large bronze sculpture, paintings and drawings (Jupiter Artland, 28 May – 2 October).
The first Scottish solo show from London-based artist Daniel Silver highlights the artist’s shift to working in clay with colourful totems, figures and busts(Fruitmarket, 11 June – 25 September). Studio Lenca presentsa series which confronts the complex cultural history of their native El Salvador (Sierra Metro, 25 June – 28 August).
The first major survey of Céline Condorelli in the UK will take place bringing the outdoors into the gallery space (Talbot Rice Gallery, 25 June – 1 October). Monumental canvases rich in colour and detail are presented in Thoughts, meals, days by Glasgow based artist Lorna Robertson (Ingleby, 25 June – 17 September). Audiences can also become absorbed in the UK premiere of Yan Wang Preston’s work, which charts the changing life of a love-heart-shaped rhododendron bush (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Saturday 14 May – Sunday 28 August).
Movements and moments in both art and time feature in the festival. Audiences can experience the power of Raphael’s work, reimagined in VR and contemporary tapestry (Dovecot Studios, 1 July – 24 September). Visitors to Anatomy: A Matter of Death and Life can see how anatomical art and illustration shaped knowledge of the human body (National Museum of Scotland, 2 July – 30 October).
Twentieth-century marvels from a group of prominent Scottish artists are revealed in National Treasure: The Scottish Modern Arts Association (City Art Centre, 21 May – 16 October), whilst the ambitions and morality of Andrew Carnegie are questioned in animation and archival presentation by Ruth Ewan (Collective, 25 June – 18 September).
The current mood of the country is closely captured by photographers working in Scotland in Counted: Scotland’s Census 2022(Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 12 March – 25 September).
Collectors and collectionsare considered during the festival. Audiences can wonder at historic Masterpieces from Buckingham Palace, which features work from Rembrandt and Artemisia Gentileschi (The Queen’s Gallery, 25 March – 25 September). Modern French art and the early collectors of the Impressionists are explored in A Taste for Impressionism (Royal Scottish Academy, 30 July – 30 November).
Recent acquisitions by the National Galleries of Scotland in New Arrivals: From Salvador Dalí to Jenny Saville (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern 1, until Spring 2023). Refreshed for the festival, the exhibition includes a new acquisition by acclaimed American artist, Amie Siegel.
In retrospectives, shows highlighting the influence of distinguished international artists are celebrated. The life and legacy of painter, jeweller, polymath and jazz musician Alan Davie are explored in a major centenary exhibition (Dovecot Studios, 24 June – 24 September).
ScotlandÕs largest ever Barbara Hepworth exhibition to open at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Barbara Hepworth: Art & Life – 9 April 2022 Ð 2 October 2022
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern Two)
Leila Riszko (Assistant Curator at the National Galleries of Scotland admires the artwork Two Forms in Echelon, 1961, Bronze
Neil Hanna Photography
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07702 246823
Barbara Hepworth’s life work comes into focus in an exhibition brought to Edinburgh with The Hepworth Wakefield, Tate St Ives and National Galleries of Scotland (Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern 2, 9 April – 2 October).
Scottish artist Will Maclean’s work is brought together – his work rooted in the history, archaeology and literature of the Scottish Highlands (City Art Centre, 4 June – 2 October). The works of Scottish artist, writer and poet Maud Sulter act as inspiration for a new publication as part of a wider ecology of projects (Rhubaba, across the festival).
The Modern Institute also presents work by American poet and artist John Giorno (1934 – 2019) alongside contemporary pieces from quilt collective Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way and artists Julia Chiang and Marc Hundley (Dovecot Studios, 8 July – 17 September).
Themes around ecologies and the environment are central to the 2022 partner programme. Turner Prize nominees Cooking Sections, in collaboration with Sakiya,look at the history of land struggles in Scotland and Palestine within a wider global dialogue, highlighting how alliances between humans and plants can also enhance new collective horizons. (Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 2 July – 18 September).
Calum Craik navigates debris and holiday rental accommodation through a sculptural stage (Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 10 June – 28 August). Camara Taylor brings further focus to Scottish waterways through new video and mixed media work, recomposed from the sighs and groans of a sinking kingdom, rooted in ideas of silt, slop and snap (Collective, 17 June – 4 September).
The result of a three-year commission, Annette Krauss explores Calton Hill as a site held in the ‘common good’, through a research resource presented online and at the City Observatory Library (Collective, 1 June – 4 September).
Jane Connarty, Programme Manager at Edinburgh Art Festival, said:“As Edinburgh marks 75 years of festival culture, we are proud to collaborate with our partners across the city to present the 18th edition of Edinburgh Art Festival, and are delighted to welcome to the city our new Director, Kim McAleese.
“A celebration of the unique ecology of visual arts in our city, our 2022 programme brings together independent galleries, world class collections, and production spaces across the city to present the work of more than 100 artists from around the world.
“The 2022 Commissions Programme invites artists and audiences to explore the site and histories of the Union Canal and includes two artists projects in Wester Hailes on the west of the city – both developed from close working and co-production with local residents.”
Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts, Creative Scotland said: “The Edinburgh Art Festival is a highlight of Scotland’s cultural calendar and always a joy to experience. This year is no exception with the festival bringing together an amazing array of art and artists in a really rich and dynamic programme.
“We’re especially excited to see the festival working with communities in Wester Hailes to create new work celebrating the 200th anniversary of the Union Canal. It’s a really tremendous opportunity for people to discover more about the canal’s histories and to re-imagine its future.
“We wish all the artists and partners well as they begin the final countdown to the festival and we look forward to exploring the great range of exhibitions and events taking place across the city this summer”.
Joan Parr, Service Director for Culture and Wellbeing at the City of Edinburgh Council, said:“I’m very excited about this year’s programme and look forward to the full return of artists from all over Scotland and the world showcasing their work in Edinburgh’s art galleries and unusual exhibition spaces.
“The Capital has a long history of promoting the value of culture and as we mark the 75th year of our August Festival’s, the EAF’s programme of 34 exhibitions will celebrate contemporary art across our ancient city.
“I’m delighted the Council is yet again able to support this year’s innovative festival. We’re also proud to host two exhibitions in our City Art Centre. With National Treasure: The Scottish Modern Arts Association, visitors can discover the story of this pioneering 20th century organisation and the outstanding collection it created.
“And Will Maclean: Points of Departure, provides a fresh insight into one of the most outstanding artists of his generation with many pieces going on public display for the first time.”
For more information, please visit www.edinburghartfestival.com or follow the Festival on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @EdArtFest #EdArtFest
Edinburgh Art Festival officially gets underway, running from 29 July – 29 August 2021. The 17th edition brings together over 35 exhibitions and new commissions in visual art spaces across the city, complemented by an online programme of events and digital presentations.
Following last year’s cancellation and an exceptionally challenging period for the creative sector, this year, more than any, we are proud to cast a spotlight on the uniquely ambitious, inventive and thoughtful programming produced each year by Edinburgh’s visual art community.
This year’s programme continues to place collaboration at its heart, with a series of festival-led commissions and premieres devised and presented in close partnership with leading visual arts organisations and a specially invited programme of new commissions curated in partnership with an Associate Artist.
All our festival venues will be following the latest Scottish Government Covid guidelines to ensure visitor safety, and we will be keeping our website regularly updated on what audiences can expect during their visit.
Highlights from the 2021 Festival Programme
Our festival-led programming features major new commissions and presentations by leading international artists, including the UK & European premiere of Lessons of the Hour by Isaac Julien in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland; and two new festival co-commissions, with work by Sean Lynch in collaboration with Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; and a sound installation by Emeka Ogboh with Talbot Rice Gallery.
In a new approach for the festival, we are delighted to collaborate with Glasgow based artist, film-maker and programmer, Tako Taal as Associate Artist. Responding to the festival’s invitation to reflect on themes and ideas emerging from Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour, Taal has invited new commissions for public and digital spaces, by a new generation of artists living and working in Scotland: Chizu Anucha, Sequoia Barnes, Francis Dosoo, Thulani Rachia, Camara Taylor and Matthew Arthur Williams.
We will also see the return of Platform, the festival’s annual showcase supporting artists in the early stages of their careers to make and present new work – with Jessica Higgins, Danny Pagarani, Kirsty Russell and Isabella Widger invited to create new work for Platform: 2021 at Institut français d’Ecosse.
There will also be chance to discover new generation artists at some of our partner galleries across Edinburgh, including the work of Satellite participant Alison Scott at Collective, Sekai Machache at Stills, Andrew Gannon at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and gobscure at Edinburgh Printmakers.
Solo presentations across the capital include Christine Borland at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Alberta Whittle and Rachel Maclean at Jupiter Artland, Frank Walter at Ingleby Gallery, Ian Hamilton Finlay at The City Art Centre, Sonia Mehra Chawla at Edinburgh Printmakers, Jock McFadyen at Dovecot Studios and a major exhibition by the artist Karla Black for the newly developed and reopened Fruitmarket and Alison Watt at The Scottish Portrait Gallery.
This year’s edition will also feature important retrospectives and major survey shows including The Galloway Hoard: Viking-age Treasure at National Museum of Scotland, Victoria & Albert: Our Lives in Watercolourat The Queen’s Gallery and Archie Brennan at Dovecot Studios.
Edinburgh’s commercial galleries present a richly diverse offering including; a new group show from Arusha Gallery and Ella Walker, Shaun Fraser and Will Maclean at The Fine Art Society, Leon Morrocco at Open Eye Gallery and the centenary of the birth of Joan Eardley is marked with an extensive new show at The Scottish Gallery.
The festival is also planning a series of digital events, to include artist and curator conversations, bespoke tours through the programme, events and activities for families and community groups, as well as newly commissioned work for digital space.
Sorcha Carey, Director, Edinburgh Art Festival said: “Festivals have always offered a space for gathering, and this year more than any, we are proud to come together with partners across the city to showcase the work of artists from Scotland, the UK and around the world.
“Some exhibitions are newly made in response to the seismic shifts of the past year; others are the result of many years of planning and careful research; but all are the unique, authentic, and thoughtful products of our city’s extraordinarily rich visual art scene.
“The past year has revealed how precarious things can be for artists and creative freelancers, as well as for the institutions and organisations that support the production and presentation of their work.
“As our summer festival season gets underway, and we look forward to welcoming audiences safely back to the festival and our city, now more than ever we need the space for community and reflection that art and artists can provide.”
Culture Minister Jenny Gilruth said: “Edinburgh Art Festival shines a spotlight on the ambitious, inventive and thoughtful work being produced by Scotland’s visual arts community.
“I am pleased to see that the 17th edition of the Edinburgh Art Festival has brought together over 35 live exhibitions and new commissions, including a series of creative new works by six Scottish artists supported by £135,000 from the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund.
“A further £215,000 has been awarded through our PLACE programme to provide greater opportunities for artists at the beginning of their careers. I look forward to seeing the results of the Festival’s work during this challenging time.”
For more information, please visit www.edinburghartfestival.com or follow the festival on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @EdArtFest #EdArtFest #ArtUnlocks
More than 35 exhibitions across the city and a special programme of online events and presentations
Highlights include:
Major new commissions and presentations by leading international artists, including the UK & European premiere of Lessons of the Hour by Isaac Julien in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland; and two new festival co-commissions, with work by Sean Lynch in collaboration with Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop; and a sound installation by Emeka Ogboh with Talbot Rice Gallery
New Associate Artist strand curated by Tako Taal and featuring newly commissioned work from 6 artists
The chance to discover new generation artists, including the return of Platform; Satellite participant Alison Scott at Collective; and Ashanti Harris at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
Solo presentations including Christine Borland at Inverleith House, RBGE; Alberta Whittle at Jupiter Artland; Frank Walter at Ingleby Gallery; Ian Hamilton Finlay at The City Art Centre; Sekai Machache at Stills; and Sonia Mehra Chawla at Edinburgh Printmakers
The first chance for festival audiences to experience the newly redeveloped Fruitmarket opening with Karla Black
Retrospectives and major survey shows;The Galloway Hoard: Viking-age Treasureat National Museum of Scotland; Victoria & Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour at The Queen’s Gallery; Joan Eardley at The Scottish Gallery; Archie Brennan at Dovecot Studios
Following the cancellation of the 2020 festival and an exceptionally challenging period for the creative sector, we are delighted to confirm that Edinburgh Art Festival will return from 29 July to 29 August this year.
The 17th edition of the festival will bring together over 35 exhibitions and new commissions in visual art spaces across the city, complemented by an online programme of events and digital presentations.
Founded in 2004, Edinburgh Art Festival is the platform for the visual arts at the heart of Edinburgh’s August festivals, bringing together the capital’s leading galleries, museums, production facilities and artist-run spaces in a city-wide celebration of the very best in visual art. Each year the festival comprises newly commissioned artworks by leading and emerging artists, alongside a rich programme of exhibitions curated and presented by partners across the city.
This year’s programme continues to place collaboration at its heart, with a series of festival-led commissions and premieres devised and presented in close partnership with leading visual arts organisations and a specially invited programme of new commissions curated in partnership with an Associate Artist.
As galleries begin to reopen after many months of closure, this year, more than any, we are proud to cast a spotlight on the uniquely ambitious, inventive and thoughtful programming produced each year by Edinburgh’s visual art community. In a rich and characteristically diverse programme of exhibitions, audiences can safely enjoy new work made in direct response to the experiences of last year, alongside projects, exhibitions, and perspectives that have been many years in the making.
All our festival venues will be following the latest government Covid guidelines to ensure visitor safety, and we will be keeping our website regularly updated on what audiences can expect during their visit.
Edinburgh Art Festival 2021 Programme Highlights
Festival-led programming
The festival is committed to championing the production and presentation of new work, inviting artists at all stages of their careers into conversation with the city, often offering rare public access to important historic buildings, and always engaging audiences in citywide debates around wider social issues.
This year we are proud to collaborate with a range of partners to bring together a programme of new work by artists working in Scotland, UK and internationally.
The UK and European premiere of Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour is presented in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland. This major new ten-screen film installation by celebrated British artist Isaac Julien, CBE, RA, offers a poetic meditation on the life and times of Frederick Douglass, the visionary African American writer, abolitionist and a freed slave, who spent two years in Edinburgh in the 1840s campaigning across Scotland, England and Ireland for freedom and social justice.
Filmed at sites in Edinburgh and other locations in Scotland, London and at Douglass’ home in Washington DC, Julien’s film portrait is informed by some of the abolitionist’s most important speeches, weaving historical scenes with footage from recent times to foreground the continued relevance and urgency of Douglass’ words in the present day. Lessons of the Hour will be presented at Modern One until 10 October, to coincide with Black History Month.
Presented by Edinburgh Art Festival in partnership with National Galleries of Scotland. Supported by the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund and EventScotland, part of VisitScotland’s Events Directorate, with additional support from British Council Scotland and Pro Av. Lessons of the Hour was commissioned by the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester with the partnership of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond and with the support of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Irish artist Sean Lynch, in a co-commission with Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, presents Tak Tent O’ Time Ere Time Be Tint. Lynch’s new project casts a spotlight on Edinburgh’s public monuments and sculptures, today subject to ongoing civic processes to have society acknowledge and understand the legacies of history. His installation at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop explores the use of folk traditions, the making of sculpture and the parables held inside monuments themselves, which can empower social change and produce a public realm implicitly open to everyone. Lynch’s exhibition is one of several artists’ projects presented at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop this summer.
Co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop. Supported by the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland. With additional support from Culture Ireland.
Nigerian sound artist Emeka Ogboh, in a co-commission with Talbot Rice Gallery, presents a new sound installation sited in Edinburgh’s Burns Monument, a circular neo-classical pavilion, built in 1831 as a national monument to Scotland’s bard, Robert Burns. The 7-channel work, a response to the ongoing theatre surrounding the U.K.’s departure from the European Union, features the recorded voices of citizens from each nation state of the EU, who currently reside in Scotland, singing Auld Lang Syne in their mother tongue. At a time when the post-Brexit reality in the U.K. is still far from resolved, the contradictions, hopes and harmonies that underscore the political concerns of the process are played out by Ogboh in the work.
Co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Talbot Rice Gallery, as part of Edinburgh College of Art. Supported by the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland. With additional support from Goethe-Institut Glasgow, Reid School of Music at Edinburgh College of Art and Museums and Galleries Edinburgh.
In a new approach for the festival, we have invited Glasgow based artist, film-maker and programmer, Tako Taal, to collaborate with us as Associate Artist. Responding to the festival’s invitation to reflect on themes and ideas emerging from Isaac Julien’s Lessons of the Hour, including themes of representation, resistance, civil rights, activism, and the power of the image.
Titled ‘What happens to desire…’, Taal encapsulates the wealth of ideas and lines of enquiry evolved by six invited artists in her compelling and concise précis: “With the transcript of a trial, a trip made to Naples, a portrait, a song and a melody composed whilst walking, six invited artists feel their way towards said and unsaid desires.”
Taal invites new commissions for public and digital spaces, by a new generation of artists living and working in Scotland: Chizu Anucha, Sequoia Barnes, Francis Dosoo, Thulani Rachia, Camara Taylor and Matthew Arthur Williams.
Supported by the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund and EventScotland. Our festival-led programme is kindly supported by the Patrons of our Commissioning Circle.
Platform, the festival’s annual showcase of artists in the early stages of their careers, will support 4 artists based in Scotland to make and present new work. Selected from an open call by writer and producer Mason Leaver-Yap, the artist Ciara Phillips, and Sorcha Carey, Director of Edinburgh Art Festival, Jessica Higgins, Danny Pagarani, Kirsty Russell and Isabella Widger have been supported to create new work which will be presented in a group show, Platform:2021 during the festival.
Supported by the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland. With additional support from the Cruden Foundation and Idlewild Trust.
The festival is also planning a series of digital and hybrid events, to include artist and curator conversations, bespoke tours through the programme, events and activities for families and community groups, as well as newly commissioned work for digital space.
Exhibition highlights from partners across Edinburgh
Presented at over 20 venues across the city, and including the first chance for festival audiences to visit the newly reopened and extended Fruitmarket, this year’s programme of exhibitions curated by partners throughout Edinburgh offers ambitious new commissions, major retrospectives and surveys, and as always, the chance to discover the next generation of artists, across the length and breadth of the city. Highlights include….
Presented by Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh at Inverleith House, In Relation to Linum is a new solo exhibition from 1997 Turner Prize nominee Christine Borland. This multidisciplinary project, featuring watercolours, prints and sculptural pieces, explores the lifecycle of flax (Linum usitatissimum), evolving RBGE’s 350-year relationship with the plant.
From flax sown at RBGE to motion-captured planting processes, In Relation to Linum is an intimate reconnection with the ecological heritage and future of growing and making practices, and their associations with care.
Also on show in the Garden will be The Hidden Beauty of Seeds & Fruits: The Botanical Photography of Levon Biss, Ellie Harrison’s Early Warning Signs, and a new research study by Cooking Sections.
Jupiter Artland presents RESET, a new solo show by Turner-prize co-winning artist Alberta Whittle. Whittle produced RESET at the height of lockdown, filming across Scotland, South African and Barbados and responding to the immediate context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the global pandemic and the climate emergency. The film connects emergent fears of contagion, moral panic and xenophobia with a call to action – a demand – to face and heal injustices and cultivate hope in hostile environments.
RESET culminates with the image of the ‘garden’ as a utopian space of re-learning, re-connecting and resetting, animated by Mele Broomes’ powerful solo performance. Shot at Jupiter Artland, Whittle coordinated the filming remotely from Barbados, where she herself was in lockdown, weaving RESET together through contributions by writers, performers, fellow artists and musicians: Sekai Machache, Mele Broomes, Matthew Arthur Williams, Christian Noelle Charles, Ama Josephine Budge, Yves B Golden, Anushka Naanyakkara, Sabrina Henry, Richy Carey and Basharat Khan, who Whittle refers to as her accomplices.
A group show entitled RISE, featuring the aforementioned artists, will coincide with Whittle’s solo exhibition of RESET at Jupiter Artland this summer.
Ingleby Gallery presents Music of The Spheres, the first ever exhibition devoted to Frank Walter’s ‘spools’ – the small circular paintings which, in their consistency of scale and form, provide a kind of lens through which to witness the workings of Walter’s inner eye.
Frank Walter’s (1926 – 2009) work was unknown during his lifetime, but in the decade since his death he has emerged as one of the most distinctive and intriguing Caribbean voices of the last 50 years.
The newly developed Fruitmarket presents Karla Black: Sculptures (2001–2021).Scottish artist Karla Black was invited to be the first to show in both the exhibition galleries and the brand-new warehouse space of the redeveloped Fruitmarket.
The new exhibition is an attempt to redefine the traditional retrospective or survey show and it combines existing and new work, and is the result of an invitation to Black to play to her strengths and “force a raw creative moment” into the Fruitmarket’s pristine new gallery spaces.
The City Art Centre presents Marine, a major exhibition celebrating the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006), the internationally renowned Scottish artist and Britain’s most significant concrete poet of the 20th century.
The exhibition focuses on the maritime theme in Finlay’s work. It was a central element of his art, and one to which he returned throughout his life. Drawn from the artist’s estate and the City Art Centre’s collection, and including loans from the National Galleries of Scotland, the exhibition showcases artworks from across several decades, ranging from stone, wood and neon sculptures to tapestry.
Stills, Edinburgh’s centre for photography, presents a solo presentation of work by Glasgow-based artist Sekai Machache. In this exhibition, the next in the Projects 20 series to take place at Stills, Machache presents a body of work titled The Divine Sky using allegory and performance to tell a complicated history through poiesis, immersive storytelling and photography.
Alongside Machache’s exhibition the front space of the gallery continues to host The Nature Library, a reference library and reading space created by artist and curator Christina Riley.
Jock McFadyen: Lost Boat Party is presented by Dovecot Studios in partnership with The Scottish Gallery. The galleries will jointly celebrate the artist’s 70th birthday year with Lost Boat Party an exhibition of paintings which describe the romance and grandeur of the Scottish landscape, alongside the urban dystopia for which the artist is known.
Open Eye Gallery presents a new show by Scottish artist Leon Morrocco. The exhibition, ‘Après-midi’, features new paintings and works on paper, as the artist takes us on a journey from the cold harbours of the East Coast of Scotland to the warm beaches, terraces and streets of the Mediterranean.
The exhibition is a celebration of Morrocco’s fresh vigour for travel, both at home and away, transporting the viewer from the harbours around his childhood home of Dundee, to the sun-drenched South of France.
TheScottish Gallery presents an extensive new exhibition to commemorate the centenary of the birth of Joan Eardley (1921-1963), one of Scotland’s greatest artists.
Joan Eardley | Centenary will include her most celebrated subjects: the lost Glasgow, the streets and children of Townhead and her wild, spiritual home at Catterline on the Kincardineshire coast are both represented by major works and charming drawings and pastels.
Eardley’s poignant story and early death, her driven, passionate engagement with art, her self-belief and intense shyness are laid bare in every drawing and painting. The exhibition is accompanied by a new publication containing colour illustrations of all works along with original commissioned writing and a foreword from Anne Morrison, the artist’s niece.
A new tapestry created by Dovecot Studios and inspired by Eardley’s July Fields, 1959 will be unveiled as part of the exhibition.
Victoria & Albert: Our Lives in Watercolour is presented by The Queen’s Gallery, The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse and surveys an evocative record of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s life together through their personal collection of watercolours.
These colourful, dynamic works capture the spirit of Victorian Britain and the birth of a modern nation. The collection also demonstrates the couple’s deep love for Scotland, and includes happy memories of their Scottish tours, from incognito expeditions through the Highlands and balls at Balmoral to atmospheric views over Edinburgh and Holyrood Abbey.
Eileanach: Na dealbhan aig Dòmhnall Mac a’ Ghobhainn / Islander: The Paintings of Donald Smith presented by the City Art Centre marks the first major retrospective of the work of Scottish artist Donald Smith (1974-2014), in a landmark display created in partnership with An Lanntair, Stornoway.
Smith’s painting acknowledged movements in Europe and America but remained resolutely local in its subject matter. From his studio on the west side of Lewis where he worked from 1974 to his death in 2014, his intense, lyrical images of island fishermen and women celebrate their indomitable human spirit.
Also presented by the City Art Centre, Charles H. Mackie: Colour and Light a major retrospective, the most comprehensive in over a century, showcases Scottish painter and printmaker Charles Hodge Mackie (1862-1920).
Regarded as one of the most versatile artists of his generation, Mackie drew inspiration from French Symbolism, the Celtic Revival movement and the landscapes of his European travels, he produced oil paintings, watercolours, murals, woodblock prints, book illustrations and sculpture.
The exhibition brings together over fifty artworks from public and private collections, including loans from the National Galleries of Scotland, the Royal Scottish Academy, and Perth Museum & Art Gallery.
Ray Harryhausen, Titan of Cinema is presented at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Modern Two and online as a virtual exhibition experience.
Film special effects superstar Ray Harryhausen elevated stop motion animation to an art. His innovative and inspiring filming, from the 1950s onwards, changed the face of modern movie making forever.
His films include Clash of the Titans (1981), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) and The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958). For the first time, highlights from Harryhausen’s collection are showcased in the largest and widest-ranging exhibition of his work ever seen, with newly restored and previously unseen material from his incredible archive.
National Museum of Scotland presents The Galloway Hoard: Viking-age Treasure. Bringing together the richest collection of rare and unique Viking-age objects ever found in Britain or Ireland, the internationally significant Galloway Hoard is transforming our understanding of Scotland’s connections with the wider world during this period.
Buried around AD 900, the Hoard contains over 100 objects, not only silver and gold but also rarely surviving textiles.
Jupiter Artland presents upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop a new permanent outdoor installation by Scottish artist Rachel Maclean.
Three years in the making, this ground-breaking new commission is the first time Maclean has working entirely with cartoon animation and at an architectural scale, and her ultimate ambition is to transport Mimi’s world to high streets around the UK. Combining animation and architecture, upside mimi ᴉɯᴉɯ uʍop takes the form of an abandoned high-street shop, sited within the woodland at Jupiter Artland.
Maclean has taken her inspiration from commercial spaces as sites of desire, combining this with the role forests play within fairy tales, being at once places of magic, of danger, of transformation and where the normal rules of daily life no longer apply.
Presented in Collective’s Hillside exhibition space, Satellites Programme participant Alison Scott will produce new, integrated sound and print works that explore the space and possibilities of ‘meteor-ontology’: an exploration of how climate and weather are entangled in the nature of our being.
Building on Scott’s recent research this exhibition works with folk and hacking cultures engaged in alternative practices of ‘weather sensing’ to explore weather as both embodied locally by the individual, and as part of industrial networks of weather-sensing infrastructure.
The Fine Art Society presents Owners of the Soil, a new exhibition of work by Scottish artists Shaun Fraser & Will Maclean.
The exhibition examines ties between land, identity and ownership through the early Scottish diaspora’s dual identity of colonised and coloniser. Maclean’s boxed constructions, collages and drawings recount the experiences of six of his ancestors, all from Polbain, Ross-shire.
Each left Scotland as a result of the Highland Clearances. Fraser’s works in glass, bronze and print focus on Nova Scotia, an area dominated by Scottish settlements with place names that displaced First Nation Mi’kmaq titles. Incorporating peat and organic matter, Fraser’s work holds an innate link to the locality upon which it draws.
Talbot Rice Gallery presents The Normal, a vivid reflection of life during the 2020 pandemic.
Through artworks that express hope, grief, survival, violence and solidarity – it situates our lived experience within a global artistic dialogue, underscored by the need for a profound reorientation towards planetary health following the “wake-up call” of Covid-19.
The commissioning and production of artworks within the exhibition has championed sustainability, and there are many installations reflecting an acute awareness of the natural world, amplified by the silencing of cities and industry. The group exhibition includes: Larry Achiampong, Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan, Gabrielle Goliath, Kahlil Joseph, Tonya McMullen, Sarah Rose.
Archie Brennan: Tapestry Goes Pop! tells the story of Edinburgh native Archie Brennan (1931-2019) in the first major retrospective of his work, presented by Dovecot Studios.
Pop artist, weaver, and former Mr Scotland, Archie Brennan changed the course of modern weaving and is considered one of the greatest unrecognised pop artists of the twentieth century. The exhibition brings together over 80 tapestries as well as archive material, presenting a unique chance to delve into the world of a master of modern tapestry. This exhibition is co-curated by National Museums Scotland.
Scottish artist Christian Newby’s new commission responds to the historic City Dome at Collective, originally built to house an astronomical telescope, with a large-scale textile and an accompanying printed newspaper.
Flower-Necklace-Cargo-Net combines Newby’s mark-making with industrial carpet tufting to explore how questions of labour, authorship and materiality define the fine and applied arts. Images found within the work subvert typical rug and textile design motifs such as flowers, birds and shells with free-hand organic forms, pictorially contained by a large net that envelopes the whole tapestry, alluding to our shared experience of enclosure during the Covid-19 lockdowns.
Ashanti Harris has created Dancing a Peripheral Quadrille, a new body of work, commissioned by Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop.
For the exhibition, a series of sculptural and performance works dance with ideas of the metamorphic nature of cultural identities and how they are formed, through the lens of the Caribbean carnival and associated collective making. Harris is a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher and researcher. Working with dance, performance, facilitation, film, installation and writing, Harris’ work disrupts historical narratives and re-imagines them from a Caribbean diasporic perspective.
Arusha Gallery and Ella Walker present Bathing Nervous Limbs.
The new group show is guided by the Balneum Book, a 15th Century illustrated Western manuscript outlining the folkloric healing legends of various freshwater bodies. Bathing Nervous Limbs brings together new and existing work by 20 international artists, who each consider the act of learning and making and question if the desired outcome and end result is, in fact, cyclical, liturgical and lies in its process. Featured artists includes: Ithell Colquhoun, Paloma Proudfoot, Anousha Payne, Nina Royle, Francesca Blomfield, Leo Robinson and Zoe Williams.
Entanglements of Time and Tide, by celebrated Indian artist and researcher Sonia Mehra Chawla is presented by Edinburgh Printmakers. Living artworks, historical scientific material, video, and new commissions in print follow intensive residencies in Scotland and mark the artist’s debut solo exhibition in the UK. Mehra Chawla’s artistic practice explores notions of selfhood, nature, ecology, sustainability and conservation.
For the new exhibition the artist spent two years on three intensive residencies at the Marine Scotland Laboratory in Aberdeen, the ASCUS Laboratory at Summerhall and Edinburgh Printmakers. The result is an all encompassing exhibition featuring new commissions in print, video, living artworks of micro-biological organisms and representations of historical scientific material which explore the entanglements of ecology industry, culture, politics and aesthetics.
Presented as part of Jupiter Artland’s 2021 Artist Residencies Programme, Reset and Rise: a summer season of residencies, broadcasts and artist-led projects reflecting the crises of 2021 – the climate emergency, the pandemic, and the Black Lives Matter Movement for social justice. Rotten TV by artist Daniel Lie is an online broadcasting studio and artist-residency series, bringing together thinkers from Indonesia, Brazil and the UK to rethink ideas of life, death and eco-system renewal. Supported by the British Council in advance of COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow, 2021.
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop presents plotting (against) the garden in collaboration with artists Alaya Ang & Hussein Mitha. plotting (against) the garden is a sound work that evokes the chromatic beauty and vegetal excess of the garden through the urban structure of The Beacon Tower, the landmark that completes the venue’s open courtyard, dreaming of the garden and the urban subsisting in the same space, pointing to an often-desperate need for places to grow, reflect, work and sit within the city.
The work explores the politics of gardens as ambivalent spaces of work and leisure; private property and public shared space; cultivation and growth.
Updated information on the full programme available on the festival website in late June.
Sorcha Carey, Director, Edinburgh Art Festival said: “Festivals have always offered a space for gathering, and this year more than any, we are proud to come together with partners across the city to showcase the work of artists from Scotland, the UK and around the world.
“Some exhibitions are newly made in response to the seismic shifts of the past year; others are the result of many years of planning and careful research; but all are the unique, authentic, and thoughtful products of our city’s extraordinarily rich visual art scene.
“The past year has revealed how precarious things can be for artists and creative freelancers, as well as for the institutions and organisations that support the production and presentation of their work.
“As galleries begin to re-open across the city, and we look forward to welcoming audiences safely back to the festival and our city, now more than ever we need the space for community and reflection that art and artists can provide.”
Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts at Creative Scotland said: “As art unlocks across Scotland we welcome the rich and diverse programme that the Edinburgh Art Festival and its partners will be staging this year.
“We’re especially excited by the opportunity that the Festival gives us to step away from our screens and to experience art in real life. It’s a great time to experience new work and to be introduced to artists whose work is less familiar, as well as to enjoy the work of artists we already know.
“We’d like to congratulate and thank the artists and the organisers for maintaining their vision and ambition during a challenging time for the arts and we look forward to celebrating their work in the summer of 2021.”
Councillor Donald Wilson, Culture and Communities Convener, said:“It’s fantastic to see the return of the Edinburgh Art Festival.
“The festival has always supported new work and this year promises to be no different. With exciting new commissions and over 35 exhibitions across the city alongside the online programme of digital presentations and events, there will be so much for audiences to enjoy.
“I’m particularly looking forward to Platform, the annual showcase which supports artists in the early stages of their careers. The Festival remains a key platform for emerging artists, helping to support and promote the vital and lasting role the arts play in our all our lives.
“I’m delighted the Council is yet again able to support this year’s innovative and creative event.”
Paul Bush OBE, VisitScotland’s Director of Events, said:“Edinburgh and Scotland is a leading destination for the very best in the visual arts and EventScotland is delighted to be supporting the Edinburgh Art Festival to maintain this reputation.
“The team has worked hard to produce an exciting and varied programme of in-person exhibitions as well as an online programme of events and digital presentations, which will allow audiences to engage with the Festival in the way they feel most comfortable.
“Events are an important part of our communities as they not only bring us great entertainment, they also sustain livelihoods and bring social and economic change. Following a difficult period for the industry it is wonderful to see the Edinburgh Art Festival return and once again provide a platform for emerging and established artists from across Scotland, the UK and the world to share their work.”
Edinburgh Art Festival runs from 29 July – 29 August 2021.
For more information, please visit www.edinburghartfestival.com or follow the festival on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram @EdArtFest #EdArtFest #ArtUnlocks
It was with great sadness that, in April this year, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the 2020 edition of Edinburgh Art Festival was cancelled.
Now, as Edinburgh begins to emerge from lockdown and we reflect on a period of unprecedented global change and upheaval, Edinburgh Art Festival have invited ten artists from previous festival editions, to mark the dates of what would have been their 2020 festival (30 July – 30 August).
Ruth Ewan; Ellie Harrison; Tam Joseph; Calvin Z Laing; Peter Liversidge; Tamara MacArthur; Rosalind Nashashibi; Rae-Yen Song; Shannon Te Ao; and Hanna Tuulikki will each present work as part of this August offering.
Combining archival presentations chosen for their resonance in relation to the current context (local and global), alongside specially conceived responses, the selection includes online screenings and live performances, available via the festival website from the 30th July as well as a small number of projects appearing in public sites around the city.
The selection is informed by and seeks to reflect on the profound personal and societal impacts of this global pandemic – as we look to find new ways of communicating and being together; to confront the urgent inequalities in our society; and to imagine new futures.
Above all, the festival is guided by a desire to connect with artists and audiences, as we look forward with optimism to returning next year: 29 Jul to 29 Aug 2021.
Online and Around the City
Ruth Ewan revisits her Sympathetic Magick (2018) project, where she invited magicians to consider how they might use their magic to change the world; with an online presentation of her short film, Worker’s Song Storydeck (devised with magician Billy Reid), and a special poster series devised with magician Ian Saville, calling upon all of us to join together in a ‘mass action for the radical transformation of society’.
Artist and activist Ellie Harrison (2012 and 2014 festival programmes) presents an up-to-date version of her graph showing the Tonnes of carbon produced by the personal transportation of a ‘professional artist’ at a city centre poster site.
Created through the meticulous analysis of the 3,988 journeys she has made over the last 17 years, Harrison makes connections between literal and social mobility and highlights the consequences of our travel choices for our climate, which have come into focus in all our lives during lockdown.
Tam Joseph re-presents The hand made map of the world, first presented as a billboard in the 2014 festival.
Transforming and subverting the ‘World Political Map’, Joseph playfully renames familiar landmasses (America becomes China; United Kingdom becomes Cuba) to lay bare the destructive quest for territorial control which has dominated geopolitics over the centuries, and critique the supposed ideological neutrality of maps.
Sited on The Meadows, Joseph is drawn to the history of this green space, which in 1886 hosted the International Exhibition of Art, Industry and Science.
Calvin Laing (whose degree show film Calvin and Metro, featured in our 2012 programme) revisits the neighbourhood of his childhood, to present a new online performance Calvin and Jogging.
Reflecting on how lockdown for many has resulted in a return to the family home and memories, as well as taking up reactive activities, the artist explores themes of nostalgia, and the disintegration of public and private space.
Peter Liversidgerevisits his 2013 festival commission Flags for Edinburgh which invited buildings across the city to fly a white flag that reads HELLO.
As we emerge from an extended period of isolation, and look to find new ways to be together, Liversidge invites organisations and communities across Edinburgh, alongside partner August Edinburgh festivals to send a collective greeting to each other and the wider world; with HELLOs flying from rooftops across the city, including libraries, hotels, galleries, museums, consulates, schools and community parks.
Following on from her 2019 Art Late performance at Dovecot Studios, Tamara MacArthur creates a new online performance investigating our desire for closeness and contemporary methods devised to simulate human contact in a time of social distancing.
For It’s All Over But the Dreaming, the artist will perform live from an elaborate theatrical set built in her studio, holding close a hand-made life-size doll, to explore themes of loneliness, yearning and futility in relation to the enforced isolation we have experienced since Coronavirus.
Rosalind Nashashibi shares an online presentation of her two-part film commissioned for the 2019 edition of the festival, following a group of individuals coming together in preparation for an experimental journey into space, to explore the importance of storytelling and love in the building and sustaining of community.
Rae-Yen Song expands on a project for the 2018 festival, to add to an ongoing familial collaboration, Song Dynasty. Presented both online and as a poster at a site in the city chosen for its special connection to the artist’s family, the work draws on autobiography and fantasy to speak broadly and politically about foreignness and the position of the Other, archiving a modern myth that settles and lives through virtual, imagined and public spaces.
Shannon Te Ao’s two screen video installation With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods, commissioned for the 2017 festival edition, is a poetic meditation on themes of love, grief, sickness and healing.
Taking its title from a tribal lament composed by Te Rohu (daughter of Tūwharetoa chief, Mananui Te Heu Heu), Te Ao counterposes cinematic references, using footage shot at a number of locations within Te Ao’s tribal lands including some of the farm lands which directly encircle the urupa (familial burial grounds) of Te Ao’s family.
Hanna Tuulikki’s Sing Sign: a close duet, commissioned for the 2015 edition, reflects on that innate human desire to communicate and connect, a vocal and gestural suite devised for the historic ‘closes’ of Edinburgh – the small alleyways that lead off either side of the Royal Mile. Tuulikki also presents a special live performance of an extract from the work on-line, with her collaborator Daniel Padden – looking to the performative possibilities of the digital technology which has become such a critical tool for us all in recent months.
This series of responses has been made possible thanks to the support of The Scottish Government Expo Fundand EventScotland, part of VisitScotland’s Events Directorate.
The festival’s online offering also includes a free art activity series DIY Art – specially designed by artists, inviting children and their parent/carer to get creative at home.
Support for artists in the early stages of their career
Despite the cancellation of the festival this year, we are delighted to confirm that Platform, the festival’s annual showcase supporting artists in the early stages of their careers to make and present new work, returns with a physical exhibition in the Autumn.
Selected from an open call by artist Ruth Ewan, and curator Sophia Hao, (Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design), four artists based in Scotland – Rabindranath Bhose, Mark Bleakley, Rhona Jack and Susannah Stark have been selected to take part, with further details being released later in the coming weeks.
Platform: 2020 is made possible thanks to the PLACE Programme, a partnership between Edinburgh Festivals, Scottish Government, City of Edinburgh Council and Creative Scotland.
Black Lives Matter Mural Trail
Edinburgh Art Festival are pleased to also support the Black Lives Matter Mural Trail – a new public trail of artworks by Scottish BAME artists in solidarity with Black Lives Matter, led by creative producer Wezi Mhura. More details will be announced on the festival website shortly.
Galleries start to reopen
As we emerge from lockdown, festival partners are busy making plans to reopen their galleries, studios and production spaces across the city. For further details, click here.
Sorcha Carey, Director, Edinburgh Art Festival said:“It is hard to imagine an Edinburgh without festivals this Summer. We, along with our colleagues in the August festivals, will miss welcoming artists to the city this year and the opportunity to engage with audiences from Edinburgh and around the world – not least because, at a time of such significant global change, art offers a vitally important space for collective reflection, and to imagine new possibilities.
“I would like to thank all the artists who have so generously agreed to contribute a response to our August offering, and have risen creatively to the challenges of presenting work despite the ongoing restrictions.
“We very much look forward to being back next year, and in the meantime we are sending a hello from Edinburgh to friends across the city and around the world.”
Edinburgh Art Festival returns next year from 29 Jul to 29 Aug 2021 – as always working closely with the festival’s partner galleries, and alongside the extended network of August festivals, to celebrate the work of artists with audiences and communities across the city.
Monday 8th July at North Edinburgh Arts 11am – 3pm
FESTIVAL FUN DAY
with Edinburgh Art Festival and Licketyspit Theatre Company
We’re celebrating the start of our summer programme, and we hope you can join us for a day of street performers, garden and arts activities for all ages and a family-friendly BBQ!
What you can expect:
lots of fun
creative workshops
street performances
garden activities
pizza making
some lovely food
family-friendly atmosphere
a taste of what’s on offer at NEA this summer (8 July – 8 August)
Cost and booking: This event is free but please pick up your ticket from the NEA reception in advance to avoid disappointment on the day.
For more details, please email admin@northedinburgharts.co.uk
Edinburgh Art Festival, the only major annual festival dedicated to the visual arts within the UK, has announced details of its 2018 events programme. The programme includes a wide range of one-off performances, artist talks, tours and walks, musical events, family activities and workshops, as well as pop-up exhibitions and events in spaces and galleries across the city.Continue reading Edinburgh Art Festival Announces Pop-Ups and Events Programme
Edinburgh Art Festival, the only major annual festival dedicated to the visual arts within the UK, is delighted to announce the first details of its 15th edition, bringing together the capital’s leading galleries, museums and artist-run spaces in a city-wide celebration of the very best in visual art. Continue reading Edinburgh Art Festival programme announced
