Edinburgh College Art Students Invite You to Celebrate ‘Contemporary Closure’
Contemporary Art Practice (CAP) HND year 1 students are seeking closure, and you’re all invited to the party with an unforgettable end-of-year exhibition of their work.
Contemporary Closure is an art exhibition being held at granton:hub (Madelvic House), put together by HND CAP students to celebrate the end of their first year studying at Edinburgh College’s Granton campus.
Join us on opening night, 31st May from 6pm – 9pm to help us celebrate. You’ll get to see a preview of the work and meet the next wave of contemporary artists over drinks and nibbles.
The exhibition will then run from June 1st – 6th. Times vary, with the exhibition being open 10am – 4pm over the weekend, then 2pm – 6pm on weekdays.
Contemporary Art Practice student and co-organiser of the event, Bronwen Winter Phoenix, said: “I’m so excited that we’re able to celebrate the end of our first year of CAP in such a great location! Granton is becoming quite an exciting place to be for art at the moment, so it’s fantastic to be a part of that.
“I hope people will come along to view our work – which is extremely varied as we all have our own different styles and personalities – have a bit of a party, and see what we’ve been up to as CAP students!”
About the exhibition:
What makes closure contemporary? When it’s put together by a motley crew of contemporary art students, of course!
Join us, Edinburgh College’s HND year 1 Contemporary Art Practice students for our end-of-year exhibition, where we’ll celebrate with a party, and a showcase of the recent work we’ve accomplished, on May 31st.
On the night, a few of us will be available to chat about our work and experiences of CAP 1 over drinks and nibbles. The exhibition will then run from June 1st – 6th, 10am – 4pm over the weekend, then 2pm – 6pm on weekdays.
About granton:hub
A community-based creative and cultural Centre in Granton, Edinburgh. granton:hub is based in Granton’s historic Madelvic House. We are a member-driven charitable organisation that aims to elevate Granton’s profile and provide a focus for Granton’s diverse and evolving communities. granton:hub is a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (SCO46708), and is managed by a small team of volunteers.
granton:hub is located within Madelvic House, Granton Park Ave, Edinburgh EH5 1HS.
About HND Contemporary Art Practice
Contemporary Art Practice is a rewarding studio-based HND that provides a broad and advanced visual education for students who have a strong interest in developing skills, knowledge and awareness of Contemporary and Fine Art practices.
CAP students have the opportunity to develop individual practice concerning their interests and benefit from having their own studio space to work in from the start of the course. They are encouraged to research, develop, contextualise and evaluate their concepts and practice in response to their subject choices.
Immerse yourself in the imagination of one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. This weekend, Do Ho Suh (born 1962, Seoul), brings his first Scottish exhibition to National Galleries Scotland: Modern One.
Don’t miss this unique opportunity to marvel at Do Ho Suh’s larger-than-life thread drawings, take in his never-before-seen sketchbooks and wander through the artist’s iconic architectural hubs, experiencing Suh’s colourful, interconnected, life-size ‘homes’.
Opening today. Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time is free to visit, taking over the entire ground floor of Modern One in Edinburgh until 1 September 2024.
This major solo exhibition by the South Korean-born, London-based artist will be the largest European exhibition to date of his work on paper, with artworks spanning 25 years of Suh’s career. With over 100 works on display, many never seen before, the artist poses questions such as ‘Where and when does home exist?’ and ‘What defines our sense of place?’.
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time explores the important role that drawing and paper play in Suh’s work, focusing on his collaborative methods, experimental techniques, and ingenious use of materials. The exhibition will travel forwards and backwards in time, organised according to the artist’s transformative approaches to drawing as a toolkit with endless possibilities.
Visitors will discover Suh’s compelling and technically innovative thread drawings, where multicoloured threads are embedded in handmade paper to create sewn images of some of the artist’s most iconic motifs. Thread takes on a new form as a mode of drawing, mirroring the use of fabric in the artist’s sculptures.
The thread drawings are created at STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore, where Suh has been working collaboratively with the Creative Workshop team for over a decade; experimenting together to produce his works on paper. Works on display from this series include the dazzling Staircase/s (2019); a seemingly impossible vertical stack of colour, winding and repeating the communal staircase from Suh’s New York apartment building, the embroidery process creating a cloud of loose threads in its wake.
These monumental thread drawings will be exhibited alongside animations, architectural rubbings, paper sculptures, printmaking and watercolours, including works such as A Perfect Home (1999); asimple, evenchildlike, drawing of a tiny home and garden, perched in an impossible location.
This watercolour was the starting point for the artist’s longest running research project, The Bridge Project, which explores the idea of his ‘perfect’ home. The project considers what form this home might take and questions whether such a thing exists.For Suh, it’s located in the centre of a bridge that connects Seoul, New York and London, the three cities he has called home. The Bridge Project demonstrates that a sketch has the power to develop into something far greater.
A selection of the artist’s sketchbooks will also be shown publicly for the first time, giving visitors an insight into the personal, unconstrained spaces in which Suh explores his past, present and future.
Using both practical problem solving and imaginative sketching, drawing helps Suh to imagine new relationships between architecture and the body, and new ways of challenging and re-defining shared public spaces.
The exhibition includes an immersive installation of Suh’s famed ‘hubs’; life-size sculptures that recreate in colourful fabric transitional spaces – thresholds, corridors and doorways – inspired by sites meaningful to the artist. Visitors to the exhibition can enter and move through these installations, giving a real-scale sense of the places which hold significance to the artist.
The translucency of the fabric which forms these hubs expands on the idea of memory being personal and subjective. It also highlights the rigidity of Western architecture in comparison to traditional Korean buildings. Suh’s fabric architecture can be packed down and transported; a means of carrying home with you.
Paper is also treated as sculptural material. Tracing Time includes a series of Suh’s ‘rubbings’; works made using a physically challenging process of coating the entire interiors of rooms in paper, which is then carefully rubbed in pencil and chalk to create an impression of the original spaces.
Suh’s engaging and imaginative artworks collectively ask questions about home and identity, inviting visitors to consider their own answer. Individual experiences of what home is on a personal level can create a fundamental part of who we are, often influenced by day-to-day life and deepest memories. Drawing is Suh’s way of navigating the world, capturing overlooked details, and making sense of how we relate to one another.
Tracing Time gathers many threads of the artist’s work and its celebration of human collaboration and creative networks.
Do Ho Suh said: “I am thrilled to be presenting my first exhibition in Scotland at the National Galleries.
“Paper has been a foundational element of my practice for as long as I’ve been working. It’s more than a medium for me and I’ve sometimes felt that in the West, paper’s strength – literally and symbolically – is underestimated.
“For me, it has sculptural, architectural and bodily qualities. It works in part because of its mercurial capacities – the ways in which it can absorb, and integrate with, other materials, rather than merely providing a surface for them to sit on.
“It’s exciting to have this element of my practice engaged with so sensitively and I cannot wait to share this body of work at Modern One.”
Anne Lyden, Director-General at the National Galleries of Scotlandsaid: “The National Galleries of Scotland are delighted to welcome the wonderfully imaginative and thought-provoking artwork of Do Ho Suh to Modern One; a monumental first not only for the galleries but for Scotland.
“Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time challenges our perception of the art of drawing, showing the endless possibilities that can stem from putting our ideas, thoughts and dreams onto a blank page.
“Tracing Time also provides a space to reflect and consider the topic of ‘home’; the interconnecting thread which collectively binds us to the places, and people, that impact us the most.
“We hope our visitors will join us in witnessing this awe-inspiring experience at Modern One and take some time to marvel in the ingenious, creative flair of one of the most remarkable artists working today.”
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time opens at National Galleries Scotland: Modern One today = on Saturday 17 February 2024.
