Art Festival

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Breathtaking exploration of both photography and science

25 Aug 2011

To say that Sugimoto's contribution to the Edinburgh International Festival is striking would be an understatement. This is the first time these works have been displayed in Europe. The Japanese photography pioneer’s huge analogue 'Lightning Fields…

Interview: John Byrne

Painter and playwright at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

24 Aug 2011

What came first – the art or the writing? It must have been the drawing and the art, because my mother used to tell people that I was drawing in my pram. We have to take her word for it – she was a very honest woman. Do you hold writing and art in…

John Byrne: Moonlight and Music

Major exhibition of works by much-loved Scottish artist

17 Aug 2011

So recent are some of the pieces in this show – timed to coincide with the launch of a biography of the artist by Lund Humphries – that self-portrait ‘Chop Suey’ and Byrne’s children’s book Donald & Benoit: A Story of a Cat and a Boy arrived close to…

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys

An art world friendship under a Scottish sky

17 Aug 2011

A single rose can make a garden; a single friend can make a world. Writer, artist and philosopher Richard Demarco’s friendship with the humanistic artist Joseph Beuys was something special. These two passionate, occasionally obtuse men were drawn to…

Mystics or Rationalists?

Elegant conceptual works bend associations of the ordinary

17 Aug 2011

Stealing the show, Susan Hiller’s new levitation works are exemplary of the conceit at the heart of this group exhibition. Having infused conceptual and minimalist strategies with the influence of psychoanalysis and pop culture since the late 1960s…

Carmen Sylva

Established artists take on a new and exciting identity

11 Aug 2011

A procession of odd assemblages punctuates the centre of Sierra Metro’s exhibition space. They are Katharina Stoever and Barbara Wolff’s latest artistic response to Peles, a late 18th Century Romanian castle that has inspired their practice for over six…

Interview: Jeremy Millar on exhibition Mystics or Rationalists?

Artist discusses his contribution to Ingleby Edinburgh Art Festival show

10 Aug 2011

How far do you agree with Sol LeWitt’s comment that ‘conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists’? I think I’d tend to agree: they’re certainly rather more mystics than rationalists. Art isn’t rational, but it can be mystical. What is…

Tamsyn Challenger: 400 Women

Stunning artistic memorial to victims of gender violence

8 Aug 2011

What unites the collection of heterogeneous portraits in 400 Women is the fate of each subject depicted. All are the victims of rape, abduction and murder, devastating crimes which have taken place on the Mexican border region of Ciudad Juàrez. In…

Katri Walker: North West

Intriguing exploration of Scottish/Wild West links

8 Aug 2011

This triptych of work by Edinburgh-born artist Katri Walker recasts the landscape of Scotland as the wilderness of the American old west, quite literally in the case of the titular central work. Projected over three connected screens, the rocky cliffs…

Ingrid Calame

Water water everywhere with only a doodle to drink

5 Aug 2011

A river runs through Ingrid Calame’s work. But this river has been drained and all that remains are detritus and old stains. Somewhere between Google Earth screen grabs, weighty childhood nature books with their own illustrative key codes and fey…

David Mach: Precious Light

Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition of biblical proportions by Fife-born artist

5 Aug 2011

Without doubt, Methil-born artist David Mach’s work ‘Golgotha’ will stand out as the defining image from the artistic strand of this year’s Edinburgh Festival. Three enormous figures of threaded steel nailed to metallic crosses, which take up the entire…

Anton Henning: Interieur No. 493

Curious and bemusing conceptual art salon at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

5 Aug 2011

If, as critic and writer Cyril Connolly once noted, ‘vulgarity is the garlic in the salad of life’ German artist Anton Henning might just have halitosis. Henning’s first solo show in Scotland is just about as curious and bemusing an exhibition as you…

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it

5 Aug 2011

Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…

Interview: US artist Ingrid Calame

Transferring transfers marks and cracks from ground outside to gallery walls

3 Aug 2011

‘This is it!’ exclaims US artist Ingrid Calame, waving towards a radiant tabletop awash with transparent sacks of bright pigments, a sea of reds, pinks, blues and greens. She’s referring to a new drawing based on tracings plucked from the cement…

Hayashi Takeshi: Haku-u (White Rain)

Impressive hand-carved sculptures

3 Aug 2011

Once upon a time, Japanese artist Hayashi Takeshi looked out over a paddy field in the rain, the texture of the water’s surface as each inverted wet plop rose and fell clearly ingraining itself on his memory. With the primary and titular work on display…

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

3 Aug 2011

There’s something of an inky-fingered Dürer overload in the ‘burgh just now. Following on from Dürer’s Fame over at the National Galleries, this 16th century compendium of more than 100 works uses his output as a springboard for the burgeoning of…

Tony Cragg

Stunning showcase of sculptor’s poetic, monolithic output

3 Aug 2011

From Scouse lab technician to director of Kunstakademie, Düsseldorf, Cragg’s prolific artistic journey has been one of inspiration and rejection, absorption and a will to move beyond. While the works of Max Ernst, Richard Long, Joseph Beuys and Henry…

Elizabeth Blackadder

Brilliant retrospective of work by one of Scotland’s major artists

3 Aug 2011

Elizabeth Blackadder is a Dame, a Royal Academician and arguably Scotland’s most popular female painter and printmaker. A major retrospective of her work at Scotland’s biggest gallery space was only ever going to draw sighs of resignation from art snobs…

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

21 Jul 2011

German handball star Pascal Hens gazes out from a black-and-white poster, his torso naked, gaze serious, his pose one of self-deification. This is enhanced further by a tattoo on his stomach of two disembodied hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Artist Martin Creed replaces Edinburgh steps with marble from around world

The Turner Prize winner transforms the Scotsman Steps

6 Jul 2011

Now in its eighth year, the Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) has done wonders in raising the profile of the capital's rich assortment of galleries while showcasing an eye-watering array of works by international artists. No stranger to Edinburgh, Turner…

Precious Light - David Mach interview

Artist's first major Scottish exhibition in years at Edinburgh Art Festival 2011

6 Jul 2011

It’s just after 9am in Forest Hill in South London. The denizens of this leafy area have walked their children to school and boarded their commuter trains. In David Mach’s messy but unfussy two-floored studio, two handfuls of assistants and technicians…

400 Women - Tamsyn Challenger interview

Edinburgh Art Festival 2011 show inspired by tragic events

6 Jul 2011

For the last couple of decades of least, the gallery-centred world of contemporary art has been a largely apolitical space, with the popularity of conceptual and often oblique work tending to overshadow that of artists engaging with or responding…

Edinburgh Art Festival 2011 highlights

David Mach, Tamsyn Challenger and Anish Kapoor among picks

1 Jul 2011

David Mach. Explosive and daring exhibition of large-scale collage and sculpture works inspired by and confronting the narratives of the Bible on the 400th anniversary of the publication of the highly influential King James version. 400 Women. A…

Why Edinburgh remains unrivalled as a festival city

A huge number and variety of festivals take place each year

16 Feb 2011

In 1961, a theatre director made a proposal. It was his opinion that the Edinburgh Festival Fringe was getting too big. It would be much better, he said, ‘if only ten halls were licensed’. Nobody listened. Had the director been able to travel…

Ian Reddie: Dirt, Glue, Gluedust

22 Aug 2010

The Edinburgh-based artist presents mixed media paintings, screen prints and digital art evoking a primordial world of desert and rock. Art’s Complex, 661 1924, until 5 Sep (not Mon/Tue), free.

Will Self: ‘The Last Refuge of Greatness’

20 Aug 2010

As part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, everyone’s favourite funny-looking writer, satirist, aesthete and husband of Deborah Orr discusses his lifelong fascination with scale, and investigates the way in which changes in scale influence artistic…

Amnesty International Urban Art Exhibition

Syrkus, Rekor, Derm, Conzo, Mark Lyken and Elph

20 Aug 2010

Urban art created onsite at a live event at the start of the festival by Syrkus, Rekor, Derm, Conzo, Mark Lyken and Elph as part of Amnesty’s festival-wide campaign to highlight the need for freedom of expression all around the world. C soco Urban…

Barbara Rae and Matthew Draper

Contrasting Landscapes, Painterly Abstractions

20 Aug 2010

Two distinct and individual responses to contemporary landscape painting from the two Scottish artists. Open Eye Gallery, 557 1020, until 31 Aug (not Sun), free.

Plan B

Nuanced and arresting marriage of text and image

19 Aug 2010

One of the most immediately arresting images of the Edinburgh Art Festival, photographer Norman McBeath’s black and white of a sculpture of Apollo swathed in smothering polythene, stands to represent a unique collaboration between this artist and…

Philip Braham: Falling Shadows In Arcadia

Insensitively curated exhibition pits the fragility of human life against the enduring landscape

19 Aug 2010

This exhibition of photographic prints by the Royal Scottish Academy’s Morton Award winner 2009 comprises two rather different series’. The most prominent pictures are of black and white scenes – forests, bodies of water, vacant bridges – that have been…

EAF host first UK solo show by Iran do Espírito Santo

Brazilian-born artist exhibits at Edinburgh's Ingleby Gallery

18 Aug 2010

The name Iran do Espírito Santo may not be a household word on these shores, but brace yourselves, the Brazilian-born artist is about to take the Edinburgh Art Festival by storm. Next month at the Ingleby Gallery, Scotland will have the opportunity to…

Atsuo Okamoto: Faraway Mountain

A strong sense of both exploration and play

18 Aug 2010

Walking among Atsuo Okamoto’s granite sculpture feels rather like exploring a prehistoric puzzle – 12 pillars, erupting from the ground, cracked and split into pieces then carefully put back together. The Japanese sculptor’s first solo show in the…

Victoria Crowe: Reflection

Rich but congested series of studies of Venice

18 Aug 2010

With so many shows in the Edinburgh Art Festival rigorously analysing the capital itself, Victoria Crowe’s show ‘Reflection’ offers an incongruous but welcome vacation from this theme. Instead of following the trends of site specificity or channelling…

The Space Between

Erratic mixed printmaking show

18 Aug 2010

Taking the theme of ‘space’ as its departure, it is unsurprising that the selection of work in Amber Art’s current show is erratic: by its very nature all artwork deals with space. It appears instead that the term is a comfortable theme within which to…

A Drawback

16 Aug 2010

The phenomenon of drawing has enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, with many artists now returning to producing, exhibiting and selling contemporary drawings. This exhibition by Perennial Art celebrates the diversity and richness of the practice and…

5 Questions - Invisible Structures

13 Aug 2010

Invisible Structures has created a special outdoor environment of hidden treasures, workshops, performances, art and science experiments guided by interactive performers to Edinburgh’s Royal Botanic Gardens. Claudia Mosely from Invisible Works takes…

Edward Weston: Life Work and William Wegman: Family Combinations

A pair of fascinating photography exhibitions for the price of one

12 Aug 2010

These two fascinating exhibitions by two very different photographers challenge John Steinbeck’s belief that cameras should be disparaged because ‘they are so much more sure than I am about everything.’ Weston was the natural, a pioneer and a comrade…

Atsuo Okomoto: Faraway Mountain

Japanese stone sculptor presents 12 pieces sculpted from same block

12 Aug 2010

The first UK solo exhibition by Japanese stone sculptor Okomoto showcases the technique of ‘war modoshi’, or splitting and returning, and features 12 pieces sculpted from the same block which can then be pushed together to reform the original piece. The…

Garage

12 Aug 2010

This new site-specific, collaborative exhibition developed during a series of micro-residencies in a New Town garage features work by UK-based international artists including Rebecca Key, Holly Fulton, Thomas MacGregor and Bob Moyler, and hosts various…

Julie Roberts: Child

Honest and compelling exploration of childhood

11 Aug 2010

Julie Roberts’ new body of work takes the subject of childhood and explores the displacement of children in the mid 20th century. Her paintings do not make use of universal images; instead they are the result of in-depth research and working through…

Hito Steyerl: In Free Fall

Sophisticated film captures the global economic crisis

11 Aug 2010

A theoretician, artist and filmmaker interested in documentary strategies in contemporary art, Hito Steyerl’s work focuses on the intersection between politics and aesthetics, specifically the status of images as they circulate globally. Steyerl is a…

Mairi Gillies: Natura Sensus

Hortisculpturist explores the relationship between art and plants

11 Aug 2010

Mairi Gillies explores the interventionist nature of horticulture, which, as opposed to agriculture, isn’t always for harvesting, but rather for aesthetic, ownership and collection purposes. As a sculptor, she works with the notion of cultivating these…

Gemma Holt & Richard Healy: Shapes And Things

Making art from the everyday

11 Aug 2010

A partnership instigated by Edinburgh gallery Sierra Metro, ‘Shapes and Things’ is the first collaboration between London-based artists Richard Healy and Gemma Holt. Both work to manipulate and divert the language of design, injecting ‘newness’ into…

Joan Mitchell

Arresting display of abstract paintings

11 Aug 2010

Inverleith House really is a special place. An 18th century mansion reserved entirely for the display of art, its beautifully proportioned light-filled rooms enjoy unmatched views of rolling lawns and botanicals. The works that are exhibited within its…

Thomas Carlile's Landscapes of Memory

Public art exhibition spread across the city interpretable by touch phones

5 Aug 2010

Keen-eyed observers will spot a number of black and white square barcodes amidst the shop signs and fly posting that decorate Edinburgh’s streets. But what is their purpose? Rachael Cloughton explains: The first one I saw was stuck to the concrete…

Gilbert and George exhibit at the National Gallery

Retrospective of the iconic art duo

5 Aug 2010

There’s something quite unnerving watching the three films that form the oldest contribution to this mini retrospective of Brit Art’s most enduring double act. Here they are, Gilbert and George, in grainy black and white, young men still in their 20s…

Impressionist Gardens

A remarkable exhibition of iconic, influential works at The National Galleries

5 Aug 2010

The National Galleries of Scotland’s ambitious exhibition brings together around 100 paintings focusing on the garden as subject for impressionist painters: remarkably the first show of its kind to have been held anywhere in the world. It’s hard to…

Iran do Espírito Santo

Brazilian artist comes to the Ingleby Gallery presenting visual puns

5 Aug 2010

Internationally acclaimed Brazilian artist Espírito Santo here presents visual puns in the form of beautiful mirrored and crystal sculptures, and a wall painting that alternately produces an instinctive and immersive effect. This is a formula that not…

Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth: Staged

Edinburgh-based artists stage a cultural land grab from August’s invasion

5 Aug 2010

Entered by way of a curtained-off doorway and presented in a compact room whose pillar-effect cornices form a kind of proscenium arch, this collaborative show by Edinburgh-based artists Coleman and Hogarth sets out its stall as a reflection upon the…

Richard Healy: Shapes and Things - five questions

Sierra Metro artist on his influences and attitudes

5 Aug 2010

In their exhibition at Sierra Metro artists Richard Healy and Gemma Holt explore the language of design through sculptural pieces, site-specific film installation and architectural techniques. Here Richard outlines his influences and attitude towards…