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Design & Democracy

Edinburgh Art Festival

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Paul Muzni: Configure

Paul Muzni: Configure

Versatility found among abstracted oil and pastel pieces of Edinburgh artist

(3 stars)30 Aug 2011

Edinburgh artist Muzni treats the eyes in this collection of life works focusing on the female nude, constantly striving to keep his approach as fresh as the colours that make up his delicately abstracted oil and pastel pieces. The use of pastel is a…

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Hiroshi Sugimoto: Lightning Fields and Photogenic Drawings

Breathtaking exploration of both photography and science

(4 stars)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

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

John Byrne: Moonlight and Music

Major exhibition of works by much-loved Scottish artist

(4 stars)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

Richard Demarco and Joseph Beuys

An art world friendship under a Scottish sky

(4 stars)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?

Mystics or Rationalists?

Elegant conceptual works bend associations of the ordinary

(3 stars)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

Carmen Sylva

Established artists take on a new and exciting identity

(3 stars)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…

Artist Jeremy Millar discusses his contribution to the Ingleby’s Mystics or Rationalists show

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

Tamsyn Challenger: 400 Women

Stunning artistic memorial to victims of gender violence

(5 stars)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

Katri Walker: North West

Intriguing exploration of Scottish/Wild West links

(3 stars)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

Ingrid Calame

Water water everywhere with only a doodle to drink

(4 stars)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

David Mach: Precious Light

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

(4 stars)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

Anton Henning: Interieur No. 493

Curious and bemusing conceptual art salon at 2011 Edinburgh Art Festival

(3 stars)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

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

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

(3 stars)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…

US artist Ingrid Calame discusses her practise of transferring transfers marks, stains and cracks from the ground outside to the gallery walls

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)

Hayashi Takeshi: Haku-u (White Rain)

Impressive hand-carved sculptures

(3 stars)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

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

(3 stars)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

Tony Cragg

Stunning showcase of sculptor’s poetic, monolithic output

(4 stars)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

Elizabeth Blackadder

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

(4 stars)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

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

(4 stars)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.

Martin Creed: Work 1059 Scotsman Steps

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…

David Mach

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…

Tamsyn Challenger: In Living Memory

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

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

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…

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