Edinburgh Art Festival

Golden years - Tracey Emin

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

As the leading female light of Britart, Tracey Emin has been revered and rejected in equal measure. Writer and broadcaster Bidisha has a few words of scorn for the detractors and reflects on the already profound legacy she will leave behind It’s been…

Tea-leafs ahoy!

21 Aug 2008

Rumours abound that a Tracey Emin polaroid was pinched from the Gilded Balloon Loft Bar, last week. The untitled display of ten self-portraits, consisting of enlarged Polaroids of the artist were hung up by pieces of velcro in the bar. Now only nine…

Bring me sunshine - Gilbert and George at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

A look at the history of the art duo

15 Jul 2010

Dubbed the Morecambe and Wise of modern art, Gilbert and George have straddled the decades, their eccentric veil never dropping for a second. Bidisha considers the pair who sidestepped misogyny to focus on the beauty of flawed males

Best of the rest - Edinburgh Art Festival

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

Richard Hamilton One of the key figures of British Pop Art brings us Protest Pictures, a selection of paintings, installations and collages examining his often damning portrayal of politics, movements and leaders. Inverleith House, Inverleith…

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…

Bob and Roberta Smith: This Artist is Deeply Dangerous

David Pollock reports on the latest subversive work from Bob and Roberta Smith

23 Jul 2009

For this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition Bob and Roberta Smith – the multiple pseudonym of Goldsmiths graduate Patrick Brill – slices up the text of an entire review and transferring it to a series of hanging paintings.

Chad McCail

31 Jul 2008

The well-revered Scottish artist has created a series of new screenprints exclusively for Edinburgh Printmakers. McCail’s deceptively bold, cartoonish graphics mask the social critique at the centre of the work, which focuses on subjects like education…

John Bellany’s: A Celtic Voyage

Cramped but impressive selection of works by Scottish artist

24 Aug 2009

Scottish painter John Bellany’s East Coast hometown of Port Seton, a small seafaring community where fishing was a way of life and Calvinism blew fear through the streets, informs the artist’s oeuvre. Fish, gannets, swans, playing cards and boats…

Milestone

Provocative exhibition accompanying a live stone-carving project

6 Aug 2009

Entering the quad of the Edinburgh College of Art feels a bit like discovering yet another ill-placed tram construction site. The air is full of the drone of power tools, and dust clouds settle in your hair and mouth. Milestone is an unconventional…

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…

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…

William Wegman and Edward Weston mark City Art Centre reopening

EAF presents first major Scottish show from two great photographers

27 Jul 2010

Celebrating the reopening of the City Art Centre after a period of refurbishment are two photographic exhibitions by American artists: Edward Weston, one of the great classical photographers of the 20th century, and the contemporary photographer William…

Scottish Paintings: Old Masters to Contemporary

Great works undermined by staid and debilitating presentation

26 Aug 2009

This closed and muted historical survey covers a time span of around 400 years and reaches from the dark, still-life ages of William Gow Ferguson in 1632, to the rarely exciting contemporary abstract paintings of Callum Innes. Chronicling Scottish…

Nigel Peake: Making Ends Meet

14 Aug 2009

Schop, the new gallery initiative from Oliver Chapman architects, which exhibits artists steeped in architecture and the built environment, showcases the work of Irish-born artist Nigel Peake for its first EAF exhibition. Peake’s drawings and prints…

The Creative World of Alan Davie

Remarkable mix of the dark and the sublime from much-loved Scottish artist

8 Aug 2009

Saxophonist and journeyman translucent Alan Davie is surely one of Scotland’s greatest living artists. At almost 90 years old it’s remarkable to think that this is the first exhibition of his work to embrace the breadth of his output in painting…

This is Now: From Drawing to Contexture

Well-stocked ragbag from a new wave of textile artists

6 Aug 2009

The first impact of this show, and the most enduring, is the overwhelming urge to touch. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the artworks are more tactile than, say, a series of oil paintings.

Richard Hamilton: Protest Pictures

Incomplete display of anti-establishment works by a British master

7 Aug 2008

While this exhibition gives a flavour of just how iconic the work of pioneering British pop artist Richard Williams has been, particularly in relation to the authority-subverting subtexts at work within them, the impression upon leaving is that only…

Turning point - Richard Wilson

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

Installation artist Richard Wilson is a true pioneer whether he’s experimenting with drawing, film or sculpture. Rosie Lesso hears from the man about how he loves to defy preconceptions British artist Richard Wilson has an uncanny ability to distort…

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.

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…

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…

New work from Moyna Flannigan at What You See is Where You’re At

One of Scotland’s most distinguished living painters at EAF 2010

3 Aug 2010

The Scottish Gallery of Modern Art continues to celebrate its 50th anniversary with a series of new commissions, including new work from Moyna Flannigan, one of Scotland’s most distinguished living painters, as part of the What You See is Where You’re…

Chad McCail

Puberty, print, perversion and compulsory education

21 Aug 2008

What a remarkable and strange artist Chad McCail is. By his own admission half of his output tends to be peopled by ‘robots, zombies or wealthy parasites’, while the other half looks like loose leaves from a particularly perverse Ladybird book. Both…

Interview - Alexander Hamilton

Travels without my camera

7 Aug 2008

It might seem laughably low-tech in a digital age, but the camera-less cyanotype, one of the earliest and simplest forms of photography, still enthrals Edinburgh artist Alexander Hamilton. ‘It’s just two chemicals mixed together and applied to…

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…