Edinburgh Festivals, Art Festival

Naked Portrait

1 Aug 2007

In contrast with the ‘nude’ figure in western art history, the naked portrait still manages to present a sometimes shocking and raw view of the sitter’s personality that reaches beyond their public façade.

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…

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…

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…

David Batchelor

Edinburgh International Art Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Art Festival Colour in David Batchelor thinks we live in a culture that’s scared of bright and vivid hues. That’s why he’s filling his own artistic world with waves of chromatic pleasure. Nick Barley looks at his work and…

Tracey Emin: 20 Years

Emin thrills… and disappoints

7 Aug 2008

Tracey Emin seems to polarise opinion – just check out the online comments on her column in The Independent. One of Britain’s most recognisable YBA artists, she’s been nominated for the Turner Prize and represented Britain at the Venice Biennale, but…

Tracey Emin

edfest.tv - video

26 Aug 2008

A unique chance to see the first major retrospective of one of Britain's most celebrated and controversial artists.

Picasso on Paper

Edinburgh International Art Festival

19 Jul 2007

Alexander Kennedy explores the enduring mass appeal of Pablo Picasso as two major new exhibitions of the great 20th century artist’s work come to Edinburgh

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…

Picasso on Paper

23 Aug 2007

They say that all is fair in love and war – although the word ‘fair’ seems a little humdrum when you take in the remarkable collection of works exhibited in one of the Festival’s undeniable big guns. Throughout a selection of around 120 graphic works…

5 Questions - John Stezaker

1 Aug 2007

John Stezaker, who creates collages from images found in books, magazines and postcards, gives a brief insight into his Festival show

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…

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

31 Jul 2008

Six different, self-contained installation pieces by hugely acclaimed Canadian artist partnership Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, which run a series of gamuts, taking in culture both high and popular, film, multimedia robotics and…

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…

William Eggleston: Portraits 1974

16 Aug 2007

No matter what decade you were brought up in, the 1970s are absolutely dripping with glossy, honey-hued nostalgia. And it’s exactly this kitschy, colour-saturated era that William Eggleston has captured in his 1974 photographs on show at Inverleith…

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller

edfest.tv - video

28 Aug 2008

A rare chance to experience the work of one of the most internationally respected artist partnerships, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller.

Treasure Hunt

Rosalie Doubal leads a team around the city on a scavenger hunt in the name of art

21 Aug 2008

9am City Art Centre Equipped with a bike, a laptop, a compass, eight sandwiches and some anoraks, my team – a dyspraxic researcher, a father-of-one, a diehard Buckfast drinker and a token ginger – joins a long queue of eager scavengers. Neither the…

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…

Dovecot: Weaving Influences

21 Aug 2008

An appreciation of the historic art of tapestry is not strictly necessary to enjoy this, one of two shows launching Dovecot as a new exhibiting space for art, craft and design. The twist here is that all the works were designed by leading modern artists…

Big Things on the Beach: Garden Gallery

Public art, right on your doorstep

14 Aug 2008

As far as public art initiatives go, it doesn’t get much more DIY or community-focused than this. Twenty-nine separate works, most of which are hosted in the front gardens of Portobello houses, and all of them part of a scenic walking tour of the…

Ric Warren - The House That Ric Built

edfest.tv - video

12 Aug 2008

Ric Warren is exhibiting a series of sculptural works on climate change in Charlotte Square Gardens.

Arthur Smith's Arturart

edfest.tv - video

7 Aug 2008

The award winning counter insurgency movement returns to the Edinburgh Fringe at the Queen Street gallery.

Bond Bound: Ian Fleming and the Art of Cover Design

Of human bond-age

7 Aug 2008

It’s strange, considering how conservative a character James Bond is, that his presentation and marketing seems to fall so readily in step with the times. From Sean Connery throughout the smooth, swinging 60s, to the more cartoonishly lurid 70s and…

5 Questions - Chad McCail

7 Aug 2008

5 words to describe your current show: Achingly beautiful, heart-wrenching eye candy. 4 other exhibitions you want to see: The Mike Kelly retrospective in Brussels I missed; a Tony Oursler retrospective, a George Condo show . . . that’s enough wanting.

What is Life?

Scottish sculptors take on biological investigation

31 Jul 2008

Exploring a common interest in plants and scientific enquiry, Inverleith House curator Paul Nesbitt has drawn together works by Scottish sculptors Christine Borland, Graham Fagen and Simon Starling. In a bold and considered move, he’s chosen to eschew…