Visual art and Previews

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…

Pioneering Painters: The Glasgow Boys 1880–1900

7 Apr 2010

After 40 years, the Glasgow Boys are finally to be the subject of a major exhibition in the Dear Green Place. But don’t let the group’s name mislead you. Jean Walsh, the exhibition’s co-curator, explains: ‘The Glasgow Boys didn’t all attend Glasgow…

Ambitious outdoor arts festival Roofless

Artists Olivier Grossetete and Sumit Sarkar to create public art projects over the next year

22 May 2012

They say if you’re going to think, think big, and that’s exactly what Roofless, Scotland’s all-new outdoor arts festival is doing, with impressive scale and great purpose. Plotted initially in five locations, and bringing together professional artists…

Tom Phillips

Big picture

1 Nov 2007

Tom Phillips Widely considered a touchstone of postmodernism, Tom Phillips’ artistic project, ‘A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel’, has achieved cult status since its initial publication in 1970. One day, Phillips went into a book shop with the…

Jupiter Artland opens its season with a new Charles Jencks exhibition

The ourdoor 'art park' also features work by Anthony Gormley

25 Apr 2011

You know that spring has sprung when Jupiter Artland opens its doors with a new season – and this year’s artistic bloom looks to be just as exciting as their last. Launching with special exhibition Metaphysical Landscape by landform artist, philosopher…

Tonite - contemporary art in Glasgow

23 Jul 2009

The East Coast scene may be dominated by the Edinburgh Art Festival, but lovers of contemporary art in Glasgow can get their fix at The Modern Instutute with this large group show, which features work by Hany Armanious, Martin Boyce, Martin Creed, Mark…

Bob Dylan’s Art

22 Jan 2009

‘My father, who was plain speaking and straight talking had said, “Isn’t an artist a fellow who paints?” when told by one of my teachers that his son had the nature of an artist. It seemed I’d always been chasing after something, anything that moved – a…

Charles Avery

27 Nov 2008

‘Be not afraid,’ says Caliban in The Tempest, ‘the isle is full of noises that bring delight and hurt not.’ Charles Avery might disagree. For the Mull-born-and-bred artist, it was the sounds of the woods around Lochdon that got his childhood imagination…

Giants in the Forest: The natural art project putting sculpture into Scotland's woods

Massive project undertaken as part of the Year of Creative Scotland

9 May 2012

In a country where much of our creativity is inspired by the incredible natural environment around us, what better year to launch our unique project, Giants in the Forest? Looking down on us from tree tops will be massive wicker heads, seeded and…

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…

Tom Phillips: A Humument

29 Nov 2007

An exhibition depicting how Phillips transformed an obscure Victorian novel (A Human Document by WH Mallock) into a postmodern masterpiece. A Humument is widely regarded as one of the most successful and influential artist’s books of the last 50…

Peak Practice

4 Sep 2008

'The Lighthouse Architecture Series is a new five-year series celebrating a range of Scottish architectural practices, which have delivered nationally, and now deserve recognition in the international market,' says Leonie Bell, programme director at…

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…

Radiance

15 Nov 2007

LIGHT INSTALLATION Various locations, Glasgow city centre, Fri 23–Sun 25 Nov As the nights draw in, Glasgow City Council is flooding the dark skies with light, filling the streets with large-scale light installations by some of the most successful…

Robert Barry's Words and Music

19 Aug 2010

Robert Barry, who wilfully abandoned painting in 1967 to become one of the central figures of conceptual art, is having his first solo showcase Words and Music in Glasgow. Dematerialising the art object, Barry developed a practice producing ephemeral…

Underneath The Arches

8 Jan 2009

Glasgow’s Arches, as anyone who’s worked there will tell you, is the sort of place that doesn’t so much defy your expectations as consistently confound them. Audiences might marvel at the sort of building that can stage a theatre show, art exhibition…

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…

Rough Cut Nation

Music meets art uptown

29 Jul 2009

Gallery gigs are ordinarily bespoke, underground shop-front affairs that flaunt their art-rock credentials like billy-o. The renovation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has allowed some of that DIY spirit to mess up its normally plush interior…

Doctor Who - Space Oddity

19 Mar 2009

In four years time Doctor Who will be 50 years old, but still it remains one of the most popular and imagination-grabbing shows on television. While the best of British actors and television writers are lining up to work on it, the series’ first…

Mr Lautner Builds His Dream House

5 Mar 2009

With a new film and major exhibition celebrating his life and work, maverick architect John Lautner’s time may finally have come. Paul Dale looks back at the life of the man who shaped the look of US moviemaking’s hometown.

Richard Demarco's countdown to 80

6 Feb 2009

The Edinburgh institution that is Ricky Demarco continues to blow like a hurricane through Auld Reekie. Marking the 40th anniversary of Telford College, Demarco has put on an exhibition, which opened last night, of items from his Demarco European Art…

Gerhard Richter: Paintings

11 Dec 2008

Time is running out to catch the first retrospective in the UK for 20 years of Gerhard Richter’s work (his first ever exhibition in Scotland). The stunning show reflects the zeitgeist of Richter’s native Germany between World War II and the early Cold…

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…

Vanity Fair Portraits

5 Jun 2008

We didn’t need Princess Diana to die to know we live in a celebrity-obsessed age. The love/hate relationship between the people and the famous is now more fraught than ever. Fame has never been so easy to come by, but we seem to take even greater joy in…

Three

11 Nov 2006

An exhibition of paintings by Glasgow painters David Sillars, Michele David and Eva Gustavsson. The artists examine how the application and removal of paint creates layers of time and suggested landscapes that are trapped beneath the skins of their…

Glasgay!: Re-Invention

Exhibition and workshop aimed at gay and trans comic fans

19 Sep 2011

The idea of gay culture in comics is nothing new, with handfuls of uptight academics frantically pointing out the homoerotic sub-tones of Batman and Robin’s cartoon exploits since the 1950s. The foundations of X-Men arguably lie in the civil rights…

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…

The Bone Collector

Nick Evans: Anti-Autonome

1 Sep 2010

Although he’s been a practising artist since leaving Glasgow School of Art in 2000 with a degree in Sculpture and Environmental Art, Nick Evans traces the beginning of his current mode of practice back to 2006, when he completed an eight-month residency…

Central Station - Sanna Dyker

16 Jun 2010

Sanna Dyker is an Illustrator currently based in Dundee and a graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. She says of her work: ‘Small things catch my eye and I can’t let them go without turning them into a story either scribbled as a…

Linder - King’s Ransom (Hybrid Tea)

15 Apr 2010

Legendary visual artist and Morrissey pal Linder discusses her epic new performance piece and eagerly awaited exhibition with Neil Cooper What are words worth? ‘Glamour’, for instance, is a Scottish derivative that comes directly from the word…

Jimmie Durham - Glasgow International

15 Apr 2010

Sculptor Jimmie Durham’s work is informed by politics and an immersion in his surroundings. Liz Shannon talks to him about his practice The renowned American sculptor Jimmie Durham has not shied away from using local materials in the creation of his…

Kurt Jackson

15 Apr 2010

Cornwall meets the west coast of Scotland in a new exhibition currently running at the capital’s Dovecot Studios. The show, which is being curated by Louise Jones of Truro’s Lemon Street Gallery, features more than 70 works by the celebrated Cornish…

Three American Artists: Randy Bolton, Michael Krueger & John Schulz

6 Jan 2010

We’re accustomed to American imagery pervading our own culture, but these three critically aware artists – whose work is displayed at the Glasgow Print Studio this month – themselves scrutinise and re-imagine American printed imagery. Bolton explores…

Secret Wars

2 Apr 2009

The first rule of Art Club is: you don’t talk about Art Club. Unless you’re writing a piece in a magazine. We’re not really sure what an event describing itself as ‘like Fight Club, with artists’ entails, but this live art battle has been running at…

Simon Baker - Close-Up

16 Oct 2008

‘I think you can probably see this exhibition on two levels,’ says Simon Baker, co-curator of Close-Up, a new show exploring the history of close-up photography. ‘There’s the obvious and rather marvellous aspect suggested by the scenes before us, which…

Picture perfect

1 Aug 2007

From international stars like Andy Warhol and Picasso to Turner Prize winners and home grown talent, Alexander Kennedy finds rich pickings in the Edinburgh Art Festival

Preview of 2012 - Martin Creed: All the Bells

Turner Prize winner invites Brits to ring in the Olympics

6 Jan 2012

Controversial he may be but conceptual artist Martin Creed has always been brutally honest with the paying public. His most famous work to date, Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, did exactly what it said on the tin and helped the Glasgow-raised…

Interview: Kirsty Whiten

Breeder Badlands show at Edinburgh Printmakers

19 Dec 2011

What made you want to be an artist? The uniform. And the pension plan. Your new solo show, Breeder Badlands, explores the complexities of the familial unit. What was the original inspiration for the exhibition? This work is really personal – friends and…

Central Station - Laurie Hastings

16 Sep 2011

Laurie Hastings is an illustrator and printmaker, striving to produce images that capture and communicate the imagery and narrative of a text. People are often central to the images Laurie creates: she enjoys conveying an emotion or a certain tension…

Central Station - Anne Doble: Artinkulate

Intricacies with healthy Scottish/nautical flavour

14 Jan 2011

Anne Doble is a self-taught artist/designer-maker, running her own business, Artinkulate, from her home in Portknockie in the North East of Scotland. Prior to this she had a long career in retail management and latterly qualified as an anaesthetic…

New Diane Arbus exhibition set for Dean Gallery, Edinburgh

23 Feb 2010

If Diane Arbus hadn’t slashed her wrists in 1971 aged 48, who knows how her work might have developed. As it is, the New York-based photographer became an underground icon, lionised for her untimely death as much as the warts and all portraits of…

Alexis Marguerite Teplin - One foot in the past

26 Jan 2010

Voluptuous, salacious and lavishly overshooting the decorative, Alexis Marguerite Teplin’s paintings are as visually arresting as they are referentially dense. Boundless pleasures can be sourced from the unpacking of their rich montages, and the…

Glasgow DIY Festival

The city shows off its talented underground arts scene

17 Sep 2009

Without wishing to play down the significance of Franz Ferdinand’s commercial breakthrough, arguably the real story of Glasgow rock in the ’00s has been the rise of the DIY gig scene. Nuts & Seeds got the ball rolling by booking weird, noisy and fun…

The phenomenon of DIY art environments

6 Aug 2009

Ever since conceptualism broke through in the 1960s, regular gallery interiors, be they extravagantly antique pieces of architecture or ice-cool white cubes, have lost their power to imprison work within their over-bearing walls. In the last couple of…

Edinburgh Mela

Edinburgh's most multicultural festival

30 Jul 2009

The 15th Edinburgh Mela is something of a milestone for the massive multicultural music, art, theatre and food festival celebrating Asian Scottish culture, and not just because it is returning to its original home of Pilrig Park. ‘This year, we’re…

Jupiter Artland - outdoor work by high-profile contemporary artists

23 Jul 2009

‘This isn’t a sculpture park,’ says Robert Wilson, co-director, along with his wife Nicky, of the recently-opened Jupiter Artland. ‘We think of it as something different. That’s why we used the word “artland”, because we want to focus equally on the…

5 Questions: John McCracken

23 Jul 2009

American minimalist sculptor John McCracken’s surfboard-inspired objects, with their bold use of colour and form, have influenced generations. As Inverleith House prepares to unveil his first solo exhibition in Scotland he tackles our Q & A

The Discovery of Spain – British Artists and Collectors: Goya to Picasso

9 Jul 2009

Spanish holidays have come a long way from the sun, sea and sangria of the 1970s and having it large in Ibiza in the 90s. Yet, the pop cultural memorabilia of both eras remains in the bullfighting posters and maracas many brought home as jet-age…

Art College Degree Shows

11 Jun 2009

Edinburgh College of Art Lizzy Stewart: Illustration Stewart’s work adorns record sleeves, editorial pages, zines and books. Her vivid prints, including ‘Giant Bear in a Tiny Village’ (pictured), will be on display alongside illustrations for Dee…