Visual art, Reviews

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Expanding Horizons: Giovanni Battista Lusieri and the Panoramic Landscape

7 Sep 20124 stars

Watercolour landscapes with photorealist sensibilities

Most remembered as the man who arranged the shipping of the Elgin Marbles in his position as artistic retainer to Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, this retrospective of Giovanni Battista Lusieri’s relatively little-remembered 18th and 19th century landscape…

Craig Coulthard - Forest Pitch

3 Sep 20124 stars

Artist Coulthard creates a full-size football pitch in the Borders as part of the Cultural Olympiad

Craig Coulthard has certainly put the ‘beautiful’ in the beautiful game with Forest Pitch; a full-size football pitch created in the middle of a forest in the Scottish Borders. At the end of August two football matches were played on the pitch, the…

Soviet Grand Designs

30 Aug 20124 stars

Surprising exhibition of art created under suppression

John Barkes, an art dealer and collector based in London, has been buying works by Soviet artists since his 1992 visit to St Petersburg. He has since met more than 400 contemporary artists in the interest of buying their paintings and has assembled…

Ilana Halperin: We Form Geology

30 Aug 20123 stars

Travelling Gallery, various locations around Scotland, Aug-Dec 2012

New York born artist Ilana Halperin collaborates with National Museums Scotland for this travelling show which kicked off on Fri 24 Aug for a three-hour run outside the City Art Centre in Edinurgh, and continues across Scotland throughout the rest of…

Eyes in the Water

24 Aug 20123 stars

Enjoyable group show of work from up-and-coming artists

Gael Fisher is a recent finalist on the BBC's Show Me the Monet, but her work is far removed from the somewhat dubious endorsement of reality TV. The quirky little space of the Gladstone Gallery is a wonderful introduction to this Edinburgh-born…

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Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre

20 Aug 20125 stars

Eduard Bersudsky's home-made theatre is a feast for the eyes and a window onto another world

Sharmanka Kinetic Theatre is a bizarre collection of automated hand-carved sculptures made from wood, sewing machines, bike wheels, lawn mowers and whatever else Russian-born artist Eduard Bersudsky could lay his hands on. As the show starts the…

John Bellany at 70

17 Aug 20123 stars

Showcase of familiar images from the Port Seton artist

John Bellany at 70 precedes the major retrospective of the Scottish painter’s work due to be held by the National Galleries of Scotland later this year, and showcases some of his more vibrant, powerful images and compositions that are now familiar…

Fiona Tan: Disorient

17 Aug 20123 stars

Twin-screened video installation a relaxing environment, but little else

The Gallery of Modern Art presents Disorient, a twin-screened video installation by Fiona Tan. Originally shown as part of the Venice Biennale, Disorient uses a reading from The Travels of Marco Polo to examine discordant perceptions, identity and…

Jock Mcfadyen: the Ability to Cling

17 Aug 20124 stars

Small but revealing exhibition of paintings and sculptures

Small but revealing exhibition of paintings and sculptures ‘The ability to cling fastidiously to an image is a pointer to the mark of a true artist,’ runs the slogan which gives this exhibition its title on one of the Paisley-born McFadyen’s earlier…

Garage

17 Aug 20124 stars

Off-piste, enjoyable compendium of grassroots art

In a residential garage, a portable TV sits on a rug on the floor, a bouquet of flowers laid down before it. On-screen a collage of scenes from a 1980s TV compendium of schlocky horror play out in Rebecca Key and Melodien’s ‘Sevant! Sevant! Vol 1…

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Phenotype Genotype (phg)

17 Aug 20124 stars

Treasure trove of avant garde works

There is no more perfect show to illustrate where Summerhall has come from than this vast display of avant-garde detritus culled from the even vaster archive of the Edinburgh-based Heart Fine Art set-up. From John and Yoko to Gilbert and George to Jake…

The Clipperton Project

10 Aug 20124 stars

An uninhabited island becomes an idea at the 2012 Edinburgh Art Festival

Clipperton is an uninhabited island in the Pacific Ocean southwest of Mexico. To a group of modern day expeditionaries this island has also become an idea. In March this year 20 artists and scientists from eight different countries embarked on a…

Art & Language

10 Aug 20123 stars

Intriguing but ultimately impenetrable overview of conceptual movement

Intriguing but ultimately impenetrable overview of conceptual movement Doing little to counteract the idea that conceptual art is a tough sell at the best of times, this sample display of pieces from the collective body behind the Art & Language…

We Are All Ufo-nauts

10 Aug 20123 stars

Subtly curated exploration of the uncanny

The uncanny possibilities of everyday life thread through this group show at compact warehouse gallery Rhubaba, the manipulation of the real through artistic technique and judicious editing creating a sense of the playfully otherworldly. As the title…

Callum Innes: The Regent Bridge

10 Aug 20123 stars

Casting light on an Edinburgh landmark

Callum Innes’ first public art commission is easy to miss at certain times of day. Using a simple strip of lights along the length of each pavement under the Regent Bridge, at night Innes’ installation lights up the walls above and casts eerie light and…

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Susan Philipsz: Timeline

9 Aug 20125 stars

Other-worldly chorale from Turner Prize winner

It only takes a few seconds, and the lunchtime Calton Hill day-trippers may not even register the three-note female vocal harmony emanating from Nelson’s monument, and which segues into the faint sound of a cannon being fired for the One O’Clock Gun. In…

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. - The Black Spot

9 Aug 20123 stars

Energetic and honest response to great works of literature

The works by Tim Rollins and K.O.S. in The Black Spot are every bit as powerful as the story behind them; Rollins, working as a teacher in the Bronx in the 80s, developed a collaborative and responsive strategy for making art with his disadvantaged…

Carolee Schneemann: Remains to be Seen

9 Aug 20124 stars

Fascinating retrospective from the iconic artist

Torn-up black-and-white images of a woman taken almost half a century ago are laid out on the floor in criss-crossing strips, as multiples of the woman’s face stare out. This is Carolee Schneemann, performance artist, avant-provocateur and feminist…

Jannis Kounellis

8 Aug 20124 stars

An eerie, uneasy sculpture show from the Arte Povera figurehead

As part of Tate’s Artist Rooms touring collection, Tramway presents this exhibition of old and new works by Jannis Kounellis. As one of the most influential figures of the 1960s movement, Arte Povera, or poor art, Kounellis uses installations of…

The Blind

7 Aug 20124 stars

Stunningly powerful outdoors multimedia spectacle

Krakow-based KTO Theatre pulls off a rare feat in combining stunning visual effects with a potent emotional impact in its gripping, wordless show The Blind. Whether through pounding music, imagery that’s by turns shocking and poignantly beautiful, or…

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Still Life: An Audience With Henrietta Moraes

7 Aug 20123 stars

Immersive monologue-cum-life-drawing-class

It’s pretty disconcerting being addressed by a naked, middle-aged woman, but you soon get used to it. And when she invites you to draw her body, you might feel self-conscious at first – but as writer and actor Sue MacLaine’s life drawing-cum-monologue…

Watch it!

7 Aug 20123 stars

Small-screen addiction writ large with dance, theatre and visual trickery

Watching too much television is bad for you. This is not a new piece of information, the psychology behind why has been well documented. But if people only created shows about new subject matters, there’d be a lot of empty stages, so we can’t really…

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Twilight Remembers

6 Aug 20125 stars

Outstanding overview of work by a remarkable artist

Poet, artist, avant-gardener; the late Ian Hamilton Finlay is best known for Little Sparta, the Pentlands garden he created with his wife, Sue. From this remarkable realm, populated by Greek gods, French revolutionaries, pastoral images and military…

Rachel Mayeri: Primate Cinema - Apes as Family

6 Aug 20123 stars

Dual screen video installation fails to create monkey magic

Los Angeles-based visual artist Rachel Mayeri’s anthropomorphic study of entertainment created for simians, a series entitled Primate Cinema, is perhaps best appreciated for its conceptual design, one of those off the wall ‘somebody had to do it’ ideas…

Dieter Roth: Diaries

6 Aug 20123 stars

Moving and sensitive, if frustrating, insight into Roth’s final days

A wall full of flickering video screens dominates the downstairs space of the Fruitmarket Gallery, labelled and ordered like surveillance monitors. Roth filmed ‘Solo Scenes’ on cameras that he positioned in the most personal spaces of his home and…