Visual art, Kirstin Innes

The Hot 100 2011: 100-50

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

100: Gordon Ferris. Kilmarnock crime author makes good. The already packed Scottish crime writing field has finally found a bit of elbow room for another burgeoning talent. Joining the likes of Rankin, Brookmyre, McDermid and co is this Ayrshire-born…

Hot 100 2011 - No. 49 to 1

The definitive list of Scottish creative talent

The Hot 100 is the definitive list of Scottish creative talent. From fashion designers to performance artists, everyone who has made a sizeable splash in 2011 has a place in this countdown. It’s for people who’ve created a buzz, but it’s also about…

400 Women - Tamsyn Challenger interview

Edinburgh Art Festival 2011 show inspired by tragic events

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…

The rising stars from Glasgow School of Art’s textile department

New fashion talent emerging from Glasgow

Glasgow School of Art’s Newbery Tower is one of the highest points in the city: a grim, grey beacon to 1970s architecture. Its scheduled demolition this summer is set to change the city’s skyline dramatically, which is why for this year’s annual fashion…

Alternative Valentine's Day presents and ideas

Four unique and romantic ways to celebrate this year

Being a List reader you’ve had the infinite good taste to pick a partner who can’t be doing with the corny hearts, flowers and factory-line V-Day dining experience we’re sold as ‘romance’. All well and good, but how on earth do you celebrate February…

How seven key figures in Scottish culture have fared over 25 years

25 years of The List

Didn’t they do well? Scotland has more than its fair share of talent, finds Kirstin Innes, as she chronicles the highs and lows of some of our finest exports over 25 years, including Peter Capaldi, Carol Ann Duffy, Ian Rankin, Douglas Gordon, Tilda…

RM Hubbert and The Parsonage among highlights of Sonic Soak

Weekend festival of music and art in Govanhill Baths

From the echoing caverns of the now-disused Govanhill Baths, sound and art collective 85A have curated a weekend festival of music, installation, cinema and fancy dress: although there’s no water in the pool, patrons are expected to come in swimwear or…

Martin Creed: Ballet Work No 1020

Oh, do try harder, disgruntled of Sadler’s Wells

Three stars. That’s what Martin Creed’s getting, although I suspect he was aiming for one, and some outrage. Three stars because there are a couple of interesting dance moments, a few good laughs, and some of the musical numbers are quite good, although…

The Forest Café celebrates tenth birthday

Volunteer-run café is a true original in Edinburgh

The Forest Café’s tenth birthday, happening mostly on Saturday 14 August, but spreading its shambolic, joyous tentacles throughout the rest of the month, is one of those true causes for celebration. That an entirely volunteer-run, hippy-hearted…

Neighbourhoods, Watch! - Leith Festival Vs West End Festival

In the East corner, Edinburgh’s Leith Festival! In the West corner, Glasgow’s West End Festival! Kirstin Innes adjudicates the battle of the community fests.

Seafood theme to East Lothian’s 3 Harbours Arts Festival 2010

Kirstin Innes finds out why East Lothian’s 3 Harbours Arts Festival has a whole new fishy wing

Graffimenco combines live graffiti with flamenco

Like graffiti art? Course you do. Like flamenco dancing? Absolutely. Well, haven’t you been longing for somebody to put them together into one riotous burst of graffiti-splattered, passionate Spanish dance-art? No, we’re not entirely sure what the…

Best of a decade: Respectable in the Noughties

Much of the most powerful art produced in Scotland in the 1980s–1990s developed in angry reaction to the political situation and tapped into our radical, left-wing and egalitarian traditions – it’s no accident that the most popular works of that period…

Made in God's Image

Defending the GOMA exhibition that brings together the Bible and the LGBTI

Anthony Schrag looks a bit stressed out when we meet. It’s been a big couple of weeks for the Gallery of Modern Art’s artist in residence, for reasons you may well have heard of. Made in God’s Image, a community outreach exhibition he organised to…

Creativity vs Destruction: Stories of Iraqi Art

The closing event of this year’s excellently curated Reel Iraq festival, this exhibition explores not only major artworks coming out of Iraq, but also the tribulations and obstacles that artists from that country have to go through in order to create…

Fete accomplis - The West End Festival

The West End Festival, which has been going since 1996, is a community festival in the proper sense of the word, running free workshops and concerts, hosting events that involve local businesses and generally inviting residents to celebrate the various…

ECA's Fashion Show

Edinburgh College of Art’s annual fashion degree show has long been a key date in the calendar of fashion-forward ‘Burghers, who know that the innovative designs on display tend to transcend expectations for a student fashion show. ECA graduates have…

Place Project

The biggest difference between Edinburgh and Glasgow’s cultural scenes can be located right down at the grassroots. While Glasgow has a plethora of places like Mono, The Arches, CCA and the Art School – centralised hubs where emergent artists, musicians…

James Houston - Cryptic Nights

What happens to your average art school student in the six months after they graduate? A spell travelling? A job waiting tables to finance their next project? Probably not a flurry of media attention, more job offers than they know what to do with…

Scotland The Great - Homecoming

Four skinny boys stare up at a mountain. The mountain stares back at them. The hairiest one throws his arms out and roars: ‘Does it not make you proud to be Scottish?’; the prettiest one looks up from his vodka bottle, and hurls back bile. It’s been…

Underneath The Arches

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…

Garlands - Falkirk

What does the richest man in America in the early 20th Century have in common with the Cocteau Twins? Falkirk. Or more specifically, the area around Falkirk and Grangemouth, birthplace of Captain Robert Dollar, Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie. They…

Room with a view - Ingleby Gallery

Edinburgh International Art Festival

From much-missed nightclub space to the biggest commercial gallery outside of London, Kirstin Innes goes behind the scenes at the new Ingleby Gallery

Glasgow International Art Festival

‘What we’ve tried to do this year is suggest a loose theme of ‘public and private’, which runs through many of the curated shows,’ says Francis McKee, director of the biannual Glasgow International, talking me through the 70 plus exhibitions, public…

Arches Theatre Festival

‘Well, it’s kind of hard to describe. I’m sorry, I just have to meet the person whose party this is... Hello! I’m back. There are two dressing rooms which are used for musicians, and there’s a room next to it with washing machines in it, and then…