Visual art, Neil Cooper

Bronwen Sleigh: Construct

An architecture-based show that aims to capture a futuristic purity that goes beyond functionality

At first glance, this body of 38 architecture-based prints and 3D constructions looks like blueprints for some Russian Constructivist science-fiction futurescape, built for a Tarkovsky film by way of a Ladybird book. Look closer beyond the…

Johanna Basford: Wonderlands

A retro-groovy, charmingly decorative array of faux Edwardiana

So Carnaby Street retro-groovy is the charmingly decorative array of Johanna Basford's faux Edwardiana inspired images that you can all but hear a wash of psychedelic harpsichords. To find a way into this first major show by the increasingly…

Ciara Phillips: And More

Canadian-born and Glasgow-based artist presents new collection of screenprints

X marks the spot in Inverleith House's latest show in which a contemporary artist responds to work in the RBG's archival holdings of botanical-based art. Arriving just in time for the sun to belatedly shine, and running alongside 'Nature Printed'…

Outwork by Stephen Sutcliffe

Ambitious new show from the Glasgow video artist

One only has to look at the names on the spines of the books projected on the two large side-screens that flank a central one in Stephen Sutcliffe's large-scale film installation to get where he's coming from. Philosopher Jacques Derrida, semiotician…

Mariana Castillo Deball - What we caught we threw away, what we didn't catch we kept

Works based on anthropological detritus from Mexican artist

Anthropological detritus forms the bulk of 'What we caught we threw away, what we didn't catch we kept', a new body of work by Mexican artist Deball, which was co-commissioned by Cove Park and the Chisenhale Gallery in London, where it transfers later…

William E Jones

Film works based on archive documentary footage from Los Angeles-based provocateur

Three film-works by this Los Angeles-based provocateur take notions of power drawn from archive documentary footage, then, by recontextualising each one via collaging, cut-ups and other treatments, liberates them from their authoritarian…

Rachel Mimiec: Plough

Show that blurs the boundaries between community and solo practice

When GoMa's soon to be outgoing associate artist Rachel Mimiec led workshops with children at the Red Road Family Centre Nursery, her own line of inquiry with blocks of colour led to 'Plough', a body of work in which pages from issues of National…

Jutta Koether - Seasons and Sacraments

Large-scale reimagining of Nicolas Poussin back catalogue

The back catalogue of 17th-century painter Nicolas Poussin isn’t the most obvious frame of reference for German iconoclast Jutta Koether, but when she was taken to see his The Seven Sacraments at the Scottish National Gallery, something clicked. The end…

Flickering Lights

Rachel Maclean cartoon pop-vid bravura a highlight of film and video show

`Up in the Lower Church Gallery end of Summerhall, three very different video works are in motion as part of this superb arts space’s latest exhibition programme. David Bellingham’s ‘An Object Revolving Around a Day / An Object Revolving Round Events…

From Death to Death and Other Small Tales

Astonishing archive of body-themed work including Sarah Lucas, Otto Dix and Matthew Barney

From the moment you step into the first corridor and meet an opening tease of Magritte, it’s hard not to be overwhelmed physically and mentally by this major mix-and-match collection of 20th and 21st century work. And that’s really how it should be for…

Massimo Bartolini: Studio Matters + 1

Large scale sculpture and miniatures from Italian artist

Like a moth to a flame, the habitual party-goer will always be drawn to Kraftwerkian big-city neon. So it goes in ‘La Strada di Sotto' (The Street Below), the toytown-style installation that maps out the whole of the Fruitmarket’s main downstairs room…

Zoe Beloff: A History of Dreams Remains to be Written

Two-part mixed media show examining Coney Island's psychogeography and Occupy Wall Street

Libido and revolution are not so strange bedfellows in New York-based Edinburgh expat Beloff’s first solo show in Scotland, in which imaginary worlds collide in two complementary takes on utopia. In ‘Dreamland’, Beloff mines the archive of the Coney…

Slovakian Master Printers

Group show highlighting the works of Karol Felix, Igor Benca, Robert Jancovic and Marian Komacek

There’s a muscular gloss to much of the work on show in this showcase of four Slovakian printmakers that forms part of an ongoing international exchange initiated by the Scottish Society of Artists. Much of this is to do with the mezzotint techniques by…

The York painter Harland Miller explores the art of fiction in Overcoming Optimism

Cock-snooking obscenities with darkly subversive intent

If the Obscene Publications Squad are on the case of this first solo exhibition in Scotland by a York-born painter with a name like a pulp fiction hack, rest easy. Miller’s monumental depictions of dog-eared Penguin book designs down the decades may…

Andy Hope 1930: When Dinosaurs Become Modernists

Investing trash aesthetic of golden age comic book iconography with a subverted mythology

Scary monsters and super-creeps abound in the Berlin-based artist formerly known as Andreas Hofer’s first UK museum exhibition, which features five new works among an epic 41 on show. Seen side by side, there are moments when they resemble an outsize…

Summerhall Art & Music exhibitions

Neil Cooper enjoys six shows exploring the relationships between sound and vision

The pathway from Johnny Cash to Bob Dylan is a tellingly symbolic one in the two most straightforward of six big shows exploring the relationships between sound and vision in very different ways. The images of these two icons of popular music may be a…

Audio art festival Sonica to showcase works by Luke Fowler, Claudia Molitor and Janek Schaefer

From Arika’s Kill Your Timid Notion to Glasgow International, sound and vision have become increasingly promiscuous bedfellows over the last decade. Throw in an increased sense of theatricality to sound-based art, and all the elements are in place for…

David Michalek: Figure Studies

Slo-mo studies of every-day movement make imperfection blur into beauty

There’s something heroic about David Michalek’s three-screen sequel of sorts to his similarly-styled ‘Slow Dancing’ triptych of larger-than-life slo-mo studies of dancers in motion, first seen in 2007. Where in that piece five blink-and-you’ll-miss-em…

What We Have Done, What We Are About to Do

A review of the CCA's Third Eye retrospective

Anyone who ever stepped into the wonderland that was the Third Eye Centre will know that, pre-Transmission/Tramway/Arches/Kinning Park/Summerhall, this holistic, slightly ramshackle Sauchiehall Street hub was pretty much the only avant-fun in town.

Garage

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…

Phenotype Genotype (phg)

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…

Susan Philipsz: Timeline

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…

Carolee Schneemann: Remains to be Seen

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…

Cheer Up! It’s Not the End of the World

Apocalypse images and tormented childhood dreams from Gordon Cheung, Damien Hirst and more

It’s coming. The end of the world, that is. Or at least that’s the case according to those who subscribe to the ancient Mayan theories of disaster-movie-style apocalypse, who reckon it will all be over by Christmas. As the title of this group show…

7x7th Street

Interactive sounds sculptures create a musical promised land

Seven and seven is, well, a very magic number indeed in Jean Pierre Muller's walk-through collaboration with musical icons including Robert Wyatt, Nile Rodgers, Archie Shepp and Terry Riley. Free-associating ideas based around the number seven (days a…