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Neil Cooper

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Tim Hecker / Wounded Knee / Matthew Collings, Pilrig, St Paul's Church, Edinburgh, Sat 19 May 2012

Tim Hecker / Wounded Knee / Matthew Collings

Pilrig St Paul's Church, Edinburgh - Sat 19 May 2012

(5 stars)23 May 2012

Anyone au fait with Sacred Music, BBC 4's two-series trawl through the history of choral worship, from plainchant to polyphony and beyond, will be as versed in the integral relationship between music and church architecture as they are with presenter…

Scott Myles: This Production

Scott Myles: This Production

Dundee artist and former skater reclaims DCA building’s interior

(4 stars)23 May 2012

It makes sense that the site of DCA used to be Scott Myles’ playground. Back then he was a skater boy and it was a bricks-and-mortar garage re-imagined as the sort of makeshift skate-park for local heroes and future high-flyers, which, under the…

Paul Thek: If you don’t like this book you don’t like me

Paul Thek: If you don’t like this book you don’t like me

Candid close-up of Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor

(3 stars)23 May 2012

‘I will now call to mind our past foulness and the carnal corruptions of my soul’ goes one missive culled from the now opened pages of almost a hundred notebooks left behind by Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor Thek, which came to light following his…

Jeremy Deller: Sacrilege

Jeremy Deller: Sacrilege

Stonehenge reimagined as a bouncy castle celebrates creative power of play

(5 stars)25 Apr 2012

If you’re feeling down in the dumps, there are few things more rejuvenating than jumping up and down like an idiot for a few minutes. If you can do so without bursting out laughing like an even bigger loon, chances are you’re dead. As a child of the…

Folkert De Jong: The Immortals

Folkert De Jong: The Immortals

Dutch artist references Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Margaret MacDonald Mackintosh

(4 stars)25 Apr 2012

A gaudily attired couple sit astride some scaffolding watching the debris-ridden legacy of the best minds of their generation. Or at least that’s the sense you get of Dutch artist Folkert De Jong’s site-specific sculptural intervention, which looks to…

Teresa Margolles

Teresa Margolles

Photographic archive of the now decaying Mexican border town

(4 stars)25 Apr 2012

Life’s a riot in Teresa Margolles’ work for Glasgow Sculpture Studios’ new space in Glasgow’s old whisky bond building, which sources a photographic archive of the now decaying Mexican border town of Ciudad Juarez alongside a new piece mined from…

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary

Valuable retrospective of the Whysman's work

(4 stars)28 Mar 2012

Environmental art may be all the rage these days, but, as with the soon to be mothballed Collins Gallery, George Wyllie was way ahead of the curve. While best known for huge public spectacles The Straw Locomotive and The Paper Boat, as well as a…

Emory Douglas - Creator of iconic imagery behind Black Panther Party

Emory Douglas - Creator of iconic imagery behind Black Panther Party

GI show from American Black Power movement linchpin

26 Mar 2012

‘In Revolution one wins, or one dies.’ When this slogan appeared aloft Emory Douglas’ image of a couple of beret-clad African-American guerrillas on a big-screen back-drop at major concert halls around the world, it was a far cry from the roots of…

Jane and Louise Wilson

Jane and Louise Wilson

Major new film installation of surveillance-related work

(4 stars)27 Feb 2012

Jane and Louise Wilson are no strangers to going behind closed doors. In ‘Face Scripting – What Did the Building See?’, a major new film installation that forms the centrepiece of this body of surveillance-related work, they cast themselves as…

Luke Fowler (with Toshiya Tsunoda and John Haynes)

Luke Fowler (with Toshiya Tsunoda and John Haynes)

Film installation references RD Laing

(4 stars)17 Feb 2012

‘We are actors in a play... whose plot we don’t know... and whose end I dare not imagine.’ These words, delivered by iconoclastic Glasgow-born ‘anti-psychiatrist’ RD Laing, not only form the opening gambit of ‘All Divided Selves’, Luke Fowler’s latest…

Steve Strange and the Detroit Starrzz, Citrus Club, Edinburgh, Fri 3 Feb 2012

Steve Strange and the Detroit Starrzz - Citrus Club, Edinburgh, Fri 3 Feb 2012

Disappointing gig from the New Romantic

(2 stars)8 Feb 2012

When 80s tribute band, and tonight's support act Party Fears Three dedicate their bombastically unsubtle cover of David Bowie's 'Ashes To Ashes' to Steve Strange,…

Raydale Dower - Cryptic Nights at CCA, Glasgow, Thu 2 Feb 2012

Raydale Dower - Cryptic Nights at CCA, Glasgow, Thu 2 Feb 2012

Experimental but playful sound installation

(3 stars)8 Feb 2012

The title of Raydale Dower's new 'spatial sound composition' speaks volumes about the former Uncle John & Whitelock bassist and current Tut Vu Vu clarinettist and sonic architect's methodology.…

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Ex-Banshees bassist delivers brooding live score to 1930s horror classic

(3 stars)1 Feb 2012

The man with the flowing white hair walks towards a small table and chair to one side of the Cameo’s big screen. Sporting a long black winter coat and carrying a glass of red wine, the man looks as if he’s stepped in from another, altogether darker age…

Allan Sekula: Ship of Fools

Allan Sekula: Ship of Fools

Large-scale images explore shipping industry’s role in exploitation of labour

(4 stars)1 Feb 2012

Now that capitalism is a sinking ship with assorted captains scrambling for the lifeboats, Allan Sekula’s ongoing photographic exploration of globalisation in motion is the perfect metaphor for a world all at sea. This most recent series by the…

Michael Nyman - Michael Nyman

Michael Nyman - Michael Nyman

Handsomely packaged re-release of early scores by minimalist composer

(4 stars)1 Feb 2012

(MN Records) Long before his soundtrack for Jane Campion’s The Piano, Michael Nyman’s very English form of baroque minimalism had impeccable art school credentials. Following his debut on Brian Eno’s Obscure label, this 1981 follow-up five years…

Space rock pioneer Silver Apples set for Glasgow Music and Film Festival.

GFF 2012 - Silver Apples set for Glasgow Music and Film Festival

Live set from the cult 60s space rock pioneers

27 Jan 2012

When Simeon Coxe III took a 1940s vintage oscillator onstage with him to liven up the psych-rock band he fronted, sparks flew to the extent that half the band left, and, with only drummer Danny Taylor in tow, Silver Apples were born. With their name…

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

Stunning exhibition of post-punk music photography

(5 stars)19 Dec 2011

Harry Papadopoulos is the great unsung documenter of post-punk, who, between 1978 and 1984, captured a crucial era in pop history in all its geeky glory. Having started out taking snaps for Bobby Bluebell’s fanzine, The Ten Commandments, and orbiting…

Alasdair Gray: City Recorder

Andrew Kerr – So Ensconced

Over 70 new paintings in this debut solo exhibition from the Glasgow-based artist

(3 stars)19 Dec 2011

Absence makes the heart grow fonder in Andrew Kerr’s first major solo show in Scotland. Almost 70 new paintings discreetly dominate both floors, only interrupted by the odd smattering of drawings or sculptural intervention. Most of the mainly…

The Hot 100 2011 - 7: Martin Boyce on winning the Turner Prize

The Hot 100 2011 - No. 7: Martin Boyce on winning the Turner Prize

The Glasgow artist on Glasgow School of Art, fame and the future

16 Dec 2011

Unlike his work, Martin Boyce doesn’t appear to have any angles. Two days before scooping the 2011 Turner Prize for A Library of Leaves, his 2010 show at Zurich’s Galerie Eva Presenhuber, the Hamilton-born, Glasgow School of Art-trained maker of…

Beholder

Beholder

Gloriously disparate jumbled-up wonderland of art for art’s sake that’s a joy to wander through

(4 stars)9 Dec 2011

‘Beauty’, according to that man David Hume, whose tercentenary year is almost up, ‘is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.’ So it goes in this bumper grab bag of some 50 works, each subjectively…

Torsten Lauschmann: Startle Reaction

Torsten Lauschmann: Startle Reaction

Explores tangled-up mess of interconnectivity

(4 stars)9 Dec 2011

You don’t immediately notice the quieter, more domestic pieces in Torsten Lauschmann’s biggest box of tricks to date. The subverted digital clock above the DCA box office and the wired-up chandelier that hangs in Gallery One, where two of Lauschmann’s…

Bill Wells' National Jazz Trio of Scotland to appear at Tracer Trails' Christmas Party

Bill Wells' National Jazz Trio of Scotland to appear at Tracer Trails' Christmas Party

Another engagement for the ubiquitous collaborator and jazzman

9 Dec 2011

The National Jazz Trio of Scotland has never really been a trio. Nor has Bill Wells’ cheekily-monickered combo ever played jazz in the conventional sense. With a first album of original material – the waggishly christened Standards Volume Two…

Fordell Research Unit - The Illusion of Movement

Fordell Research Unit - The Illusion of Movement

Edinburgh noise auteurs' exercise in metal machine minimalism

(3 stars)7 Dec 2011

(At War With False Noise/Braw Music) Following the textured nuances of his Pjorn 72 label’s Songs For Dying compilation, Edinburgh noise auteur Fraser Burnett joins forces with Muscletusk’s Grant Smith for a relentless exercise in metal machine…

FareWell Poetry / Matthew Collings / Hiva Oa / Opul, The Third Door, Edinburgh, Mon 14 Nov

FareWell Poetry / Matthew Collings / Hiva Oa / Opul, The Third Door, Edinburgh, Mon 14 Nov

Carefully crafted multi-media, poetry-meets-noise and guitar assaults

(4 stars)18 Nov 2011

Salsa class is cancelled tonight, according to the blackboard outside what used to be after-hours hippy student dive Medina, but which now looks intent on filling the DIY boho gap that the Roxy Arthouse and The Forest once occupied so randomly. The…

Various artists - Songs For Dying

Various artists - Songs For Dying

Vibrant collection of tunes exploring noise genres from techno to metal

(4 stars)16 Nov 2011

(Pjorn 72) The local Noiserati and associates’ recent reclaiming of their techno and/or metal roots helped their clan avoid a nihilistic dead end. As this bumper fifteen track compendium of clings, clangs, sci-fi slapstick, sepulchral drones…

Bill Bollinger

Bill Bollinger

The contemporary of Bruce Nauman, Eva Hesse et al gets his own well-deserved retrospective

(4 stars)15 Nov 2011

Onscreen in black and white, a man is attempting to stand a log upright of its own volition. Time and again the man methodically lifts the log off the ground, moving it from horizontal to vertical before it topples as though felled with some invisible…

Twin Sister - Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, Thu Nov 9 2011

Twin Sister - Sneaky Pete's, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Nov 2011

Infectiously prettified melodies threaten to become dance-floor dream

(4 stars)15 Nov 2011

In her geek-girl specs and floppy Annie Hall hat, Twin Sister chanteuse Andrea Estella appears as quintessentially kooky a New Yorker as any afficionado of 1970s me-generation peak era Woody Allen movies could wish for. The check-shirted quartet of…

Rob St John - Weald

Rob St John - Weald

Forceful mix of melancholy and otherworldly rapture

(4 stars)10 Nov 2011

(Song, by Toad) Forget the much misused ‘F-word’. Rob St John is miles better than that, and putting a full electric band behind his whey-faced Lancastrian intonations has put muscle and guts on his musings. Yet for all the low-key chorales…

Viv Albertine - Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Saturday 5 Nov

Viv Albertine - Henry’s Cellar Bar, Edinburgh, Saturday 5 Nov

Musically and emotionally raw 'secret' show from former Slits guitarist

(4 stars)8 Nov 2011

“Penis!” Former Slits guitarist Viv Albertine may only be checking her sound levels, but her one word opening gambit sets out her store for the artistic splurge that’s to follow. Within seconds Albertine is relating how she thinks about sex all…

The Writing On Your Wall

The Writing On Your Wall

Rob Tufnell-curated group show chronicling the history of radical print

(4 stars)28 Oct 2011

When Jeremy Deller put Rupert Murdoch’s walnut face on a sky-blue ‘Vote Conservative’ poster to raise funds for the Labour Party, it looked like satire. Given the ongoing phone-hacking saga, it now feels like prophecy. The ‘Murdoch Doesn’t Give A XXX…

Minimal: Glass at 75 - Programme highlights

Minimal: Glass at 75 - Programme highlights

Glasgow festival features, Scottish Ensemble, Bang On A Can and composer himself

19 Oct 2011

How fragile is Glass? And how shattering? Audiences have had plenty of time of late to ponder the cause and effect of veteran New York composer Philip Glass’ considerable body of work. Glass himself appeared with his Ensemble to perform the dizzying…

Koreless - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 9 Oct 2011

Koreless - Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, Sun 9 Oct 2011

The youthful, bright-eyed dubstepper takes centre-stage at Sneaky's

(4 stars)19 Oct 2011

Lewis Roberts may only be just about old enough to attend a club, but judging by this appearance he certainly understands what’s required to keep the customers satisfied. Still in his teens, this Glasgow-based Welshman has patented a form of lazy…

John Foxx & The Maths - Interplay

John Foxx & The Maths - Interplay

Cold synth masterpiece from the electro-pop pioneer

(4 stars)12 Oct 2011

(Metamatic Records) Now a real-life silver Foxx, the pushing-60 electro-pop/clash pioneer and former vocalist with Ultravox before Midge Ure made them rubbish might just have found his time. This retro-future compendium of detached, dystopian…

The Wild Swans - The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years

The Wild Swans - The Coldest Winter For A Hundred Years

Paul Simpson’s band of reignited pop classicists plus guests

(4 stars)10 Aug 2011

(Occultation) After 30 years of hurt, Paul Simpson’s band of reignited pop classicists are on a mission. Featuring a supergroup of musical crusaders recruited from the ranks of Echo and the Bunnymen, Spiritualised and Brian Jonestown Massacre, this…

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it

(3 stars)5 Aug 2011

Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Sparkling post-industrial dance on gleaming surfaces

(4 stars)3 Aug 2011

Inverleith House has long carved a niche for itself as a champion of late 20th century American icons, and for the gallery’s British Art Show contribution has gathered up a grab-bag of 37 works made between 1982 and 1998 by Abstract Expressionism’s…

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

(3 stars)3 Aug 2011

There’s something of an inky-fingered Dürer overload in the ‘burgh just now. Following on from Dürer’s Fame over at the National Galleries, this 16th century compendium of more than 100 works uses his output as a springboard for the burgeoning of…

The Pineapple Chunks - A Dog Walked In

The Pineapple Chunks - A Dog Walked In

Gloriously messy pop rock from Edinburgh scuzz merchants

(4 stars)3 Aug 2011

(self-released) Smoother than they once were, Edinburgh’s premier lo-fi power-popsters nervertheless come on like some unreconstructed missing link between Swell Maps and Pavement, their urgently scuzzed-up melodies bouncing along with an unashamed…

Dürer’s Fame

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

(4 stars)21 Jul 2011

German handball star Pascal Hens gazes out from a black-and-white poster, his torso naked, gaze serious, his pose one of self-deification. This is enhanced further by a tattoo on his stomach of two disembodied hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow

Pynchon-inspired group show explores different representations of colour

(4 stars)21 Jul 2011

The acid house smiley face on the sunny yellow ball of Peter Liversidge’s shelf-load of single-hued detritus speaks volumes about this colour-focused group show of eight artists that takes its title from Thomas Pynchon’s baroque noir. It begins with a…

Fake Eyelashes - A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese

Fake Eyelashes - A Little Bit of Bread and No Cheese

Melancholic laidback affair fronted by Katy Lironi

(4 stars)13 Jul 2011

(Creeping Bent) Katy Lironi’s pedigree as a chanteuse dates back to C-86 swoonsters Fizzbombs followed by a stint fronting bubblegum stompers The Secret Goldfish. This latest vehicle for Ms L’s sublime cooing is an infinitely more laidback affair.

The Blue Aeroplanes - Anti Gravity

The Blue Aeroplanes - Anti Gravity

Dense art-rock epic chiming with wisdom and experience

(4 stars)13 Jul 2011

(Art Star/Albino Two) Long before REM lost their edge, Bristol’s Blue Aeroplanes were their English counterparts, ploughing an urgent furrow of spikily jangular folk-rock with multiple guitars zinging about every which way to backdrop lead auteur…

Qatsi trilogy with Philip Glass live score Edinburgh International Festival 2011

Qatsi trilogy with Philip Glass live score highlight of Edinburgh International Festival

EIF 2011 screening of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi

5 Jul 2011

One of the earliest Edinburgh screenings of Koyaanisqatsi, the first of Godfrey Reggio’s remarkable trilogy of films scored by minimalist composer Philip Glass, was in an old porn cinema opposite what is now the Festival Theatre, then a bingo hall.

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read Thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Mixed media from Glasgow and Berlin

(4 stars)23 Jun 2011

If the world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends (‘laa-la-laaa-la’), as a zenned-out Hal David once wrote to a Burt Bacharach choon, then both Nina Rhode and Cara Tolmie’s worlds seem to be on a permanent loop in these…

Wounded Knee - Anicca

Wounded Knee - Anicca

Drew Wright’s ongoing adventure in ethno-celtic vocal loops

(4 stars)21 Jun 2011

(Krapp Tapes) This latest excursion in Drew Wright’s ongoing adventure in ethno-celtic vocal loops marries two extended pieces back-to-back on a cassette that comes in a plain brown, hand-stamped envelope and wrapped in an offcut of Harris…

Thomas Houseago: The Beat of the Show

Thomas Houseago: The Beat of the Show

Sculptures that 'suggest a society getting back to basics'

(4 stars)14 Jun 2011

The relationship between the title of the first museum-based show by Leeds-born sculptor Houseago and the work itself may not be immediately apparent. It’s taken from Transmission, the urgent post-punk anthem released in 1979 by Joy Division, who…

The Wild Swans - Captain's Rest, Glasgow, Tue 7 Jun, 2011

The Wild Swans - Captain's Rest, Glasgow, Tue 7 Jun, 2011

Reignited version of iconic Liverpool post-punk group

14 Jun 2011

Heroism comes in many forms, but Paul Simpson's ongoing awfully big adventure fronting his reconstituted, reconfigured and on this showing on the first date of a short UK tour thoroughly reignited Wild Swans nom de plume is a sublime experience that…

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Nina Rhode: Friendly Fire / Cara Tolmie: Read thou Art And Read Thou Shalt Remain

Two art films from a Berliner and a Glasweigan

(4 stars)14 Jun 2011

If the world is a circle without a beginning and nobody knows where it really ends (‘laa-la-laaa-la’), as a zenned-out Hal David once wrote to a Burt Bacharach choon, then both Nina Rhode and Cara Tolmie’s worlds seem to be on a permanent loop in these…

White Heath - Take No Thought For Tomorrow

White Heath - Take No Thought For Tomorrow

Edinburgh five-piece pop-rock collection latest fruits from Stow College

(3 stars)14 Jun 2011

(Electric Honey) The latest graduate of Stow College’s music industry course’s in-house record label is this Edinburgh five-piece’s collection of epic soundtracks to vocalist Sean Watson’s heartfelt lyrical concerns. Delivered in an opaque vocal…

In the wake of the 2011 Turner Prize nominations and ahead of the degree show season, we look at the legacy of the ECA and GSA

The legacy of Scottish arts institutions ECA and GSA

An examination as degree shows and 2011 Turner Prize approach

27 May 2011

When David Shrigley spoke in 2010 about how the arts institutions in Glasgow were crucial to his creative development, he may have been bemoaning the impending threat of arts cuts, but his intervention nonetheless speaks volumes about where art…

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