Neil Cooper

Tim Hecker / Wounded Knee / Matthew Collings

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

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…

Peter Blake: Venice

Poptabulous exhibition of screenprints inspired by La Dominante

21 Jul 2009

When Art went POP!, Peter Blake defined a very British view of how the 60s swung. Collaging trash iconography with pop star royalty, all involved were bestowed with mutually acquired cult credibility. Forty-odd years on from Sergeant Pepper, the…

Chicks on Speed: Don’t Art, Fashion, Music

16 Jun 2010

‘CREATE UNDER ALL DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES’ is one of the slogans on the large-scale banners that adorn the walls of globe-spanning riot grrrl art provocateurs Chicks on Speed’s first major UK solo show. A large-scale projection of ‘Fashion Archive’, a…

Silviu Purcărete’s 'Faust'

The veteran Romanian director tackles Goethe

13 Jul 2009

Silviu Purcărete doesn’t do things by halves. Last time the veteran Romanian director was in Edinburgh was almost two decades ago with a version of Ubu Rex. The production was a massive take on Alfred Jarry’s absurdist classic. Since then he brought a…

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…

Gerhard Richter

Man for all seasons

30 Oct 2008

When Sonic Youth toured their 1988 Daydream Nation album in 2007 on the back of the same year's two-CD deluxe edition of what had originally been the New York art rock pioneers' final independent release, the original LP cover art was probably the last…

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…

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

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

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…

Porgy and Bess takes centre stage at Edinburgh International Festival

Opéra de Lyon's production of Gershwins' crossover classic

16 Jul 2010

As operas go, it’s fair to say that Porgy and Bess blew in like a hurricane. When George and Ira Gershwin’s self-styled ‘American folk opera’ featuring a libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward appeared on the New York stage in 1935, its cast of…

50th Anniversary: Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

9 Dec 2009

As an exhibition celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art gets underway Neil Cooper delves into the institution’s colourful history As labours of love go setting up the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in…

Nashashibi and Skaer - On a different plane

A film-based collaboration inspired by the painting of Paul Nash

13 Jul 2009

A shared belief in experimentation brought the creative talents of Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer together. Neil Cooper talks to them about the wartime painting which has inspired their new filmed collaboration

Scott Myles: This Production

Dundee artist and former skater reclaims DCA building’s interior

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

Candid close-up of Brooklyn-born painter and sculptor

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…

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…

What Presence! – The Rock Photography of Harry Papadopoulos

Stunning exhibition of post-punk music photography

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…

The Writing On Your Wall

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

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

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…

Davy Henderson - three albums that bridge the pop/art matrix

The Sexual Objects - Cucumber, The Nectarine No. 9 - Saint Jack, Win - Freaky Trigger

7 Sep 2010

The Sexual Objects - Cucumber (Aktion und Spass) The Nectarine No. 9 - Saint Jack (We Can Still Picnic) Win - Freaky Trigger (RPM) From Fire Engines onwards, Davy Henderson has bridged the pop/art matrix with singularly maverick aplomb. The…

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…

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

Disappointing gig from the New Romantic

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,…

Andrew Kerr – So Ensconced

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

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…

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

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

Pynchon-inspired group show explores different representations of colour

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…

British Art Show 2011 - Karla Black interview

Scottish artist with work at BAS7 and the upcoming Venice Biennale

11 May 2011

Representing a cross-section of the best of the nation's contemporary artists (including a sizeable chunk of Scottish talent), the British Art Show is touring to Glasgow for the first time in 21 years. Neil Cooper talks to Karla Black whose work will…

Fovea Hex - Here Is Where We Used To Sing

10 May 2011

(Janet Records) The hidden past of Fovea Hex vocalist and focal point Clodagh Simonds is almost as colourful as her present on this beguilingly mysterious album of new songs supported by an ensemble – neither the words 'band' nor 'group' lend the…