Spin members were invited to an exclusive tour organised by Spin, the Contemporary Art Society and their associates, Blood, to address the wider context of collecting for institutions. The tour coincided with the Contemporary Art Society’s ShowCASe exhibition featuring over 100 works which have been acquired on behalf of the CAS in the last five years, ready for donation to galleries and museums across the country. On show at the City Art Centre and the Talbot Rice, this was the only complete showing of this group of works before it was dispersed to new homes throughout the UK.
FIELDTRIP! included a tour of the contemporary art collection in the new Scottish Parliament, in the company of two parliamentarians involved in commissioning work, Eric Kinsey and Dr John Gibbon, and art critic Moira Jeffrey, whose documentary about the process was aired on television recently. This was followed by a visit to ShowCASe with CAS curator Ceri Lewis and then attendance at the ‘ShowCASing Craft’ talk with Amanda Game, craft curator at the Scottish Gallery.
Finally, there was an exclusive screening of the National Galleries of Scotland’s first video commission, a work by Daniel Warren. Part two of the tour introduced some of Edinburgh’s cutting-edge spaces, together with curators and artists that drive the contemporary art scene in Edinburgh. These included Inverleith House, Ingleby Gallery, Collective Gallery and the Embassy Gallery.
