26 April 2018
For the last 15 years, Scotland + Venice has been providing artists based in Scotland with a valuable platform to showcase their work on the international stage at one of the world’s most prestigious visual arts festivals, the Venice Biennale. Previous artists have included Graham Fagen, Karla Black and Martin Boyce.
For the 57th edition of the Venice Biennale in 2017, the selected artist was Rachel Maclean. A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, Maclean makes films using green screen technology to create outlandish characters and fantasy worlds in which she explores politics, society and identity. Spite Your Face was written when Donald Trump had just won the Presidential election and in the aftermath of the EU Referendum and explores, amongst other things, notions of truth. The basis of the narrative in which Maclean plays all the parts, is the classic Italian folktale, The Adventures of Pinocchio.
This is the UK premiere the work which was originally commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery ad Alchemy Film and Arts for Scotland + Venice. We will be joined by Stuart Fallon, Assistant Curator at the Gallery who worked closely on the project.
24 November 2016
For the final Spin event of 2016, we will be heading to the Number Shop, an artist-run studio and gallery space founded in 2014. We will be getting a sneak preview of Eden Hawkins’ photography exhibition which officially opens the day after our visit. Eden will join us to discuss her work.
Eden studied photography at Edinburgh College of Art (eca), graduating in June 2016. For her degree show she exhibited several large format photographs featuring staged tableaux, lit like commercial images, playfully dramatising everyday objects. These pieces are now part of the University Art Collection since Eden won the eca Degree Show Purchase Prize along with only eight other students. Alongside this, Eden is one of two artists who have been given the Number Shop’s new eca Grad Award, offering her the opportunity to produce work especially for the project space at the gallery.
28 May 2015
This month we will be visiting the studio of Scottish visual artist Stephanie Mann.
Stephanie studied Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art and completed her MFA in Contemporary Art Practice there in 2013. Since 2010 she has regularly collaborated with fellow ECA Sculpture graduate Calvin Laing. Her practice now includes installation, lens-based media and performance.
She was awarded the John Kinross Scholarship in Florence by the Royal Scottish Academy in 2013 and the John Watson Prize in 2014. In April 2015 she exhibited Linking, Linking Arms at The Bothy on the lawn at Modern One and is currently the RSA Residency at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop (ESW).
Spin members may remember her Inherit this Mango solo exhibition from our last visit to Summerhall in May 2014 as well as the collaborative works she made with Laing (including the hula-hoop piece!) from our visit to his New Work Scotland exhibition Collective Gallery (at their former site on Cockburn Street) back in February 2013.
Stephanie will be talking to us talk about her recent Bothy show, some of the works in her studio and future projects.
26 February 2015
Our February event will be Spin’s first visit to a new visual art space in the city, The Number Shop Gallery and Studios.
Gallery Director, Alistair Grant will take us on a tour of the studios and preview emerging artist Natasha Russell’s exhibition of new work which will open the following night. Russell is an Edinburgh-based painter and illustrator. She is a recent graduate of Edinburgh College of Art and will join us on the night for the discussion.
Natasha is interested in the strange and imbalanced relationships between humans and the rest of nature. Night Smell is a body of recent work in printmaking and drawing exploring night time. Here she has woven together folklore and science, exploring the tug of war between our desire to become more removed from the natural world while peering ever closer.
The Number Shop studios provide artists with a defined personal space, as well as shared floor space in which to work, echoing the art school studio model. Since its opening, the TNS has hosted a program of exhibitions in the Project Space as well as throughout the shared studio spaces.
28 February 2013 at 6pm
In our February 2013 Spin event, we will be visiting the New Work Scotland Programme: Conor Kelly and Calvin Laing exhibition at the Collective Gallery. Kate Gray, Director of the Collective Gallery, will join us in discussing the two artists selected for the exhibition, the New Work Scotland programme and the plans for the gallery’s move to Calton Hill in later this year.
New Work Scotland is a Collective initiative recognised as giving artists based in Scotland their first significant visual art project or commission. Through an annual open application, NWSP identifies and supports some of the most promising new practitioners working in the visual arts in Scotland, providing them with the opportunity to make new work and bring it to the attention of a wider public.
Conor Kelly graduated in 2008 from the MFA course at Glasgow School of Art and for this exhibition he has produced new series of paintings and sculptures. As part of his exhibition, Kelly will also present a ‘ready-made’ sculpture; La Tour de Travail (The Tower of Labour), named after Rodin’s ornate maquette for a monumental folly to labour.
Calvin Laing graduated with BA (Hons) in sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art in 2011. He works predominantly in video and sculpture with Laing himself, present in it. In his work Calvin is represented as the protagonist, playing an exaggerated and extended, alter-ego version of himself. He carries out performances in the public realm and the interaction with the public, often happening off camera, is an important part of the process, allowing the work to be manipulated and driven by people’s interjections.
29 March 2012 at 6pm
Edinburgh College of Art’s spectacular Sculpture Court is the venue for our March visit to see a group show by the 2nd and 3rd year sculpture students.
Edinburgh College of Art has a strong international standing as one of the most successful art colleges in Europe and currently has 1,700 students from all over the world. Based near the Grassmarket in the historic Old Town, the college can trace its origins back to 1760 when it was first established as the Academy of Arts by the Trustees of the Board of Fisheries and Manufactures.
The sculpture department at the College has a longstanding reputation with an ethos based on developing student’s spatial, material and critical awareness through a range of approaches pertinent to the expanded field of sculpture. Students are encouraged to interrogate and challenge traditional and experimental methods of making and thinking whilst mastering key practical skills in metal, wood and casting.
This event will be a space to consider the constantly evolving landscape of contemporary sculpture and a chance for members to discuss the ideas and methods behind each students work with the Head of Sculpture, David Moore. David’s work is widely exhibited nationally and internationally. Recent public art commissions have included works produced in collaboration with artist Kate Davis for the Docklands Light Railway, Langdon Park, London and ‘The Cut’ screened at the Arnolfini Gallery in Bristol.
27 January 2011 at 6pm
This month we will be visiting the artist-run gallery space Rhubaba to see the work of Hannah James.
Rhubaba was set up by recent graduates from Edinburgh College of Art in 2009, and over the course of the year, ran a curatorial project, taking on empty shop spaces in Edinburgh or working with host galleries elsewhere in Glasgow and Bristol. In 2010, the space relocated to a warehouse space in Leith allowing Rhubaba to expand and provide private workspace for 14 artists and create a project space. Rhubaba promote themselves as propagating and practicing a DIY approach to art production and dissemination with an aim to provide a platform for emerging practices in contemporary art.
For this solo exhibition Hannah James will be making and installing work in response to Rhubaba’s project space. One point of reference within James’ work comes from the mise-en-scene, which encompasses all components staged within a space and the manner with which they are composed. The strength in the James’ sculptures comes from the reliance on the viewer to activate them so we look forward to you joining us in our exploration of this work.
Also joining us in discussion will be Rhubaba directors and practicing artists Tom Nolan, Catherine Payton and Frances Stacey.
27 July 2006 at 6pm
Uniting two artists in a joint show and finding common ground between them can be simple if both are recent Scottish graduates. Gemma Louise Stephenson and Mark Doyle completed their degrees in 2005, the former at Duncan of Jordanstone in Dundee, and the latter at Edinburgh College of Art.
At first glance, other than their academic achievements, there is little to connect both practitioners, but we will look a little deeper into the realms of these young minds at our next Spin event.
Think of Galileos Acceleration Hypothesis, supremely executed by Rosencrantz (or was it Guildenstern) who proves an obvious puzzle in life, demonstrating the different rates at which objects fall – an iron ball plummets to the floor while the feather floats to the ground.
We can explore this idea, and twist its irony, with paper aeroplanes made from lead and a giant dense black weather balloon which is filled with air, as well as with a series of beautifully executed drawings, paintings and works in resin.
Spin members will also have the opportunity to meet the Director of the gallery, Amber Roome, who will provide us with further insights into these two inspiring individuals.
23 June 2006 at 6pm
Spin‘s very own co-ordinator, Suzanne Dunn, has obtained the master keys to open up the expansive Georgian studios on her home turf of Edinburgh College of Art.
This is a one-off opportunity for Spin members to see the highlights of this year’s fine art degree show behind closed doors. This tour will provide a real insight into the work of emerging artists, and there will also be a chance to meet some of the artists.
Tickets cost £15 (includes a light buffet and drinks).
28 January 2005
This month, we will be visiting the exhibition, Frankie and Other Stories at the Embassy Gallery.
Glasgow artist Ronnie Heeps is not easy to describe or pin down. He is a horror/dream/fairy storyteller for the electronic age. His paintings are psychedelic and psychological, surreal and satirical. The ‘airbrush’ style and palette of some of Ronnie’s paintings might suggest a naive mysticism, but wisdom and complexity rise to the surface the longer you look.
Indeed you may have seen two of his beautiful (and spooky) Ghost Paintings at the Collective Gallery (one in the Haunted Swing exhibition and one in the Birthday Party) – the forms of Margaret Thatcher and Lady Agnew gradually appear in what one initially takes to be a white monochrome. The Frankie of the exhibition title is Ronnie’s name for Frankenstein’s monster. In his first solo show for three years, Ronnie focuses on the isolation and frustration of a person/monster who can find no place in the society that created him.
Also joining us to ask Ronnie questions, will be Dr Neil Mulholland, who is Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Edinburgh College of Art, a busy curator and a prolific writer. Our hosts are Jenny Hogarth and the other directors who established the Embassy Gallery last year.
Individually, they are all talented young artists and as a group they deliver the professional development programme for students (and public) at ECA. They have already organised three performance and video evenings as well as touring group shows to Glasgow and Manchester. This is the first time, since the Collective opened 20 years ago, that artists have set up such an ambitious venture in Edinburgh (they intend that Embassy, like the Collective, will continue and develop beyond their own tenure). Their potential has been recognised with funding from Scottish Arts Council, ECA Trustees and the young Scot award. Everyone is enjoying following their progress.
