30 September 2010 at 6pm
This month, we will be discussing Martin Creed’s major exhibition of new work, Down Over Up. One of Britain’s most highly-regarded and popular artists, he is known for installations such as his 2001 Turner Prize work, No. 227, The Lights Going On and Off and in 2008, No. 850, in which volunteer runners sprinted across the Tate Britain gallery every 30 seconds.
Renowned for his straightforward approach to making art and his deft economy of means, Creed has produced sculptures, installations, drawings, films, performances, music and text, each of which has found its inspiration in the objects and activities of everyday life. Always in search of the essential nature of things, Creed uses the simplest materials to create a world in which reality appears transformed by conceptual rules, as well as by the unexpected breaking of those rules.
‘I want to make things. Im not sure why, but I think its got something to do with other people. I think I want to try to communicate with other people, because I want to say “hello”, because I want to express myself, and because I want to be loved.’ Martin Creed.
27 August 2009 at 6pm
Spin is taking part in the Edinburgh Art Festivals Art Late on Thursday 27 August from 6-9pm – a city-wide end of Festival party with gallery openings, tours, music, artists performances and live readings. We will be giving a tour of the highlights of this years festival and is one of three tours taking place on the night.
Art Late begins at 6pm at the Ingleby Gallery with a collaborative performance from musician Wounded Knee and dancer Ianthe Wright. Later, two contrasting tours will set out from the gallery leading people round the Festival offering different experiences of the exhibitions: The Giving Tour and the Blank Canvas Bike Tour.
Our Spin tour, led by Rosie Lesso, will set out from Talbot Rice Gallery at 6pm and is an introduction to exhibitions including Jane and Louise Wilson and Joseph Kosuth (Talbot Rice Gallery); Eva Hesse (Fruitmarket); Rough Cut Nation (Scottish National Portrait Gallery) and Lucy Skaer and Rosalind Nashashibi (doggerfisher).
To sign up for Art Late or to join one of the three tours (please note there are limited places), click on the link below to get your invite:
http://www.edinburghartfestival.com/09-festival-programme/events/art-late/
29 May 2008 at 6pm
We visit The Fruitmarket Gallery to see the first major solo exhibition of work by Lucy Skaer.
Skaer makes drawings, sculptures and films, often combining them in installations of all three. Her work always begins with an existing image or representation, which she works and reworks, transforming them while retaining a sense of their original meaning and physical form.
Using optical distortion, scale, and immense detail, her drawings are constructed not with the desire to represent an original object but rather with the intention of eliciting a certain experience of reality absent in the primary source: the moment of encounter between image and observer. Skaer’s work underscores that usually overlooked instant in which a viewer recognises an image as an image.
This exhibition is the most substantial presentation of Skaer’s work to date, and offers a chance to assess the development of her practice. Drawings dating from 2001 to 2008 are shown alongside film, installation and sculpture.
Lucy Skaer was one of the six artists chosen to represent Scotland at the 2007 Venice Biennale. She was also shortlisted for Becks Futures in 2003. Joining us to explore the exhibition will be Stacy Boldrick, Adult Education Coordinator at the Fruitmarket Gallery.
27 November 2003 at 6pm
To mark the culmination of the gallery’s acclaimed four-year series VISIONS FOR THE FUTURE with the presentation of work by Edinburgh-based artists Paul Carter and Chad McCail, we will be hearing from Gallery exhibitions manager, George Gilliland. He will present an overview of the new commissions series and its publications and then give us a tour of Carter and McCail’s installations.
Both artists are held in great affection by Edinburgh audiences who have enjoyed watching their work develop since their initial impact on the scene a few years ago. Although their approaches are highly individual and distinct, they both have a gift for the uncanny. They recast familiar things in a strange light – their imaginary worlds are spooky and wondrous at the same time.
Chad McCail’s exhibition, Life is driven by the desire for pleasure, features intricate large-format cartoon diagrams, revealing the pleasure-seeking principle underlying cycles of life, work and relationships.
Paul Carter’s Edge of Darkness adopts the language of old-fashioned museum display. His dioramas of objects and artefacts illustrate forgotten or illusory geographical conquests in a re-imagined uncharted Scotland. Carter’s imagery of the intrepid ‘solo’ expedition holds human populations at a distance, in contrast to McCail’s collective image of humanity, which draws all things into the social network.
