30 June 2022
This month we will be heading along to the City Art Centre for their new exhibition Will Maclean: Points of Departure, which is also presented as part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2022. To guide us round this exhibition we will be joined by Curatorial and Conservation Manager, David Patterson, as well as the artist himself, Will Maclean.
Will Maclean (b.1941) is one of the outstanding artists of his generation. His work is anchored in the history, archaeology, and literature of the Scottish Highlands and the Highland people, as well as his family background and personal associations with the sea.
Best known for his wall constructions, this major retrospective will span almost 50 years of work and embrace every facet of his practice – his constructions, drawings, prints, sculptures, artistic collaborations, video productions and outdoor installations. Combining exquisitely hand-made pieces with found or (on occasions) mass produced objects, his work balances between simplicity and complexity and invites the viewer to linger, to admire and to ponder the universal themes which he explores.
Accompanied by a new publication, the exhibition will be drawn from public and private collections, with many of the exhibits going on public display for the first time. The exhibition promises to be a rich visual feast for anyone with an interest in Scottish art and history.
27 February 2020
For our February session, we will be discussing the major retrospective exhibition, Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance, where we will be joined by the curator of the exhibition, Alice Strang.
Paula Rego: Obedience and Defiance is a survey of the Portuguese artist’s work that brings politics to the fore. This major exhibition is the first ever retrospective of Paula Rego’s work to be held in Scotland. Rego is one of the most important artists living in Britain today. Born in Lisbon in 1935, she is celebrated for her intense and courageous paintings, drawings and prints. The exhibition spans over 50 years of her international career, from the 1960s to the 2010s. It features more than 80 works, lent from public and private collections. Rego is admired for her courageous exploration of moral challenges to humanity, such as political tyranny, gender discrimination, abortion, female genital mutilation and the death of civilians in war. Other works in the exhibition begin with her Portuguese roots and lived experiences, or respond to current affairs and stories from literature, cinema, folklore, mythology and art history.
29 June 2017
This month we will be visiting Interview Room 11, an artist-run gallery and project space set up in 2013 and housed in the Ocean Terminal retail complex. The gallery is run by committee of artists and curators, with an interest in promoting emerging and early career local and international artists.
We will be discussing Galician artist Carme Nogueira’s new video work Leith Walk: Our Share of the Profits with the curator and committee members. The artist has explored Leith’s history focusing on the strike that took place by dock workers in the Port of Leith in 1913. Three people connected with Edinburgh’s artistic community have been chosen to read texts relating to the history of the neighbourhood in this portrait of the story of Leith told from our present.
19 May 2010 at 6.30pm
This month we visit the sumptuous and beautifully intimate cinema within GMAC to see the work of the highly acclaimed emerging artist, Corin Sworn, who will personally screen her short films, show slides and talk to us about her emerging practice.
Corin Sworn (born in London 1976, lives in Vancouver and Glasgow) is a visual artist whose work explores issues connected with the process by which subjective experience becomes translated into history. She works with drawing, video and sculpture, and her work has been shown in group exhibitions including: ICA London (2010), Witte de Wih (2010) EASTInternatinal (2009), Kunsthalle Basel (2009), The Contemporary Art Gallery, Bogotá, The Kunstverein Wolfsburg, Participant Inc. New York (2008). A new solo exhibition was presented at the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Arts, and she has a forthcoming solo show at Tramway.
Within her practice, Sworn draws on historical events to produce works that serve the place of artefacts, ephemera or props in a fragmented retelling of some historical, cultural event. These works are not interested in reproducing a specific history but in analyzing some suggestion within it. Throughout this work she has often considered whether mute objects can carry and convey the events they purport to relate to. Or whether they, instead, situate readings that are performed upon them.
For over 20 years, GMAC (Glasgow Media Access Centre) has supported independent filmmakers and the community through access to low cost facilities, equipment and high quality training and production opportunities. GMAC provides a central space and resource for all people interested in film and media. The organisation aims to be a bridge between local communities and the screen industries by providing opportunities and accessible resources for all. www.g-mac.co.uk
25 February 2010 at 6pm
This month, we will explore the Collective Gallerys latest exhibition Documentalist – an international group show presenting work that explores blurred boundaries between fiction and reality through drawing, sculpture and film.
Chris Evans deliberately muddles the roles of artist and patron, genius and muse. Evans will show two sculptural pieces Warm Hermaphrodite and Repeat Horizon, both of which form visual motifs created by Evans in response to interviews with four elderly Italian politicians. All were asked about sacrifice and after a life in the public eye, on the choices they made.
Deimantas Narkevicius will show his film Revisiting Solaris. Trained as a sculptor, Narkevicius has developed a practice, based on video and film that explores fascinating, problematic and overlooked passages of recent post-communist European history, including his personal history of living and working in Lithuania during the soviet era and after.
Suzanne Treister’s practice deals with notions of identity, history, power and the hallucinatory. She will present Alchemy, a series of works which transcribe front pages of international daily newspapers into alchemical drawings, reframing the world as a place animated by strange forces, powers and belief systems.
Joining us to explore individual works and to discuss each artist’s relationship to the title Documentalist will be Kate Gray, Director of The Collective Gallery.
26 May 2006 at 6pm
This month, Spin: Edinburgh will visit Anatomy Acts, a comprehensive exhibition fusing art, science, history and medicine. There are over 160 exhibits on loan from a vast array of museums and universities across Scotland. We will be focusing on the contemporary selection, which includes specially commissioned work by Christine Borland, Joel Fisher and Claude Heath.
Joining us will be the exhibitions curator, Dr Andrew Patrizio, who will provide a valuable insight into the commissioned works that each present a unique view of this absorbing subject matter.
Patrizio’s selection is far more urbane than Gunther Von Hagen’s Bodyworlds and less sensationalist than Damien Hirst’s Hymn. We will have the chance to discuss the inspiration provided by the world of art and science which makes these works so exciting.
