Tag Archives: performance

The dead don’t go until we do

30 April 2026

Join us this month as we make our way to Talbot Rice Gallery for their group show The dead don’t go until we do, where we will be joined by curator James Clegg. 

The dead don’t go until we do brings together four artists who channel the strength of family, friends and communities. It is about the collective power that runs across generations. The title of these collective exhibitions takes its inspiration from a line in Jackie Kay’s poem Darling. 

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas celebrates her ancestral Roma community. Through colourful fabric collages, she takes control of the images made about people, past and present, to overcome centuries of prejudice.  

Amol K Patil follows his late father and grandfathers’ bold writing and performances. He uses his art and poetry to share the struggles of those living in poverty in the City of Mumbai.  

Kang Seung Lee begins with research into historical archives, looking at the way marginalised communities are erased. But he uses the gaps and absences to make space for both the living and dead, in this exhibition linking with historical queer sites across Edinburgh.  

MADEYOULOOK is a collaboration between Molemo Moiloa and Nare Mokgotho. They explore the landscapes shaped by the frequently displaced Koni people in South Africa. Working from the ancient earthworks left by the Bakoni, they think about alternative relationships to the land. 

Walker & Bromwich

27 March 2025

Glasgow-based duo Walker & Bromwich work with communities or organisations to explore matters surrounding local and global issues. What’s exciting is that they create a collective journey within communities in a festival-like environment to tackle concerns. From unique giant inflatables with titles like Serpent of Capitalism, to totems that manifest positive and negative forces, their work can encapsulate humour, be sombre but always evoke hope.

We have the opportunity to explore the exhibition with Talbot Rice’s Curator James Clegg. The work of Walker & Bromwich will take us on a journey from the working-class communities of Wales to environmental scholars and Indigenous representatives for the Colombian Amazon with a stop off with anarchists in Denmark.

Bruce McLean: I Want My Crown

28 November 2024

This month we will be joined by assistant curator Leila Riszko, as she guides us around the new exhibition Bruce McLean: I Want My Crown at Modern One. 

This celebratory display of works by internationally renowned Scottish artist Bruce McLean, marks his 80th birthday. Discover McLean’s humorous and lively six-decade long inquiry into sculpture and his criticisms of the art world from within. Through works made across a range of media – including photography, performance, painting, printmaking, film, and ceramics – this display invites you to challenge your thinking about sculpture and expand your ideas of what it can be. 

Sharp, witty and satirical, this display will showcase the breadth of McLean’s boundary-pushing work and spotlight him as one of the most important artists of his generation. 

Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990

25 July 2024

This month we will be joined by Chief Curator Lucy Askew as we make our way to Modern Two for Women in Revolt! Art and Activism in the UK 1970-1990. 

This touring exhibition is a timely exploration of the work and lived experiences of a post-war generation of women artists that have largely been omitted from art historical narratives. Surfacing the wealth and diversity of work created in the UK during the 1970s and 80s, a period of seismic social and political change, it demonstrates, across a wide variety of mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, film and photography, how women’s needs were marginalised within mainstream culture and reveals how these artists used radical ideas and methods to confront issues that will resonate with contemporary audiences – from access to healthcare and class struggles to ecological disaster, racism, and misogyny. 

Angelica Mesiti: In the Round

24 February 2022

We’re back! Finally for in-person visits to galleries in Edinburgh. This month, we are heading along to the Talbot Rice Gallery for their current exhibition In the Round, where we will be joined by curator James Clegg. This visit will hopefully mark the return of physical visits for 2022. 

In the Round is the first major exhibition in the UK of Angelica Mesiti, one of the leading Australian artists of her generation. Building upon her practice, it takes a dynamic journey that extends through historical painting, ancient musical notation, geological specimens and musical instruments. Mesiti consistently returns to communication and translation in her sound, performance and video installations, reflecting the struggle of communities to co-exist. Taking this unique opportunity to combine present concerns with historical research, Mesiti allows her artworks to echo through ancient objects and to materialise in new works made for this expansive exhibition.  

 

NOW Monster Chetwynd, Henry Coobes, Moyna Flannigan, Betye Saar, Wael Shawky

25 October 2018

This month we will visit the fourth phase of the contemporary art exhibition series NOW which opens on Saturday 20 October at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Senior Curator Dan Brown will meet us there and offer us an insight into the production of this group exhibition and the practice of the artists represented.

Previous editions of NOW have shown work by Nathan Coley, Susan Philipsz and Jenny Saville (amongst many others), this instalment is built around the work of Turner Prize nominee (2012) Monster Chetwynd. Renowned for using diverse cultural and historical sources to create performative work, sculptural installation and video, Alalia Chetwynd was born in London in 1973; she later adopted the name Spartacus Chetwynd, then morphing into Marvin Gaye Chetwynd before earlier this year becoming Monster Chetwynd. She studied Anthropology and holds a BA in Fine Art from Slade School of Art (London). In 2002, she completed her studies with an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London.

Until 28 April 2019, Chetwynd’s work, including collage and painting, will be on show at Modern One surrounded by the work of four international contemporary artists: Moyna Flannigan (Scotland), Henry Coombes (Scotland), Betye Saar (USA) and Wael Shawky (Egypt). Although working in diverse mediums and with different approaches all these artists share a desire to challenge convention.

WASPS Artists’ Studios Visit: Louise Fraser, Jenny Pope and Carrie Fertig

25 May 2017

This month, we will be visiting three artists who each have a studio at WASPS on Albion Road. Artists include Louise Fraser, Jenny Pope and Carrie Fertig.

Louise Fraser’s practice incorporates drawing, printmaking and sculpture and is a response to the environment she inhabits. Her work draws people’s attention to the space they are in, the space they consume and the space they leave their imprint on.

Jenny Pope creates sculptural pieces inspired by beach-combing, collecting, bone structures and geology working with a range of materials including porcelain, limecrete and found materials. Through her work she explores the changes that happen in our internal lives and externally in the natural environment. Recently, Jenny has been working within a hospital, creating large drawings and wearable sculptures which explore personal space.

Carrie Fertig uses borosilicate glass as the main material in her practice of performance, film, installation, sound and sculpture. From the 20 May-2 July 2017, she will be exhibiting as part of Summa at the Royal Scottish Academy with an installation, sound and performance based on the physical, social and metaphysical events of death. The work she will be showing us concentrates on sound, including work from her group Torcher Chamber Arkestra, which features live music, fire, and digital manipulation of sound on glass instruments that she designs, makes, and repurposes.

This is a great opportunity to meet artists living and working in Edinburgh and to find out more about their working methods and approaches to their art-making

NOW

27 April 2017

NOW is the first in a series of exhibitions which brings together contemporary art from Scotland with works by leading international artists. Over the next three years, through a series of six exhibitions, NOW will explore and celebrate the role of artists in society and the alternative ways of seeing and understanding the world through their work.

The centerpiece of the first show is Nathan Coley’s The Lamp of Sacrifice, 286 Places of Worship, Edinburgh, 2004. This iconic work features 286 sculptures which depict every place of worship listed in the 2004 edition of the Edinburgh Yellow Pages directory, offering a snapshot of the city at a particular moment in time through its places of religious meeting.

A key theme running through the exhibition is place and its relationship to time. Peter Doig’s imagined landscape is shown with Jock McFadyen’s real landscape of Carlton Hill recalled from memory. Rivane Neuenschwander’s Colheita Harvest 2013-2014 is a portrait of a London community through an installation of 365 shopping lists collected from supermarkets.

Performance Documents 1980-1987/2013 by Mona Hatoum presents rare archival material documenting the actions and performances she produced during the 1980s. And The Acrobat c.1982 by Peter Horobin, documents performances and interventions he did whilst on a month-long residency in Kassel under the persona of The Acrobat.

Joining us to discuss the works on show will be the curators of the exhibition, Lucy Askew and Julie-Ann Delaney.

 

Kevin Harman: No Man’s Land

28 April 2016

For our April Spin event we will visit and discuss the exhibition Kevin Harman: No Man’s Land at the Ingleby Gallery, where we will be joined by the visual arts specialist and consultant Wendy Law, who has worked closely with Kevin on various projects. This will be the last chance to visit Ingleby in their current location, as the Gallery will be moving to a new site in the near future.

Some of you will remember visiting Kevin’s studio in October 2014 to discuss the installations and performances he was working on at the time. No Man’s Land presents his most recent work: a series of wall-hanging, abstract ‘glassworks’ produced over the last two years. These pieces are made by pouring paint into double-glazing units, resulting in layered and dripped effects that are as much the result of chance as of the artist’s intention. These painting/objects challenge the notion that the painting offers a ‘window on the world’. They also echo the free use of paint by earlier generations of artists from the atmospheric watercolours of J.M.W. Turner to the surrealist paint techniques used by Max Ernst and the bold abstract expressionist gestures of Jackson Pollock. Kevin Harman’s work offers a rich stimulus for discussion.

Studio Visit: Kevin Harman

30 October 2014

For our October Spin event, we will meet at artist Kevin Harman’s studio. Kevin’s work crosses definitions of sculpture, installation and performance. In his most recent work, The Absinthe Bar (2014) he created an immersive environment in his studio. This was the backdrop for a series of ‘happenings’ which included a resident tattoo artist, butchery demonstrations, poetry readings, musical performances as part of this year’s Edinburgh Art Festival.

Previous works include the Skip series (2007–) where the artist has ‘tidied up’ the contents of skips around Edinburgh making unique sculptural artworks from the detritus of the cycle of renovation and repair in the city. In his 2009 work, Brick, the artist smashed the window of the former Collective Gallery space on Cockburn Street. The subsequent police statements, cautions and lawyers letters now form the body of the remaining artwork.

Many of his works begin with found objects and existing scenarios which are then adapted and transformed in to unique artworks. He said of his though process: ‘When viewing the sculpture of Saddam Hussein being pulled down, I was witnessing an object, which had been built to be permanent, transforming, advancing how futile an idea of permanence became.’

His piece 24/7 (2012) began as a 24-hour visit to an Asda Supercentre. Everything in the subsequent installation in a disused city centre shop was created from purchases during this 24-hour period culminating in a live auction where the entire installation was auctioned off.

Kevin has previously exhibited at Ingleby Gallery, Summerhall, Talbot Rice Gallery and Collective.