Art Late
This Thursday, festival-goers will get the chance to experience art in a series of rather unusual ways with Art Late, one of the Art Festival’s most consistently popular events. This is the end of festival party, and it promises to send everyone out on a high with a whole range of activities from traditional gallery-hopping to wild parties. The majority of the schedule will be free, although it is necessary to pre-register on the Festival website before attending.
Art Festival Director Joanne Brown commented on the reasons behind the Art Late’s popularity, observing: “As well as extending the opportunities to see exhibitions featured in the Festival it also reaches out to audiences who might not normally visit a gallery show, offering them more opportunities to encounter the artwork.”
A number of the exhibition venues will be staying open well into the evening, giving those who have been unable to visit in standard hours the chance to take them in.
There is a whole host of participating galleries, including: the Fruitmarket Gallery which has been displaying Martin Creed’s Down Over Up, a look at progression focusing on the use of steps; Dovecot with Sitting and Looking, a collection of practical items that explores human attachment to objects; and Talbot Rice’s CHILD by Julie Roberts, an exhibition examining difficult issues that affect children. Also open are Ingleby and the Henderson Gallery, with full details available on the Art Festival website.
There is a pair of formal talks on offer, which features two highly esteemed artists who will be discussing their exhibitions in the galleries that have been showing them. At 6pm, the Open Eye Gallery will host Barbara Rae, talking about her work exploring contemporary landscape painting. Tickets are £3 and require advance booking, but do come with a complimentary glass of wine. Half an hour later, a lecture called ‘The Scottish Enlightenment Monumentalised’ will be given at Bourne Fine Art by Alexander Stoddart, the Sculptor in Ordinary to the Queen in Scotland.
There will even be a worldwide premiere courtesy of New Media Scotland. The community-driven life.turns. has been collecting photos from across the world with the aim of creating a lengthy zoetrope (an illusory motion display technique) of a walking human figure from the individual images. The final results of this innovative scheme, born right here in Edinburgh, will be shown at Inspace from 8pm until 10pm. Director Brown is delighted to host such an exciting event, saying: “Life.turns is a truly international interactive project and one that breathes new life into a fascinating historic process.”
As well as this, a variety of shows under the heading Total Kunst will be taking place at the Forest Fringe at 7.30. Promised attractions are a conversation between artist Mik Godley and Michael Bowdidge, an iPod drawing demonstration by the former as well as live music from Marie-Louise Plum.
There is no shortage of outright partying either. KOMACHI, the not-for-profit art space, will begin things at 3pm with a mixture of excellent local music acts, improvisation and art. After this comes Instruments of Darkness at 7pm at the Electric Circus, courtesy of Edinburgh Printmakers. A clutch of musical performers, including The Frankensteins who count ex-members of The Fall among their number, will join forces with the artists behind the exhibition Prints of Darkness. Tickets are £5, and proceedings promise to continue well into the early hours. Finally, at 8pm there is the Dress Up Dress Down party at gallerA1 at the Lighthouse out in Granton. This is an interior beach party with an ‘outlandish’ dress code, and should provide everything that that description brings to mind. Tickets for this event are £10.
