Stunning Ruins, Thick Time, and a Touring Show: This Week in Scottish Art

Could this be the best week yet since the start of our weekly Scottish art events column? There's abstract painting, performances, screenings, conversations and a parked Mazda playing the Amelie soundtrack, so quite possibly

Feature by Adam Benmakhlouf | 27 Jan 2015

If counting and collecting are your thing, you’ll be excited to learn that we have a list of at least eight art-related adventures for you to embark on this coming week. Starting with the enigmatic, there’s a bit of a dearth of information about Simon Buckley’s upcoming show Evil Empire in the Market Gallery. Check out Buckley's website here for some of his past works, including his piece on a parked Mazda, which in one version is parked in Frankfurt while the Amelie soundtrack plays inside, while another has a portrait of Basquiat with a wire box set taped to it in the passenger seat. Find out what’s happening this time around from this Saturday 31 Jan; a text by Homera Cheema will also accompany the exhibit.

Skipping back in the week a bit, on Wednesday in Edinburgh's Interview Room 11, there will be an artist talk and screening by Colin Lindsay. From 6pm, Lindsay will discuss the relationship between architecture and art, followed by a screening of Murray Grigor’s 2009 film Space and Light Revisited. This film recreates, shot-by-shot, his 1972 film on St Peter’s seminary which in the time between projects has become a stunning ruin.

In Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery this Wednesday, there is a free talk entitled Simultaneity: History in the Present on the Stan Douglas exhibit. Amsterdam-based Professor of Cultural Analysis Mieke Bal will consider the means by which Stan Douglas 'makes time thick' and his specific film-making strategies. As our video of the week, here’s Stan Douglas talking about photographs of his Paris exhibit, which closed last week.


Video of the Week


Stan Douglas on his recent Paris show


There’s a very exciting project – Edge and Shore – coming up in Dovecot Gallery from this Friday. Within the gallery itself, the extended research project of visual artist Helen Carnac and dancer Laïla Diallo is continued. Using found objects from previous iterations, as well as from around Dovecot, the artists will each day from 2-4pm offer an insight into the making process, when the duo 'are in a focused period of activity in the space.' Next Tuesday from 6pm, there is a free conversation event with the artists – register for that by clicking here.

Staying in Edinburgh, the exhibition ABJAD is now open in Ingleby Gallery. There’s a common approach in this group show, by Jane Bustin, Kevin Harman, Paul Keir and Jeff McMillan, to the practice of abstraction which distracts from the danger of this kind of painting’s dangerous slippage into dryness or decoration with subtly intuitive, sensitive approaches. 

In Glasgow, from this Friday Romany Dear along with the Glasgow Open Dance School takes control of the CCA again with a programme of workshops and performances that take as their inspiration – as well as seek to motivate – movement and dancing. Full details here.

Staying in Glasgow, but this time for a closing show, this week marks the last few days of Art from Elsewhere at GoMA – read our Northwest Art Editor Sacha Waldron's review of the show featuring work by Romuald Hazoumè and Robert Smithson here. See it now before it embarks on the rest of its two year tour of the UK. 

And finally, a quick reminder that Dundee’s GENERATOR Members Show 2015 hand-in will take place between this Thursday, 29 Jan, until 1 Feb between 12-5pm. This is in advance of the exciting return of the show, which opens next Sat 7 Feb from 7-9pm, and continues from the 8th and throughout the rest of February. 


More from The Skinny:


Our Romany Dear showcase

Look ahead with our guide to 2015 in Scottish art

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