Scottish art news for August 2015: Ambiguity, ESP, and the EAF

August brings an incredibly exciting and packed month of exhibitions and events around Scotland. Mention has already been made of the Integrity Painting Prize at the Glue Factory in Glasgow (until 9 Aug). Our picks of the Edinburgh Art Festival features this month were no coincidence, so if you can make it, please head to shows by kennardphillips in Stills Gallery, the Dennis and Debbie Club at CodeBase, Platform 2015 at an as-yet-unnamed venue (11 Blair Street, EH1 1QR) and France-Lise McGurn at Collective Gallery.

Rhubaba Gallery in Edinburgh will also be taking part in the festivities with eeee o ee e i a a e a, until 30 Aug. This group show brings together new and existing works from four artists. One makes work while pregnant (as the press release mentions, without including their name) and has been making collages of multi-limbed unhappy faces. Another’s an artist/drummer making films of elderly women protagonists. There’s two more, but broadly speaking it’s a fun show – did you see that title?!

With its usual impressive quantity, Summerhall in Edinburgh opens 10 exhibitions on 5 Aug, with all but one running until 5 Oct. There’s a huge mix of names both old and new, with figures like major 20th century German gore-o-phile Hermann Nitsch. Also exhibiting are Ortonandon: an artistic collaboration between three sisters who are planning an audience-interactive set of props with two video installations, titled How to Die and Family Patterning. Broadly they’re exploring the desire to 'join in'. Head to festival15.summerhall.co.uk/visual-art for information on all ten shows.

Collective Gallery are not only showing work by France-Lise McGurn throughout August for EAF. Beatrice Gibson will also be screening a new film in the City Dome space. In its influences, Gibson has drawn on 20th century American literature, as well as radical child-centred pedagogy of the post-war. Coming from a narrative about an 11-year-old empire inadvertently creating the greatest financial empire, Gibson oriented the score around an experimental workshop for children.

Generator in Dundee between 5-15 August will be hosting Continuance, an exhibition of 11 artists based in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee. There’s a broad remit of the exhibition, looking towards 'overlooked materials', 'ephemeral objects' and a challenge to 'the idea of finite timelines' in dialogue with the audience. The opening takes place on 5 Aug from 6-9pm.

In Glasgow, in the Hunterian and the Common Guild, there are interesting events planned for August regarding the continuing shows in these spaces. As part of the GSA curatorial students’ experimental exhibition on postwar American Abstraction, Glasgow dance collective G.O.D.S. will present their second workshop as part of the show on Sunday 16 Aug – a free workshop, open to all.

In the Common Guild, on Thursday 6 August at 6pm, Dr Stephen Burn – a reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow – will contextualise current exhibitor Anne Hardy’s work in relation to his research on Contemporary American and British Fiction and an interest in neuroscience. Then, on Thursday 13 Aug from 6pm, writer Sally O’Reilly will also give her take on the show, informed by her multidisciplinary research into ambiguity.

In Glasgow, at the CCA Lauren Gault and Alison Gibbs exhibit together for the first time in Fugue States. There’s a broad connection between the two artists; an interest in the possibility of a kind of extra-sensory perception. Gibb takes her cue from American medium Jane Roberts (1929-1984), while Gault thinks more materially about the 'resonant quality of materials', how objects can spur sense memories and an awareness of place. From these subtly different positions, the artists investigate how time and future can be re-expressed and understood.