Polymaths, A Home Show, and Bacon Scissors: This Week in Scottish Art
There's plenty of diverse art events this week, including curator-slash-band duo WE's concert and breakfast talk, Project Ability's international showcase and a couple of Slade graduates' open house exhibition among others.
Starting early this week, Project Ability will host the opening of their latest exhibition The Summit - It is Now from 2-4pm on Wednesday. Project Ability support artists with learning disabilities, and this latest exhibition brings together ten of the top international supported art studios to show work by two or more of their artists. The Summit will continue until 4 Apr.
This Thursday (5 Mar), our February Showcase artist Matthew Arthur Williams opens his new solo exhibition in the Glad Cafe. Simply titled NYC, William displays his photos and recordings made during a trip to New York last year. In this work, Williams addresses head-on his role as "the outsider looking in". While there may be a strong compositional sense to many of the works, at the same time they speak more to the snapshot and the "fleeting moment" rather than artificial and deliberate set-ups. As well as the photography exhibition, Williams will launch a small publication, also entitled NYC, "connecting findings and past experiences with the city."
Also on Thursday, as part of Georgia Horgan’s exhibition at the Collective Gallery in Edinburgh, there will be a screening of Ursula Biemann’s 1999 video essay, Performing the Border. This work examines the conditions of female workers in electronics factories on the US/Mexico border. The screening takes place in the Gallery from 6pm.
A still from Luca George's new film I Am The Wheel, showing this Sunday at CCA
On Friday, Out of Step – a group show by seven Edinburgh-based photographers – opens in Whitespace at 7pm. The show will see the septet present the work they have produced over the past six months. On the same night across Edinburgh, recent graduates Suzy Babington and Jack Towndrow will host a painting show at their address at 9 Forres Street. Both having graduated from the Slade School of Fine Arts, they present work they’ve made since relocating to Edinburgh. Titled Havin’ a Wobbly One, the show is from 7pm on Friday.
Over in Glasgow this Saturday, Transmission have scheduled a "breakfast artist talk" at midday. For the talk, London-based artists, writers and curators Pil and Galia Kollectiv will discuss their diverse work, which is "interested in the relationship between art and politics and the tole irony and belief play in its current articulation". Their band WE will be playing in the Old Hairdresser’s the night before (Fri 6 Mar). Within the band, they extend "the role of music in their artwork, as well as their interrogation of individuality and collectivity."
This Sunday in the CCA, Luca George presents new film I Am The Wheel. George describes his practice as "conceptualised conceptuality", and much of performance work is subject to "post conceptualisation". The film shows at 7pm on Sun 8 Feb; admission is free. And finally, back at the Old Hairdresser’s, the second of the series of five exhibitions entitled Perm takes place on Monday.
And finally this week, for one night only, Caitlin Merrett King’s exhibition Bacon Scissors runs from 6pm at the Old Hairdresser's. Merrett King works across collage, printmaking, sculpture, film and installation. For Bacon Scissors, there is an emphasis on recent sculptural works, subject matter ranging from Modernism to the colour blue and the presentation of information by BBC documentaries.