The Week in Scottish Art: Edinburgh Art Fest & more

Starting promptly this week, on Tuesday (18 Aug) Luke Collins, Project Manager for artists’ moving image agency LUX Scotland, has selected four artists’ films to screen at the Edinburgh Art Festival's Festival Kiosk on 9-11 Blair Street. Following the screenings, there will be a Q & A session with featured artist Adam Lewis-Jacob. The event takes place from 7-9.30pm, free but please book.

Now we're nearing the end of summer, degree shows are beginning to crop up again but this time it’s the postgrads’ turn, starting with Dundee's Masters Show. The exhibition, at the city's Duncan of Jordanstone art college, previews this Friday 21 August, from 6-9pm. On the Friday night, acoustic musicians will play stories from Emil Thompson’s ‘Backstories’ songbook, comprising of songs inspired by newspaper headlines. On Saturday at 2pm, there will be a conversation event with the exhibiting artists; the exhibition continues until 29 August.

In Glasgow’s CCA this week, Patrick Cole’s latest performance exhibition concludes. A Cowboy’s Rite of Passage is intended as a “humorous catharsis” and in its form references the idea of the “bard”, whose satirical stories were intended to give some relief to audiences of the 17th century. Performances take place this week on Thursday and Saturday, both at 3pm.

Also at CCA this Thursday, the artists and curators of Lauren Gault and Allison Gibbs’ exhibition Fugue States will participate in Asks Your Voice from 6:30pm. Gault and Gibbs' exhibition turns on the practices surrounding extra-sensory perception and the potentially auratic quality of objects. Thursday’s event is intended as a “performative artist Q and A”, involving “discussion, reading, visual and sound installation in the CCA Theatre Space.” The event is free and unticketed.

In Edinburgh, this Thursday brings the second of two of Jupiter Artland’s “At Night” events this summer. The art sculpture park will be open until 9pm, and invites you to see “the dusk settle in around Laura Ford’s Weeping Girls” as “Nathan Coley’s You Imagine What You Desire illuminates the surrounding lawn”. Then on Saturday evening, it’s the second last of Jupiter’s Dinners - five courses for £45, bookings via hello@cafemilk.co.uk.

Also in Edinburgh this Thursday, there’s a lecture by psychologist and academic Nick Wade on the work of Canadian artist Derek Michael Besant, now exhibiting in Edinburgh Printmakers. Besant’s recent work combines photographic portraits of members of the Edinburgh Printmakers’ community with text overlaid onto these images. Professor Wade considers various precedents for Besant’s facial representation, looking towards for example the printing of poetry alongside engravings, as well as the scientific study of faces via photography. Wade will begin his talk at 6:30pm, please book.

This weekend in Glasgow, you'll find a Temporary Iron Foundry in which a number of artists will fire scrap iron salvaged from the canal to create a series of iron ingots to commemorate the barge-pull that took place during the Whisky Bond's recent summer party. Pulled variously by a heavy horse, 15 adults, 8 children, 7 kayakers and a golden labrador, the distances achieved by each will be recorded on the ingots. Seven ingots will be cast between 5.30-8:30pm on Friday, then released between 2-5pm on Saturday. Taking place near to the former Victoria Foundry, the temporary foundry can be accessed from the lane behind the Scottish Canals Head Office, near 1 Applecross Street.

On Sunday, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd will deliver an artist talk, with Neil Mulholland, Edinburgh Professor of Contemporary Art. A former Turner Prize nominee, Chetwynd is now known widely for her near-shambolic performances, taking place in handmade environments that could edge on shoddy, if not for Chetwynd’s cool control of the many deliberately eccentric-seeming elements she incorporates into her performances. Again, this event takes place in the Festival Kiosk on 9-11 Blair Street; the last few tickets are available at this link. On Saturday at 2pm, there’s an almost sold-out performance of The King Must Die by the artist in New Parliament House on Regent Road. Places are limited, book fast.