This Week in Scottish Art: Gangs, Ashes, and the Transmission Party

It’s just about safe to say we’re officially through degree show season – except for the Phoenix Bursary exhibition, which is open to the public from Friday 24 July. This is a show of the work by 2014 GSA graduates who had their degree show exhibition cancelled following the fire at the School last year.

There’s a tightly private opening on Thursday, but there is a free after-party in The Art School dubbed Ashes 2 Ashes, which after an emotional few months perhaps evidences a healthy desensitisation towards the narrative of the tragic Mackintosh fire of 2014. Ashes 2 Ashes will include sets from RIDE, On Top and Deep Brandy Album Cuts, and kicks off at 11pm. Taking place in the Reid Building across the road from the Mack itself, the Phoenix Bursary exhibition runs from Friday until 2 August.

Continuing this week, and also concluding on 2 August, Embassy Gallery are showing new work by their artist-in-residence Ailsa MacKenzie. With degrees in Maths and Sculpture, MacKenzie’s different backgrounds are melded into surreal environments, and colorful interdisciplinary works. MacKenzie describes her objective as “an oscillation between chaos and order”, and in the title of this exhibition asks, 'What on Earth is Going On?'

Schementality, Scott Lang’s exhibition in Project Ability comes via recommendation this week comes from kennardphillips, who will be exhibiting as part of Edinburgh Art Festival from the end of this month in Stills. During conversation about their upcoming show (which will be published in Augus's magazine), Lang was cited as an exciting young artist. Sharing with kennardphillips an interest in photomontage, in this exhibition Lang turns his interest towards gang culture, its stereotypes and contemporary representations. An opening for Schementality takes place this Friday from 6-8pm.

This Friday (24 Jul), CCA opens 'fugue states', by Lauren Gault and Allison Gibbs. Collaborating for the first time, the artists’ interests can be understood to overlap in a certain interest in the extra-sensory. While Gibbs takes her cue from a late medium Jane Roberts, Gault looks to objects and their potential to bring a sense of “time, place or presence”. On Friday, the preview takes place from 7-9pm; fugue states continues until 6 September.

From Saturday 25 July, Inverleith House will exhibit, as part of Edinburgh Art Festival, the work of late American artist John Chamberlain (1927-2011). Making works from discarded car parts, Chamberlain built these materials into monumental sculptures. In his manipulations of these industrial metals, Chamberlain would often begin to draw out organic and natural associations, making their installation within the Inverleith House gardens particularly exciting.

Over in Glasgow, at the Common Guild this Saturday afternoon, there is a talk by Dr Dominic Paterson on current Common Guild exhibitor Anne Hardy’s work and its relationship to mirroring and doubling from 3pm. Book a place here. Just a little later in the day, from 6pm on Saturday in the Poloc Cricket Club, within Pollok Country Park, the Transmission gallery will have their summer party – this comes with promises of great music and a barbeque.

Staying in Glasgow, on Sunday from 2-3.30pm there’s an exhibition talk in Tramway entitled Soft Focus. Accompanying the Persistence of Type exhibition, this show features new work by artist Fiona Jardine and designers Sophie Dyer and Maeve Redmond, and “explores exchanges between graphic design, visual art, fiction and historical advertising”. Sunday's talk “examines the politics of photographic enhancements within advertising from the 1950s to the present day; Persistence of Type will continue until 9 August.

Sunday also marks the last day of group show Hold, Sway in Generator Projects in Dundee. For this exhibition, Generator bring together works from five artists that make for exceptions to the easy distinction between painting and sculpture, making for an interesting combination of different approaches, as well as of emerging and established artists from around Europe.