Cannons & Kickstarters: This Week in Scottish Art

Just when you thought the degree show celebrations were over, GSA Painting and Printmaking students (or, as of a week and a half ago, graduates) are taking their wares to London this week for All You Can Eat.

Completely off their own back, the students managed to raise funding from donors via a Kickstarter campaign, and after raising over £4700 the show is more than ready to kick off this Thursday in the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, from 6-10pm. It’s set to continue until Monday 6 July. For those who can’t make it to London, 13 students from across the GSA MLitt postgraduate programme exhibit in a range of media at Unlimited Studios in Hyndland. Their exhibition runs until this Saturday, 4 July.

Taking attention up north, in Dundee on Friday night there is a conversation event to launch the new Dundee Contemporary Arts exhibition by Roman Signer. From 6:30pm, Alona Pardo, Curator for the Barbican Centre in London, and DCA's Graham Domke discuss what it’s like to curate a show by Signer. The new show promises, among other things, a cannon, a catapult and a kayak filled with whisky. Roman Signer’s DCA exhibition opens on Saturday, and runs until 20 September.

Following Friday night's discussion, Saturday night in Dundee promises to keep up the momentum with an opening at Generator, and the closing party for Print Festival Scotland in the Hannah Maclure Centre. In Generator, Hold, Sway previews from 6-9pm, displaying works that hang or sit somewhere between sculpture and painting and that self-referentially take their medium as subject.

After giving the opening of David Dale’s birthday show – Finite Project Altered When Open – a mention a few weeks ago, now is a good time to make another visit. What started as an empty space has gradually been filled by artists, writers and curators who have collaborated with the gallery in the past, to mark its fifth anniversary. If that’s not reason enough to visit, there’s the closing party this Saturday from 5pm ‘til late.

Staying in East Glasgow, Thomas Teurlai previews his new exhibition Snug as a thug in a rug from 7-9pm on Saturday. Teurlai presents the work completed in exchange, after being resident in Glasgow from April to June this year, as part of the Triangle France programme. Working across a range of heavy duty materials and processes, Teurlai’s work has a rough non-finish, though often incorporating neat mass produced products as a motif. The show is at The Pipe Factory this weekend, then from 9-12 July.

This Sunday in Glasgow Film Theatre, as part of the cinema's Crossing the Line monthly screen of films that transgress obvious film/art distinctions, LUX Scotland will screen Over Our Dead Bodies. By video artist Stuart Marshall, the film documents the AIDS activism of the 80s and early 90s as it happened and the provocative campaigns used. As well as the screening, artist Conal McStravick, curator Ed Webb-Ingall and researcher Laura Guy will intrduce the work and hold a post-screening Q and A. See a trailer for the event here – the film screens at 7:30pm this Sunday (5 Jul).

Now open until 18 October, Phyllida Barlow presents a new body of work made especially for the Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh. Intending to “turn the gallery upside down”, Barlow is known for installing large scale sculptures constructed from industrial and construction materials.

There's more sculpture to see in the Briggait over in Glasgow, as MANY Studios Graduate Resident for 2014/2015 Margré Steensma exhibits 'All I Want is to Take a Bath'. Steensma celebrates with a series of sculptural works the fulfilment of her life-long desire, to have “a bathtub to dream in”. Emmie McLuskey also displays new sculptural work in the Briggait this month. In this exhibition 'At Night I am a Dreamer...' McLuskey works along the “relationship between form, colour and narrative” by frequently removing everyday objects from their usual context of encounter. Both shows are open until 17 July.