Scottish Art News: 16-22 May

TOP PICK: Dundee Degree Show

Scotland’s 2017 degree show season kicks off with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. Fingers crossed for the usual overwhelming warren of fine art and design, intricate recreations of granny’s living room and videos of masturbation. Also lovely jewellery. If you can get in to the Friday night preview expect a rager. Dundee knows how to party.
Preview: Fri 19 May
Exhibition runs: 20-28 May, Mon-Fri 10am-8pm, Sat & Sun 10am-4pm, free

GLASGOW

From 17-19 May, Duke Street’s Market Gallery are hosting a free symposium entitled Free Market: A Forum on Cultural Resources in Crisis. The gallery will host numerous arts organisers, journalists, writers, economists and activists from across Scotland and the UK. In particular, they’ll be considering the most pressing issues affecting the increasingly fragile ecology of the arts, culture and media in Britain today including what determines the distribution of resources, privatisation of the arts, and how to transform approaches to art, work and culture.
Public event: Wed 17 May, from 12pm 
Afterparty: Fri 19 May, 8.30pm

On Thursday CCA present Jude Browning & Emmie McLuskey: this voice is not my own. Bringing together a collection of research materials, Glasgow-based artists Jude Browning and Emmie McLuskey will use the format of a staged dialogue to question how the authoritative voice may find shape. They will consider the role of instruction and translation in relation to gesture and speech, asking a variety of questions to frame the research.
Public event: Thu 18 May 7-9pm, CCA Creative Lab, Free (unticketed)

At 493 Victoria Road Celine present You, Telluric Thing, a solo show by French artist Marine Julié. Julié’s work questions the masculine values which underpin historical narratives and monuments to glorious battles and great men which she struggles to identify with. The work presented depicts transgressive authority figures through a pictorial language that references, traditional South Asian painting, Greek red-figure pottery and Egyptian hieroglyphics to subvert the aesthetic vocabularies that once articulated the very values she interrogates.
Preview: Fri 19 May 7-9pm
Exhibition: Until 10 Jun, by appointment

EDINBURGH

Syria in Painting, Photography, Film and Word launches in Summerhall’s Library and Basement Galleries with an event featuring live performance from Ayman Jarjour and dance from MIN& Albscot. The exhibition brings together a broad-based selection of new artworks by Syrian artists based in Edinburgh and further afield, including organisations involved with Syria. Each of the artists presents a highly personal reflection of their homeland and the Syrian people through works in a variety of media. 
Preview: Thu 18 May, 6.30-9.30pm
Exhibition runs: 19 May-4 June

Also launching in Summerhall is -}}}}}} : {{{+}}} from Anneli Holstrom. This multimedia exhibition centres upon two new bodies of work (titled Levitation and Flood) which together strive for a visual experience conjuring the sense of crossing between two distinct but interlocked psychological worlds. The exhibition will be accompanied by texts written by poets JL Williams and Janette Ayachi, scientific researchers Alex Murphy and David Carmel, artist-researcher Dr. Louise Milne and philanthropist Fatima Ashrif.
Preview: Fri 19 May
Public event: Absence / Presence panel discussion, Sat 20 May, 7pm, Anatomy Lecture Theatre, tickets free through Eventbrite 
Exhibition runs: 20 May-14 Jul

Embassy Gallery present interdisciplinary artist Evan Ifekoya’s A Net Made of Individual Knots in their Broughton Street Lane space.
Preview: Fri 19 May, 7-10pm
Exhibition: Until 11 Jun, Thu-Sun, 12-6pm, free

On Sunday Rhubaba host Soft Space by Florrie James. This discussion event will cover areas around film production and making films that sit within non-exploitative, non-hierarchical, feminist, anti-copyright contexts. Florrie James will present recent research and experiments in this area, showing the development of a narrative feature film she is currently working on with writer and musician Sam Bellacosa, 4 Day Weekend Underground.
Public event: Sun 21 May, 2-6pm, free