This Week in Scottish Art: Africa in Motion & more

Transmission’s member’s show is open now. With an open call across all its members (and an all welcome membership), the loose curatorial policy and spatially economic hanging make for a representative and non-didactic representation of the current artistic community in Glasgow every year. The exhibition continues until 7 November, and is open 11-5 Tuesday to Saturday.

This Thursday in the Edinburgh Printmakers, Catherine Baker gives a lecture entitled Ways of Seeing. As a response to John Berger’s influential text of the same name, she has conducted research into seeing as an activity of simultaneous artistic and scientific status. Within her practice-led research, she considers the neurobiology of eye movement control and these movements as drawings in themselves. Tickets cost £5 each, two for £8 or free for Edinburgh Printmaker Members and students – book in advance.

Edinburgh Printmakers are also involved in the exhibition Remembering the North British Rubber Company, taking place in the St Bride’s Community Centre, 10 Orwell Terrace, Edinburgh, EH11 2DZ until 30 November. Edinburgh Printmakers invited established international photographer Norman McBeath to celebrate the history of the NBRC, which was once the industrial anchor of Dalry, Gorgie and Fountainbridge, employing thousands of people. Collaborating extensively with the local community (including former Rubber Co employees' organisation NBR Wrinklies’ Club), McBeath has made an exhibition of photogravure prints (combining photography and etching) as well as historical documents, old newspapers and magazine adverts.  

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Read more on visual art:

 The Out of Towners: Art outwith Scotland's central belt

 Fur Coat Nae Knickers: What we thought of the Turner Prize in Tramway

 We take a look at the Africa in Motion 2015 programme

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Edinburgh’s Dovecot Gallery is this week taking notice of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival, this year titled Stories without Borders – which runs from Friday 23 Oct until Sunday 1 November, programme here. For their part, Dovecot are exhibiting a series of tapestries and rugs and hosting a traditional storytelling event at 3pm on Saturday 24 October. Book for this free event on the Eventbrite page.

This Friday, CCA collaborate with Glasgow School of Art to provide a free lecture at 11am in the Glasgow Film Theatre by Palestine-based artist Oraib Toukan. For four years, Toukan has been working with a found collection of 900 film reels of former Soviet cultural centres in Jordan.  For this event, she will discuss her contribution to The Shock of Victory, the current Scottish Independence Referendum-themed exhibition in the CCA. She will also discuss her past works by means of context, as part of this free public exhibition. No booking necessary.

This Saturday in Edinburgh’s Inverleith House, two artists’ films are presented that consider the natural world and scientific enquiry. This is intended as a means of reflection on Inverleith’s place as an art gallery, site of scientific research and public Botanic Garden. Following the films by Glasgow-based artists Duncan Marquiss and Anne-Marie Copestake, there will be a discussion including invited speakers Isla Leaver-Yapp, the director of Artist Moving Image Agency LUX, and the Director of the CCA Francis McKee. Tickets are £3(2) and can be purchased here – where there is more information on the individual artists and films to be shown.

On Monday 26 October, GSA Exhibitions host a part of the Africa in Motion festival with their screening of Black President. This exciting film is on the face of it a biopic of contemporary Zimbabwean artist Kudzanai Chiurai. As the first film by Mpumelelo Mcata, an experimental guitarist, Black President in form becomes inseparable from Chiurai’s art practice itself. Within this formal experimentation, the filmmakers make a number of provocations: “what is the responsibility of African artists in an ever more globalised world? Will it be a perpetual game of ‘catch up’? Are we still slaves, or will be define our own path?” The screening takes place in the Glasgow School of Art’s Reid Auditorium, and is followed by a Q&A with director Mpumelelo Mcata and producer Anna Teeman.