Neville Rae @ Sierra Metro

2008 is starting to feel like a year of new beginnings in Edinburgh’s art world. First The Embassy were cruelly evicted from their gallery (to make way for some rather more profitable studio spaces, if rumours are to be believed); then we had the launch of the new Ingleby, raising the bar on what it is to be commercial in this city; and now we are treated to the launch of Sierra Metro, a new exhibiting space with plans to be commercially viable located out on the periphery, in the old Lighthouse Studios in Granton.

Started by new curating partnership Martin Minton and Janine Sproule, Sierra Metro aims to give exhibiting opportunities to early-career artists, providing them with a warehouse-alike space far beyond those normally afforded them in terms of both scope and scale. The inaugural show has been given to Neville Rae, a Glasgow-based artist whose impressive exhibiting pedigree belies his comparative youth; since graduating from GSA in 2005, Neville has taken his A Town For Tomorrow show from Edinburgh’s Inverleith House to Dusseldorf’s Kunstverein gallery. For the Sierra Metro exhibition Neville plans to depart from Cumbernauld, his previous subject of choice, and present work dealing with the site-appropriate theories and practicalities of waterfront regeneration. At the time of going to press he was still unwilling to divulge exactly what the work involved, only that it would possibly be to do with cast concrete sculptures that have been abandoned by the community, and possibly to do with models of proposed sculptures for the Leith / Granton area, each based on a weird local occurrence: “Headless swans, digestive biscuits, sailors with no arms...” he says.

Whatever the outcome, it’s bound to be intriguing. The gallery itself is a brave move, and one which is surely essential to the artistic development of Edinburgh as a city. The notion of a commercial gallery showcasing interesting, young art, and not a watercolour in sight, is one which was until very very recently completely at odds with the city’s modus operandi. This particular development seems almost the intellectual partner of the ten-til-ten curating partnership, currently operating a warehouse in Tradeston and endeavouring to promote artistic dialogue between the two cities. By choosing a Glasgow-based artist for their first exhibition, Sierra Metro avoid the parochial, thawing inter-city relations and taking another step down the road to a Scottish art scene. On a more basic level, they’ve got a great space, and great plans for giving opportunities to young artists while working out of an area that is as yet unconventional for the display of art. Well worth the trip to Granton.