NYC Meets Dundee, Marx, and Gill Sans: This Week in Contemporary Scottish Art

Across Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh this week, there are exhibitions and events concerning typography, historical materialism, and an open call from the capital's Embassy gallery.

Feature by Adam Benmakhlouf | 14 Jan 2015

So after a Christmas break, art is once again open to the public across Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. With galleries having been closed for Christmas and New Year, this week sees the contemporary art events schedule getting busy again with experimental cinema screenings, group shows and upcoming artists.

Common sense would suggest that some of you art enthusiasts may also on occasion make some drawings, primitive sculptures, or works of art in some other medium known only to yourself as of yet. If this is the case, note the upcoming submission deadline for the annual Embassy Members Show, which in line with previous years involves an (almost) open call, as you can sign up to be a member in person while submitting work or online here. Submissions will be accepted in the gallery space at the following times: Thu 15 Jan 5-9pm, Fri 16 12-9pm and Saturday 17 12-9pm. Six days later comes the preview event, on Fri 23rd Jan 7-9pm (free entry), and the show itself will be open until 1 Feb.

Proving that a print show is not just for Christmas (presents), the Dundee Winter Print exhibition continues this week, until 18 Jan. On show and on sale are works from the Dundee Contemporary Arts print studio members. DCA promise some reasonably priced take-home pieces with some works starting at a tenner, and the prints ranging from stamp-sized to A1. There’s no dominant style, theme or technique to the prints, so the work is by local and visiting artists using linocut, etching, screen print and every other printmaking technique you might like to see. See the works in the DCA's upstairs print space until Sunday.


A typographical talk on the GSA's Alasdair Gray exhibition takes place on Thursday

Staying in Dundee, the Hannah Maclure centre is hosting Coded After Lovelace. This group show has already been on display (though in a different configuration) in New York’s Whitebox Art Centre, and is now halfway through its run which began during the seven-day NEoN annual digital arts festival back in November. Named after the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, and taking place 199 years after her birth, this show looks looks to bring attention to women past and present who have been overlooked in the history of art and technology.

On to Glasgow, and on Thursday there's an event to accompany the Alasdair Gray exhibition in the Reid Gallery of the Glasgow School of Art. Titled "A potted history of the alphabet and its designs", Edwin Pickstone will be discussing fonts and especially those to do with the Gray exhibition, including Gill Sans. So it's one for the typography enthusiasts, and it will take place at 1pm in the Barnes Building Lecture Theatre, 9-11 West Graham Street. All welcome, no need to book.

Staying in Glasgow, and in one of the most idiosyncratic spaces in the city, there is an opening in the Queens Park Railway Club with a fairly idiosyncratic character, Craig Mulholland. There's not much information about the nature of the exhibition, but the press release consists of a long quotation from a text about Walter Benjamin on "the classless society" and what "Marx says". As a further bit of contextual information, his last show involved the creation of a gym environment in Glasgow's Fleming House for Glasgow International. If this is your kind of thing, the exhibit opens on Friday 16 Jan at 7pm.

For the last dash, shows closing this week in Glasgow include Manuel Chavajay and Rebecca Wilcox' joint show at the CCA This Might Be a Place for Hummingbirds (closes Sun 18 Jan), and Victoria Morton's solo exhibit in The Modern Institute Aird's Lane (closing Sat 17 Jan). In Edinburgh, two more shows end on Sunday 18 Jan; Invented Acoustical Tools by Tony Conrad in Inverleith House, and an exhibition of Art of the First World War in the City Art Centre.


More from The Skinny:


• Get your art calendar up to date with our 2015 exhibitions guide


• Towering Ambitions: Ponte City


Send details of forthcoming exhibitions, events and openings to adam@theskinny.co.uk http://theskinny.co.uk/art