Books, building websites, and Turner Prize build-up: This week in Scottish Art

From David Shrigley's lecture in the GFT to library sculptures sited around the country, this week's accidental theme in Scottish contemporary art is books

Feature by Adam Benmakhlouf | 25 Nov 2014

This week, five young artists have been commissioned to produce art in libraries as part of Book Week Scotland. In order to raise the profile of each of the libraries, a large-scale artwork has been installed outside each of the five libraries involved. Among the participating artists is former Skinny scribe Emma Ewan, whose work will sit outside Musselburgh Library. Ewan’s concrete lectern surrounded by artificial grass “is intended as an object, platform, or stage that can be activated by anyone in the local community.” The works are being unveiled, one per day, all this week.

Staying bookish, in Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice gallery, Disinformation have created a sound installation and video named after William Hogarth’s treatise “The Analysis of Beauty”. In this written work, Hogarth discussed the beauty of s-shaped lines, waving and snake-like. These lines are now more contemporarily identifiable as sine-waves, whose geometry is encountered across music, physics and engineering. Disinformation have employed these sine-waves to create their soundwork, which will be in the Talbot Rice space until 29 Nov.

In the final piece of book-related art news this week, David Shrigley will deliver a lecture in the GFT on Thu 27 Nov. In An Evening of Words and Images, Shrigley will discuss his new book Weak Messages Create Bad Situations: A Manifesto. Tickets are available here. As a teaser for Thursday's events, in our video of the week Shrigley inimitably delivers a sermon on the seven deadly sins.

This time last year, Shrigley was in the running for the Turner Prize, and this year's winner will be announced this Monday, 1 December. It's a particularly important edition for Scotland, as three of the nominees have come from the Glasgow School of Art – Ciara Phillips, Duncan Campbell and Tris Vonna-Michell, with James Richards the lone non-GSA nominee. There's an emphasis on video work this year, across the practices of Vonna-Michell, Campbell and Richards, the only interruption being Phillips' work which bases itself firmly within the context of printmaking. 2015 will be another important Turner year for Glasgow, as the exhibition will take place in the Tramway, where the prize will also be presented. Find out who grabs the prize on Monday at 7.30pm on Channel 4, and check back on Tuesday for reaction to the big news.

In Arbroath, the winter programme for Hospitalfield Arts continues with the preview for Bob and Roberta Smith’s project, The Arbroath Template. Smith’s project pivots on the question 'Where is innovation with education?' With this project, Smith hopes to build “an inspirational large resource of 'Open Source' imagery connected with value in the arts.” The preview evening event will take place on Friday 28 November from 6.30-8.30pm, with daytime events from 11am to 5pm the following Saturday and Sunday.

There’s particular relevance to Smith’s question this week after Radio 4’s broadcast on Saturday of Art School Smart School. As trends dictate that workshops are replaced with computer suites and teaching hours shrink in the face of huge increases in student numbers, the programme puts to question the value of an art school education. Featuring contributions from the likes of Grayson Perry and Brian Eno, the show is available now on the BBC iPlayer.

Online again, but this time for the freaky makeover of the Embassy Gallery website. Until 30 November, as part of their current Vitae exhibition, Embassy is hosting Dave Young’s Another Collaborative Editor. Turning their usually well put-together website over to Young to make it into the loud, indecipherable mess you see above is a particularly reflexive moment of the exhibition, which addresses issues of professionalism in arts practice. The exhibition continues in the gallery until 30 November and is open Thursday to Sunday 12pm-6pm.

There is also news this week from Glasgow public art organisation NVA, who are in charge of the revitalisation of St Peter’s Seminary, the stunning modernist structure in Cardross. Work now begins in earnest as they have appointed their creative design team of architects. It’s particularly reassuring that NVA have reaffirmed their commitment to a “partial restoration,” as they outline in their vision: “Rather than rubbing off the hard edges to create a linear, polished version of the past, the intention is to preserve a raw sense of otherness, excitement and revelation.”


MORE FROM THE SKINNY:

 
• Malcolm Middleton and David Shrigley team up on new LP – listen to a track here


• Our review of the Scotland pavilion at the Venice Biennale

• David Shrigley sent us a Christmas card