The Skinny Review of 2015

ART

Scotland Art editor Adam Benmakhlouf selects his 2015 highlight

Phyllida Barlow's exhibition at the Fruitmarket was an excellent play of the monumental object against little crannies of spaces. Downstairs the literal remnants of an earlier major show were left leaning and piled around the floor. Going up, there was a massive construction, so big in the space it was more proper to think of it in terms of the temporary plaster board walls you might see as office partitions, the kind that move if you put too much weight on them. Taking away the possibility of distance, everything was too close to get a sense of scale. Instead, physicality and presence nicely overrode impressive largeness.

After a long career of teaching in London art schools, and influencing now well-known artists like Rachel Whiteread, Barlow began to gain visibility later in life after years of working without much recognition. Fresh from the Tate, she kept a sense of economy by reusing many of the same (already-inexpensive) construction materials for her large-scale installation. Barlow’s more than paid her dues and it was a privilege to see her work, and to see a late-stage career artist still refining and making work afresh. [Adam Benmakhlouf]

BOOKS

Alan Bett, Books editor Scotland, recalls a touching moment from 2015

At Edinburgh International Book Festival in August, Michel Faber – author of Under the Skin – grumbled through a wry smile that his new and (it is claimed) final novel had missed the Booker Prize longlist. I doubt he was overly concerned in truth. He seems a man indifferent to critical lauding. But on 26 November The Book of Strange New Things won the Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year.

Faber took to the stage in a long sleeved black T shirt and what seemed to be jogging bottoms tucked into fur-lined, UGG-style boots. His wife had died just before the book had published, her long and tragic illness feeding a plot he tried bitterly to distance from the Earth and any reference to the human race. Contrary to this original wish, it became an absolute affirmation of humanity, its immeasurable faults and beauty. At the ceremony, he spoke of Eva during his acceptance. Tenderly and with humour. In such a way that audience lips quivered. A collective allergy seemed to engulf the room.

On leaving the stage our respite proved merely momentary, as he was called straight back to be crowned overall winner of the Scottish Book of the Year award. For a ceremony set to honour Scottish culture and achievement to award the novel of a Dutch-born Australian expat, which mentions our country once (a seemingly off-hand reference to RBS), was refreshingly outward-looking. It is a seminal book, and it was an extraordinarily touching moment, to be remembered. It’s nice when the good guys win. [Alan Bett]

COMEDY

Ben Venables took over as Comedy editor in early 2015. He looks back on a year of overlooked genius and #piggate

Rewind back to 2011, when the then-21-year-old Richard Gadd told our former comedy editor Lizzie Cass-Maran, “I do a very weird act.” Well, he’s certainly stuck to that. At this year’s Fringe the annual discussion about who the Edinburgh award judges had missed was all about him. And if his show was too weird to be recognised on the main shortlist, Waiting for Gaddot’s genre-warping audacity surely made it a shoo-in for the ‘Spirit of the Fringe’ panel prize? Alas, no.

But, Gadd did pick-up the Amused Moose award and his show perhaps gained more traction for his exclusion from the main judges’ plans. He’ll be returning home in March after his extended Soho Theatre run to perform at the Glasgow International Comedy Festival – unless he decides to keep us waiting…

Oh, and Lord Ashcroft arguably made the year’s most significant cultural contribution to comedy by rearing David Cameron’s ritual humiliation into the public mind. Though Ashcroft provided no evidence, the universal jubilation at the very idea of a prime ministerial penis encased within a dead pig’s head suggest one funny mental picture is a more powerful force than any ethical considerations. [Ben Venables]

FILM

Our resident cinema expert, Jamie Dunn looks back on a year where female characters stepped to the fore

Any wrong-headed notion that the general public are less interested in female-oriented stories was shattered in 2015. In Mad Max: Fury Road, the year’s best action film, the eponymous road warrior was pushed to the edge of his own franchise in favour of a thrilling female-driven (pun intended) narrative. In Carol, the year’s most moving romance, two women defy the men trying to control their lives and begin a tentative relationship in 50s New York. The year’s best comedies (Mistress America, Spy, Tangerine) were as concerned with female friendship as they were with belly laughs.

In the year’s best horror, It Follows, a young woman is stalked by a mysterious creature when a man uses her for sex, but she challenges all notions of victimhood. In the year’s most anticipated movie, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, a franchise that had become stale and unsure of itself was raised from the ashes on the shoulders of a plucky female jedi who will see sales in lightsabers among pre-teen girls skyrocket. On top of all this, the final instalment from The Hunger Games franchise, one of the most mature and gritty action series of recent years, confirmed Jennifer Lawrence's standing as the movie star of the moment (Joy, out 1 Jan, looks set to cement this even further).

If things were looking rosy for female talent in front of the camera in 2015, it certainly wasn’t the case behind it. All the films mentioned above were directed by men, and, in general, it’s as difficult for female directors to get a foot in the door as ever. There are buds of hope, however. Many of the year’s most exciting directorial debuts – Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behaviour, Marielle Heller's Diary of a Teenage Girl, and Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night – were from female filmmakers, as were two of 2015’s most profitable movies (Pitch Perfect 2 and Fifty Shades of Grey). The glass ceiling remain stubbornly in place, but cracks are beginning to appear. [Jamie Dunn]

FOOD & DRINK

Food editor Peter Simpson celebrates an event focussing on food equality

It's one thing to come up with a good idea, but to carry it off is quite another. So when the newly-minted Real Food, Real Folk restaurant collective announced their plans for Let's Eat Glasgow, a two-day food festival and pop-up restaurant at SWG3, it seemed like an intriguing concept. And then thousands of people of turned up, as the good people of Glasgow got hyped and ate the collective out of house and (temporary) home.

When we spoke to RFRF ringleader Colin Clydesdale of Ubiquitous Chip ahead of the event, he was keen to explain that the collective's goals stretch beyond the occasional pop-up bash, saying: "The gulf between those with access to good food and those who don’t is basically inherently unfair and, in Glasgow, which has always been such an intrinsically socially minded city, this strikes me as particularly glaring." Who knows what 2016 holds in store for Real Food, Real Folk, but it's safe to say Scotland's foodies will be interested. [Peter Simpson]

MUSIC

Our stage at this year's Electric Fields festival in Dumfries was months in the planning, with a line-up comprised of an eclectic mix of acts from across the pages of our music section in recent months and the past ten years of the magazine's history. With the sounds tied up, it fell to the gods to keep up their end of the bargain, and the pleasingly cooperative weather combined with the down-home atmosphere of the Drumlanrig Castle setting for a brilliantly jovial atmosphere. 

From spotting William Doyle of East India Youth trudging across a field in a hoodie only for him to remerge in trademark suit-and-tie minutes later, to Blanck Mass emptying then refilling then emptying our tent with an organ-rearranging set, via James Graham of the Twilight Sad exchanging heckles with his dad during the band's surprise two-piece set, the whole day was a celebration of music in all its forms. 

Of course, there's nowhere the room here to scratch the surface of our Music writers' highlights; the team could be found taking notes on the frontlines at festivals throughout the country and indeed around the world. But Electric Fields was a little closer to our hearts.

ALSO IN 2015:

We turned 10 years old, and marked the occasion with a massive party at The Mash House in Edinburgh. There were live sets from Zyna Hel and Stillhound, Substance brought the noise in the upstairs club room, Neu! Reekie! put on a spoken word showcase, and the author of our Phagomania food art column bowled everyone over with a non-stop set of 70s and 80s funk bangers. You had to be there. We also marked our Northwest edition's 2nd birthday with a big ol' bash at Hold Fast Bar in Manchester, with good friends, good cake and plenty of booze. No Food section funk set though, unfortunately.

The Skinny Showcase exhibition returned to the Edinburgh Art Festival, with four graduates of Gray's School of Art, Duncan of Jordanstone, Edinburgh College of Art and Glasgow School of Art showing off their work at Hill Street Design House in the New Town. Hill Street also played host to our 2015 Short Film Competition screening, with Bryan M Ferguson's CAUSTIC GULP crowned this year's winner. Thanks, Hill Street!

We teamed up with the Edinburgh International Book Festival for their Jura Unbound late-night events strand, and celebrated the work of one of our earliest contributors. Sean Michaels was a music writer in the very early days of The Skinny, but returned to Edinburgh for this year's Book Festival as the winner of Canada's prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize for literature for his debut novel Us Conductors. The novel centres on the inventor of the theremin, Lev Termen, so we did what anyone would do given the circumstances – we brought the world's best theremin player to Edinburgh for a performance alongside Sean. 

Though known as a comedy critic of great integrity, Fringe Dog’s knowledge and performance of promenade theatre was again somewhat overlooked this August. However, for those in the right place at the right time on Grassmarket and Nicholson Street, no-one was left in doubt that the double header of his most legendary shows – Sniffin a Drain and Lickin a Bin – more than demonstrated this wise Norfolk Terrier as the true guardian of the Fringe’s soul. 10 stars.