Comicbooks, Perms, A-ha: This Month in Scottish Art
Across Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh, there are several major new exhibitions opening throughout March, as well as accompanying conversation and discussion events
This month in art starts on Friday 6 March, when three new exhibits open up across Edinburgh and Dundee. Let’s start with Dovecot, who will be exhibiting work by Magne Furuholmen. Enjoying a double life, Furuholmen is a respected visual artist, but as 'Mags' he is also one-third of the band A-ha. For the exhibition, Furuholmen has had one of a series of his woodcuts turned into a tapestry at the Dovecot Studios, titled Glass Onion after the Beatles song. This in turn forms the centrepiece: “a new body of work for the exhibition using music, film, printmaking and large scale ceramic.” Open from 6 March, there’s an In Conversation event on 5 March between Furuholmen and radio broadcaster Gaby Hartel.
Also opening on 6 March is the group show Possibilities of the Object, in Edinburgh's Fruitmarket Gallery. Here visiting curator Paulo Venancio Filho looks at the developments in Brazilian art since the 1950s, and the building of Brazil’s reputation for producing experimental contemporary art. Established artists from Brazil like Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark will be shown alongside some of their less well-known contemporaries, and the latest generation of Brazilian artists. On Friday 6 March, there is a curator’s talk by Paulo Venancio Filho in conversation with Professor Briony Fer of UCL.
In Dundee, again from 6 March, there will be an exhibition of the work of Hugo Canoilas. An extensive show, Someone a Long Time ago, Now will include paintings and projected works that collage drawings, writings and photographs. The artist has also set up “an exhibition within an exhibition” in the form of a comic book by Francisco Sousa Lobo “that mirrors and examines” Canoilas’ practice. There will be a performance by Hugo Canoilas on Thursday 5 March at 6pm. He will be appearing as “his alter ego Jeffrey, a 60-year-old hippie.”
From 14 March, in Edinburgh again, Ross Birrell and David Harding will be showing their work in the Talbot Rice gallery. Titled Where Language Ends, Birrell and Harding use “spectacular coloured window installations, sculptural objects, prints and multimedia works” in which they make “poignant references to the voices of those in exile – poets and musicians writing from the margins.” Music comes into the works as the form of a “redemptive force; a force never far from brutality and violence.” Birrell and Harding look to celebrate “the importance of symbolic labour and the possibility of transcending a purely material reality.”
On Friday 13 March from 7-9pm, there will be the opening for Jess Ramm’s show Earth Rise. Ramm will present works across film, sculpture and performance documentation, through which she addresses the human-environment relationship. More specifically, she reconfigures objects and materials drawn from nature, including outdoor performances in which she directly reconfigures the environment. Conducting these experiments acts as a means of research into the current order of technology and science, and as contrasted “against the environmental forces of the natural world.”
On Friday 20 March in Glasgow again, Good Press will move from its established home in Mono to 5 St Margaret’s Place, just around the corner. For the first installation at new God Press, there will be an installation of paintings, sculptures 'and more' from Owen Piper, as well as a new A2 glossy print edition to mark the occasion. It’s an early opening, starting at 3pm, with drinks.
Also throughout this month is Perm, a series of weekly one-night exhibitions by Glasgow School of Art Painting and Printmaking graduates in the Old Hairdresser’s. Details for each week’s artist will be published online in the weekly news and events column.