What's On: Edinburgh Art Festival 2022

The Community Wellbeing Collective (C.W.C), a group of residents from Wester Hailes and surrounding areas, will present Watch this Space, initiated by the visual artist Jeanne van Heeswijk. Throughout the festival the space will host an array of events and gatherings led by C.W.C members, alongside weekend events by guest practitioners to expand upon themes of community wellbeing and social care. Activities will take place in Westside Plaza and online at watchthisspace.online (live from 28 July). Jeanne van Heeswijk will also present the Keynote Lecture on the opening weekend to kickstart this year’s festival on Friday 29 July.

Mother's #38, Ishiuchi Miyako

Finding Buoyancy is produced in collaboration with groups and individuals in Wester Hailes, alongside Glasgow-based artists Pester and Rossi. The commission consists of three elements – a set of publicly sited sails at Bridge 8 Hub and Paddle Café; a community raft called Float For The Future made collaboratively with artist Sarah Kenchington and a canal-based performance produced with local people in collaboration with Rhubaba Choir.

Co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and Edinburgh Printmakers, Montreal-based artist Nadia Myre will present Tell Me of Your Boats and Your Waters – Where Do They Come From, Where Do They Go? Working across print, performance and sound, Myre explores geographies spanning Scotland and Canada, referencing Indigenous storytelling and histories of migration. The exhibition will take place both along the Union Canal and at Edinburgh Printmakers. 

Platform: 2022 presents the work of four emerging Scotland-based artists – Saoirse Amira Anis, Emelia Kerr Beale, Lynsey MacKenzie and Jonny Walker. The exhibition reflects on the bodily experience and mythologies of care and interdependence. Taking place at Edinburgh Art Festival’s home L’institut Français d’Ecosse, it promises to be an expansive and multifaceted exhibition of some of the nation’s most exciting artists.

Glasgow-based artist Emmie McLuskey is this year’s festival’s Associate Artist, and she will present four new commissions centred on the environment, translation and gentrification. Hannah Jones will present a multi-disciplinary exploration of language, rhythm and origin in response to cultural and social migration. Janice Parker works with choreography and dance as part of her socially engaged practice, while Amanda Thomson works with notions of home and movement in relation to landscape. Designer Maeve Redmond’s research-led practice unpacks how the context of a site informs our aesthetic sense of place. 

A multitude of exhibitions form the Festival’s partner program. Ashanti Harris presents an exciting new commission at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, titled Dancing A Peripheral Quadrille. The commission takes the form of a series of sculptural and performance works that entangle ideas around grassroots cultural production with Harris’s research and experience of West Indian Carnivals. Meanwhile, at Edinburgh Printmakers, Tessa Lynch considers feminist readings of the city in ‘expanded print’, promoting alternative building techniques inspired by play and the natural environment. The show continues until 18 September.

if i can't have some sunshine ill take-_, Camara Taylor

At Sierra Metro In Leith, Margate-based artist Studio Lenca presents a series of new works confronting the complex cultural history of El Salvador. Representing Japan at the 2005 Venice Biennale, Ishiuchi Miyako will present her first solo show of photography in Scotland at Stills, which continues until 8 October. In Talbot Rice, you'll find the first survey exhibition of Céline Condorelli, including a major new installation expanding upon her Zanzibar series (2018-ongoing), informed by the Brazilian modernist architect Lina Bo Bardi. Fruitmarket present Daniel Silver's Looking, a major solo exhibition of large-scale ceramic works from this protegé of Phyllida Barlow. Collective have three new artist commissions considering the hidden histories and untold stories relating to their City Observatory site and wider cultural history. Explore work from Camara Taylor, Ruth Ewan and Annette Kraus in their Calton Hill space and online. 

Closing this year’s festival, the Endnote Lecture will be delivered by artist Hew Locke at St Cecilia’s Hall. He will be in conversation with Dr Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani from the Department of Art History at the University of Edinburgh on 26 August.

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Edinburgh Art Festival, 28 Jul-28 Aug