This Week in Scottish Art: 4-10 April

Tue 4 Apr: GFT

1984 screens at the GFT from 6.10 to 8.10 pm tonight, extending US cinemas’ joint showings of the film today across the pond. The screening recognizes threats to the freedom of speech in the US following the silencing of liberal voices. All tickets cost £5.50, buy them here on the GFT’s website.

Wed 5 Apr: Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh Printmakers and Civic Room

and per se and part III – Albrecht Durer and Katie Paterson opens at Ingleby Gallery today. and per se is Ingleby Gallery’s 2017 rolling exhibition programme, pairing works by two artists alongside each other for a period of two weeks. Dürer’s 1498 fifteen-woodcut volume The Apocalypse will be opened to display The Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Seals and Patterson’s 2009 All the Dead Stars, an exploration of our cosmos on etched aluminum, are featured. Visit the show Wednesday to Saturday (till 15 April) from 11am to 5pm.

The Green Tease network joins the artist Sean Caulfield and Professor Emily Brady for a discussion regarding Caulfield’s current exhibition Firedamp: Revisiting the Flood at Edinburgh Printmakers from 5 to 6pm. Caulfield and Brady will give presentations about their artistic practice, which merges the natural and the mechanical to capture transformations in our environment brought about by industrial and urban growth, and research, which cites historical environmental events in relation to contemporary environmental issues. Networking drinks will follow the discussion. Admission is free, but tickets must be booked in advance here. Firedamp is on display till 15 April in the main gallery; see the show Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 6pm.

Civic Room is hosting Curatorial Conversations at Many Studios this evening from 6pm. This is the first of many events where attendees are welcomed to openly share curatorial practices and ideas. If you wish to attend, please RSVP by sending an email to sarah@sarahstrang.com with the subject line: Curatorial Conversations.

Thu 6 Apr: House of an Art Lover

Portrait Postcards: Glasgow School of Fine Art 1975-2015 is a work-in-progress exhibition by Barry and Linda Atherton at House of an Art Lover’s Studio Pavillion. This exhibition presents a unique opportunity to watch the Athertons assemble their five-panel mural of portraits and discuss the project with the artists. The growing assemblage of portraits of artists from the Glasgow School of Fine Art will amount to a complicated history painting representing four decades from the School’s past. Portrait Postcards is open until 30 April, Monday to Sunday from 1 to 4pm.

Fri 7 Apr: Collective gallery, Market Gallery, The Telfer Gallery, Tramway, Queens Park Railway Club and Generator Projects

Collective in Edinburgh hosts the preview for Alex Impey’s ←Term.←Lam.← from 6 to 8pm. Impey’s research pursues interests in materials, animal motifs, divination and art history; his work explores the construction and organization of value through writing and sculptural installation. In ←Term.←Lam.←, Impey employs a diverse selection of materials of natural origin and engineering use to divulge humankind’s adaptation of nature and animals to fit our own needs and understand the workings of our world.  

The Minch previews at Market Gallery this evening from 6 to 9pm. Suzanne Déry and Susannah Stark’s The Minch is a multimedia installation including moveable plastic prints, handmade instruments and a cacophony of disembodied voices. The human imagination’s potential to animate and appropriate objects, environments or concepts and the power of the human voice in public space are explored in the show. This exhibition will be on display until 23 April, visit Tuesdays to Sundays between noon and 6pm.

Ewan Murray’s exhibition Landscapes, People, Buildings also opens tonight from 6 to 9pm at The Telfer Gallery. Murray is a Glasgow-based painter with an interest in the history of the medium of painting and an explorative studio practice – read our recent interview with Murray here. This body of new work examines painting’s illusionistic potential and material qualities. For the artist, painting can structure and help find meaning in what we see. Landscapes, People, Buildings will remain on display until 30 April; visit Friday to Sunday from noon to 5pm or by appointment.

Chew and Spit, the new show from 2017 Tramway Open recipient Beatrice Loft Schulz, is previewing tonight at Tramway from 7 to 9pm. Loft Schulz neutralizes the gallery space by utilising methods of deception, artifice and craft. Chew and Spit, in Tramway’s front gallery, is an immersive installation featuring materials referencing faded and fading passions which remain of personal significance. Loft Schulz’s materials reference shifting dynamics like the inevitable worthlessness of fashion trends, the construction of taste and tensions between the provincial and cosmopolitan. The exhibition is open till 14 May, visit between noon and 5pm Tuesday to Friday, and from noon to 6pm at the weekend; admission is free.

Queens Park Railway Club premieres Clemens Wilhelm’s new film A Horse with Wheels in a show of the same title previewing tonight from 7 to 9pm. Wilhelm’s essayistic film takes an unusual highway sighting, a horse with wheels, and attempts to reconnect its audience to the creator of mankind’s first piece of art or “useless tool”: The Swimming Reindeer made 13,000 years ago in the Last Ice Age. The exhibition is open till 7 May, visit during their opening hours: Thursday to Sunday from 12 to 6pm.

A constellation is forming here also previews tonight at Generator Projects in Dundee from 7 to 9pm. Linda Bolsakova and Brodie Sim (who we interviewed this month, read here) explore poetic and material moments of connection and resonance between their work. Bolsakova and Sim use natural materials for their tonal and conductive qualities creating a space of solace encouraging meditative contemplation. The exhibition will remain on display till 30 Apr; visit Thursday to Sunday from noon to 5pm.

Sat 8 Apr: Cooper Gallery and The Pipe Factory

Today is your last chance to see Two Night Stands, co-curated with Lynda Morris, at Cooper Gallery in Dundee. In Two Night Stands artists and collaborative groups take over Cooper Gallery to stage six immediate and impromptu appearances otherwise known as “happenings”. By moving away from a more traditional format of the exhibition and declaring ownership of the gallery to its occupying artists, tensions between politics and space (and its ownership and occupation) are subverted and reconsidered.

Two Night Stands follows two curatorial projects by Morris: One Artist – One Day (1975) and One Night Stands (co-curated with Kirsty Ogg, 1997), inspired by and realised from Andre Cadere’s notion assigning the ownership of a space to an artist and their audience. Visit today between 10.30am and 4.30pm.    

A new exhibition by Brian McFie and Geneva Sills previews today at The Pipe Factory from 2 to 5pm. Both artists show recent bodies of work alongside each other to set up an aesthetic dialogue. McFie shows paintings, which exist between gestural or abstract expression and plein air “training”. Sills has silver gelatin prints from experimenting with black and white film processing blurring the boundaries between photography and painting. The exhibition is on display till April 30 30; visit The Pipe Factory between 11am and 6pm at the weekend and by appointment Mondays to Fridays.

Sun 9 Apr: Tramway, Street Level Photoworks, Stills and Scottish National Portrait Gallery

Do not miss your last chance to see Claire Barclay’s impressive site-specific installation Yield Point at Tramway today. Yield Point was created in direct response to Tramway’s industrial aesthetic and imposing scale. Admission is free and open to all; visit between noon and 6pm.  

Rock Against Racism closes today at Street Level Photoworks, open from noon till 5pm. Syd Shelton photographed Britain in the 1970s and the RAR Carnival 1 in London’s Victoria Park in 1978. Although the Carnival had no official photographer, Shelton produced the largest archive of photographs documenting the movement. Shelton describes his oeuvre as a subjective witnessing and capturing of a period he hoped would contribute to social change in a volatile Britain divided by gender, class and race.

In Edinburgh, The Collection Series: Works from a private photography collection & Alan Dimmick's studio archive, 1977-2017 at Stills gallery and Out of the Shadow: Women of Nineteenth Century Scotland at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery end today. The former is a two-part display featuring a private photography collection on loan from David Eustace and photographs by Dimmick chronicling the recent history of Scotland’s cultural scene. The latter is a display of portraits of nineteenth century women whose lives were marked by noteworthy achievements at a time women were expected to remain within the domestic sphere. Both exhibitions are free to attend, Still is open from 11am to 6pm and the Portrait Gallery from 10am to 5pm.   

Mon 10 Apr: Platform

Visit Balancing Acts, an exhibition by (Ruby) Pester and (Nadia) Rossi, at Platform today between 9am and 9pm. Pester and Rossi have been associate artists at Platform since last year, and create imagery and make handmade costumes and props referencing popular culture and the body. The duo create immersive social experiments and environments celebrating all that is home-made, and exploring childhood nostalgia and rituals of public ceremony with a DIY approach and sensibility. The exhibition is open till 7 May, visit from 9am to 9pm Monday to Friday, till 5pm on Saturdays and 7pm on Sundays.