This Week in Scottish Art: 7-13 February

Wed 8 Feb: CCA

The GRAMNet/BEMIS film series present Chasing Asylum at the CCA Cinema tonight at 6pm. Chasing Asylum discloses Australia’s offshore detention policies with inside-footage from offshore detention camps exposing the irreparable effects of placing people in search of a home in limbo. The centre's conditions have largely remained hidden from public view. Tickets are free, but must be booked in advance to guarantee a space, book online here.

Thu 9 Feb: Collective, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Studio 24 and Tramway

Collective gallery on Edinburgh’s Calton Hill is hosting a book launch for and reading of Maria Fusco’s Legend of the Necessary Dreamer 6.30-7.30pm. The event parallels the City Observatory’s current redevelopment. Legend of the Necessary Dreamer is an account of Lisbon’s Palacio Pombal; it was written on-site during Fuscos’s post as writer-in-residence at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale.  

John Walter, who is currently completing a micro-residency at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, is giving a free artist talk 6-8pm. Walter’s installations employ colour, humour and hospitality in exuberance seducing viewers to confront the works’ uncomfortable and complex topics. Walter questions the artist’s social role by using art as a platform to address subjects usually bound to the fields of politics, science and sociology, like HIV. The artist combines personal experience with those of others to create pieces and fictional narratives that work in connection to one another. 

Yield Point opens 7-9pm at Tramway this evening. Artist Claire Barclay’s exhibition has been created on-site in response to the Tramway’s industrial aesthetic. For this new exhibition, Barclay explores relations between the human body and industrial workplaces, as well as the strengths and vulnerabilities associated with skilled manual labour. Yield Point will run until 9 April, open 12-5pm Tuesday to Friday and til 6pm on weekends; admission is free. There will also be free tours of the exhibition every Sunday until 19 March for a brief 10-minute introduction.   

The Edinburgh Students’ Art Festival launch party kicks off their third annual festival at Studio 24 7-10.30pm. Come along for some live music, performance and socialising. Tickets are available here, and may be available at the door. ESAF present their programme of visual arts, performance, music, film events, talks, workshops, and creative partner series until 3 March.

Fri 10 Feb: Cooper Gallery, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, The Number Shop, Telfer Gallery and GFT

Professional dancer Melanie Forbes Broomes is leading Cooper Gallery’s third dance workshop We Dance Ourselves! Re:Rosas! 5.30-7pm as part of an extended programme of events accompanying their exhibition Of Other Spaces: Where Does Gesture Become Event?. Rosas danst Rosasd by Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker was first performed in 1983 and is included in the show. De Keersmaeker initiated Re:Rosas! in 2013, a project which allows her choreography to be performed anywhere and by whoever, and then uploaded to the project’s website. The choreography, originally performed by four dancers, is an amalgamation of fierce movements and smaller gestures of the everyday. The four dancers perform themselves over and over in a feminine statement of sexual expression and woman’s power.    

Anna Danielewicz‘s performance Weather Channel takes place today at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop 7-9pm. Danielewicz is part of the Workshop’s graduate residency; she will present a geopolitical weather oracle while in conversation with Calathea Roseopicta. The forecast and the weather are ultimate banalities and of cosmic forces simultaneously, which binds us all together. The performance is set in a room with a selection of objects to peruse. Drinks and skittles will follow, admission is free and unticketed.

Glasgow-based artist Calum Monteith’s exhibition Other previews at the Number Shop at 7pm tonight. Monteith uses painting, sculpture, photography and screen-printing in his work, which values a strong link between apprehending the natural world and attaining a better understanding of the self. The exhibition is on display till 26 February; visit Thursdays to Sundays 12-6pm.

Glasgow artist Kimberly O’Neill’s Circuits of Bad Conscience opens 6-9pm at the Telfer Gallery. On show is a new science-fiction video work produced during O’Neill’ residency at the Telfer Gallery, with characters crafted from historical figures, personal experience and commercial materials. O’Neill’s work considers the stymying and exploitation of female energy in circuits of mainstream media, which preserve dominant ideological paradigms. The artist also explores the potential of the body as media-made-flesh consequential to the marking of our personal bodies by ideological powers. The exhibition is on until 5 March; visit Friday to Sunday 12-5pm or by appointment.

The GFT is hosting a series of premiere screenings for Moonlight from today to Wednesday, 15 February before its 17 February general UK release date. Barry Jenkin’s critically acclaimed film has been nominated for eight Academy Awards and six Golden Globes, and is the winner of the latter’s Best Drama Motion Picture. The film set in 1980s Miami, shadows protagonist Chiron discovering his personal identity and sexuality through three adolescent stages. Purchase your tickets on their website here or at their box office.

Sat 11 Feb: Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow Project Room and Project Café

Rock Against Racism opens today at Street Level Photoworks 2-5pm. The exhibition includes photographs by Syd Shelton of audiences at Rock Against Racism (RAR) festivals and musical performers from the 1970s. RAR had no official photographer, but Shelton photographed the largest collection of images of a movement which produced counter-realities obliterating dominating standards of white supremacy and black alienation. Syd Shelton and Carol Tulloch will host an exhibition walk and talk at 2pm followed by a reception at 3pm; attendance is free.    

New works by artists Alistair Dearie, Sally Wright and Shireen Taylor are on display at Glasgow Project Room. Conversations between all three artists sparked the development of the works on display, which employ personal narratives and the tradition of still life often associated with craft. Textiles, decorative styles, psychological states, spiritualist practices and the Bloomsbury Set at Charleston House are all included in their set of influences.The exhibition is open Saturda and Sunday 12-5pm.

Earth, Iron, Fire by David Farrar and Fionnuala McGowan opens at Project Café 6-8pm today. Farrar and McGowan set up Mobile Print Studio, which sets up pop-up printmaking workshops at various venues in Glasgow. Earth, Iron, Fire is an exhibition of contemporary printmaking and methods of display bridging traditional techniques with unconventional processes and (natural) materials.

Sun 12 Feb: City Art Centre

This is the last day to see Peter Randall-Page’s works on paper at City Art Centre. Randall-Page’s ink drawings line the edge of chaos and order; the artist allows the ink to flow naturally on the page and then flips the page’s alignment to reverse the ink’s direction. These process-made drawings hint at mirror symmetry and branching patterns in natural forms. The exhibition is open 12-5pm; admission is free for all.

Mon 13 Feb: The Briggait

Come and see O-Pin Collab, an exhibition featuring works by twenty jewellery artists at The Briggait from 11-5pm. The exhibition will culminate in a silent auction on Friday 24 February. Ten jewellers were selected to invite another creative individual to collaborate and create a wearable art object inspired by a particular theme in one day. The resulting pieces are exhibited in the Workable Works Space in Gallery 2 and will be auctioned off to raise funds for the Scottish Refugee Council.