Flip the Switch

Deborah Jackson is hunting for The Embassy Gallery’s electricity switch when I first meet her. She is the co-ordinator of Edinburgh’s fourth Annuale: a programme of performances and exhibitions featuring local collectives. Our conversation takes place within Adam McLean’s show Alchemy. This dizzyingly intellectual project of mystical renderings provides a refreshing contrast to the predominance of established artists and urban themed exhibitions this year.

The Annuale strives to reach a wider audience, employing varied spaces across the whole city: it’s a hectic schedule of events from flat exhibitions to one-night performances in abandoned railway tunnels!

Providing support to emerging artists is also extremely important to Jackson. She enthusiastically details the role The Embassy and ECA play as facilitators of ambitious projects throughout the year. Their current project New Venue; New Viewers is the re-screening of stimulating works from The Embassy Film Season.

Annuale’s premise is echoed in the concept behind the exhibition Sets (organised by artist led initiative Standby): “A set can be thought of as any collection of distinct objects considered as a whole.” Two buildings on Edinburgh's Quay call for a purpose. Labelled as offices or bars to be, the fact that an enterprising youthful group has turned the concrete vacuoles into exhibition spaces brings satisfaction to the site. Flip the switch turn on the power and fill the space with work from Art School Graduates! At the busy opening the show has a “carnivalesque” feel, dipped in the sinister and bound by the surreal.

In spite of its innovation, this exhibition of theatrical installation, performance and film works, lacks a rounded curatorial theme. Tessa Lynch’s stitched banner structure ‘thoughts are real’ resembling half an oversized umbrella and accompanied by self-help instructions embraces the ambiguous commands the show directs to the audience. Nevertheless the character and enthusiasm demonstrated in the show is impressive and definitely worth a visit.

Collective People/Animals have curated a rotating exhibition in The Royal Edinburgh Hospital with the help of Art Link. Work by patients sits alongside that of art students. This small exhibition strikes the heart of The Annuale by targeting a new intimate audience.

Build Rome in a Day; find the Pedal Panoptikon; have an Artoscopic experience or take a trip to Hyperground. This utopian programme encapsulates the zeal, ambition, and excitement of Edinburgh’s youngest Art Scene.
www.annuale.org