X MUSE* Co-founder Vadim Grigoryan has selected 10 highlights for EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival 2024) who are celebrating their 20th Birthday this year. EAF, the UK’s largest annual festival of visual arts, spans the work of more than 200 artists and multiple art disciplines across the city.
Mele Broomes: Through Warm Temperatures Custom Lane, 92 Constitution Street, EH6 6RP
Award-winning choreographer and performance artist Mele Broomes and their Scotland-based dance collective Project X often celebrate the juxtaposition of ancestral knowledge and contemporaneity, time-inflicted change, reconnection with natural sources, beliefs in natural remedies and elixirs. Broomes’ themes are dear to the ethos of X MUSE and its team has even created an EAF24 cocktail in their honour.
El Anatsui: Scottish Mission Book Depot Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge, EH8 9YL
The exhibition of this giant of contemporary sculpture from Ghana is a must-see. El Anatsui is one of the most important living artists – he was even included in the 2023 Time 100 list of the world’s most influential people – and this exhibition will be the most significant exploration of his practice ever staged in the UK, spanning more than five decades.
Hayley Barker: The Ringing Stone Ingleby Gallery, 33 Barony Street, EH3 6NX
This is the first exhibition in Europe from Los Angeles-based artist Hayley Barker from Oregon, whose paintings with seemingly prosaic subjects become for a viewer complex, energetic membranes. A daughter of an amateur poet, Baker is a fascinated believer in the power of plants. As a collector of minerals she also believes that any object has a memory and energy that affect us.
But, mostly interestingly, Baker’s paintings are “a means of both measuring time and freezing the moment”, according to her gallery. The Ringing Stone rings with intimate poetry and melancholic introspection that have universal resonance and cannot leave one indifferent.
Andrew Sim: Two rainbows and a forest of plants and trees Jupiter Artland
Another intriguing American painter of energy and time, is being shown at Jupiter Artland. Just like his West Coast colleague, Glasgow-born but New York-based, Sim draws his inspiration from plants in woodlands, parks or ornamental gardens. His exploration of trees is full of symbolism. Apart from using a more obvious rainbow as a symbol of Queer experience, the plants symbolically become “portraits through which to express vulnerability, community connection and growth”.
Fungi Forms Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh
Fungi were some of the first complex life forms on land and, according to a new study, the first mushrooms were already present around 800 million years ago – way earlier than even the shadows of Adam and Eve. These life-enhancers and underground connectors of trees and plants are perpetual inspiration for artists and are in focus at an exhibition that explores them from cultural, design and artistic perspectives. Yeast is also a fungus and without it there would not be spirits.
Nearby there is also and event-based installation in the form of a large table around a tree aimed to discuss the interconnections between humans, plants and fungi in times of rapid biodiversity loss.
Chris Ofili: The Caged Bird’s Song Dovecot Studios, 10 Infirmary Street, EH1 1LT
The majestic oeuvre of Chris Ofili attracted my attention through its medium – a large format tapestry – and associated craft in handweaving, which could be viewed as a symbol of time. Ofili’s original mythological watercolour design has been transformed over three years into a tapestry by Dovecot’s master weavers.
Koji Hatakeyama: Scenes in Bronze The Scottish Gallery, 16 Dundas St, EH3 6HZ
The show of Japanese artist Koji Hatakeyama (1956-) continues the time-related meaning of ancient craft and noble artistic materials. Hatakeyama’s approach to metalwork is rooted in 17th century Japanese traditions. His signature patinated, cast bronze boxes are full of enigmatic surfaces which represent the landscape, evoking a sense of time.
Do Ho Suh: Tracing Time National Galleries Scotland, Modern One, 75 Belford Road, EH4 3DR
The title of Do Ho Suh’s first solo exhibition in Scotland – Tracing Time – clearly indicates it belongs to this particular curation of highlights. This Korean artist is one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. In contrast to the two previous artists he often sculpts time from much more fragile media such as paper and fabric.
Edward Gwyn Jones as part of PLATFORM24 group exhibition City Art Centre, Floor 4 | 2 Market St, EH1 1DE)
It is always rewarding to discover young emerging talent and this is exactly what this annual group exhibition is designed to do for artists based in Scotland. One of them – Edward Gwyn Jones’ moving side-out histories and examine time as malleable, and history as subjective”.
Martin Creed, Work No. 1059 The building housing The Scotsman Hotel
This permanent public art installation by British artist Martin Creed is not part of this EAF festival, but could be easily enjoyed during it. What is a better symbol of time than marble? This metamorphic rock born in the older layers of Earth’s crust breathes Precambrian Time.
The original Scotsman Steps were built at the turn of the 20th century to connect the Edinburgh New and Old Towns. In 2010 Creed was commissioned by the Fruitmarket Gallery to reimagine the dilapidated steps. Creed clad each of the 104 steps in a different type of marble, coming from marble quarries all over the world. Thanks to the artist, a simple architectural passage has become a time and space teleporter and “microcosm of the whole world”.
EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) 9th-25th August edinburghartfestival.com
*X MUSE Scottish Barley Vodka is proud to be the official drinks partner of the EAF24 – art is its brand DNA and our spiritual home is Jupiter Artland.
About
EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Founded in 2004, we cultivate connections between artists, collaborators and communities to develop contemporary visual art projects in Edinburgh. In August, we present the UK’s largest annual visual art festival that is deeply rooted in the city and Scotland, with a global dialogue and connection. We amplify intersectional voices and perspectives. 2024 is EAF’s 20th birthday.
The festival is the moment once a year where we make public and bring together in a live moment all of the relationships and support structures that we embody. Since 2004, we have presented 20 editions, working with an average of 35 partner galleries and venues every year. We have programmed 685 events, in addition to the hundreds of other events presented by our partners. Since 2011, we have welcomed a total of over 2.5 million visitors to EAF. edinburghartfestival.com / @EdArtFest
Jupiter Artland, set in the grounds of Bonnington House outside Edinburgh, opened to the public in 2009. It was the brainchild of Nicky Wilson who studied sculpture at Camberwell and Chelsea Art Colleges. Jupiter Artland has commissioned works by a remarkable rollcall of contemporary artist including Anish Kapoor, Cornelia Parker, Andy Goldsworthy, Anya Gallaccio, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Charles Jenks, Marc Quinn, Anthony Gormley, Helen Chadwick, Pablo Bronstein, Christian Boltanski, Laura Ford and Tania Kovats. jupiterartland.org
Art, Meaning and Brand Leadership Vadim Grigoryan demonstrates how engagement with art, artists and the art world is essential for the success of all high-quality aspirational brands. True success, says Grigoryan, comes with being a genuine cultural agent, and contributing to global creativity and a global cultural legacy. Art Thinking illustrates the strategies brands should adopt – and avoid – on the path to cultural agency and sets out steps for successful artistic collaborations. Art Thinking also goes beyond the more straightforward artistic collaboration to examine non-aesthetic artistic collaboration and inspiration, offering lessons and advice on how to uncover the nuggets of thought, philosophies, methodologies and creative approaches practiced by great artists, and how these can be applied by brands, companies and non-profit organisations.? Book to be released at the end of 2024
