On a bright and blustery morning, sheltered in a dappled glade outside Edinburgh, we are standing in front of a classical bust by the Scottish sculptor Ian Hamilton Finlay. Titled X Muse (2008) the bust depicts Sappho, an ancient Greek poetess whose work was to be sung accompanied by music. Atop an 8-foot high Portland stone plinth, gazing wanly into the middle distance up at another Finlay work - the Temple of Apollo (2005) - Sappho is a quietly commanding presence. Standing between the two works, it feels like time is briefly suspended.
We are at Jupiter Artland, the sculpture park and home of Robert and Nicky Wilson who have, since 2009, commissioned an extraordinary range of site-specific artworks across their 100-acre site. Phyllida Barlow, Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin and Cornelia Parker are a mere handful of the 30-odd permanent works here. One of Wilson’s most recent ventures is the launch of X MUSE (pronounced ‘tenth muse’) - the first blended barley vodka inspired by the spirit making traditions of Scotland, infused with ‘art thinking’, as the brand’s co-founder and artistic director Vadim Grigoryan puts it.
X MUSE is of and from, not just Scotland, but Jupiter Artland itself: Hamilton Finlay’s sculpture gave the brand its name and classical roots; the water used in it composition comes from an ancient aquifer on the estate, which sits beneath Charles Jenck’s otherworldly Cells of Life (2010). Jencks’ magnificent work of land art inspired the vodka’s bottle design by Stranger & Stranger. Within the estate there is a new Buckminster Fuller-esque tasting pavilion - the X MUSE Temple - by Formafantasma. It is a beguiling gesamtkunstwerk with every detail designed by the Italian duo. Outreach and education are core pillars of the Wilsons' mission and Jupiter Artland has a fascinating, far-reaching and impressive programme of events, on and off site called Jupiter Rising.
X MUSE is a work of art in and of itself, so it is fitting that the brand is also a partner for the 20th Edinburgh Art Festival (Robert Wilson is a former Chair of Edinburgh Art Festival). EAF is a fulcrum moment in the Scottish, national and global arts calendar with a multitude of exhibitions, installations, events and gatherings spread across 30 venues all over the capital. The art crowd is a thirsty one. Against the backdrop of controversy over the future of sponsorship for several cultural events in the UK, here is a partnership that feels symbiotic. Augmentary, even.
Under the guidance of Wilson and Grigoryan, we are introduced to a range of flagship shows taking place for EAF, tramping the bridges and cobbles, amongst the crowds in Edinburgh for the International and Fringe Festivals, which happen simultaneously. That such a density of global cultural happenings are taking place concurrently is mind-boggling. It is testament to EAF Director Kim McAleese, and her dynamic young team, that the art festival feels like a breath of fresh air, urgent, varied and enlivening in its deft curation, rarely overwhelming. ‘The festival celebrates persistence,’ she writes in her introduction to the programme and, if there is a theme that connects the breadth of work on show, it is the energetic restlessness to question and counter rogue realities. ‘Persistence’ is more optimistic than resistance; less exhausting than endurance.
The festival itself technically closes on Sunday 25th August, but several of the shows run weeks and months beyond. What follows are five of our highlights.
Don't Miss: Edinburgh Art Festival Highlights
Chris Ofili: The Caged Bird’s Song at Dovecot Studios (until 5th October)
Ofili’s commission by The Clothworkers’ Company in London is one of the most ambitious tapestries to have emerged from the hands and looms at Dovecot in Edinburgh in its century-long existence. It took the studio three years to turn Ofili’s watercolour into a gargantuan tapestry, and both the finished spectacle and the story of its making are on show here in a riveting display of process, skill and tenacity combined. Learning about the alchemy of weaving and understanding how the watery brush and hue effects of Ofili’s palette were achieved is a heart-warming story of the enduring wonder and power of craft in our increasingly anodyne digital lives.
Hayley Barker: The Ringing Stone at Ingleby Gallery (until 31st August)
One of the most beautiful shows in the festival, in one of the most beautiful buildings in Edinburgh, this is the first exhibition of LA-based painter Hayley Barker in Europe. ‘The Ringing Stone’ takes its title from one work depicting the enigmatic boulder of the same name on Tiree. It captured Barker’s imagination and her painting reverberates with its own presence here in Ingleby’s Glasite Meeting House, alongside large-scale works that celebrate the cycle of the seasons in her LA garden. It is the colours of these paintings that beguile and captivate; dusty, luminous, dream-like. Utterly seductive.
Home: Ukrainian Photography at Stills: Centre for Photography (until 5th October)
This powerful and arresting show of contemporary photography from Ukraine presents work that explores the meaning of home. Featuring work by eight photographers, each turning their lens on aspects of domesticity, it brings the extreme present of living in a war zone to life in ways that are personal, intimate and deeply moving. The notion of home as a place of safety and sanctuary is un-sensationally dismantled in a variety of implicit and explicit images.
El Anatsui: Scottish Mission Book Depot at Talbot Rice Gallery (until 29th September)
This is the UK’s largest show of the Ghanaian artist’s work to date. Visitors the ominous Old College quad are greeted by the monumental, shimmering work TSIATSIA - Searching for Connection (2013), stitched together from thousands of flattened bottle tops from the liquor industry, representing the reclaiming of cultural identity across the post-colonial African continent. Amidst a show of breadth charting the artist’s extraordinary career, this single image of El Anatsui’s masterpiece, veiling a building built from the proceeds of empire, will live on in the memory of the capital. Anatsui has received an honorary degree from the University of Edinburgh to coincide with the show.
Karol Radziszewski: Filo at City Art Centre (until 25th August)
An absorbing and engrossing collection of original material from Filo magazine, one of the earliest queer magazines in Central-Eastern Europe. Founded in 1986 by Ryszard Kisiel at a time of acute police persecution towards gay communities, Radziszewski’s show lays bare the social and political context within which Filo emerged, inspired and persisted. Beyond magazine ephemera, the effect is more like looking at a relative’s photo collection. The material brings the past into the present. A punchy series of portraits by Radziszewski of queer, Central-European historical figures line one wall.
