The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Festival: EDEN 2018
Various venues, Cupar, June 17 to 24
Sometimes it’s good to know that the major metropolises aren’t the only ones able to put on an important arts festival.
After a series of public consultations and workshops, A Midsummer Exploration of Arts and Culture comes to Cupar with the aim of becoming an annual event, one that focuses on the natural assets around the area such as the Corn Exchange, Haugh Park and the eponymous 30-mile Fife river.
Among the highlights across the week are The Purple, White And Green (June 22), a stage play about the story of Scotland’s suffragettes featuring music by BBC Radio 2 Young Folk Awards 2017 semi-finalist Essa Flett, who will also perform solo after the play; local singer-songwriter Tom Beaver will team up with The Tarviteers (June 23); and the Midsummer Henge (June 23) offers the chance to celebrate midsummer by the side of the Eden with collage art and music from Muchty Musicmakers.
Arguably the main attraction for the festival is the event featuring 1988 Turner Prize nominee David Mach and folk singer-songwriter Rab Noakes. Both men are proud Fifers at heart and, having grown up just a few miles from each other, will have plenty shared background to discuss.
You may think you’re unaware of Mach’s work but if you’ve ever travelled along the M8 and spotted those Big Heids, then you’re already familiar with his striking output. His works are big, bold and dramatic, and 100 of his collages will be on show throughout the festival.
As well as Big Heids, among his most famous pieces is Die Harder, an interpretation of the crucifixion made with coat-hangers. Talking in 2011 of his motivation for that work, David said: “You get all those big, epic stories (in the Bible), all that struggle, violence, sex, mayhem, pestilence, famine. That’s the stuff for me.”
Rab Noakes has been performing for just over half a century, was championed by John Peel and worked closely with Gerry Rafferty. After a brush with tonsil cancer three years ago, Rab responded with an EP entitled The Treatment Tapes and has no intention of slowing down.
While life, art, poetry and music will almost certainly be on the agenda for their A Conversation With event, the working brief for this pair’s chat at the Corn Exchange on June 17 will be a broad one. But as David Mach said in an interview with the Cass Art website earlier this year, he may have to concentrate a little harder than normal to maintain his own focus: “I’m very much looking forward to our evening together; he’s such a creative man that I think it’ll be difficult for me not to just sit back and listen to him.”
cupararts.org.uk