JUPITER ARTLAND
What’s the appeal? It says something of the ambitions of Nicky and Robert Wilson that the first piece commissioned for the sculpture park they founded five miles west of Edinburgh was hardly a piece at all, but a series of grand swirling landforms by US landscape architect Charles Jencks. Set in 100 acres of fields and woodlands surrounding the Jacobean Bonnington House, the park’s soothing pastoral setting acts as a brilliant foil for its cutting-edge collection, which includes site-specific works by Anish Kapoor (a caged vortex entitled Suck) and Cornelia Parker (whose huge shotgun forms Landscape with Gun and Tree, 2012). It’s also home to the very first permanent outdoor piece by Brit experimenter Phyllida Barlow, commissioned to mark the park’s 10th anniversary in 2018. What’s on? Though the new commission and exhibition by Tracey Emin is delayed until next year, this season will see Scottish multimedia artist Rachel Maclean call on her discordant, candy-hued aesthetic for her first permanent outdoor installation in the woods, while the park’s gallery spaces will survey a decade of her daring work. In August, intimate arts festival Jupiter Rising is hoping to return for its second outing, with a weekend of live music, performance and film, plus the opportunity for visitors to camp out in the grounds ( jupiterrising.art).
What’s nearby? The sculpture park is a pocket of world-class creativity among rolling countryside, but it’s only a short drive from Edinburgh’s network of galleries. A highlight at the City Art Centre this spring is ‘Adjust/Adapt’ , which sees the Scottish Furniture Makers Association showcase a collection of bespoke pieces – from stools to surfboards – crafted in response to our shifting domestic needs (edinburghmuseums.org.uk).