The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Time for a feast after the famine
With art spaces set to reopen, here are ten events to get excited about
IN the last year we have all become digital humans, casting our virtual net far and wide as our lives shrank to hearth, home and heath, punctuated with the odd supermarket visit to spice things up. In visual arts, festivals and galleries alike have had to weather many a storm in order to come out the other side. The good news is that Scotland’s art spaces should start opening up after April 26. So if, like me, you have been missing seeing actual art, what is there to look forward to this year?
GLASGOW INTERNATIONAL
www.glasgowinternational.org, June 11-17 Last year, just weeks away from opening, Glasgow International (Gi), Scotland’s major biennial festival of contemporary art, was forced to postpone. It’s back with a director’s programme of commissions and exhibitions in collaboration with partners and venues. News of the full programme is still to be announced but a highlight is sure to be a new installation by Barbadian-Scottish multimedia artist Alberta Whittle and Ingrid Pollard at Glasgow Women’s Library (GWL). Following a residency in 2019, Whittle’s solo show will reveal Pollard’s responses to the fascinating materials held in the lesbian archive at GWL.
ILANA HALPERIN – THERE IS A VOLCANO BEHIND MY HOUSE
Mount Stuart, Bute, www.mountstuart.com/ arts/visual-arts-programme, May 8 to July 11 For one of her largest solo presentations, US-born Ilana Halperin, who is based between Bute and Glasgow, has been inspired by the geology of her adopted island home.
Situated throughout Mount Stuart House, her works on paper and textile will refer to “immigrant” minerals embedded in the fabric of the building, as well as geologic phenomena found on the island. Halperin describes it as a “constellation combining personal, poetic and corporeal responses to the house and island”. This is also the first part of the 20th anniversary of the visual arts programme at Mount Stuart.
JOAN EARDLEY CENTENARY
www.joaneardley.com. Across Scotland throughout 2021
To mark the centenary of the birth of Joan Eardley, one of the greatest British painters of her generation, events and exhibitions are being held throughout this year. Eardley was born in Wareham, Sussex, in 1921 and moved to Glasgow in 1939, where she enrolled at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA).
She lived and worked in Scotland until her death in 1963 aged 42.
There are Eardley works in many public collections, and exhibitions are already planned by the National Galleries of Scotland in Edinburgh, Perth Museum and Art Gallery, The Hunterian in Glasgow, GSA and Glasgow Women’s Library. The Scottish Women in the Arts Research Network (Swarn), co-ordinated by the University of Glasgow, is leading the Eardley 100 celebrations. The website www.joaneardley.com will be updated throughout the year with news.
HOSPITALFIELD, ARBROATH
www.hospitalfield.org.uk. Opens May 20 Historic art venue Hospitalfield in Arbroath will launch the first major part of its redevelopment on May 20. This will see the opening of its garden and restored fernery and a new café, as well as a series of artist commissions across 2021. Its artistic programme includes new works by Mick Peter (outdoors from May 20) and Hanna Tuuliki, as well as a work inside the
house by Christina Mackie (later this summer). The newly planted gardens and Peter’s installation will open next month along with the cafe.
ART NIGHT 2021: NOTHING COMPARES TO U
www.artnight.london. Across the UK from June 18 to July 18 Nothing Compares to U – a reference to the Prince song famously covered by Sinéad O’Connor – is the fifth edition of Art Night. This year, the free festival is pushing out beyond London and popping up in locations across the UK. Art Night will also stretch to a month.
A highlight will be a series of billboards, entitled The Male Graze, by US activists Guerrilla Girls, which will appear throughout the UK. Billboard sites will include the Glasgow Women’s Library and Dundee Contemporary Arts. This is Guerrilla Girls’ largest UK public project in the UK to date and explores bad male behaviour. Look out too for Isabel Lewis’s new commission, What can we Learn about Love from Lichen? in Skye, in collaboration with Atlas Arts.
ART IN MIND
Glasgow Print Studio, Trongate 103, Glasgow G1 5HD, www.gpsart.co.uk and www. lyonandturnbull.com. May 18-29
Poor mental health has affected many people in the wake of the pandemic. Stirling artist June Carey decided to do something positive to help people in Scotland whose mental health has been adversely affected and Art in Mind is the result. Carey, who has had a long association with Glasgow Print Studio (GPS), has asked more than 40 leading Scottish artists to put their own unique stamp on a plain ceramic vase.
Included in the mix are vases designed by comedian Phill Jupitus, currently studying art in Dundee, and author Ian Rankin. The vases will be auctioned by Lyon & Turnbull on May 30 in aid of SAMH (the Scottish Association for Mental Health), with all proceeds going directly to the charity. The vases will be on show at GPS from May 18-29 leading up to the silent online auction on Lyon & Turnbull’s website.
RACHEL MACLEAN
Jupiter Artland, Wilkieston, Edinburgh EH27 8BY, www.jupiterartland.org. May 8 to July 18 Jupiter Artland will reopen next month by unveiling a major new permanent outdoor installation by Scottish artist Rachel Maclean. Mimi combines architecture and animation to create an upside-down fantasy world of cartoon princesses and wicked women, whisking viewers away from the humdrum of daily life. Alongside this, a new solo exhibition featuring four key works by Maclean – Spite Your Face (2017), Eyes to Me (2015), Germs (2013) and The Lion and the Unicorn (2012) – will showcase a decade of the artist creating groundbreaking fantasy worlds.
FRUITMARKET GALLERY REOPENS
45 Market Street, Edinburgh EH1 1DF, www. fruitmarket.co.uk. Summer 2021 (opening date to be confirmed)
Edinburgh’s much-missed Fruitmarket Gallery is due to reopen this summer after a £3.75million redevelopment programme. Its galleries have undergone a facelift while a major expansion into a large adjacent warehouse will open the space out to make room for a new cross-cultural programme. Designed by Edinburgh’s Reiach and Hall Architects, the Fruitmarket has doubled in size.
A major exhibition by Glasgow sculptor and Turner Prize nominee Karla Black will open the gallery this summer.
V&A DUNDEE
1 Riverside Esplanade, Dundee DD1 4EZ, www.vam.ac.uk/dundee/nightfever. Reopens May 1
The V&A Dundee reopens on May 1 with the first major examination of the relationship between club culture and design, charting the evolution of nightclubs from the 1960s to the present day. From Italy to New York, Paris, Manchester, London, Beirut and Berlin, and on to online streaming, Night Fever charts how nightclub design has changed and developed.
The exhibition includes a section on Scotland’s unique and distinct club culture, including club nights in Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Paisley, exploring how the Scottish club scene holds closer ties to the music and influences of Chicago, Detroit and Europe than London clubs. Night Fever will be followed by another major exhibition on Michael Clark, the groundbreaking Scottish dancer and choreographer.
GLASGOW OPEN HOUSE ARTS FESTIVAL
Venues across Glasgow, www. glasgowopenhousearts.co.uk & www. crowdfunder.co.uk/GOHAF-2021. September 24-27
After a four-year break, Glasgow Open House Arts Festival, which encourages artists to use alternative, domestic and public spaces to exhibit their art, returns for 2021. Hopes are high for a repeat success of the 2017 version of the festival, which showcased the work of more than 200 artists in 69 unexpected locations around the city. This year’s festival, which will have the theme Artists in Isolation, will offer a different kind of “open house”. Artists are currently being invited to register their interest in taking part in the festival. A crowdfunder campaign has also been set up to help the not-forprofit festival to continue.