|
Press 33Selected Essays and Reviews |
|
Edinburgh Art Festival and the Annuale Jack Mottram
Nov 05 Prior to the inception of the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2004, the city's galleries would raise their game a little in August, seeking to lure folk away from the Festivals and the Fringes. Now, with the EAF in its second year, they do much the same, each playing to their strengths, whether that's the Stills' knack for collating memorable group shows from an overlooked corner of the artworld or the Scottish National Gallery Of Modern Art's flair for mounting thorough, and thoroughly accessible retrospectives. So, what is the EAF? Since it does not have a hand in programming exhibitions and events, does not seek to add Edinburgh to the ever-expanding rosta of biennales, and, going by the low profile maintained this year, does not serve as a marketing body for the galleries under its aegis, it is rather hard to fathom the body's purpose. It has, however had a practical impact. First, money. With £15,000 of Scottish Arts Council cash earmarked for visual art projects, the EAF funded Cai Guo-Qiang's Black Rainbow, a murky explosion of darkness over Edinburgh Castle, Ken Kageyama's sculptural piece made from 10,000 disposable chopsticks and Kate Owens' charming assembly of pop bottles, Gates of Ades. Secondly, the EAF offered the opportunity for some grassroots opposition to a newly established establishment. The Annuale, an artist-run fringe to the Festival proper co-ordinated by the The Embassy gallery. Cheekily positioning itself as an alternative to both the high profile bi- and triennials, where cities play host to outside artists rather than promoting their own, and a bottom-up alternate to the top-down organisation the EAF would be doing if it were more than a waving banner with a wallet, the Annuale offered up an array of events, exhibitions and publications. Even here, though, the EAF's role was muddied, with Annuale events listed, rather confusingly, as being a part of the EAF itself. The EAF, then, could be damned for failing to make a mark, and it could be damned with faint praise for keeping its nose out of gallery business and stumping up a few quid, but given the wealth and standard of work on show in Edinburgh in August, it seems almost churlish to attack the organisation as it finds its role, or lack thereof. The flagship shows were hits, and deservedly so. Francis Bacon: Portraits And Heads at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was something of a revelation, freshening eyes jaded by over-exposure to Bacon's best-known work by focussing on portraiture. Across the way at the Dean Gallery, Henri Cartier-Bresson was simply a vast compendium of 'decisive moments', packing together some 200 photographs. Passing over the oddities and failures - a sycophantic showing of watercolours owned by the late Queen Mum at Holyrood House, the dreary collection of Tsarist tat at the Royal Museum, the disservice done to Paula Rego's prints by hanging them higgeldy-piggeldy in the Talbot Rice - and we come to the real meat of the EAF, the smaller galleries. Collective played host to Daria Martin's filmic explorations of Modernism and hosted Kate Owens' biscuit-themed companion piece to her Gates of Ades. Stills' offering was a wonderful look at work made with networked technologies, rubbishing the assumption that net art belongs on the net, not in the gallery. Finally, Fruitmarket became a grove of banana palms planted by Cai Guo-Qiang alongside his gunpowder portraits of Scottish luminaries linked by alchemy, the occult and, ultimately, death. And so to the Annuale, a festival that felt, truly, like a festival, thanks to its fast, freewheeling pace. Total Kunst, a one-room gallery tacked on the side of a cafZ, led the way here, mounting new shows and performances daily which, despite labouring under a dreadful pun of a title, Mullets Against The Fringe, set the overall high standard. Aurora, at the Cell 77 project space, played host to sound experiments by the Found collective, and a drawing workshop. The Edinburgh Sculpture workshop threw open its doors to Magazine 05, a show that made use of every available space to present a vast group show featuring work by ESW members and others, from Scott Laverie and Colin Parker's huge shed-like structure to the minutiae of Elaine Allison's boxed collections of Little Precious Things. In the spirit of the Annuale, The Embassy presented Teaming, a show devoted to art made collaboratively, including a live performance by art-rockabilly group Uncle John & Whitelock and archive footage of a 1965 Boyle Family performance, Oh What A Lovely Whore, which saw the audience run amok, gleefully smashing pianos and after Mark Boyle opening proceedings with the words, 'If you want an event, you'll have to do it yourselves'. And in those words is the key to understanding the impact of the Edinburgh Art Festival and the Annuale. The latter revelled in the opportunities presented by a million-strong temporary audience of the arts-inclined, building an atmosphere of experimentation, foregrounding live events and performance work, and providing a platform for Edinburgh artists, one that might well serve to draw the city's scene out from under shadow cast by it's West Coast rival Glasgow. The former, in short, did none of these things, sticking fast to the status quo. It remains to be seen how the EAF fares in it's third year, but on the evidence of this year's outing, smart eyes will be looking to the artists doing it themselves. - Jack Mottram
Jack Mottram's website- www.submitresponse.co.uk
|
