30 July – 30 August
Our twelfth edition of the festival presented 41 exhibitions at 28 venues across the city, 6 special pop up events including several organised by artists and organisations from outwith Edinburgh, a new exhibition platform dedicated to early career artists, and 7 new works conceived for the Festival by Scottish and international artists under the theme of the Improbable City.
“There is always something to discover amid the cacophony of shows, and this year is no exception.”
Karen Wright, The Independent
View the Festival Guide:
View the Festival Map:
Commissions Programme
The Improbable City
Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities takes the form of an imagined conversation between Marco Polo and the Kublai Khan, in which the famous explorer describes to the world-weary emperor a succession of fantastical cities he has visited on his travels. As it dawns on the Khan that the cities Polo describes are almost certainly entirely imaginary, Polo acknowledges the struggle which lies at the heart of his model, his need to balance ‘exceptions, exclusions, incongruities, contradictions’ with the probable, to avoid achieving ‘cities too probable to be real’.
The Improbable City brought together the work of seven artists, each of whom, in very different ways, offer an encounter with worlds or spaces at the limits of the probable; spaces which, like Polo’s imaginary cities, find their reality precisely through embracing the incongruous and contradictory. Worlds which are distinctly ‘other’, yet sit in close relation to our own; isolated, self-contained, but also, crucially, permeable.
Situated principally in public spaces, the commissions found a suitably improbable context in Edinburgh, a city once described by Robert Louis Stevenson as a ‘dream in living masonry’, and which once a year, gives over its entirety to an intense exploration of the ‘other’ in all its forms.
Participating Artists:
Charles Avery: Tree no.5 (from the Jadindagadendar)
Marvin Gaye Chetwynd: The King Must Die
Julie Favreau: She century
Emma Finn: Double Mountain
Ariel Guzik: Holoturian
Kemang Wa Lehulere: Join the Dots
Hanna Tuulikki: SING SIGN: a close duet
Platform: 2015
Our twelfth edition marked the start of our annual showcase of early-career artists, with individuals being selected from an open call by an invited panel of judges including artists Christine Borland and Craig Coulthard, and supported to create new work to present in a group exhibition during the festival.
For our first Platform showcase, the selected artists were:
Antonia Bañados
Ben Callaghan
Ross Hamilton Frew
Jessica Ramm
View the Platform: 2015 Booklet:
Partner Exhibitions
Scottish Art: People, Places, Ideas at City Art Centre
France-Lise McGurn Beatrice Gibson at Collective
Bernat Klein: A LIFE IN COLOUR and Kwang Young Chun: Aggregations at Dovecot
ECA Masters Festival 2015 Reciprociti and Remote Centres: Performances from Outlandia at Edinburgh College of Art
In Other Words… Derek Michael Besant at Edinburgh Printmakers
Toby Paterson: Thresholds at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
Phyllida Barlow: set at Fruitmarket Gallery
Charles Avery: The People and Things of Onomatopoeia at Ingleby Gallery
John Chamberlain at Inverleith House
Sara Barker, Tara Donovan, Samara Scott: Still Life and Lauren Gault: lipstick – NASA at Jupiter Artland
Photography: A Victorian Sensation Masters of Japanese Porcelain at National Museum of Scotland
Work Out at The Number Shop
John Bellany: The Capercaillie’s Song Weave at Open Eye Gallery
Scottish Artists 1750-1900: From Caledonia to the Continent at The Queen’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse
e e e o ee e i a a e e a at Rhubaba
Bailey’s Stardust and Jean-Étienne Liotard at Scottish National Gallery
The Amazing World of MC Escher, ARTIST ROOMS, Roy Lichtenstein Reflections: A series of changing displays of Contemporary Art at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Lee Miller & Picasso at Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Here Comes Everybody War on War Room by Stills
Hanne Darboven: accepting anything among everything at Talbot Rice Gallery
James Morrison: The North Wind Fine Lines and Joan Eardley: In Context at The Scottish Gallery
Pop-Up Exhibitions and Events
South Gallery: Believe
Dennis and Debbie Club: The Strip at Codebase
Hill Street Design House: The Skinny Showcase
Travelling Gallery: Eyes On The Prize
GARAGE: Live art events and shows
Deveron Arts: Contemporary Pilgrimage: The Way to Venice
Sarah Hardie: Songs for someone who isn’t there
Deborah Marshall: Trace at H M General Reister House
David Sherry: Avoiding Answer at St Andrew Square
Yvonne Buskie: Joan of Arc 603 at Dance Base
Telfer Gallery: This Is Not A City at Scottish Book Trust
Art Late 2015 | Photo: Erika Stevenson. Hanne Darboven: accepting anything among everything at Talbot Rice Gallery | Installation photograph, courtesy of Talbot Rice Gallery. Here Comes Everybody at Stills | kennardphillipps, Here Comes Everybody courtesy of kennardphillipps ARTIST ROOMS Roy Lichtenstein at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art | Roy Lichtenstein, Reflections on Girl, 1990 Lithograph Jean-Etienne Liotard at Scottish National Gallery | Jean-Etienne Liotard, Princess Louisa Anne, Royal Collection Trust