26 July – 26 August
Our fifteenth edition brought together over 50 exhibitions across more than 40 venues throughout the city, curated by Edinburgh’s leading galleries, museums and artist-run spaces, featuring major historic surveys alongside leading Scottish, UK and international contemporary artists and 13 projects from across Scotland selected for our Pop Up Exhibitions and Events feature, alongside over 200 events throughout the month.
The work of 412 artists and 103 writers and poets formed the festival programme, alongside performances by 60 musicians and 8 magicians across 47 magic performances.
“Year in and year out it gives me some of the most satisfying cultural experiences of the summer.”
Kenny Farquharson, The Times
View the Festival Guide:
View the Festival Map:
Commissions Programme
Our 2018 programme featured new work by Shilpa Gupta, Ross Birrell & David Harding, Ruth Ewan and Adam Lewis Jacob. Collectively through music, poetry, conversation and magic the artists invite us to reflect on urgent political issues. Strategies of collaboration, orchestration and the act of close listening inform a number of the works; and freedom of expression and a questioning of our consumer culture feature prominently as themes within the programme.
Ross Birrell & David Harding, Triptych, 2018. Photo: Sally Jubb Photography. 
Magician James James performing as part of Ruth Ewan’s Sympathetic Magick, 2018. Photo: Sally Jubb Photography. 
Adam Lewis Jacob, No Easy Answers, 2018. Photo: Johnny Barrington. 
Shilpa Gupta, For, in your tongue I cannot hide, 2018. Photo: Johnny Barrington.
Our Commissions Programme is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Scottish Government’s Festivals Expo Fund and EventScotland.
Participating Artists:
Shilpa Gupta: For, in your tongue I cannot hide
Ruth Ewan, Sympathetic Magick
Ross Birrell & David Harding, Triptych
Adam Lewis Jacob, No Easy Answers
View the Commissioned Artist Interpretation Leaflets:
Platform: 2018
The 2018 edition of our dedicated showcase for artists at the beginning of their careers was selected from an open call by artists Jonathan Owen and Hanna Tuulikki, and included:
Renèe Helèna Browne
Annie Crabtree
Isobel Lutz-Smith
Rae-Yen Song
View the Platform: 2018 Booklet:
Partner Exhibitions
In Focus: Scottish Photography, Edwin G. Lucas: An Individual Eye and Travelling Gallery at 40 at City Art Centre
LIBERTY Art Fabrics & Fashion and Lucy Wayman at Dovecot Gallery
The Common Sense, DEAD IMAGES, Biodiversity, Data Pipe Dreams: Glimpses of a Near Future and ECA Festival Exhibition at Edinburgh College of Art
Nàdar / Prakriti at Edinburgh Printmakers
Hemispheric Phases at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop
Robert Powell: Between The Lost Places at The Fine Art Society in Edinburgh
Tacita Dean: Woman with a Red Hat at The Fruitmarket Gallery
Jacob’s Ladder at Ingleby
Art of Glass at National Museum of Scotland
Ollie Dook: Of Landscape Immersion, Jupiter Campout: ROMANTI-CRASH!, Phyllida Barlow: quarry and Joana Vasconcelos: Gateway at Jupiter Artland
DOZEN at The Number Shop
John Bellany (1942—2013): The Wild Days at Open Eye Gallery
Canaletto & the Art of Venice at The Queen’s Gallery
Standard Bearers #1 and All in a Days Work at Rhubaba Gallery and Studios
Victoria Crowe: A Certain Light at The Scottish Gallery
Rembrandt: Britain’s Discovery of the Master at Scottish National Gallery
Raqib Shaw: Reinventing the Old Masters, Emil Nolde: Colour is Life and NOW: Jenny Saville, Sara Barker, Christine Borland, Robin Rhode, Markus Schinwald, Catherine Street at Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
Victoria Crowe: Beyond Likeness and Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Transportation Photographs from the National Galleries of Scotland at Scottish National Portrait Gallery
The days never seem the same: Gunnie Moberg and Margaret Tait at Stills: Centre for Photography
Lucy Skaer: The Green Man at Talbot Rice Gallery
Installation view of Jacob’s Ladder. Ingleby, 2018. Photograph: Tom Nolan. Image courtesy the Artists and Ingleby, Edinburgh 
Edwin G. Lucas, Caley Station, Edinburgh, 1942. City Art Centre, Museums & Galleries Edinburgh. Courtesy of the artist’s estate. Photo: City Art Centre. 
Maud Sulter, Terpsichore, 1989. Courtesy of the artist / the artist’s estate. Photo: Street Level Photoworks. 
Siobhan Healy, Biodiversity. Courtesy of the artist. 
Melanie Gilligan, The Common Sense, Trondheim kunstmuseum, 2016.
Pop Up Exhibitions
The ERRAID RESIDENCY, 6°WEST
Muir is Tìr/Land and Sea, An Lanntair
Adam Linklater: Mythopoeia, Andy Cumming
The Past is Singing in our Teeth, Kate McMillan
Arts, Borders and Migration, Deveron Projects
Anatomy of Fleeting Moments, Hans K Clausen & Kjersti Sletteland
Consensus, Invisible Women
Temporary Land, 5595 Gallery
MEANWHILE, Yolanda McKean, Emma Drye & Michael Coombes
Hito’s Forest, “A Thing Like You and Me”, Salli Yule-Tsingas
Bill Viola: Three Women, The Parish Church of St Cuthbert
Gordon Douglas: Black Box Take Stock, Travelling Gallery
Warmed Air, The Anatomical Museum