The Edinburgh Art Festival is underway and the Telegraph offers two different guides to the gallery offerings in Scotland this August. First, here are some selections from Colin Gleadell’s reporting:
- Bourne Fine Art on Dundas Street has taken 18 months to gather 17 works covering 300 years of Scottish paintings. “For six months, the market went incredibly quiet, with few sales and little to buy,” says director Emily Walsh, “but they are picking up.” […] The exhibition got off to a good start last Wednesday, with four works sold or held on reserve. Among the sales was a portrait of Mr George Abercromby of Tullibody, a Scottish lawyer, by Sir Henry Raeburn, which was acquired at Sotheby’s New York in June 2008 for $116,500 (£60,000), 10 times the estimate.
- A rare opportunity to see the whole range of materials in which Alan Davie, Scotland’s answer to the Abstract Expressionists, works opens in the Dovecot Studios in Infirmary Street from tomorrow.
Here are selections from the Telegraph picks:
- Eva Hesse: Studiowork Scintillating show devoted to the tiny, experimental and hitherto-ignored “test pieces” of Eva Hesse, the German-born American artist who radically changed the course of post-war sculpture by working with non-traditional materials such as latex, wax, wire-mesh and cheesecloth. Fruitmarket Gallery (0131 225 2383), Aug 5-Oct 25.
- Peter Blake: Venice Scottish premiere for a jaunty suite of 20 new screen-prints by the godfather of British Pop art, who, following a visit to the Venice Biennale two years ago, decided to depict the watery city as a fantastical realm using his inimitable collage style, which he pioneered to great effect when he designed the album cover for The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band more than four decades ago. Edinburgh Printmakers (0131 557 2479), until Aug 29.
- Jane and Louise Wilson The innovative British sisters, who were nominated for the Turner Prize a decade ago, present their recent video installation, Unfolding the Aryan Papers. The product of extensive research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive in London, this quasi-documentary focuses on the story of the Dutch actress Johanna ter Steege, whom Kubrick cast as the lead in what was to be his 13th feature film, an adaptation of a novel set during the Second World War, before he cancelled the project. Talbot Rice Gallery (0131 650 2210), Aug 7-Sept 26.
Market News (Telegraph)
Edinbrugh Festival 2009: Exhibitions (Telegraph)
