Five things you need to know today

Wintry weather – Transport Committee meets today – Art exhibition – Earth Hour  – Craigies at Easter

Snow is forecast for the East of Scotland from early morning and certainly there was enough in the city centre last night to cause difficulties for traffic and pedestrians. There was yet another city centre road incident at the junction of Heriot Row and Dundas Street where locals say that traffic often exceeds the 20mph advisory painted on the street.

Please keep an eye on our Twitter feed on the right hand side where we will retweet any snow related news. And if you see anything then please either let us know on Twitter or email us any news. theedinburghreporter@gmail.com

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The Transport  and Environment Committee meets this morning to consider a fairly packed agenda. There are a couple of items which we have already written about:- Gull denesting in Merchiston, Ecostars Edinburgh, Saughton Park and recycling.

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At the Talbot Rice Gallery from now until 4 May 2013 there is a new exhibition of sculpture and drawing.

Drawn Away Together brings together the work of 11 Scottish, or Scottish-based, artists all of whom explore the theme of abstraction within their practice. In the Georgian Gallery there will be the first ever solo-exhibition of the enigmatic sculptor Anthony Hatwell, including many sculptures and drawings that have never been seen in public before. 

Talbot Rice Gallery is transformed by a series of abstract shapes, forms and colour, featuring the work of 11 Scottish, or Scottish-based, painters, sculptors and installation artists:

Rachel Barron, Miranda Blennerhassett, Kevin Henderson, Paul Keir, Lorna Macintyre, Andrew Mackenzie, Jo Milne, Neil Nodzak, Malcolm O’Connell, Eric Schumacher, Alan Shipway

The exhibition represents a dialogue between different generations of artists in Scotland who, whilst connected by their shared interest in and exploration of abstract art, span a wide range of ages and career stages; from Malcolm O’Connell, a current Undergraduate, to Alan Shipway who has been exhibiting for over 30 years.

Several new works have been commissioned specifically for the exhibition: Miranda Blennerhassett has created a new wall-painting that spans the entire length of the upstairs balcony, whilst Paul Keir’s installation will be altered and adapted by the artist throughout the duration of the exhibition. In the gallery’s Round Room Rachel Barron will install her newly constructed ‘drawing device’, a custom designed machine used to create new abstract prints. At certain times throughout the exhibition Barron can be found working at the machine, creating new, unique works and providing a rare opportunity to witness the artist at work.

Drawn Away Together aims at reimagining the role of ‘abstract art’ in the contemporary world, offering a challenge or counterpoint to what Carl Andre recently described as ‘a linguistic culture [where] everything has to be turned into language [and] people don’t understand anything until you’ve explained it.’

 

Anthony Hatwell: Sculpture & Drawing

Anthony Hatwell (born 1931) is from the generation of artists who emerged after World War Two into a British art scene very different from the one today. A contemporary of Leon Kossof and Frank Auerbach, he studied under the legendary David Bomberg in London in the early 1950s.

Within his work Hatwell sought to make abstracted forms in response to his materials. The works in the exhibition, spanning almost 40 years of his career, demonstrate his adaptation of canonical forms, such as reclining female figures, portraits and still lifes, worked out within the techniques of Modern Art.

After moving to Scotland Hatwell spent over 20 years as Head of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art (1969-90), during which time he was pivotal in ushering modernism into the college, whilst also gaining a reputation as an enigmatic figure who was guarded about his own work and often kept it hidden. Although he has shown in a number of prestigious national group exhibitions, this is, at the age of 82, his first ever solo exhibition. It provides an intriguing opportunity to see a selection of his sculpture and drawings that have rarely, if ever, been seen in public before.

 

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https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/static2.wwf.org.uk/badge.1.js//

Earth Hour takes place next Saturday evening. There are many buildings going dark in Edinburgh to mark the WWF event. Edinburgh castle, the Scottish Parliament, the Palace of Holyroodhouse, the National Gallery of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Academy, the Balmoral Hotel, Camera Obscura and the National Monument have all confirmed their lights will be extinguished.

So what’s it all about? It is a worldwide symbolic display of support for action on climate change.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8q9Zave1TI]

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