Council meeting – Balerno Community Council – This weekend at Summerhall – Royal Blind concert – At the Fruitmarket Gallery

Our photograph today shows three councillors, Councillors Bridgman, Day and Child at the ground-breaking ceremony at Craigmillar yesterday where the council have just begun building 60 affordable homes.

Today the full council meets at 10:00am at the City Chambers, and we will be covering proceedings live from around 10. The council papers are here

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Balerno Community Council meets this evening at 7:30pm in Balerno High School. More details here.

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This weekend there is a show for children aged 10+ at Summerhall called One Giant Leap. As you might be able to tell from the title this is a show about science.

“One Giant Leap is an impossible attempt to bring the whole universe into a theatre and into our understanding, using a tennis ball, a wastepaper basket and a dash of theatrical invention. Iain Johnstone’s passionate solo performance about the relationship between humanity and the heavens fills your head with facts and asks some awkward questions.”

Book tickets here. Family tickets 2 adults and 2 children £20.

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The Royal Blind School is holding a concert called Come to Your Senses at the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh on 20 June 2013 at 7pm. The concert will be a celebration of the pupils’ achievements through their senses, music and music. We would be delighted if you could attend and show your support to the school.

Tickets are available from the Queen’s Hall box office on 0131 668 2019 or online here. Tickets cost £10 (£6 concessions).

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A new exhibition previews tomorrow Friday 3 May 2013

David Batchelor Flatlands
Exhibition 4 May – 14 July 2013
Preview Friday 3 May, 6.30–8.30pm
All welcome

David Batchelor (born 1955, Dundee) is perhaps best known for his vividly coloured sculptural installations of illuminated lightboxes, industrial dollies, and other found objects. These three-dimensional works perhaps belie the fact that the root of his interest is and always has been in drawing, painting, abstraction and the monochrome – preoccupations that are best charted in his immensely varied 2D oeuvre. This exhibition will be the first in-depth survey of David Batchelor’s drawings, paintings and photographic work.

Trained originally as a painter, Batchelor has, over the last twenty years, made colour his leitmotif – not the colour found in nature, but the synthetic colour of the illuminated street sign and lurid glare of the nocturnal metropolis. Whether using conventional materials such as pencil, ink, pastel, gouache and acrylic, or highlighter pen, spray or gloss paint and industrial tape, Batchelor’s drawings on paper or card show how formal rigour and modernist aesthetic can be subverted by the deployment of intense, exuberant colour.

This exhibition represents a first considered attempt to analyse Batchelor’s graphic register by critically reflecting on his use of surface, painting, drawing, and colour. It will present work created over the last two decades, including drawings, paintings, photographs, slide projections and preparatory drawings for sculpture. It will also include sculptures in which a sense of line and plane take precedence over mass and volume.

The exhibition is curated by Andrea Schlieker, who worked with Batchelor as Director of the Folkestone Triennial in 2008, and will be accompanied by a catalogue with an interview of the artist by Schlieker as well as a new essay by Rudi Fuchs.

David Batchelor Talks and Events at the Fruitmarket Gallery

Artist’s Talk
Wednesday 8 May, 6.30pm. Free.
David Batchelor in conversation with exhibition curator Andrea Schlieker.

Workshop: Sculptural Samples
Tuesday 21 May, 11am–5pm. Free.
12 places for 14–17 year olds.
Led by artist Tomasina Hurrell, this workshop takes inspiration from the exhibition to experiment with approaches to drawing and sculpture through colour, structure and movement.

Panel Discussion ‘Imagining things that cannot exist’: David Batchelor’s Drawings
Wednesday 22 May, 6–7.30pm. £5 full/£3 conc.
Refreshments available from 5.30pm.
Director of The Fruitmarket Gallery Fiona Bradley, Professor Briony Fer (University College London) and Professor Anne Wagner (University of California, Berkeley) consider ideas explored in this exhibition of drawings by an artist primarily known for his sculpture.

Audio Tour
Wednesday 5 June, 2–3pm. Free. 10 places.
A tour of the exhibition with assistive listening devices, for visitors who are hard of hearing.

Descriptive Tour
Wednesday 5 June, 6.30–8pm. Free. 10 places.
Artist Juliana Capes leads a tour designed specifically for visually impaired visitors with detailed descriptions of Batchelor’s work and practice.

Booking is recommended for all events. To book your place call 0131 226 8181 or emailbookshop@fruitmarket.co.uk

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Founding Editor of The Edinburgh Reporter.
Edinburgh-born multimedia journalist and iPhoneographer.