Chocolate and Moonlight Sonata set to delight at Jupiter Artland

Jupiter Artland opens on 17 May this year and runs till the end of September with a huge programme of installations, daily performances and solo shows by contemporary artists.

This will be one of the venues for GENERATION and the Edinburgh Art Festival and will feature a gallery with 40 kgs of chocolate and popcorn kernels.

Never scared to be different the edge of town art park will surely grab your attention with the wide range of works about to be installed there. It is more than just a place to go and have a look at some art however. There is a cafe, it is accessible to those with limited mobility and best of all perhaps, through its interactive Education Foundation it invites many schoolchildren to come along and work alongside the artists working on commissions there.

The Edinburgh Reporter was very lucky to get a glimpse of Artland during its preparation phase and speak to owner Nicky Wilson there about the plans for this summer.

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Highlights for 2014 include a new illuminated text commission by Turner-prize nominee Nathan Coley for the artland; a gallery displaying 40 kilograms of chocolate by artist Anya Gallaccio; daily performances throughout the summer of Katie Paterson’s Earth-Moon-Earth (Moonlight Sonata From the Surface of the Moon) and Tessa Lynch’s Raising, enacting a Medieval-style ‘barn raising’. 2014 will feature solo shows by artist Mick Peter who brings together concrete wall reliefs and popcorn kernels in Popcorn Plaza, Silvy Weatherall’s exhibition in the Tin Roof Gallery of framed works made from feathers, bones and skulls, and Jessica Harrison’s macabre Broken ceramic figurines. Jupiter Artland is a continuing partner of Edinburgh Art Festival and is delighted to be part of GENERATION 2014, celebrating 25 years of contemporary art in Scotland across 60 different locations.

This year, Jupiter Artland will announce a new interactive audio-visual App, enhancing the on-and-off-site experience for visitors. This summer also marks the opening of Jupiter Artland’s re-designed shop, boasting a new range of merchandise including artist prints and editions by Jupiter Artland-commissioned artists, including Anya Gallaccio, Sara Barker and Jessica Harrison.

May marks the premiere of a new large-scale illuminated text work by Glasgow-based artist Nathan Coley (b.1967), with You Imagine What You Desire which will first be presented in the Steading Gallery before being permanently re-sited in front of Bonnington House this summer. The work is inspired by George Bernard Shaw’s quote, “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will”.

British installation artist Anya Gallaccio (b.1963) will also be presenting STROKE in May – a work on show for the first time since 1994. This exhibition will see the Turner-prize nominee coat the walls of the Goldsworthy Gallery with 40 kilograms of rich Belgian Callebrutt dark chocolate, exploring how what is beautiful over time becomes putrid and decayed.

Silvy Weatherall (b.1968) will present her studio collection of skulls, feathers and bones, among other intriguing objects in the Tin Roof Gallery this summer. Adopted from her family’s game-hunting business, Weatherall collates and collages the found objects into framed artworks.

Jupiter Artland will also present Katie Paterson’s (b.1981) celebrated Earth-Moon-Earth this July. In this, Paterson sent Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight Sonata’ in Morse code to the moon. Played on a Grand piano in daily performances, the keys seeming to ghostly move of their own accord, composed from the subtle flaws and changes absorbed in the process of transmission, reminding us with every key the incredible journey that the sonata has taken.

Glasgow School of Art graduate Tessa Lynch (b.1984) will be enacting daily performances of a ‘barn raising’ in Jupiter Artland’s orchard throughout the summer, where the artist and a team of volunteers will construct and de-construct a platform structure based on a modern home, adhering to the concept of a medieval barn raising. Concluding the sculptural performance with a lit fire each afternoon, Raising inspires questions about home ownership and modern-day communities.

The Steading Gallery meanwhile will play host to fellow GSA graduate, Mick Peter’s (b.1974) dramatic exhibition, Popcorn Plaza, with the gallery being transformed into a cement wall relief environment strewn with enlarged ‘popcorn’ kernels, referencing the powerful contrast between formal civic architecture and the unruly nature of the popped form.

At the Tin Roof Gallery, Scottish artist Jessica Harrison (b. 1982) will be showcasing her most recent ceramic sculptures in Broken. Harrison re-works ready-made found figurines, unravelling the complex relationship between the body and objects by enacting grotesque transformations.