In 2015 the University of Edinburgh’s Talbot Rice Gallery will celebrate its 40th birthday.
This landmark will mean a series of celebrations and events take place there throughout the year, accompanying a dynamic programme of exhibitions by local and international artists, plus new initiatives focused on supporting and developing young creative talent and developing academic collaborations with both staff and students from across the University.
Exhibitions Ross Birrell | March – May Ross Birrell’s work is characterised by crossing boundaries, he works as an artist, composer and academic to produce work that revolves around the interrelations of art, philosophy, place, politics and music. For his first major solo-exhibition in Scotland Talbot Rice will be filled with colour and sound, designed and composed site-specifically for the Gallery.
Hanne Darboven | August – October For the 2015 Festival exhibition, Talbot Rice is delighted to present the first major solo show in Scotland by legendary German Conceptual artist Hanne Darboven. Darboven’s interdisciplinary work explores time, music and world history through serialisation and numerical systems, realised on a vast scale.
Luc Tuymans | November – December Luc Tuymans is one of the most celebrated and influential painters working today. Acting as artist and curator, Tuymans will select a group of Henry Raeburn portraits from the University of Edinburgh’s Collections to be shown alongside his own, newly commissioned work.
Round Room Programme 2015 will include the re-launch of the Round Room Programme. Operating as a residency and open studio space, the Round Room will offer emerging artists, both local and international, the space, time and financial support to aid the development of their practice. Audiences will benefit from the public outcomes of the programme, including exhibitions, public talks and performances.
Academic Collaborations As well as the ongoing gap in the air project, devised with the University of Edinburgh’s School of Music, 2015 will include the continued development of academic collaborations with colleagues and students from across the University. To accompany the Ross Birrell exhibition, the gallery will present the outcomes of an experimental collaborative project between Professor Raymond MacDonald, Head of the Reid School of Music, and Jo Ganter, Printmaking Lecturer at Edinburgh College of Art.
Raymond and Jo’s work together explores the crossover between Music and Art, testing the possibilities of directing improvisatory musical performance through visual composition as well as conventional musical notation. This will be followed by the annual project with MFA students at Edinburgh College of Art. This Interim show allows students at the mid-way point of their Masters Degree to try out new ideas, gain professional experience of showing in the Gallery setting, whilst also offering audiences a preview of the work of the new crop of upcoming Graduates from ECA.
Towards the end of the year the gallery will present a unique exhibition of works from the ECA collections to coincide with, and complement the Luc Tuymans exhibition. Working in close collaboration with the University Collections Department, the project allows many items of the collection to be revisited, seen by the public for the first time, and presented in the unique context of the historic Georgian Gallery.
40th Birthday Celebrations Running from May 2015 – May 2016, there will be a series of special events and activity to mark the 40th anniversary of the Gallery. Including bespoke archival projects, keynote lectures and discussions, artistic commissions, plus many more celebratory events, these activities will be designed to revisit and consider the past, celebrate the present and look with ambition to the future.
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