Super Sedan Chairs. Sedan chairs carried people through the streets of Edinburgh, particularly in the Old Town. Take inspiration from the museum’s sedan chair to make and decorate your own miniature one, with Lauren Wayland. 2.30-4pm, Museum of Edinburgh, Huntly House, 142 Canongate. Tickets cost £4 and must be booked in advance via the Usher Hall Box Office, in person, by calling 0131 228 1155 or online here. Please note that these workshops are intended for children and adults to experience together; children must be accompanied by at least one paying adult, and no child should be booked into a workshop alone.
Festival Exhibition: Gordon Mitchell RSA. The acclaimed and prolific Edinburgh artist describes himself as an ‘abstract expressionist’, and intends his work to be thought-provoking. 11am-5pm, Tuesday to Saturday, Scottish Arts Club, 24 Rutland Square. Ends 30th August 2015.
Hanne Darbovan: accepting anything among everything. German artist Darbovan (1941-2009) created a vast body of idiosyncratic works, documenting her attempt to index life as it is lived; amongst the weight of world history and culture. accepting anything among everything is centred on the work Life/Living (1997-98), a monumental installation of hundreds of framed works that form a systematic representation of the years 1900-1999. Darbovan was one of the last century’s most important conceptual artists; this exhibition will create a spectacular monument to an extraordinary individual. Preview tonight 6-8pm, then 10am-5pm Monday to Friday, 12 noon-5pm Saturday & Sunday in August only, then 10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday, 12 noon-5pm Saturdays (closed Sundays and Mondays) in September and October, Talbot Rice Gallery, Old College, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge. Ends 3rd October 2015. There will be a curator’s talk about Hanne Darbovan at 4pm on Friday 31st July: booking is required – see listing. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.
Meet the Glasshouse Staff: find out more about this stunning collection of plants from the people who care for them. Every month meet a different member of the indoor horticulture team, each with different specialist knowledge. 1-2pm, Glasshouses, Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh, Inverleith Row. Free with Glasshouse entry (£5/£4, children under 5 and essential carers free).
Nordic House: an exhibition of art work from the five Nordic nations, featuring Arctic seascapes, Icelandic lava fields, Denmark’s oldest allotment gardens, women fishing on the Baltic and a subsidence-threatened Swedish mining town. For five weeks the Scottish Storytelling Centre will become a visible symbol of Nordic/Scottish cooperation,with all national flags flying together outside, and a model of the North Atlantic linking Scotland with all the regions depicted on the floor inside. Curated by Graham Hogg of Lateral North. Throughout the exhibition there will also be a children’s trail with Nordic soft toys, and the centre’s cafe will feature Nordic dishes. 10am-6pm Monday to Saturday, 12 noon-6pm Sundays, Scottish Storytelling Centre, 43-45 High Street. Ends 5th September 2015.
WHALE Arts Summer Festival: fun activities for children and families. Today: Street Arts Drums – fun rhythms and drumming! 10am-12 noon for ages 5+, 1-3pm for ages 8+, WHALE Arts, 30 Westburn Grove. Free – just drop in.
Edinburgh Art Festival starts today! Founded in 2004, this is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art, bringing together the capital’s leading galleries, museums and artist-run spaces, alongside new public art commissions by established and emerging artists, with an innovative programme of special events. Artists’ talks, theatre, children’s activities, music, guided tours, film screenings, plus Art Late – a special programme of late openings and live events. Featured artists include Charles Avery, Derek Michael Besant, Toby Patterson, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Beatrice Gibson. There will be free guided tours of the venues at 2pm Saturday-Thursday, leaving from the Festival Kiosk, 9-11 Blair Street (no booking required, just turn up). The festival takes place throughout the city and also at Jupiter Artland in West Lothian; most events are free. Please see the festival’s website here for further information and to book for ticketed events. Ends 30th August 2015.
Blackwell’s Edinburgh Presents Ron Butlin: The Magicians of Scotland. The themes of this new collection from Edinburgh’s former makar include Scotland’s past, present and future, its landscapes and people, its myths and politics, from Bannockburn to Donald Trump. 6.30pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge. Tickets are free and may be obtained from the shop’s front desk, by calling 0131 622 8218, emailing events.edinburgh@blackwell.co.uk or via eventbrite here.
Scrapheap Art: get creative with rubbish – including the scrapheap boat race! 2-3.30pm, Water of Leith Visitor Centre, 24 Lanark Road. £4 per child, accompanying adult free. Booking is essential and may be made by calling 0131 455 7367 or emailing admin@waterofleith.org.uk.
Fabienne Hess: Hits and Misses (from the archive). Swiss-born Hess explores the disorientation and bewilderment we feel in the face of the vast quantities of digital information surrounding us, questioning how we begin to navigate this maelstrom of images we produce, consume and distribute in everyday life. Preview tonight 6-8pm, then 10am-5pm Monday to Friday, 12 noon-5pm Saturday & Sunday in August only, then 10am-5pm Tuesday to Friday, 12 noon-5pm Saturdays (closed Sundays and Mondays) in September and October, Talbot Rice Gallery, Old College, University of Edinburgh, South Bridge. Ends 3rd October 2015. The artist will be in conversation with University of Edinburgh Art Collections Curator Neil Lebeter at 6.30pm on Saturday 1st August: booking is required – see listing. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.
An Evening with Gavin Francis: having won Scottish Book of the Year in 2013 with his outstanding travel narrative Empire Antarctica, Gavin Francis is back with Adventures in Human Being, a very different book – a cultural map of the human body. 6pm, Waterstones West End, 128 Princes Street. Please call 0131 226 2666 for further information.
Cafe Voices: Norse Myths & Legends. Join storyteller Calum Lykan, in full Viking dress, to be transported to the Norse lands in an evening of sagas surrounded by the dramatic Nordic House exhibition in the Storytelling Court. Plus an open-floor section for people to tell their own tales. 7pm, Scottish Storytelling Centre, 43-45 High Street. Tickets cost £5 and are available in person, by calling the Box Office on 0131 556 9579 or online here.
Maidan (12A): a special showing of Sergei Loznitsa’s film, which captures the trajectory of the Ukrainian civil uprising in 2013/2014, from peaceful rallies to bloody street battles. In a minimalist style and with still, long shots, the film depicts the point of view of the crowd, peeking into the organised chaos of a revolution. 6.30pm, Filmhouse, Lothian Road. Tickets may be purchased from the Box Office in person, by calling 0131 228 2688 or online here; prices vary.
A Potter, A Painter and A Poet. Potter Paul Tebble, artist Anne Gilchrist and poet Elizabeth Burns have worked together over several years, exploring their shared creative processes. In this exhibition they will focus on the natural world and make connections between their work, showing crystal-glazed stonewear, porcelain and multi-textured golded pots, paintings, drawings and installations growing from a deep relationship with pottery and an ancient Perthshire landscape, and poetry exhibited and read around the galleries. The artists will work alongside invited projection artist Sophia Lindsay Burns, and the exhibition will take place over the entire third floor of the building. Opening preview tonight 6-9pm, then 10am-6pm daily, Third Floor (galleries 1,2 & 3), St Margaret’s House, 151 London Road. Ends 30th August 2015.
In Other Words…Derek Michael Besant: the highly acclaimed Canadian multi-media artist presents a dynamic new exhibition. In Other Words… explores our means of visual perception and the scientific resolution that the eye is a faulty mechanism and the brain compensates for this by assembling data we observe to construct what we see. Besant has researched the idea that one part of our brain ‘sees’ while another part ‘reads’. ‘Everyone has two selves. This exhibition will reveal both…..one we wear outward…the other, we wear inside’. Talk and tour by the artist tonight 6-7pm, launch follows 7-9pm, Edinburgh Printmakers, Union Street. Free; all welcome to both events, but tickets are required for the artist’s talk and may be obtained via eventbrite here. Derek Michael Besant will also give a lecture on 1st August about his concept for the exhibition and for the public art facade integration at Castle Mill Works, Fountainbridge (which will be launched on 31st July), along with four other related projects that draw from public collaboration in other cities.
The Bonzai Quartet: groovy instrumental jazz-fusion from guitarist Dan Abrahams and his eclectic band, with Rob Harrison (keys), Charlie Nash (electric bass) and Italian drummer Davide Rinaldi, playing a varied range of originals and catchy jazzy/funky tunes, with influences from all over the world. 9pm (entry from 8pm), The Jazz Bar, Chambers Street. £5/£4 on the door: please note this venue is cash only.
Charles Avery: The People and Things of Onomatopoeia. This exhibition will include new drawings and sculptural works, all of which stem from the fictional port of Onomatopoeia, the main town in Avery’s epic project, The Islanders. 10am-6pm Monday to Saturday, 12 noon-5pm Sundays in August only, Ingleby Gallery, 15 Calton Road. Ends 3rd October 2015. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival 2015.
Hanna Tuulikki: Sing Sign: A Close Duet. An intimate performance devised for the closes of the Old Town. Composed by Hanna Tuulikki and performed with Daniel Padden, the work combines music and gestures drawn from British Sign Language to reflect on how our experience of the city is inseparable from the languages that we speak. 5pm or 6.30pm, Fountain Close, 22 High Street. Free: please contact Edinburgh Art Festival for booking information. Also on various dates throughout August – see Edinburgh Art Festival programme for details.
Ragged University: Psychology of Obedience and Authority and An Ancient Syrian All-Girl Band. The first talk this evening, by Professor Ray Miller, will look at what we can really learn from psychology about the extent to which we are controlled or are in control – are we really open to manipulation against our better judgement? After a break for refreshments, in the second part of the evening, Warwick Ball will focus on the Maryamin Mosaic (from Maryamin, Near Hama in Syria), one of the most extraordinary works of art to have survived from the ancient world. The mosaic represents a snapshot of an actual event – a live musical performance – and is an important source of information on the development of music and musical instruments, their spread from the Ancient Eastern Mediterranean to Medieval Europe, and also on ancient costume. 7-10pm, The Counting House, West Nicolson Street. Free, no booking required, just drop in. Please bring an item of food to put on the table to share if you can.
Ariel Guzik: Holoturian. For the last ten years, Mexican artist, musician, illustrator and inventor Ariel Guzik has searched for a way to communicate with whales and dolphins. His new work, commissioned by The Arts Catalyst, brings him closer to this goal; for his first UK exhibition, Guzik is constructing a beautiful capsule, the Holoturian, designed to send a living plant and a string instrument into the depths of the sea for a period of time. Imagined and re-imagined by Guzik in a series of extraordinary drawings made over the past decade, this ship has instrumentation, which expresses life, space, harmony and brightness as primary messages, and is dedicated to sperm whales and other deep ocean creatures. 10am-6pm daily, Trinity Apse, Chalmers Close, High Street. Ends 30th August 2015. Part of Edinburgh Art Festival.
Southern Fried: your first chance to get away this weekend isn’t too far from home – it’s Perth’s festival of American Roots music, featuring country, Americana, rockabilly, blues, soul, bluegrass, gospel, funk, cajun and folk. Acts include Punch Brothers, Rhiannon Giddens, McCray Sisters, the Fairfield Four, and many more – there’s even an all-women celebration of the songs of Dolly Parton. There’ll also be a free daytime outdoor stage, open mic session, ‘country-oke’, free gigs, a cinema programme, a hot rod and custom cars meet, and plenty of Southern Fried soul food. Most events are held inside at various venues around Perth, so this is one where you don’t have to worry so much about the weather. Launch party tonight (sold out), then various acts and events throughout Friday 31st July, Saturday 1st August and Sunday 2nd August. For more information and tickets, see www.horsecross.co.uk here or the festival’s Facebook page here.
Man of Moon: the Edinburgh two-piece rock band have supported We Were Promised Jetpacks, Phantom Band and The Subways. 7pm, The Speakeasy, The Voodoo Rooms, West Register Street. For over 18s only. Tickets cost £6 and may be purchased online here (transaction fee applies).
