As part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is holding a series of exhibitions of work from three contemporary sculptors which will be displayed for, at least, the duration of the Festival
Lucy Wayman has been commissioned to create a new public sculpture for the cycle path close to Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, that connects Newhaven to Edinburgh City Centre. Wayman’s practice makes use of craft techniques, such as weaving, knotting and macramé, but at a dramatic scale.
The work, created from marine rope, follows Wayman’s interest in the industrial and historic uses of rope, connecting ideas of system, control and release with skills recognisable from the domestic realm.
The small rhythmic repetitions Wayman uses to make her works, build and mimic the materials’ original manufacture and communicate the labour invested in them.
Lucy Wayman was selected for this commission from an open call to all of ESW’s members.
Wayman has had a Graduate Studio at ESW since 2017 and has also been part of ESW Technical Academy since 2018, a year long training scheme for artists who want to gain experience as workshop technicians.
Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop has also commissioned Adam Benmakhlouf to make a new sound work for its beacon tower. His practice mixes painting, writing, print, sculpture, sound and video.
The works he produces reveal hints of autobiography, friendship and intimacy, which can be tender, honest and candid. This new work will be a collage of field recordings, and accumulated audio and music, gathered in a sound poem that reflects the ethos of ESW’s Schools Programme which Benmakhlouf has been assisting for two years.
‘The Noise of Making Spills Over’ is a looping sound collage of the noises of ‘working it out’ and informal education and is played through four speakers set high in the tower. As a response to the radical ESW Schools Programme, recordings of the primary 5s describing their own and each other’s artworks are mixed into noises of inclusive and community music groups’ warm-ups and reheasals, situating the listener in a rich soundscape of practice and the steady progress of collaborative learning.
With thanks to Debi Banerjee, Laurie Brown, Adam Gandy and Handbuilding Ceramics Class, The Glad Choir, Aniela Piasecka, Quoir, The Really Terrible Orchestra, Tinderbox Orchestra, Trinity Primary School, Victoria Primary School, Yoga Ema.
ESW have invited Caroline Achaintre to make new work for the central courtyard space. Achaintre is known for her sculptures in ceramic and metal as well as her drawings, prints, watercolours and fabric pieces in the form of tufted rugs.
For this project Achaintre’s outdoor sculptures, made from constructed and cast metal as well as elements of ceramic, will be an extension of her drawings of multipersonalities. The imaginative co-existence within one object-body, and a deftness in use of materials will create a perception of fluidity despite the rigid constituent parts.
Achaintre’s work brings together abstraction, figuration, humour and materiality. She often integrates small sculptures within larger support structures, called ‘display furniture’, and within whole exhibition schemes.
Caroline Achaintre was born in France, raised in Germany, and now lives in London.
She studied at Kunsthochschule in Halle/Saale, Germany and then at Chelsea College of Art & Design and Goldsmiths College London.
Further details of these and other events are available on the ESW website
