Discover Scotland’s greatest modernist ruin, St Peter’s Seminary, transformed by light and music. Fifty years on since the building opened, you can explore this architectural masterpiece reanimated at night for the first time by public art company NVA. From 18 – 27 March, Hinterland will reveal the full glory of the towering concrete ruin, combining moving light installations and projection with a haunting choral soundscape.

Tickets on sale now at www.hinterland.org

Photo credit: James Johnston

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Amongst this year’s Selected 2015, there are returning exhibitors Gilly Langton, James Donald and Julia Smith and notably makers using new technologies in their design or production process including Lindsay Hill, Lynne MacLachlan-Eastwood and Kathryn Hinton.

Lynne MacLachlan Eastwood, Mesh Sphere Bangle, 2015, Hand Dyed 3D Printed Nylon, Photo courtesy Lynne Maclachlan Eastwood

Satoko Takemura, Hori Pendant, 2015, Silver, Photo courtesy Satoko Takemura

Jode Pankhurst, Kinky Bots, 2015, Porcelain & Gold Lustre, Photo courtesy Jode Pankhurst

Kerstin Gren, Dots, Raku & Smoked Fired Ceramics, Photo courtesy Kerstin Gren

Catherine Aitken, Hayworth Handbag, 2015, Harris Tweed, Deerskin Leather &Linen, Photo courtesy Catherine Aitken

In addition to the makers represented by Selected 2015, Dovecot has invited In addition to the makers represented by Selected 2015, Dovecot has invited Timorous Beasties, Dashing Tweeds and Method Studio to be part of + Dovecot Selects for the first time. These three established design studios represent Dovecot’s close association with luxury craft making and collaboration. As members of the Walpole British luxury partnership, Dovecot and the + Dovecot Selects exhibitors are part of a mission to promote, protect and develop the unique qualities of British luxury: rich heritage, superior craftsmanship, contemporary design and style at the heart of the industry. Dovecot Studios was winner of the Walpole British Luxury Craftsmanship Award in 2014; an accolade afforded by its commitment to the Tapestry Studio’s apprenticeship programme and ongoing collaborations with contemporary artists. The three + Dovecot Selects exhibitors will showcase new works which are made available for purchase.

For more information go to the Dovecot Gallery website.

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Mark Devereux Projects supports visual artists through mentoring, critical dialogue and curatorial production.

The second annual Associate Members Exhibition will run until 13 December in Manchester. Featuring seven associate member artists, the exhibition will display work from multiple disciplines under the umbrella theme ‘Looking at the Reflection of Reality.’ The selected artists include Rob Davies, Marco Giordano, Aylwin Greenwood-Lambert, Evi Grigoropoulou, Joe Hancock, Laura Napier and Mary Wintour who were chosen by curators Kitty Anderson (Curator, The Common Guild, Glasgow), Stuart Tulloch (Curator, Ikon, Birmingham), Derek Horton (Director and curator, &Model, Leeds) and Mark Devereux (Director, Mark Devereux Projects).

Looking at the Reflection of Reality runs in Manchester’s Federation House until 13 December. Find more information about the show on the Mark Devereux Projects website here.

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As part of GENERATION, photographer and filmmaker Wendy McMurdo is presenting a series of collected works ranging from 1995 to 2012 at Street Level Photoworks until 17 August. In addition to The Skater and film The Loop (made with Paul Holmes in 2009), the exhibition will feature several works not before seen in Scotland as part of a major solo exhibition of collected works that have been curated specifically for GENERATION.

McMurdo focuses on the relationship between technology and identity expressed through the images and ideas of childhood. She looks at the psychological world of children and young people, both as a protected space and, increasingly, as a ground for marketing wars and a prematurely forced adulthood.

Two limited edition Wendy McMurdo prints of the above image have been produced to accompany the exhibition. These can be purchased from the gallery during the run of the show or direct from Wendy’s website.

Digital Play runs at Street Level Photoworks until 17 August. McMurdo will give an artist talk on 9 August to accompany the exhibition. For more details about the exhibition see the Street Level website.

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The Festival of Museums is a three day event from 16 – 18 May where museums all over Scotland throw open their doors to over 90 events, workshops, exhibitions and live performances. Targeting every age range and interest, the festival has something for everyone.

In Glasgow, explore the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons after hours, bring a sketchpad and draw and hear artist Hugh Buchanan speak about some of the ways museums, archives and libraries influence his practice (16 May). The next day, hop on the GoMA Big Bus Tour to learn about architecture, illustration and/or creative art around Glasgow. Make artwork throughout the tour and see it displayed in the GoMA afterwards (17 May). Later that day, relax in Kelvingrove Museum with a Mackintosh inspired tea party and enjoy music from the Royal Conservatoire before hearing the results of the Great Glasgow-Style Bake Off.

In Edinburgh, start the weekend with Retro-future and BBC Radio 1 host, Vic Galloway in the Grand Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland. Suit up in the vintage/futuristic dress code, hear music from the 20s, 30s and 40s and have a wander through the galleries. The following morning, take a life drawing class in the Scottish National Gallery (17 May) before heading out for an evening of 1940s inspired swing at the Excelsior Ballroom.

The Festival of Museums runs from 16 – 18 May all over Scotland. For the full programme of events see the Festival website.

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On 18 May, Montreal based visual artist Herman Kolgen will present two audiovisual pieces for Alpha-ville LIVE at Kings Place in a London premiere. In the prize-winning Inject, a body is injected in a cistern over the course of forty-five minutes. Kolgen writes “The pressure of the liquid exerts upon him multiple neurosensorial transformations. From his epidermal fiber to his nervous system, he reacts to influxes of viscosity in this liquid chamber.”

Inject by Herman Kolgen

Dust by Herman Kolgen

In Dust, Kolgen is inspired by Elevage de Poussiere, the 1920s photograph from Man Ray which documents dust over work by friend and contemporary, Marcel Duchamp. Kolgen explores changes in the state of the matter: “At the edge of the imperceptible, pigments are suspended around a magnetic field, random fibrous networks take shape and then form composite objects, hypnotic in their complexity. Sound particles paired with luminous aggregates exist on a scale that cancels out all points of reference.”

Alpha-ville LIVE – Herman Kolgen: Inject & Dust teaser trailer

Herman Kolgen: Inject & Dust is a part of Alpha-ville LIVE at Kings Place on 18 May. To learn more see the Alpha-ville website and book tickets here.

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Seizing the extraordinary in the objects of the everyday, Wakefield born Martin Creed’s art is known for its unconventionality. Until the 5 May, The Hayward Gallery will present an extensive survey of the 2001 Turner prize-winning artist’s work. Entitled What’s the point of it?, the exhibition spans nearly twenty-five years of work from various disciplines.

What’s the point of it? shows at the Hayward Gallery until 5 May. For more details see the website. 

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The 6th edition of the Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art returns from 4-21 April. Known throughout the world, the biennial contemporary arts festival will feature over 50 exhibitions and 90 events and will encompass the work of over 150 artists from 24 different countries. With several innovative venues throughout the city, including a public bath house and an underground car park, the festival will also offer a unique series of commissions and projects curated by new festival Director Sarah McCrory.

Image credit: Aleksandra Domanović, Untitled (30.III.2010), 2010. Courtesy of the artist and Tanya Leighton, Berlin.

Selected highlights for the 2014 Festival include:

• Major new commissions by critically acclaimed international and local artists including Bedwyr Williams, Aleksandra Domanović, Sue Tompkins and Simon Martin.
• A programme for the year of Homecoming Scotland 2014 which will include off-site projects by Jordan Wolfson, Charlotte Prodger and Avery Singer.
• Over 50 solo and group exhibitions by up-and-coming Glaswegian, Scottish, UK and international artists at diverse permanent, temporary, converted and unexpected venues across the city.

Glasgow International runs from 4-21 April at various venues throughout Glasgow. For more information and the programme of events see the GI website.

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This is my favourite time in the festival planning cycle – when we not only know what’s going to be in the festival programme, but we can talk about it. This year is a particularly significant one for us as we celebrate our tenth edition – a kind of coming of age (although we are still the youngest of Edinburgh’s August festivals). Our programme reflects our growing ambition. We’ll have 45 exhibitions in over 30 venues across the city, as well as our largest programme of publicly sited commissions to date.

I’m really looking forward to having the time to reflect on what happens when artists collaborate with one another. This is something we have been considering in our Parley commissions programme, and there are some great exhibitions dedicated to this too. Inverleith House’s Mostly West explores the collaborations of the recently deceased Franz West with such major and diverse figures from the contemporary art world as Douglas Gordon, Mike Kelly, Sarah Lucas and Michelangelo Pistoletto.

Jupiter Artland is looking at the longstanding collaboration between Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, in an exhibition which includes the amazing Steam Powered Internet Machine (and for people who didn’t make it to Documenta last year (or did and loved it), there’s a one in a lifetime opportunity to see Sam Durant’s Scaffold).

Paul Rooney with Leeds United at Edinburgh College of Art is another interesting collaboration. Paul Rooney originally studied at ECA, and has been attracting increasing attention since winning the Northern Art Prize in 2008. If Mostly West shows us jointly authored works, Rooney and the artist collective Leeds United are making an exhibition which deliberately blurs the edges between each other’s practice – less a collaboration than a deliberate obliteration or confusion of the boundaries of individual authorship.

There’s some great new work by younger artists featured in this year’s programme. Rhubaba’s project with Polish artist, Lucy Pawlak, is a definite must see – the artist will set herself up for duration of the festival in the role of a Producer of a narrative feature film, and visitors, as well as invited experts will be invited to become involved in the creation of the final piece.

National Museum of Scotland have the second in a series of commissions which invite contemporary artists to work with their collections – Ilana Halperin has been exploring the museum’s geological and mineralogical collections. The other must-see at the museum is the Mary Queen of Scots exhibition which explores the elaborately crafted myth around the Queen which still retains its power today. It’s just one in a series of exhibitions in the programme which offer a timely reflection (in view of a certain impending date) on Scottish identity and its constructions. Bourne Fine Art’s exhibition considers how for over two centuries, artists have been crucial in the building a visual picture of Scottishness. While Rachel Maclean’s solo exhibition at Edinburgh Printmakers offers a very contemporary response to some of those same questions.

And lest we think it’s all easily expressed with thistle and tartan, Talbot Rice’s Nam June Paik exhibition (which is also part of the Edinburgh International Festival) reminds us of the profoundly international outlook of Scotland as a nation. Pat Fisher, Senior Curator at the Talbot Rice recently gave a lecture at a Nam June Paik conference in Seoul, entitled ‘Nam June Paik; Honorary Scot’ – and faced with the enticing prospect of the first exhibition in Scotland (birthplace of electromagnetic theory and John Logie Baird) of the artist who incorporated the television into the world of art, it is hard not to see this as a homecoming of sorts.

What:
Aperture, a very busy not-for-profit foundation, is a multi-platform publisher connecting photographers and their audiences with the most inspiring work and the best ideas.

Aperture magazine publishes four issues each year and these are filled with the most inspiring photography and writing on photography. They also publish between twelve and fifteen new photobooks, and books about photography, each year, with a growing digital publishing program, including e-books, apps, and a daily blog, as well as online features on their website. They have thus far published over 650 books.

Aperture 208 Magazine, Fall 2012

Additionally, they have a regular program of exhibitions each year, at their gallery in New York and at partner venues, touring to museums and other photography centers nationally and internationally. In their shop, Aperture sell approximately twenty-five print editions each year, many by emerging photographers, aimed at collectors and published to support their programs, and the photographers they work with.

Why we like it:
As if all that was not enough, Aperture host an annual Portfolio Prize, recognizing and promoting the most exciting emerging photographers internationally, and Paris Photo, an annual PhotoBook Award recognizing the contribution of photographers’ books.

Aperture 208 Magazine, Fall 2012

Aperture are celebrating their sixtieth anniversary in 2012 with exhibitions, publications and a Gala. See here for more details.

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