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.

Find out more:
Website | Blog | Twitter

The Gallery’s principal aim is to make contemporary art accessible without compromising art or underestimating audiences, and it presents world-class, thought-provoking and challenging exhibitions of contemporary art made by both Scottish and international artists. The 2012 Festival exhibition concentrates on the theme of the diary in the work of Dieter Roth. Roth was one of late twentieth century art’s major figures, and although he died in 1998, his work remains of interest to artists and audiences alike. He has a particular connection to Edinburgh, having been part of Richard Demarco’s exhibition Strategy Get Arts at the 1970 International Festival. This will be the first time his work has been seen in Scotland since.

The Gallery is also home to Scotland’s leading contemporary culture bookshop and a busy café making fresh, tasty lunches and delicious cakes. The Gallery sits neatly behind Edinburgh’s Waverley Station and is close to many bus routes and the Royal Mile, North Bridge, Waverley Bridge and Princes Street.

Visit the Fruitmarket Gallery’s website here and follow them on Twitter and Facebook. Also check out their Youtube Channel which has some great archive films of Artists’ and Curators’ talks.

The Fruitmarket Gallery is located at 45 Market Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF

Gallery Opening Hours Mon – Sat 11am–6pm Sun 12–5pm

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From time to time we feature galleries and spaces that showcase & encourage grassroots artists. Browse through more of our Featured Venues.
Contact us to talk about a feature on your venue.

INSIDE OUT is a large-scale participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work. Everyone is challenged to use black and white photographic portraits to discover, reveal and share the untold stories and images of people around the world.

These digitally uploaded images are made into posters and sent back to the project’s co-creators for them to exhibit in their own communities. People can participate as an individual or in a group; posters can be placed anywhere, from a solitary image in an office window to a wall of portraits on an abandoned building or a full stadium. These exhibitions will be documented, archived and viewable virtually.

To find out more about INSIDE OUT,  to find out how to get involved or to just to see more of the images uploaded so far, go here.

Image by Françoise L  – Colmery, France

Image by JUAREZ M – Juarez, Mexico

2009 Edinburgh International Festival Fireworks

I’ve viewed these displays of pyrotechnic excess every year since they started (I shan’t mention when that was but I was young enough to fall asleep during the concert because it was past my bedtime) and have been completely spoiled. Having one of the world’s largest and most impressive sets of explosive devices hanging overhead once a year, getting better all the time, means that anything in a back garden on November 5th is about as exciting as lighting a dicky gas hob.

2010 Edinburgh International Festival Fireworks

This sort of thing doesn’t come cheap. Word on the street – well, internet – suggests that there are to be around £1million of fireworks set off this year. To cover this expense, over the years the event has been sponsored by Glenlivet (who commissioned Carl Davis to compose the ‘Glenlivet Fireworks Music’, which I remember singing at school and miss dearly) and latterly the Bank of Scotland. This year Virgin Money are the sponsors – having opened offices in the city centre they’re throwing money at all sorts of things this year – and the EIF invited people to come up and tour the preparations for this year’s event.

I thought I would be clever and take the spare camera so I wouldn’t have to fumble with lenses but in the post-Festival haze I then left the main camera at home so was left fumbling nonetheless. Tsk.

Once through the inner gate of Edinburgh Castle the outer wall is layered about eight feet deep with racks of explosives and wires running between them like a pasta chef’s mad dream.

In days of yore the fireworks were triggered manually in time to the music, using little boxes like these. Unfortunately, some of the music at the concerts can be a bit too fast for mere humans to keep time with. So why not use computers? Well, it’s tricky to syc up a preprogrammed computer with a human orchestra and conductor; an unexpected pause and the whole thing would come apart. The solution? Most of the fireworks are still set off by hand but where there are fast sections there will be a computer-controlled subsection.

Preset fireworks, one array of many across the Castle

I was suprised to hear that the fireworks themselves, as well as the trigger mechanisms, are imported from all over the world; although apparently the famous waterfall – pretty much the biggest display of its sort – is British made. The devices are certainly varied in appearance, what I could see of them. Many were covered in plastic, presumably to protect them from the rain, making it look like an exiting trip to IKEA for wrapping paper.

The Castle was swarming with efficient-looking people tending to their charges, wiring things together, poring over plans and never far away from a fire extinguisher!

Sadly there had been some sort of miscommunication which meant that we had to get out by 6pm, when the Castle closes, and the tour was truncated. We were given a very brief look at the breakdown of this year’s display on our way…

… passing some very serious-looking first aid kit…

… pausing to admire the artistry of the setup, which takes a week of intensive labour for such a brief climax…

… chuckling at the covers for the cannons, which I suspect could take a certain amount of explosive without damage…

… and then it was over, and we just had to get through Arcade Fire’s soundcheck without harm.

Many thanks to the people at the Edinburgh International Festival for organising the tour which was fascinating if brief. Maybe next year I’ll manage to get a better, longer look…

But what few notice is the miracle in Charlotte Square: the city that is the Edinburgh International Book Festival grows there in three weeks, only to be dismantled at the end of the Festival season… By the end of July it’s clear that something is afoot, although it’s yet a far cry from the finished product.

Something I hadn’t realised is that the placement of the many and varied buildings around the square is something that has evolved over the 28 years since the festival started. Each tent is squeezed up between the trees to make as much use of the space as is possible!

I had hoped to create a thorough series of the build this year but time, and the weather, foiled me. So instead I went on site on the day when the books were due to start coming in, a remarkable undertaking when you realise how many they have! When I arrived most of the buildings were there, it was only lacking the entrance, the Spiegeltent and the yurts which are used to house the authors, press etc. The bookshop tent was all but complete; the shelves were all there, all it needed were books!

The children’s bookshop tent was slightly further behind, with workmen still finishing the shelving, but this seemed a minor matter.

The site was a hive of directed activity, the displays were getting the finishing touches…

… the main theatre was getting the last bits of tech installed…

… there were chairs and tables just waiting to be placed…

… and the last of the walkways were getting covered.

At last the moment arrived and the first load of books arrived. The initial set up takes three lorries loads of books. Over the course of the festival some are taken away and replaced, as different events will cause demand for different stock. This is all rotated through a secure container on site and a huge warehouse out of town. Now there’s a timelapse I should do!

As each pallet of books was unloaded it was delivered to one of the bookshops and unwrapped.

The boxes are then taken to the appropriate section by the bookshop staff, where they mount up at a fair pace!

Once the first delivery is in the unpacking starts and shelves start to fill up.

… and are delivered to the bookshops…

… and the shelves fill up…

And all the while every box has to be painstakingy flatpacked for later – after all, not everything gets sold and they will need to get them out again in just a few weeks!

It was a dizzying thing to watch!

I’ll be going in again before the Book Festival starts but I expect it will be all ready to go. Then it’s time for the fun and I’ll try to keep you appraised of what’s been happening there.

If you’ve never been there, find an opportunity to do so. It’s a wonderful space run by New Media Scotland in partnership with the School of informatics; located on the corner of what was once Crichton Square car park, opposite the Mosque, it’s a techy nerd’s surreal minimalist wet dream. This year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival almost completely bypassed me. Since it escaped the August festivals hurly burly it’s harder for me to get enthusiastic about it and if it hadn’t been for the number of excellent events I’ve seen at Inspace of late I probably would have seen nothing. The Atmosphere programme goes almost unnoticed during the EIFF; although listed in the programme it just talks about the films and not the remarkable things that go on around them.

The goal of the series is to “re-imagine the concept of Atmospheric movie theaters from the 1920s and 30s,” and it does this very well. Last year a screening of Moon had the staff all in NASA-style jumpsuits and a real life astronaut there for a Q&A about what it’s really like to go to the moon. Since I had already been spending a lot of time there and had some free time I dived into the 2011 programme…

It started with The Man in the White Suit, a film I had never seen. Excellent! Entertaining as well as educational. The audience were welcomed with white cocktails in test tubes which were tasty but amusingly difficult to drink.

The chemistry theme continued with a glorious glass construction near the cocktais.

And of course there was the film to watch as well.

Next up was The Incredibles, which got me very excited and everyone else too apparently as it was a full house. This ‘season’ at Inspace has been in association with the Scottish Academy of Fashion, so for this event we saw a selection of dresses that could almost have been designed by the film’s star, Edna Mode.

There was also a tiny voice activated talking Edna who had been wired into the building’s computer and sound system. It’s remarkable how many people coo-ed and squeed over her.

The Pufferfish had also been roped in, taking the form of the Omnidroid and lurking distressingly in the corner.

The drinks today were mimosas because, of course, Mr Incredible sips on one during the film. I think most of the audience only cottoned on to this while watching.

I had to miss Funny Face. Apparently I should be very sad because it was a massive bunch of fun. [sigh] I am sad.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie was another full house.

The audience came in to a tranquil picnic scene where they were served drinks with the promise of picnicky delights later.

There was more fashion…

… and throughout the film Erika Duffy created a Jean Brodie ‘signature scent’ using bubbles, squirters and vast beakers scattered around the space.

For Eyes of Laura Mars the extras were very scientific. Working with the DIEM project, a bunch of volunteers came in to the Informatics department a few weeks previously and watched a clip from the film while having their eye movement tracked. This was then pulled together in a number of styles and the results projected around the space on the night.

You can see the output here:

The Eyes of Laura Mars photoshoot peekthrough from TheDIEMProject on Vimeo.

And so to the grand finale, Fellini’s 8 ½. I knew some of what was planned for this so even though I had to run away from another engagement early to get there, get there I did. Confronted on arrival by a ringmaster’s outfit – complete with whip – and a strangely monochrome setting with gauzy partitions, it set the tone perfectly for the film.

As well as being projected on the main wall…

… the film was also projected onto the rear wall through some of the drapes…

… onto a bed…

… and onto a dinner table…

… where people were invited to sit and have some wine and cheese.

And as if this wasn’t enough, ten minutes before the end of the film it was stopped; people were asked to join hands and were led onto the roof of the building where the remainder of the film was shown on the pufferfish while ‘Fellini bellinis’ were served.

It was a truly magical and spectacular way to show a film that broke the barriers of filmmaking. I saw nothing else of the 2011 EIFF but thanks to this series I have nothing but good things to say about it. I thoroughly recommend you keep an eye on what’s happening next season and where possible, go along!

This year, the book festival was brave. It did things it had never done before. In a time where funding is being pulled left, right and centre, it would be easy for an established festival like the EIBF to stick to their guns, sit on their laurels and hide, but they didn’t.

Instead, they brought out a programme that was rich and varied, with more of my favourite writers than I have ever seen before (and that’s after working for  four literary festivals over six years) and a selection of exciting new events.

From Unbound, which filled the Spiegeltent with music, writing and tons of people every night, to their fantastic guest selectors, to their fantastic social media presence, they were really on the ball. They showed what a book festival could do.

As the Booker prize was announced today it made me sad that they did not take risks with their selection. There was no Mitchell, no Christos Tsiolkas, no spark. Though I appreciate the work that literary novelists do, I ultimately believe that authors who appeal to a wide audience do  great things too.  Be it Scarlett Thomas or (dare I say it) Stephenie Meyer, these guys are really reaching and affecting a large group of people. Neil Gaiman tells a great story about how he was once asked by a literary novelist at a festival how he made his living, to which he replied, ‘I write books’. The novelist was incredulous that Gaiman could support himself solely through his writing. This is something that has really stuck with me.  It makes me happy, then, to see the Guardian running the Not the Booker prize, which allows people to nominate the books they feel are deserving of acclaim. The shortlist is currently being contended, but you can read the original longlist here.

Seeing the range of books submitted for consideration is joyful; just look at it! Comics sit happily next to literary novels, which in turn are making friends with science fiction stalwarts and popular fiction.  It’s very similar to what you see in this year’s book festival programme, and it’s a trend I hope to see continuing.

And so I am going to look forward, to when the winter is over, when Charlotte Square has been re-sod, and my bones stop hurting.  I can’t wait to see what next year’s book festival, and Not the Booker, bring us..

However, this is not the Moore I saw today. Sure, he has an excellent beard, and yes, he is frighteningly intelligent, but at his core Alan Moore comes across as a very rational and personable man.

His work in comics helped redefine the genre at a time when it needed it most, helping, in his own words, to make comics fit their times and more accurately reflect a contemporary world. Almost 30 years on, and Moore speaks of his comic work with only a hint of regret, and apologises for starting the trend that has made every character in today’s comics a psychopath or a murderer.  Sadly, he does not hold the rights for the most famous of these books (Swamp Thing, Watchmen, V for Vendetta), due to creators’ rights issues. Moore has now become known for his work outside the mainstream, with smaller publishers like Knockabout and America’s Best Comics. For people looking for something off the beaten track, I can now recommend Moore’s new magazine venture, Dodgemlogic.

During the space of a too short hour, Moore talked about his background, his methods of storytelling (Moore is famous for his highly visual scripts) and his past with DC. He speaks with such confidence and resolution about this time, that you can’t not see his side of the story.

At the end of the event, an audience member asks; ‘Alan, how do you not compromise your morals and stay true to your writing, while still making your books a huge commercial success?’ to which Alan Moore responds:

‘As a writer, you simply cannot think about commercial success. You have the obligation to stay true to your own voice, but that is all. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what people want, because they’d probably want The Sun; it’s about what they need.’

My wish with my Edinburgh International Book Festival coverage was to provide an accurate picture of what it’s like to go to a festival and still have to get up the next day, and in some ways my (lack of) coverage has been quite accurate, because no one has seen me. I run from work to events, sloping in and then dashing off again to help out with work (day work) related projects or to catch one of the few shows I foolishly booked for at the Fringe. I wish that I could wander serene and bookish around Charlotte Square Gardens, notebook in hand,  looking all calm and interesting, but I am really never going to be like that. I will always that slightly mad person with the red hair bouncing from one event to the other, looking vaguely stressed out . If you spot me, come say hi. I am not as stressed as I look, promise.

Anyway, here’s the first part of my blast through Charlotte Square this past week, to give you an idea of what it has been like.

OPENING WEEKEND

On Saturday morning the Edinburgh International Book Festival opened its doors for the 21^st time. By now a truly grown up festival, it has been given new youth by its latest director, Nick Barley, who took up the reigns in October of last year, and has since been making some radical changes to regular book festival fare.

The first day, however, was classic Book Festival. The Soweto Gospel Choir were singing just inside the entrance to the gardens and the weather was glorious. There were old faces and lots of new ones, and that lovely book festival buzz was definitely doing the rounds.

First up was Garth Nix, Australian author of Lirael, Sabriel and Abhorsen. He put on a great show, and told a lot of stories about his life (most of which turned out to be lies), to teach the kids in the audience that anyone can tell a good story – or a good lie – with the right tools.

It was interesting to go from an event where stories were described as lies to the Philip Pullman event. Pullman was attending the Book Festival to discuss his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. The book is divisively published as part of Canongate’s Myth series, which sees well known authors reimagining famous myths.

The Good Man Jesus certainly has Pullman written all over it, and smacks of His Dark Materials, both in tone and ideological bias.

The event featured Philip Pullman in conversation with former Bishop of Oxford Richard Harries, and rock star theologian Richard Holloway. Richard Holloway spoke about faith and the problems of the church at the closing event of last year’s festival, and did so with such intelligence and compassion that it seemed only natural that he would chair this event.

For a discussion that could have so easily disintegrated into argument, Holloway handled the event admirably, instead posing questions that allowed Harries and Pullman to find common ground and expand upon their views for the audience’s benefit.

All three started off in agreement that the figure of Jesus likely existed, but whether this figure was divinely sent is another matter entirely. CS Lewis famously said that Jesus could only be one of two things, God or mad, but Pullman sees this is a foolish dichotomy, and one that can only divide people. Holloway asked: Is it possible to have a non-divine Jesus that is still morally relevant, or are the human and the divine interminably bound together? This is the question that Pullman has tried to answer in The Good Man, providing a moral and human alternative to the traditional gospels of the New Testament.

What I found interesting was Pullman’s openness to discussion and debate, despite the strong moral thwack of his novels. Last year at the festival, we saw Richard Dawkins speak out about the foolishness of religion. Pullman was the opposite. Though he remains opposed to the structures of institutional religion and is sceptical of miracles, Pullman believes that, at the end of the day ‘religion is about the experience’ and so anything that encourages this cannot be a bad thing. To Harries, he said:  ‘If my book makes people so cross that they go and read the New Testament, no one could be happier than me.’

All three men come from very different backgrounds, but agreed that the experience of religion is, at the core of it, one’s own, and that very little can or should be done by the church to mediate it. Though part of me wanted to see Harries and Pullman go at it Vatican-style, the end result was much more informative.

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Melvyn Bragg attracted the crowds on the last Saturday of the festival leading to a queue that lapped around the Book Festival’s tented village, but the sun was shining and some Gruffalos were wandering around so all were happy, even the kids.

Bragg is mostly known for his work on The South Bank Show, where he was Editor and presenter from 1978 to 2010. He spoke with great enthusiasm about how, when he first started in the role, one of his principle aims was to present popular culture alongside traditional ‘high art’ which dominated the programmes of the time. How things have changed… Yet Bragg distinctively gave the impression that he thought perhaps things have gone too far the other way and at one point bemoaned the current quality of BBC television – harking back to a time when Chekhov was shown on a Sunday evening on BBC2. He also started off by saying that he thought the large audiences at the Book Festival were proof of ‘anti-dumbing down’. Certainly one way to get an audience on your side.

The most fascinating part of Bragg’s event was hearing his stories of those he had interviewed, from opera singer Pavarotti to British filmmaker David Lean. In particular he was determined to capture these artists’ lives through their own words, letting their personalities come through on camera without the associated critique that most arts programmes see as essential. He referred to film critic Pauline Kael’s astute observation that television could act as a lie-detector, revealing the true nature of its subjects.

And finally he pondered on what it was that made a truly great artist. Something that many have discussed and debated over the years. His conclusion? Quite simply, that the artists he met had that extra bit of confidence that they carried through to their work.

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The next event for me was to see 60s counter-culture luminary Barry Miles. He famously established the Indica Gallery where John Lennon first met Yoko Ono and was one of the founding editors of the International Times – the prominent underground newspaper that was set up in 1966. He has written numerous books on counterculture, the beat generation and biographies on Paul McCartney, Jack Kerouac and Charles Bukowski, to name a few.

His latest book is called London Calling and attempts to document London’s counterculture history from the forties to the present day. It’s an anecdotal yet detailed account, focusing on Miles’ own experiences and it includes an impressive number of  well-known people, eccentric figures and ‘people behaving badly’ (his words!).

It was particularly fascinating to hear Miles talk of his experiences of being part of the team who put on the International Poetry Incarnation, which featured among others William S Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg; an event that was pivotal in establishing the underground culture in London.

Miles also put forward some interesting thoughts on the concept of an underground press in today’s world, he posited that perhaps WikiLeaks is the closest thing we have to such a thing today. The true incarnation of people putting out information for no personal gain.

I managed to catch up with Miles after the event for a chat too – look out for a Q&A to follow shortly.

London Calling: A Countercultural History of London since 1945 is published by Atlantic.

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This year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival began on the 14 August, but for me it all kicked off this Monday when I attended two very different events, one featuring art journalist Jonathan Jones and the other popular artist David Shrigley.

The sun was shining down on the tented village in Charlotte Square where the festival makes its home each year. Everything appeared terribly civilised: there were children running around but miraculously no noise, people enjoying a cup of tea in the sun and better still I discovered the press area was actually in a yurt. All in all, a brilliant start.

My first event was the Guardian’s film critic Jonathan Jones in conversation with the director of the Scottish National Galleries, John Leighton. Whilst the younger generation were in the majority outside, inside this event it was a sea of grey-haired ladies and gentlemen. Perhaps the topic wasn’t particularly conducive to a younger audience: Jones was discussing his book ‘The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel That Defined the Renaissance’ which looks at a point in time in 1504 when the two artists competed to paint the walls of a room in Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio. A traditional topic but with some interesting contemporary parallels: specifically, comparisons between the status of artists in 16^th Century Florence and today’s celebrity equivalents. Although Jones was also keen to point out that whilst some artists might be given a certain amount of reverence in today’s society, they wouldn’t for example, be asked to design a plane, which was the equivalent of a few of the commissions in 16^th Century Florence.

Jones also cites this moment in time as a pivotal point in the creation of the concept of the ‘artist as genius’ and sees the Michelangelo/Da Vinci contest as a ‘battle of the genii’. What emerged most fiercely was Jones’ passion for art of the period, something that he couldn’t muster for much contemporary work (although he made an exception for Richard Wright), a sentiment that won’t be a surprise to his regular readers.

Later on I attended a very different event: David Shrigley discussing his hefty new book ‘What the Hell are You Doing?: The Essential David Shrigley’, a collection of his past drawings and photographs. Shrigley’s work has been widely distributed and is frequently featured in newspapers, magazines and on greeting cards. His desire to make people laugh and to reach popular appeal shines through not just in his work but in person too. The event saw Shrigley talk irreverently about his practice with plenty of jokes thrown in. It made me think about the degree to which artists (in the broader sense) are aware of and consider their audience. I’ve always been struck in the past by the number of filmmakers I’ve spoken to who all but ignore the people who will end up watching their film. Shrigley, however, seems to be at the other end of the spectrum, almost positioning himself as an entertainer. The tone of the event very much matched the tone of Shrigley’s work (perhaps unsurprisingly) but personally I found myself wishing that some more meaty discussion had been teased out of the artist.

I’m hoping that the panel discussions later on in the festival will provide more food for thought….

Look out for more commentary from the Book Festival from me and our festival reporters over the coming days.