Held during August – and we all know what happens in Edinburgh in August – the Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) was established in 2004 as a much-needed way of bringing all the capital’s art exhibitions under one umbrella during the very busy festival season. As a result, the EAF is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. But it now also functions as an increasingly important commissioning body in its own right, bringing selected artists into selected spaces and thereby given the festival more of its own identity. The current Festival Director is Belfast-born Kim McAleese, and she works alongside curators Eleanor Taylor and Elle Haswell. This year’s festival turns on what McAleese describes as “alternative archives, queer histories, community-held stories, and living sound collections”, and will operate out of its new permanent space on Constitution Street in Leith as well as at venues across the city.
Pittenweem Arts Festival
Sometimes small is beautiful and that’s certainly the case with the event held annually since the early 1980s in the picturesque East Neuk fishing village of Pittenweem. The village itself isn’t short of galleries and has always been a draw for artists, but what gives the festival its charm is that sheds, garages and even family homes are also given over to the displaying of art. There’s also a strong programme of talks, workshops and community events – comedian Phill Jupitus, who lives locally, will take another of his collage workshops, for instance. There will also be an invited artist: previous recipients of the honour have included Alasdair Gray, John Byrne and Joyce Gunn Cairns. This year’s event opens on August 1 and runs until August 8, and there’s a full line-up of participating artists on the festival website.
Glasgow International
Now gearing up for its 11th ‘edition’, this prestigious biennial puts some curatorial muscle behind (and throws some art world glitz onto) Glasgow’s well-deserved reputation as a powerhouse of contemporary art. With a new Festival Director in place – Helen Nisbett, who took over from Richard Birkett this time last year – the event will be seeking to add to its lustre with another programme mixing the best work by Scotland-based artists with work from big names and coming forces on the international scene. Among the Scotland-based artists featured are Jonathan Owen, the fast-rising Aqsa Arif, Victoria Morton, Edinburgh-born Rae-Yen Song (don’t miss their crowd-pleasing installation at Tramway) and Cathy Wilkes, who represented Scotland at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005 and Britain at the 58th edition in 2019. Elsewhere the Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA) hosts the European debut of Australian South Sea Islander artist Jasmine Togo-Brisby, and there’s also a retrospective of sorts for Bettina Grossman. Known by the mononym Bettina, the eccentric artist lived and worked in New York’s legendary Chelsea Hotel from 1972 until her death in 2021 aged 94. The festival runs at venues and galleries across the city from June 5 to June 21.
Hidden Door
Held annually in Edinburgh, the USP of this multi-disciplinary festival is that it moves from venue to venue, colonising empty office spaces or shuttered up warehouses in industrial areas before the builders of pricey executive flats get their grubby mitts on them. This year, as last, it is to be held in the wonderfully atmospheric surrounds of a vast old paper factory in the west of Edinburgh titled – The Paper Factory. There’s ticketed music, dance and performance at night, but the festival’s site-specific visual art component is a huge part of the draw for those visitors attending for free during the day. Around 20 artists have been chosen to exhibit this year and each has their merits, but among the picks is Glasgow-based Ellie Harrison, who combines an interest in data with a strong sense of political activism (as well as a healthy dose of humour). Elsewhere don’t miss the enigmatic photographic and moving image work of Edinburgh-based Romanian artist Oana Stanciu. Or just wander around the vast area and take it all in, monumental installation by monumental installation. This year’s festival opens on June 3 and runs until June 7.
Maximum Tilt
Is there something in the water in Fife? Just up the road from Pittenweem is the august old university town of St Andrews, where this innovative three day festival of art concentrating on moving image works has its inaugural showing next month. The programmers are Andrew Black and Anne-Marie Copestake. The first is an artist and film-maker whose work fuses politics with issues of land and place and a former winner of the prestigious Margaret Tait Award, named for the Orcadian poet and gleefully avant-garde film-maker. His co-curator is a Glasgow-based artist who often collaborates with musicians and whose work has been shown at Glasgow International, Glasgow’s GOMA and the London Film Festival among other platforms. Screenings take place at the Byre Theatre, the mini-festival celebrates what the programmers refer to as “slowness, conversation and being together” – and on that last note each day ends with a communal meal. Maximum Tilt runs from June 23 to June 25.
