VISUAL ART list.co.uk/visualart
HITLIST THE BEST EXHIBITIONS & EVENTS
✽ Glasgow International The biennial festival of contemporary art takes over venues across the city. In her first year as director, Sarah McCrory has curated her own strand of exhibitions that includes work by Aleksandra Domanovic, Bedwyr Williams (pictured) and Sue Tompkins. See feature, page 12. Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 4–Mon 21 Apr.
House, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Apr–Sun 22 Jun.
✽ Corin Sworn See preview, left. Inverleith ✽ Hidden Door Festival New and innovative festival bringing alive the derelict
CORIN SWORN Glasgow-based artist responds to the Botanic Gardens collection
Sworn. Last year, she
I t’s been a busy few months for Corin represented Scotland at the Venice Biennale, exhibited in Berlin, London and Canada, and now, her new Inverleith House show opens in the middle of a six-month residency in Italy. The residency was awarded as part of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, which she won in January, and Sworn says she wants to use it to work on her sculpture and installation. ‘I often use research to write scripts for videos and then situate them in installations’, she says. ‘Having been given a bit of time to think and experiment, I’d like to use it to explore the installation side of my practice.’ Her Inverleith show comprises work made in response to the Botanic Gardens collection, as well as her film installation The Rag Papers, an exploration of reuse and appropriation that Sworn made for London’s Chisenhale Gallery last year.
‘While researching the circulation of fabric and second-hand clothing for The Rag Papers, I ended up reading about natural dye techniques’, she says. ‘One of the things that struck me about natural dyes was their somewhat unstable characteristics. I felt this had a strong resonance with themes in The Rag Papers, which is concerned with the way that objects can change as they are read and used by people. In a not dissimilar way, I also think objects affect the people who engage with them.’ Moving the location of The Rag Papers will, Sworn says, change the feel of the work. ‘I never know what the changes will be until they happen. I’m often surprised by how different a work feels in a new location.’ (Rhona Taylor)
Inverleith House, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Apr–Sun 22 Jun.
vaults lining Market Street with a nine-day celebration of grassroots art, music, theatre and film. See feature, page 18. Market Street Vaults, Edinburgh, Fri 28 Mar–Sat 5 Apr.
✽ Tania Kovats: Oceans Exhibition bringing together water from around the world in this participatory installation from the artist who brought her Rivers exhibition to Jupiter Artland in 2012. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 25 May.
✽ Glasgow Open House Festival running alongside Glasgow International opens up 36 unusual and unlikely venues across the city. More than 70 artists are getting involved in the project, which was the brainchild of a group of GSA graduates. See feature, page 16. Various venues, Glasgow, Fri 11–Mon 21 Apr.
✽ Navid Nuur: Renderender The Dutch/ Iranian artist takes over DCA with an
epic array of work that turns the detritus of everyday life into a series of constructions that provoke the viewer as much as they play with the material. See preview, page 104. Dundee Contemporary Arts, Sat 29 Mar–Sun 15 Jun.
20 Mar–17 Apr 2014 THE LIST 103