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HANNA TUULIKKI No sooner had Hanna Tuulikki’s Edinburgh Art Festival exhibition, Deer Dancer, ended its run at Edinburgh Printmakers than the Glasgow-based composer, performer and artist was shortlisted for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women, acknowledging her increasingly expansive explorations of nature and ritual. (NC)
EDINBURGH PRINTMAKERS The first open-access art studio established in Britain, Edinburgh Printmakers are doing their legacy proud with a stunning new studio space, gallery and café that have transformed the Castle Mills factory in Fountainbridge, continuing their mission of making art publicly accessible. (AB)
CATHY WILKES Two years after winning the prestigious Maria Lassnig Prize, Glasgow-based artist Cathy Wilkes has wowed the art world once again, this time at the Venice Biennale, transforming the grandiose British Pavilion into an eerily quiet space, haunted by uncanny, almost human forms. (RC)
ALBERTA WHITTLE With her first major exhibition in a UK institution, How Flexible Can We Make the Mouth, currently running at DCA, Alberta Whittle mixes various forms to question western constructs of history and white privilege from a post-colonial black perspective on oppression, healing and self-liberation. (NC)
KATIE PATERSON The universe has no limit for Katie Paterson, who this year was given her largest UK exhibition at the Turner Contemporary in
Margate alongside works by Turner himself. A new publication, A place that exists only in moonlight, was published to coincide with the show. (NC)
V&A DUNDEE In V&A Dundee’s first 12 months, 883,000 visitors were welcomed, a significant advance on the pre-opening projection of half a million, while the Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition was a critical success. Thanks to actor Brian Cox, it also made a cameo in the second season of HBO’s hit show Succession. (DP)
ARPITA SHAH Photographer Arpita Shah’s solo exhibition, Nalini, showed us how histories, memories and physical bodies are entangled and connected to one another, through a powerful and deeply personal collection of new work exploring the artist’s own maternal lineage. (RC)
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Scotland’s festival landscape has changed beyond recognition with large countryside events being accompanied by bespoke boutique affairs both in and away from the city. David Pollock looks at some must-attend music and multi-arts gatherings from 2019
Located midway between Stirling and Loch Lomond, Doune the Rabbit Hole bore an outstanding line-up this year, courtesy of Glasgow promoters 432 Presents, while Kelburn Garden Party continues to offer a bohemian party amid a forested hillside valley filled with art. With an extra night to accommodate a guest appearance by the Waterboys, Portree’s Skye Live also provided an unlikely but workable blend of club beats and contemporary folk in a beautiful location. The urban club festival has now become
the destination of choice for young festivalgoers, with Glasgow’s Riverside Festival expanding to offer a line-up on the banks of the Clyde that’s worthy of the Slam Tent (RIP). Yet for all that Glasgow’s club scene is thriving, Edinburgh leads the way with such shows: FLY Open Air’s spring event at Hopetoun House and autumn party in Princes Street Gardens are big draws, as is the ever-expanding Terminal V at Ingliston. The ghost of T in the Park has been broken
up into TRNSMT and August’s Summer Sessions, the latter featuring high-profile acts: the Cure at Bellahouston Park turned out to be one of this year’s most discussed shows. On the more esoteric side of the coin, experimental music is celebrated by Glasgow’s Counterflows, which has branched out to Edinburgh with some winter shows. Plus, there’s Tectonics, a collaboration of the BBC SSO and Counterflows, while also proving its leftfield worth is Sonica, Cryptic’s celebration of sound art.
Away from music, Scotland has also been hosting an increasing number of eye- catching multi-arts festivals, like UNFIX, an ‘evolving festival of ecological performance, dance, music, film and discussion’ at Glasgow’s CCA, and the increasingly timely, countrywide Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival.
For film lovers, Scotland also hosts the Glasgow Short Film Festival, the social-change and activism-focused Take One Action! and Glasgow’s cult cinema experience, Matchbox Cineclub, which has attracted a lot of attention for its events based on Nicolas Cage and Keanu Reeves. And theatre festivals we’ve enjoyed (which don’t involve visiting Edinburgh in August) include the puppetry-themed Manipulate and the young audiences-focused Imaginate.
1 Nov 2019–31 Jan 2020 THE LIST 35
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