Spin Events
Public and Private
Spin members visit Mike Nelson's Pumpkin Palace, August 2004
Various Venues, Edinburgh
14 August 2004
Exploring the physical and conceptual boundaries between public space, we toured around contemporary artworks situated in a stately home, a corporate space, a humble flat, a reclaimed commercial property, and visited special environments constructed in a church and on a classic American bus. The Festival is a time when Edinburgh showcases home-grown talent alongside internationally renowned artistic figures, and this tour took in everything from energetic recent graduates exhibiting on a shoestring, to ambitious site-specific installations created by major artists.
We were accompanied on the bus by Juliet Dean, Director of PACE (public art commissions and exhibitions), and Helen Watson (Outreach Officer at the National Galleries of Scotland). We viewed the permanent installations by Elizabeth Oglivie, Shauna McMullan, Keiko Mukaide and Adam Barker-Mill, sited by PACE at the BT Headquarters at the Gyle. Then we visited Newhailes, a National Trust house in Musselburgh where Helen had recently organised a project and exhibition: artist Nicky Bird had worked with a group of retired people to produce a series of evocative photographs and text called Below Stairs at Newhailes.
We got a glimpse of two of the group shows in Annuale – a mini-festival of emerging and international artists exhibiting in domestic and artist-run spaces: Repro Tableau at the Embassy Gallery and Brainchild at Magnifitat (a Bruntsfield flat). And we finished with the two special temporary installations created for the Festival: Alison Watt’s piece at Old St Paul’s Church and Mike Nelson’s Pumpkin Palace, a Collective Gallery off-site project. Along the way we met and chatted to curators Kim Coleman (Embassy and Magnifitat), Sarah Munro (Collective Gallery) and artist Jonathan Owen.