For decades it was the poor relation of Scotland’s biggest cultural celebration. Twenty years after it was launched to raise the profile of visual art in Edinburgh in August, its annual showcase now covers much more of the city than its sister festivals. The Edinburgh Art Festival, which will feature the work of more than 200 artists, embraces all of the city’s best-known museums and galleries, including Fruitmarket, Collective, Ingleby and Dovecot Studios.
But it also takes the summer festivals into parts of the city that other events rarely reach. Its 20th anniversary programme will see events and exhibitions staged at a former carpet shop and the Shore in Leith, the Royal Botanic Garden, a community project in Restalrig, a shopping centre in Wester Hailes, a former rubber factory in Fountainbridge, a city centre car park and an outdoor sculpture park near Edinburgh Airport. Art festival director Kim McAleese said: “We have such incredible museums and galleries in Edinburgh, with beautiful collections and really amazing commercial and artist-spaces.
"In most parts of the city, there is something visual art related that you can and visit. "Visual art just wasn't as prominent in the city in 2004, but that was part of the reason for the genesis of the art festival. There was a real feeling that the city wasn’t really shouting about the wonderful programmes that were on.
“Visual art historically had a presence in the Edinburgh International Festival programme, but it fell by the wayside or was really dependent on where a particular director wanted to take it.” The 2024 festival, which officially launches this weekend, features work inspired by the climate emergency, trailblazing Edinburgh medical students, the landscape of Ukraine, feminist movements in the UK and the 1970s and 1980s, Georgian fashion and anti-immigration speeches made by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman while she was in office. The festival will also be taking over the entire City Art Centre on Market Street with a programme which includes an exhibition dedicated to early-career artists currently living and working in Scotland.
Alaya Ang, Edward Gwyn Jones, Tamara MacArthur and Kialy Tihngang will be responding to some of the key themes of this year’s EAF programme, including protest, colonialism, protest and persecution. Initially created as a way of promoting the huge range of visual art exhibitions on offer in August, the EAF has evolved to include special commissions, projects, shows and events, which have often involved opening up spaces to the public for the first time or involving them in the summer festivals for the first time. Permanent commissions by Martin Creed, Graham Fagan, Rabiya Choudhry, Bobby Niven and Richard Wright can be found at the Scotsman Steps, at the junction between New Street and Calton Road, outside Leith Library, the Johnston Terrace Wildlife Garden below Edinburgh Castle and in a stairwell of the National Galleries’ Modern Two building.
Ms McAleese, who is overseeing her second programme as festival director, said: “When I stepped into this role, the key for me was to really think about collaboration, how we can co-commission and be really intertwined between all our partner galleries. “The festival can move between all those spaces and do lots of different things in an agile way that they maybe can’t do all year round. "Although we have an exhibition-based programme, the festival is not just about artists making paintings which can be hung on a wall.
"We have a lot of performative events, provocations, discussions and workshops to ensure there are different ways for people to interact with us.” The official EAF launch event and birthday party on 9 August in and around Custom Lane, on the Shore in Leith, will feature a performance by Mele Broomes, while an outdoor light installation created by Prem Sahib will be on display throughout the festival. Sahib will be staging the performance work Alleus, which will feature live and pre-recorded voices, including excerpts of spaces made by Suella Braverman when she was Home Secretary, at the Castle Terrace Car Park.
Ms McAleese added: "What’s really interesting now is that artists are working in loads of different mediums and formats in loads of different ways. "It’s about expression and what people want to put in the world. Artists are choosing very different ways to do that now.
” Highlights of the festival will include Renèe Helèna Browne’s film installation at the City Art Centre, which will bring together elements of rally car culture to explore issues around faith, death and the afterlife. The Columbian-based arts organisation Más Arte Más Acción will be staging an “artistic public intervention at the Royal Botanic Garden, where a large table will be built around a tree to explore the connections between humans and plants. DJ, musician and artist Rory Dixon will be staging a solo exhibition inspired by his interest in Las Vegas and counter-culture at Sett Studios on Leith Walk.
The Sierra Metro gallery, a former carpet shop on Ferry Road, will host Flannery O’kafka’s show, which is partly inspired by the artist’s childhood bedroom. New work at Jupiter Artland, the sculpture park and art attraction at Bonnington House, near Ratho, includes a “snail fountain” sculpture and an exhibition by Andrew Sim which is said to have turned its ballroom into a “dream-like forest,” complete with winged horses, sunflowers, rainbows and werewolves. The Jupiter Rising festival, which the art festival collaborates on with the venue, will feature live music, poetry, storytelling and DJ sets.
Ms McAleese said: "We try to make sure that the majority of our programme is free to access and there are no barriers for people. “I think it’s important when you’re putting on a festival that you resonate with local, as well as national and international audiences. "We do a lot of work in Wester Hailes and Leith.
Lots of people who live there don’t necessarily want to come into the city centre. "It’s also important to spread out across the city as much as possible to show people who are visiting Edinburgh that there is more to it than the Old Town and the New Town. There are so many interesting indoor and outdoor spaces.
"But if you are in the centre of town and have an hour spare before a Fringe show we also have so much on offer.”.
