EmergeD [edinburgh]

Four local and international artists have created ambitious artistic interventions in a city centre shopping mall’s empty spaces.

Placed right in the heart of the city, viewed only through the shop-front windows and using materials as diverse as spray-paint, video-tape, exercise balls and neon lettering these art-works have been created especially for the orphaned spaces within the St James.

Together with two local artists, eilidh MCNAIR and niall MACDONALD, a direct exchange project has been embedded into the programme between E m e r g e D Edinburgh and 24seven, a Melbourne-based shop-front ‘gallery’ similar to the Vacant Shop Front run by E m e r g e D Glasgow. Australian artists kiron ROBINSON and lou HUBBARD have been invited to create ‘remote responses’ to shopping units within the St James Shopping Centre which have been posted and installed by their Edinburgh counterparts.

www.24seven.org.au

Edinburgh-based artist jackie MCNAMEE will be exhibiting in Melbourne as part of the exchange programme throughout August.

eilidh MCNAIR

Eilidh incorporates her drawing based practice into site-specific projects, using both these disciplines to explore geometry, illusion, light and shadow.

Drawing can be used as a means to investigate the relationship between representation and perception, specificially that of form and structure. In spatial interventions, superimposed imagery simultaneously references and obstructs, creating a duality between the work's reliance on its surroundings whilst also redefining and manipulating this environment.

Videodromes (Spider) and Videodromes (Scanners) are a continuation of a series of works using films by David Cronenberg. Wrapping the vhs tape around the room’s supporting pillars eilidh creates a delicate and shimmering spatial drawing in the front of the room complemented by a dense black wall of tape in it’s further recesses.

niall MACDONALD

For the abanndonned unit, Macdonald has produced a sculptural intervention and spray-painted text piece which gradually obscures the story of Babel's Tower:

"The whole earth had one language and few words. Men said to one another, 'Let us make bricks and fire them well. Let us build ourselves a city, a tower with its top in the heavens.' And the Lord came down to see the city, the great tower, and said, 'They are one people and this is only the beginning of what they will do;
nothing they propose will now be impossible. Let me confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.'

And scattered men over the face of the earth".

The parable contains within it the possibility of infinite human success (the Übermensch and perhaps the utopian 'what if') and attempts to justify its
intangibility through strict hierarchical force. Moral power enters the narrative through language, by the willful blocking of communication. By increasingly
'over-spraying' the stencil and obscuring the latter parts of the text, the work therefore re-enacts and inverts its significance; a double act of abstraction and intervention

lou HUBBARD - Stuck

Stuck is an invitation to contemplate force. HUBBARD collects everyday objects which can trigger psychological and emotional impulses and re-presents them in new, abstract, relationships. Here, a gym ball and metal seat are squeezed into the restricted space of the shop front forming a hovering blue target or a gigantic unflinching eye trained on passers-by.

kiron ROBINSON - Please, Please, Please

Mimicking the commercial landscape of any shopping strip in the world ROBINSON has created a neon sign which implores the passer-by to question. In the business of selling uncertainty Please, Please, Please embraces all targets and topics yet the incessant blinking offers no answers.

E m e r g e D continue to encourage artists to seek out gaps and orphaned spaces in the city’s urban fabric - contemporary ruins which are overlooked and yet full of potential. Part of both the Edinburgh Art Festival and Annuale, the [08/05] programme will give local communities and visitors alike an alternative perspective of the city. The breadth and potential of site-responsive art will be represented offering a range of experiences for audiences from the intimate to the collective, the subtle to the ambitious.

E m e r g e D is a not-for-profit organisation, founded in Glasgow in April 2002 and expanded to include Leeds in March 2004 and Edinburgh in March 2005. Since 2002 we have showcased the work of over 300 artists in a variety of sites including vacant shop fronts, churches, derelict cafes, youth hostels and shopping centres.
E m e r g e D are committed to promoting and enabling up-and-coming artists interested in working in a context-led manner out-with the gallery space.

In Edinburgh E m e r g e D present a dynamic monthly schedule of changing artists’ projects, populating Edinburgh’s forgotten spaces and engaging local communities.

Edinburgh Annuale
August 05

Playing on the high budget, high profile international art Biennials and Triennials which take place during the summer months in cities worldwide, the second Edinburgh Annuale again swaps the role of international host for the promotion of grass-roots operations, encouraging an experience of Edinburgh's art as it emerges. Coordinated by the Embassy Gallery, The Annuale includes events and exhibitions by:

Zug *, Onezero Projects, Embassy, Aurora, E m e r g e D, Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Generator (at ESW), Magnifitat, The Gun *, The Scorpion *, Total Kunst.
*publication

The Rain or Shine Annuale Closing Party at the Bongo Club Thursday 1st September 10-3 with live music by Gideon and Robert Redford. Tickets (£4/3) available in advance from The Embassy and on the door

Go to www.annuale.org for images, up to date information on events, and links to the galleries and publications