Edinburgh Art Festival Preview 2011 This year’s Edinburgh Art Festival promises to be a good year for established names in contemporary art; not for the youngest, sexiest headline grabbers; or, with one or two exceptions, for the old masters of yesteryear. This is a festival where respected Scots take centre-stage and quality looks likely to prevail. Take David Mach, for example. The London-based Scot has been a household name in his native land since those lofty steel Big Heids appeared on the M8. This summer he will fill all five floors of Edinburgh’s City Art Centre with an epic exhibition of new work inspired by the King James Bible, now 400 years old. A highlight will be the artist’s own studio, taking up one whole floor, where he and his team will work in full view. Elizabeth Blackadder is, it’s fair to say, no spring chicken. Turning 80 this year, the Queen’s Painter and Limner in Scotland has spent a lifetime making paintings whose domestic gentleness masks a hidden well of power and experimentation. With pride of place on The Mound, the artist leads this year’s offering from the National Galleries and can expect the critical attention she has long deserved. Paisley-born John Byrne has in his 70 years been a psychedelic volcano of creativity, drawing record covers for the Beatles and winning countless awards for his stage and television plays, The Slab Boys and Tutti Frutti. On the publication of his biography, Open Eye Gallery will stage a major exhibition of the artist’s paintings, drawings and etchings, including those from Byrne’s recent children’s book. One of this year’s festival triumphs is sure to be Tony Cragg at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The sculptor’s first museum show in Britain for more than a decade, at 50-odd major works of art, indoors and out, it’s bound to be impressive. Cragg’s sculptures are the antithesis of cold, dead stone: whether made from plastic, bronze or wood, they seem to be alive with energy. Inverleith House, inside the Botanic Garden, continues to explore a rich vein of 20th New York artists with the late Robert Rauschenberg. The artist bridged the gap between abstract expressionism and pop art, but in ways far too eclectic to categorise with any degree of success. Botanical Vaudeville, the artist’s first substantial UK show for 30 years, concentrates on paintings and sculpture from the 1980s and 1990s. What with Elizabeth Blackadder and a quirky show devoted to the Queen, the Scottish National Gallery has no room this year for old masters. Not so at The Queen’s Gallery, which offers yet another breathtaking selection from the Royal Collection, ranging from the apocalyptic woodcuts of Dürer to the characterful portraits of Holbein the Younger. This is a must-see exhibition of top-notch northern European masterpieces borrowed from the walls of the royal palaces. Out and about in Edinburgh, there’s plenty more to choose from, including Karen Forbes’s specially commissioned Solar Pavilion, a curved glass chamber at the centre of St Andrew Square; and Martin Creed’s newly marbled Scotsman Steps. A bus ride away at the spectacular gardens of Jupiter Artland, an exhibition of Charles Jencks’s smaller sculptures offer clues to the thinking behind his unforgettable landforms. Lastly, one show at Inspace has got me intrigued: Left To My Own Devices is about a phenomenon called Device Art. The medium is the message in this high-tech exploration of hardware as the art itself. The term was coined in Japan in 2004; artists from Japan, China and Scotland will feature in this show, which should with any luck include some odd, playful, and very clever things.
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