August 9–25, 2024
This summer, EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) will invite audiences to join them in a moment to collectively pause and reflect upon the conditions under which we live, work, gather and resist. EAF will connect with historic and contemporary ways of organising that have built infrastructures of care and pioneering activist movements over the past 20 years (and beyond).
Across the city audiences will be able to experience a range of performances and events across three weekends.
Mele Broomes presents a newly commissioned outdoor performance; with progressions of vocal callings accompanied by live melodies and choreographies, this work pays homage to a series of conversations facilitated by Mele and the living archive.
Prem Sahib will present their performance work Alleus, co-commissioned with Roberts Institute of Art and Somerset House Studios. Alongside this, across EAF, there will be an outdoor site-specific light installation by Prem Sahib – Liquid Gold.
JUPITER RISING x EAF invites audiences to explore, discover and celebrate underrepresented artistic voices, championing queer and QTIPOC experimental practice through a one day festival within a festival.
For their Opening Provocation, EAF will join with Cooper Gallery (DJCAD, University of Dundee); Falastin Film Festival, a volunteer-run collective bringing Palestinian art to Scotland; Haven for Artists, a Beirut-based cultural feminist organisation rooted in intersectional feminism, gender, racial justice, and decolonial practices; Lighthouse Books, Edinburgh’s oldest radical, queer-owned bookshop and Más Arte Más Acción, a Colombian foundation using art and ecology to facilitate conversations about Climate Emergency.
EAF and Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh also invite Más Arte Más Acción to present an artistic public intervention at Inverleith House.
A birthday party will take place to celebrate EAF’s 20th Birthday. Hosted by queer-led hair salon turned iconic party series Ponyboy, with EHFM’s impressive roster of DJs providing music.
EAF’s 2024 hub is the City Art Centre.
Sanctus! a new film installation by Renèe Helèna Browne exploring devotion in relation to portraiture, faith, and belonging.
Karol Radziszewski’s curated exhibition collects rare photographs and ephemera to trace the history of Filo Magazine, one of the first underground queer magazines in Central-Eastern Europe, founded by activist Ryszard Kisiel. This will be Radziszewski’s first Scottish solo exhibition. Co-commissioned by EAF and Auto Italia.
This year’s PLATFORM early-career artists Alaya Ang, Edward Gwyn Jones, Tamara MacArthur and Kialy Tihngang will respond directly to the themes of the 2024 programme, centering intimacy, material memory, protest and persecution.
EAF asks visitors to look again at the city around them in new ways this summer.
EAF have invited Rosie’s Disobedient Press, a collaborative project by artists Lisette May Monroe and Adrien Howard, to reflect on the framework for EAF’s 20th Birthday and on the landscape of the city over the past 20 years.
Remnants: How you re-assemble a city will launch for EAF24 and is a free newspaper for Edinburgh, created by feminist architecture collective Voices of Experience, EAF and Panel.
A wide range of partner exhibitions take place across the city.
At Fruitmarket, Ibrahim Mahama is making a brand new body of work inspired by the gallery's unique physical location, supported on columns above Waverley railway station. At Talbot Rice Gallery, El Anatsui’s exhibition will comprise a large selection of his iconic sculptural wall hangings, wooden reliefs and works on paper and will be the most significant exploration of El Anatsui’s practice ever to be shown in the UK. Los Angeles based painter Hayley Barker will make her first exhibition in Europe at Ingleby. At the National Galleries of Scotland, Do Ho Suh plays with architectural structures and objects using fabric.
Women in Revolt! is the National Galleries of Scotland’s survey of feminist art that celebrates the women who challenged and changed the face of British culture. The Edinburgh Seven Tapestry at Edinburgh Futures Institute, commemorates the first women to matriculate at any British university and is designed by Christine Borland, At the National Museum of Scotland, a new exhibition draws on Scotland’s rich history of Cold War-era protest and activism. Stills Centre for Photography presents Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words, featuring contemporary Ukrainian photographers exploring the meaning of home. At Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, Sequoia Danielle Barnes, will show an Afro-surreal retelling of Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Further commisions by Jan Pimblett and EtchingRoom1 also take place at the same venue.
Laura Aldridge and Andrew Sim will transform Jupiter Artland with Aldridge’s richly glazed ceramics, light, videos, textiles and sound, alongside Sim’s paintings depicting a dreamlike forest, with plants and trees growing beneath rainbows and star-studded skies. Making a return to Scotland will be will be Dovecot Studios' major tapestry that Chris Ofili first created in Edinburgh. Collective welcomes back early committee member Moyna Flannigan for an exhibition of new work featuring collages, alongside a constellation of paper sculptures that extend the principles of collage into three-dimensional form and space. At Sierra Metro, Flannery O’kafka’s childhood bedroom and home studio bleed into the former carpet shop, as powder blue covers the space in a soft subversion of gender performance, respectability, and the picturing of disability. Edinburgh College of Art invites visitors to a showcase of work by graduating students. The show combines new work from the schools of Art, Design and Architecture & Landscape Architecture within the beautiful studio spaces of the main building.
At Edinburgh Printmakers, Ade Adesina will showcase prints combining inspiration from Adesina's African roots, British culture, and travelling into international landscapes, while Tayo Adekunle repurposes the imagery of ethnographic exhibitions into a powerful commentary on the fetishisation of Black women's bodies. Sett Studios will showcase a vibrant range of work from their member artists. Travelling Gallery is delighted to be partnering with Community Land Scotland to celebrate 100 years of community ownership in Scotland. At the City Art Centre, Adam Bruce Thomson, one of the most quietly impactful artists of his generation has a long overdue exhibition. At Inverleith House, through music, literature, fashion, design, scent and visual art, Fungi Forms will take you on a spectacular journey, exploring fungi in science, culture and innovation. The Scottish Gallery hosts Geoff Uglow, whose oeuvre stands as a testament to his unwavering originality. Koji Hatakeyama’s enigmatic, patinated surfaces, meantime, also at Scottish Gallery, represent the landscape, evoking a sense of time. Finally, Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians at the Kings Gallery, exhibition explores what the Georgians wore, from the practical dress of laundry maids to the glittering gowns worn at court.
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Studio Nicola Jeffs
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EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) is the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art. Founded in 2004, we cultivate connections between artists, collaborators and communities to develop contemporary visual art projects in Edinburgh. We present the UK’s largest annual visual art festival that is deeply rooted in the city and Scotland, with a global dialogue and connection. We amplify intersectional voices and perspectives.
