Edinburgh International Festival 2009 Shows a Series of New Commissions

Written by Jonathan Kosuth Tuesday, 01 September 2009 21:34

EDINBURGH.- The Edinburgh International Festival 2009 visual arts exhibition The Enlightenments is a series of new commissions and work new to Scotland. It takes a contemporary view of ideas and questions which first arose in Edinburgh during the 18th century Enlightenment. The Enlightenments is integral to the Festival’s exploration of the Enlightenment and its great minds and innovations. It is presented in partnership with the Dean Gallery – National Galleries of Scotland, Talbot Rice Gallery – The University of Edinburgh and Collective Gallery which are hosting the project, in addition to a Bluetooth delivered work.

Juliana Engberg, Artistic Director of Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne and curator of The Enlightenments said: ‘Edinburgh epitomizes the ideals of the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment with its neo-classical beauty and places of learning, law and finance. The city also exists as a series of warrens and darker places. Its Enlightenment edifice is built upon a maze of intriguing geological fissures, labyrinthine architecture and iniquitous underworlds. The Enlightenments runs through Saturday 26 and Sunday 27 September.

Against this backdrop of the city and its philosophical history the artworks that make up The Enlightenments offer contemporary observations on subjects including religion, philosophy, superstition, architecture, literature, natural history, the cosmos, skepticism, stoicism and social manners.’

The artists and works that make up The Enlightenments are as follows; Presented in partnership with the Dean Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland:

Nathan Coley (UK)
BELOVED (New commission)
Questioning belief systems and investigating architectural structures inhabited by and invested with faith form Turner Prize nominee Coley’s three-dimensional practice.

His work for The Enlightenments, takes as its starting point three gnarled tree trunks that support the extraordinary undulating roof of a remote 19th century stone cottage in Perthshire.

Coley has isolated and re-presented this existing element of the built environment – architecturally remixing spruce and pine trunks through a process that included drying out the trunks in kilns over the course of three months, applying coats of eggshell and a final layer of meticulously chosen paint. Text is also being added through a highly involved process which will result in textual references being slightly visible through a series of small holes drilled into the trunks using a steel template made with a computer guided laser cutter.

Lee Mingwei (USA/Taiwan)
Letter Writing Project
Lee Mingwei makes projects that help people connect to themselves, their memories and emotions.

His Letter Writing Project – which will take place for the first time in the UK as part of The Enlightenments - invites viewers to write the letters they always meant to, but have never had the opportunity or time to do.

Lee’s three-sided booth, constructed of wood and translucent glass, contains a desk and writing materials. In this project, visitors enter the booths to write their letter. The letters are then sealed and addressed (for posting by the gallery), or left unsealed in one of many slots on the wall of the booth, where later visitors can read them. Many of the visitors come to realise, through reading the letters of others that they too carry unexpressed feelings that they would feel relieved to write down and perhaps share. A chain of feelings is created, reminding visitors of the larger world of emotions in which we all participate.

Tacita Dean (UK)
Presentation Sisters
Acclaimed British artist Tacita Dean films the daily routines and rituals of the last remaining members of this small ecclesiastical community. With a patient and gentle regard for the rhythm of the day, plotted through the ethereal light that travels through the lives and rooms of this order, Dean emphasizes the aspects of quiet devotion, internal contemplation and external dedication that define the Sisters’ spiritual and earthly existence. (Running time 60 minutes.)

Greg Creek (Australian)
Edinburgh Drawing: Chatter Shapes (New commission)
Edinburgh, city of the Enlightenment, is combined with its darker underbelly in Greg Creek’s epic drawings and water colours, a form of city panorama. Detailed drawings of Edinburgh’s architecture and notable landmarks are interspersed with more scatological notations, doodles, scenes, dreams and invented prose that build a delicate filigree of place. Creek’s drawing encourages a visual journey that maps both place and time, with references to historical, contemporary and fictional events, people and subjects.

Joshua Mosley (USA)
dread
Joshua Mosley’s digital film of animated clay figures presents a fictional encounter between two of history’s most important philosophical and theological thinkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Blaise Pascal. Rousseau and Pascal meet whilst on a journey through woodland as they contemplate creation, question the nature of truth and pose central philosophical questions. Is God divined or secularly evolved? Is man inherently good, contradicting the accepted doctrine of original sin?

Gabrielle de Vietri (Australian)
Hark!
The I Don’t Know Show: Philosophy for Kids (New commission)
Gabrielle de Vietri engages the public in acts of communication. Hark!, greets you as you arrive at the portico of the Dean Gallery. Singers relate the news, horoscopes, stock exchange information and other current affairs of the day, recalling the way information was delivered to people prior to the Enlightenment and mass literacy.

For The I Don’t Know Show: Philosophy for Kids, children have been asked to answer some of the fundamental philosophical questions concerning art and aesthetics. These interrogations offer humorous and engagingly honest responses in a video record.

Presented in partnership with Talbot Rice Gallery, The University of Edinburgh

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~