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Category: Articles & Reviews

A note from Venice: the art, atmosphere and antics:  

Published October 15, 2026
A quiet Venetian street scene with pink and terracotta buildings, laundry hanging between windows and balconies, and a large white sheet displaying the word “LIKE” suspended across a small square. A pedestrian walks across the paved foreground.
“LIKE” Venice Street view 2026.

A personal reflection from a month spent in Venice as part of the Scotland + Venice personal Learning Programme* by recent CAPetc… graduate Beth Primrose.

What are you going to do next? The dreaded question I have been asked, almost daily, for the past six months. An arts course is not a sensible choice. At 40 it’s a midlife crisis and so I feel like I have something to prove. Fortunately, as I graduate from my HND in Contemporary Art Practice, I have been offered the opportunity to take part in the Personal Development Programme for Scotland+ Venice at The Venice Biennale. Surely the superstar of art exhibitions, in one of the world’s most glamorous settings, will put everyone off the scent that I have no idea what I’ll do next. At least for four weeks.

The soup of excitement and ubiquitous nerves swills around my belly as I write copious lists and try to plan for life and work in a country so far removed from the grey skies of Scotland and structure of teaching and the school run. I wrangle with the little green owl who teaches me Italian phrases which I struggle to imagine using and I prepare for new flatmates and work colleagues that I barely know but will become the people I spend most of my time with, and rely on, in this new adventure.

I imagine strolling round Venetian streets in silk trousers and casually chatting to the literati of the artworld whilst I brace for a heat that I am not entirely comfortable with. I look forward to delicious cicchetti (bitesize open sandwiches to accompany your vino), gelato and immersing myself in Venetian culture.

But of course… no lists or google search can really prepare you for a month living and working abroad. And as I land on an airstrip flanked by murky-grey waters and travel along the one road that leads to the island of Venice I wonder what I’ve let myself in for.

I had also failed to incorporate the hours spent in the gallery invigilating the Scotland + Venice exhibition (one of the main reasons I am here) into my romanticised daydreams. However, after a few hours of acclimatising and grabbing a food shop, plus a night in our very plush apartment, I’m off to my first shift.

We are living on the island of Guideccca and so catch the Vaporetto (a public boat service- like the bus) to the main island. Many better people have described the special and spectacular landscape of this uniquely ancient and stranded place but needless to say the view from this commute is unreal. The light and the architecture truly are picture-postcard and I think it something that will be etched in my memory until I’m old and doddery.

After a stroll through the beautiful park, off the Giardinni, and a hello to a gathering of turtles, we arrive at the gallery and prepare for visitors. It’s such a pleasure to get up close to Bugarin + Castle’s Shame Parade, which by now I know intimately on paper but haven’t seen in person. Viewing the film also titled Shame Parade alongside the sculptural works helps bring all the concepts and visual elements together as a cohesive work. And placed in a crumbling historic building on the edge of the water- the aesthetics of the work really sing. 

Mixed-media sculptural clock installation suspended within a blue-walled exhibition space, featuring decorative spikes, flowers and a red floor.
Video installation displayed across four screens in a historic gallery space with exposed brick walls, timber ceiling beams and a blue fabric backdrop.
Visitors gather around a bright green bench installation inside a gallery space with exposed brick walls, timber ceiling beams and polished concrete floors.

I’d imagined throngs of people in the space, but as a collateral event, which is a little off-the-beaten track there are times when there are very few people coming into the space. When they do though, it’s a real buzz to speak to visitors about the work and the reaction from the LGBTQIA+ community is overwhelming. I see how much visibility means to folks who are often overlooked and I feel childishly proud that I am part of supporting this inclusive work.

As part of the opportunity we are given passes to access the behemoth that is the Biennale and I take every opportunity to visit the leafy Giardini to take in the art, shade and caffe crema (think a latte in slushie form). Highlights included the ethereal French pavilion and exploration of cosmic breath by Endre Koronczi from Hungary. Dipping into collateral events and a couple of days at the Arsenale mean I am thoroughly immersed in Art of every form. 

As part of our creative project for the development programme I was also able to host a creative writing event at the Scotland + Venice pavilion. Other invigilators and a charming lecturer and spoken word artist from The Netherlands came together to create beautiful blackout, sensory and found poetry which I’m excited to develop as an artist’s book.

Visitor and guide observing a large-scale mixed-media installation in a gallery space, with illuminated sculptural elements, exposed timber ceilings and natural light entering through an open doorway to an outdoor garden.
Beth Primrose with CAP Lecturer Colette Woods
Bright yellow exhibition information panel for Shame Parade mounted on an exposed brick wall, featuring artwork details, artist information and a list of works presented as part of Scotland + Venice at the Venice Biennale.
Detailed miniature sculpture showing a small brick-and-timber building beside a brightly decorated green jeepney. The model includes a green spiral staircase, hanging laundry, trophies, plants and various household objects displayed inside a glass case.

All this art was punctuated by evenings filled with spritz, nights out at local festivals, ubiquitous pizza and pasta and celebrating midsummer at the beach on the Lido. The opportunity to meet and chat with people from all over the world was both illuminating and at times a little exhausting but one of the high points of the whole experience.

As I look back on the experience it almost feels like a dream. Hot evenings, beautiful people and time and space to really explore art and consider my next steps in the artworld. And while I don’t have a definitive answer to the question ‘what will you do next?’ I’m certainly a lot clearer on the path I’d like to take and the art I’d like to continue making.

Text by Beth Primrose: Beth graduated from CAPetc… in June 2026. She is an artist, writer, educator and founder of CAPture Art Magazine, based in Edinburgh.

Further Writing, articles and interviews by Beth Primrose: https://fadmagazine.com/author/beth-cockerline/ – https://snackmag.co.uk/author/beth-primrose

Images by Alan Holligan: Lecturer HND Contemporary Art Practice.

*The HND Contemporary Art Practice course at Edinburgh College is the only non degree course to be selected to participate in the Scotland + Venice Learning Learning Programme.

CAPture: CAPetc.. Launches new arts publication.

Published October 2, 2025

We are delighted to announce the launch of our new arts publication “CAPture” and we would love you to join us on Thursday 9th October.

CAPture is a new artist run publication promoting visual arts and writing through internal contributions, open call, and submissions from more established practitioners.

Developed by participants of the CAPetc… course the publication will seek to explore themes of marginalisation and inequality and how the artworld is either tackling or ignoring these critical issues.

We want the publication to be inclusive and representative of the art community’s views so if you have any ideas you’d like to explore please get in touch at: capture.artetc@gmail.com or better still let’s have a chat at the launch.

Bookable Quiet Session 4:30pm – 5:30pm – Book Here

Open Event 5:30pm – 8:30pm

CAPture is currently an entirely self funded venture reliant on good will and donations.

Hard copies of the publication will be available at the launch on a donate if you can basis.

Large Print version will also be available.

For venue accessibility information please Click Here

Mike Nelson Constructs A Eulogy to Entropy 

Published August 18, 2025

By Beth Cockerline CAPetc YR2. 1st publised by FAD magazine 14th Aug 2025

Entropy  

/ˈɛntrəpi/  

Noun 

1. a measurement of the energy in a system or process that is not available to do work 1 

2. lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder. 

“The crucial thing about entropy- it always increases over time. It is the natural tendency of things to lose order. Left to its own devices, life will always become less structured. Sandcastles get washed away. Weeds overtake gardens”  2  

In this unprecedented time of change and turmoil perhaps we need to embrace entropy? Perhaps we need to pause and let things be washed away, slow down and let the weeds take over? Synonymous with immersive installations, Mike Nelson recently spent two months in homage to this decay; in an act of service and love to the entropy of a block of South London flats. In a “reverse DIY”3 feat, Nelson has created a hauntingly familiar work, Humpty Dumpty, a transient history of Mardin earthworks, low rise, at Fruitmarket gallery in Edinburgh. The exhibit, which coincides with Edinburgh Arts Festival, then comes full circle and counters with the inquisitive exploration of the rebirth of a South-Eastern Turkish city, Mardin. 

 If you grew up in the 70s-90s, in a British council house, Low Tide is akin to attending the funeral of a former life. I’d suggest you start your journey here,  in the upper gallery and Warehouse, where Nelson sensitively captures the gritty detail with nostalgic reminiscence, of the now extinct, Heygate Estate, through photography, sculpture and installation. 

Life-size documentation, come sculptures, dominate the upper gallery. Interior and exterior scenes ubiquitous to run-down, concrete housing estates around the country are showcased and transformed into 3D works with Nelson’s scavenged and reused materials- providing a rich textural language of his own work alongside patinaed architectural features. Incongruous 80s arcade machines also form parts of these sculptures, the technology and aesthetic of these pieces not quite matching the decaying beauty of the wooden beams or the flaking deterioration of salvaged metal but a genre marker of an era none-the-less.   

The scale of these works (printed on a machine, specifically sourced from the same era as the building) give them transportive powers. I feel like I could walk up the well-worn stairs, I almost feel the threadbare carpet underfoot, the invasive presence of beige- the tiles, the carpets, the wallpaper, the curtains- feels so recognisable I can almost hear the hiss of the open grill in my mum’s kitchen.  I smell and could reach out to her infamous chip pan entombed in grease. Stepping into Nelson’s work is like inhabiting a memory and I am flooded with flashbacks of pink velour pyjamas and anaglypta wallpaper.  

There is also a distinct evocation of wistfulness in this work. Stairs are embellished with festoons of work lights and torn lanterns from bygone celebrations. They are littered with evidence of lives lived: crisp packets, frayed t-shirts, chipped paintwork, fag-ends and mould. The guts have been ripped out and homes have been left to slowly die.  

Continuing this mournful trip through Nelson’s exterior photos, the audience are invited to trespass through scrapyards of rusting hubcaps and abandoned garages. Ironic graffiti claiming this failed utopia as ‘Home Sweet Home’ jostles with the palpable coldness of the giant textured slabs used to hastily construct the tower blocks. We see behind the scenes of the concrete- in excavations of pipes and clipped electrical cables and the monstrous claw of a digger making way for ‘progress’. 

If these photos don’t help you inhabit council houses of the 70s, just make your way down to the warehouse where you can physically enter a scale replica of one of the flats Nelson visited. Despite it being a replica in shape and size Nelson has cobbled together this building and it’s contents from all corners of the earth. Suggesting perhaps that decay and entropy are a universal experience? Or just embracing the beauty and texture of found materials? 

Apprehensively, I enter through an ominous metal security door (from New York), scrawled with graffiti tags, which creaks and then slams behind me. Instantly, I leave the gallery, and I am consumed by contrary feelings of both home and anxiety. The bones of the place creak as I explore the crumbling façade and damp innards of this building steeped in an melancholic fragility- it feels as if it could disintegrate at any moment. An unfettered harsh light from a bare-bulb and the flicker of a strip light highlight the Matrix-type glitch of this construction, of a construction, within a construction and expose a bookshelf cleared of life but layered in grime. 

The shuffle of my feet on barren floorboards is the only sound in this seemingly deserted place which only serves to underline the feeling that I shouldn’t be here. I am witnessing something I shouldn’t, and it is both thrilling and terrifying.  

The chipboard walls and chipped doors are laced with roses of mould, and the proverbial stench of damp concrete is pervasive as I try to readjust my vision to the darkness lingering through the kitchen window (from Nelson’s own house I’m told). An expansive building site of rubble and abandoned builder’s buckets surrounds the

About the author: Beth Cockerline is about to start the 2nd year of the HND Contemporary Art Practice at Edinburgh College. Edinburgh based writer, artist and teacher with a penchant for gender equality, feminism and promoting the rights of marginalised groups. Beth is also a member of the amazing hubCAP gallery in Granton.