CAP Diploma Exhibition 2015
Contemporary Art
Skinny Review CAP @ESW
PUBLISHED 04 JULY 2014
“The Contemporary Art Practice course has a fine art focus, offering students the environment to experiment, to investigate processes and challenge themselves. Says lecturer Alan Holligan, “We offer a very broad range of contemporary practices so people can specialise in sculpture, 2D practices, 3D practices or mixed practice. Usually they make decisions based on the courses they specifically want to go to, wherever that might be. They’re encouraged to work into areas that we as lecturers don’t necessarily have expertise in. I think in some courses they’re supposed to stay within the knowledge of their lecturer, which is why there’s often an emphasis on painting, an emphasis on sculpture, whereas we’re very clear that the students’ ambition shouldn’t be set by our skillset. They need to outreach that and often we have to keep up with them, which is good for everybody concerned.”
This year’s class first exhibited in the working professional environment that is the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, before transferring a pared-down version of the show to Summerhall. They’re a mixed bunch, exploring a wide variety of disciplines with varying degrees of success. Still at an experimental stage in their practice, this is to be expected. However, some students display a striking level of ambition, notably Jay Easton, who delves into the realms of technology to present work which aims to pose challenging questions. In ESW, two iPhones communicate with one another, displaying the mundane chatter between a couple. With the human protagonists removed from the equation, the relationship is reduced to two screens interacting eerily.
In Summerhall, Easton displays two QR codes, one on a slate (redolent of history, sculpture, early man) and one on a box afixed to the wall. A hasty download of a QR scanner (the technology seems a bit retro already, ironically) reveals the works to link to texts on his blog meditating on the dangers of an unconsidered embrace of technology, and the parallels of Pandora’s box, respectively.
He’s now off to GSA to delve further into his research. Like many in the Let’s Glow showcase, Easton is at an interesting point in his development. The bright prospects each has before them suggests this will not be the last we hear of them.”
Read the full article here: http://www.theskinny.co.uk/art/features/308272-edinburgh_college_lets_glow
Annuale Open Call 2014:
Annuale 2014 / 20 June – 6 July
Annuale 2014 / 20 June – 6 July
open call submit by 4 May to participate in annuale 2014.
Annuale is an annual festival of independent and grassroots activity co-ordinated by Embassy in Edinburgh.
Embassy provides a promotional platform for events that take place as part of annuale. We also offer what help we can to make it possible for your project to take place, although we cannot provide financial support for projects.
Past annuale events have included exhibitions, one night events, screenings, workshops and trips out of the city,
Please get in touch at annuale@embassygallery.org if you have any queries or would like more information.
Annuale welcome proposals from artists based out of town as well as local groups
To the reader.
New exhibition curated by CAP guest lecturer Benjamin Fallon opens at IMPAKT Festival in Utrecht.
To the reader is a new exhibition curated by #CAPetc guest lecturer and ex-student Benjamin Fallon. Forming part of the 2013 IMPAKT Festival the exhibition deals with issues around capital and the lack of cohesive responses since the crisis that emerged in 2008. IMPAKT is a major European media art festival, which has taken place annually in Utrect, Netherlands since 1988. Each year IMPAKT deals with a single theme, which is examined through various media, including an extensive film programme, talks, events and exhibition. The theme of this year’s festival is CAPITALISM CATCH-22 posing the question of how to solve the dilemma, which exists between capitalisms place as the dominant and seemingly most workable economic system and its failures and the apparent inevitability of it being a dead end.
“The work in the show understands the limits of a moral critique that suggests that capital should just act nicely. Curator Benjamin Fallon points out that asking an inhuman system that is fundamentally interested in its own progress and growth, to behave in the interest of humans, is ultimately futile.”
To The Reader emerges from the understanding that capitalism is, first and foremost, a social relation that defines our behaviour. The exhibition is grounded in our current historical period. The basis for capitalism as a mode of organization has never been weaker, but paradoxically has seen almost no credible articulations of dissent. Perhaps there have been some fairly weak moral pleas for it to behave more pleasantly, and vague ideas that a return to Fordism and Keynesianism might be a good idea.
The exhibition itself is a tightly packed constellation of existing, newly commissioned and extended works, thinking through some of the contradictions we find ourselves entangled within. Whilst some of the information and ideas dealt with are necessarily complex, the exhibition will maintains a level of humour, understanding the importance for a certain lightness of touch when dealing with complexity.
The exhibition includes works by: Daniel Andújar; Bureau d’études; Liam Gillick; Goldin+Senneby; Hiwa K; Mierle Laderman Ukeles; Learning Site; Huw Lemmey and Ben Vickers; The Bureau of Melodramatic Research; Capital Drawing Group (Andrew Cooper, Enda Deburka, Dean Kenning, and John Russell); Paul Sullivan; and Marika Troili.
http://impakt.nl/headquarters/news/festival-exhibition-to-the-reader/
Opening on Friday 18 October from 17.00 to 20.00 hrs at BAK, with a performance by The Bureau of Melodramatic Research titled Lovegold – Contemporary Alchemy at 18.30 hrs.
On Saturday 2 November 2013 at 15.00 hrs, Fallon and participating artists will introduce the project through a guided tour.
The Impakt Festival takes place from 30 October to 3 November 2013 at various locations throughout Utrecht. For more information on the Impakt Festival exhibition To The Reader, please visit www.impakt.nl.
Benjamin Fallon is an independent curator, writer and designer currently based in Brussels. Since leaving the HND Public Art (now Contemporary Art Practice) at Edinburgh College Granton (formally Edinburgh’s Telford College) he has participated in Curatorlab, Konstfack Stockholm 2012/13, served as co-director of Embassy Gallery between 2008 and 2010 and prior to this he worked in various capacities at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop and ONEZERO. Benjamin is visiting lecturer at both Edinburgh College of Art and Edinburgh College.
Recent projects include You are just in the middle of the beginning various locations around Stockholm, 2013-ongoing; The Exhibition and its Histories the University of Edinburgh, 2013; Banal Inferno CCA Glasgow, 2010; Hello World Embassy Gallery, 2010; Warehouse of Horrors +44 141/ Studio Warehouse, Glasgow, 2009.
Benjamin is instigator of the working group Let’s get together and call ourselves an institute. researching the possibilities for new forms of institutional practice.
AH 18-10-13
PARADISE: Found.
‘PARADISE’ is an exhibition of new work by #exCAPer Sofie Fischer-Rasmussen. The exhibition is a presentation of bold, botanically themed, photographic works, fragile sculptures and intricate instillations. These are the result of the artist’s struggle to maintain the necessary balance between economic self sufficiency, and becoming a professional working artist in her first year out of art school.
Sofie graduated from HND Contemporary Art Course at Edinburgh College Granton in 2009 before going directly into year 2 of the highly respected Sculpture and Environmental Art Course at Glasgow School of Art. Since graduating from GSA in summer 2012 Sofie has continued to develop her practice while dealing with the economic realities of life after art school.
Sofie is prolific in her use of social media and internet based research. Some which readers can see from the links below which include an interview on Glasgow based artists collective 2-1-4-1 website.
PARADISE: Opens tonight at 6pm at A.Gallery, 87 Saltmarket Glasgow.
SFR on tumblr:
http://sofiefischerrasmussen.tumblr.com
Full exhibition text:
http://sofiefischerrasmussen.tumblr.com/image/64408284423
Interview with SFR on 2-1-4-1 website:
http://2-1-4-1.com/exhibition-preview-and-artist-interview-sofie-fischer-rasmussen
AH:16-10-13
Contemporary Art Practice etc... 
