Hidden Door Festival

Hidden Door Festival
Friday 27 May to Saturday 4th June
12am to 6pm free, 6pm to midnight £15
Courtyard off King’s Stables Road
8-20 King’s Stables Road
Edinburgh
EH1 2JY
I will include a note on this for sake of completeness, I am so not the target audience for this sort of thing. This is one of those hidden courtyards that persist in the city. Presumably used for some vaguely council purpose it has been converted to a short lived pop up festival site. It was relatively easy to find, head to the Grassmarket then take the road round by the rock face of the the castle on the west side of the Grassmarket.
You enter via a dark curtained twisty corridor, every other exhibition these days seems to entail going through some curtains to gain entry. Inside the courtyard some installation art, a bit Occupy, some street food stands, a couple of bars. Although there were a few folk about the place was not terribly lively when I was there, but if you are happy to use a portaloo and drink wine from plastic cups, then this offers an urban alternative to festivals. There is a full programme of events, so this could be good place to hang out for a mix of art culture and drinking.

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 = Evolution House

28th May – 5th June 2016
11:00 – 17:00
Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 = Evolution House
As ever this covers a variety of disciplines, some of which lend themselves far more to exhibitions than others. Design Informatics seems a relatively new addition, and there were some interesting ideas on display, for example a forlorn bin chasing someone while another bin ran away from people.
The jewellery was strong, with the tactile creations like luminous deep sea creatures by Wanshu Li being the most novel. I also liked the botanical illustrator who used plants to inform her jewellery.
As ever Illustration was a highlight for me, particularly the little self portraits and notebooks. If I were to criticise then it might be helpful to force the illustrators out of their comfort zone a bit more. They seemed to be reinforcing their existing styles rather than redefining their boundaries.
Overall the standout for me was the product design, with a strong selection of strongly evidence pieces, starter kits for coral reefs, a surf board made from cigarette ends, a lifebelt that could make potable water, a siren that could put out fires, basalt ceramics, that were both thought provoking, attractive and often quite covetable.

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 = Main Building

28th May – 5th June 2016
11:00 – 17:00
Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 - Main Building
This is probably the starting point for most visitors to the Degree show. On the way in you spot a few oversized children’s toy sucker arrows. The main atrium is well used with the performance costumes, which are displayed with some real exuberance. It was nice to see some futuristic and different stuff, nice as steampunk is, it can be overdone at these things.
I thought that the photography was particularly strong and as ever persevering to the remote corners of the West wing can lead to some very evocative room sized installations. My perennial favourites are the animations. However I really wish that they would just upload them all to Vimeo for people to enjoy. I watched two,

GNOME by Ben Cresswell

which was dark strange and really rather wonderful 

and

THE GIRL WHO STOLE THE SUN by Atikah Zailani

which packed an involving story into a short running time. 

I did not see much painting, traditionally strong, but this is probably because I missed those galleries. It would really take a few visits to get the best out of this show.

Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 = Minto and Adam House

28th May – 5th June 2016
11:00 – 17:00

Edinburgh College of Art, 74 Lauriston Place, Edinburgh
Edinburgh College of Art Degree Show 2016 = Minto and Adam House
There really is far too much to the ECA degree show to try and cover it all in the one posting, so I will split it up by buildings. I had a good look round most of the various rooms but even with a visit of a few hours you are just skimming the surface of what is on offer.
First off I will cover the architecture students.
It is nice to see the architecture students really getting some space at the degree show and show what they are capable of. There was a range of strong material across a variety of floors at both Minto and Adam House, but for me the strongest material was in Minto House, it was also the most interesting building to get into as well.
Many pieces were highly stylised visions of a near future. There was a strong sense of place in most of the displays, often a reaction or commentary of some very distinctive existing landscape. A dystopian nightmare of Japan set out a powerful and pervasive vision, reminiscent of the classic Ghost in the Shell. At times things seemed to be as much moody set design as architecture.
There was consistently strong model work, evocative illustrations and even short video segments. While models and computer graphics featured strongly the couple of notebooks that I opened up and looked at included relatively little material. While the illustrators and other visual artists seem inveterate notebook users, the notebook seems to be on the way out for architects. A handy spot for the odd working out of some detail, but not much more.
For some reason the architecture students do not appear to feature in the usual free newspaper style programme so I have included a few photos of things that I liked. Even non architecture buffs should find this an impressive and evocative experience.

Lewis Baltz with works by C Andre and C Posenake exhibition

Lewis Baltz with works by C Andre and C Posenake - exhibition
Saturday 30th April to Saturday 9th July 2016, Monday to Saturday 11am to 6pm
Stills (Gallery) 23 Cockburn Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1BP

This is an odd but welcome addition to the Festival of Architecture exhibitions, events, etc, running over 2016. I am really not sighted on modern photography at all. Accordingly on first looking through the photos, a large array of black and white photos of non descript bits of land, mounds of earth, etc, I was really wondering whether I was stupidly missing something deeply profound about each single image.
There is a short five minute video that is well worth a look and my take on what Baltz (the photographer) was saying, was that by taking photos he was really seeking to put a frame on something to draw attention to it. Sometimes it might simply be a pleasing arrangement of architectural details or some nondescript land pared back of anything of interest.
Whereas the work of the French landscape artist Claude Lorrain created an ideal of beauty that was then translated by landscape gardeners into created landscapes, Baltz had taken the existing banality of our surroundings, framed it, and challenged us to see the beauty in it what we have ourselves created.
The exhibition also features some minimal art pieces, to parallel and perhaps offer their own commentary. In fact these pieces are so minimal as to be quite unobtrusive, there were aluminium floor panels (illustrated) and perhaps something that looked like ducting, or was that really just ducting, I am not sure.
While no single item here carried a great deal of meaning, as a whole the effect was contemplative and thought provoking.

Innovation, Architecture or Design? Exhibition - Edinburgh

Innovation, Architecture or Design? Exhibition - Edinburgh
Monday 25th April to Friday 29th July 2016, opening hours Monday to Friday 9.30am to 6pm.
Studio DuB, 17a, at flat 2 West Crosscauseway, Edinburgh EH8 9JW
This is another little gem of an exhibition under the aegis of the Festival of Architecture. I love the idea of pop up displays repurposing space, and testing the boundaries of what an exhibition might be. This is a fine example of the genre, an architectural practice has used an enclosed garage space, to put up a series of display boards, and if you press the buzzer they will let you in to see them. According to the website the shutters can also be raised to allow disabled access.
The projects are an imaginative mix, some fairly grounded, some fairly out there, but all well presented and thoughtful. I have incorporated a few photos of projects that particularly caught my eye.
It did take me a while to figure out exactly where the exhibition was, it is behind the shutters in the last photo, use the entry phone to the right of the shutters and the press button and ask to be let in. Once I found the place (eventually) I had no trouble gaining access, but inevitably with something as ad hoc as this, access might be a bit patchy.
Kudos to Studio DuB for putting on this exhibition, an inspiring demonstration of creativity and real generosity of spirit.

The Ideal Hut Show - Edinburgh

The Ideal Hut Show - Edinburgh
Saturday 30th April to Monday 30th May 2016, 10am to 6pm.
Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh

my latest excursion to keep up with the by now totally bewildering array of events that constitute the Festival of Architecture was to the Ideal Hut Show at the Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. This is a couple of rows, totalling eighteen huts. A few themes recur, there are various huts that you can look inside, kaleidoscope style, a negative space absence of hut, an expanded hut, many decorated huts. Unfortunately jamming the huts together in two neat rows does detract from their impact. Had they been spaced out around a larger area they would have carried more impact.
It would also appear that these are conceptual pieces, someone somewhere has drawn a plan, and someone else has constructed the finished item. This runs contrary to the usual principles of shed as man made man-cave, and none of these really seem to function as sheds. Overall worth a look and a ponder, but likely to be of more interest to architecture buffs than the average man in the street.
The Botanic Gardens are always worth a look, with plenty to see, so worth incorporating a look at these huts into a trip on a fine day. If you head towards the glasshouses, and then towards the big pond then you should spot them quite easily.