Iconic Cockenzie Power Plant given final salute by local artist

Cockenzie Power Plant in East Lothian stopped coal-fired electricity generation in  March this year.  Photographer Alex Hewitt wanted to tell the story of this iconic landmark and is showing at the 3 Harbour Art Festival this week.

 

Affordable Art at Drill Hall’s Arts Market

The Out of the Blue Drill Hall’s quarterly Arts Market took place over the weekend. The Dalmeny  Street venue’s Arts Market hosted over 50 artists who were on hand to sell their work to the public. Showcasing local talent and artists from further afield, works for sale ranged from photography and illustration to textiles and jewellery.  Many stalls were run by the artists themselves, offering buyers a unique opportunity to meet the people behind their purchases.

With the cost of entry set at only 80p, and with the Drill Hall’s own cafe serving up homemade soup, snacks and cakes, there really is something to suit all tastes.

 

Kirsten Welsh, pictured above, is an Edinburgh-based artist who regularly hosts a stall at the Arts Market. Graduating in 1999 and inspired by land and seascapes, her abstract works use a variety of mediums. She can be contacted through her website, which also contains a gallery of her work.
www.kirstenwelsh.co.uk

 

 

Freelance illustrator Kim Cruickshank (top) was also tending to her own stall. Her whimsical illustrations feature animals, people and in some cases scenes from the Olympics, and are available as bags, mirrors, cards and prints.
www.kimcruickshank.com

 

 

Polish illustrator and Edinburgh College of Art graduate Zuzanna Dominiak was also selling her work. Bags and brooches, cards and prints were all available and featuring quirky illustrations inspired by the natural world. These can be viewed and bought in a variety of different formats from her website, and through her Etsy shop.
http://www.zyzanna.com/
http://www.etsy.com/shop/zyzanna

 

 

Homewares and furnishings were offered for sale by many different artists, including these cushions featuring the work of photographer Liz Tainsh.
http://lizt.redbubble.com/

 

Handmade jewellery featured on several stalls. These handmade medals by Derring-Do are created by recycled vintage materials and are one-of-a-kind, to be bought for anyone who deserves it!
www.derring-do-medals.com

 

To keep up to date with what’s on at the Drill Hall, including details of the next Arts Market, click here:  http://2outoftheblue.org.uk/page19.htm

And if you are interested in becoming a stallholder, there is an online Stallholder Mailing List Form which can be accessed through the link on this page:  http://2outoftheblue.org.uk/page36.htm

 

A rainy day at the Botanics

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh was pretty empty today. It was rainy and cold  but we braved it out to bring you some photos.

Unfortunately the rain seems to be spoiling the rhododendrons in the garden although when we met David Knott, Curator of the Living Collection recently he admitted the rainfall last year had helped bed in some of their new trees, planted to replace those lost in the January 2012 storm. We will have a video interview with David very soon.

New photography exhibition at the Portrait Gallery

A new photography exhibition opens at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery tomorrow.

Edith Tudor-Hart was one of the most important female photographers to have worked in the UK. She lived through and documented some of the most significant political events of the 20^th century,  covering inter-war Vienna, Britain during the Great Slump of the 1930s and post-WW2 child welfare in the UK.

Based on extensive new research, Edith Tudor-Hart: In the Shadow of Tyranny, is the first complete presentation of the photographer’s work. It contains over 80 images, many of which have never been shown before, and includes film footage, Tudor-Hart’s scrapbook and a selection of her published stories in books and magazines. Having trained at the Bauhaus she pursued a career as a documentary and portrait photographer, covering issues of poverty, social division and child welfare in Vienna, London, Tyneside, Wales and Scotland.

EDITH TUDOR-HART: IN THE SHADOW OF TYRANNY

2 MARCH 2013 – 26 MAY 2013
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, Robert Mapplethorpe Photography Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Admission free

Aurora in the Lothians

I took this photo from my garden in Humbie, East Lothian on Thursday 17th January at 6.55 PM. I saw it 3 times last year, but this was the most colourful display.

 

Submitted by Jim Hunter

Photos from Haddowfest

Haddowfest took place over the weekend offering a positive wealth of live music at six city centre venues. If you missed it then you may have to wait till next year. More information here.

These lovely photos from Haddowfest are by Kat Got the Cream Photography and you can see more of her work on her website.  Kat is a photography student and we are sure you will agree she shows lots of promise!

 

New photo exibition by Albie Clark at the Institut francais d’Ecosse

The Institut francais d’Ecosse hosts a new photos exhibition showcasing the work of Albie Clark for the Institut’s Festivals 2012 programme.

The various Edinburgh festivals say a lot about the vitality of the cultural scene in Scotland, featuring artists from all over the world as well as talents living right next door.

As an institution deeply rooted in the Scottish cultural landscape, the Institut français d’Ecosse has always participated in the festivals’ excitement, as a supporter and a venue.

In the summer 2012, the Institut hosted theatre shows (more than 160 performances), film screenings, talks, social events and parties for the Festival Fringe, the International Festival, the Book Festival and the Fashion Festival.

Edinburgh-based photographer Albie Clark spent spent hours in the nooks and crannies of the Institute’s building to capture the images – on and behind the stage – of a vibrant and very French festivals venue before it all vanished.

From 15 November to 19 January 2013
Institut francais d’Ecosse, 13 Randolph Crescent, Edinburgh EH3 7TT
Mon – Fri 9.30 am – 6.30 pm
Sat: 9.30 am – 1.00 pm
Admission free

A catalogue is published to accompany the exhibition and introduce a generous selection of Clark’s photos, with introductions by Fiona Hyslop MSP, Jonathan Mills, Nick Barley, Kath Mainland and Vincent Guérin 44 pp / £10

For more information, please visit http://www.ifecosse.org.uk/changement-de-decor or call 0131 225 5366

Submitted by Vanessa Bismuth

Scottish National Portrait Gallery hosts new exhibition about India

A collection of beautiful and rarely seen photographs, which offers a fascinating insight into the role played by Scots in the British Raj, is to feature in a new exhibition at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery from today.

Lucknow to Lahore: Fred Bremner’s Vision of India will chart the remarkable career of Bremner – a commercial photographer who left Scotland for India in 1882 and spent the next 40 years working there.  This selection of 24 outstanding images, beautifully printed by renowned photographer Pradip Malde from the original glass negatives, will offer a rich, personal perspective on the people and places that Bremner encountered.

The exhibition will open a season of photography at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this autumn, which also includes the work of the multi-award-winning Czech-born photographer Jitka Hanzlová, and Leading Lights: Portraits by KK Dundas, which captures many of the stars who have studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, in Glasgow.

Born in 1863 Aberchirder, Aberdeenshire, Bremner began his career in his father’s photographic studio in Banff, before accepting an offer to work with his brother-in-law G W Lawrie, an established photographer in Lucknow, India.  His assignments took him across Northern India, and in 1889 he set up his own studio in Karachi, followed by premises in Quetta in Baluchistan, and in Lahore and Rawalpindi in the Punjab.  Travelling incessantly over vast distances, and working in rarely photographed areas, Bremner created a captivating record of Imperial India’s rural life, landscapes and people.

The exhibition will help to illustrate how imperial expansion in the nineteenth century provided photographers with a powerful stimulus, as well as great opportunities and rewards, as they followed in the footsteps of colonial armies, traders and adventurers.  Of the British territories, India was the most photographed, and the work of men like Bremner provided knowledge that was vital to imperial interests. His photographs both reveal how British India was imagined and reflect the complex attitudes of its rulers.

Portraiture was the core of Bremner’s business, with regular commissions to photograph not only colonial officers and their families but also members of the native aristocracy: his striking portraits of The Khan of Kalat and his Sons (c.1893) and Nawab Sultan Kaikhusrau Jahan, Begum of Bhopal (1858-1930) (c.1920) are among the highlights of the exhibition.  Like many commercial photographers, however, Bremner also found time to complete personal projects.  His fascination with the diversity of local customs and his determination to record them can be seen in memorable images of fishermen on the River Indus and the dramatic River crossing, River Jhelum, Kashmir (c.1896).

A skilled craftsman himself, Bremner produced a series of large glass plate negatives showing Indian artisans at work.  His photographs of woodcarvers and carpet-makers hint at the material wealth that placed India at the heart of Britain’s colonial economy.

The exhibition will also look at how Bremner (like many of his contemporaries) sought to transpose a European conception of the picturesque onto his photographs the Indian landscape.

Speaking of the exhibition, Sheila Asante, Migration Stories Curator at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery said, “This is a fantastic opportunity to catch a glimpse of rarely seen images of the Indian Empire.  Fred Bremner was one of the first photographers to capture the very north-western edge of the British Raj.  An accomplished photographer, he had an eye for dynamic compositions.  This intimate exhibition of his work offers an extraordinary insight into how one Scot viewed ‘that far off land known as the Indian Empire’.”

LUCKNOW TO LAHORE:
FRED BREMNER’S VISION OF INDIA
6 October 2012 – 7 April 2013
Scottish National Portrait Gallery
1 Queen Street, Edinburgh EH2 1JD
Telephone: 0131 624 6200 | Admission free
www.nationalgalleries.org

Talk at Central Library tonight

An American teacher’s passion for photographing gravestones in Scotland is the focus of a major new exhibition in Edinburgh this week, and there is a talk by him tonight at The Central Library.