Edinburgh Art Festival has announced its Platform: 2020 exhibition, showcasing four emerging artists
Lead image: Unnatural wealth, watercolours and found imagery, 2018 by Susannah Stark. The artist’s work consists of an audio soundscape featuring field recordings and song fragments that draw on histories of habitation in Scotland, interwoven with ‘moving collages’ and floor-based sculptures.
The annual Edinburgh Art Festival showcase supports artists in the early stages of their careers to make and present new work. This year’s exhibition is at City Art Centre from 31st October to 29th November.
Selected from an open call by artist Ruth Ewan, and curator, Sophia Hao (Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design), four artists based in Scotland – Rabindranath A Bhose, Mark Bleakley, Rhona Jack and Susannah Stark – have been supported to create new work which will be presented in a group show at City Art Centre. The exhibition brings together four new bodies of work that include sound installations, textile and sculptural works, print-making, film, performance, and text-based works.
Edinburgh Art Festival, along with its sibling August Festivals, made the difficult decision earlier this year to cancel their 2020 edition due to the ongoing pandemic. Despite the many challenges faced across the cultural sector, the festival is very pleased to continue to support artists during this difficult time by presenting the delayed 2020 edition of their Platform series, which usually forms a key element of each Edinburgh Art Festival programme.
Rhona Jack, Trouble Maker Heart Breaker, 2020. Photo: Rhona Jack. The artist is developing a series of large-scale, textile-based sculptural works, taking the form of stitched hangings, woven rugs and elements of soft sculpture.
Rabindranath A Bhose, I’m Calling You From Nowhere, Backlit, 2019. Photo: Jamie Sorensen. Bhose draws on queer modes of living and relating as expansive strategies for survival, and will create a new large-scale vinyl drawing for the exhibition space.
Mark Bleakley, UR- Prototyping. Performer: Mark Bleakley. Photo: Brian Hartley. An artist and choreographer, Bleakley is developing a new work using movement, print and video in a playful exploration of the poetics of weight and gravity.
Tickets for Platform: 2020 are free, pre-booking is essential via edinburghmuseums.org.uk
