Festival VISUAL ART
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PLATFORM: 2015 Recent graduates take centre stage at Edinburgh Art Festival
In the great agglomeration of shows and events that make up Edinburgh Art Festival, it’s encouraging to see an initiative to place the work of emerging artists right in the festival hub. Selected from an open submission by a panel which includes Christine Borland and Craig Coulthard, these are four distinctive bodies of work by recent graduates.
Ben Callaghan gives us a chessboard without pieces, dice with no markings, a film of a perpetually spinning top: a space to play with ideas, to find your own metaphors. Chilean Antonia Bañados, makes a cabinet of curiosities in which mundane objects are cast in glass, as well as being drawn and painted, the ordinary made unfamiliar.
Ross Hamilton Frew creates delicate
abstracts by making patterns of fine lines on handmade recycled paper. Here, he places them next to recycled words, which he shapes into haiku with the same meticulousness. Jessica Ramm’s spherical sculpture of metal bars with climbers’ hand-holds is not only a strong sculptural form, it can also be climbed on, as her film demonstrates. It would be artificial to try to link the four
works thematically, but Emily Gray’s thoughtful curation and design brings their contrasting creations into a kind of harmony. (Susan Mansfield) ■ 9–11 Blair Street, 225 5248, until 30 Aug, free. ●●●●●
20–31 Aug 2015 THE LIST FESTIVAL 89
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