Gallery shows place ECA at heart of Art Festival
Colourful installations and thought-provoking exhibits by students and staff will transform Edinburgh College of Art into one of the city’s biggest and most diverse gallery spaces throughout August.
Part of the Edinburgh Art Festival, the shows explore themes such as the links between social media and mental health, China’s relationship with nature and the theory of deep time.
Masters Show
Floor-to-ceiling scrolls covered in illustrations exploring how social media can affect mental health are among the attractions at the Masters Degree Show.
A selection of postgraduate work from students in Illustration, Glass, Contemporary Art Practice, Material Practice and Art, Space and Nature will be on display from 10 August.
Caitlin Brown’s illustrated scrolls were inspired by her relationship with Instagram, and the pressure to showcase her artwork on the social media platform.
The monochrome cartoons – printed using lino – mimic pictures that could be found on an Instagram feed, with text sharing her thoughts about using the medium.
Sustainability focus
Chinese student Kai Xin Li’s work features a bright flower growing out of a concrete slab. The piece reflects how her perspective on nature has changed since living in Scotland, and how she wants to encourage people in Shanghai to alter their views on the environment when she returns to Shanghai.
Elsewhere, Kaitlin Ferguson’s display of 13 geologically significant rocks from different eras – including one that is more than three billion years old – explores how we can understand the implication of our actions on the environment through the idea of the vastness of time.
Other attractions include illustrations of the 12 disciples depicted as working-class heroes, colourful drawings of food that have a personal connection with the artist and images of a forest through shattered glass.
Arresting installation
A series of sculptures, photographs, video and recorded sounds form the basis of Postgraduate student and award-winning artist Yulia Kovanova’s colourful installation.
Grey to Blue explores the role of colour in the natural world and how different organisms, such as flowers and birds, interact with their surroundings.
Inventive soundscape
A sound composition that responds to movements in the gallery space has been created by ECA’s Dr Martin Parker.
Sonikebana features nine custom speakers on wheels, set within a series of images by Anna Chapman Parker.
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