Leafy green costumes

To passers-by on Cockburn Street, when Collective is closed for installation, the gallery looks shut with blinds down and no activity – if only they could see inside… Not only are we installing the second part of the New Work Scotland Programme 2009, this weekend sees the Bank of Reason formed and ‘walked’ into existence. Below is a pic of the costume and if you’re out and about in Edinburgh city centre tomorrow you may catch a glimpse. Don’t be frightened it’s a coat of ecological and economical beauty! The Bank of Reason is taking place over two weekends, 28/29th Nov and 5/6th Dec.

 

Artists Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich are leading the Bank of Reason and are rallying the people to propose a new Banking System.

 

The first act in forming The Bank of Reason is a walk through the city centre. Zoë and Neil have invited an Ecologist and an Economist to take participants on a guided walk through the ecological and economic diversity of Edinburgh’s City Centre. The first walk will take place tomorrow Sat 28th November. Fingers crossed it’s not windy and raining! Have a look at the website for the programme of events on the 5th and 6th.

 

China crisis

It will come as no surprise to people who know me that this is a first, a blog post. But as the season of goodwill comes upon us and in the spirit of trying to find out how new gadgets work, I am taking my technophobia in hand to tell you about a recent development.

In October I took part in a research trip to China. It was a shock, but some interesting spaces I saw there were The Arrow Factory in Beijing and 140sqmGallery in Shanghai.

While I was in Shanghai I met Chen Hangfeng who was already taking part in the 1Mile² programme that Collective is piloting with Visiting Arts for the next three years. He showed me a video he had made of the Village in China where 90% of all Christmas decorations are made and it brought two things together for me. I had been thinking about Collective’s window blinds being closed every year for two weeks over Christmas and Hogmanay and I had thought about possibilities for an artist addressing this. So Hangfeng is making Collective’s first Christmas window Dec 20th-Jan 4th: look out for it as you run down Cockburn street in search of the all important matching tights this festive season.

Kate, Collective Director

Gary Numan and the elusive artist run initiative.

I’ve been at Collective for just over 2 months now and am excited about my first proper project which is to find new artist-run initiatives to talk at the annual event Artists DIY Soapbox.As a new fine art graduate I have been kind of obsessed with this kind of research, not unusually. I have a lot of enthusiasm for finding new galleries and opportunities . So much so in fact that as I dreamt along to my clock radio this morning, I swear that the robotic words of Gary Numan were describing my quest to uncover the mysteries of some of the more elusive Artist-run initiatives particularly Komachi (Fountain Bridge) and the badbadboysclub (Dundee). Anyway I’m really looking forward to this event on the run-up to Christmas.

Ill be back.

Jasmin (currently and otherwise known as Intern no.3 at the Collective)

It’s good to be back…

Here we go my first ever blog…
I’ve just about caught up with everything coming up at Collective after being on maternity leave for the last 5 months. A big thanks to Jenny for managing the festival exhibitions and New Work Scotland Programme in my absence. I’m really excited about some of the free events she’s planned; Fanzine Sunday (every Sunday) and Showreel on Thursday 26 November 6-8pm.

Also this week I popped along to the Dean Gallery to see ‘Running Time – Artist Films in Scotland 1960 – Now’ which features our Collective commission ‘Lost High Street’ by Paul Rooney. The films are changing weekly so if you want to see our Jenny aka Aileen the tour guide you’ve got to until Sunday 8th November. My other highlights from the show are Henry Coombes’ ‘The Bedfords’ and ‘We Are the People’ (Beagles & Ramsay) featuring a very youthful looking Graham Ramsay.

Kirsten