Archive

Open Out 2019 presented performance, film, dance, installation, music and artist-led workshops which explored new ways of collaborative, cross-artform working, building relationships and giving artists the opportunity to experiment and show their work.   

Contributions by Marco Giordano, Spilt Milk and Aniela Piasecka were curated by Katherine Midgley, Kaycee Moore, Nic Ruecroft and Sandra Stole as part of the MScR in Collections and Curating Practices at Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh).

In Marco Giordano’s Conjunctive Tissue a series of bright banners occupied the Fruitmarket, based on collages created by members of the public who took part in workshops run by the artist. The banners showed coordinating conjunctions in different languages, with associations and connections between the words forming and disappearing as people moved around the space.

Spilt Milk, an artist-led social enterprise promoting the work of artists who are mothers, presented a selection of artists’ moving image works exploring motherhood by Courtney Kessel, Alison O’Neill and Megan Wynne. Themes of identity, memory and subjectivity, gender and femininity connected across each work.

Aniela Piasecka performed Passé, a newly commissioned movement performance exploring the discovery of the collective from the expression of the individual. An evocative, personal work that turned inward and then reached out, this performance combined personal memories with historical events and scraps of popular culture. Francis Dosoo’s accompanying soundscape provided a soundtrack, with visual contributions by artist Joanne Dawson.

Fruitmarket presented Open Bodies [re]presentation, an installation and performance work around gender and sexuality developed on the Brazilian residency, Open Bodies. Artists Stephanie Black-Daniels and Henry McPherson lead artist-aimed workshops in and around the gallery, and added live elements to the presentation of their own, and artists Vinícius Pinto Rosa’s and Miro Spinelli’s, work shown in the lower gallery.

A new Fruitmarket commission, What My Body Can/t Remember, was the latest story in Palestinian dancer and choreographer Farah Saleh’s Palestinian Archive of Gestures – an ongoing project through which Saleh archives hidden stories from the Palestinian narrative. In What My Body Can/t Remember Saleh attempted to archive her personal story by exploring what her body can and can’t remember of her life in Ramallah in 2002 when, living under curfew, she returned to dancing after years of interruption. Working with filmmaker Owa Barua, Saleh recalled the daily gestures of her life exploring her memory of a period when her domestic space was her only site of physical freedom. Alongside the performance, Saleh showed a selection of videos from her Palestinian Archive of Gestures and her wider practice.

The week ended with an evening of music from Kobi Onyame and Heir of The Cursed on Saturday. Onyame, a UK-based Ghanaian hip-hop artist who draws heavily on African culture, creating a deft crossover between traditional hip-hop and Ghanaian rhythms, was joined by Heir of The Cursed, known for her mesmerising, intricate guitar work and soulful voice.

On Sunday LINK: Closing Party was curated by Fresh Fruit, celebrating art and connectedness with badge and banner making and Ritmoclectic beats by DJ Domcore.