August 2024: Enjoy Edinburgh Art Festival and one of Scotland’s biggest outdoor parties at Jupiter Artland
EAF24 celebrates its 20th Birthday as the UK’s largest annual festival of visual art – and you won’t want to miss it!
This summer, EAF (Edinburgh Art Festival) presents an ambitious programme of exhibitions and events across the city between 9—25 August.
Founded in 2004, EAF cultivates connections between artists, collaborators, and communities to develop contemporary visual art projects in Edinburgh, spotlighting the programmes of 35+ partner galleries and venues as well as its own programme of creative commissions.
This August, to celebrate its 20th Birthday, EAF will present a range of exhibitions, performance, that are deeply rooted in the city and Scotland.
Join the party
You are invited to join the party when JUPITER RISING x EAF returns for a one-night-only event on Saturday 17 August
Held in Jupiter Artland’s iconic landscape, JUPITER RISING is Scotland’s artist-driven art and music festival that is now partnering with EAF for a second year to throw a party with a full programme of experimental music, poetry, artist performance, the return of the infamous late night stage and more.
“Following the success of last year, we are thrilled to partner with EAF once more for a one-night-only party at Jupiter Artland. JUPITER RISING is central to our programme, and it’s fantastic that the ethos of this event is aligned with the programming from the EAF team. We look forward to welcoming audiences this August.” - Nicky Wilson, Director, Jupiter Artland.
This year's festival will take a Queer Summer Fete as its theme, expect experimental best-in-show, acid bright bunting, gay-pole dancing, and a towering cake bar serving drinks all night. Saturday 17 August, 6pm - 1am. Book your ticket here, with bus tickets from Edinburgh and Glasgow also available to get you home after the party’s over.
The event will be opened with a special Scottish launch with Gemma Rolls-Bentley to launch her latest book Queer Art : From Canvas To Club, And The Spaces Between with EAF24 artist Prem Sahib.
Later in the evening JUPITER RISING x EAF will welcome back Sgàire Wood for Sgàiraoke, before you’ll be invited to dance the night away at the infamous late-night stage, this year curated by Femmergy – an intersectional, open space to celebrate femme art and music.
Explore the park after hours with Jupiter Artland’s summer exhibitions Andrew Sim and Laura Aldridge open until 7:30pm.
Now in our 20th year, EAF seeks to celebrate resistance through this year’s programme. I’m so excited to continue this collaboration with Jupiter Artland, it’s become a massive moment in EAF’s programme that welcomes audiences to an evening of art and performance.
For those that have never visited, Jupiter Artland is an award-winning, contemporary sculpture park, located just outside Edinburgh. Set over 100 acres of meadow, woodland and five indoor gallery spaces, Jupiter Artland has to date commissioned over 35 permanent site-specific sculptures from the world’s leading artists including Alec Finlay, Andy Goldsworthy, Anish Kapoor, Antony Gormley, Anya Gallaccio, Charles Jencks, Christian Boltanski, Cornelia Parker, Helen Chadwick, Henry Castle, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Joana Vasconcelos, Laura Ford, Marc Quinn, Nathan Coley, Nicolas Party, Pablo Bronstein, Peter Liversidge, Phyllida Barlow, Rachel Maclean, Sara Barker, Shane Waltener, Tania Kovats, and Tracey Emin.
Experience the festival – August 9-25
Since 2004, EAF has presented 20 years’ worth of exhibitions, both within its own commissions programme and through its 35+ partner galleries and venues. It has programmed 685 events, in addition to the hundreds of other events presented by its partners. Since 2011, it has welcomed a total of over 2.5 million visitors to EAF. Read more on the Edinburgh Art Festival website here.
For the 2024 programme, EAF will invite audiences to join them in a moment to collectively pause and reflect upon the conditions under which we live, work, gather and resist. EAF will use the opportunity of their 20th Birthday to connect with historic and contemporary ways of organising that have built infrastructures of care and pioneering activist movements over the past 20 years (and beyond). The programme, the biggest yet for EAF, spans the work of more than 200 artists, and takes place all across the city, asking viewers to look again at Edinburgh through the eyes of the exhibiting artists.
“This year, EAF celebrates persistence. Our programme traces lines through personal histories, the natural world, post-colonial landscapes, and the global political stage.
We have invited artists from across Scotland, the UK, Europe, Latin America, and the SWANA region, who refuse inequity, isolation, destruction, and despair (in large ways and in quiet ways). We want to connect to our context and the city — to the people and movements who inspire change, who enable solidarity, and bring people together to work towards collective futures.
Highlights include:
Agné Jokšé: Lezbynai, City Art Centre, 3pm—3:30pm, Saturday 24th August 2024. Book tickets here.
Join EAF and Auto Italia for a 20 minute performance by Lithuanian artist Agné Jokšé, presenting an erotic story about lesbian love against the watchful background of Lazdynai, a district of Vilnius, where the artist grew up. Jokšé’s work explores language normativity, autoethnography, reflections on intimacy and parallel histories.
This performance is taking place in conjunction with Karol Radziszewski: Filo, an exhibition exploring the history of queer communities in Central-Eastern Europe through underground magazine Filo
Prem Sahib: Alleus, 6.30—8.30pm, 16th August 2024, Castle Terrace Car Park. Book tickets here.
Prem Sahib presents performance work Alleus, a polyphony of live and pre-recorded voices. Alleus – ‘Suella’ spelled backwards – re-orders, re-directs and disrupts an anti-immigration speech by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, resisting the hatred it expresses. Co-commissioned with the Roberts Institute for Art and Somerset House Studios, Alleus will be staged for the first time in Scotland in the unique, brutalist setting underneath Edinburgh Castle.
Please note: The performance will speak openly about racism, violence and feature sounds of xenophobic dialogue. This immersive event takes place centred around a staircase, with standing room only, but level access space is available.
Más Arte Más Acción: Closing Event, 11am—3pm, 25th August 2024, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Book tickets here
In their installation Around a Tree, Colombian cultural foundation Más Arte Más Acción presents an artistic public intervention in the form of a large table around a tree. The roundtable will be open to the public to pause, converse, and rest, to encourage interaction with nature and conversations about human connections to it.
Join Más Arte Más Acción, EAF, and Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, along with Colombian ecological powerhouse Brigitte Baptiste, as they invite academics, poets and performers to bring their table to life, and ignite EAF24 with a closing ritual.
This event will also be accompanied by a BSL Tour. For tickets that include the BSL Tour, book here.
Please note the work will speak openly about the Climate Emergency, and intersecting global crises. The event will take place outdoors on a grassy area, with limited stools for seating. This event will be BSL interpreted.
Opening Provocation: 11am - 3pm, 11th August 2024, Edinburgh College Of Art. Book tickets here
Join EAF for a day of conversation, workshops, film, food, and poetry, bringing together artists and collectives from across the world to reflect on the role, responsibility, and power of creativity during times of global crisis.
The Opening Provocation begins with a discussion in the round, featuring perspectives on creative resistance from distinctive art platform Cooper Gallery (DJCAD, University of Dundee), Beirut-based cultural feminist collective Haven for Artists, EAF Director Kim McAleese, and Edinburgh’s oldest radical bookshop Lighthouse Books.
Following this discussion, EAF aims to bring people together with a unique cultural offering on the theme of resistance: from film work curated by Palestinian art collective Falastin Film Festival and a peaceful soundscape from Colombian environmentalist foundation Más Arte Más Acción, to an activist poster fundraiser by risograph artist Matilda Bull, poetry and to be food created and shared.
Care considerations: The work will speak openly about xenophobia, conflict, and global crises, including the Climate Emergency and Palestinian liberation.