Summerhall, Edinburgh, January 25th-March
10th
If Robert Burns was an early sighting of a working
class auto-didact, it befits a multi-media arts festival to reimagine Burns’
questing poetic spirit for the twenty-first century. This is the aim of the
Summerhall-hosted Burns Unbroke festival, which over its six-week duration will
feature an array of music, performance and visual art inspired by the bard.
The visual art strand includes work by more than thirty
artists spread out over eleven gallery spaces. This includes pieces by Graham
Fagen, Bridget Collins, Douglas Gordon and the Chapman Brothers, as well as
former Frankie Goes to Hollywood vocalist, Holly Johnson. Four new commissions
will also feature; a mural by Ciara Veronica Dunne, a film-based installation
by Ross Fleming, a mixed media piece by Derrick Guild, and a map by Robert
Powell that pinpoints all the places in Edinburgh relevant to Burns.
Presented in a collaboration between Summerhall and the
Artruist organisation, the title of the festival is drawn from the epigraph
printed at the front of Burns’ first poetry collection, published in 1786, and
which spoke of ‘The Simple Bard, unbroke by rules of art.’ As the assorted
rule-breakers of Burns Unbroke should show, Burns’ spirit is very much alive.
The List, January 2018
ends
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