The Skinny Showcase @ Creative Exchange
Introducing a new development for the Showcase – an exhibition of a selection of this year's graduates as part of Edinburgh Art Festival
Since 2008, we’ve been selecting an artist from each of the degree shows in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee to display their work in the Showcase section of our magazine in print and online. Over the years we’ve featured dozens of artists, many of whom have gone on to become familiar names on the art scene. Artists like Kevin Harman, Rachel Maclean, Fraser Gray and, just last year, Dennis Reinmueller have all had first coverage here before going on to shows in prominent galleries and festivals at home and abroad.
This year we’ve been offered the opportunity to take this selection into the real world with an exhibition as part of the Edinburgh Art Festival. We of course jumped at the chance – being able to give graduates from Scotland’s art schools a platform in an international festival of visual art is an incomparable opportunity, and almost definitely worth all the headaches we’ve encountered putting it together. We’ve expanded the selection to include Gray’s in Aberdeen, so there are four artists in the exhibition, namely Fiona Beveridge (ECA), Edward Humphrey (DJCAD), Caitlin Hynes (Gray’s) and Melanie Letore (GSA).
The show runs in the Creative Exchange down in Leith, the venue kindly offered to us by Edinburgh College. We’ve also been given fantastic support from some of the colleges, namely ECA, GSA and Gray’s, as well as our pals at Pilot Beer, who’re providing some casks for the opening, and Old School Fabrications, who’re helping us out with building a screening room for Edward Humphrey’s video work. The Skinny Showcase opens on Friday 1 August and runs until the end of the month. Here’s a bit more about each of the artists involved.
FIONA BEVERIDGE
Fiona Beveridge graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 2014 with a BA (Hons) Sculpture. Her degree show was selected for RSA New Contemporaries 2015. Her practice is an ongoing exploration of human-object interaction, working with material that is manufactured primarily to develop perceptions through the senses. She approaches malleable toys and sensory products playfully, investigating their texture and stretchy consistency. Although in reality they are not living, their disorganised pattern and form gives them lifelike qualities. She is curious about synesthesia and how our different senses can blend together to create an idea of surrealism from simply looking at a specific colour or shape.
EDWARD HUMPHREY
Edward Humphrey is a video and sound artist who graduated from DJCAD in Dundee in 2014. His degree show was selected for the RSA New Contemporaries exhibition in March, and he has previously featured in group shows at Generator Projects and Dundee Contemporary Arts. He is primarily interested in the distance between abstract thought, language, and physical reality, and he has investigated these areas with film, sound installation, and text-based work.
CAITLIN HYNES
Caitlin Hynes graduated from Printmaking at Gray’s School of Art in 2014. Her work has previously been exhibited at Peacock Visual Arts and AKI ArtEz in the Netherlands, and has been selected for RSA New Contemporaries 2015. She received a Highly Commended in the BP Fine Art Award and a SMART Gallery New Art Look to the North Award for her degree show.
She is inspired by the concept of ‘pilgrimage’ – a journey which leads us.
MELANIE LETORE
French-Swiss photographer Melanie Letore was born in Geneva and completed her Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Central Saint Martins in 2010. She graduated from her BA (Hons) in Fine Art Photography at the Glasgow School of Art in 2014. The photographic series Places was created in 2013 and 2014 in various locations in Great Britain, France, Switzerland and Italy, where she worked as an Information Assistant for the Scotland + Venice exhibition at the Venice Biennale.