EAF Commissions 2017: The Art Crawl

Each year the Edinburgh Art Festival Commissions present a series of carefully considered bespoke public artworks in unusual locations across the city. This offers an opportunity – for an art crawl. One which also provides the chance to explore the best of central Edinburgh’s purveyors of food and drink over the course of a grand day out, meandering from one end of the Old Town to the other. We've even made a map, and embedded it below. Scroll down to start navigating.  

Breakfast

We’ve run the data and concluded that the best place to start your 2017 EAF Commissions crawl – whether coming at it from Edinburgh or further afield – is at Waverley Station. From here, take a walk up the gentle wind of Cockburn Street stopping to pick up a coffee in The Milkman. If you cut through the North Bridge Arcade you could also purchase one of the obsessively loved pastel de nata of the newly opened Casa Amiga.

If hills and Portuguese tarts aren’t your thing, you could alternatively take a left out of the station onto Market St and walk along past the new Waverley Arches where you will find Baba Budan, purveyors of some of Edinburgh’s most celebrated donuts. From here, follow the road down and cut through the Food and Flea market (we’ll get to that later) and join the Royal Mile where you will find the first of your EAF commissions, Kiwi artist Shannon Te Ao’s With the sun aglow, I have my pensive moods.

As this year marks Scotland’s Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology, the 2017 programme has invited artists to reflect on two important anniversaries for the city – the foundation of the first Edinburgh Festival in 1947, and the publication in 1917 of Sir Patrick Geddes’ The Making of the Future: A Manifesto and a Project. Both were born directly out of the experience of global conflict, and a strong belief that artists could play a critical role in helping societies to imagine new and better ways of living.

Shannon Te Ao creates emotive video, sound and performative installations, often inspired by literary sources, particularly Māori lyrical roots. His new multimedia installation promises to explore the ‘physical and emotional depths of love, grief, sickness and healing’ using video footage shot in different locations across New Zealand reflecting influences as diverse as an 1840s waiata (traditional Māori music) and a hemp farm.

Round the corner in Chessels Court, you’ll find the commission by Glasgow artist and architecture lover Toby Paterson, The Sociology of Autumn. The title borrows from Geddes’ 1895 essay of the same name; the location chosen because of the multiplicity of eras combined within one close, the tranquil green space a la Geddes’ city planning vision, medieval surrounds and 1950s architecture. Paterson has created a piece working in sculpture, architecture and landscape to ‘respond to the essential colours, materials and form of Edinburgh's Old Town, producing a micro-landscape that invites reflection on Patrick Geddes' observations on the city, in the context of Chessels Court and the High Street today.’

Lunch

From here, we think you might like to find some lunch. If so, you are very well-placed. Burger lovers can head down the road to The Holyrood 9A, also home to an impressive array of craft beers. Over the road from there you will find disconcertingly Scottish barbecue joint Reekie’s Smokehouse, home to many forms of (responsibly sourced) meat smoked in house and accompanied by locally flavoured sauces featuring such classic BBQ flavours as Irn Bru, Buckfast and whisky.

Alternatively, head back up to the Food and Flea market, featuring the best of Edinburgh’s street food brought to you by those good people behind beloved weekend extravaganza The Pitt.

Next up on the commissions crawl is Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich’s The Dragon of Profit and Private Ownership. The pair are internationally known for large-scale sculpture and participatory performance work exploring utopianism through protest and pageant in order to imagine an alternative way of living.

Sited in Trinity Apse – a little known chapel between the Royal Mile and Market Street – the work will consider Geddes in the context of radical thought and social activism at the end of the 19th century, with the core of the presentation being a giant inflatable dragon sculpture. The artists are working with the pupils of a Wester Hailes primary school to explore alternative models of capitalism inspired by Geddes’ expression 'By Leaves we Live ... not by Coins.'

Drinks

From here, you may well be ready for a delicious alcoholic beverage, particularly as the only way to reach the final commission is through Edinburgh’s own hearts of darkness, the Grassmarket or the Royal Mile. Beer fans can pop down Blackfriars St to Salt Horse, home to an extensive selection of craft beers. Cocktail lovers can walk a little further up the Mile (beating off the flyerers, street performers and assorted Fringe enthusiasts as you go) to find Devil’s Advocate, an oasis of industrial-meets-medieval-meets-cocktails deep in the heart of the Old Town.

Once you’re suitably buzzed, take your pick of routes. Would you prefer to face the impenetrable hordes of Military Tattoo-attendees of Castle Hill OR the marauding stag and hen dos of the Grassmarket? Both excellent choices.

On the other side of these twin evils you will find Bobby Niven’s Palm House, home to a programme of artists’ residencies over the course of the Festival. Niven is the initiator of the Bothy Project, a series of small shelters located in rural and (one) urban spaces across Scotland offering year round residencies.

The temporary structure in Johnston Terrace Wildlife Garden, beneath Edinburgh Castle, will provide a space for social sculpture and interaction, and will feature items from Niven’s own practice, a mud oven and cooking facilities amid an oasis of urban wildlife (and possibly stag dos). The artists undertaking garden residencies are Neil Bickerton (31 Jul-6 Aug), Alison Scott (7-13 Aug), Daisy Lafarge (14-20 Aug) and Deirdre Nelson (21-27 Aug).

And you’ve reached the end of the Commissions programme. Congratulations. BEFORE YOU GO, though, you’re very close to both Mary's Milk Bar, Edinburgh's premier ice cream makers, and the Platform exhibition which offers a – ahem – platform for early career artists. The group show, this year in the former Museum of Fire recently acquired by Edinburgh College of Art, features four artists selected by a panel including artists Graham Fagen and Jackie Donachie. 2017’s selectees are Uist Corrigan, Rebecca Howard, Kotryna Ula Kiliulyte & Adam Quinn. 

More drinks (and maybe dinner)

This leaves you conveniently close to some favourite Edinburgh pubs and also a few upscale restaurants. Do either – do both? We recommend pints in the Blue Blazer, Ventoux or Cloisters. For food you could try Kanpai, the place regularly voted Edinburgh’s finest Japanese cuisine; the very stylish Timberyard or Castle Terrace from the team behind Tom Kitchin's restaurants. This being August (and some of the most popular destinations in the city centre) you’d be very wise to book ahead.

And there you have it – the EAF Art Crawl, 2017.