Edinburgh Art Festival is delighted to present Festival Promenade, a major programme of newly commissioned artworks and one-off performances, which will take place across the UNESCO World Heritage city this August. The Festival Promenade will feature the best in contemporary visual art, from Turner Prize winners and nominees to the most exciting early career artists, in a programme of work which will invite spectators to look at the city and its iconic landmarks anew.
New work by Callum Innes; Susan Philipsz; Andrew Miller; Kevin Harman; The House of Fairy Tales with Deborah Curtis and Gavin Turk; Emily Speed; ~ in the fields; Anthony Schrag; Ortonandon and Peter Arkle make Festival Promenade EAF’s most ambitious commissions programme to date. Inspired by the nineteenth century Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson’s quote, ‘… this profusion of eccentricities, this dream in masonry and living rock, is not a drop-scene in a theatre, but a city in the world of every-day reality’, Festival Promenade considers the fundamental contradiction at the heart of Scotland’s capital city – that a city which belongs to the world of the visual imagination is in fact physi cally real – with a series of artworks which invite visitors to experience the city in new ways. Festival Promenade is supported by the Scottish Government’s Edinburgh Expo Fund, Creative Scotland, City of Edinburgh Council, Event Scotland and Essential Edinburgh.
Sorcha Carey, Director, Edinburgh Art Festival, said:
“With over 40 exhibitions distributed in venues across the length and breadth of Edinburgh, the Edinburgh Art Festival experience has always necessitated an experience of the city itself. Festival Promenade, our most ambitious programme of commissions to date, celebrates just this, bringing the city to life and transforming it into a magical playground through an innovative programme of externally sited commissions, which will invite visitors to look anew at one of the world’s most iconic cityscapes.”
