The Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, UK, opens its doors for the first time Wednesday 7 July since summer 2019, with its existing galleries refreshed and expanded into a large adjacent warehouse. A £4.3m capital development, it is the first project and renovation of its kind to open in the UK since the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic. A major exhibition of over 30 works including major new commissions by renowned Scottish sculptor Karla Black inaugurates the newly expanded Fruitmarket and spans the entire building comprising two gallery spaces, the new warehouse space and linking walkway. Access into and around the building has been improved, with an emphasis placed on equality of experience for everyone.
The new spaces and redevelopment have been designed by Edinburgh-based Reiach and Hall Architects and prioritise re-use and sustainability. The resulting transformation doubles the footprint of the gallery and brings the next door building – like the Fruitmarket’s original building, also a former fruit and vegetable warehouse – into active cultural use, as an expansive, inspirational space. In the original building, the essential rhythms of the rooms and the natural light that floods the upper floor have been preserved. The spaces of the Exhibition Galleries have been simplified and their material finishes and facilities upgraded. There’s a brand new Learning Studio; an enlarged Information Room, Café and Bookshop; and a simple yet commanding new main staircase.
New, and to be revealed for the first time in July, is an expansion into a second historic warehouse, most recently the Electric Circus nightclub. This steel-framed, brick-lined building has been kept as raw as possible. It has been opened out by removing the upper floor and reusing the joists and floorboards rather than bringing in new materials. The resulting space will lend itself to theatre and music, spoken word and dance as much as it does to the presentation of visual art. The redevelopment will ensure that the Fruitmarket can continue to operate at the forefront of contemporary culture for decades to come.
The Fruitmarket curated Black’s solo presentation for Scotland in Venice at the 54th International Biennale in 2011 but Karla Black sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective marks their first collaboration at home and is the result of an invitation to Black to play to her strengths and “force a raw creative moment” into the Fruitmarket’s pristine new gallery spaces. The renovation and expansion offers Karla Black inspirational, materially resonant spaces in which to make and site her work. Inspired by the interplay of the new, double height warehouse with its raw brick and rough wood, and the refurbished conventionality of the exhibition galleries, she has worked with the Fruitmarket to reimagine what a retrospective exhibition can be.
A selection of sculpture made since 2001 will fill the ground floor galleries with standing, hanging and low-lying volumes and planes. They are constructed from and worked on with some of Black’s signature materials – cardboard, sugar paper, polystyrene, polythene, cellophane, sellotape, glass, mirror, net, Vaseline, plaster powder, powder paint, medicines, cosmetics and thread. Works – some large and some small – are installed in the gallery spaces, brick walls, gallery windows and across floors. The existing works set the stage for the major new commission Waiver For Shade – made by Karla Black in the new warehouse space in the weeks before it opened.
Publishing is a central part of the Fruitmarket’s mission to create opportunities and inspiration for artists and audiences. A new publication will mark Karla Black’s work in the new Fruitmarket, with images of the work in the spaces and essays by former Director of Curatorial Affairs/Senior Curator at the Des Moines Art Center Alison Ferris, who initiated Black’s exhibition there in early 2020; and Fruitmarket Director and curator of the Fruitmarket’s exhibition Fiona Bradley.
The Fruitmarket is also the first Scottish cultural institution to be included on the Bloomberg Connects cultural app, joining more than twenty other cultural institutions around the globe.
Karla Black
sculptures (2001–2021)
details for a retrospective
Fruitmarket, Market St, Edinburgh, EH1 1DF
7 July 2021 to 21 November 2021