A new series of events has been revealed as part of the Fruitrmarket’s Spring programme. In continuation of Fruitmarket’s commitment to welcoming the wider creative community into the newly extended and redeveloped building, poets, performers and choreographers share the results of new commissions created while the building was closed for renovation and during the pandemic.
During the Fruitmarket’s recent renovation two extended projects, Beginning a Line and Writers’ Shift made use of the time. The result is newly commissioned work from dancers, poets, artists and writers. From 24 – 26 February Fruitmarket will share the creative results that have inspired them while the building was closed and now energise us all in the new reimagined building.
Writer’s Shift, a group of five poets Janette Ayachi, Callie Gardner, Jane Goldman, Iain Morrison and Tom Pow who followed their individual interests in exploratory writing around the Fruitmarket, its past, present and future. What results are poems that find fascination in almost 50 years of art and artists, and which examine the infrastructure surrounding the Fruitmarket in the city and in the wider world.
The celebration/showcase begins on 24 February with the launch of a publication to mark the project and a reading of the work of poet Callie Gardner, who died unexpectedly last year. Their Writer’s Shift colleagues read through Gardner’s remarkable extended poem which takes particular interest in the movement of art work between institutions and across borders and draws heavily on the Fruitmarket’s archive of past exhibition material. Poets Janette Ayachi, Jane Goldman, Iain Morrison and Tom Pow will then read their work, and a special exhibition of works by Kate Livingstone’s suite of drawings responding to the poets’ work will be displayed in the Fruitmarket cafe. During her research for Writers’ Shift, poet and writer Jane Goldman looked into women’s participation in the Fruitmarket during the 1970s and 1980s. Contributions from two of the women with whom she made connections form part of these days’ programme.
On 24 February artist, performer and writer Jill Smith will make a performance ritual in the Fruitmarket Warehouse, the traces of which will remain over the following two days. On 25 February, Jane Goldman introduces Jill Smith, the two read Goldman’s poem THE MANIFESTATIONS OF THE OBSESSIONS AND FANTASIES OF BRUCE LACEY AND JILL BRUCE IS A SOLO EXHIBITION BY BRUCE LACEY and Smith presents the development of her art practice from the 70s to the present day. The event will weave Smith’s story into that of women’s activism, taking in the protests at Greenham Common and the solidarity she found in women’s art collectives. Always finding ways to keep making work even when tides of favour and resources have been diverted from her, Smith’s story is one of resilience and deep commitment to her chosen life. Jill Smith (born 1942) was the first woman to show in the Fruitmarket’s exhibition’s programme in 1975 when she was working as a pioneering performance artist with her then husband Bruce Lacey. Writers’ Shift poet Jane Goldman reconnected Fruitmarket with Smith who is now based on the Isle of Lewis. Making up for lost time, this artist and writer has been welcomed back to the Fruitmarket nearly 50 years after she last visited.
On 26 February, artist, teacher and former Fruitmarket staffer Louise Dick leads a drawing workshop based on spiral forms. Inspiration is taken from her recent practice and the ideas of Scottish biologist and mathematician D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Louise Dick (born 1960) first visited the Fruitmarket in the 1970s when her art teacher at Craigroyston School, John Kirkwood, brought her to see an exhibition that included his sculpture. After attending art college in London, Dick returned to Edinburgh and worked with us as a gallery assistant during the 1980s, a period with many exhibitions that continue to resonate strongly in the Fruitmarket’s history. Dick has worked as an artist and teacher in the city since that time. Jane Goldman’s poem ON GROWTH AND FORM (FIBONACCIS FOR LOUISE DICK) charts Dick’s life against the structures of spiral growth in nature.
Closing the weekend’s events will be a special collaborative project by artist and poet Rhona Warwick Paterson and dancer and choreographer Eve Mutso that responded to the period of the Fruitmarket’s redevelopment and reopening in word, movement and sound.
On 26 February, Fruitmarket welcome audiences for a film screening and panel discussion in celebration of three choreopoems – After Orta, Cunei Form and Lean To – by artist/poet Rhona Warwick Paterson and dancer/choreographer Eve Mutso. A cross art form, collaborative project, working with filmmaker Brian Ross, Beginning a Line creatively documented the transition of the Fruitmarket as it entered into a new phase and a new set of walls.
Beginning with a film made in the galleries shortly before Fruitmarket closed its doors for renovation in 2019 and closing with a final film made in celebration of the new Warehouse space, Warwick Paterson and Mutso have made three films that address the nature of site, palimpsest and language as an embodied experience, with research material sourced from archaeology, choreology, the Fruitmarket’s exhibition history, and the architectural, physical and historical elements of the building.
Speaking ahead of the Writers Shift and Beginning a Line events, Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley said:
When the Fruitmarket closed for redevelopment in 2019 we could not have imagined the extent of the change all of us have undergone collectively in the meantime. Throughout the period we were delighted to have been able to extend these two projects commissioning writers and performances to respond to the rich history contained within the Fruitmarket archives. The results have given us an insight into the role the organisation can play for the wider creative community. We’re excited to welcome visitors to the readings, screenings, workshops and more.