Conversation Piece

A short walk from the hotel to the National Portrait Gallery and a visit to the exhibition for the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2013. Some very interesting pictures.

Walking again, this time to the Fruitmarket Gallery to see the Exhibition Oceans by Tania Kovats. The blip is of one of the installations which has samples of seas and oceans from all over the world (information below).

From there to the National Museum of Scotland. We like the Beginnings and Early Peoples exhibits. There was also The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition to see.

Next on the agenda was a visit to Dovecot Studios to see their weaving and tapestries and have a late lunch.

After a very short break at our hotel we went to the cinema. On the way we called round to Broughton Street and a shop called Concrete Wardrobe which showcases Scottish crafts and makers. We had met one of the partners (who is a weaver and has some of his own work on sale in the shop) on our course at Bridge House Art in Ullapool last year and as luck would have it he was in the shop when we called in. There was lots of chatter, catching up, and laughter.

We did make it to the cinema. Just in time to see The Monuments Men.

British artist Tania Kovats makes drawings, sculpture, installations and large-scale time-based projects exploring our experience and understanding of landscape. She
is best known for Tree (2009), a permanent installation for the Natural History Museum in London; and Rivers, an outdoor sculpture in the landscape of Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. This new exhibition focuses on her fascination with the sea.

A highlight of the exhibition is All the Sea, an ambitious new work which presents water from all the world’s seas, collected with the help of a global network of people drawn in by the idea of bringing all the waters of the world to one place. It is joined by new and existing work all of which has to do in some way with the sea. Sculptures referencing cliff formations;
a machine that mimics the formation of mountains;
a sculpture in the form of a reef of proliferating barnacles; a re-orientation of the world in favour of the ocean drawn on a collection of obsolete atlases; a work exploring what happens when two or more seas meet and a selection of drawings made of and with seawater combine in an evocative presentation of the impact of the sea.