TateShots met up with the Boyle Family as they installed a new work at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. The World Series began life at a party hosted by Mark Boyle and Joan Hills in 1968, where the guests were invited to throw darts at a large map of the world. Since then, the artists have studied the exact parts of the world where the darts landed, resulting in a range of output including sculptures, films and photographs. This exhibition, presenting their observations of a spot of coast in the Outer Hebridean island of Barra, is the result of eighteen years’ work and the first of the series to be made in Britain.Boyle Family: World Series, Barra is on display at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.
On the outskirts of Edinburgh the grounds of one country estate have been turned into a haven for contemporary art. Jupiter Artland at Bonnington House, Kirknewton, features site-specific work of the scale normally reserved for large art galleries or public spaces. In fact it’s a private collection owned by Robert and Nicky Wilson, who opened it up to the public in 2009. Many artists found in the Tate Collection have made a home for their work here, and this film highlights a few of these: Antony Gormley’s enormous ‘expanded field’ sculpture, Firmament; Laura Ford’s eerie Weeping Girls; Cornelia Parker’s spectacular Landscape with Gun and Tree and Jim Lambie’s shiny new A Forest. We spoke to Nicky and Robert about how the artists responded to the site, and filmed some gratuitously beautiful Scottish scenery.
In the second part of TateShots’ Edinburgh special, artist Nathan Coley discusses two of his works that are located in and around the city. In Memory has just been installed at Jupiter Artland, a contemporary sculpture park in the grounds of Bonnington House, just outside Edinburgh. The work takes the form of a graveyard, complete with headstones and flower beds. There are no names on the stones, and they represent different faiths, inviting the viewer to stop and reflect on a scene that is both site-specific and universal. At the Dean Gallery, part of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, There Will Be No Miracles Here is a message spelled out in bright lights against the backdrop of Edinburgh Castle – but who the message is from, and who it is aimed at, is deliberately withheld.
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