4 May to 23 June

Ciara Phillips And More

Ciara Phillips installation view, photograph by Michael Wolchover. Courtesy Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Ciara Phillips, installation view, photograph by Michael Wolchover. Courtesy Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

A major exhibition featuring new works on paper and fabric made for Inverleith House by the Glasgow-based artist Ciara Phillips (b.1976) in response to the Garden's unique collection of nature printed books.

Nature Printed: Examples of Nature Printing from the Collection of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

A plate from 'Nature-Printed British Sea-weeds' (Ptilota plumosa) by W.G. Johnstone & A. Croall, Nature-printed by Henry Bradbury, London (1859). © The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh 2013.

This exhibition features remarkable nature-printed illustrations of plants, ferns and seaweeds by the best nature-printers of the day, including Johannes Kniphof (1704-1763) and Henry Bradbury (1829-1860), whose first publication A Few Leaves from the Newly-Invented Process of "Nature-Printing", attracted much attention when published in 1854. The Royal Botanic Garden's collection of twenty plates from this edition are being exhibited for the first time, following recent conservation work.

Rory McEwen The Tweed Road

Pat Douthwaite and Rory McEwen with his Tweed Road ‘sculptural environment’ at the RDG, 8 Melville Crescent, Edinburgh, 22 August to 13 September 1969. Courtesy of Richard Demarco and The Richard Demarco Digital Archive, University of Dundee.

Visitors to The Tweed Road will be able to view five of Rory McEwen's rarely-exhibited Polarised Perspex sculptures, event photographs of The Tweed Road's 'sculptural environment' taken at the Richard Demarco Gallery in 1969 and the film McEwen made with his friend Joseph Beuys (1921-1986) on Rannoch Moor in 1970.

Forthcoming:

13 July to 22 September

Mostly West: Franz West and Artist Collaborations

Franz West (1947–2012). Photograph by Markus Rossle, 2009. Courtesy of the Franz West Foundation and Gagosian Gallery.

The first exhibition in the UK by the great Austrian artist Franz West (1947-2012) of works made in collaboration with other leading visual artists, including Douglas Gordon, Marina Faust, Mike Kelley, Sarah Lucas, Albert Oehlen, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Rudolf Polanszky, Andreas Reiter Raabe, Anselm Reyle, Rudolf Stingel and Heimo Zobernig.

Mostly West encapsulates Franz West's belief in the juxtaposition of various viewpoints: '…like the known fact that a radio is made of screws, glass and wires but that it can be used to listen to speeches or music. But of course I don't mean to refer to the exhibiting artists as a conglomeration of glass, screws and springs, but rather like the English empiricists, and later Marx, who understood a collective co-operation like a machine. And that it results in something other than what one would see in a solo exhibition' (West, 2008).

Franz West collaborated throughout his career and saw art as participatory. His hugely influential Adaptives, early sculptural works begun in 1974, were made to be held and adapted to the human body. Later works also invited participation and interaction, including furniture and his brightly-coloured aluminium sculptures which were the subject of Meeting Points, an outdoor exhibition held at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh in 2002. Throughout his life, West combined works from different periods to produce new readings, often integrating works by other artists with his own.

The exhibition is curated by Ines Turian, Chair of the Franz West Foundation. Kindly supported by The Austrian Consulate and Gagosian Gallery.

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