Reviews & features: David Pollock

Best Edinburgh Festival street food

The ten best pop-up food stalls to be found at 2011 Edinburgh Festival

Mussel Men Seafood George Square walkway (east side), 11am–1am The guys in the stripey Breton shirts are actually London-based Scots, serving up fresh mussels and oysters from the west coast near Oban. Steaming hot moules come in a wee box sturdy…

Amanda Palmer & Neil Gaiman bring joint live show to Edinburgh Fringe

Singing and reading from musical and literary couple

‘Amanda taught Neil to love the festival,’ speaks the Palmer/Gaiman marital unimind (in fact hallowed fantasy author Gaiman emailing on behalf of himself and his ex-Dresden Doll and Fringe mainstay spouse). ‘He used to come to Edinburgh and do the book…

The Lost Fingers - Lost in the 80s

Skillful gypsy jazz paired up with an inspired choice of cover versions

‘We’re kinda known for taking cheese and making it better,’ declares one of Québécoise gypsy-folk interpretation trio The Lost Fingers (they’re named after Django Reinhardt’s disappeared digits), although not everyone might go along with their…

Horror Stories for Kids at 2011 Edinburgh Book Festival

Darren Shan, Barry Hutchison & Alexander Gordon Smith talk horror

As far as groundings in the horror business go, young adult writer Barry Hutchison knew exactly what fear was from an early age. ‘I lived in a perpetual state of terror when I was a kid,’ says the Fort William-based creator of the Invisible Fiends…

The National - Matt Berninger interview

US band set for Edinburgh gig as part of 2011 UK tour

The National‘s Matt Berninger has a way with a tear-jerking lyric. However, as he tells David Pollock, the release of album High Violet has ushered in good times for the Ohioan band. That, and Obama getting elected.

Frank Cottrell Boyce discusses his winged Fleming sequel at Edinburgh Book Festival

The author talks of new novel Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again

Liverpudlian writer Frank Cottrell Boyce has a career which can only be described as enviable. When we spoke he was in the midst of working on the Olympic Games opening ceremony, as one of director Danny Boyle’s hand-picked creative advisors. He’s…

Chris Difford and Norman Lovett: It's All About Me!

Squeeze singer and Red Dwarf comedian in inexplicable team-up

Quite why Chris Difford of highly-successful 70s and 80s pop group Squeeze has chosen to embellish his partial spoken word life story with the presence of miserablist comedian and former Red Dwarf actor Norman Lovett is never explained here, so we can…

Simon Stephens explores pains of adolescence in Fringe show Morning

2012 Edinburgh Fringe Show explores those on the cusp of their lives

‘I realised recently that I’ve written an unusual amount of characters who are 17,’ says playwright Simon Stephens, whose new play Morning follows his previous works Punk Rock, Sea Wall and Herons in visiting the lives of teenagers. ‘It’s an age where…

Edvard Munch: Graphic Works from the Gunderson Collection

Extended introduction to troubled Norwegian painter

Perhaps the greatest surprise for casual viewers of this high-profile new exhibition from the Scottish National Galleries is the discovery that Norwegian painter Edvard Munch had a whole catalogue of work besides ‘The Scream’. One of the most famous…

Edinburgh Fringe show based on 7th July 2005 London bombings

Whenever I Get Blown Up I Think of You addresses 7/7 London attacks

Molly Naylor is nervous, she doesn’t mind admitting. That’s partly because her first ever one-woman Edinburgh Fringe show is nearing the end of its rehearsal period when I speak to her, and is about to be unleashed upon preview audiences within a matter…

Ian McMillan

Home truths from Yorkshire poet

‘Times are good,’ says Ian McMillan on the poet’s lot, with the articulate and enthusiastic Yorkshireman saying it in a voice that’s gently encouraging. ‘It’s easier than it used to be when I started. There are magazines, you can self-publish or publish…

Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller

Edinburgh International Art Festival

Husband and wife duo Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller are quite possibly the most vibrant artistic force to have emerged from Canada in recent years. Certainly, this show will be one of the least missable exhibitions of the Festival period, as…

William Kentridge

One of South Africa’s most highly-regarded artists, it seems somehow appropriate that this first Scottish collection of William Kentridge’s print works should fall in the middle of the Edinburgh Festival. Although this show concentrates solely on his…

Ilana Halperin: the Library

Geologically-themed show repurposing museum exhibits as art

Location is everything for this new exhibition by Glasgow-based, New York-raised artist Ilana Halperin, the first recipient of an artist's fellowship at National Museums Scotland. Flying in the face of even the richest modern art's essential…

Expanding Horizons: Giovanni Battista Lusieri and the Panoramic Landscape

Watercolour landscapes with photorealist sensibilities

Most remembered as the man who arranged the shipping of the Elgin Marbles in his position as artistic retainer to Thomas Bruce, Lord Elgin, this retrospective of Giovanni Battista Lusieri’s relatively little-remembered 18th and 19th century landscape…

Jock Mcfadyen: the Ability to Cling

Small but revealing exhibition of paintings and sculptures

Small but revealing exhibition of paintings and sculptures ‘The ability to cling fastidiously to an image is a pointer to the mark of a true artist,’ runs the slogan which gives this exhibition its title on one of the Paisley-born McFadyen’s earlier…

Temper Temper: The Pain of Desire

Weimar rock ‘n’ roll from an unforgettable performer

The edges between live concert and theatrical performance bleed together in this full band show instigated by creative director Wendy Bevan. It begins as we await outside, the sound of piano flourishes being prepared echoing through the…

Art & Language

Intriguing but ultimately impenetrable overview of conceptual movement

Intriguing but ultimately impenetrable overview of conceptual movement Doing little to counteract the idea that conceptual art is a tough sell at the best of times, this sample display of pieces from the collective body behind the Art & Language…

We Are All Ufo-nauts

Subtly curated exploration of the uncanny

The uncanny possibilities of everyday life thread through this group show at compact warehouse gallery Rhubaba, the manipulation of the real through artistic technique and judicious editing creating a sense of the playfully otherworldly. As the title…

Highlands-based writer Melanie Challenger to talk about last year's book at Edinburgh Book Festival

Reconnecting with the natural world

Highlands-based writer and poet Melanie Challenger acknowledges that last year’s On Extinction, a weighty book which muses on humanity’s often fraught relationship with the environment, isn’t a work based in specialist knowledge. ‘It’s a personal…

Rachel Mayeri: Primate Cinema - Apes as Family

Dual screen video installation fails to create monkey magic

Los Angeles-based visual artist Rachel Mayeri’s anthropomorphic study of entertainment created for simians, a series entitled Primate Cinema, is perhaps best appreciated for its conceptual design, one of those off the wall ‘somebody had to do it’ ideas…

Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales prepares for first Fringe shows

The multi-talented musician is set to blend comedy, music and spoken word

‘The world that the Fringe represents is a world I’ve always been conscious of,’ says omnitalented raconteur, pianist and friend to Canada’s finest alternative musicians, Chilly Gonzales. ‘But to be honest, I’ve always chosen consciously not to go…

Philip Guston (1913-1980): Late Paintings

Late work by renowned US artist in Scotland for the first time

Continuing its growing tradition of presenting some of the greats of 20th century art in striking surroundings, this festival Inverleith House plays host to Canadian painter Philip Guston, a contemporary of Pollock and De Kooning in 1950s New York. The…

Theatre productions The Prize, Endure and Born to Run bring sport to the Fringe

Sport-themed shows at 2012 Edinburgh Fringe

Any Fringe show which takes a sporting theme in the same month as the Olympic Games arrive in London might be seen as belonging to the roster of gimmickry which inevitably assails Edinburgh in August. Yet speaking to the writers of three of the most…