Neil Cooper

Lineage: Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Davenport and Julian Opie

Edinburgh Art Festival 2010 - Printmaking, but not as we know it

5 Aug 2011

Drip, drip, drip go the variations on a theme that form the quartet of works culled from Ian Davenport’s ‘Etched Puddle’ series, in which assorted rainbow-arrayed, candy-striped, multi-coloured streams trickle down into a similarly hued liquid carpet at…

Robert Rauschenberg: Botanical Vaudeville

Sparkling post-industrial dance on gleaming surfaces

3 Aug 2011

Inverleith House has long carved a niche for itself as a champion of late 20th century American icons, and for the gallery’s British Art Show contribution has gathered up a grab-bag of 37 works made between 1982 and 1998 by Abstract Expressionism’s…

The Northern Renaissance: Dürer to Holbein

Compendium of works inspired by the Renaissance innovator

3 Aug 2011

There’s something of an inky-fingered Dürer overload in the ‘burgh just now. Following on from Dürer’s Fame over at the National Galleries, this 16th century compendium of more than 100 works uses his output as a springboard for the burgeoning of…

Dürer’s Fame

Tribute to the German woodcut and engravings master Albrecht Durer

21 Jul 2011

German handball star Pascal Hens gazes out from a black-and-white poster, his torso naked, gaze serious, his pose one of self-deification. This is enhanced further by a tattoo on his stomach of two disembodied hands clasped together as if in prayer.

Qatsi trilogy with Philip Glass live score highlight of Edinburgh International Festival

EIF 2011 screening of Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi and Naqoyqatsi

5 Jul 2011

One of the earliest Edinburgh screenings of Koyaanisqatsi, the first of Godfrey Reggio’s remarkable trilogy of films scored by minimalist composer Philip Glass, was in an old porn cinema opposite what is now the Festival Theatre, then a bingo hall.

Gilbert and George exhibit at the National Gallery

Retrospective of the iconic art duo

5 Aug 2010

There’s something quite unnerving watching the three films that form the oldest contribution to this mini retrospective of Brit Art’s most enduring double act. Here they are, Gilbert and George, in grainy black and white, young men still in their 20s…

Prints of Darkness

Playful compendium of new work exploring record cover art

29 Jul 2010

If a record is the ultimate mass-produced multiple, the mainstream music industry’s demise has seen a reclaiming of vinyl as a more bespoke medium whereby one work of art (musical) is packaged inside another (visual). This compendium lines up 13…

Porgy and Bess takes centre stage at Edinburgh International Festival

Opéra de Lyon's production of Gershwins' crossover classic

16 Jul 2010

As operas go, it’s fair to say that Porgy and Bess blew in like a hurricane. When George and Ira Gershwin’s self-styled ‘American folk opera’ featuring a libretto by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward appeared on the New York stage in 1935, its cast of…

John Cooper Clarke back with new material for Festival

Deadpan northerner sharper than ever for Edinburgh Fringe run

16 Jul 2010

Just a few years shy of pensionable age, deadpan northerner John Cooper Clarke shows very little sign of slowing up. Neil Cooper talks to the Salford legend about keeping poetry alive

Magazine - Second Life

21 Aug 2009

On their return earlier this year, Magazine received ecstatic words. Now, Neil Cooper is convinced lighting can strike twice. Valentine’s Day is the perfect time for reigniting love affairs. This year, in a concrete hall close to Manchester University…

Telepathe

Old-school synths and discrete artistry

14 Aug 2009

Just what, exactly, is affecting young female Brooklynites with such analog aplomb right now? Like fellow New Yorkers Au Revoir Simone, Telepathe’s duo of Melissa Livaudis and Busy Gangnes have picked up a swirl of old-school synths and applied some…

The Pineapple Chunks vs The Leg

Confusion Is Sex, The Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Fri 7 Aug 2009

10 Aug 2009

So what do you get if you put two of Edinburgh’s most maverick and free-spirited guitar-based bands side by side in a nightclub’s upstairs café after midnight, then get them to play their own sets – at the same time? In the case of this curious and…

Rough Cut Nation

Music meets art uptown

29 Jul 2009

Gallery gigs are ordinarily bespoke, underground shop-front affairs that flaunt their art-rock credentials like billy-o. The renovation of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery has allowed some of that DIY spirit to mess up its normally plush interior…

Dub Syndicate

Sci-fi wall wobblers

29 Jul 2009

Anyone who witnessed former Pop Group vocalist Mark Stewart with ex-Sugarhill house band The Maffia play Edinburgh last year with seminal producer and On-U Sound head honcho Adrian Sherwood manning the controls will probably still be wondering where on…

Peter Blake: Venice

Poptabulous exhibition of screenprints inspired by La Dominante

21 Jul 2009

When Art went POP!, Peter Blake defined a very British view of how the 60s swung. Collaging trash iconography with pop star royalty, all involved were bestowed with mutually acquired cult credibility. Forty-odd years on from Sergeant Pepper, the…

Silviu Purcărete’s 'Faust'

The veteran Romanian director tackles Goethe

13 Jul 2009

Silviu Purcărete doesn’t do things by halves. Last time the veteran Romanian director was in Edinburgh was almost two decades ago with a version of Ubu Rex. The production was a massive take on Alfred Jarry’s absurdist classic. Since then he brought a…

Nashashibi and Skaer - On a different plane

A film-based collaboration inspired by the painting of Paul Nash

13 Jul 2009

A shared belief in experimentation brought the creative talents of Rosalind Nashashibi and Lucy Skaer together. Neil Cooper talks to them about the wartime painting which has inspired their new filmed collaboration

Magazine to play Edinburgh Edge Festival

Howard Devoto's band offer a theatrical spectacle

13 Jul 2009

When Howard Devoto reconvened his band of post-punk fabulists after a 28-year hiatus earlier this year, it not only revisited a back catalogue that married a Proust and Dostoyevsky-inspired lyrical ennui to sophisticated layers of sci-fi punk-prog-glam.

Wil Hodgson

West Country boy with scabrous memoir

14 Aug 2008

Wil Hodgson is sponsored by Chippenham Athletic Football Club. For now, anyway. Because if the club's camel-coated directors ever make the Edinburgh trek to see the pink-haired chubby-chasing punk-geek tattooed love-boy, he might end up getting a…

The Golden Record - Sounds of Earth

7 Aug 2008

If the truth really is out there, the prospect of aliens landing on a planet populated by posh comedians would be enough to send them zapping back beyond Uranus in double-quick hyper-drive. The comedy aspect is one of the more worrying premises of this…

Richard Wilson

Feats of engineering and derring-do

7 Aug 2008

A man burrows his way out of the back of a black hackney cab that’s still in motion, looking like he’s tunnelled his way out of Wonderland to avoid paying his fare. The same hole-in-the-wall gang appears to have turned the brutalist façade of an office…

Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945

Edinburgh International Art Festival

22 Jul 2008

Between the wars, the world changed. European cities were rebuilt taller and denser than before, with new technology giving rise to an industrial and creative hub. More than half a century on, this major touring show originating from Washington’s…

I Went to the House But Did Not Enter

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

A collage-based approach to theatre from maverick creator. Heiner Goebbels’ latest work may be in the Edinburgh International Festival’s drama programme, but the scope of this maverick composer and theatre maker is far more expansive. In 2001…

Bittersweet symphony - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Edinburgh International Festival

22 Jul 2008

Brecht and Weill’s Mahagonny has inspired an artistic generation. Neil Cooper analyses the pair’s enduring appeal.

Happy Mondays

23 Aug 2007

‘Hola!’ Shaun Ryder is just back from Spain, and has clearly been learning the language. In between shows leading up to next week’s T on the Fringe gig, though, the surprisingly sharp and decidedly affable Happy Mondays frontman is at home, ‘catching up…