Fruitmarket Segments

Artists Ilana Halperin and Louise Bennetts, writer and performer Karine Polwart, and soil scientist Colin Campbell (Chief Executive of the James Hutton Institute) discuss Hutton’s legacy in the context of contemporary creative practice. The conversation is chaired by Susanna Beaumont, curator of Earth Matters. This event was programmed as part of Earth Day to celebrate two concurrent exhibitions that explore our place in geological time – Ilana Halperin: What Is Us and What Is Earth (Fruitmarket) and Earth Matters (Inverleith House Gallery, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) – in the context of the tercentenary of Scottish geologist James Hutton (1726-1797). Ilana Halperin: What Is Us and What Is Earth An exhibition of sculpture, drawing and photography from Glasgow based artist Ilana Halperin, whose art seeks to make geological time human; to map the incomprehensible vastness of geological time and the natural world through the knowable familiarity of human experience. Earth Matters (20.03.26–01.11.26. Inverleith House Gallery, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) Marking the tercentenary of James Hutton’s birth, Earth Matters celebrates the life of the ground-breaking Edinburgh born geologist and farmer. Exploring his writings on soil, Earth Matters is inspired by Hutton and other subsequent trailblazers who have helped challenge and change our understanding of soil. Through art and craft, dating from the 18th century to the present-day, work by over thirty artists and makers illuminates the vital beauty and brilliance of the earth beneath our feet. Funded jointly with the Edinburgh Geological Society and Design Exhibition Scotland. Photos and video of What is Us and What is Earth are available on our online archive. Fruitmarket produced a book to accompany the show. Writing by Paul Bonaventura, Catriona McAra with Claire Cousins, and Stephanie Straine sheds new light on Halperin's work and career, while a sequence of letters between Ilana Halperin and friends geographer Adam Bobbette and writer Candice Chung offer personal insight into the thought processes behind this intensely beguiling body of work. The book can be ordered from our online shop, where you can also buy a limited edition lithograph print made especially by Ilana. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Bluesky, Instagram or TikTok.

A conversation between Neal Ambrose-Smith and Dr. Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani about the artist, activist, educator and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Fruitmarket’s new exhibition Jaune Quick-to-See Smith: Wilding Born January 15, 1940 Jaune Quick-to-See Smith was an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, Montana. Smith created complex abstract paintings and prints for over five decades. Known for her poetic, curious, and profound interpretations of America’s particular forms of bigotry toward Native peoples, the artist’s sharp humour pierced through the heavy topics of race, colonialism, pollution, genocide, and survival. Wilding is showing at the Fruitmarket until February 2026. The exhibition was conceived in conversation with the artist before her sad and sudden death at the beginning of 2025 and will be the first time her work has been seen in Scotland. The exhibition’s title came from the artist, who from our earliest conversations wanted the exhibition to engage with the history and politics of land stewardship. The exhibition includes paintings and a large canoe sculpture made by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith especially for Fruitmarket, together with a selection of paintings from throughout her career. The exhibition is an opportunity to get to know the compelling work of this artist attuned to the importance of paying attention and taking action. While the show is running pictures and video of the work are available on our website. In future this material will be available in our online archive. The book produced by Fruitmarket to accompany Wilding is available from our online bookshop. Neal Ambrose-Smith, Jaune’s son, collaborated with his mother from the 1990s until her death, including on many of the works featured in Wilding. Neal is a descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. A renowned painter, sculptor, Ambrose-Smith formerly served as professor and department chair at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. A descendant of the Mvskoke (Creek) and Osage nations, Dr. Maryam Ohadi-Hamadani is an art historian and curator specialising in modern and contemporary art of the global diasporas, focusing on the postcolonial histories of African, Afro-Caribbean, Asian and Black British art in Britain and beyond. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.ukwhere you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Bluesky, Instagram or TikTok.

Mike Nelson in conversation with Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley about his exhibition Humpty Dumpty, a transient history of Mardin earthworks, low rise. The show uses Fruitmarket’s Warehouse as the machine room, or driving force, for a major new installation that extends across all three spaces of the gallery. Built around two sets of photographs taken in London and a city in Eastern Turkey between 2010 and 2014, the work captures cities in flux, guided by their politics and leaders of the time. Mike’s show is running at Fruitmarket until Sunday October 5th. Find out more at fruitmarket.co.uk (once the show closes, images and video will still be available, via our online archive). A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

Andrew O’Hagan and Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley discuss the links between Lee Lozano and Dame Muriel Spark. Their conversation, titled ‘Self-Sabotage’, explored the parallels between the self destructive tendencies of one of the protagonists of Spark’s 1970 novella The Driver’s Seat and Lozano’s rejection of the art world in the early 1970s, which threw her into semi-obscurity. Lee Lozano was a major figure in the New York art scene of the 1960s and early 1970s. Her radical approach to art and life, in particular her systematic refusal to engage with the institutions and support structures of the art world, led to her work being neglected and becoming much less well known over time. A reassessment of Lozano’s work over recent years has included the 2018 Fruitmarket exhibition which led to this talk. There are more details about the 2018 exhibition Lee Lozano: Slip Slide Splice, including images and video, at the Fruitmarket’s online archive. Along with the exhibition catalogue, Fruitmarket produced a book of Lozano’s language pieces, which is still available from our online bookshop. These hand written and sometimes typed notes , many of which had never been published before, read like a working instruction book of her work. Andrew O’Hagan is a Scottish writer. His recent novels include Mayflies and Caledonian Road. Our Fathers, his first novel, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize for Fiction and the Whitbread First Novel Award. He has also published several non-fiction books and had essays and stories in London Review of Books, The Guardian and The New Yorker. In 2018 O’Hagan wrote the introduction to a new edition of The Driver’s Seat, published by Polygon on the 100th anniversary of Spark’s birth. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

On Mike Nelson: David Grinly and David Moore in conversation David Grinly (Stills) and David Moore (Edinburgh College of Art) discuss Mike Nelson’s new work for Fruitmarket: a transient history of Mardin earthworks and low rise, and think about its intersections with both sculpture and photography. The conversation explores the sophisticated lie of Mike’s practice, and the way in which his spaces tap into a material collective imagination. The speakers talk about the unusual amount of photography in this exhibition and its relationship to ‘stuff’ in the way it is made and displayed. Hosted by Ruth Bretherick, Fruitmarket’s Research and Public Engagement Curator Mike Nelson’s exhibition runs until October 2025. For more go to https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/mike-nelson/ Mike Nelson will be live in conversation with Fruitmarket director Fiona Bradley on Weds 17th September 2025. For details and to book your ticket go to https://www.fruitmarket.co.uk/event/mike-nelson-artists-talk/ This episode was recorded at University of Edinburgh’s uCreate Makerspace. Thanks to Simeon and the team there for all their help. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

A conversation between Canadian artist Stan Douglas and Fruitmarket director Fiona Bradley. Stan Douglas is known for films, photographs and installations which use new and outdated technologies, the tropes of cinema, TV and photography, the conventions of various Hollywood genres, and classic literary texts to examine the intersection of history and memory in evocative, mesmerising artworks. In 2014, when this conversation was recorded, Fruitmarket presented a selection of Douglas’s films and photographs in a new exhibition. That same year, his innovative play/film hybrid, Helen Lawrence, was performed for the first time in the UK at the Edinburgh International Festival. You can find out more about Stan Douglas’ Fruitmarket exhibition at the gallery’s online archive, where you can also listen to a lecture on his work by Amsterdam based cultural analyst Mieke Bal. The book produced to accompany the show, featuring essays by Fiona Bradley and Mieke Bal, is available from Fruitmarket’s online bookshop. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

A mix of speech, music and song from Karine Polwart, introducing the plans for her 2025/26 writing residency with Fruitmarket. Karine Polwart is a writer, musician, and storyteller whose work evokes a richness of place, hidden histories, scientific enquiry and folklore. She has been selected as the recipient of the 2025/25 Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship, for which Fruitmarket is the host organisation. The Dr Gavin Wallace Fellowship, supported by Creative Scotland, offers the opportunity for a mid-career writer to spend a year dedicated to producing their own new writing, with the support and inspiration of a host organisation. Ticket details for Karine’s August 2025 show, Windblown, at Queen’s Hall, are here: https://www.thequeenshall.net/whats-on/karine-polwart-windblown Archive televised film of Dick Gaughan performing Now Westlin Winds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZ7oYCx6tBw Karine refers to Robbie Nichol in this podcast. Robbie is now Professor of Place-Based Education at Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. Fruitmarket is a free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, which provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. Creativity makes space for meaning, and we create a welcoming space for people to think with contemporary art and culture in ways that are helpful to them – for free. Further information at fruitmarket.co.uk. Follow us on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok.

A conversation between British-European artist Tacita Dean and Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley, recorded in 2018 to accompany Dean’s exhibition Woman with a Red Hat. Best known for her use of film, and her advocacy for its preservation as an artistic medium, Tacita has a wide-ranging practice that includes drawings, photographs, installations and collections of found objects and images. She was a nominee for the Turner Prize in 1998, won the Hugo Boss Prize in 2006, and was elected to the Royal Academy of Arts in 2008. The works in her Fruitmarket exhibition asked us to consider the ways in which theatrical artifice can transport us, and ultimately deliver truth through fiction. The title – Woman with a Red Hat – was taken from the film Event for a Stage, around which the exhibition pivoted. Originally commissioned for the 2014 Sydney Biennale as a live theatre piece, the work was Dean’s first foray into the theatre and her first experience of working with an actor. The film is an intricate interweaving of the four consecutive performances of the piece. The fierce interplay between the artist and the actor, Stephen Dillane, as they struggle to understand and accommodate each other’s artforms makes for a compelling, complex investigation into the balance of reality and illusion in both. For more details about the show, visit the Fruitmarket online archive. The book which accompanied the exhibition is available from Fruitmarket’s online bookshop. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

Extracts of a conversation between artists Mike Nelson and Simon Patterson and art historian, lecturer and writer Patricia Bickers, from the opening of Print the Legend: The Myth of the West, at Fruitmarket in 2008. British artist Mike Nelson is known for immersive, absorbing installations assembled from the detritus of everyday lives. Often referencing works of literature or countercultural or fringe political movements, his work transforms the spaces it inhabits. This summer Mike is taking over Fruitmarket with his new show Humpty Dumpty/ a transient history of Mardin earthworks / low rise, which opens on 27th June 2025 and runs until early October. In 2008 Mike was part of the group exhibition Print the Legend at Fruitmarket, alongside artists including Douglas Gordon, Isaac Julien, Cornelia Parker and Simon Patterson. Curated by Patricia Bickers, Print the Legend was a critical response to the western and the myth of the west, exploring themes such as narrative, conflict, fiction and truth, justice and injustice, frontiers and desire. Further details about the show, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive. Mike Nelson’s piece, Untitled No.22 (High Plains Drifter) (1993/2001/2008), involved spray painting one of our fire escapes and the entire contents of a store cupboard with several coats of red paint to create a disorientating, breath-taking new environment. This was a reference to the film High Plains Drifter, but also painting, and in particular the work of the artist Niele Toroni, whose signature style is the measured repetition of a single brushstroke. In High Plains Drifter, Clint Eastwood’s character takes revenge on the citizens of Lago, getting them to paint their own town red, transforming it into a living hell. Simon Patterson’s wall drawing, Western: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1997), references the concept of the frame and horizon, portraying a metaphorical moral landscape through the representation of the Kodak™ Gray Scale, an exposure-testing format used in photography. The names of the three main actors in the film, Lee Marvin (who plays the outlaw Liberty Valance), John Wayne (the gunfighter) and James Stewart (the lawyer), are painted in black, grey and white, respectively, to denote their relative ethics, and good and bad actions –the equivalent of the black hat and the white hat in early westerns. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

Artists William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland in conversation with curator Tamar Garb. The conversation was recorded at the opening of the 2016 Fruitmarket exhibition William Kentridge and Vivienne Koorland: Conversations in letters and lines. Curated by Garb, this exhibition brought together the work of the two prominent South African artists, mapping their artistic friendship through shared artistic strategies and a common sense of the urgency and agency of art. Further details about the show, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive. The book published to accompany the show features an insightful essay by Garb, a conversation between Kentridge and Koorland, and writing from Briony Fer, Joseph Leo Koerner, Ed Krcma and Griselda Pollock. Lavishly illustrated, it offers the chance to look in a new way at the work of these two significant artists. Buy it now from our online bookshop. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, the Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.

Phyllida Barlow in conversation with fellow artists with Kate Davis, Keith Wilson, Eric Bainbridge and Jon Wood. They discuss the question why make art? This conversation accompanied the 2015 Fruitmarket exhibition Phyllida Barlow: Set, a major exhibition of new work made specially for the gallery. Further details about Set, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive In 2024 Fruitmarket and Hauser & Wirth Publishers published an updated and expended edition of the book Phyllida Barlow: Sculpture, 1963-2023 available now from the Fruitmarket online bookshop. This major monograph is a comprehensive survey of the work of Barlow, authored by curator Frances Morris, who has made extensive additions to her original text. This new expanded edition features three new chapters by Morris, as well as a new introduction by Fruitmarket Director Fiona Bradley. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, the Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk, where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram or Bluesky.

University of Edinburgh students in conversation with Dr. Kirsten Lloyd and Dr. Rochelle Rowe This episode is one of three in a series accompanying the exhibition of Sisters!, a film by Petra Bauer at Fruitmarket. Sisters! is a collaborative film, documenting a day in the life of the Southall Black Sisters, a feminist organisation supporting Black and minoritised women in London facing domestic abuse and immigration challenges. The film follows the organisation, exploring the day-to-day challenges and successes of running a politically charged non-profit. In this episode, University of Edinburgh students facilitate a conversation between two academics from the University, Dr. Kirsten Lloyd and Dr. Rochelle Rowe, whose areas of expertise lie within the field of feminist art and curation, and cultural histories of race and gender. To accompany the exhibition and provide a wider context for Sisters!, this conversation delves into the intersection of art and politics and how artistic activism serves as both a powerful tool for resistance and a platform for radical change. This episode opens conversations about the role of visual culture in shaping public discourse, and examines how the film addresses issues of race, class, and gender while pushing the boundaries of traditional political activism. Further details about the show, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit www.fruitmarket.co.uk or follow us on Instagram. Produced by University of Edinburgh students on the MScR in Collections and Curating Practices, on which Fruitmarket is a partner: Lucy Beirne, Sara Kate Gregory and Greta Martyniuk.

Artist Karla Black in conversation with Fruitmarket Director, Fiona Bradley, discussing how Barry Le Va’s work inspires and informs her approach to materials and continues to have relevance for artists working today. This conversation, recorded in January 2025, accompanied the Fruitmarket show Barry Le Va: In a State of Flux, the first-ever major exhibition in the UK of the work of ground-breaking American artist and the first comprehensive museum exhibition anywhere since his death in 2021. The work of Le Va has long been a touchstone for Black. Sharing a use of fragmented and scattered materials, including powders – chalk and flour for Le Va; plaster dust, pigment and soil for Black – both artists make predominantly floor-based work that explores the transient nature of materials. Both practices rail against the apparent permanence of traditional sculpture, revealing, as Black puts it ‘that material in this world is only ever either flying together or flying apart and it’s only the limited experience we as human beings can have of time that leads us to believe that an object is permanent.’ Similarly, Le Va sought ‘to eliminate sculpture as a finished, totally resolved object’ and maintain its potential energy in a state of flux. A video of this conversation is available on Fruitmarket’s YouTube. Further details about In a State of Flux, including images and video, can be found at the Fruitmarket online archive, where you can also see more about Karla Black’s 2021 exhibition sculptures (2001–2021) details for a retrospective. The books on Barry Le Va and Karla Black that accompanied each exhibition are available to buy from Fruitmarket’s online bookshop. A free, public space for culture in the heart of Edinburgh, the Fruitmarket provides inspiration and opportunity for artists and audiences. We programme, develop and present world-class exhibitions, commissions, publications, performances, events and engagement activities, opening up the artistic process. To find out more about our current exhibition programme and upcoming events visit fruitmarket.co.uk, where you can sign up for our newsletter, or follow us on Instagram.