Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket Gallery has announced its inaugural programme as it prepares to reopen in the summer of next year.
The city-centre gallery has revealed it will exhibit the first selected survey of Turner-prize nominee Karla Black’s work in all of the UK.
The space had been closed following £3.75m expansion works which are now due to complete in August 2020.
Scottish artist Karla Black will present new work alongside existing sculptures selected to represent the kinds of work she has been making since 2000.
In addition to this, Fruitmarket Gallery will host dance, poetry and a range of performance in a bid to become Scotland’s newest contemporary arts venue.
The development brings the gallery’s next door building – also a former fruit and vegetable warehouse – into active cultural use, as an expansive, inspirational space where artists can make new work in and for the Fruitmarket Gallery.
The new space will realise the gallery’s ambitions to deliver a year-round multi-art form programme from a venue at the heart of the capital.
Since opening in 1974 the gallery has shown a wide range of artists including David Hockney, Jean Michele Basquiat, John Cage, Senga Negudi, Mark Wallinger, Jacqueline Donachie, Louise Bourgeois, Callum Innes, Gabriel Orozco, Marina Abramovic, Yoko Ono and Jeff Koons.
Fiona Bradley, Fruitmarket Gallery Director, said: “This is an exciting year for us, as we work towards opening an inspirational new space for creative, collaborative working and our refreshed and renovated existing building.
“We can’t wait to work with Karla Black. There is a defiant force to her work – it is demanding and disruptive as well as beautiful and inspiring.
“It is because of this that we invited her to be the first artist to work in the newly reopened Fruitmarket: we value artistic experiment and we want her to really challenge the new space. We look forward to sharing her insights with our audience.
As we work towards the reopening of the Fruitmarket we are using poetry, drawing, dance, film and performance to reflect on the spaces of the gallery from the beginning of the development through the refurbishment, marking the transition into the new and renewed spaces.”
