- Venue
- Art Walk Hub
- Starts
- Thursday, September 1, 2022
- Ends
- Sunday, September 11, 2022
- Address
- 189 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DU
- Location
- Scotland
- Organiser
- Art Walk Projects
EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND: Art Walk Projects is delighted to reveal the full programme for Art Walk Porty festival (1-11 September 2022).
Under the overarching theme of SALT, the festival’s programme of contemporary public art includes newly commissioned work by 24 local and international artists. The emphasis is on temporary, often outdoor, place-specific and participatory artworks that connect Edinburgh’s coastal ecologies with the global climate crisis. As well as the central SALT exhibition at the Art Walk hub (189 Portobello High Street) the programme includes a rich array of walks, talks, workshops, tastings and film screenings.
For 2022, Art Walk Porty has commissioned work across 16 coastal locations, including Portobello beach, promenade, and the site of the former Joppa salt pans.
In addition to the commissioned programme, Art Walk Porty includes Art Houses, a series of open studios with accompanying talks and workshops, and Art in Shops and Cafes, a cluster of small exhibitions across nine sites involving Portobello’s local shops, cafes and businesses.
Altogether, Art Walk Porty involves over 60 artists across 49 locations.
Festival highlights include:
- SALT exhibition (1-11 September)
At the heart of Art Walk Porty is an exhibition that brings together SALT’s four artists in residence:
Tonya McMullan, Joanne Matthews, Mahala le May and Natasha Thembiso Ruwona. The exhibition includes documentation of ongoing artistic research, work across a range of media, including sculpture and film, and a series of artist-curated SALT-themed libraries.
- I looked out and saw plumes of salted air (3 September)
Starting from Joppa salt pans, a former site of fossil-fuel-powered salt production, Joanne Matthews explores connections between capitalism, rising sea levels and over-salination. Through this performative reading, Matthews tests speculative fictional environments to transform neoliberal apocalyptic narratives of doom and find hope in the dark.
- Microscopy on the Prom (3 September)
Keira Tucker leads a pair of experimental science events on Portobello Promenade, teaching participants how to use smart phone microscopy to gain greater understanding of the complex lifeforms that inhabit seawater. Tucker manages ASCUS Lab at Summerhall, Edinburgh, the UK’s largest publicly accessible laboratory for experimentation in art and science
- Salt tasting (4 September)
Also at Joppa salt pans, Mahala Le May leads a salt tasting session along with discussions around local food and our relationship to flavour. By focusing on the production of salt and its use in food, especially as a means of preservation, Le May is connecting the Forth coastal area of Scotland to global questions relating to supply chains and systems of food production.
- When we come out of the water (10-11 September)
Tanatsei Gambura invites people to come together, bringing flesh flowers to a two-day vigil that bears witness to Black lives lost at sea in the wake of colonial and imperialist violence. This is an opportunity for communal grieving through ceremony and ritual. It acknowledges that Black and indigenous people will continue to be the worst affected by the climate emergency.
- Seafield scent identifying workshop (11 September)
Tonya McMullan leads a small group walk to discuss the scents that can be detected in the air, land and sea, and begin to make scent diaries. The group will then work together in a makeshift beach laboratory, combining synthetic seawater and other materials to create a new scent. This event starts a series of events planned over the autumn to develop a Seafield scent.
- PORT walk and talk (11 September)
Henna Asikainen, Louise Barrington, Rosy Naylor, Elspeth Penfold and Stephanie Whitelaw take part in a low-tide walk and talk from Joppa to Seafield. Five points along the walk link out to the five locations of the PORT project (Holy Island; Scapa Beach, Orkney; Seafield, Edinburgh; Swalecliffe, near Whitstable, Kent; and The Lagoons, Musselburgh), prompting discussions around place, belonging, the value of water, and our relationship with the natural environment.
