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An installation by Ettie Spencer |
STOP PRESS! Tobacco House is reaching maturity. This allusive work, weaving together discourse about aesthetics, the natural and built environments, the politics of business and trade, and the history of slavery, will come to fruition at Edinburgh Art Festival’s “Art Late” on Thursday 28th August from 6-9pm. Join Ettie and her team at St. Margaret’s House for an event to harvest the tobacco crop – both literally and metaphorically – and decide its fate. Background: A crop of tobacco will be grown in the empty shell of St Margaret’s House on London Road in Edinburgh. With its history of harvesting by slave labour in the US, and grown as a cash crop in 3rd World countries, exploitation and a bad smell sticks to this lush looking plant. Yet, grown against a backdrop of an inner city eighty’s office block, it will provide a rich visual texture and an opportunity for urban dwellers to engage in the therapeutic activity of growing things. Issues about displacement and forced migration in our globalised, consumer-driven world are further indicated in this work, as well as the ever increasing shift from rural to urban environments, and the disconnection that goes with this process. Sprouting out of the top four floors of the massive empty building, that was the Scottish Pensions headquarters, the work will seen from the street by passers by, a very different way of ‘greening’ the city. 1) Artist's Talk: In the Art Festival Reading Room, Sat. 2nd August, 2 - 3 pm (free admission) 2) Things will be smokin' in Craigmillar. A crop will be growing outside and will be part of another episode in the 'Tobacco House' story… The artist explains all at Craigmillar Community Arts Centre, 58 Newcraighall Road, EH15 3HS. (Tel: 0131 659 4759) Sat. 9th August 2pm. (free admission) 3) The Inside Story - Artist's talk at the heart of the operation. St.Margaret's House, London Road, Edinburgh, www.artscomplex.org Sunday 10th August, 2pm - Pre booked only - contact the artist (details below). (free admission) 4) Artist's Talk SWG3 Studio Warehouse, 100 Eastvale Place, Glasgow, G38QG, www.swg3.tv 5) 'Art Late' inside Tobacco House, St Margaret's House. Wine and harvesting the crop! Thursday 28th August 7pm PRESS "Festival grows up in world with high-rise tobacco plants..." "Exhibition to bloom in garden galleries as art goes public" Evening News 23 July 2008 by Hazel Mollison HERE "Artist Ettie Spencer discusses her installation Tobacco House, in which tobacco plants - with all the connotations involved with this most controversial of cash crops - have been grown in a disused building in the heart of the city. Taking place as part of the 2008 Edinburgh Art Festival." Watch the video interview with Ettie on the Edinburgh Festival website. HERE "As well as the aesthetic benefits of adding greenery to the front of the austere old pensions building, the work has roots (sorry) in Edinburgh’s less savoury history." Read about TOBACCO HOUSE in the List, 31th July 2008 HERE ARTIST INFORMATION AND CONTACT: Tobacco plants growing in a garden in Portobello for the 'Big Things On The Beach' garden gallery project.
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