This article appears as part of the Herald Arts newsletter.
With Scotland about to disappear under a tsunami of stand-up comics, theatre shows, jugglers, stilt-walkers, sundry other street entertainers – not to mention a slew of outdoor music festivals – perhaps now is the time for a quick word about the visual arts. They do often feel like the poor relation at this time of year.
First to the capital. The Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) turns 20 this August and has gathered together 55 exhibitions and events at venues across the city. These range from the grand national galleries, where Belfast-born Glasgow Boy Sir John Lavery has pride of place in the Royal Scottish Academy building, to the less salubrious surrounds of the Castle Terrace car park. It’s there on August 16 that you can catch a special, one-off performance by artist Prem Sahib of his provocative work, Alleus.
The eagle-eyed among you will already have twigged that spells Suella backwards. To that nugget of information let me add this: the Suella in question is former UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, and in his work Sahib uses cut-ups and re-edits of her speeches on immigration alongside live and recorded voices to offer his own tribute. OK, maybe tribute isn’t quite the right........