Inverleith House presents two artist films that consider the natural world and scientific enquiry as part of a new short season of screenings reflecting upon the gallery’s unique position as an artistic organisation within a scientific research institution and Botanic Garden.

Screenings will be accompanied by an expanded discussion between artists, curators and members of the scientific community touching on themes explored in the films. As the season develops, conversations will highlight connections between artistic inquiry and scientific investigation, and consider the commonalities of these distinct disciplines. Over the coming months, screenings will address themes of collecting and taxonomy, anthropological and ethnographic subjects, and psychological or imagined landscapes.

The first screening will present two new artist films; Back As Front, Inside As Out, Part One, by Anne-Marie Copestake, and Search Film by Duncan Marquiss.

The artists will be joined by invited speakers Isla Leaver-Yapp, Project Director, Lux Scotland and Francis McKee, Director, CCA Glasgow for a conversation after the screening.

Image: Anne-Marie Copestake, Back As Front, Inside As Out, Part 1, 2015 (Film Still). Courtesy of the artist

Back As Front, Inside As Out, Part One by Anne-Marie Copestake

(2015, 25 minutes)

Holography as a theory, written in 1947 by Dennis Gabor, described how a three-dimensional image of information (as patterns encoded in a beam of light) could be stored on a photographic plate. This required a coherent light source, which was eventually provided by lasers twenty years later as technology advanced. Copestake’s film considers this early period as holography developed as a medium, foregrounding experimentation and pursuit through rigorous actions, optimism, exploration and discovery.

Anne-Marie Copestake lives and works in Glasgow, and studied MA Fine Art at Glasgow School of Art (1995-1997) and at the Stadelschule, Frankfurt-am-Main in 2000. Her work encompasses text, sculpture, film and video, and she has produced several bookworks her most recent publication is ‘Joy Boy’, print and text edition, published with Aye Aye Books, Glasgow (2008). She is a member of the band Muscles of Joy and Poster Club, a group of seven Glasgow-based artists who work collaboratively.

Image: Duncan Marquiss, Search Film, 2015 (Film Still). Courtesy of the artist

Search Film by Duncan Marquiss

(2015, HD, 22 minutes)

Search Film follows the artist’s father, the biologist Dr. Mick Marquiss as he tracks goshawks, an elusive bird of prey, in rural north east Scotland. The film expands into a broader conversation on the nature of searching in a variety of contexts, comparing innate foraging behaviour with shopping and browsing databases.

Duncan Marquiss (b. 1979 Scotland) graduated from the MFA at Glasgow School of Art in 2005, and undertook the LUX Associate Artist programme 2009-10. Recent projects include; Foraging Economics, an essay for The Happy Hypocrite journal, 2014; Flatness: Cinema After The Internet, International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 2013; Information Foraging, film programme for AMIF Tramway, Glasgow 2013. This year Marquiss received the Margaret Tait Award 2015/16.

Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Entrance via West Gate, Arboretum Place from 6pm.