A COLOURFUL swimming pool is the centrepiece of the opening of an adventurous new festival of music and contemporary art.
Jupiter Rising is a three-day festival set in Jupiter Artland, the magnificent sculpture park set within the grounds of Bonnington House, outside Edinburgh.
As well as live music from the likes of Welsh maverick Cate Le Bon, Mercury nominees The Comet Is Coming and The Vaselines, Jupiter Rising will premier new artistic collaborations from the likes of electronic musician Steve Warwick and visual artist/choreographer Carlos Maria Romero.
Warwick and Romero’s performance, titled HQ: (I feel so Mezzaniney) will open the festival in a “swimming pool garden” commissioned as a new permanent work at Jupiter Artland.
“It’s a fantastical, fairytale-like space with this incredibly colourful plunge pool at the centre,” says Claire Feeley, head of exhibitions.
Festival-goers will then be guided to the main site, set within Charles Jencks’s huge swirling Cells of Life landform, where The Vaselines, Karen Gwyer, Alpha Maid and Jenny Moore’s Mystic Business will perform live. Glasgow DJ Sarra Wild will then host a “woodland disco” well into the night.
Jupiter Rising is about creating unique moments, Feeley says, moments where “you see visual art coming together with music to create very immersive experiences which make the most of that kind of collectivity you only really get at a festival”.
Featuring a mix of crossover practitioners such as artist-musicians Duncan Marquiss and Jenny Moore, the festival is part of Jupiter Artland’s programme of supporting artists at all stages of their careers.
It builds on the success of previous, smaller artist-led festivals, and numbers are capped under 1000 to ensure the “best possible experience for people attending and for the artists performing,” says Feeley. The entire sculpture park will be “activated” the following day, she adds, with all-ages artist workshops, performances, a programme of films curated by the artists and the Scottish Queer International Film Festival, woodland dining and even swimming in the park’s glassy lakes.
The creativity of 1970s/1980s New York will be celebrated throughout, with programmes dedicated to late composer Julius Eastman and choreographer Trisha Brown, who died in 2017. In August, some of Brown’s most striking works will be reconceived for Jupiter Artland as In Plain Site as part of the Edinburgh International Festival. Opening in July, Jupiter Artland’s main summer exhibition will chart the development of Brown’s practice with materials from her moving image archive.
“She was massively influential,” says Feeley. “She made dance pieces which took place on lakes, in wetlands, on city streets in New York. There is a little nod to her spirit threaded through Jupiter Rising.”
August 23 to 25, Jupiter Artland, Wilkieston, Edinburgh, weekend tickets £65 to £85, under-13s free. www.jupiterrising.art Trisha Brown Dance Company – In Plain Site: August 9 to 11, 8pm, £25. Trisha Brown: Time, Space, Gravity: July 27 to September 29, £8.10, concs available. www.jupiterartland.org
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