Two Art Exhibitions in Edinburgh

On Thursday I went to two art exhibitions:

North Light - Contemporary Photography (on until 8 June at the City Art Centre ) is a varied and interesting collection. A lot of the photos on show are social commentary, ranging from black and white photos of Edinburgh in the 1960s to more recent vibrantly colourful photos of a Sikh wedding ceremony. My favourites were the black and white photos taken in Orkney - Thomas Joshua Cooper's stark landscape of part of the Old Man of Hoy and Albert Watson's series of photos of stones - a standing stone and large scale close ups of ancient mortar and pestle. I left wishing more photos had been on show....

Across the road from the City Art Centre in the Fruitmarket Gallery was an exhhibition of works from Lucy Skaer (on until 9 July). Skaer's work is varied and interesting but sometimes feels to me to be too experimental, just for the same of being experimental. The highlight for me was her large scale reworking of the iconic Japanese print of the Great Wave by Katsushika Hokusai , her version is entirely made up of grey spirals of various sizes - the exhibition is worth going to purely for this piece.