German artist Isa Genzken and fringe venue Summerhall are standouts
“Thank the dark gods for Summerhall, a true fringe venue whose name suggests the sinister Summerisle in the Hebridean horror film The Wicker Man, and whose mad exhibitions in sprawling corridors and basements fully live up to this promise. Here at last, Edinburgh shows that it too has a wild side. The ruinous grandiosity of the place is like the much-mourned Berlin art squat Tacheles. And Isa Genzken meets, if not her artistic match, then definitely a fellow decadent spirit in an exhibition of stuffed wolf heads, sleazy digital shots of sensual flesh, literally cocky paintings and rude religious art by avant garde hero and pioneer Genesis P-Orridge. Throbbing gristle is everywhere in this encounter with a lion of counterculture. Here are Mr and Mrs Hyde for real.
Edinburgh has the making of a real art city, if only it curbs its virtuous side. Dr Jekyll, sadly, was never the creative one.”