Fiona Bradley on 50 years of Edinburgh's Fruitmarket gallery

Lawrence Weiner in his exhibition in The Fruitmarket Gallery, 1986 PIC: Courtesy of Fruitmarket

Tomorrow, Fruitmarket enters its 50th anniversary year. Edinburgh’s internationally renowned contemporary art space, famous for launching artists’ careers and ground-breaking exhibitions, has been welcoming audiences for free for a remarkable half-century.

Fruitmarket has always been a place for people to come together and learn about the world through art and conversation. Since the inaugural show opened in August 1974 at a brave new public venue down by Waverley Station, some of the art world’s most famous and best-respected names have exhibited here: from Jean-Michel Basquiat – the critics weren’t quite ready for him – to David Hockney, Max Ernst, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, Phyllida Barlow, Gabriel Orozco, Yoko Ono, and Marina Abramović. And over the years Scottish artists have more than held their own alongside those from elsewhere, including Turner prize winners Martin Boyce and Martin Creed; and Alison Watt, Karla Black, Christine Borland, Nathan Coley, and Callum Innes.

It feels invidious to leave any out. The list of artists and exhibitions is long, and lines the walls of Fruitmarket’s café in a joyous celebration of the past in the present. As important as the names, though, is the kind of art Fruitmarket has stood for: generous, generative exhibitions that reveal what art can do as much as what it might mean. Sarah Wood, whose film Project Paradise is currently on show in our new warehouse gallery (until January 21), calls it “the thinking space that art can give.”

Along with its core ethos of being free to enter, Fruitmarket has always been ambitious, bringing the internationalism of contemporary art – whether made in Scotland or Zimbabwe – right into the heart of Edinburgh. There have been downs as well as ups of course, and periods when the future was in doubt, the programme faltered and the building went into hibernation. But it has always survived, and I’m proud to be part of the history of artistic directors who have brought artists and audiences together here.

Fruitmarket’s story begins when the building at 45 Market Street – built as a fruit and vegetable market in 1938 – was rescued by the Scottish Arts Council from demolition and run together with the New 57 Gallery and the Printmakers Workshop as a space for art. During this period several exhibitions were curated by the Richard Demarco Gallery, with the verve and flair we would expect. Some extracts from letters Demarco exchanged with artist Joseph Beuys in 1974 about the persistent importance of art are being featured right now on Fruitmarket’s windows: “Can the experience of art help? Can the artist play a role? Can the artist help ensure a future? The most sublime language of all, that of the artist, must be used to fight the battle for Scotland’s future.”

At the end of 1983 the Scottish Arts Council relinquished management of the building, and in 1984 Fruitmarket became independent. Mark Francis, the director, ran an ambitious, international programme until 1987, when he left to become the founding director of the new Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. He was succeeded by Fiona Macleod, who had worked closely with him. Graeme Murray followed her in 1992, and worked with Edinburgh-based Richard Murphy Architects on a major refurbishment which opened up the building to public view by creating a glass frontage for the lower level, and brought natural light into the top floor with a new winged roof.

Murphy’s decision to unite the triple purposes of an art gallery, a café and a bookshop by making these spaces interactive – the concept of a pavement level café and increased visibility to the outside linking the visitor to their surroundings – continues today. The entrance, just next to the busy station access, gained a new sense of inclusivity: a place where art combined with a chance simply to shelter from the rain, wait for a train or enjoy a good scone.

Fear Meets the Soul 2008, by Martin Boyce, who will be the subject of a major solo show at Fruitmarket in 2024. PIC: Fruitmarket

After 11 successful years, Graeme Murray left to pursue other projects and I arrived in May 2003. My brief from the board and the Scottish Arts Council was to try and expand Fruitmarket: physically, by increasing its footprint; but also culturally, broadening our audience, relevance and impact. Working together with a courageous and committed board, an imaginative and dedicated staff team, and the incredible range and quality of artists who accepted invitations to join us, we swiftly achieved cultural expansion. By 2019 we had outgrown the building and could finally start the physical expansion, working with the Edinburgh-based Reiach and Hall Architects.

The project involved taking on another former fruit and vegetable warehouse next door, one which had been run as a succession of nightclubs and was looking for a new occupant. That enabled us to double in size, improving visitor services and access and to open wonderful new spaces. Our renovated Warehouse Gallery is an impressive double storey of raw steel and brick. Since we reopened in July 2021 it has hosted dance, theatre, sculpture, cabaret, film, live music, makers’ markets and club nights, growing into a wonderful new public platform for artists and partners across the city.

Our new Learning Studio has allowed us to build an extensive range of projects with the community, among them Making Memories, our reminiscence workshops for older people; See With Me, our accessible workshops led by blind and partially sighted artists; Fresh Fruit, our award-winning peer-led youth group; and the Wonder Studio, which encourages very young children and their adults to give free rein to their creativity. It’s also a space we can offer to groups to run their own events in, and recently we have hosted film screenings by Artists for Woman Life Freedom to raise awareness about the uprising in Iran; and a Sunday Sawra with speakers, musicians and poets from the Sudanese community to raise money for those affected by the conflict inside and outside of Sudan.

On our anniversary, we have much to be proud of: 50 years as a free, public space for culture in the heart of Scotland’s capital; 50 years of helping artists bring their work to an audience, and audiences make sense of the world. We welcome everyone seven days a week, 361 days a year, with free entry, lots of toilets, an artist-designed water fountain and a great café. We show over 300 artists every year to more than 200,000 visitors. Our talks, workshops, making sessions and debates reach people aged 3 to 93. We take art outside, to Martin Creed’s fabulous multi-coloured marble Scotsman Steps, or through Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller’s acclaimed video Night Walk for Edinburgh, which is available for everyone to enjoy. Our six artists in residence in primary schools in areas less connected to the city’s cultural offer to take the spark and creativity into the heart of the curriculum.

There’s so much joy in what we do, but right now, as we try to ensure that Fruitmarket can continue to bring art to all for the next 50 years, it feels precarious. It’s no secret that times are hard, and that support for the arts, public and private, is hard to achieve and under increasing scrutiny. We’re sure that Richard Demarco was right, 50 years ago, to insist that art and artists can help ensure a future – a future for more than just the arts. Investment in artists is investment in hope, in clarity, in social justice. Art helps us come together to imagine new ways of doing things, shift conversations, make change, start afresh. Here’s to 50 more years of that.

For more information, visit www.fruitmarket.co.uk