Scotland is to return with a show of contemporary art to the Venice Biennale, the world's most prestigious visual arts festival, in 2017.

The organisers of this year's show, by Glasgow based artist Graham Fagen, have committed to continuing Scotland's individual presence at the Biennale for its next edition.

Creative Scotland funds the Scottish presence in Venice with £350,000, the funds covering an eight month long exhibition which lasts through the summer and into the autumn.

The backers of Scotland + Venice, also including the National Galleries of Scotland and the British Council, remain convinced that Scotland deserves and needs a show at the Biennale, in which dozens of countries and "collateral" events stage exhibitions in the Italian canal city.

Scotland has staged its own show at the festival since 2003.

The UK main pavilion is in the Giardini gardens of the festival, which opens this week.

The organisers believe that Scotland's success and talent in contemporary art - artists and curators, galleries and arts organisations - merits a display at this international showcase seen by hundreds of thousands of visitors.

Three Scottish and Scotland-based artists who showed work as part of Scotland + Venice, Simon Starling, Martin Boyce and Duncan Campbell, went on to win the Turner Prize after showing at Venice.

Fagen's show, currently showing at the Palazzo Fonata, is to be shown in Scotland in 2016.

Curators Hospitalfield Arts, of Arbroath, are to stage the show in Leith, near or in its docks.

Inspired by Robert Burns' Slaves Lament, from 1792, Fagen's show features a huge bronze rope tree, works with ink on paper, clay and enamel, and a major musical and visual installation featuring a collaboration with classical, dub and reggae artists.

The main hall, with a tilted terrazzo floor and two Murano glass chandeliers, holds the Rope Tree.

The four and a half metre tall tree, it is formed from rope but cast from bronze.

The coir rope tree, fashioned from 1o separate sections, was made by Powderhall Bronze of Edinburgh.

The rope, a reference to the architectural maritime detail found both in Venice and Hospitalfield, also points to the history of slavery which Burns song also references.

Fagen, born in 1966, has recorded Burns' 1792 song with Scottish composer Sally Beamish, the voice of reggae artist Ghetto Priest, noted 'dub' music producer Adrian Sherwood, and musicians from the Scottish Ensemble.

On four video screens, images of the artists play in pin-sharp video while the sound, expertly produced and mixed by Sherwood, resonates around the four hundred year old room.

A limited edition 10inch record has been pressed of the song.

The show is inspired by that Burns song but also the poet's life - in 1786 he booked a passage to Jamaica, where he would have been an overseer of slaves.

However the bard changed his mind, perhaps influenced by the success of his first book.

This version of the Slaves Lament was recorded in the City Halls in Glasgow, and mixed and produced by Sherwood at his studios in Ramsgate, Kent.

Lucy Byatt, director of Hospitalfield, the Arbroath house and arts centre which is curating the show, said: "When we bring this show to Edinburgh, it won't be exactly the same, it will be reworked and resonate in a different way.

"It will be in spring 2016 and our aim is to find a space in the docks in Leith, a space that has a maritime history, and re-install the show in similar form."

The Palazzo Fontana is being used as a Biennale venue for the first time.

The national pavilions of the UK, and countries such as France and Germany, will open to the press today at the main Giardini (gardens) site.

The first Biennale took place in 1895 and this year more than 80 countries are holding exhibitions, with more than 40 'collateral' events, such as Scotland + Venice.

The last Biennale of art attracted more than 475,000 visitors.

The show runs from May 9 to November 22.