If Venice is now at the �centre of the arts world, then Scotland is ready to take its place in the sun. The Venice Biennale, the festival regarded as the most prestigious in the art world�s calendar, gets under way this week.

If Venice is now at the centre of the arts world, then Scotland is ready to take its place in the sun.

The Venice Biennale, the festival regarded as the most prestigious in the art world's calendar, gets under way this week.

Glasgow-based artist Martin Boyce has filled seven rooms of the fifteenth-century Palazzo Pisani with a collection of installations he designed and constructed in his studios in Maryhill, Glasgow, in a large exhibition called No Reflections.

The exhibition includes large concrete stepping stones, more than 20,000 fake leaves, steel chandeliers and odd furniture.

It represents a step away from the previous showings of Scotland in Venice, where it has exhibited separately from the main British pavilion since 2003, by focusing on a single artist's work, rather than a group.

His exhibition will be shown at Dundee Contemporary Arts on its return to the UK.

Other parts of the UK exhibiting in the canal city have also now chosen a single artist to represent the country's contemporary art, or at least some part of its modern art scene.

Some 70 countries participate in the Venice Biennale, which is held every other year, in national pavilions or other exhibition space, attracting more than 400,000 visitors.

The main UK pavilion, an imposing building in the Giardini gardens, flanked by equally impressive French and German permanent pavilions, is this year being filled by work by Steve McQueen, the artist and film-maker who recently made an acclaimed movie about the IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands, while Northern Ireland is represented by Susan McWilliam, and Wales by the founder of the Velvet Underground, John Cale.

Boyce's show will run from June 7 to November 22, and is based around the idea of "the outside world blowing into the building" - filling the ancient building with objects that should not be there.

He said that he regards the show as not representing Scotland as a nation, but the community of Scottish artists within which he works.

Appearing at the Biennale for Scotland has given artists some good luck. Jim Lambie was short-listed for the Turner Prize, and Simon Starling won it in 2005. An artist in 2005's exhibition, Cathy Wilkes, was nominated for the 2008 Turner Prize. In 2007, Lucy Skaer exhibited in the Scottish show, and this year she is also short-listed for the Turner Prize.

Boyce, 41, who is regarded as one of Scotland's most prominent contemporary artists, studied at Glasgow School of Art and the California Institute for the Arts, and has had solo exhibitions in Frankfurt, London, Geneva and New York.