A Dazzle Ship in Edinburgh's docks and a new film exploring the influence of revolutionary James Connolly are to be part of this year's Edinburgh Art Festival.

The Turner Prize-nominated artist Ciara Phillips has unveiled her striking design, called Every Woman, to the vessel MV Fingal in Leith docks as part of this year's festival (EAF), in a work which celebrates the role of women during the First World War.

Dazzle Ship Scotland also commemorates the battle-ready ships that were docked at Leith 100 years ago.

Dazzle was a technique invented by the British marine artist Norman Wilkinson during the war.

Ships were covered in abstract designs and disorientating shapes to prevent the enemy from determining their range, speed and direction of travel.

There were once 2000 Dazzle Ships.

On Saturday, the ship will set sail to the Firth of Forth, where it will be docked near South Queensferry to take part in the Battle of Jutland commemorations.

On its return to Leith docks, it will be berthed facing a different direction so that public can see the other side of the boat.

Entitled Every Woman, the new work takes Phillips’ medium of screen-printing to a "new scale as she covers the entire surface of the ship with a bold gestural design" the festival said.

Phillips has drawn on untold histories of women in the First World War, inspired by the team of women who worked under Wilkinson to develop the dazzle designs.

Women also worked as telegraphists and signallers, and Phillips’ design includes a message in Morse code embedded within the design reading ‘Every Woman a Signal Tower’.

The title of the full EAF 2016 Commissions Programme this year is More Lasting than Bronze.

The boat was painted by hand with six inch rollers and a team of seven painters, including Ms Phillips, who stood on a pontoon beside the boat to paint the design.

Elsewhere in the EAF, the artist Roderick Buchanan is to create a filmed portrait of the Irish historian Owen Dudley Edwards, exploring his lifelong interest in the work and ideas of James Connolly, the Irish republican born in Edinburgh and executed in Dublin a hundred years ago, for his role in the Easter Rising.

The work will be presented in the church in which Connolly was baptised, St Patrick's, at the centre of Edinburgh’s ‘Little Ireland’ in the 19th Century.The Herald: EASTER RISING



James Connolly

Irish Republician Leader

Executed 1916 easter uprising

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Other commissions will include "a major new work reinterpreting the depiction of the female nude in sculpture" by Jonathan Owen, allowing rare access for festival visitors to the interior of the Burns Monument.

There will be a new neon installation by the Scottish artist Graham Fagen, whose work represented Scotland at the last Venice Biennale.

There will also be work by Sally Hackett’s, The Fountain of Youth and Platform: 2016, work by emerging artists The Brownlee Brothers, Paloma Proudfoot & Aniela Piasecka, Dorian Jose Braun and Jack Saunders.

Sorcha Carey, director of Edinburgh Art Festival, said: "On the occasion of the launch of Ciara Phillips’ Every Woman, co-commissioned with 14-18 NOW as part of a nationwide commemoration of the centenary of the First World War, we are delighted to reveal full details of our 2016 commissions programme, which this year reflects on the role of monuments in our city.

"More Lasting than Bronze [the commissions official title] brings together 7 artists working in Scotland and internationally to reflect on how we collectively commemorate individuals and events, and in tune with a programme which sheds light on histories and individuals who are not well remembered in the official records, we are delighted to continue to present work in several sites across the city which are not usually open to the public.”

Jenny Waldman, director of 14-18 NOW said: "Every Woman is an amazing piece of visual art that also gives occasion to reflect on a crucial moment when art contributed to saving lives in the First World War.

"It is wonderful to be working with Edinburgh Art Festival and Scottish Government to present Ciara’s extraordinary design in the place where the first bedazzled war-ready ships were docked 100 years ago".

Ciara Phillips’ Every Woman is co-commissioned by Edinburgh Art Festival and 14-18 NOW with support from the Scottish Government, Creative Scotland, City of Edinburgh Council, the Royal Yacht Britannia, the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund and by the Department for Culture Media and Sport.

Fagen's light installation will illuminate the pavements below Calton Road and the New Street Railway Bridge.

It is called A Drama in Time, and borrows its title from Sir Patrick Geddes, the biologist and town planner, who described a city as "more than a place in space, it is a drama in time".