Scotland's show at the world's most prestigious visual arts festival, the Venice Biennale, is to be shown in Edinburgh next spring.

A venue in Leith, near or in its docks, will be the home for the exhibition by Glasgow based artist Graham Fagen, which has now been unveiled to the world's press.

Inspired by Robert Burns' Slaves Lament, from 1792, Fagen's show, the official 'Scotland + Venice'event at the festival, 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.

Based at a new venue for the Biennale,the 16th century Palazzo Fontana, the melancholic sounds of strings and the words of Robert Burns' The Slaves Lament drift from room to room and out onto the Grand Canal.

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 10 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 Slaves Lament is not certain to have been written by Burns, but it is often attributed to the national bard, with lines sung from the point of view of a slave.

Ms Byatt said: "I think the show is a really interesting, emotional and a fantastic development in Graham's works, and its an opportunity to give his work the platform he needs now.

"However, what I am really looking forward to is audiences coming in and experiencing it and getting their feedback on it."

In two rooms of the palace Fagen has made pictures and sculptures, entitled Scheme for Lament and Scheme for our Nature.

Scheme for our Nature features sculptures adorned with casts and moulds of Fagen's hands, face and teeth in clay and ceramics coated in metallic lustre.

The faces resemble death masks, and are like three dimensional takes on Scheme for Lament, a picture gallery hung with a series of ghostly self portraits spattered in colourful Indian ink.

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.

Creative Scotland have given £350,000 towards the show, which runs from May 9 to November 22.

Scotland has had its own show, separate from the UK Pavilion, since 2003.