The Arts Diary: Visit Jupiter to see 10,000 red, red roses, newly strewn in June By Roger Cox Published on Thursday 26 April 2012 00:00 Things are set to take a turn for the trippy at Jupiter Artland next month, as Paisley-born Turner Prize nominee Anya Gallaccio moves in for the summer. The contemporary sculpture garden on the outskirts of Edinburgh already has something of an Alice in Wonderland feel to it, thanks to an assortment of mindbending landforms by Charles Jencks and works like Anish Kapoor's gigantic hole in the ground, Suck, and Cornelia Parker's nine-metre tall replica shotgun propped against a tree, Landscape with Gun and Tree. Even in this surreal company, however, the works Gallaccio has in mind should stand out from the crowd. In the Jupiter Artland gallery space, from 11 May, Gallaccio plans to install a piece called Red on Green - a field of 10,000 red Grand Prix roses. Arts administrator Ailsa Boag explains: "What she does is cuts the head off the roses, lays the stems down and then places the roses on top - that's why it's called Red on Green." She's laying them on the 10th, the day before we open, so when we open on the 11th they'll be fresh. Then, on 21 June, we're opening her permanent piece in the woods. By then the roses should be... well... quite dead. The decomposing roses, says Boag, will probably end up being used to fertilise Jupiter's luscious gardens - those lucky shrubs will never have had such a gourmet feast in their lives. And Gallaccio's permanent piece in the woods? That's right, you guessed it: she's going to create an underground healing chamber filled with amethyst crystals. Obvious, really, when you think about it. Transport of delight While we're on the subject of surreal goings-on, the programme for this year's Edinburgh International Magic Festival was launched with a flourish yesterday at Lothian Buses" Central Depot in Edinburgh. In what was touted as one of the biggest illusions ever attempted in Scotland, the festival's artistic director Kevin McMahon transformed a double-decker bus into a cloud of paper butterflies. Edinburgh City Council are reportedly keen to see if he can also turn a heap of broken promises into a fully functioning tram network. Headliners at this year's festival include Italian clown-magician Tino Fimiani, German juggler Jeton, card ninja Jav Jarquin, Scots mindreader Drew McAdam and mute conjuror Voronin, intriguingly described as a "Dracula-cum-Casanova" from the Ukraine. The festival will be held in various venues around the city, including the Royal Lyceum Theatre, the Scottish Storytelling Centre, the Traverse Bar and the Voodoo Rooms, from 29 June until 6 July. Spring in the Garden There are two kinds of art works: those which are suitable for bouncing up and down on and those which are not. Firmly in the former category is Jeremy Deller's inflatable Stonehenge, Sacrilege - his contribution to Glasgow International, currently entertaining kids large and small on Glasgow Green. In the latter category, meanwhile, is Hard Rain: Whole Earth?, an outdoor exhibition of photographs on an environmental theme by photographer Mark Edwards, on show at Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden until 1 July. The pictures are displayed on large PVC banners, stretched between metal frames about two feet off the ground, and tilted towards the viewer at an angle of roughly 45 degrees. With this year's Rio Earth Summit fast approaching, it is hoped that the show will "illustrate the urgent need to find new ways of showing political and business leaders the public swell of support for sustainable development." Many of the pictures are stunning and their message could hardly be more important, but the show's curators currently have more prosaic things to worry about: namely the fact that junior art-lovers have started using the exhibits as sideways trampolines. Visitors to the exhibition are currently met with a barrage of orange signs stuck into the grass, asking them to prevent their offspring from bouncing around on the art. Given the height of the banners, though, and how obviously bouncy they are, I reckon it's going to take more than a few signs to keep the three year-olds of Edinburgh at bay. Perhaps rather than signs, staff at the Botanics should simply install safety netting to catch all the airborne toddlers.