EDINBURGH.- A season of events, activities and workshops which celebrate creativity and inspire hope, lightness and joy will open the new season at Jupiter Artland this week. The Happiness Series creates moments for escape and dreaming together in the beautiful Jupiter Artland landscape.

Nicky Wilson, Founder and Director, Jupiter Artland, said, “We are delighted to open our 2024 programme with such a range of joyful events and exhibitions ahead. Experience luscious and textured paintings and sculptures, relax with a wild swim, or join for one of our workshops set to take place in the artland – we look forward to welcoming you this season”

Included are peaceful explorations of nature using sound, movement and meditation, to playful and imaginative creative activities. Take part in a laughter workshop or try out yoga with the resident goats. This series takes inspiration from Laura Aldridge and Andrew Sim’s joyful exhibitions, open from 11 May at Jupiter Artland, featuring luscious colour, texture, rainbows and forests. From Easter weekend to the summer solstice celebration in June, visitors are encouraged to book now for Wild Swimming Wednesdays and a behind-the-scenes studio visit with artist Andrew Sim, with further events available to book soon. For more conventional swimmers, Jupiter Artland's regular Gateway bathing sessions - public and private - can be booked online via the website again for this season.

From May, Laura Aldridge’s installation brings together the cosmic with the everyday to create a world filled with fictions, songs, luscious colour and sensual texture. This new work spans a range of spaces at Jupiter Artland, including the pond and three loveseats for visitors to pause during a visit. LAWNMOWER creates a space “where materiality might absorb or encourage certain feelings”. Aldridge’s varied artistic activities are imbued with a sense of freedom and play, leaving space for audiences' own interpretations and feelings.

An exhibition of new paintings by Andrew Sim will also open in May. Born in Glasgow, Sim now lives and works between New York and London. Sim’s new paintings will transform The Ballroom into a dreamlike forest, with plants and trees growing beneath rainbows and star-studded skies. Their practice draws upon their everyday experience, conscious and unconscious, simultaneously creating forms and characters that represent Sim’s experience of Queerness. Winged horses, sunflowers, rainbows and werewolves all feature in this painted mythology. This exhibition of brand new work continues Sim’s exploration of trees, roots, networks and growth, with works made on-site at Jupiter and at the artist’s London studio. It will be the artist's biggest exhibition to date in Scotland.