The National Galleries of Scotland are excited to announce Halloween: By Night.

The National Galleries of Scotland are excited to announce Halloween: By Night, the third event in the 2013 By Night series, inspired by Witches & Wicked Bodies and headlined by The Eccentronic Research Council ft Maxine Peake.

The Eccentronic Research Council are a self-styled collective of artists, sound designers, experimental pop performers led primarily by Sheffield musicians Adrian Flanagan and Dean Honer (formerly of The All Seeing I). The band have performed at various venues across the UK are we are very excited to see them add the National Galleries to their list of performance spaces.

The gig at the Scottish National Gallery on 31 October 2013 will include a performance, in full, of the ERC’s 2012 record 1612 Underture. The 14-track collaboration with British actress Maxine Peake is inspired by the tale of the Pendle witch trials and compliments the thematic Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art show, Witches & Wicked Bodies, which charts 500 years of the depiction of witches in art. The narration on the album performed by Peake, which will be reinterpreted for the Halloween performance, is based around a (part fictional) account of a psycho-geographical trip taken by a priest and a nun from Salford to Pendle to learn more about the town's most notorious daughters.

Maxine Peake is well known for her extensive work across British Film and TV. From the first series of Shameless alongside James McAvoy and Anne Marie Duff to Victoria Wood’s Dinnerladies. Peake’s recent TV work includes the BBC crime series Silk and STV’s The Village.

The event, in the form of all By Night events, will provide a unique opportunity to explore the Gallery in a new light, after hours, with bars, music and performers. There will be poetry readings by Blake Morrison, rediscovering his work on the Pendle witches, alongside Tarot readings, DJ Fudge Fingas and the film The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Other Halloween happenings are to be confirmed.

Halloween: By Night 

Tickets are £12
31 October 2013, 7.15pm – 10pm at the Gardens entrance of the Scottish National Gallery.

By Night from the National Galleries of Scotland

Listen to ‘Maxine’s Dream’ from 1612 Underture.

Witches & Wicked Bodies

Maxine Peake and the ERC on the Culture Show February 2013.