Hidden Door 2025 is set to fill The Paper Factory with incredible and varied visual art from all disciplines.

Each piece responds to the overarching theme of Building as Myth and the sub themes of Transformation and Reclamation, Time and Memory, Rituals and New Narratives and Feminisation and Re-imagining the space.

Join us on a virtual walk into The Paper Factory as we introduce some of the artists preparing work for the festival...

The factory floor is the largest we’ve ever had available for a Hidden Door event. Visual Art can be found in all the nooks and crannies you will explore during your visit, and we are also showing large-scale site specific installations which will be impossible to miss!

Amongst the first work for visitors to discover, in the Office Block which you’ll enter as you arrive on site, Rohanie Campbell-Thakoordin presents art inspired by the The Paper Factory’s health and safety manual, discovered in the dust. Olivier Julien’s video piece is nearby, an archival work of his drum performance to Peter Lilley’s infamous 1992 Tory party conference speech “I’ve Got a Little List”.

The Long Room plays host to Laura McGlinchey’s interactive “Trash Cave”, an exciting piece with multiple pathways to explore. The Cave, made entirely of everyday waste, will be a memorable exhibit.

Iona Peterson’s “High Tide” transforms her exhibition space into an otherworldly shoreline where meticulously crafted jellyfish appear stranded on a concrete floor, as if abandoned by a recently receded tide. Nearby, Adam Hogarth’s “Battle Cat” features 20 six-foot canvases that continue the theme of environment and global disaster.

MNDMTH (AKA Stuart Brown) will also be located here. He brings an ambitious project featuring projections of images of the factory, which will be animated by live drumming performances activating the projections over the weekend. “Helter Skelter” by Paul Meikle will be one of the largest pieces to discover, using pieces of the old Helter Skelter from Montgomery Street Park in Leith to create new large-scale sculptures.

Sculpture dominates certain areas of the site and other highlights include Molly Wickett’s “Other Light Sources” featuring large scale charred wood and found waste. The resulting landscape explores the apocalypse and dereliction of sites as endings of hope, not of finality. 

Muireann Nic an Beatha presents “Layers of Care“, a multi-disciplinary piece is sculpted from bioplastic. It reimagines the creation of plastics as a slow, ritualistic, and symbolic act,  inviting audiences to engage with the process of bioplastic creation, reframing this typically industrial act as one of intimate, hands-on craftsmanship.

Lucas Chih-Peng Kao and Katanari present “Creaturim: The Lost Ones“, featuring sculpted creatures, video, soundscape, drawing and various objects housed in a handmade cabinet by Edinburgh based maker Emily Martineli. Laura Mulholland’s playful series of sculptures, “Undercooked thoughts and dreams“, embody the fluid, fragmented nature of incomplete thoughts, fleeting memories, and speculative ideas of the future.

The Loading Bay is home to another ambitious piece, “Dreamwormers” by Silas T. Parry which goes from floor to the ceiling rafters. Tom Fairlamb’s intriguing sculpture can also be found on the Factory Floor – “The Current Current of Current“ is an installation consisting of 60 motorised minnows flipping and flopping on the floor.

Dorsey Kaufmann’s “Ripple Effect” plays with the effects of water and its patterns. Speakers will play “data soundtracks” that vibrate water held in attached trays, creating unique patterns known as water cymatics, allowing participants to simultaneously hear and see data materialised before them.

Ewan Douglas will show three pieces including his latest work, “Feeder”, a thought-provoking installation inspired by societies ideas of unity and the paradox of the plight of refugees.

As you move through these areas you will also find a short film by Claire Marion Black, projected at an almost life-sized scale, creating an imposing visual presence while inviting intimate engagement. Izzy Osborne’s “Gaia Alterpiece” is a monumental triptych inspired by the iconic Ghent Altarpiece that serves as a contemporary meditation on humanity’s relationship with the natural world. 

Next, take time to inspect eight unique pieces crafted by Gosia Walton from luminous acrylic sheets. Each semi-transparent surface has been meticulously etched, engraved and rastered with organic forms that appear suspended within the material – creating an ethereal effect. Here too, Juliana Capes’ inventive site-specific work Rainbow Pool transforms a hole in the ground using rainbow coloured beach balls.

“The Forge” installation by Jaxx Waygood and Fiona Oliver-Larkin will be rolled outside and brought to life with a ritualistic 20-minute performance that incorporates live blacksmithing, with hot, glowing metal transformed into puppets amid steam, water, and sound. David Lemm displays ‘Formworks’ using reclaimed materials from Leith’s tramline development. 

Jo McDonald’s “Archive”  is an installation that poetically interprets the concept of library shelves, whilst Jackie Bell’s “Rampart” plays with the idea of protection with her display of a commanding curtain constructed from interwoven strips of rich red fabric, suspended by iron hooks from an industrial iron bar.

Felicity White’s imposing “Tower” will be a feature of the Crane Shed, a striking structure taking the form of a pyramidal tower crafted from industrial-organic hybrid materials, whilst April Lannigan’s “Marked Paper“ uses the walls of the space as part of the work, allowing the site’s inherent textures to guide the artwork’s development.

Back on the Factory Floor, a wall of prints and paintings inspired by childbirth are presented by Sam Sharma, and Sue Sim joins the painters displaying nearby with “Echoes of Circles”, exploring the curious, unearthly beauty of lichens, fungi and mosses.

Vicky Higginson‘s “Arrows of Time” explores memory and perception through the symbolism of arrows and feathers, while Valerie Reid’s “Lapse” provides another new installation for visitors to ponder, using remnants of life in The Paper Factory before it emptied, looking to a different, imagined future.

Multi-media is also used to great effect by Waad Al-Bawaardi’s sound installation “Morphogen, which uses creative programming to simulate an ever-evolving digital ecosystem, and Sweaetshops‘ “IMPERSON”, their provocative 15-track music video piece, recorded over several years.

Visual Art at Hidden Door 2025 will be completely free to explore from Thursday to Sunday, 1-6pm.

Tickets for the evening programme, from 6pm-1am every night, are available now.