Aberdeen Exhibition and Conference Centre (AECC), is a large exhibition and conference complex, in Aberdeen, Scotland. The complex is home to a Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express hotel, conference facilities and the 4,800-seat multi-purpose Press & Journal Arena, which can hold around 4,000 to 8,500 people, depending on the size of the performance.
The arena currently hosts local sporting events, including the Aberdeen Cup tennis event.
In recent years, the AECC underwent a major refurbishment, with the conference facilities being completely re-built. As part of the redevelopment, a large viewing tower was constructed and is one of the tallest structures in Aberdeen.
Oasis have played several times over the years – their first being two performances on the 19-20 September 1997. They returned for another two gigs on the 9-10 September 2002 and once more on the 12 December 2005. They performed their most recent, and probably last concerts at the venue on the 1–2 November 2008. All these gigs were sold out in a matter of minutes. Noel Gallagher returned to the venue on the 14 February 2012 as part of his High Flying Birds Tour. The concert was a sell-out.
Neil Young and AC/DC are some the biggest acts in its history when AC/DC played in 1996 and Young in 2009.
Status Quo regularly play at the AECC in December.
In the last few years it has hosted major international acts including the likes of blink-182 Rihanna, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, The Killers, Hey Ocean, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga as well as comedians Frankie Boyle, Ricky Tomlinson and Peter Kay.
The arena has also played host to Premier League Darts, WWE wrestling events, Torville and Dean, Disney on Ice, World Snooker's Grand Prix Championship, The X Factor Live Tour and The Britain's Got Talent Live Tour.
Famous quotes containing the words exhibition, conference and/or centre:
“Work, as we usually think of it, is energy expended for a further end in view; play is energy expended for its own sake, as with children’s play, or as manifestation of the end or goal of work, as in “playing” chess or the piano. Play in this sense, then, is the fulfillment of work, the exhibition of what the work has been done for.”
—Northrop Frye (1912–1991)
“The peace conference must not adjourn without the establishment of some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees. ... Unless a league something like this results at our peace conference, we shall merely drop back into armed hostility and international anarchy. The war will have been fought in vain ...”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“In the centre of his cage
The pacing animal
Surveys the jungle cove
And slicks his slithering wiles
To turn the venereal awl
In the livid wound of love.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)