shift SHIFT shift SHIFT shift

Enjoy…! Coffee Lounge, 44-46 Albert Street, Dundee, serves as the temporary site for new works by Morgan Cahn, Becca Clark, Katie Reid, Richard Taylor and Lada Wilson on 22 June, 12.30-4.30pm.

Made in response to an understanding of the third place, a place other than or in between ‘home' and ‘workplace', the Coffee Lounge becomes studio, gallery and library hosting performance and installation over one Sunday afternoon.

For shift, I will make new works responding to what becomes the excess furniture and nooks and crannies of Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge.

What's going to shift from useful furniture to excess, and where the nooks and crannies will be, is partially to be determined. Though through making the arrangements with the Coffee Lounge owners and inviting the other artists to contribute, I have an overall idea of how their new works might fit together and I'm intrigued to see how I can extend the practical/facilitating role I am taking to make an installation. That work will also aim to function to create a more suitable space for the project, and I wonder how this will affect the reading of it as a 'work'.

shift - site visit, Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge, Dundee.

shift is shaping up.

Site visit extraordinaire today with three of the artists contributing to shift meeting me for americanos at Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge - that third place between home and work.

Morgan Cahn, Richard Taylor, Lada Wilson. NOTE-shift at Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge

Talking ensued. Some performed a meeting, sitting straight, diligently taking notes. Others transcribed their own thoughts as the site influenced plans for their work. Tables were pointed at and re-arranged in our mind's eye - yes, a singular mind's eye, shared by the four of us as we discussed shift.

Morgan Cahn's table became clothed in drawing after the ceiling lights presented to her a twisted network of highlights like a mind-map and sparked new ideas for how she would install her work.

Richard Taylor spoke of Work Done; he's already begun, much more to come. See his twitter for some photographs - one of which might appear in the Coffee Lounge in June as part of an installation to include performative readings.

We opened the blinds at our window table and looked out to the dis-used door space where Lada Wilson's 47 Words might appear as part of her inside/outside installation.

Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge, 44-46 Albert Street, Dundee.

Our conversations concluded and the artists journeyed west from Stobswell. Called over by Enjoy...! owners, Aziz and Lawra, I stayed behind and, notebook out at the ready, we three sketched a timeline for 22 June.

shift is coming soon at Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge, 44-46 Albert Street, Dundee. Put a note for 22 June, 12.30-4.30pm in your diary/notebook/a napkin/etc.

shift; (LIVE) publishing; Park Centre

Projects are brewing.
Spring is a fitting time to be thinking about what's next.
Bad good things come in threes.


shift will occupy Enjoy...! Coffee Lounge on Albert Street, Dundee, for one afternoon on Sunday 22 June.
Through an expanded notion of reading - reading works, reading spaces, reading books, reading aloud - a currency of ideas will be shared with visitors during an afternoon punctuated by performative moments. Setting aside time for quiet contemplation of the artists' works, this group exhibition ponders; if a cafe is a 'third place' between home and work, what is a coffee lounge taken over by artworks?

(LIVE) publishing, a project co-edited by myself and Sean Scott, will run throughout Cooper Gallery's Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland's exhibition and event series, which highlights the vibrant and distinctive practice of collaborative groups such as GANGHUT, Graham Fagen & Graham Eatough, Full Eye and Henry VIII's Wives. 

(LIVE) publishing will produce regular publications that annotate and reflect upon the Studio Jamming project through digital and screen printing, creating a series of editions in reaction to the project to construct an instant record, of sorts.

Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland, Cooper Gallery, 28 June - 2 August

Emma Reid and I are working towards an exhibition and events series to be held at Baxter Park's glass walled Park Centre towards the end of summer.
Framed by the site, this project engages with the poetic, utopian, and somewhat disquieting phrase, 'may meet in mutual' as declared by Sir David Baxter on the opening of the park in 1863, which he used to describe his intention that Dundee's population would meet in mutual recognition of their interdependence. The utopian perspective of this comment and the Park Centre's glass walls have inspired a transparent and democratic approach - we are experimenting with an 'open source' model of curatorial/artistic practice, attempting to uncover what this could mean. Perhaps it suggests that the process leading up to the project is widely opened up to audiences, or just the group of artists? Maybe the exhibition/public presence of the project will provide the 'source code' for a future project? Or will the online manifestation play its own distinct role?

Let's say 'tbc' for now.