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.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz - Post Military Cinema - Transmission Gallery

The poetic and slightly disturbing visions in Transmission Gallery's Post-Military Cinema by Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, staged as part of Glasgow International 2014, remain within me now two weeks on. Santiago Muñoz's three screen projection permeates through the upper gallery space presenting a cross-referencing abstracted narrative of the ruins of Roosevelt Roads, a US Naval Base no longer operational on the coastal Puerto Rican town Ceiba. Santiago Muñoz presents carefully crafted shots of lizards scuttling across empty concrete spaces, shots of trees over-running what once would have been a controlled area, and we follow Pedro Ortiz Pedraza who we're told is a teacher and theatre actor, as well as a member of one of the families that was evicted from the land decades ago by the navy, through the forest as he makes a plea to the orishas 'give my enemies eyes with which to see so that they might not take mine out'. 


On the surface these films tell the story of an abandoned space, but Santiago Muñoz highlights the events that remain. Santiago Munoz records the light that shines into the old cinema space for up to an hour each day projects its own moving images of the growing trees moving outside. Downstairs, light and destruction again stamp their creative voice, this time through a 35mm film found in Ceiba's cinema and now projected as slides in Gallery 2; the original images faded and re-made by rain, heat and light. A vinyl record produced with recordings from both Peurto Rico and Scotland accompanies the exhibition, you can hear it downstairs interacting with the whir of the carousel slide projector, the sounds of still operating military base Faslane accompany recordings from Ceiba, and the newly opened airport at the site.


Post Military Cinema deconstructs a situation using methodologies intrinsic to cinema/film/sight. The works collectively present a new space for reflection on what this site meant and what it could become now, perceived individually they would inform and reshape our understanding of cinematography. Perhaps in part because of Santiago Muñoz’s six-week residency at Transmission in 2013 the works make sense of the gallery spaces. The exhibition is curated so that the relationship between works and the delicate frustration you feel while intently watching one screen yet entirely missing the projection directly behind you and still only stealing glances of the refracted sun rays and seascapes in the next closest projection, becomes analogous to an exploration of the site itself. Perhaps this also suggests the frustration implicit in this type of film making, for attempting to record these fleeting moments before the next 'event' occurs and changes them entirely must be an on-going process of consideration, judgement and patience.

Beatriz Santiago Muñoz - Post Military Cinema at Transmission Gallery continues until 22 May 2014. More information: http://www.transmissiongallery.org

Currently working on...

SHIFT

As of now.

Currently working as...

So, my last post said I would start working on SHIFT and leave Exhibitions DJCAD in September, however the plan changed a lot and in fact I stayed full-time until, well, yesterday! Now I'm on a new part-time contract I'll have more time to focus on projects of my own while still working on the fantastic exhibitions we have coming up with Exhibitions DJCAD.

It was wonderful to work through the full cycle of Georgina Starr's Before Le Cerveau Affamé - the Opening Ceremony Performance, the exhibition, the production of a new artist's book, and the Salon of the Voice created a complex and mysterious world that fed our 'hungry brains' with Starr's own tarot system, bubble gum brains, ceramic cats, surreal film and French poetry.

Naiza Khan's Disrupting the Alignment opens today, a filmic installation that takes the structures, geography and stories of Manora Island off the coast of Pakistan as a point for exploration of the social, economic complexities at play in contemporary Pakistan.

Currently working as...

Currently working as Curatorial Assistant with Cooper Gallery, Exhibitions at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design.

Having worked there since April, I've had the opportunity to see through the Undergrad Degree Show and a Centre for Artists' Books exhibition at Centrespace, and now we're working towards the Masters Show and Knife Edge Press: The Complete Works (so far) with Bruce McLean and Mel Gooding, as well as preparing for a really exciting interdisciplinary exhibition later in the year and making preparations and funding applications for future projects. It gives me the brilliant opportunity to learn about different stages in project development.

I'll be working until early September and by then it'll certainly be time to take stock of everything I've learned! Sophia Hao, Curator and Andrew Dodds, Technical Manager have been incredible sharing their knowledge and experience, whether it's in answer to small queries or by helping me to think through larger or more complicated situations.

Then from September I'll focus on SHIFT which is the project I'm curating with the funding I was granted by Dundee Visual Artists Awards. I hope to hold the exhibition towards the end of October, which should allow me to spend time in the run up working on it full-time. There are a few people already on board who I'm looking forward to working with, but I will also have a Call Out for artists soon.

Fun A Day Dundee, 2013

Last year Morgan Cahn brought Fun A Day to Dundee inviting individuals to pick a project to do each day of the month of January, and then submit their work for a celebratory group exhibition. 2013 saw it return with 38 people taking part, myself included: I decided to use the project to kick-start re-learning French.

'Un peu quelque chose francais, chaque jour'

I studied French at high school, though I never got to the stage where I was confident in being able to hold a conversation in the language. Aware that my skills would only continue to diminish, Fun A Day seemed like the perfect opportunity to return to my learning before forgetting everything entirely. 

Easing my way back into the language, I spent January watching French tv, reading Le Monde, remembering grammar rules, emailing a friend in French and booking/planning a trip to Paris in February! I created a zine to document some of the things I'd been up to and wrote everything in French, including my to-do list for my trip to Paris.

Image courtesy of Scotsman-In-Hawaii 

There was a vast variety of work for Fun A Day, which is part of what makes it such a brilliant project to take part in - almost nothing would seem out-of-place so you can really take your own idea and run with it. 

The Celebratory Exhibition was held at Roseangle Cafe Arts, Feb 8th from 6-9pm. There was such a great atmosphere made by people bustling around talking about the works, (trying to see as many as possible over the evening) all interspersed by the sounds of the flute whenever Matt-R was summoned by ringing a bell and later in the evening there was a performance by Playground Tactics. Then we joined up with folk from the DCA's Jutta Koether Seasons and Sacraments exhibition preview for a lot of dancing at an After-Party at Redd. Fun A Day, 2013 certainly got the year off to a great beginning... ensuite j'irai a Paris!

Zoo As A Gallery, Camperdown Conversations

In January, 2013 Beth Savage and I met to discuss the concept of the zoo as a gallery - what could this mean? What would we consider? What would we challenge? 

Before holding our conversations, we decided upon six topics to act as focal points for our discussions - value, aesthetics, roles and symbols, site/situation/proximity, the gaze and ethics - and each put forward a text relating to our thinking about individual topics. The conversations weren't confined to the topics and texts we presented but were often guided by them, so that the six conversations have overlaps but are distinct in their content.

We made notes on screen prints Beth has worked on as part of her Residency at Camperdown Wildlife Centre. Toy animals explored the words as we explored our thoughts on the ethical considerations of animals in art, life, zoos etc. This project will continue to evolve. As yet it has no determined end-point, or aim, but I expect that once we listen back to the conversations we will have more of a sense of what route it could take.

Our day of conversation was recorded and can be heard by following this link from Beth's blog, there are also details of the texts/articles we read.

Student Curatorial Team: Currency of Ideas Workshop

Alongside Holly Knox Yeoman, I recently devised a workshop for students of Exhibitions DJCAD's Student Curatorial Team of which we were members while studying in Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. Holly and I blogged on Exhibitions, DJCAD's blog about the two afternoons, Afternoon 1 and Afternoon 2.

The workshop, SCT: A Currency of Ideas was structured to take place over two afternoons. The first explored curatorial models and highlighted experiences that have so far been key to our understanding of curation. (This included talking about Collection(s) Part 1 and Part 2 which we worked on during our 4th year of University). The second afternoon facilitated the sharing, exchanging and improving of ideas for potential exhibitions and projects between the student members of the team. 

Great ideas were put forward and discussed amongst the team who are now continuing to develop them. I look forward to seeing how their exhibitions and projects develop over the next few months!