D-AiR: Dundee Artists in Residence

The following interview took place via email between March and May 2010.

Jenny Brownrigg is Exhibitions Director at the Glasgow School of Art. Having completed her Drawing and Painting BA Hons Fine Art degree at the Glasgow School of Art (1990-94), then Masters Degree in Fine Art and Public Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design in 1996, she was volunteer at The Changing Room Stirling (1996-8), Pier Arts Centre Fellow (1999), writer-in-residence then Projects Officer at Grizedale Arts (1999-2002), artist in residence at Royston Road Projects with Molendinar Community Council, Glasgow (2002) and subsequently worked as the Curator in DJCAD Exhibitions Department from 2002 – 2009.

Q: Looking back at your time in Dundee what general comments would you make about the Dundee art scene? Is there anything that particularly stands out for you?

A: What is an art scene and what makes it? The phrase ‘art scene’ suggests from its own grammar that it is a singular entity. However, there are the multifarious activities of individuals, groups and organisations which go towards making an art scene. There is creative endeavour and the support of that endeavour (peers, financial and otherwise). The art scene is subject to ebb and flow in different combinations and comes to fruition over various time periods. There is also the local ‘real estate’ which lends itself to housing the local art scene: the art centre, the artist-led organisation, the art college, the studios, vacant premises, artist dwellings and the outlying area. Dundee’s art scene meets this fluid definition of an art scene. A time line can be marked out with the establishment of Generator Projects, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Wasps studios. These organisations have all gone towards keeping artists in the city that have predominantly studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design. There are also a number of artists operating outside these constellations; working from their own flats, such as The Lonely Piper or The Attic Archive who has clocked up thirty years of practice; or through creating their own virtual or otherwise structures to house activities such as D-AiR, ‘Yuck n Yum’ fanzine or www.ditch.org.uk. Many artists are actively making connections nationally and internationally, keeping Dundee, as all art interpretation coins it, their ‘base’ and willingly garnering the eponymous ‘lives and works in Dundee’ phrase.

Q: Interesting. Now what about specifics? How does Dundee compare with Glasgow, for example? Obviously Dundee is a smaller city. How do you see the impact of that? What are the advantages and disadvantages? Also, you once told me that the Dundee art scene was less historicised that Glasgow's, could you say something about that?

A: The recently published 'Younger than Jesus Artist Directory' subtitled as ‘the essential handbook to a new generation of artists’ (Phaidon, 2009) features 540 artists selected by more than 150 critics, artists and curators from around the globe. Out of the 14 Scotland-based artists profiled, 11 live in Glasgow, 2 in London, 1 part-time in Edinburgh. This would, taken on the statistical face of it, allude to a very short visit to Scotland if you were a ‘global’ curator making this tome their main art map. However, as is always the case, there are more subtleties at work than such a census would imply. Thinking of interesting artists, there are surely more than 11 living in Glasgow. Equally, there are more than 0 artists living in Dundee. Furthermore, there are more than 2 Scottish artists living in London. This is, of course, not counting those aged beyond ‘the new generation.’

With Dundee being the third largest city in Scotland, the ratio is indeed different. Dundee has a smaller amount of buildings dedicated to contemporary art than Glasgow. But there again it has a few more than Inverness. Due to the manageable number of arts organisations in Dundee, this lends itself to good communication and a flow between the spaces. With Dundee Contemporary Arts, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and Generator Projects, all found basically along the same road, there has never been any point in operating in splendid isolation although all three organisations’ galleries hold a different remit. As someone who worked in Dundee for 7 years, I found this to be a really positive association, in terms of potential collaborations, information exchange and practically in skill share or the borrowing of equipment! And of course, if Dundee was under the microscope, beyond the Perth Rd there are, as I mentioned, other art organisms teeming in the petri dish. The Dundee art scene can be given an active bill of health. It is also very open to new arrivals.

As someone moving to work in Glasgow, the first thing I was aware of was a comparison of how each art scene chooses to create and wear the weight of its own history. Glasgow’s contemporary art scene has articulated a clearer popular understanding of itself to a wider audience through a more complete history, picked up by the media. Glasgow Boys, Glasgow Girls, New Glasgow Boys – there has been an understanding and prevalence to create easily recognisable groups of practitioners in Glasgow, with allegiances to style or to collective action.

A more recent history has also been recorded, for example, with the publication Social Sculpture (Stop Stop, 2004) by Sarah Lowndes. This looks at art, performance and music in Glasgow, presenting a social history of independent practice, exhibitions and events in the city since 1971. Dundee does not have an equivalent tome or a similar predilection for creating larger groups of artists working under the same manifesto. I can, however, think of individual exhibitions and events in Dundee that have chosen to uncover disparate contemporary art histories, such as Dundee Contemporary Art’s 2009 exhibition ‘The Associates’ which was a survey show of 18 graduates from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design who have gone on to ‘national and international acclaim’; or 2010’s Attic Archive exhibition and event at Duncan of JordanstonCollege of Art and Design that presented an individual art practice based in Dundee spanning 30 years, and illuminated the wider networks of association through that. It should be noted that there are, of course, more nuances, alternative histories and approaches in both cities.

In Glasgow, many Glasgow School of Art Fine Art students will cite a major factor in moving to Glasgow, as the art scene and the hope to become part of it, as well as the reputation of the art school. In Dundee, students will more predominantly apply because of the reputation of the art college, then those who are interested find out about Dundee’s art scene as they move through the college.

Q: You mention what I'd call 'art infrastructure', i.e. arts organisations, good communication, flow between the spaces etc. Is there anything about the wider ecology of Dundee or its post-industrial heritage that you think leaves its mark on artwork made in the city?

A: What is the relationship between the artists and their environment and the work they make? There are a number of individual artists who are influenced by ideas and encounters with a natural ecology, who work from or live in Dundee and the surrounding area, such as The Lonely Piper, Edward Summerton, or Dalziel & Scullion. However, I would say that theirs is more predominantly an engagement with the natural world rather than their local habitat. In the case of The Lonely Piper, it is his encounter with nature imbued with Caledonian spirituality and myth. The Attic Archive is the most specific engagement I can think of where work has been made according to specific local conditions, with pieces relating to the place of Dundee and the labour of making art over a specific time period of 30 years. In the video work, Utopia, Peter Haining (of the Attic Archive) carefully balances ideas of ‘natural’ habitat for seagulls, ranging from out in nature, to the roof of the tenement across from the Attic Archive. Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design’s project 'The Nine Trades of Dundee' focuses on the people and the industrial trade environment of Dundee, inspired by ‘The Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee’. There has also been a predominance of off-site projects in flats, old warehouses and the remains of post-industrial heritage. However, I think predominantly the majority of artists make artwork that is not specific to the nature of Dundee. Perhaps they are driven more by a social ecology through the connections and collaborations they make with others and the informal infrastructure that creates.

Q: Picking up on the issue of social ecology, could you say a final something about the relationship between socially engaged art practices and more traditional (modernist) forms of artmaking? I've also got in mind, here, a question about new ways of curating i.e. moving from a culture of 'display' towards a culture of 'participation'.

A: I don’t think it’s necessarily about moving away from one mode towards another. Let all sides keep curious – curators, audience, practitioners. The umbrella of creative production is one under which we can be fickle in our complicities. As a potential participant, I know if I enter into something it can be rewarding but equally sometimes I don’t want to hold hands with the artist, lie down in public or be asked to sing in the name of art. There is a need at times, for keeping your ‘modernist’ distance. Visual participation after all is a form of participative engagement.

The social functions of contemporary art have indeed questioned the previously accepted modes of curating. Early examples of social engagement like works by Rirkrit Tiravanija set up a kind of ‘staged set’ in the gallery which offered the opportunity or a gesture indicating potential for audience participation. This might have been the gallery as a place to share a meal in or sleep in. In socially engaged practice where the importance of exchange is often not between the work and the gallery space but between people, many participatory projects have moved away from the gallery space into the public realm. However, to show the output of such activity, many socially engaged projects have been presented after the participation has occurred within the gallery space or within publication format. Showing the remnants of the action or documentation of the action has been one curatorial mode which strangely brings us back to ideas of ‘display’. However, this can set up a distance between the gallery audience and what has occurred. Why should I look at a half eaten bowl of soup I didn’t eat? Documentation also archives and in a sense historicises what has occurred – there can be a dissonance between the time it took for the activity (1/2 a day for example) and the length of a normal exhibition of the results (one month), leading to the ghosts of action remaining in the gallery space for too long. These are some of the factors, the ecology of working in this field, to consider.

For me curating is about making the connections (or discovering the dissonance) between ideas, practitioners and place. As Ellen Blumenstein said at a recent conference, ‘Curating can also be a form of knowledge production; a space that does not produce outcome or output; a space for collaboration, a space to come together and see how complicity might occur’. Ah, that last quote is back in the socially engaged ball park.