There has been quite a lot of exhibitions opening the last few weeks, the highlight of a week past Friday being Pockets of Landscape in the Lower Foyer Gallery at DOJ which included fellow classmate Hayley Mathersin it. All the work in it was lovely, sharing a quite, subtle, contemplative feel, focusing on objects and drawing.

After that there was the Alex Frost opening at the DCA which I did enjoy. His portraits are stunning and the methods he uses to produce his “2d” work is quite stunning. The noses were interesting although I fear lost a little charm out of their original residence of a water reservoir outside Glenfiddich distillery. It was hard not to enjoy the exhibition, especially with a whisky cocktail in hand!

The DCA was followed by a mysterious event at Tayside Recyclers entitled Miscellaneous Enquiries, featuring 8 female Dundee artists. There was a bit of secrecy around this event, but sharing a studio with half of them did result in bits of jigsaw coming together in my head to make it not such a mystery as to those involved ;) It was an excellent night! We were all handed a lab coat when we went in, making us, the viewer, feel part of the event itself and thus engaging their audience automatically. They had a mock job interview we could take part in, film projections of the artists themselves and the Tayside Recyclers staff, the dissection of Jelly Beans, and a sound performance utilising, mainly, exercise machines of sorts. I have a few photos uploaded over in the gallery at dundeefineart2010.co.uk.

This last Friday also saw a few exhibition opening. The first was Moving Images At The Attic Archive at the Cooper Gallery at DOJ. I got through a couple of the film pieces and plan to visit again in the following weeks. There is a good amount of things to keep you occupied. The Attic Archive itself is related to Peter Haining, who we had an artist talk from in 3rd year and who was at the last Cupar Arts Festival, with part of his archive. The stuff at Cupar was mainly literature that was a highlight and included quite a few publications I wouldn’t mind in my own collection. More info on The Attic Archive is here.

After that there was Billow Bellow, an exhibition of Deilia Baillie and Lee O’Connor, both of whom were 1st year tutors of mine. It was rather good, mainly paintings with a few photographs by Delia. I loved the paintings, there is a quality to Lee’s that make me instantly connect to them, and Delia’s have always impressed me. Also could not help noticing the flat they were exhibiting in had an amazing ceiling and entranceway, which joined with a couple of musicians in the background made it a good evening.

This was all then topped of with a visit to the union metal night \m/ The next Distorted is the last one of the (academic) year, which is a sobering though since it is on May 7th, effectively degree show time, technically the last one ever for me (I doubt I’ll venture back outwith studentdom) and possible summer weather will be occurring. Better get on with that to-do list!

I was really looking forward to Francisco Lopez’s and it did not disappoint. The sounds were played while we all sat in darkness, blindfolded. It was pretty amazing, immense and intense, and just swept over you. My only complaint was I felt the more “extreme” sounds could have been pushed further – played for longer, or louder, but then that might just be me liking them reverbrating through my body. Also people fidgeting around you is never good! That was my only main issue, even with a blindfold it was hard to completely shut off from everything, and the awareness of people around you.

What I love most is that it is soley about the sound, and in terms of art practice I like how the visual aspect is taken away. You can still, obviously, visualise in your mind, but you are doing so reacting to sound alone. The absence of imagery, whether film or otherwise, means you are not influenced in how you interpret the sound – you react to the sound and the sound alone.

Anyhow, it was ♥

I currently do not have much to say. Uni has been quite busy, considering it is only the end of Week 3, it feels a lot longer. As part of our speakers programme we had a talk by Patrick Elliot, the curator of Tracey Emin’s retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. He gave a balanced and honest account of Tracey Emin which was refreshing to listen to. As yet I have not had the chance to visit the exhibition but plan to do so before it closes. I am unsure whether I will like it, mixed reactions from people I know, so it’s hard to predict what side I will fall on.

Our second talk was by Arika who are behind the Kill Your Timid Notion exhibition and festival at the DCA, which is basically about sound & vision, exploring the relationships between what you see and hear. It quite good, the guy giving the talk is clearly enthusiastic about what he is doing and made it an interesting talk. He did say “I put it to you” enough times to be noticeable though, which was rather amusing. The exhibition side of KYTN has, firstly, Paul Sharits’ Epileptic Seizure Comparison; explanation here which I found quite interesting – if you did not know you had epilepsy you would after viewing this! Clearly uncomfortable on first entering on both eyes and ears, but after a while my brain sort of got used to it and it stopped bothering me as such, although the flickering of the film did make me stop looking directly at it. My oncoming state of “calm” surrounding my viewing of it made me decide I should leave, as I was getting slightly unnerved. The second exhibit is Figment Light by Kjell Bjørgeengen; simple description is that it consists of “white noise” both visually on numerous tv screens and the sound; better explanation here. I liked the sound in this one, and having just come out of the previous, it is definitely a calming in comparison. Sounds wise I liked it, visually I was less converted, I would have been happy with experiencing the sound minus the TVs being in sight, because the visual association basically did nothing for me. Seemingly there is another exhibit by Felix Hess, but that might be where the DCA could signpost things a little better, because one I did not know it was there, and two, where on earth it is in the building!

The festival part of it has been ongoing over this weekend, and I’m hoping to catch a couple of things tomorrow night, namely Francisco Lopez and Seth Cluett, so lets hope I manage to get into town for it.