Sharing Not Hoarding

Kieran Dodds 1st June – 1st August 2017

Ginger is a Scottish colloquial term of what is popularly called ‘red hair’. Scotland has the highest proportion of gingers in the world yet it remains uncommon with only 13% expressing the hair type and is a cliche of Scottish identity abroad.

This new portrait series seeks to forge physical and cultural links between the everyday Dundonian and the new V&A development and wider Waterfront Development and challenges us to reconsider superficial assumptions. The photographs depict residents of Dundee and allows them to inhabit the space between two realms, the past and the future, acting as the city’s representatives within the new landscape.

The use of a visual minority to represent a whole city raises questions of representation and perception. Does the Waterfront Development reflect the views of the everyday resident and if so which ones? There is a hidden complexity even among the supposed uniformity of this group. 

Through interview excerpts with the sitters, the viewer is invited to consider the deeper unseen complexities of supposedly simple issues. The Waterfront Development represents a complex meeting point of many Dundee voices each projecting their own personal assumptions upon the external environment that deserves greater interrogation. 

The visual language references a rich seam within art history, one that can be explored within the V&A online archives.The hair colour has held a deeply significant role in art history, most notably, but not limited to, the Renaissance and pre-Raphaelites period where central characters, often divine in nature, were red-haired. Yet it is also a type of Scottish identity, one that is familiar in a collection brought from ‘outside’.

This is a new chapter in an ongoing body of work called ‘Gingers’ that has been published globally and exhibited in the Hermitage in St Petersburg. These portraits will contribute to Kieran Dodds’ first book, planned for publication in 2018. To find out more about Kieran Dodds see here.

O Street, All Welcome Here, 2017

Design agency O Street have created a bold and colourful exhibition that incorporates badges people can wear or display to show a sign of openness to all, and celebrate diversity in Dundee and beyond. With the aim of creating a sign that works across language barriers and is simple to draw and understand, O Street settled on a design derived from a smile and two people joining hands. 

The installation spells out ALL WELCOME HERE and includes 3000 removable pin badges. The installation is a vibrant, challenging message of inclusivity. But it’s also a question to ourselves and the city. Are we ALL really WELCOME HERE? Are there limits to our openness? What would a truly open city look like? Beyond the physical installation, O Street will be working with Making Dundee Home to generate conversation around the exhibition and gather thoughts about what values and behaviours the symbol represents. 

 The badges will be installed and available to the public from 3pm on the 10th April 2017.

 If you’d like to know more about opportunities to exhibit in the context of Sharing Not Hoarding please contact us.

Welcome Symbol from O Street on Vimeo.

3rd February – 7th April 2017

Showing work by 10 artists from Dundee Print Collective: Lucia Gomez, Andrea Sayers, Kieran Milne, Tom Carlile, Sarah Burt, Fraser MacDonald, Bobby Sinclair, Annis Fitzhugh, Jonny Lyons, and Thomas Woodcock. 

Dundee Print Collective formed in 2013 following the IMPACT 8 International Printmaking Festival Conference in Dundee. The unique aspect of Dundee Print Collective is that it is a collective not just for artists and designers. Over one hundred individuals have been involved with Dundee Print Collective and many of these individuals have had no prior artistic training. Scott Hudson said, 'We're delighted to be collaborating on our first public arts project. 

Previously Dundee Print Collective have only exhibited in a gallery environment. Being part of the Sharing Not Hoarding project opens the door for our artists to convey their message and artwork to a wider audience in Dundee. We're looking forward to hearing the response.' 

 Dundee Print Collective continue to promote printmaking as a creative, social and educational method for anyone to express themselves visually. They encourage individuals to engage with future Dundee Print Collective projects. To find out more about Dundee Print Collective see www.facebook.com/dundeeprintcollective

Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg – in collaboration with NEoN Digital Arts Festival

9th November 2016 – 2nd January 2017

Working in collaboration with NEoN Digital Arts Festival Studer and van den Berg created images comprising an imaginary park. The panorama, compiled from landscapes taken from their recent installation works, was composed of digitally generated images, without any photographic elements. Most of Studer and van den Berg's projects comment on the relationship between digital imagery and the physical space we live in. The exhibition was inspired by the artists' earlier livecam installations, where visitors walk up to an outdoor viewfinder to see themselves superimposed into an artificial space in real time. For this work, the artists borrowed the image of the viewfinder to rethink a well known motif: a person peeking through a gap in the hoardings. Here the hoardings were formed by an 'impossible landscape', in contrast to the 'public space' developing on the other side. 

Visitors were asked to take photos of people looking through the central viewfinder and then send the image to sharingnothoarding.org or tweet to @weareneon. 

For more information about Studer and van den Berg's work for NEoN see northeastofnorth.com/event/passage-park-4-hotspot-shack.

Robert Orchardson 15 August to 16 October 2016 

The Substance of Things Unseen imagined a series of modernist facades based on Le Corbusier's drawings to calculate the "golden section" – a seemingly "perfect" ratio, or divine proportion. Here the "golden section" was obscured by a series of curtains and flags that subtly interrupted Le Corbusier's modernist ideal by bringing the viewer back to a potential that existed not in some unattainable utopia but in the here and now, of Slessor Gardens. 

For more information about Robert Orchardson see here.

Mhairi Anderson, Sue Beveridge, Jonathan Liddell, and Hayley Whelan – students on DJCAD's MFA course, Art, Society and Publics

16 November – 28th December 2015

This exhibition was developed by students from DJCAD's MFA course, Arts, Society and Publics. Showing a series of photographs depicting different aspects of Dundee's ongoing development, the artists used social media to generate a dialogue around two questions: 'what does regeneration mean for you?' and 'what does regeneration mean for the city?' 

 Over the course of the exhibition the artists pasted facebook and twitter responses to these questions on their original photographs, thus making an online dialogue visible within the Waterfront Development.

Jonathan Baxter and Sarah Gittins – aka Dundee Urban Orchard 

1 October to 16 November 2015

This exhibition – conceived as a 2D installation – took place at a particular moment in time, when Dundee Urban Orchard were beginning to lose faith that the Waterfront Development would include any edible landscaping. 

The exhibition, Shadow Work, drew on the writings of Ivan Illich and depicted a group of school children from Braeview Academy walking towards an elliptical shape – a hole where a tree might otherwise be planted. 

The installation reflected on the precarious nature of many socially engaged art projects and the failure of public bodies to create a sustainable future for both young and old alike. Since installing the work DUO are pleased to announce that a 'temporary' edible garden and orchard have now been planted in Slessor Gardens. See here for details.

City as Archive Owen Daily – in association with PACE and If the City were a Commons Festival

26 August – 1 October 2015

Owen Daily's posters drew upon his teaching experience with PACE projects and young people from Dundee's peripheral housing schemes. Using public domain images, Daily's posters reflected on experiences of disenfranchised young people through the established visual languages of power – including heraldry, land ownership and the city's rich naval history. The exhibition asks us to imagine how the city's public history and personal voice could be used to generate new narratives and understanding for Dundee. It does so by opening up conversation about shared space, place and belonging in the city. If you'd like to know more about opportunities to exhibit in the context of Sharing Not Hoarding please contact us.