DCA Prints – Own Art
It probably isn’t art that springs to mind when you hear the phrase ‘Buy now, pay later,’ – it’s a three-piece suite or a new kitchen. But Creative Scotland’s Own Art scheme allows you to do just this. Wandering through contemporary art shows, even the most avid art-goer might have no notion of owning the work. Once you know where to look, though, Scotland is chock-full of work you can acquire at affordable prices.
Like many top contemporary art spaces, DCA tends to show artists whose work isn’t primarily commercial – take last year’s Turner Prize winner, Martin Boyce, for example. His geometric aluminium shapes and hanging lanterns in school crayon reds, greens and yellows may seem to owe something to interior design as well as to the urban landscape, but it would never occur to you to covet them for your own home. You might well assume that this sort of work isn’t for sale (unless your name is Miuccia Prada). But in fact, you can own a Martin Boyce.
DCA works with exhibiting artists to develop limited edition artworks, produced in their in-house Print Studio. Boyce’s print series features abstract compositions of coloured shapes that strongly echo his sculptural installations. Also on offer is a large-scale, unique screen print commissioned to mark his installation No Reflections at the 2009 Venice Biennale. Unlike a park bench upended to resemble undulating waves, you can display these in your living room and they’ll look fantastic. Pretty exciting, eh?
Don’t do all your Christmas shopping just yet, though, because you’ll want to have a shufty at the two newest editions, by Ruth Ewan and Rob Pruitt. ‘Nae Sums,’ proclaims the text by Ewan, who describes her work as ‘conceptually led but socially realised.’ The piece reinstates the gesture of her exhibition, which referenced local histories of Dundee schooldays, with an installation of reclaimed school desks.
The display in the Print Space overlooking the DCA shop generally changes in parallel with the main gallery exhibition, so it’s always worth your while popping in to see what’s new. You can also browse and buy using a 'Bounce Pad' in the lobby, or peruse the display cases if you’re feeling less digitally-inclined. The obliging Editions experts are happy to dig out any works that aren’t currently on display. Of course, you needn’t even leave home to bag your art – works can be purchased online at the Culture Label, as well as via the DCA online shop.
You’d be a fool not to take a look around the facilities, though. The state-of-the-art Print Studio provides a variety of courses and workshops and if you can’t find one to suit you, you can arrange one-to-one tuition. Each year the Print Space shows a group exhibition of prints by Print Studio members.
An exciting new edition that hasn’t even been launched yet is a work by Jane and Louise Wilson. Their major show at DCA last year featured a video that retraces the final movements of a Hamas operative before he was murdered in a Dubai hotel room. Faced with the challenge of negotiating Dubai’s notorious high-security to shoot the video, the artists donned black and white ‘dazzle camouflage’ to trick the face recognition cameras. The resultant photographic images are all the more enigmatic because the artists are twins.
This edition will soon be available to buy from DCA’s website and Culture Label, where you can already peruse works by such diverse artists as Claire Barclay, Chicks on Speed, Neil Clements, Graham Fagen and Scott Myles.