Revisionism, Radices and Reggio: This week in Scottish Art

In the first weekly events column of the new year, there's plenty of interesting events across Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow to kick off a cultural 2015.

Feature by Adam Benmakhlouf | 06 Jan 2015

So after a lot of Christmas breaks, art is again open to the public across Dundee, Glasgow and Edinburgh. With galleries closed for the Christmas break over the last fortnight, this week sees the contemporary art events schedule getting busy again with experimental cinema screenings, group shows and upcoming artists.

Proving that a print show is not just for Christmas (presents), the Dundee Winter Print exhibition is open all this week and through until the 18 January. On show and on sale are works from the Dundee Centre of Arts print studio members. DCA promise some reasonably priced take-home pieces with some works starting at a tenner, and the prints ranging from stamp-sized to A1. There’s no dominant style, theme or technique to the prints, so the work is by local and visiting artists using linocut, etching, screen print and every other printmaking technique you might like to see. View the works in DCA upstairs in the print space.

Staying in Dundee, the Hannah Maclure centre is also hosting the group show Coded After Lovelace until 6 March. This group show has already been on display (though in a different configuration) in New York’s Whitebox Art Centre, and is now halfway through its run which began during the seven-day NEoN annual digital arts festival in November. Named after the first computer programmer Ada Lovelace, and taking place 199 years after her birth, this show looks to bring attention to the women artists past and present who have been overlooked in the history of art and technology.

Again in the Hannah Maclure Centre, on Monday 12 January, there is a screening of Koyaanisqatsi in the Hannah Maclure Centre – at the top floor of the Abertay Union. Directed by experimental documentary film maker Godfrey Reggio and with an original score by Philip Glass, this is concentrated art house fare, with promises of time-lapse photography and slow-mo cinematography. This film came after Reggio’s involvement with the American Civil Liberties Union, with whom he broadcasted these TV spots that are pitched in the surreal tone of The Twilight Zone. Here they are as our video of the week.


VIDEO OF THE WEEK


In Glasgow this week, experimental film screenings continue with the GFT’s Crossing the Line programme, a series of films that 'push at the bounders between visual at and cinema.' This Sunday 11 January, the emphasis is on experimental Irish cinema, curated by the Experimental Film Club – who have published on their blog an interesting introduction to the choice of films. There’s a broad range to the choice made, with films coming from between 1897 and 2013, and include works by the Lumiére brothers, Samuel Beckett, Vivienne Dick, Dónal Ó Céilleachair and Jesse Jones. Head to the GFT for 19:30 this Sunday, more information and tickets are available here.

This Saturday 10 January at 7pm in the Old Hairdresser’s is an exhibition of work by Jessica Susan Higgins, with the amazing title Picturesque Radices in Small Decisions. Higgins is a fourth yeah Sculpture and Environmental Art student at the Glasgow School of Art, who was chosen as part of the Glasgow Artstore’s Open Call for GSA Students to receive support to exhibit her work. There will be a performance of “Wild Side or A Clumsy Medley More Like”, played by Higgins, along with Edwin Stevens, Julia Scott, Ruari MacLean.

As a last recommendation, there is on Thursday a curator’s talk in relation to the exhibition Ponte City, which we’ve featured in this month’s print edition. For half an hour from 17:30 this Thursday, the International Photography Curator Anne Lyden will be available to discuss the powerful exhibition in the Portrait Gallery.