Art News and Opportunities: October 2018
With autumn comes new exhibitions from Rhubaba in Edinburgh and Cooper Gallery in Dundee (including a "jamming studio"), and exhibition, grant and residency opportunities from Dewar Arts and Hospitalfield Trust
Exhibition Highlights
COCO!NUTS!, the solo exhibition by painter Rabiya Choudhry, continues until 20 October in Transmission Gallery in Glasgow. COCO!NUTS! is Choudhry’s first major solo show, bringing attention to the idiosyncratic and striking paintings that she has been producing for almost two decades. Alongside the paintings, Choudhry also includes new works in sculpture, neon and textiles that draw upon a set of personal imageries and symbols that can be funny, bizarre, disturbing, mysterious, abstract, surreal – sometimes all at once. COCO!NUTS! in its title already gives away its main reference point, Choudhry's own experience of South Asian diaspora and cultural displacement, coupled with dark comedic Scottish humour. Through October, there is a film programme to accompany the show, including a screening of My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) on Saturday 6 October at 2.30pm, then East is East (1999) on Saturday 13 October at 2.30pm.
Rhubaba opens its new show, such tender bodies cannot bear so much pressure on Friday 19 October 7-9pm, continuing until 4 November. Three artists are invited to explore the language of gestures, working across performance, film and writing, and considering the use of gesture within verbal and written languages, at work in labour processes, and the multitude of ways gesture makes and breaks meaning throughout daily interactions. Performances by exhibiting artist Claricia Parinussa take place on Friday 19 and Sunday 28 October, and Sunday 4 November.
On Thursday 25 October 6-9pm at The Goethe Institut in Glasgow, The Common Guild host the launch of artist Katinka Bock's latest publication Radio Piombino, with a discussion between curator Kitty Anderson and the artist. This 16-page publication will feature photography of the brass and ceramic sculptures featured during the summer exhibition, and which combined demanding sculptural processes and materials with reference to Glaswegian and Etruscan industrial histories and legacies. Paris-based curator and art-critic Anne Bonin also contributes an essay alongside production photographs by the artist. The event is free but ticketed; see The Common Guild website for further details.
From 26 October, in Dundee’s Cooper Gallery, there is Great Noises that Fill the Air, the first retrospective of the influential collective Bow Gamelan Ensemble. Since the 80s, this group of artists has been repurposing scrap and found materials (electric motors, river barges, domestic objects like glass sheets, light bulbs and fireworks) to make experimental sound and musical instruments. Part archival, the retrospective will draw together notes, drawings, scores and objects from the group’s more than twenty-five years of “improvisation, camaraderie, provocation and antagonism.”
An Event Series will transform the gallery into an open “‘jamming studio’, where artists musicians, poets and audiences will share, debate and question strategies of collaboration and antagonism in culture, society and everyday life.” There will also be a symposium to close the exhibition on Saturday 24 November from 2-6pm, considering collectivity and collaboration within current social and critical discourse.
Awards and Opportunities
The Dundee Women’s Festival will take place next year from 2-16 March 2019. It will bring together a huge range of different “events, activities, debate, talks, arts and therapies providing opportunities to celebrate women’s culture, women’s stories, women’s wisdom, women’s identities and women’s lives.” The Festival is currently accepting proposals for events to be included as part of their programme. Deadline: 2 November
The Dewar Arts Awards make awards to all kinds of makers and artists. Applications are invited from individuals “under 30, [who] live and work in Scotland, have talent and financial need.” More details are available on www.dewarawards.org. Deadline: 20 December, 4.30pm
Hospitalfield’s Interdisciplinary Residency is currently open to applications from “writers, curators, designers, architects, composers, choreographers and other cultural practitioners and theorists.” There are several opportunities for two-week residencies during March, May, August and November 2019. These residencies can be a “test bed for [individuals or groups] developing their practice and a scenario to concentrate on a specific project. The cost is £630 for a two-week full board residency. Deadline: 12 November