This week, six artists have taken part in May Meet In Mutual Micro Residency in the Park Centre, Baxter Park, Dundee. The artists, who were selected through an open call, have researched and developed new work engaging with the site to further explore the possibilities of site-­responsive practice. On Friday 29 August, Micro Residents will share their responses from the Micro Residency during an Open Stage event. The Open Stage coincides with the preview of an exhibition of work by Sogol Mabadi, Emma Reid, and Craig Thomson.

Earlier in the week, this dynamic group of artists, whose practices encompass curation, music, writing, and research, shared with us their initial intentions for the MMIM Micro Residency.

Frances Davis:
 Particular sites provide the catalyst for most of the works I make, and the Micro Residency is thus a really interesting proposition, presenting both an opportunity to make new work and to engage in open dialogue and conversation about what site­responsive practice is and what it could be.

Lada Wilson:
 The words Meet and Mutual from the title of the Micro Residency in the Park Centre, Baxter Park, Dundee inspire me. It is inspirational and stimulating to meet other artists, share ideas and through art mutually/collectively transform the Park Centre. My artworks are mainly site specific.

David McLeish: 
I hope to explore the place, other people’s relationship with it, and the intertwining social narratives, and create something that is accessible to all, inclusive and respectful to the space, its history, local residents and is at the same time perhaps not too po-­faced or serious.

Bobby Sayers:
 I intend to engage conversations around site­-specific artworks and the challenges that this brings, as well as the honesty and beauty that can come from connecting directly with environments around us. Through my practice I use colour, shape, and form to create site­-specific sculptures, installations and performances that challenge traditional notions of beauty and value, examining the sublime within the everyday.

Pauline Meikleham:
 This residency particularly caught my attention as I grew up in a Tenement flat on Eden Street, just below Baxter Park, attended Morgan School at the top of the park, and the surrounding streets, houses and Stobie area were my stomping ground.

I also see this engagement with environment as a lense to explore memory, social history and the emotional/imaginative landscape of childhood as complex, exciting and potentially problematic, spanning as it does the period from 1969 to 1982 with its rich political and cultural references.

Emil Max Thompson:
 For the MMIM Micro Residency I will collaborate with writer and artist Pauline Meikleham to give shape to her memories and reflections triggered by the environment of the park and contextualise them within a wider social and cultural frame while exploring my response to the setting within the themes of my current research. My research involves mapping the inspirational topography of the urban landscape through a process of storytelling, writing and research ­ which draws on the inherent but often invisible cultural heritage of the city.

Beth Savage, who will be hosting the Conversation Over Coffee Event on 30 August 3pm-4pm: Making site-responsive work can be challenging, especially when working with a site that people have a certain relationship with or sense of ownership over. For instance while working in the Czech Republic with the Wild Project, we were making art about wildness and remoteness in a village where people didn’t feel that way about the landscape. It was just their home. In these cases you have to work sensitively and inclusively. Work which ignores the sites’ publics often ignores the very essence of the site

The MMIM Micro Residency is organised by MMIM (Emma Reid & Katie Reid): A newly established collaboration between twin sisters Emma Reid and Katie Reid, founded upon a sharing and mutual challenging of artistic and curatorial practices particularly engaged with the potentials and problematics of site­-responsive practice.

MMIM’s project includes May Meet In Mutual, an exhibition of works by Sogol Mabadi, Emma Reid and Craig Thomson. See our featured event for more information on May Meet In Mutual. For further information on the public programme see the May Meet in Mutual website here.

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May Meet In Mutual centres around the exhibition of newly developed sculptural and performance work by Sogol Mabadi, Emma Reid and Craig Thomson, in the Park Ranger Centre in Baxter Park, Dundee. The exhibition will be open to the public for the Open Install and Preview on 29 August (3-9pm) and continues on 30 & 31 August (10am-4pm). The project, May Meet In Mutual co-curated by Katie Reid and Emma Reid, seeks to explore the potentials and complexities of site responsive practice, a method of artistic production where artists respond to physical, social and/or historical conditions of a particular location, in this case Dundee’s Park Ranger Centre in Baxter Park.

Emma Reid – Hole Video Installation – New Contemporaries 2013

May Meet In Mutual, showcases new work by Mabadi, Reid and Thomson. Responding to the situation of the Park Ranger Centre within Baxter Park, the artists share a common interest in boundaries, edges, and the in between and how these affect peoples’ interaction and relations.

Sogol Mabadi – The Family Transmission Gallery 2014 – Photo: Tor Jonsson

Mabadi’s sensitive work explores intimacy through a directness of the experience with the audience. Her performances and sculptural work often generate a sense of being at once near the edge of something whilst becoming a part of a shared meeting place. Reid is also interested in relations between people and investigates these through the notion of playfulness or performativity that is often present in our being in the world. Through clever positioning of live-feed cameras and monitors, combined with use of the Park Ranger Centre’s ground to ceiling glass windows, Reid takes the visitor to a place of inquiry whereby their watching, acting and manoeuvring of the space is distorted and revealed to them. Reid also takes her work outside the Park Ranger Centre, temporarily marking the large pillars so that they become an abstract signpost to the event within the space. Thomson’s sculpture underplays the power of the wrought iron fences. Through an exact replica of a portion of the fence made from wood, Thomson transposes the fence into a functional coat rack to be gifted to the Park Ranger Centre after the exhibition.

Craig Thomson – The Storm, 2014

May Meet In Mutual exploits its temporary nature through an events series, beginning with a Micro Residency on 27 & 28 August by Scottish artists responding to an Open Call to take part in a two day residency in the Park Ranger Centre to research and/or make work in response to the site. This Micro Residency acts as a fast-paced test bed to open up discussion surrounding site responsive practice.

Emma Reid – Hole Video Installation – New Contemporaries 2013

More Information about the Events Series:

- Open Install: 3-6pm, Friday 29 August. Join the artists and curators as they finalise the installation of new works by Mabadi, Reid and Thomson in the Park Ranger Centre.

- Preview with Open Stage: 6-9pm, Friday 29 August. Preview of the exhibition May Meet In Mutual, including an Open Stage event with performance, spoken word, screenings and music presented by the artists of the exhibition and those who contributed to the Micro Residency earlier in the week.

- Conversation Over Coffee: 3-4pm, Saturday 30 August. This relaxed discussion event on Saturday afternoon encourages further inquiry into the nature of site responsive practice. Invited speakers Annie Crabtree and Beth Savage, alongside artists and visitors will join or listen to this Conversation Over Coffee navigating the potentials and complexities of site responsive artistic/curatorial practice and what it might mean to work in this way today.

For further information about May Meet in Mutual which runs from 29 to 31 August in Dundee’s Baxter Park, see their website.

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