Casual Fragrance

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Are you willing to participate?, 2015

With the help of the objects and sculptures that I produce or select, I lead an investigation of what objects communicate and are able to modulate within social relations. Through my work I tend to question the impact and subversive potential of our material environment in our lives. I use fiction as a means to negotiate reality: it allows me to explore and point out the artificiality of what is engraved as being intuitive, natural or presented as the norm.

Lately video has taken a substantial place in my practice. I write the scenario at the same time as I produce the objects that will later play a part in the video. In this sense constructing the characters happens both in words and through material research. Therefore the two processes influence one another in the construction of the narration. I see exhibitions as occasions to extend the fictional space developed in videos through sculptures and installation that generate new directions for the work. Likewise the installation of a video can engender another installation, until it reaches a sense of exhaustion.

When I arrived at the Cooper Gallery Summer Residency in July, I’ve just finished the video Nothing Remains, Only Us and freshly set it up in a group exhibition. The video presents a man recalling a community he was part of. The people living in this community aimed to inhabit together a shared house in a way that will disturb their way of living and therefore create new means of experiencing and acting in society. The only rule which is said to have existed and been stressed was to produce a new object a day “which implied as a tacit agreement to break one thing beforehand”. The work shown in Dundee extends the research explored in the video on strategies of resistance towards productivity and participation. It addresses what relations and ways to inhabit the world can material empowerment invent. The sculpture presented acts as a body that spatially regulates the three approaches to material production in relation to individual withdrawal to the logic of labour.

One side of the sculpture shows the video on a flat screen TV. Viewers are invited to sit in this space filled with objects being in a bad mood or displaying their feelings and weaknesses. They express their dissatisfaction toward their functionality echoing a broader contemporary requirement of being happy, complete and accomplished but also functioning and productive. Inter-dependence is put on focus when care is applied to wherever the sculpture needs to: bandages cover flat angle brackets that needed to be added during the install to fix the fleshy beam as for the cushion that stands where the beam needed support.

During the residency, I started to reflect on notion of productivity within an artistic practice when responding to invitations to work. That’s what the opposite side of the sculpture draw upon. There, a drawing of an open mouth made with pink glitters rests on a curvy wall. The hole is cut out which allows to see the inside of the structure. Through this hole I’ve thrown the genuine and organic ceramic objects I made in the first weeks of the residency when aiming to populate and decorate my working environment Dundee. Performing a mindless and wrecker maker seemed to be an appropriate reaction when thinking of perpetual mobility and immediacy of production. I came here reading over The Lesbian Body of Monique Wittig again. The author is known for a statement she made in The Straight Mind, which was that lesbians are not woman since woman is nothing but a social class that they refuse to be part of. What is interesting is how she implies that lesbians refuse to become or to remain heterosexual, implying a conscious decision over passing a simple desire to revolt by taking concrete action endangering the patriarchal society. In The Lesbian Body she recalls the physical, material and mental love from one woman to another. This desire is mediated through the consumption of every bit of the partner’s body. A carnivorous, violent and destructive experimentation where the body has to be eaten and digested in order to be understood adored and re-invented. That was an opening point in considering the motif of destruction as a form of empowerment over one’s existence. This is extremely present in the video and I extend this aspect in the back of the sculpture when thinking of my own relation to labour.

Finally, on top of the structure, I’ve placed a terracotta pot that my mum made before I was born. We had a discussion around this pot a couple of days before I left for Dundee. It served as a proxy to discuss her long life living-and-working economy in which I was raised.  My stepfather and her started to rehabilitate a house whilst we were living there decades ago. Once the house was ready, it was sold in order to buy a new site. This process happened over and over and merged work and life. The pot is one of the rare objects that remain from all the relocations. Family and friends already appeared in some of my works, either through their material production or featuring some videos. Florent Dubois who plays the interviewee in the video presented at the Cooper Gallery is also a friend of mine. It was his first experience as an actor and for me the first time I asked someone to enact a well-defined role and to deliver a script. We spent three days together in what used to be my studio in Lyon and shot the whole thing on green screen.

Anouchka Oler will exhibit at Cooper Summer Residency Exhibition 2015: THINGNESS? until 10 October.

Images courtesy of the artist and Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee. Photographer: Ross Fraser McLean.

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Detail view, “I am the horizon”, (2015) Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I studied art from the 9th grade on. Since the age of 15 I wanted to be an artist. Although my perception of it developed, I have lived this activity intensively since then.

I studied my BA degree for 5 years (3 years painting and two years fine art) in a small town in Portugal called Caldas da Rainha. I believe no one made this school his or her first choice but the last possibility. The result was a hippie, very experimental school that started from 6pm, when we would return home to make dinner for friends, go out and go wild. It was the time to reinvent ourselves and do our own thing. We did a lot of self-organised projects and we worked with little means. The last 2 years of the 5-year course brought in subjects like Political Studies that increased our capacity to think and establish our own ethos.

I was an assistant to a writer and translator of philosophy who had worked as an artist for 20 years. The books he translated shaped my readings from the age of 15. I also worked for the artist Pedro Cabrita Reis who taught me a lot and gave me a greater capacity to work.

Where do you make your work?
I live in Vienna, Austria, where I have a studio that I share with Christoph Meier and Nicola Pecoraro. We have a strong sense of community, and there’s also place for critical sarcasm, since a joke can push the work somewhere else with its critical distance. I could also say that I work everywhere, because I read in the toilet, in bed, on the metro; I work directly in galleries or institutional exhibition spaces and I love to work directly in the streets. It’s hard to disconnect when I’m working and when I’m not. And this is wrong! One should be critical to this neo-liberal way of working. Labour is a key tool to transform the way we live. On the other hand, art is not exactly labour… it’s a job but it’s also a pleasure…

Detail view, Low (2013-15), from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Installation view, I Like Your Art Much (2015), Hugo Canoilas from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

What is your work process/technique?
All and none. I do everything and nothing. I don’t want to be a specialist and I don’t want to be recognised for my skills. Art being understood as a skill is like judging the work of a writer by his calligraphy.

Can you describe what a typical day is like?
Let me say that I’m plural! I am many things… I aim to be in permanent motion. I have this erotic-Dionysian force that is the opposite of the jubilation of the fixed, achieved form or idea. So I don’t repeat many things in my everyday life (i.e. having the same breakfast for years) apart from taking my daughter to school and going back home early in the evening to have dinner with my family.

Installation view, Visitors, (2015), To be read aloud, To be read aloud (2014) and Chevy, (2015), from the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Performance photo, Jeffrey goes to Dundee, (2015) Performance during the Preview of the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD. Photo: Ross Fraser McLean.

Where do you find your inspiration?
I don’t know if this word is used in the right way. Usually “inspiration” pushes us back to the cliché in art and I’m not into this. Taking the word as it is I inspire as much as I can from the world, from the whole and I try to give it back to that whole that is the people. Since I aim to have what I don’t have, I think and make, in ways that will produce a change of my self; to be another or to try to live many lives in one life; following your question, I’m inspired by the absolute otherness.

What are your future plans?
When my daughter goes to University I would love to move to the countryside and build a house and have my garden with my wife. Maybe we would invite friends or open it to all, like a small non “ecophagic” way of living with the contradiction of going somewhere else to exhibit from time to time. I could dedicate my time to working in a barn, behind the house, building a secretive work that could be developed through the years. Plough in my stomach, work without serving anyone else’s project or agenda (artistic or political), that is the only way you can respect the whole. The whole should be a space of convergence of all differences, even the non-negotiable ones.

Detail view, I Like Your Art Much (2015), from Francisco Sousa Lobo to Hugo Canoilas, for the exhibition Someone a long time ago, now., Hugo Canoilas, 2015, Cooper Gallery DJCAD.

Hugo Canoilas with painting in bed, 2015, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the artist and Workplace Gallery, UK.

Someone a long time ago, now. is on display at Cooper Gallery, DJCAD until 10 April.

All photos courtesy of Hugo Canoilas, Cooper Gallery DJCAD and Workplace Gallery, UK unless otherwise stated.

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Running until 13 December Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis is an exhibition at DJCAD’s Cooper Gallery. The show is built around the display of 1982 ensemble Cotoneaster horizontalis (Anticommunication Design) and features early drawings, prints, collages and other archival material.

Focused on the personal and the political, the exhibition showcases Oppermann’s practice and its development around her sculptural situations or ‘ensembles’.

Detail photograph of Anna Oppermann, Cotoneaster horizontalis (Anticommunication Design), 1982–1984. Cooper Gallery, 2014.

Detail photograph of Anna Oppermann, Cotoneaster horizontalis (Anticommunication Design), 1982–1984. Cooper Gallery, 2014.

Drawing on Oppermann’s work, there will be a forum entitled ‘The Process of Content: on the temporality in Conceptual Art’ on 29 November which will feature Lynda Morris and Guy Brett, Head of Sculpture Studies at Henry Moore Institute Lisa Le Feuvre and Professor Martin Warnke and Carmen Wedemeyer from Leuphana University Lüneburg in Germany.

Installation View of Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis in Cooper Gallery, 2014.

Installation View of Anna Oppermann: Cotoneaster horizontalis in Cooper Gallery, 2014.

For more details of the exhibition which runs until 13 December see the DJCAD Cooper Gallery website.

Photos by Kathryn Rattray

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Find more events in our weekly bulletin here.

[Brochure a collaboration by Lyall Bruce & Johanna Basford]

On Sat 6th Feb 2010, Censta and members went on Dundee Popup, a tour round the city’s creative people and places.  Artists, designers, illustrators, film-makers all gathered for a day of behind the scenes studio tours at Dundee Contemporary Arts, Duncan of Jordanstone and WASPS, private artist talks with Martin Boyce and Daziel and Scullion, plus an exclusive preview of the soon to be opened McManus Gallery after a 4 year refurbishment.

Members were blogging, tweeting and documenting in stills each part of the day, so you can take the tour for yourself.

As well as a day for members, and the city’s creatives to meet and discuss their work and practice, Dundee Popup created some LTD edition artworks. Censta members  SooperDD and Johanna Basford worked together to produce the booklet detailing the day, and Superfly worked with artists from the site to create a poster gallery round the city. Read more about it here.

To top it all off, we had an evening of talks from members, followed by wine and some rather fine Central Station cakes, created by Nikki McWilliams.

To see some of the photographs from the day look here. Read the rest of the blog to find out more about the day, and click here to find reviews and thoughts by the members who joined us.

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What? A tour of the creative world of Dundee, Central Station style. Private talks, tours and presentations. As well as lots of members meeting & discussing.

Where? Dundee

When? 11am – 8pm Saturday February 6th

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[SuperFly poster by Jen Collins - part of a series]

11am:
Meet us at the Reception entrance of Duncan of Jordonson College of Art & Design. We’ll have a quick chat…and then the tour begins. Join us for some or all of it and come visit us at The Rep for a coffee stop.

11:30am options:
i) See the new exhibition at Cooper Gallery, Public Image, accompanied by a Curator talk & listen to sculptor student Julie Duffy talk about her practice

ii) Meet some graduates from DJCAD who’ll talk about how they’ve got themselves noticed since leaving

iii) Have a private tour of Dalziel + Scullion’s studio space

1pm options:
i) Go to Generator Projects for a private talk and tour

ii) Go to WASPS for a private studio tour

iii) Go to a screening of a film selected by Martin Boyce, with a live soundtrack by saxophonist Raymond MacDonald (please note there is a charge for this event & booking is necessary)

2pm options:
i) Get a rare private walkround of Realtime Worlds

ii) Have an exclusive peek inside the newly renovated McManus Galleries

3pm options:
i) Pop along to The Visual Research Centre

ii) Go to the DCA Print Studio for a private tour

3.45pm:
Hear an exclusive Martin Boyce talk about his No Reflections exhibition at the DCA

5pm options:
i) See the SuperFly Pop-up exhibition at the Hannah MacLure Centre

ii) Hear Yann Seznec talk about his Gelkies exhibition at the Hannah MacLure Centre

iii) Take a look at Handmade Heaven’s handmade wares at the Hannah MacLure Centre

6 – 8pm:
Join us for This is… Sit back and listen to a selection of our members giving quick-fire presentations about their work & practice. Then a chance to chat, mingle, drink and nibble

[Cupcakes by Nikki McWilliams]

I got to meet Superfly Guy who I have exchanged several emails with and circulated info to our students about his projects in the past.

I have been thinking about how the links made can be maintained but my daydreaming has now gone further than that: As I was recounting some of the day during a conversation today with someone who was not able to come it made me think could the Popup Tour happen again next year…..It took a lot of work but it was work done together and benefiting from what each other was doing. It was a collaboration and will hopefully nurture further collaboration. We have Open Doors days and I suppose the Dundee Popup Tour organised by Central Station was a hyper equivalent of that with social media involved! Anyone else interested in doing it all again next year?

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

Hello CenSta-ers!

Myself, the Central Station Team and a whole load of other Central Station members are here at the Dundee Pop-up day and so far it’s proving to be pretty interesting. Art mixed with a sort of Anneka’s Challenge ethos, as we jump from venue to venue. Anyway, here i’ll be trying to fit in blog posts of the events and exhibitions I’ve seen.

Just came from the Cooper Gallery to check out the Public Image exhibition and was especially taken by the work by Liu Wei. His video installation was focussed around challenging the censorship of images in China, taking that particularly arresting photo of the person standing in front of tanks in Tiananmen Square and seeing if students of Beijing University remember this event. Their responses are certainly intriguing and makes me think how much we take our freedom of speech for granted, in the Western world.

Another one of the exhibits I enjoyed was the Patricia Esquivias’ work. In a video installation, Esquivias details the connections between King Phillip II of Spain and Spanish crooner Julio Iglesias. Examples of the connections included how many albums Iglesias has sold compared to how much land Phillip conquered. And the fact that Phillip had a traitor son as did Iglesias, in the form of Enrique, who tries to deviate from the Iglesias sound by being trendy (that was my favourite connection). The similarities between the two are strangely strong. It was a wonderfully odd exhibit, delivered in a humourously deadpan manner which put a wry smile on my face.

The event is still on at The Cooper Gallery, from 6th February to the 6th March 2010. Check it out for sure!

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.

It’s already looking like a great day and a great turnout of people, but don’t fret if you can’t be here. Along with some of Censta’s members we’ll be blogging and tweeting the day. Watch out for blogs in the Dundee Popup group, follow @censta for tweets, tagged #dundeepopup and there will be photos uploaded by Ross_McLean all through the day and footage coming from Andy later in the week.

Posters by Superfly have been spotted all round the city, and the LTD edition booklets by SooperDD and Johanna Basford are already a coveted item.

The blogs as they come in…… and the tweets for the day.

And here’s the first blog … read all about Public Image at the Cooper Gallery @DCJAD.

Lots of people meeting, eating and blogging in between tours at the Censta hub at the Dundee Rep.

Emlyn Firth gives the lowdown on the DJCAD graduates showcase, including a live link up on Skype.

Our very own Suzy Glass gives her view of the Dalziel & Scullion studio tour.

Ever been inside the coveted doors of Realtime Worlds? Jon Carlos went along, what did he see?

Censta and members got a very special sneak preview of the soon to be re-opened and very much renovated McManus Gallery. Gillian Easson gives you an idea of what’s in store.

Heidi Proven disappeared into the Visual Research Centre at Dundee Contemporary Arts, and thinks you should too.

JonGill took in the DCA Print studio, screen printing, etching, block, lino and litho. Jessica Ashman gave us her account of the DCA Print Studio tour too.

Martin Boyce took members round his No Reflections instillation at the DCA, and explained the challenges of exhibiting the work in two different spaces. Here and at Venice Biennalle. Curator Donna HolfordLovell takes us through the talk.

Superfly has an obsession, find out what it is.

Artists and makers from Handmade Heaven, showed off their wares and Censta members a plenty bought things. See what Hellojenuine liked.

Then it was time for This is… at the Hannah Maclure Centre which went like this:
Yuck & Yum told us about the ways they distrubute art without using gallery spaces
Johanna Basford & Sooper DD entertained us with stories of collaboration
Arika went through their KYTN 2009 plans and how you can get involved
Genevieve Ryan & Jo Swingler talked us through recent illustration & creative writing collaboration
We heard and saw music & animation from Colliderscope‘s Fiona Soe Paing
Georgina Follett let us know about the V&A Dundee developments.

These were covered by Htothep, suzy.glass & DJCADExhibitions.

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To find out what Dundee Popup was all about or to read more reviews & blogs  from the day, click here.