Louise Ritchie is a Scottish based visual artist and current Project Artist in Residence at Angus Council.

As well as providing many a visual treat, her blog details some of the projects Louise has been involved in, including: Jueopolis 2009 (collaborative sculpture with members of the Society of Scottish Artists); Project Bleprint (with Ginkgo Projects); & Art Thinking (with Seaview Primary School).

The image above is from her stitchworks series, the one below from perspex & mirror work. These are just a couple of the stunning examples of the art work Louise has showcased on her blog. We recommend you go here to see more

[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.

Jeanette Ginslov kicked things off via a Skype link from Denmark. Her project ‘Concrete’ which she described as a kinaesthetic work, is a short film featuring a complex and engaging arrangement of dancers, environment and sound.
Rather than a linear narrative, Ginslov interrogates the sounds and gestures of the performers and their environments,  and the  filming and editing process  becomes a part of the piece too.

Ginslov successfully blends these themes and processes by attempting to “break the frame… drawing the audience in” For her, “affecting the audience is the ultimate goal – firing off motor neurons, stimulating…”. The “concrete emotional displays of erotic love and happiness, an emotion for each environment” is almost a conduit for exploring her unique methodology. The dancers perform a very contemporary contact improvisation which Ginslov not only directs but attempts to become an intimate part of via reactive camerawork and ‘choreo-editing’.

Catt Le Marr graduated in Media Imaging, and explores sound. Le Marr carefully picks apart patterns and formations between images and noise, through processes she describes as ‘Sonic Semblance’ and ‘Rhythmanalysis’. Citing John Cage as a major inspiration, Le Marr attempts to make the visual, audible and showed us visual scores based on the traced horizons of landscape photography. Le Marr continually pushes at her process, developing ideas via circuit building, coding and using software such as ‘arduino’, mappin movements of birds onto midi-grids, programming “the musicality of natural rhythm”. She’s actively engaged with her peers too, developing the experimental Music/Arts Fest N_ilk.
(By chance we bumped into Catt again later on when were on a tour of the DCA Screenprint facility, where she was busily learning new techniques. Truly a renaissance woman!)

Jo Hodge followed up a degree in Textiles with a Masters in Design, and now works with wearable technology. Jo’s process is both fascinating and down to earth, using Transformation Design techniques such as cultural probes and group workshops to make clothes which are unique to the user and attempt to deal with consumerist over-consumption ans sustainability. Experimenting with complex thermographic and photochromic smart materials, it was fantastic to see real craft and experimentation being merged with contemporary theory and resulting in innovate real-world products.

It was an inspiring start to a fascinating day… I’ll update this post with links to their work as and when they appear on the site. I’m off for the second round now – the THIS IS talks… more soon.

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

Earlier today we spent somewhere near an hour in the Dalziel + Scullion studios in DJCAD. Matthew chatted to us about some of his live projects, talked us through how the commissioning and making process usually works for him. Very refreshingly, he discussed profit-making frankly, without any embarrassment and / or pain. How does an artist make enough to sustain him/herself and his/her work? How do you learn about contracting and working with all the various other people necessary to make particularly big installation pieces? No answers…just a tip to talk to people, to take advice, to think forward.

Dalziel + Scullion’s work is pretty wide-ranging. To classify what they do is pretty tricky – Matthew finds it hard. But he does say all their work is united by theme. Their work focusses on all things ecological, man’s place in the natural world. Which has proved to be pretty useful in a political environment that’s increasingly interested in the climate. They’re talking to the government about projects, have recently made a piece of work for the HBOS headquarters etc etc.

As well as working to commission they also make self-initiated, often smaller pieces of work. Including these beautifully printed bark tubes (I’m sure that’s not what they’re called.) The images are Dalziel + Scullion photographs that are then printed up in Dundee at the Print Studios. They’re made into tubes, sent down to London and sold through a gallery / shop. I think I’ve got all of those details right.

They were initially made for a show in a now closed gallery in Skye. It was part of a dispersed project that happened across the world, and all invited artists in the various countries were briefed to make something that could be sent through the post. And it’s kept going. It’s a nice small project that makes the guys some money. One of the questions asked – how does that make you feel? Working the same piece up over and over again? Does that make you a designer rather than an artist? Matthew says no not really. It makes you someone who can earn through his art, and there’s nothing wrong with that. And if someone wants to talk to them about turning the tubes into a commodity, say a lamp pendant, well they’d be more than willing to do that. Why not?

Last thing. They’re looking into setting up an MFA in Ecology and Art. Sounds interesting eh?

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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.