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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Questioning how we enact the process of learning while highlighting the moments of educational exchange that can occur through conversation, Morgan Cahn develops an active and evolving library as she exchanges knowledge with visitors. Morgan’s site responsive installations and performances encourage interaction through participatory elements. One on-going work, Me(a)nder, sees Morgan stitch and mend visitors’ wears, offer advice and console broken hearts. Morgan wanders the sites from Baxter Park for May Meet In Mutual, 2012, to Cupar Arts Festival, 2013, or this year when Morgan re-developed Me(a)nder for New Scottish Artists at The Fleming Gallery, London.

Morgan Cahn, Me(a)nder, Cupar Arts Festival, 2013

To journey is also material for Richard Taylor who presents a small sculpture and a drawing connected by themes expanded upon in a new text read to the audience along with selected photography. The text will be read at 1pm, 2.30pm and 4pm, slightly edited each time after Richard journeys repeatedly to the top of Dundee Law hill and back down to Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge to read again. Richard’s practice confronts the ability text has to record and transform experience, leading to published works and live readings with apparatus. Recent projects include Scree Magazine Presents, The Out of the Blue Drill Hall, Edinburgh, PerformingNOW, Generator Projects, Dundee and Epigone, Basement Arts Project, Leeds.

Richard Taylor, Hutchinsons Tack at PerformingNOW, Generator Projects, 2014

As with Richard, the reading of language is also a concern of Lada Wilson’s practice. After living in a number of countries, Croatian-born Dutch artist and curator Lada made her home in Scotland. She transforms words from different languages into objets trouvés that lead to participatory events. For shift, Lada invites the audience to take part in a verbal and visual exchange that will create a portrait of time from words and imagination, exploring our understanding of language and the structures surrounding it. Recent works include a series of projects for the Matthew Cabinet Gallery, DJCAD, Dundee from 2013-2014 entitled interAction(s), and Alphabetarij at PerformingNow, Generator Projects, Dundee, 2013.

Lada Wilson, Imperfect, 2014

As curator/facilitator of shift, Katie Reid plays with extending the functional role this often encompasses to make use of what temporarily becomes excess furniture and the overlooked nooks and crannies of Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge. Katie works site responsively often making projects that investigate our judgement of value, these include Camperdown Conversations with Beth Savage, 2013; May Meet in Mutual, Baxter Park Centre, Dundee, 2012, and leading workshops Working through Ideas with Sean Scott, 2014, and Currency of Ideas with Holly Knox Yeoman, 2012.

Katie Reid, Untitled (canvas corner), 2011

Becca Clark’s sculptural pulley systems developed for shift also find themselves somewhere between work and play. A series of small interventions by way of teeny movable sculptures assess the value of input and output, action and reaction. Becca also adds zines; a medium made for the work/art, art/work, art/life, work/life balance. Becca is organiser of the Dundee micro festival, Ickle Film Fest, committee member of Art Label Yuck ‘n Yum, one half of the collective RBBC and a third of the collective Pitch + Strike.

Becca Clark, Untitled, 2012

Site-visit at Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge, 2014

shift is open on Sunday, 22 June, 12.30-4.30pm at Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge, 44-46 Albert Street, DD4 6QQ, and is supported by the Dundee Visual Artists Awards through Leisure & Culture Dundee City Council with Creative Scotland and Enjoy..! Coffee Lounge, Dundee.

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