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I worked freelance for a while after graduating in Fine Art but my first ‘real’ job, as my Dad would call it, was with the University of Dundee’s Museum Services. I was Assistant Curator of Arts and my principle role was to correctly acquisition Duncan of Jordanstone’s art collection into the main University collection. One of the best jobs was the re-housing of a print collection bequest by the Scottish Arts Council, which can now be seen at the Visual Research Centre in Dundee. I also got to clean the zoology collection – I hoovered an emu and buffed a giant tortoise.

From there I went to the Exhibitions Dept at Duncan of Jordanstone as the Assistant Curator and I had the immense pleasure of working with Jenny Brownrigg. The Brownrigg taught me many things and I owe her a lot. We had a great time and produced some excellent projects such as Jerusalem Syndrome with Nathan Coley, discparc an audio label and Paul Butlers Collage Party. We had 7 great years of creative fun.

I then had the urge to sell all of my worldly goods and travel across Canada, get married and have a baby. In between this I was Dundee’s City Coordinator for the Six Cities Design Festival. This was a great experience as I really got to know and love Dundee and make many new contacts.

After the birth of my amazing daughter I became Cultural Projects Officer for the University of Abertay. I ran an annual programme of events and exhibitions in the Hannah Maclure Centre and in their performance space. This is where I become involved in the NEoN project. For the first manifestation of the NEoN Digital Arts Festival my assistant Clare Brennan and myself were asked to curate an interactive exhibition for the public.

By early 2010 we had become fully-fledged NEoN committee members and we help deliver an excellent programme of events in November 2010 having the pleasure of working with Akinori Oishi, Tado, Pictoplasma and Ken Perlin.

This brings me to me to my two current jobs! I am still on the management team for NEoN and my personal ambition is to make this festival Scotland’s leading platform for digital and technology driven arts, which I am sure is the ambition of the committee also. My main day-to-day job is Curatorial Director of Fleet Collective. Lyall Bruce and I set up this art collective out of frustration really – we wanted to bring together the arts and creative industries, mix the organic process of creativity with the structure of business and get the individuals together to make a powerful creative force.

Fleet is commitment to increasing provisions for the creative community and to tackling retention issues by keeping work, opportunities and talent in Scotland. Under one roof we empower a community of creative people by fostering collaborative working practices, we represent artists and manage multi disciplinary creative projects. Fleet Collective is new, fresh and unique, brought together out of a commitment to the arts and a passion to use it to make a better world.

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We’ve asked professionals in creative industries what jobs they have had in the past to get their foot through the door (or at least pay the rent). For more in the “My First 5 Jobs” series look here.

During the month we received photos of  business cards in the Central Station group and through our Twitter and Facebook sites. Here’s a top 5 of what we’ve seen.

sebastien

Nils_A

communitea

jono.sandilands

Sooper_Double_D

[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]

Lyall Bruce and Johanna Basford have worked together over the last year on a couple of projects. Closest to home is the poster for Central Station Dundee Popup, which allowed them to develop on from a previous collaboration for NEoN (North East if North) in 2009.

They created both of the  works by passing the design between the two of them. Lyall, who is a graphic designer and sooperdd entity, always works digitally (he said he had attempted to include a pencil sketch he had made at the start of the project but was too embarrassed!). For the NEoN piece he started with the image of a wee guy in a hat slumped over and holding up a placard reading ‘The Future is Coming’ in the vector based imaging programme Illustrator, adding in tonal colour by ‘painting into the image in Photoshop’ using a graphics tablet.

Johanna is completely opposite in her process where she always works in a lo-fi and hand made way. Her artwork is characterised by intricate and decorative hand drawn patterns. Johanna showed the audience her drawings for both the projects which were drawn in black ink on thin white paper. She said that part of her process with Lyall had included balancing a pyrex dish on her knee with a lamp angled under it to make a d.i.y. light box so she could trace through parts of Lyall’s design to work around. Having said that, Johanna does use Photoshop to scan and clean up her drawings to use in different formats.

Lyall was in charge of combining the two images. Lyall was nervous about adding colour, (he had coveted amending Johanna’s drawing with marker pen for a while) but bravely went ahead and  brought a few points of colour into Johanna’s monochromatic design to tie it with his Photoshopped character.

For the Central Station leaflet they also included photographs of Dundee scenes and buildings, which Lyall overlaid with artworks, design and logos from the artists and organisers involved in the tour. Central station – photos from Dundee, then with members artwork hidden into the buildings. Yuck N Yum logo was on the train station, there was an illustrators artwork on the façade of the DCA. Kind of bringing what is going on behind closed doors out into the open… so fits well with the Popup tour idea!

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