Latest news with #DuncanofJordanstoneCollegeofArtandDesign
The Courier
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Courier
Why art world star Jeremy Deller chose Dundee over Scotland's capital for myth-inspired project
Even if you've never set foot in an art gallery, you might have walked right by Jeremy Deller's work. In 2004 he won the Turner Prize for recreating the 1980s miners' strike's Battle of Orgreave as an enthusiast's military re-enactment. More recently his bouncy, interactive model of Stonehenge premiered in Glasgow in 2012 and toured the country during that year's London Olympics. Or you might know him from his films, including Our Hobby is Depeche Mode – about hardcore fans of the '80s group – and Everybody in the Place, a masterful study of the crossover between rave music and politics in the '80s and '90s. Most importantly for Dundonian art lovers, he designed the billboards outside the East Marketgait underpass. And this weekend Deller is coming to Dundee with a new, large-scale interactive project which is taking over City Square. Created with students from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Meet the Gods is part of The Triumph of Art, a multi-city project which Deller has created to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery in London. 'It's the National Gallery, so it has to be a national project,' says Deller. 'It has to happen outside of London, not just within it.' Meet the Gods will be the second of four monthly events held in Derry-Londonderry, Dundee, Llandudno and Plymouth, before they all come together for the concluding celebration in London on July 26. 'In the National Gallery you have all these paintings with different stories and characters and imagery,' continues Deller. 'These events take examples from these ancient stories and create a party around them, it's simple really. 'In Dundee the paintings will come to life through the contemporary equivalents of some mythological characters who are in a party mood.' Meet the Gods was Deller's suggested theme, and he's worked with Dundee's students to build a scenario in which the god of wine and celebration, Bacchus, has thrown a party for his fellow gods. 'It's a Bacchic tea party, and other gods are going to be there,' says Deller. 'Medusa will be there, we have a Narcissus bothy, then we have elements to do with stone circles, which are probably as ancient as these gods. 'There's a spiritual element, that's really important. We have life drawing with the gods, Eros (AKA Cupid) might be around, maybe even Venus (goddess of love). 'Some of the students have taken on the characters of these gods.' There will also be DIY merch-making from artists Peter Kennard and Cat Phillipps, aka KennardPhillipps, a performance by art school band Fallope and the Tubes, folk music and a ceilidh. 'It's all about enjoyment,' says Deller. 'Art has many roles, and one of them is bringing people together to celebrate cultures and places. That's what will happen here.' 'I didn't want to go to the obvious places,' he continues. 'I wanted to go to cities which maybe don't get the attention others do, but ones where people have enthusiasm and there's a culture that I can work with, an organisation that's rooted there. 'Also, I wanted to be in cities where I felt I could get to grips with them without having to travel huge distances across them, walkable places where I can see everything around me. 'Dundee is a really great size of city to work with, I get a lot done and everybody knows each other, which is really helpful.' It certainly isn't an unfamiliar city to Deller. 'I've been to Dundee a number of times,' he says. 'I was in a show at the DCA some years ago, in 2003 I think. It had only just opened, or it felt like it. 'I like the city a lot, and the surrounding area. 'Arbroath is a very interesting place. I know the coastline because I come up on the train a lot, and I've always had a good time here.' Has he seen Dundee change much in that time? 'The buildings have changed,' he says. 'I don't think the people have. It's changed physically, but it's still the place I remember from then.' Deller is an unusual case among contemporary artists, in that he actively seeks out people to put his art in front of who may not give it a second thought. More often than not, it produces a reaction. 'I love making work in the public realm,' he says. 'It's nerve-wracking, because you have the weather to deal with. And the public can behave in ways you're not expecting, but that brings up interesting moments. 'I just want people to have an interesting experience and to take away new memories. And of course there'll be plenty of moments where people can take pictures of themselves doing things with gods. 'It's about changing the nature of the everyday, even for just a split second, and making the world seem different,' he continues. 'People think contemporary art is difficult to understand and a bit pretentious, but it really isn't. It's just people trying to communicate an idea or a feeling, and that's what we're trying to do here. 'It's about people coming together, enjoying themselves in a common space and being proud and happy of where they live. 'That's important to me, and when it's in the open air it's much more random than a gallery. 'However much publicity you do there are going to be loads of people who don't know this is happening. So they'll just come across it and hopefully it'll change their afternoon.'
Scotsman
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Look inside the sleek Modernist property starring on Scotland's Home of the Year
Jackie McKenzie and Paul Durrant consider themselves custodians of their beautiful Modernist house. IWC Media This Broughty Ferry residence, The Tree House, was designed in the Sixties, and will be going up against a farm steading conversion near Doune and a detached Victorian home in Auchterarder on the Central and Tayside episode of Scotland's Home of the Year. It's unusual in that it only had one previous owner - architect, Dr Bruce Walker, who lectured at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and brought his family up in the house. Despite its sleek and distinctive vernacular design, after Walker died and his family moved abroad, the building wasn't immediately snapped up by buyers. When McKenzie and Durrant took on the property, five years ago, it had become rather dilapidated. 'I think his family tried to sell it a couple of times, but didn't manage, and nobody had taken the bite. Then Covid struck and in 2021 the house came up again, and it was literally around the corner from our old place, when we were thinking we needed to downsize,' says McKenzie. 'But you couldn't spot the house because it was surrounded by trees. We went along to the viewing. And my husband said, 'this is amazing''. The couple could see past the rather oppressive black painted walls, and retro decor, to the bare bones of the beautiful open plan L-shaped building. 'We bid for it and got it. I was amazed,' says Jackie. 'We understood its quirkiness and that it was somewhere that's been loved a lot and through the years, but just needed to have love injected back into it'. The couple moved into the property while they were renovating it. The first job was to remove some of the surrounding trees, since there was no working toilet as the drains were blocked with roots. They had to replace the glass in the windows, while retaining the original frames, plus put in two new bathrooms, a new kitchen and extend into the attic. Although they wanted to preserve many of the Sixties features, some things had to go, or be disguised at the very least. At that point, McKenzie thought they might have bitten off more than they could chew. 'We kept the original pine doors and the stainless steel door handles, but I found the pine ceilings just a little bit claustrophobic, so we plasterboarded over them,' she says. 'While we had a plasterer in, we went away for two nights. When we came back, I remember bursting into tears because it looked like he'd taken a bag of flour and scattered it over the entire property. It took us a whole night and a whole day before we could even get into our bed. It was awful'. While they cleared up the mess, their two cats, Mirren and Kaja, had to go in an outdoor pen, and made their indignation clear by 'howling'. Thankfully, it was all worth it in the end, for all four of them. The building still retains its essence, but they've breathed new life into it. 'We didn't want to rip the heart out and make it become a 2025 house,' says McKenzie, whose favourite space is the bedroom, with its views across the treetops. Their beautiful property is all clean lines and restful views out to the garden. Still, the vibe, as Jackie says, remains 'comfy, cosy and relaxed'. When it comes to the interior, the couple have referenced a few garden colours, like the reds of their acer tree, and brought them indoors. 'It's very much an inside-outside house,' McKenzie says. They're fans of mid-century design, and the living room features a pea green sofa, a classic Eames chair, as well as statement lamps and light fittings. McKenzie has picked up some of their secondhand pieces of furniture from one of her favourite shops, the Tayside Upcycling and Craft Centre at Carse of Gowrie. The pair don't tend to spend lots of money on these pieces, since the cats like to make themselves very comfortable. The walls are white, to suit the architectural period, but also to show off some of their precious artworks. These include four pieces from local landscape painter Morag Muir, who studied at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and a huge pastel-hued abstract canvas called Spring, which was bought from a friend's artist husband, and is near one of the windows. 'It's deliberately positioned there, because when you sit outside in the courtyard, you can look in and see that painting,' says McKenzie, who got the piece for her 40th birthday. When buying the property, the couple also inherited one of Walker's own garden sculptures, and the architect's family left some of the original drawings he made for the house design. 'We've framed some of them, and they're up on the walls,' McKenzie says. 'There are even little pen and ink drawings of the trees that were planted'. They see their home's appearance on the much-loved programme as an opportunity for others to appreciate their handicraft, but also that of the original owner. Although they're getting back from holiday on the screening day, they will be glued to the television in the evening. So far, they've been very impressed by all the contestants, though that makes them slightly nervous. 'There's a bit of trepidation, because there's some really lovely properties, and people have put a lot of effort into their homes,' says McKenzie. After hearing about the plastering incident, we doubt that anyone has put as much work in as this couple. In common with Walker, their vision has resulted in a forever home. As McKenzie says, 'There's no reason for us to move'. Scotland's Home of the Year, Central & Tayside, Monday 12 May on BBC One Scotland, 8.30-9.00pm, 1 . The cat in the living room IWC Media Photo: IWC Media Photo Sales 2 . View along corridor to garden with acer tree IWC Media Photo: IWC Media Photo Sales 3 . View from the bedroom to garden IWC Media Photo: IWC Media Photo Sales
The Independent
10-02-2025
- General
- The Independent
Archive project aims to protect the legacy of Afghanistan's female artists
A student at a Scottish university is leading a project to ensure work produced by Afghanistan's female artists can continue to be shared with the world amid efforts from the country's rulers to suppress them. Mahtab Karami, who attends the University of Dundee's Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, is creating a digital archive of artwork created by women over the last 20 years so it can always be viewed no matter what happens to the physical pieces. Artistic expression by female artists has been severely restricted by the Taliban since it regained control of the country in 2021. Many drawings, paintings and other artworks have reportedly been destroyed or removed from public display as a result. To ensure pieces produced by women can continue to be viewed by people all over the world, Ms Karami has started to collate photographs and documentation of more than 150 artworks. Many of them (Afghan women) want to show the world that they exist and have something to say. This project gives their work an opportunity to be seen and to endure Mahtab Karami, student It is part of a wider research project she is conducting to establish comparisons between the work of Afghan artists and female counterparts in other Middle Eastern states. 'This is a very contemporary issue,' said Ms Karami. 'Art can be used as a form of resistance and female artists are still trying to find ways to navigate their careers given the restrictions they face. 'In other countries in the Middle East there are established ways of doing this, but this is less clearly defined in current day Afghanistan.' Following the removal of the Taliban by coalition forces in 2001, nearly two decades of reform had allowed female artists to develop their careers and display work publicly in much of the country. But the withdrawal of coalition forces in 2021 and the subsequent return to power by the Taliban have seen these reforms rapidly eroded. Education for girls has also been curtailed, with Unesco reporting 1.4 million girls have been deliberately deprived of schooling in the past three years. 'Female artists were flourishing before the Taliban,' said Ms Kamani. 'However, women living in rural areas would still have faced issues if they had wanted to show off their art, even before the return of the Taliban, and it is important to acknowledge that. 'But now women and girls are banned from attending schools. The Taliban do not care about providing a pathway for them to grow as artists. Because they are restricted from having a normal life, they cannot begin to think about creating artwork.' Ms Kamani's research, which is being supported with funding from the UKRI Arts and Humanities Research Council, will also compare the work of Afghanistan's female artists with those from Iran, Iraq and Egypt. She will use her connections in the art world to interview some of the artists and bring together photographs and other information to comprehensively detail each piece featured in her archive, as well as canvass online networks for previously created records. The archive will also incorporate present day work produced by Afghan artists living in exile. The ultimate aim of the project is to establish both the similarities and differences in themes and style between the artists of each nation. Ms Kamani hopes to catalogue around 500 pieces of art in total, providing a permanent record of the work of artists who face significant hurdles in showcasing their talent. Her research will be conducted under the supervision of Duncan of Jordanstone's Dr Helen Gorrill, a leading figure in the role of gender in contemporary art. Ms Kamani said: 'I understand how women in Afghanistan may feel – frightened and scared – but many will also want to use art as a form of resistance to express themselves. 'Many of them want to show the world that they exist and have something to say. This project gives their work an opportunity to be seen and to endure. 'Interviewing the artists will allow people to learn more about their situation and what they face in Afghanistan. 'It is vital that these people and their paintings do not disappear from the history of art.'
