This is a group exhibition of film/video work from Scotland which is part of an on-going project in China in have been involved with over the past 3 years. For this show I will present a new edit of the film, 'The Ballad of 20 Years of Real Life, Chinese Version', (with subtitles/commentary in Mandarin). In Phase 3, later on, I will present a solo show in Shanghai. On phase two I am working with Jin Wei (SEA 2) and Flora Huang (PP3) on translation of text for this project which has been interesting and important.Following the successful 2015 debut, CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland will move into Phase Two at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum in December 2016.
Curated by Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee in collaboration with Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and organised in partnership with the British Council, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland focuses on the history, development and current conditions of artists’ moving image works to further explore the distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland, its grass-roots spirit and its keen debates with the social and political dimensions of art and culture.
Phase One of CURRENT noted that the present is ‘the only moment that ever matters’. Phase Two sustains this observation with the caveat that the ‘contemporary’ is nothing but the shadow of this very moment.
Transfixed in the immediate passage of a recurring now, the contemporary captures and projects only its own image. This is its currency, its irredeemable value, the unique quality of being simultaneously both what is watched and the means of watching. But the now of the contemporary is inherently unstable and indefinite. Without permanency or stability, it smoulders in a closed loop, ceaselessly rewinding and leaping forward, an image always moving ahead and falling back upon itself.
Marking and making time, the contemporary inscribes itself within a technical universe composed of images in constant flux. Faced with this temporal apparition that oscillates between high definition close-ups and impossible wide angle panoramas, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland grasps the restless energies of now by means of two contrasting takes on the moving image; REWIND and >>FFWD.
Crashing in and out of focus, cutting and editing time the moving image is the aesthetic medium of the contemporary. Yet as a medium it holds more than just the present moment, its play of film strips and pixels is marked by radical histories. Excavating this radical history encapsulated in seminal artists’ video works from the 1970’s and 80’s REWIND provides an in-depth historical perspective with which to grasp the condition of the contemporary as a moving image falling in and out of history. In contrast, >>FFWD seizes the contemporary in its full immediacy and impact. Choreographed as a four-week rolling programme of moving image works from Scotland, >>FFWD illuminates a visual lexicon of now.
>>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland
Featuring works by twenty-four artists, >>FFWD captures the evocative light of contemporary moving image works from four distinct angles. Indexed by questions of the body, history, narrative and time, >>FFWD unrolls the moving image as a medium irrevocably defined by the urgencies of our contemporary moment. The selection of >>FFWD is supported by Modern Edinburgh Film School.
>> FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland features artists include: Anne Colvin, Anne-Marie Copestake, Karen Cunningham, Kate Davis, Katy Dove, Kathryn Elkin, Sarah Forrest, Allison Gibbs, Michelle Hannah, Elín Jacobsdottir, Mairi Lafferty, Adam Lewis Jacob, Lyndsay Mann, Duncan Marquiss, Oliver Mezger, Rosalind Nashashibi, Lucy Skaer, Bobby Niven, Hardeep Pandhal, Ross Sinclair, Pernille Spence, Corin Sworn, Tom Varley, Dominic Watson. Current, Phase Two, at Mingshen Art Museum, Shanghai (Dec 16).
