Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum is pleased to present CURRENT:Contemporary Art from Scotland (Phase Two). Following the successful 2015 debut in China, CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland programme will move into Phase Two at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum in December 2016. The project is curated by Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee in collaboration with Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and organized in partnership with the British Council. The exhibitions will open to the public on December 17 and continue to run until January 15.
Consisting of two group exhibitions REWIND: British Artists’ Video in the 70s and 80s and >>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland, 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.
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, >>FFWDseizes 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.
Fast-forwarding to yesterday and rewinding today, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland throws light on the shadow we call the contemporary. Replete with radical aesthetics and artistic passions,>>FFWD and REWIND bring into startling focus the moving images that give the contemporary its fiction of permanency.
REWIND: British Video Art in the 70s & 80s
David Hall, TV Interuptions (1971)
Drawn from the significant national AHRC research project led by scholars at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, REWINDis a critical and historical counter-point to the contemporary moving image works presented in >>FFWD.Sampling the visual languages and formal innovations developed by video artists working during the 1970’s and 80’s, REWIND provides a telling account of how the image culture of the contemporary is saturated with citations, quotations and references from its near past.
>>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland
Katy Dove, October (2011)
Spliced together as a four week ‘film strip’ of Artists’ Moving Image practices animating contemporary art from Scotland, >>FFWD holds timeas a material, and the camera as the medium of looking, recording and seeing. 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.
There will be an opportunity for the audience to meet with the curators and some of the artists featured in the exhibitions to discuss the ideas behind their work and contemporary art in Scotland. For further information, please visit our website or follow us on Wechat.
About Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum
Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum is sponsored and funded by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation, which is a non-profit organization mainly establishing varies types of activities that engaged in art. It is also the first public welfare organization in context of financial institutions in Mainland China. It is based on the study of Chinese modern and contemporary art. With an international perspective, closely reflecting the trend and the status of Chinese contemporary art, and actively promoting the communication and cooperation between Chinese contemporary art and international cutting-edge art. Minsheng Art Museum will collect and exhibit the outstanding artworks from both in and out of China; also, it promotes different forms of international communications to support the academic research. Meanwhile, Minsheng Art Museum will conduct multiple forms of education programs of art and aesthetic to the public.
About Cooper Gallery DJCAD
Cooper Gallery DJCAD is a public gallery associated with one of the most respected art colleges in the UK, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) established in 1892.
Cooper Gallery have gained international recognition as a distinctive platform in Scotland with their radical curatorial research, international approach and focus on critical discourse in contemporary art and culture.
With four galleries devoted to an integrated programme of new commissions, exhibitions, off-site projects, public engagement events, artists’/writers’ residencies and publishing, Cooper Gallery DJCAD actively develop meaningful and effective collaborations with national and international organizations/individuals. This approach enhances the reach and quality of its work, enabling the gallery to support, produce and disseminate the best practices of established and emerging, national and international artists and creative practitioners.
About the curator
Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum is pleased to present CURRENT:Contemporary Art from Scotland (Phase Two).Following the successful 2015 debut in China, CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotlandprogramme will move into Phase Two at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum in December 2016. The project is curated by Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee in collaboration with Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and organized in partnership with the British Council. The exhibitions will open to the public on December 17 and continue to run until January 15.
About the exhibition
REWIND: British Artists’ Video in the 70s and 80s
>>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland
Dates: 17 December 2016 – 15 January 2017
Curator: Sophia Hao
Organisers: Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee in partnership with the British Council
REWIND: British Artists’ Video in the 70s and 80s:
George Barber, David Critchley, Judith Goddard, David Hall, Stephen Partridge, Elaine Shemilt
>>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland:
Anne Colvin, Anne-Marie Copestake, Karen Cunningham, Kate Davis, Katy Dove, Kathryn Elkin, Sarah Forrest, Allison Gibbs, Michelle Hannah, Elín Jakobsdóttir, Mairi Lafferty, Adam Lewis Jacob, Lindsay Mann, Duncan Marquiss, Oliver Mezger, Rosalind Nashashibi, Bobby Niven,Hardeep Pandhal, Ross Sinclair,Lucy Skaer, Pernille Spence, Corin Sworn, Tom Varley, Dominic Watson
Courtesy of the artists and Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, for further information please visit www.minshengart.com.
