23 September 2011

Public invited to cut, scratch and score with artists

Photo opportunity: 10am-12noon on Friday, 21st October at the Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

Three acclaimed figures from the UK art scene are to collaborate with ordinary Dundonians on of a major new performance and exhibition commissioned by Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.

Up-and-coming star artists David Barnett and Sam Belinfante will team up with Bruce McLean, one of the most renowned figures in British contemporary art, to produce ‘A CUT A SCRATCH A SCORE: a comic opera in three parts’, which will be held across three public spaces in the city next month.

The project combines opera, comedy, drawings, sculpture and moving images. The daring work will act as a stage for the city and its people, upon which the comedies of contemporary life will strut, turn and take a bow. The five-day project is open to members of the Dundee public interested in shaping the final performance, which will draw on the history of the city’s famous industries of jute, jam and journalism.

It will be the first time Bruce McLean has held a major performance exhibition in Scotland for several years, and the project represents a rare opportunity to see such a high profile artist working in collaboration with a team of visual artists, performers and musicians.

A series of open rehearsals and salons will be held from Monday, 17th October. The Salons will be events where the artists invite the public to join them for a round-table discussion. All events are free and open to anyone to attend.

The culminating performance will take place on Friday, 21st October, and an exhibition relating to the project will then be held at the Cooper Gallery, DJCAD.

In dealing with obesity, gluttony, avarice, consumerism, deportment, immigration, anarchy and conformity, the story line will chart the ups and downs of our very modern relationships.

Directly following the final performance, the exhibition will continue to tell the tale of this comic opera by drawing on the ethos of collaboration.

Renowned Mezzo-soprano Lore Lixenberg and performance artist Adeline Bourret will also take part in the performances, as will musicians from Dundee including the Cantiones, Sacrae and St Paul’s Cathedral choirs, and Dundee Drum Academy.

The project is part of the Cooper Gallery-led ‘Legends of Now’, a series of commissions featuring influential British artists who came to prominence in the 1970s and 1980s, and who are still making innovative and challenging new works today in collaboration with other artists. Legends of Now is supported by supported by Creative Scotland and The Elephant Trust.

More information is available by contacting Laura Simpson on l.z.simpson@dundee.ac.uk or 01382 385330. Images are available and interviews with the artists can be arranged.

Notes to editors:

Open Rehearsals:

• Tuesday, 18th October, 3-4pm, Cooper Gallery, DJCAD.
• Wednesday, 19th October, 3-4pm, City Square, Dundee.
• Thursday, 20th October, 3-4pm, Botanic Garden, Riverside Drive, Dundee.

5 o’clock Salon:

• Monday, 17th October, 5-5.40pm, Cooper Gallery.
• Tuesday, 18th October, 5-5.40pm, Cooper Gallery.
• Wednesday, 19th October, 5-40pm, Cooper Gallery.
• Thursday, 20th October, 5-5.40pm, Cooper Gallery.

Refreshments will be served at the Salon events.

Culminating Performance:

Friday, 21st October, 7pm, Cooper Gallery,

Booking is essential.

Exhibition:

Saturday, 22nd October-Saturday, 5th November, Cooper Gallery.

Bruce McLean
Bruce McLean is one of the major figures of contemporary British Art. He first came to prominence in the late 1960s as a sculptor, rethinking the possibilities of three-dimensional work in terms of form, scale and permanence. This radical rethinking will be at the heart of the new commission for The Legends of Now. Bruce's bold and confident approach to art-making and the wit evident therein proved influential to his contemporaries and also to a generation of younger artists. In 1971 McLean established a collective Nice Style, billed as ‘The World's First Pose Band'. With them and in other collaborative performances he continued to use humour to confront the pretensions of the art world and wider social issues such as the nature of bureaucracy and institutional politics.

Born in 1944 in Scotland, he studied at The Glasgow School of Art and at St. Martin's in London, where he was taught by Anthony Caro. He found the attitude there ponderous: "Twelve adult men with pipes would walk for hours around sculpture and mumble." In reaction he turned to making sculpture out of rubbish, to performance art and to producing photographic works in which he often posed.

Bruce McLean was awarded the John Moores prize for painting in 1985, and was the Head of Graduate Painting at the Slade until 2010. He lives and works in London.

David Barnett
David Barnett is a Digital Scenographer with a background in graphic design, moving image and theatre. Barnett has also been a long term collaborator both with MontageTheatre Arts and Mem Morrison Company where he has developed a body of work examining the technical and creative boundaries of working with the physical, spacial and digital. He graduated from Central Saint Martin's College of Art & Design, Scenogrphic Design MA in 2000.

Sam Belinfante
Sam Belinfante is an artist living and working in London.

Since graduating from University of Leeds (BA) and the Slade School of Fine Art (MA), Belinfante has performed and exhibited internationally - including group shows in major venues such as Stoltzestrasse 11, Frankfurt; REMAP, Athens; BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, The Hayward, London and Tate Britain, London. Most recently he has been commissioned by Tate Britain’s prestigious evening performance strand, Late at Tate, to present Stimmung (2011).

Since 2008 Sam Belinfante has been working on a series of performances and events devised in collaboration with Hayward Touring for Every Day is a Good Day, a major retrospective of the visual artwork of John Cage.

Adeline Bourret
Born in France (1988), Adeline Bourret lives and works in Edinburgh and graduated in Sculpture from Edinburgh College of Art in 2010. She is actively engaged in the Scottish dance & theatre community and recently initiated and led and exhibition and performance project for Edinburgh Fringe:

Lore Lixenberg
Born in the UK, Lore Lixenberg has performed widely in opera, concert repertoire and music-theatre, and works internationally with many leading composers, orchestras and ensembles.

For media enquiries contact:
Grant Hill
Press Officer
University of Dundee
Nethergate, Dundee, DD1 4HN
TEL: 01382 384768
E-MAIL: g.hill@dundee.ac.uk
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