Archived exhibition
Moving Images from the Attic Archive
Date: 20 March 2010 - 17 April 2010
Gallery: Cooper Gallery
Preview : Friday 19th March 6-8pm
Exhibition: 20 March - 17 April
Event: Thursday 1st April 6.30 - 8.30pm
In Conversation with the administrator of The Attic Archive and artist/writer Stewart Home (http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/)
/// An exhibition of video edits from The Attic Archive, an independent artists archive which began collecting in 1976, in Dundee.
The works, on VHS, DVD and digitised Super 8 have been made across the span of the project, with many collaborators. The subject matter drawn upon is diverse, from documenting performative actions in 1980's London, to urban gull colonies in Dundee, to Andy Murray Flower of Scotland.
The Archive has grown through collaborations with many artists and interaction with the Neoist and early mailart networks. Collaborations within the Archive include with Stewart Home, Karen Strang, David Zack, Istvan Kantor / Monty Cantsin, Sarah Falloon, Stefan Szczelkun and tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE.
The visitors to the exhibition will see installed works, projections and will be able to select works to view at their own leisure within the space.
Running alongside Moving Images from The Attic Archive, three installations, drawn from three decades of the Archive, have been curated to explore the following three themes: artistic motivation, collaborative practice and insider / outsider discourse. Visits to the Archive will be made once a week in the company of Jonathan Baxter (D-AiR). Participants will be invited to reflect on the installations through informed discussion.
These visits are facilitated by D-AiR (Dundee Artists in Residence) in collaboration with The Attic Archive and Exhibitions at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design and are designed for a small group of participants to take part in all three visits over the period.
This artist has, over a thirty-year period, documented three distinct decades of his life as Pete Horobin, Marshall Anderson and Peter Haining. The documentation and artworks made during this time have become The Attic Archive, which contains journals, drawings, correspondence, collaborations, mail art projects, video & audio works, and ephemera. The Attic Archive is Haining’s home in Dundee.
Pete Horobin was a Scottish artist involved in the international movements of mail art and neoism, exchanging correspondence in the form of letters, small publications, postcards and audio cassettes as well as small three-dimensional objects, with artists Robin Crozier, Rod Summers, Mark Pawson, Stefan Szczelkun, Vittore Baroni, Carlo Pittore and David Zack among many. Horobin’s self-historification project DATA (Daily Action Time Archive) 01.01.1980 documents many personal pilgrimages and walks – one being PRAM (Pedestrian Rambles Around Myland) a walk across Scotland from Dysart in Fife to Mallaig on the West coast. The actual gold pram contained all his living and studio needs and the action celebrated Horobin’s Year of Freedom which was in antithesis of Orwell’s 1984 dystopia.
Marshall Anderson 01.01.1990 to 31.12.1999 was a mixed media artist and freelance arts journalist specialising in the arts and crafts in Scotland. In 1995 he began to work collaboratively with the ceramicist Lotte Glob on a series of book works which were of the land. These were not only inspired by the topography and history of the land but were also constructed with its elements.
In 2000 Peter Haining was born. HIBERNIA [Haining’s Irish Biketour in Eire and Round N Ireland (Arts)] commenced in March of that year and closed five years later. This project researched autodidactic art practice throughout Ireland and was the first audit of its type to be undertaken. The resulting ‘Archive of Contemporary Irish Folk & Outsider Art’ is now contained within the Attic Archive in Dundee.
Drawing has featured heavily from the three periods of this artist’s life. Horobin, Anderson and Haining all used drawing to document particular aspects of their practice – for example, each spent considerable periods of time living in the landscape. Series of drawings include the collaborative and performance related drawings by Peter Horobin, the landscape drawings by Marshall Anderson and the drawings which document Haining’s hainings or campsites. Anderson’s portfolios, constructed from the clothes he wore, contain his drawings which are largely informed by such Scottish Romantics as Horatio MacCulloch, whom Anderson noted had instilled a vigorous emotion into his documentation of the Scottish landscape, a response that he also wanted to achieve.
Film work has also been a predominant feature of the three artists’ practises. The available DVD Attic Archive Details is a showreel of excerpts of film from key periods. From 1980 a series of animated actions introduces Horobin’s DATA (Daily Action Time Archive). From 1984 is PRAM (Pedestrian Rambles Around Myland) and ‘Fifeman’, which animates pages of a mail art book work set to audio work by Horobin. Poetically investigating nature versus the political, are three film works all sited in Fife locations: ‘Mossmoran’ documents ExxonMobil Chemical's Fife Ethylene Plant, filming it from dawn to dusk; ‘Garden’ a rural idyll set to a soundtrack of news broadcasts from the Falklands War; and ‘UTOPIA’, showing observations of how nature has had to adapt to the city. From Haining’s ‘Archive of Contemporary Irish Folk & Outsider Art’ there are excerpts from three of his films in conversation about and with artists ‘Moscow’ Joe McKinley, James Finlay and John Crampsey. The showreel finishes with ‘Busy Doing Nothing’ a piece that is Haining’s signature work.
Image: Moscow Joe McKinley
BIOGRAPHY
Pete Horobin
1:1:80 commenced ten-year self-historification project DATA (Daily Action Time Archive)
Selected exhibitions / events in which DATA participated
1989: The Year of the Tent (throughout Scotland); 1988: The Festival of non-Participation (various venues, Scotland); 1987: The Festival of Plagiarism (London); 1985: APT 9 – Neoist Apartment Festival (Ponte Nossa, Italy); 1984: APT 8 – Neoist Apartment Festival (London); 1984: First International Portfolio of Artists’ Photography (New York); 1982: Neoist Network’s First European Training Camp (Wurzburg, Germany); 1982: World Art Post (Artpool, Budapest)
Marshall Anderson
Selected publications: 1997-99 Variant; 1996-99 Art Review; 1996: The Living Tradition; 1995 (Oct) Scottish Field; 1992 to 1997: Artwork; 1990 to 94 Artists Newsletter
Selected exhibitions: 1999 The Library, collaboration with Peter Russell (Alloa tower and The Loft gallery, Glasgow); 1999 Foot-Ware (Artpool, Budapest, Hungary); 1998 MacTotem (An Lanntair, Stornoway travelling exhibition); 1997 Carmina Gadelica (art.tm, Inverness travelling exhibition); 1997 Marcel Duchamp Commemorative (Artpool, Budapest)
Peter Haining
Selected publications: 2003: Naïve art in Northern Ireland, Linenhall Library, Belfast; 2003: Outsider Art in Ireland, circa magazine; 2003: The destruction of Irish Folk Art, start magazine; 2002: Art out of Idleness, start magazine; 2001: Pete Horobin’s DATA project, essay for Justified Sinners published Pocketbooks, Edinburgh; 2001: Exploring the margins of Irish Art, circa magazine
Selected exhibitions: 2006: DATA Controlled Access DATA, as part of ‘I confess I was there – symposium on artists’ archives’ at the University of Ulster in Belfast
Until December 2009 self-publishing limited editions of DVDs based on work from The Attic Archive.
Websites:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y7U1OSgj8Q
www.stewarthomesociety.org/neoism/neoass.htm
LINKS
Stefan Szczelkun
http://szczelkuns.wordpress.com/
Artpool
Lotte Glob
Stewart Home
http://www.stewarthomesociety.org
Karen Strang
tENTATIVELY a cONVENIENCE
http://www.thing.de/projekte/7:9%23/tent_index.html