artists' book collection Dundee Exhibition

Student Curatorial Team | Body of Work

abcD | Artists' Book Collection Dundee & Student Curatorial Team

Body of Work

Preview: Monday 20 February, 5.30-7.30pm

Exhibition: 21 - 28 February 2017

Opening Times: Mon-Fri, 11am - 2pm & 3 - 5pm

Centrespace, Visual Research Centre

Body of Work is an exhibition by the DJCAD Student Curatorial Team of selected books and multiples from artist’s book collection Dundee (abcD). The exhibition explores the body in relation to, and represented by, the artist.

The body has long been a subject of art and artworks; we have a fascination with what we recognise, the beautiful or the ugly, and what the human form can depict. Particularly in the age of the ‘selfie’, depictions of the ‘self’ surround us in contemporary culture more than ever before - the body is reshaped and re-represented in unbounded ways. Through these artists’ books, the body is interpreted in a myriad of forms. It can be inherently political, but simultaneously personal: a statement of a public and a portrait of the ‘personal’.

Body of Work draws inspiration from the work of Hackney Flashers Collective which operated in the 1970s and 80s. The collective drew attention to the image of the woman’s body, as a means to raise awareness of contemporary socio-political issues in relation to the representation of women in art and popular visual culture. The publication from 1980 entitled Domestic Labour and Visual Representation explores the fundamental construction of idealistic images of women in art, and will be displayed amongst other pieces in Body of Work to inform a diverse narrative of representations of bodies.

Selected exhibition catalogues, newspapers, zines, books, artist’s editions from abcD unite in a shared space to explore the dynamic and ever-changing nature of the body in contemporary publications, forming a ‘Body of Work’.

The selection of artists’ books from abcD include titles by from the collection by Oriana Fox, Yoko Ono, Elaine Shemilt, Carolee Schneemann, Kirsty Whiten, and Julian Opie among others.

Themes of performance, feminism, visual representation, and the self, surface in a broad investigation into the body in artist’s publications; accommodating a discourse between language, image, and object in the space.

Body of Work is curated by Student Curatorial Team members Fiona Verran, Ana Hine and Steven Wilson.

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abcD is a space dedicated solely to Artists' Books, the first combined archive and exhibitions space of its kind in the United Kingdom. The Centre was established by distinguished publisher and artist Alec Finlay in 1999 and holds a collection of over 1,500 Artists' Books and multiples created by both international artists and artists based in Scotland. An acquisition scheme enables new items to be added to the collection regularly. One of the main aims of CAB is to publish its own titles, the first being Selected Walks by Richard Long and most recently, TENT by Paul Noble.

Between 1999-2002 the exhibition programme at CAB was curated by Alec Finlay. Since 2011, Exhibitions (Cooper Gallery) at DJCAD has led on an exiting programme that aims to explore this unique art form through cross-disciplinary approaches and to broaden the exposure and accessibility of Artists' Books.

abcD is the artists’ book collection at University of Dundee’s Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design and is cared for by Museum Services as part of the University of Dundee Museum Collections.

artists' book collection Dundee is based in the Visual Research Centre, DJCAD and is located on the lower floors of Dundee Contemporary Arts, 152 Nethergate, Dundee.