Archived exhibition

Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland

Preview: 28 June 2014, 6pm – 8pm

Exhibition: 30 June – 2 August 2014

We are pleased to announce Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland, an exhibition as part of GENERATION, this summer's major, nation-wide exhibition programme showcasing some of the best and most significant art to have emerged from Scotland over a period of 25 years and part of the Glasgow 2014 Culture Programme.

Taking its cue from the live improvised excitement of musical jamming, Cooper Gallery in Dundee presents Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland; the first discursive survey to foreground the grassroots character of artists’ collaboration that has contributed to the remarkable achievements of contemporary art in Scotland.

Adopting a diverse curatorial approach the project is comprised of exhibitions, a dynamic event series and a Group Critical Writing Residency, culminating in a 12-hour Jamming Symposium.

Studio Jamming is set to re-search, annotate, contextualise and celebrate artists’ collaboration as a particular phenomenon of artistic practice in Scotland. The key ingredient for this process is the Studio Jamming Hub, an architectural intervention constructed in and around Cooper Gallery designed by Studio Miessen led by Markus Miessen, an alumni of GSA and now a leading thinker in Critical Spatial Practice. Developing as a live critical discourse, the Studio Jamming Hub acts as a collaborative ‘site’ where artists, writers, architects, educators, researchers, performers, cultural thinkers and participants present, reflect upon and elaborate the possibilities and histories embedded in artists’ collaborations.

Among the highlights of Studio Jamming is the presentation of works from artists’ collaborative groups including Graham Eatough & Graham Fagen, Full Eye, GANGHUT and Henry VIII’s Wives. The artists’ collaborative groups occupy the Studio Jamming Hub for a week each to present new works and events between 30 June – 2 August.

Studio Jamming is annotated and collated through (LIVE) publishing, a series of free publications created, printed and disseminated in situ, edited by Sean Scott and Katie Reid, produced with the (LIVE) publishing team.

Information video about Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland courtesy of Rob Page.

Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland previewed on 28 June 2014, with a performance by GANGHUT.

Photographs by Kathryn Rattray 2014.

12-Hour Jamming Symposium took place at part of Studio Jamming on 25 July 2014, 11am - 11pm in Cooper Gallery.

Photographs by Alan Hillyer 2014

Video Documentation of 12-Hour Jamming Symposium.

Filming & editing: Rob Page, 2014

Filming Assistance: Lucas Battich and Neele Hruby.

The Studio Jamming preview with a performance by GANGHUT was part of the Dundee Launch Weekend to celebrate GENERATION exhibitions taking place across Dundee and the local areas. Click the following link to view a pdf of the weekend's exhibitions and events.

Dundee Launch Weekend Programme 28 June 2014

Studio Jamming was reviewed on 'this is tomorrow' by Alex Hetherington on 17 July 2014. You can read the review here:

thisistomorrow.info/articles/studio-jamming-artists-collaborations-in-scotland

frieze blog featured Studio Jamming as part of Postcard: ‘Generation – 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland’ by Chris Fite-Wassilak on 8 July 2014.

a-n featured the 12-Hour Jamming Symposium in their News. You can read their preview here:

www.a-n.co.uk/news/jamming-for-artists-collaborations-in-scotland

The List featured Studio Jamming in their 'Ten Unmissable GENERATION Events' and Henry VIII's Wives in '25 Years of Art in Scotland' by David Pollack.

Studio Jamming artists and participants

Graham Eatough & Graham Fagen

Theatre Director Graham Eatough and artist Graham Fagen have worked collaboratively on projects including Killing Time, DCA 2006, and The Making of Us, Tramway 2012. Graham Eatough is the Artistic Director of Suspect Culture, the theatre company he co-founded in 1992. Graham Fagen is an artist based in Glasgow and will represent Scotland for the 56th Exhibition of the Venice Biennale in 2015. Their collaborative work responds to shared preoccupations of the experience of ‘time’ and ‘place’, the relationship between the individual and society and its mediation through performance.

For Studio Jamming, Graham Eatough & Graham Fagen present a new installation comprised of two configurations of their 2006 narrative film Killing Time immersed among sketches and notes made during the development period of the film. The juxtaposition of the 'work' and the 'process' illuminates the stimulating collaborative mode of their creative thinking and making.

Killing Time shows the fragmented journey of an eerie harlequin dressed character as he travels between five theatrical settings crossing the boundaries of past, present and future; each staged frame recalls references from film, theatre and shared cultural histories.

Between 7 – 12 July, Killing Time is re-configured into a large filmic installation in the Studio Jamming Hub to draw the audience into a wandering of the worlds of Killing Time.

On Monday 7th July Eatough & Fagen present a screening of their most recent collaborative production The Making of Us followed by an In Conversation event. Commissioned by Glasgow International in 2012, The Making of Us was a live filmic installation at Tramway, that saw visitors to the gallery become ‘extras’ as the live production developed.

Graham Eatough & Graham Fagen, Studio Jamming, Cooper Gallery, 2014, Photographs by Alan Hillyer

Full Eye

Full Eye is a new collaboration formed by Anne-Marie Copestake, Katy Dove and Ariki Porteous in response to the propositions of Studio Jamming. Through a shared interest in music, moving image, vocalisation, instrument making, sound, performance and visual art, Copestake, Dove and Porteous collaborated previously as Muscles of Joy performing at Glasgow International, Stereo, Glasgow, 2010, Subject in Process: Feminism in Art, CCA, Glasgow, 2009, Moot Points, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, 2008.

For Studio Jamming, Full Eye are creating a multimedia installation. Using sound, light and colour to evoke ideas of suggestion, memory and perception, this new work evolves in response to the temporal changes taking place across the Studio Jamming Hub.

From 14 – 19 July, when Full Eye occupies Cooper Gallery for their Hub week, Copestake, Dove and Porteous extend their collaborative circle and invite other artists to deliver workshops responding to their shared exploration of mantra through acts of writing, deep listening, vocal technique and percussion. These events comprise of a DIY Deep Listening Workshop with artist Katherine MacBride on 17 July, an electronic music production workshop with musician Jamie Grier on 18 July, culminating with Full Eye’s debut live music performance amidst their installation in Cooper Gallery on 19 July.

Full Eye, Studio Jamming, Cooper Gallery, 2014, Photographs by Alan Hillyer & Full Eye

GANGHUT

GANGHUT is a collaborative group with no fixed membership, permanent base or clear manifesto that brings together people with various backgrounds in art, design, music, poetry and curating, from different parts of Scotland to work together. Not just a collective of people, GANGHUT is a social and communal space where activities can happen in the spirit of utopian ideologies, co-operation, and camaraderie. GANGHUT has been commissioned by a number of organisations over 10 years including exhibitions and residencies at Chapletown, Leeds, 2011, Glasgow International, 2010, DCA, Dundee, 2009, Scottish Sculpture Workshop Lumsden, 2007, and Spike Island, Bristol, 2004.

Entitled Pump up the Jam, GANGHUT’s presence in Studio Jamming is formed from the physical results of the group’s time as Artists in Residence from 23 – 27 June when they occupy the Cooper Gallery Project Space for the week. During this time GANGHUT members spend time together, working and collaborating on the task of ‘making jam’. For GANGHUT, ‘making jam’ provides a situation in which to make connections with the other artists and the audience and by referencing this tradition of Dundee, the jam making opens out a space for recalling and retelling particular narratives associated with the city and themselves.

During GANGHUT’s week in residence, the public is invited to a series of Five O’clock Open Studio Events on 25, 26 & 27 June to take part in their process-led practice. Inspired by the notions of “jam” and “jamming”, GANGHUT are using this time to develop a live performance to be staged during the preview of Studio Jamming on 28 June from 6pm.

GANGHUT, Studio Jamming, Cooper Gallery, 2014, Photographs by Alan Hillyer

Henry VIII’s Wives

Henry VIII’s Wives are a collective of artists founded in 1997, and include Rachel Dagnall, Bob Grieve, Sirko Knupfer, Simon Polli, Per Sander and Lucy Skaer. They are based variously in Scotland, Denmark, Norway and Germany, and are all graduates of the Environmental Art Department at Glasgow School of Art. Since 2005 the group has focused on their ongoing project Tatlin’s Tower and the World, an attempt to build the famously unbuilt tower in full size in different locations and venues across the world. Henry VIII’s Wives have shown in major venues internationally including The Museum of Contemporary Art, Roskilde, 2014, Whitechapel Gallery, London, 2009, Kunsthalle Friedericianum, Kassel, 2006, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 2004, PS1, New York, 2004, Transmission Gallery, Glasgow, 1998.

For Studio Jamming, Henry VIII’s Wives present a video installation and undertake a road-trip to the group members’ studios across Europe to gather together their extensive archive of works. Until now this archive has been scattered across Europe in their different members' studios, but for the first time since they formed in 1997, their archive is assembled in public at the Cooper Gallery creating a new body of works.

Between 28 July – 2 August, Henry VIII’s Wives occupy the Studio Jamming Hub for a week to index and present their newly assembled archive in a shipping crate alongside their pipe organ sculpture The Lowest Note of an Organ. Potentially accompanying the process would be their boat, 'The Bang Larsen'. This homemade rowing skiff would be positioned within and against the backdrop of the specially designed structure by Studio Miessen.

Henry VIII's Wives, Studio Jamming, Cooper Gallery, 2014, Photographs by Alan Hillyer

Maria Fusco

Maria Fusco writes fiction, critical and theoretical texts, edits publications, and contributes to a broad range of magazines, books and catalogues. Fusco is founder/editorial director of The Happy Hypocrite a semi-annual journal for and about Experimental Art Writing. Fusco was the inaugural Writer in Residence at Whitechapel Gallery in 2009-10 and the Critic in Residence at The Kadist Art Foundation Paris in 2008-9. In 2013 Fusco was Writer-in-Residence at the Lisbon Architecture Triennale and a Hawthornden Fellow, Scotland.

For Studio Jamming, Maria Fusco edits the Group Critical Writing Residency (2 June – 2 August) which invites writers from across Scotland to contribute new, original writing for online publication, accumulating distinct singularised voices into a prescient document of what it is to be contemporary in art in Scotland today. The residency will culminate in a Group Critical Reading Event led by Fusco, presenting the multitude of creative and critical writing produced for Studio Jamming.

Please see Maria Fusco’s website for more information: http://mariafusco.net

Images copyright Maria Fusco.

Studio Miessen

Established in 2002 Studio Miessen is a collaborative agency for spatial strategy and cultural analysis, led by Markus Miessen, an alumni of GSA and now a leading thinker in Critical Spatial Practice. Studio Miessen conceive space, design strategic framework proposals, research and write on spatial practice and comment on a wide range of cultural phenomena through international publishing. In other words: Studio Miessen produce ideas. Studio Miessen’s spatial/design projects include LU Arts Centre (UK), Gwangju Biennial Hub (Korea), Performa Hubs 09/11 (US), the reappropriation of a former post-office for Manifesta 8 (Spain), a new interior for Witte de With (NL), and the largest project to date: a master plan and Kunsthalle building for a former NATO nuclear-warhead bunker facility in Germany.

Studio Miessen is designing the key ingredient of Studio Jamming, the Hub; a spatial design constructed in and around Cooper Gallery in response to the idea and actuality of collaboration today.

Developing a live critical discourse, the Studio Jamming Hub acts as a collaborative ‘site’ where artists, writers, architects, educators, researchers, performers, cultural thinkers and participants present, reflect upon and elaborate the possibilities and histories embedded in artists’ collaborations.

Studio Miessen's contribution to the projects is concerned with a new and differentiated zoning of the existing gallery space. With their design for the project, Studio Miessen attempt to unite the different spaces in Cooper Gallery by introducing a decentralised structure that produces a unified spatial sequence of recognisable forms in response to the particular temporality of the project.

Markus Miessen is presenting one of the keynote talks, as part of the 12-Hour Jamming Symposium on 25 July.

Please see Studio Miessen’s website for further information: http://www.studiomiessen.com

Image copyright Studio Miessen

Group Critical Writing Residency, 2 June – 2 August 2014

Offering a vital platform for presenting and disseminating critical writing, the Group Critical Writing Residency, edited by Maria Fusco, invited emerging writers in Scotland to produce new textual works on collaboration and collectivity, accumulating distinct singularised voices into a prescient document of what it is to be contemporary in art and culture in Scotland today. Selected writers respond to various propositions of collaboration within the wider contexts of art, culture and society suggested by the exhibiting artist’s collaborative groups and Maria Fusco:

? How do collectives function?
? How to collaborate between differences? Finding a shared vocabulary in a cross- disciplinary collaboration.
? No individual authorship.
? I’m not interested in collaboration; I just want to make things.
? Here. Right now.

Contributions from selected writers are published on the Group Critical Writing Residency website, culminating in a live Group Critical Reading Event led by Fusco in which the writers give their work a public voice as part of the 12-hour Jamming Symposium on 25 July 2014.

On Saturday 23 August 2014, 2 - 3pm, Edinburgh based writers from Group Critical Writing Residency will present a cycle of readings at Here, Right Now: art writing readings, part of the Edinburgh College of Art Masters Festival in the ECA Sculpture Court.

12-Hour Jamming Symposium, Friday 25 July 2014, 11am – 11pm

Studio Jamming culminates in an incendiary 12-Hour Jamming Symposium. Staged in the Studio Jamming Hub at Cooper Gallery on Friday 25 July, the Jamming Symposium forges a vital platform for discursive interrogations and speculations upon the phenomena of collaboration and the ideas, artworks and writings constituting Studio Jamming.

Centred on declarations from Artists’ Collaborative Groups from across Scotland, the 12-hour Jamming Symposium features keynote talks by international and national leading thinkers whose practices invest collaboration with depth and rigour.

The 12 hours are jammed with gigs, performances, screenings and Group Critical Readings, providing an auditorium for the multiple voices that are the spirit of contemporary art and culture in Scotland. Keynote speakers include Stine Hebert, Maria Lind, Francis McKee and Markus Miessen. David Harding will introduce the Declarations from Artists’ Collaborative Groups, the Group Critical Writing Residency readings will be led by Maria Fusco and Dominic Paterson will chair the panel discussion. Please click the following link for more information about Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland.

This information can be downloaded in large print and rich text format using this link:

Studio Miessen's contribution to this exhibition is kindly supported by the Goethe-Institut Glasgow. For more information on Goethe-Institut Glasgow please see: http://www.goethe.de/glasgow.

Henry VIII's Wives artist Rachel Dagnall's contribution to this exhibition is kindly supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA).

This project is kindly supported by The National Lottery through Creative Scotland.‌

Studio Jamming: Artists' Collaborations in Scotland is an associate exhibition of GENERATION: 25 Years of Contemporary Art in Scotland.

GENERATION is a major, nation-wide exhibition programme showcasing some of the best and most significant art to have emerged from Scotland over a period of 25 years.

GENERATION offer access to world-class art on an unparalleled scale with over 70 venues across Scotland taking part. It's free, its exciting and it's accessible. This is a once in a generation opportunity.

Studio Jamming: Artists’ Collaborations in Scotland is part of the Glasgow 2014 Culture Programme. The Glasgow 2014 Cultural Programme is a national celebration. Culture 2014 will showcase dance, theatre, music, visual arts, comedy and much more in the run up to and after the Commonwealth Games with Festival 2014 transforming the Host City at Games Time. The Cultural Programme is a partnership between the Glasgow 2014 Organising Committee, Glasgow Life and Creative Scotland through National Lottery funding.

Cooper Gallery is open Monday – Saturday, 11am – 5pm. The galleries can be accessed via the Cooper Gallery doors on the east side of the DJCAD car park.