17 December 2009

Picture the scene from your desk

What do you see when you sit at your work desk? Are your eyes met with rows of cubicles across an open plan office, or do you look out at a spectacular south-facing view over the Tay? Perhaps a brick wall faces your window, or the photographs, paper clutter and desk plants are the most notable feature of your working environment.

Whatever sights greet them when arriving at their desk each morning, office workers from throughout Dundee are invited to capture their views on mobile phone or camera and send them to artist Pippa Koszerek.

She is currently creating an alternative public art tour based on views from the office desk or window of secretaries and admin workers as part of the ‘Nine Trades of Dundee’ project that seeks to take art directly to the workplace and challenge preconceptions about who is an artist.

Each project is run by an artist who is either working in a job that helps fund their artwork, or who has done in the past.

Since 2002, Pippa has worked as a temporary secretary in a variety of workplaces, which inspired her to apply to be part of the Nine Trades of Dundee initiative. She finds that her day job often inspires her artwork and has begun exploring minute-taking as a creative tool in which the secretary is both the audience, the scribe and, in many ways, the scriptwriter. This has inspired her to look at the cinematic moment of the workplace.

'I really enjoy entering new office environments and meeting new people,' she said. 'Past colleagues have become good friends and it is always great fun when aspects of my art-life and work-life merge.'

'Last summer colleagues of mine helped me out and became agents in a geo-caching project I was doing. During lunch hour they passed on messages for me to give to other participants in the project.'

'I find that this playful approach adds an aura of mystery and excitement to the everyday goings on of the workplace. For me, the strangeness I experience each time I enter a new office as a temp, makes me think of each new environment as a film set. By collaboratively creating an alternative public art tour based on workplaces I hope to expand on this sensation.'

Pippa has been working as an artist for the past nine years, and as a secretary for the last eight. During the past year, Pippa has worked as a Legal Secretary and as a PA. She is keen to make contact with office workers based in offices around Dundee to explore the tools of their trade, and see how the views from their desks differ.

The art tour will be developed collaboratively with secretaries from around the city after they send in images of their usual workplace views.

As well as gathering photos Pippa would like to set up a Lunch Club for secretaries. Each secretary would bring a particular skill or area of interest to the group. Over a 12-week period, a series of artworks will be developed that can either be part of a site-specific performance event around the offices where they work, a web based publication or an exhibition.

Nine Trades is a project initiated by the Exhibitions Department at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. It was inspired by the ‘The Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee’, an organisation that has been operating since the 1800’s. Originally concerned with commerce and standards of the city it now functions as a charity and is involved in the preservation of heritage.

'Nine Trades of Dundee' aims to increase arts access and encourage more participation for non-arts audiences by bringing art activity and creativity to the heart of the workplace.

Anyone who would like to contribute by sending a picture of the view from their desk can contact Pippa on P.Koszerek@dundee.ac.uk.

Notes to editors:

Nine Trades of Dundee is a project devised by Exhibtions at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, and funded by The National Lottery through the Scottish Arts Council’s Inspire Fund.

The outputs of the ‘Nine Trades of Dundee’ will include nine core collaborative commissions; a ‘Nine Trades Final Gathering’ event bringing together the artists, participants and wider audience; two ‘open door’ tours to see the work in situ; nine ‘Nine Trades Apprenticeships’ for Duncan of Jordanstone students; one ‘Nine Trades’ workshop for a Dundee school; an Edinburgh International Festival musical performance co-presented with The Space of ‘Experimentum Mundi’, an Italian orchestra of artisans; and a linked Creative Learning Resource to accompany the ‘Nine Incorporated Trades of Dundee’ display at McManus Galleries.

The project will commission nine artists with second non-art trades to lead collaborative art projects with workers from that particular trade, and commissions will be developed to fit the individual artists practice and the working environment and the artist will receive curatorial and peer support as part of the larger ‘Nine Trades of Dundee’ project.

More information is available by visiting www.ninetrades.com.

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