26 November 2012

Touring forum to explore contemporary culture

Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) will later this week host a high-profile panel of speakers from the worlds of art, architecture and cinema, who will be discussing current cultural practices.

The theme of 'imported remoteness' will feature heavily at 'Hubs and Fictions', which takes place at the Cooper Gallery on Friday, 30th December. This will be the first of three dates for the travelling forum, which will also visit BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, and Goldsmiths, University of London.

Hubs and Fictions serves as a satellite to 'Surplus Cameo Decor' by Edgar Schmitz, a three-episode 'exhibition-as-film' that being held at DJCAD, part of the University of Dundee, until 14th December.

Imported remoteness refers to the tension between local settings and the global aspirations of exhibitions and other cultural events. Curator Sophia Hao says the topics to be covered by the forum are relevant to Edgar Schmitz's exhibition, which has seen the Cooper Gallery turned into the set of an imaginary film.

"As researchers, curators and artists who are engaged in cultural production, there is a need to interrogate the relations that play out between gallery presentations, institutional aspirations and the ways they intersect with fantasies of elsewhere," she said.

"If exhibition making is inherently a form of narrative, what kinds of fiction or reality can it stage? This is a timely discussion given that the film sets of Surplus Cameo Decor transport the viewer into Berlin, Cuba and Hong Kong, whilst they remain physically grounded in Dundee."

The Hubs and Fiction travelling forum takes place at Cooper Gallery from 2-5pm on Friday, 30th December. It will be chaired by Lucy Byatt, Director of Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, and contributors include Simon Groom (Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art), Lisa Le Feuvre (Head of Sculpture Studies, Henry Moore Institute, Leeds), Berlin-based architect and writer Markus Miessen, and Wang Nanming, a leading art critic based in Shanghai.

More information is available by contact Laura Simpson on l.z.simpson@dundee.ac.uk or visiting Exhibitions web page.

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