1 November 2005

Bottle fountains and giant jumping beans at playful exhibition

PHOTOCALL: 6.30 pm, Friday November 4th
Cooper Gallery,
Duncan of Jordanstone College

A spectacular fountain built from bottles of soft fizzy drinks and giant jumping beans making their wobbly descent down a purpose-built slope show off a sense of playful subversion at a new exhibition opening at the University of Dundee.

"Function Form Follows" brings together five young designers and artists from France, Japan, Scotland and England whose work playfully subverts the design mantra of ‘form follows function’.

The exhibition - which runs from November 5th to December 3rd - will get a colourful launch at the preview opening on November 4th when Kate Owens and Tommy Grace set the juice flowing on their installation 'The Ill-tempered Waters', a working fountain constructed from pop bottles and their juice.

A slope has also been built in the gallery on which viewers can roll Emmanuelle Lainé's giant jumping beans.

Emmanuelle Lainé is based in Paris. Her practice, part product designer, part artist, is intriguing as she launches her proto-typed products in the type of environment she has made them for. In her film 'Jumping Beans' (2001), we follow a line of outsize jumping beans on their journey through the parks and streets of Paris.

Mixko are two Goldsmiths graduates Nahoko Koyama and Alex Garnett. Their design practice involves the subversion of everyday items through playing with scale, thus a ubiquitous ‘I Love NY’ mug is custom made as a chair or table, and ‘FUNkey’, a computer key, becomes a computer stool. Their website is http://www.mixko.net.

Kate Owens is an emerging Edinburgh artist who makes spectacular and beautiful objects and installations through seeing beauty and a change of function in cheap food and drink products. Past installations have seen the tiling of pillars with the humble wrapped cheese slice, and ornate gothic windows through the application of crisps such as Wotsits in intricate patterns. For this exhibition Kate and her collaborative partner Tommy Grace are going to make a working ornate fountain from pop bottles and their juice, thus embodying design excess.

Function Form Follows - Emmanuelle Lainé Mixko Kate Owens & Tommy Grace
Cooper Gallery, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design,
13 Perth Rd, Dundee DD1 4HT
01382 345330 Admission Free

For more information and images please contact:

Cooper Gallery Opening Hours: Opening Hours - 9.30-5pm, Mon- Fri. 10.30-4.30pm, Saturdays.

For more information contact:

Roddy Isles,
Head of Press
Tel: 01382 344910,
out of hours: 07968298585,
Email: r.isles@dundee.ac.uk