Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum is pleased to present CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland (Phase Two).Following the successful 2015 debut in China, CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland programme will move into Phase Two at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum in December 2016. The project is curated by Cooper Gallery DJCAD, University of Dundee in collaboration with Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum and organized in partnership with the British Council. The exhibitions will open to the public on December 17 and continue to run until January 15.
Consisting of two group exhibitions REWIND: British Video Art in the 70s & 80s and >>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland focuses on the history, development and current conditions of artists’ moving image works to further explore the distinctiveness of contemporary art made in Scotland, its grass-roots spirit and its keen debates with the social and political dimensions of art and culture.
Transfixed in the immediate passage of a recurring now, the contemporary captures and projects only its own image. This is its currency, its irredeemable value, the unique quality of being simultaneously both what is watched and the means of watching. But the now of the contemporary is inherently unstable and indefinite. Without permanency or stability, it smoulders in a closed loop, ceaselessly rewinding and leaping forward, an image always moving ahead and falling back upon itself.
Marking and making time, the contemporary inscribes itself within a technical universe composed of images in constant flux. Faced with this temporal apparition that oscillates between high definition close-ups and impossible wide angle panoramas, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland grasps the restless energies of now by means of two contrasting takes on the moving image; REWIND and >>FFWD.
Crashing in and out of focus, cutting and editing time, the moving image is the aesthetic medium of the contemporary. Yet as a medium it holds more than just the present moment, its play of film strips and pixels is marked by radical histories. Excavating this radical history encapsulated in seminal artists’ video works from the 1970’s and 80’s, REWIND provides an in-depth historical perspective with which to grasp the condition of the contemporary as a moving image falling in and out of history. In contrast, >>FFWD seizes the contemporary in its full immediacy and impact. Choreographed as a four-week rolling programme of moving image works from Scotland, >>FFWD illuminates a visual lexicon of now.
Fast-forwarding to yesterday and rewinding today, Phase Two of CURRENT: Contemporary Art from Scotland throws light on the shadow we call the contemporary. Replete with radical aesthetics and artistic passions, >>FFWD and REWIND bring into startling focus the moving images that give the contemporary its fiction of permanency.
REWIND: British Video Art in the 70s & 80s
Drawn from the significant national AHRC research project led by scholars at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, REWIND is a critical and historical counter-point to the contemporary moving image works presented in >>FFWD. Sampling the visual languages and formal innovations developed by video artists working during the 1970’s and 80’s, REWIND provides a telling account of how the image culture of the contemporary is saturated with citations, quotations and references from its near past.
>>FFWD: Artists’ Moving Image from Scotland
Spliced together as a four week ‘film strip’ of Artists’ Moving Image practices animating contemporary art from Scotland, >>FFWD holds time as a material, and the camera as the medium of looking, recording and seeing. Featuring works by twenty-four artists, >>FFWD captures the evocative light of contemporary moving image works from four distinct angles. Indexed by questions of the body, history, narrative and time, >>FFWD unrolls the moving image as a medium irrevocably defined by the urgencies of our contemporary moment. The selection of >>FFWD is supported by Modern Edinburgh Film School.
There will be an opportunity for the audience to meet with the curators and some of the artists featured in the exhibitions to discuss the ideas behind their work and contemporary art in Scotland. For further information, please visit our website or follow us on Wechat.
CURRENT | Contemporary Art from Scotland is kindly supported by the British Council, China-UK Connections through Culture, The National Lottery through Creative Scotland, Scottish Government, Shanghai International Culture Association, LUX Scotland and Goldsmiths College, University of London. CURRENT is a direct result of the Research and Development Trip (January 2014) funded by Creative Scotland.
Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum
Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum (SMAM), sponsored and funded by the China Minsheng Banking Corporation, is a non-profit organization focused on the research of Chinese modern and contemporary art. Closely reflecting the international trajectory and the status of Chinese contemporary art, SMAM actively promotes dialogue and exchange between Chinese contemporary art and international cutting-edge art practices. Collecting and exhibiting outstanding artworks from both China and the rest of the world, SMAM is as a public platform for international debate and academic research with an extensive educational programme.
Cooper Gallery DJCAD
Cooper Gallery DJCAD is a public gallery associated with one of the most respected art colleges in the UK, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (DJCAD) established in 1892.
Cooper Gallery have gained international recognition as a distinctive platform in Scotland with their radical curatorial research, international approach and focus on critical discourse in contemporary art and culture.
With four galleries devoted to an integrated programme of new commissions, exhibitions, off-site projects, public engagement events, artists’/writers’ residencies and publishing, Cooper Gallery DJCAD actively develop meaningful and effective collaborations with national and international organizations/individuals. This approach enhances the reach and quality of its work, enabling the gallery to support, produce and disseminate the best practices of established and emerging, national and international artists and creative practitioners.
The British Council
The British Council is the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities. The British Council create friendly knowledge and understanding between the people of the UK and other countries. Using the UK’s cultural resources we make a positive contribution to the countries we work with – changing lives by creating opportunities, building connections and engendering trust.
The British Council work with over 100 countries across the world in the fields of arts and culture, English language, education and civil society.
Founded in 1934, we are a UK charity governed by Royal Charter and a UK public body. The majority of our income is raised delivering a range of projects and contracts in English teaching and examinations, education and development contracts and from partnerships with public and private organisations. Eighteen per cent of our funding is received from the UK government.
We operate as the Cultural and Education Section of the British Embassy in Beijing and Cultural and Education Section of the British Consulate-General in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chongqing and Wuhan. Our Exams work across China operates as a Wholly Foreign Owned Enterprise.
Curator
Sophia Hao
Sophia Hao is Director and Curator of Cooper Gallery at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee, where she leads an experimental and integrated curatorial programme with a focus on critical discourse in contemporary art and visual culture.
Hao has published books, articles, catalogue essays, novels and poetry internationally. She is also the founder and editor of the contemporary art journal &labels. Her books include A CUT A SCRATCH A SCORE (2015) and NOTES on a return (2010). Her most recent book Hubs and Fictions: On Current Art and Imported Remoteness (co-edited with Edgar Schmitz) was published by Sternberg Press in 2016. In 2014 Hao was awarded the Henry Moore Institute Research Fellowship. She is a panel member of Margaret Tait Award for artists’ film and moving image 2016/17.
