Staff

Mary Modeen BA, BFA, MA, MFA

Course Director, MFA in Art & Humanities

Tel: +44 (0) 1382 384036
Email: m.modeen@dundee.ac.uk

Biography

Mary Modeen is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art and Art and Philosophy at the University of Dundee. She teaches undergraduates and postgraduates, and supervises PhD candidates in interdisciplinary practices. Her research has several threads. These are: perception as a cognitive and interpretive process, philosophy (especially ontological, aesthetic and metaphysical aspects of knowing), and place-based research which tends to connect many of these concerns, with attention to cultural values, history and embodied experience. As such, this research is usually interdisciplinary, combining many methods and approaches, and speaks to many different audiences. Part of this work appears as creative art, and part is conveyed through writing, presentations and workshops.

She co-convenes three national and international research networks: Mapping Spectral Traces (www.mappingspectraltraces.org), PLaCE Scotland, and as of 2012, Land2 (http://www.land2.uwe.ac.uk). All three of these research groups are multi-disciplinary, and each begins with place-based research, but often involves collaborative teams working on specific projects.

Modeen combines academic writing, conference presentations, and artwork in public exhibition to address aspects of seeing that go beyond the visible, questioning what we know. Prints, videos, artist books, sculptures and installations, and soundworks all feature as recent media in her exhibitions. Her work often focuses on various aspects of perception, and of cognisance of place in many forms.  Differences between people, viewpoints, cultures and values are inherent in these investigations, and feature in a several upcoming funded research projects, as well as in past work. Her work often incorporates Indigenous studies and cultures of the ‘other’ as important within the overall scope of these topics.

REF Outputs & Research Projects

1. Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Cognition and Text, funded by the AHRC. For this, Modeen commissioned and curated an exhibition of 44 artists and poets, and wrote a publication of the same title, in support of this research (2011). This work was launched at the Visual Research Centre located in Dundee, and followed by further different exhibitions at the Scottish Poetry Library, Moray Arts Ctr. and culminating for the full exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy (Nov-Dec. 2011).

2. Mapping Spectral Traces-ongoing. This has five separate component parts:

a. Co-convening a research network with members in six countries, and participating in an ongoing website.

b. Four Exhibitions:

• Landscapes of Epiphany, Blacksburg, Virginia at the Armory Gallery, 2-person exhibition with Dr. Judith Tucker. October-2012-Jan. 2011;
• Space, Place and Spectral Trace, BV Studio Gallery, Bristol, England. A group exhibition with 20 artists. 22-28 March 2011;
• National University of Ireland-Galway and MST in Galway, Ireland- Untitled, (The Language of Stone), video 2:30, video presented at the Black Box theatre art exhibition. 21 April 2012; and
• Minneapolis, two group exhibitions at Univ. of Minnesota (Nash Gallery and also Architecture Library) October 2012

c. Four Conferences with papers delivered:

• At the Greenscapes conference at Brock University in Ontario, a paper entitled Landscapes of Epiphany.
• MST at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, Virginia, a paper entitled Polyvalent Perception and Cultural Memory. October 2010.
• In Bristol, Love From a Distance.
• And at MST3 in Dublin/Maynooth at NUI-M, a panel called Groundedness.

d. Book chapter (X 3): 

• Two book chapters in Deep Mapping & Slow Residency: New Creative Engagements with the Ecology of Place, Iain Biggs (Ed.), Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2013.
• Neither Here Nor There, in Art is the Gap, Bristol: Wild Conversations, 2012.

e. Pending grant applications: Leverhulme International research grant application, and HERA group research application (Stage 1)

3. Engendering Dialogue (in Scotland and Beyond)-2011-2012

Modeen co-hosted a symposium with Dr. Rachel Jones (PI) of the Philosophy department in the School of Humanities, examining feminist art and philosophy and the futures of feminism in Scotland (http://engenderingdialogue.wordpress.com), called Seeing Things Differently (30-31 March 2012). This was one of three symposia in the research project entitled Engendering Dialogue, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A concurrent exhibition with the art of three artists, Beth Fisher, Ingrid Pollard and Gina Wall was curated by Modeen for this event, and an artists’ panel was included in the proceedings.

4. Polyvalent Perception and Cultural Memory

a. First Nation research, delivery of paper entitled The Opposite of Snake, presented to the Native American Surrealisms panel of the 100^th College Art Association of America’s annual conference, Los Angeles, CA (Feb. 2012) and inclusion in special issue of the Journal of Surrealism and the Americas

b. Group exhibition:  Current Voodoo, for the Southern Graphics Council International (USA) Conference entitled “Navigating Currents” at Ogden Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana, March 2012. Followed by tour to: Wriston Galleries, Lawrence University, Appleton, Wisconsin

c. Academic writing (X 5):

• Book chapter: “Distancing and Foregrounding: Visual Art, Place and Memory”: Vol.2, Cartographies of Culture: Memory, Space, Representation. Literary and Cultural Theory, Vol. 35, Peter Lang Publishing, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Oxford, Wien: Germany, 2010.
• book chapter Ahi Ka; Ahi Ka: Homefires Burning. Published in: Debatable Lands, Vol .II, Iain Biggs, Ed. Bristol, England: Wild Conversations Press (2009-10). Book chapter with images and sound files on CD-rom.
• pending book chapter Polyvalent Perception and Cultural Memory;
• pending journal article In Praise of Multiplicity;
• Book chapter: Poohsticks and Rivers of Referents: Opening Out Philosophical Space and Movement in Photography and Film, for a book on movement: The Theory, Practice, and Art of Movement Capture, Analysis and Preservation, Grethe Mitchell (Ed). Publication in 2012: London: Intellect.