Event
Art Night Dundee
Saturday 24 June 2023
Internationally renowned contemporary art festival Art Night to take place in Dundee in 2023
Art Night Dundee
Saturday 24 June, 12noon–Midnight
Mourning Ritual: 8.30pm & 9.30pm
Art Night comes to venues across Dundee on Saturday 24 June and we're delighted to be presenting an exhibition and live event by Turner Prize nominated artist Heather Phillipson.
Heather Phillipson's exhibition Dream Land will be open during the evening of Art Night, punctuated by the live event Mourning Ritual.
Mourning Ritual is a new audiovisual event in which the artist speaks live over sampled musical refrains, acapella vocals and the calls of critically endangered UK birds. Mourning Ritual has been composed by Heather Phillipson as a 'sonic summons' - an attempt to communicate with the spirits of departed animals. Mourning Ritual is co-commissioned with Art Night and Cooper Gallery and supported by the DJCAD Centenary Trust.
Dream Land is a new commission by Phillipson which incorporates archival BBC wildlife footage, recast as hallucination. Opening with its bug protagonist sucked through a vacuum cleaner nozzle, the film lands us in an alternative world which resembles our own but as if broadcast from another dimension. Remixing and revoicing remarkable scenes from innovative 1980s nature documentaries Supersense and Life Sense, Dream Land presents earthly life as a dream, accessed via the bizarre and precious lives by which we’re surrounded.
Schedule
Exhibition open: 12noon–8pm
Exhibition paused: 8–10pm
Mourning Ritual: 8.30pm & 9.30pm
Exhibition re-opens: 10pm–midnight
Free, open to all and unticketed.
Artist's Biography
Heather Phillipson’s audacious and wide-ranging practice often involves collisions of wildly different materials, media and gestures in what she describes as ‘quantum thought experiments’. Phillipson was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2022. In 2023, she will present a new commission for the Imperial War Museum/14:18 Now Legacy Fund at Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. Recent solo exhibitions include: THE END, the Fourth Plinth commission, Trafalgar Square (2020-22); RUPTURE NO.1: blowtorching the bitten peach, Tate Britain, London (2021); Almost Gone, an audio collage for BBC Radio 3 (2020); The Age of Love, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK (2018); and my name is lettie eggsyrub, a major public commission for Gloucester Road underground station, Art on the Underground, London (2018). Recent group exhibitions include: British Art Show 9, UK touring (2021-22); Bodies of Water, 13th Shanghai Biennale, China (2021); Garden of Earthly Delights, Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (2019); Leaving the Echo Chamber, Sharjah Biennial 14, UAE (2019); I Was Raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2018); Frieze Projects, New York, USA (2016); INCERTEZA VIVA (Live Uncertainty), 32nd Bienal de Sāo Paulo, Brazil (2016); and Performa, New York (2016).
Phillipson received the Film London Jarman Award in 2016 and was awarded the European Film Festival selection at the 47th International Film Festival Rotterdam in 2018. She is also a musician and award-winning poet and has published five volumes of poetry.
Partner Biography
In 2021, Art Night went national for the first time, engaging with audiences at a range of museums, galleries and outdoor spaces across the UK as well as being open to audiences globally through a series of newly commissioned online works. In 2023, this format will be developed further, and cemented with a biennial festival.. Since 2016 Art Night has commissioned 60 new artworks and attracted 300,000 live audiences, 800,000 digital and an additional 2 million via touring, museum acquisitions and national projects.
Art Night was set up in 2015 by Philippine Nguyen and Ksenia Zemtsova. The original four festivals took place in partnership with art organisations in different parts of London and were guest curated by leading UK based curators - The ICA and Kathy Noble (2015); Whitechapel Gallery and Fatos Uztek (2016); Hayward Gallery and Ralph Rugoff (2017`). In 2019, Art Night appointed Helen Nisbet as Artistic Director, her first festival took place in the outer London borough of Waltham Forest to coincide with the Mayor of London’s first Borough of Culture before the first national Art Night festival in 2021.
Art Night invites artists to make ambitious, durational and performative work for non-traditional public spaces. Previous artists making major new commissions for the festival include Barbara Kruger; Joan Jonas; Zadie Xa; Cecile B Evans; Imran Perretta and Paul Purgas; Linder; Celia Hempton; Mark Leckey; Christine Sun Kim; Frances Stark and Anne Hardy.
Follow Art Night on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter @artnightuk #artnightdundee
#artnight2023
Access
Cooper Gallery is located to the right side of the DJCAD buildings on Perth Road. The entrance is via double doors which face onto a car park.
The gallery is on two floors. Ground floor has ramped access. First floor is accessible by an internal lift and six steps with a handrail. Wheelchair access is via a stairclimber. Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access.
First floor is also accessible via 24 steps. Two flights of 12 steps with handrails are separated by a landing.
The moving image work has English captions.
The exhibition has low lighting.
In the second floor gallery there is an uneven floor surface with accessible routes through.
Seating will be available, if required, please ask a gallery attendant.
For all enquiries please email: exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk
Content Note
The exhibition and event contains flashing images.
Toilets
The ground floor has a wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral.
Interpretation
Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides. If you require alternative formats for material in exhibitions please email or ask our Guides.
Press coverage
Image credit
Heather Phillipson, Mourning Ritual, 2023. Live event. Image courtesy Art Night, photo by Helen Nisbet.
Funding
Cooper Gallery is a parter of Art Night Dundee.
Dream Land is a co-commission by Art Night and the Art Fund. It forms part of Art Fund's Wild Escape programme. The live event Mourning Ritual is co-commissioned by Art Night and Cooper Gallery with support from the DJCAD Centenary Trust.
Cooper Gallery
exhibitions@dundee.ac.uk