Visiting Artist Semester 2 - Jacqueline Donachie - 25.1.18

Jacqueline Donachie - 25.1.18

Jacqueline Donachie. South . Spike Island Bristol , 2001. - Image courtesy of the artist. 

Scottish Artist, Jacqueline Donachie, introduced her practice as dealing with public engagement, situated in public contexts. She noted a bandstand from her home city of Glasgow and the socio-economic transformation the image of the bandstand has undertaken over the past 100 years. Once a cultural hub, a place of music and performance. The bandstand has now become a sight of the 14-18 youth of Scotland passing round £3 3-litre bottles of cider. Here she details a social phenomena bought on by the increase in poverty in large cities. How artistic practices might address things that change and evolve over time proved to be integral to Donachie's work. 

During a 2001 residency at Spike Island, Bristol. Donachie explored the notion of a community, a social space. Returning to the notion of the bandstand, the work ‘South' became an event and a gathering, a place that becomes open rather than closed. Sounds of the south; carefully constructed around the concrete circle and internal heating within the piece, generates an atmosphere that physically denotes social warmth as well as visually.

Jacqueline Donachie. South . Spike Island Bristol , 2001. - Image courtesy of the artist. 

Notes 

- Mid – Career retrospective – The fruit-market gallery Edinburgh. Reflective time of her art-making career . Thinking back on her 25- year career 

- Process 

“ If you are working with a research process, the end result is not information; the end result is art. “ – Donachie

‘How things evolve over Time' – Research practice – genetics – tracing the nature of her sisters degenerative disease 

- DEEP IN THE HEART OF YOUR BRAIN – 2016 

- Science behind the work she makes . GENETICS // Family 

- Sculptural 

- Materiality 

- Loss 

- The edge of what is possible 

- Lamppost drawings – metaphors for families. They act as a catalyst for part of a family yet individual ( different types of lampposts) 

- THE MEDIUM OF WRITING 

- Modes of transportation . Travel , trains boats . In Scotland travel is always interrupted. Gaps . Permissions and rules. Thinking beyond the rules that exist . Given examples of council rules to do with roads. 

- Social spaces – gathering spaces – the bar – the goal 

- Physical relationship to sculpture important in approach to her work. Her sculpture needs involvement from the human body ? why ? being able to lean on the bar important. 

- The weight of something 

- Small pleasures – individual connotations attached to leather, the smell, memories. 

- POSE WORK FOR SISTERS

- Inspired by Bruce Maclean’s pose work for plinths. 

- TOMORROW BEONGS TO ME – 2002 – Muscular Dystrophy. – Multiplication of something getting worse. * Drawing of something she noticed in her study of science practice* - gap between patient and scientist. Attending a science conference. Some Korean scientists never saw anyone with the disease in person before. Only study the gene.  Interesting to think about the values held here in scientists who are researcher. Their moral implication associated with looking for cures etc? Are they production machines? Or do they hold a duty of care towards the people they train to save? 

-          Deliberate decisions in her video work. Her choices to have the ill sister talking and the healthy sister silent looking upset. Important decision in showing the impact of serious medical conditions on families.

-          Artistic research – What is it useful for. Art as a catalyst.

-          Public works. – Temporary

-          HUNTLEY – Scotland

Tutorial 

-          Discussing the language of installation art. Creating the experience.

-          The language of cinema and social cinema space, comfort. -carpet tiles, curtains , fabrics

-          Turbine Hall installation – Miroslaw Balka– the blackness – the environment.

-          Value of my work to me – I can’t make work for anyone else.

-          Process – begins with a feeling and an event that I want to convey. Processes of elimination, the only way to come up with the best way of presenting something is to try things out.

-          Playing with materials in spaces – contained space.

-          Containing things in space – parallel reality – real human experience that mirrored in technology – e.g seeing images of a place physically then a digital representation of the same vision existing in the empty space of online.