We have wanted to visit Stills Gallery for some time, and this exhibition – the culmination of a series of 18-month artists’ residencies – is the perfect opportunity to do so. Director of Stills, Deirdre MacKenna, will give us a tour of the facilities (Stills is much more than a gallery) and fill us in on the significant opportunities offered by their residency programme.
We will hear from Chris Dooks about his filmmaking career, art practice and interest in Buddhism. Chris is actually a dedicated and serious Buddhist, but he has an irreverent approach to the practice and a gift for entertaining speaking that makes the whole thing particularly accessible. His work is absorbing, amusing and deeply humane. So, in a rather unexpected continuation of a Spin theme – following Luke Watson’s photos last month of Kagyu Samye Ling, the Tibetan Buddhist Retreat near Lockerbie – we will see the beautiful and strange film that Chris made in its grounds. He is also showing a second work in installation form. The Seventeen Perfections of the CD Burner is a ‘Lost Buddhist Scripture of Scotland’ channelled to the artist in a Glen Lyon B&B. As Chris will explain, ‘this scripture conforms to the rules known to every teenage boy i.e. the rules for making the perfect compilation tape . . .’
Incidentally, one of Chris’s previous films, Demixed, made in the Northern Region Film and Television Archive, can be seen at http://www.isisarts.org.uk/dooks.html
In this, the first of two residents’ exhibitions to be shown at Stills, we will also see the work of four other artists, some of whom Spin members might remember from previous outings. The little gem of an exhibition by a group of retired people at Newhailes House this summer was organised by NGS Education and facilitated by Nicky Bird and Sam Hill. Here, you will see Nicky’s collection of vintage photos bought on EBay, Questions for Seller and Sam’s sweet (and sometimes explicit!) interactive animation addressing children’s questions about sex and reproduction. Spin-Off London has just come from seeing, at Pilot, Sam Clark‘s wine glasses, jumping and vibrating to piano chords. Here she shows Lure, an array of glasses that magnify mysterious objects trapped behind them. Along with Jessie Blindell‘s dramatic new photographic tableaux of melodramatic family scenarios, these works are all engaging, thoughtful, emotive and witty, and sit together remarkably well.
