Catch up with 4 Nine Trades artists

It was great to hear about updates on four of the Nine Trades of Dundee artists' projects last night and to make a few introductions across the group.

Pippa Koszerek - had a productive week in Dundee and one of the things she has been focussing on with the secretaries she's working with is shorthand. It truely looks like a beautiful, elegant code and Pippa has been instructed how to write her name. She is also working with the graph and data presentation imagery that the secretaries use every day and following up on how to make this 3D and present within some of the office locations.

David Yu - has arrived in Dundee after another residency in Nigeria (yes I think that there is severe aclimatisation to occur yet). He is working with 6-8 bars and clubs around town and got a warm welcome back from some of the publicans he has been in touch with since his scoping visit in January.

Chris Dyson - this has been a busy time for Chris as he prepares for our biggest event yet, a secret staff-only Drive In Movie event. It will be 1950's themed to fit with the film Grease which was selected by the workers at the factory where Chris is based.

Fraser MacDonald - Fraser has been continuing his work at Friarton Recycling Depot and has several visits in the pipeline. We are hoping that these will include visits from an educational group from Scottish Natural Heritage and a special visit from one of Ange Taggart's workers groups from Dundee Central Library. I thoroughly reccommend a visit to the site, so I know that they will enjoy it.

see more about their projects and the other Nine Trades of Dundee artists on the blogs listed to the right of this page.

Fraser MacDonald exhibits at Generator Members' Show

Last Friday night the annual Generator Members' Show opened with 103 exhibits including one from Nine Trades of Dundee artist Fraser MacDonald. His work was a drawing board full of sketches (by hand and in Google-sketch-up) which illustrated an exhibition proposal. This proposal was for a street scene, complete with Bin Lorry trapped in a one way street and the exhibition is to be viewed by climbing up some steps and putting your head through a man hole!

Alan Grieve magazine

Nine Trades of Dundee artist Alan Grieve and Laura Simpson had a really interesting meeting with designer extraordinaire Tara Wainwright of University of Dundee's Design Print Marketing unit earlier in the year. Alan wants it to have a balance of fashion magazine design, trade skills and humour and had brought along lots of examples of great looking page layouts. Alan has been working on the storyboard for the magazine and will get to grips with InDesign this week. The magazines will be distributed to Hair Salons around Dundee (please get in touch if you want your salon to be included on the list), and will also be available at the Final Gathering event at Centrespace on the 17th July.

See more about Alan's project : http://ninetradesalan.blogspot.com/

Clare Thornton waxes lyrical about waxed cotton

Clare Thornton's project is progressing well and we have been lucky enough to have seen some samples of the waxed cotton that Halley Stevensons produce. Clare also did a presentation to DJCAD Textile Design students in advance of their Craft Festival Scotland project called Craft Interventions. The students art interventions, were specially made for different sites around the college and were unveiled on the same night as the Craft Research Exposition which opened last week: http://craftresearch.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-craft-invite.html

Clare has already met with DJCAD staff and visiting lecturers Frances Stevenson (see her work in the Research Expo mentioned above) and Fiona Jardine (artist based in Glasgow).

More about Clare's visits (including a great post with images from gent's outfitters on Reform Street which was once called Saville Row of the North) at Clare's blog: http://ninetradesclare.blogspot.com/

Ange reaching out from the Library

Its been great speaking to a couple of people that Nine Trades of Dundee artist Ange Taggart has been connecting to through her project. Theresa Lynn from Dundee City Council has been working to engage the folks of Dundee with the arts for years. I have met her a couple of times at art exhibition openings - most recently at the Cooper Gallery show - Moving Images from The Attic Archive. ( http://www.exhibitions.dundee.ac.uk/programmes_current.html ). So its great to hear a bit more about what she does and know that Ange and Theresa's paths will cross over the next few months.
Also I had a very positive conversation with Amina Shah from the exceptional Central Library. The work that they do there is amazing, the librarians look after the people as well as the books, running innovative cultural activity workshops with groups from different parts of the community. Ange has already been introducing her TagTool work to the clients and staff and has an amigo called Alistair who has particularly interested in that side of things. Alistair and Ange will be heading off to Austria to get skilled up with the originators of the TagTool and do some networking with other TagTool users.

Hear more about it on Ange's blog:   http://ninetradesange.blogspot.com/

Final Gathering announcement

Nine Trades of Dundee project team are pleased to announce that our celebratory event - to mark the end of the Nine Trades of Dundee project will be called the Final Gathering and will take place in Centrespace downstairs in Dundee Contemporary Arts. The event will take place on Saturday 17th July 2010 and is open to the participants and artists, their friends and family and also to the general public and others who have helped the project along the way. In short - You are Invited!!!
There will be information and representations from each of the nine projects so you can learn about whats happened in each of the locations.
More details to follow - please put the date in your diary.

David's coming to town

This week will see the return of Nine Trades of Dundee artist David Yu to Dundee. last time he was here he paced the streets and propped up the bars of Dundee, speaking to publicans across the city. Loads of bars were up for working with him and he has selected a good variety of locations. He will be talking to staff and working with them to produce video and audio footage. Editing this footage and including these within physical installations within the pubs is the aim. The footage from each will be swapped with the other pubs.