To celebrate the 150th anniversary of The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum, contemporary artist Duncan Marquiss has been invited to delve into the city’s extraordinary collection of objects and artworks to create a new large-scale video installation that will light up the exterior of the museum building on Saturday November 25. The project is called Drawn to Light. Alongside Marquiss, the electro-pop musician Jonnie Common will give a special live performance. He will perform his own composition on the museum steps, similarly inspired by the spaces, sounds and stories of the McManus.
FOR the last few months I’ve been visiting Dundee regularly in preparation for Drawn to Light, a commission to celebrate 150 years of The McManus museum. It’s the first time I’ve been asked to work on an exterior projection. I’ve made many video works for exhibitions before, and recently worked on documentary films, but the scale and context of this project is new territory for me.
It’s interesting because the building is an unusual choice for a projection surface. It’s Gothic Victorian and dates back to 1867. Often projection-mapping plays with architectural features by animating them or flattening out surfaces. But there is also the scope to re-clad the building if you like, to alter or pattern its skin with light.
Wandering around the displays and stores at The McManus I was struck by the diversity of the museum’s collection (there are more than 150,000 objects spanning 400 million years). I want the commission to demonstrate that variety, and the points of connection between objects. My artistic practice is often concerned with overlaps between the biological and the cultural realms. I’m interested in the fuzzy boundaries between categories, so the chance to film natural history specimens alongside historical artefacts was exciting.
I was also interested in speculating about The McManus as a collective memory bank. A “museum-mind” that emerges when all these disparate objects and memories are connected. I’m often intrigued by how we find patterns in chaotic territory. Maybe museums are a grand example of this trait.
To select objects for filming I took random walks through the museum’s collection database, using loose associations and analogies to leap between items. I wanted to find objects that might not often go on public display – some unlikely choices from the museum’s subconscious.
I’ve filmed lots of dissimilar objects – from sherds of medieval pottery to iridescent bird plumage and computer circuitry, often shooting items close-up using a macro lens. This zoomed-in perspective can estrange familiar forms or produce abstract patterns. I’m currently assembling all this material together into video collages for the projection.
By projecting shifting images of The McManus’ collection onto the building itself, the museum can display its internal contents, presenting its “thoughts” and “memories” upon its exterior for onlookers to interpret.
November 25, The McManus Art Gallery & Museum, Dundee, 7pm to 8.30pm, free. www.mcmanus.co.uk
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here