This video is an edition of ‘Art in Scotland’ featuring the exhibition ‘Here & Now’ at Dundee Contemporary Arts, artist Nathan Coley and Babs McCool, Director of Dundee’s Visual Research Centre.

Dave Rushton introduces the programme, observing that contemporary art is considered by many to be a difficult subject. The exhibition ‘Here and Now’ was appearing in five separate galleries across Scotland, three of them in Dundee (at the DCA, McManus and Generator), and hoped to address some of the problems of access by providing a very engaging and diverse range of exhibits.

Katrina Brown is the curator at Dundee Contemporary Arts. She explains that each venue has a range of artists and houses a complete exhibition in its own right, focussing on art from the previous eleven years. In addition to drawings, paintings, photographs, sculptures and installations the exhibition includes sound works, digital video and objects you can touch or even sit on. Most of the venues give you a sense of an encounter and Brown says the placing of each work within the gallery is part of the process, the show is very much an experience in space and time, hence the title ‘Here and Now’.

The interview is illustrated throughout with attractive shots of the venues and exhibits, many of which draw on current popular culture, particularly using music and video.

In a thoughtful and in-depth discussion, Dave Rushton talks to artist Nathan Coley about the exhibition, his work and the spaces in which we experience art. They talk about the importance of such exhibitions for the international reputation of the region. Coley talks about his exhibit, a continuous video projection of Munster in Germany inspired by the allied bombing of the city during the Second World War. They also discuss the relevance of video and audio art to a gallery space or a broadcast medium.

In a separate section of the programme Dave Rushton asks Babs McCool about the Visual Research Centre. She says the interest in visual research is about ten years old, and was very much centred on Dundee. Duncan of Jordanstone had always been an art school for working artists and had worked with other institutions, mostly in London, to redefine practice as research and thus create an academic discipline. She describes the work and facilities of Dundee’s VRC. This video recording lasts 28 minutes and 22 seconds.