Installation: Tuesday-Thursday, 2-4 April
Performances: Thursday, 4 April, 17:00-20:00 BST
History/Reality is a contemporary installation of the Attic Archive, initially established by artist Pete Horobin in 1975 at 37 Union Street, Dundee, and now dispersed across collections in Scotland, Ireland, and Hungary. The exhibition features rarely or never-seen video art, correspondence, drawings, and artefacts documenting distinct decades of the artist's life through the characters of Pete Horobin, Marshall Anderson, Peter Haining and Ae Phor Aitch. The work explores the relationship between constructed histories and lived realities, particularly regarding personal and cultural identity, the material basis of everyday life, urban and rural experience and institutional critique. In addition to archival display and video screenings, History/Reality will feature an evening of performances by Stewart Home, Roddy Hunter and Laurie McInally, responding to aspects of the archive from their different perspectives and exploring its relevance to contemporary cultural and social experience. History/Reality is curated by Judit Bodor as part of the wider project, ‘The Digital Attic Archive’, which aims to establish an international 'network of care' to sustainably secure the archive's legacy through the development of an open-source web platform.
Stewart Home was born in London (UK) in 1962, where he still lives. When he was sixteen, he held down a factory job for a few months, an experience that led him to vow he'd never work again. After dabbling in rock journalism and music, in the early eighties he switched his attention to the art world. He is the author of 17 novels, 7 books of cultural commentary, as well as collections of short stories & poetry. He has long been an underground legend in Europe, North America and Brazil.
Laurie McInally is a Glasgow-born, Dundee-based, multi-media artist. Her work explores internalised views on gender, class and sexuality while investigating and challenging the social structures that inherently feed these attitudes. While critiquing culture, social class and status, Laurie’s work offers deeply personal and inclusive overtones, which support the more challenging themes of her practice.
Judit Bodor is Baxter Fellow and Programme Director of MFA Curatorial Practice at DJCAD, University of Dundee. Her curatorial work is always collaborative, often working directly with artists to expose lesser-known histories and post-1970s practices of counter-cultural, time-based, and networked art.
Roddy Hunter is an artist, curator, and writer whose interests range from locational and durational art and performance to post-digital approaches to making and curating contemporary art. He works in the School of Fine Art at The Glasgow School of Art.
‘The Digital Attic Archive’ research network is funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh and includes the University of Dundee Archive Services, National Library of Scotland, Artpool Art Research Center at the Central European Institute for Art History (KEMKI), Budapest, and the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin.
Organiser: DJCAD? Digital Attic Archive Research Network?
