Dream Land
Cooper Gallery and Art Night are delighted to invite you to the preview of Dream Land, a first look at the major new commission by artist Heather Phillipson.
The preview is free open to all and unticketed.
71 Brewing will provide the drinks reception, serving alcoholic draft beers. Non-alcoholic options will also be available.
Dream Land is a new commission by Heather Phillipson which incorporates archival BBC wildlife footage, recast as hallucination. Opening with its bug protagonist sucked through a vacuum cleaner nozzle, the film lands us in an alternative world which resembles our own but as if broadcast from another dimension.
Remixing and revoicing remarkable scenes from innovative 1980s nature documentaries Supersense and Life Sense, Dream Land presents earthly life as a dream, accessed via the bizarre and precious lives by which we’re surrounded. Its leading characters shape shift between species and environments, reprogrammed to form an alternative narrative. Creatures appear as interlocutors, harbingers and guides. In parallel, it is scored with a soundscape, composed by the artist, that samples the crackles of wildlife into a strange new music.
Dream Land is part of Art Fund’s national 2023 programme The Wild Escape and will be exhibited at the Cooper Gallery, Dundee from 16 June–1 July. Art Night will subsequently gift the video to The McManus Art Gallery & Museum’s permanent collection as a legacy of the festival in Dundee.
Hear from Heather as she talks about the film in this video.
Art Night
Saturday 24 June, 7pm–midnight
Performances at 8.30pm & 9.30pm
The film is punctuated by Mourning Ritual, an audio event composed by Phillipson to communicate with the spirits of departed animals. The event will take place at Cooper Gallery on the evening of Art Night. The live event is co-commissioned with Art Night and Cooper Gallery and supported by the DJCAD Centenary Trust.
Art Night is a national, biennial contemporary art festival presenting ambitious work by artists in civic spaces, coming to Dundee on Saturday 24 June.