THERE is a buzz about Duncan Marquiss at the moment, DCA Curator Graham Domke tells me over the phone from London. Cars rev and sound their horns in the background, buses pass. We struggle to hear each other, but Domke is on a tight schedule, in London to pick up one of the artist’s drawings from a private collection and transport it up to Dundee for next week’s show. “It’s the best way,” he shrugs.
The buzz is everything to do with Marquiss’ film, Evolutionary Jerks & Gradualist Creeps, that premiered at the Glasgow Film Festival earlier this year, a documentary of sorts centring on a discussion between two biologists on a revolutionary new theory of evolution (Punctuated Equilibria) – and how that can equally be applied to pop music in a form of
"pop-paleontology", as one of the scientists dubs it. It’s a good example of the artist’s own evolving practice, frequently interested in analogies and multiple meanings.
“We’ve had a lot of interest in the show, before it’s even in,” says Domke, who tells me that the exhibition will include a variety of Marquiss’ recent works, which range from flicker films to prints.
The springboard for this exhibition has effectively been the annual Ignite Festival which celebrates Dundee’s creativity. “To coincide, as often as possible, I like to programme artists who studied in the city and made their first advances here, then spread their wings and proved themselves as artists,” says Domke. Marquiss is a good case in point. It’s been 15 years since he graduated from the printmaking programme at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and recent successes include a major exhibition in Frankfurt. Domke points out that for a combined cultural centre like DCA to offer Marquiss an exhibition is “an encapsulation of him as an artist. He’s as likely to pick up a camera, a paintbrush or a pencil as make prints.”
Marquiss is currently using DCAs Open Access Print Studio to make small artworks for the exhibition, which will also include works from the last 5 years of his practice. The centrepiece of this diverse exhibition, however, will be the screening of Evolutionary Jerks…, a major commission which resulted from his 2015 Margaret Tait Award.
“It’s a big development for an artist, a big commission,” says Domke. “I’ve been involved in the selection process for the award previously, and I leapt on this when Duncan won it. It’s been the catalyst to an expansive exhibition, his largest to date, and we’re working on producing a catalogue that will come out in the run of the exhibition.”
Born in 1979, Marquiss moved to Glasgow (where he is once more based) to study on the MFA programme (2005) after graduating from Dundee. He followed this with a stint in London on the Lux Associate Artist Programme (2009). His creative practice is wide-ranging and also includes forays into other artforms – he is guitarist with The Phantom Band. “His capacity to work in different circumstances is really interesting,” says Domke.
“I’ve followed Duncan’s work for the past 15 years, and have been really keen to find an opportunity to show his work since he was part of our group exhibition celebrating ten years of DCA,” says Domke, who like all curators keeps a keen eye on the annual degree shows. “His work has developed from a fascination with myth and horror in the early years into an interest in pattern and mark-making. He’s interested in many things from early seminal film-making to surrealist artists like Max Ernst,” says Domke. “I’m really drawn to his work. It’s interesting to find an artist in their 30s making work that’s cutting edge and new but also referencing historic practice. It’s also important for DCA to offer the next step on the ladder for artists like Duncan to advance in their career.”
Duncan Marquiss: Copying Errors, Dundee Contemporary Arts, May 14 – July 3
www.dca.org.uk
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