Dundee Contemporary Arts has shared the public events programme accompanying its exhibition of work by Eve Fowler, what a slight. what a sound. what a universal shudder. The exhibition is the first major European exhibition for Fowler, a major figure in American contemporary art.
Having exhibited widely over the past two decades in her native USA, Fowler is one of the most significant artists of her generation, using art and language to disrupt and unsettle the dominant power structures that control much of the world around us. This exhibition reflects and further expands on the artist’s intense and intimate engagement with the words of Gertrude Stein over the past eight years. Fowler’s work is filling the DCA galleries over the summer and also reach beyond the walls of the building to appear in public spaces across Dundee and further afield, punctuating the landscape with Stein’s prescient words.
Here are some of the related events you can attend:
- For families, Art Cart Adventures will be out and about on Sat 9 and 30 June, Sat 14 July and Sat 11 August – fun for all ages Art Cart offers creative, active ways of connecting with themes in our exhibitions and methods used by artists. Inspiration will come from text, words, print and sound.
- For each month of the exhibition there will be a Gertrude Stein reading group, In The Evening There is Feeling, led by Eoin Dara and Valerie Norris from DCA’s Exhibitions team. This reading group will provide an informal and welcoming introduction to some of the key texts by Gertrude Stein that connect to the exhibition and will be held on Monday evenings at 18:00 on 9 July and 13 August.
- Artist Eve Fowler has selected four films for her Artist’s Choice Film selection, you can watch Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Cannes Critics’ Prize winning Ali: Fear Eats the Soul on Tue 26 June, and by Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho, a key film in the New Queer Cinema movement of the early 90s, on Wed 11 July. Eve’s final film selection is Paris Was a Women on Tue 24 July, a portrait of the creative community of women writers, artists, photographers and editors who flocked to the Left Bank of Paris in the early decades of the 20th century, including Gertrude Stein.
- On Thu 5 July The Difference is Spreading: A Stroll in the City DCA’s Head of Exhibitions, Eoin Dara, will lead audiences on an evening stroll beginning in our galleries and then moving out into the city to see and discuss some of Eve Fowler’s works.
- Family Art Lab runs twice during the exhibition: on Sat 7 July and Sat 18 August. Join our Learning Team artists for some fun, free making, exploring then discussing and creating in connection to Eve Fowler’s work.
- On Thu 19 July at 18:00, join poet and writer Sophie Collins for I Want to Tell About Fire, a discussion about some of the ideas at play within her poem commissioned in response to Eve Fowler’s work and included in our newly published book accompanying the exhibition.
- Senior Citizen Kane Gallery Tour and Workshop returns on Tue 7 Aug to give visitors aged 60+ a chance to learn more about the works in the gallery, followed by a creative workshop with tea, coffee and biscuits provided to fuel the creativity.
- Echo, DCA’s evening of multidisciplinary responses to its exhibitions programme, returns on Thu 16 August. This time the guest is poet Lindsay Macgregor, who lives and works near Cupar, Fife and hosts Platform a regular poetry and music night at Ladybank Station. In advance of Lindsay’s response there will be further opportunities for other voices to present ideas. To share your creative response to the work on show, please submit a short proposal to exhibitions@dca.org.uk by Mon 6 August.
- On the final week of what a slight. what a sound. what a universal shudder. there will be An Epilogue with Dr Monica Pearl. Dr Pearl is a lecturer in 20th Century American Literature at the University of Manchester; for this event she’ll be discussing ideas at play in Eve’s work, weaving in some of her own research on aspects of sexuality, life-writing, and visual and written self-representation.
- There are Exhibition Tours that take place in the galleries daily at 11:00 and 15:00. These are 30-minute introductions to the exhibition by one of DCA’s friendly Visitor Assistants, with the opportunity to ask questions about the works on show.
Eoin Dara, Head of Exhibitions said: “We’re thrilled to be able to draw out some of the electric ideas within Eve’s work with this public programme over the summer, delving further into Gertrude Stein’s powerful texts to explore the legacy of this kind of early queer writing and the impact it’s had on poetry, literature, art, and film over the past 100 years.”
Eve Fowler’s what a slight. what a sound. what a universal shudder. runs from Sat 9 June until Sun 26 August. DCA galleries are open 10:00 – 18:00 daily (20:00 on Thu). There will also be a publication released to coincide with the exhibition featuring contemporary writers Sophie Collins, Eileen Myles and Litia Perta.
