It’s a big week in Dundee art-wise: Saturday brings the big Art Night with events all over town, including Tai Shani whom Amy Hale as praised highly, especially in this essential read. A few things are already in place and some will hang around after because Dundee is always full of art! So I went to the DCA this week as I try to get myself into the habit of occasionally leaving the house and there were some great rewards for doing so:

Saoirse Amira Anis has an installation with video called symphony for a fraying body; the mottled green walls provide a soothing contrast with the bright red madder-died braids of ‘detritus’ from the video performance framed in the image above. In it she embodies a creature who emerges from a cave to the water’s edge. It’s really moving. It was wonderful to see a couple of toddlers, too, playing with the yarn left lying on the floor. Other pieces from the performance adorn the walls and I left the installation feeling buoyant.

Buoyant was just the right state of mind to approach Zineb Sedira‘s Can’t You See the Sea Changing? From the artist’s ongoing investigation of transnational interactions both commercial and migratory from a post-colonial perspective, this installation brings together still and moving images focused on lighthouses in Algeria along with a reconstituted experience of her studio and its nautical obsessions. Far more colourful and far less fraught than Eggers’ film (of course!) these insights nevertheless show us the peculiar perspective of the lighthouse keeper and the flow of life. Log books for example detailing the problems as well as the many entries of trouble-free ‘same’ days which are of course never quite the same. The video room showing concurrent films is endlessly fascinating. I must go back.

The city itself always has plenty to entertain. And the bus strike is over so hurrah!