When Rob Churm, Raydale Dower and Tony Swain opened up Le Drapeau Noir
for the duration of the 2010 Glasgow International Festival of Visual
Art, the nightly word of mouth happenings that took place in the former
hairdresser's shop down a city centre back street became as legendary
as the forbears they emulated, paid homage to and reinvented for the
moment via a series of gigs, performances and events in a speak-easy
environment tailor-made for underground conspiracy.
Le Drapeau Noir drew inspiration from Dada-ist nightclub Cabaret
Voltaire, founded in Zurich by Hugo Ball and Emmy Hennings in 1916.
With Le Drapeau Noir translating as The Black Flag, referencing the
anarchist flag as much as American hardcore band, Black Flag, the
spirit of anarchist talking shops and any late night boho dive where
dreamers and schemers have plotted assorted invisible insurrections for
centuries were also in the minds of Churm, Dower and Swain.
All of which should make Continue without losing Consciousness, the
trio's latest, Le Drapeau Noir referencing collaboration at Dundee
Contemporary Arts, a tantalising prospect even as it scales up Le
Drapeau Noir's original sense of self-mythology for DCA's bigger space.
Continue without losing Consciousness will form part of GENERATION,
20154's major Scotland-wide celebration of contemporary art in Scotland
over the last twenty-five years, and which will feature some fifty
galleries hosting work.
“Continue without losing Consciousness, like GENERATION as a whole, is
based on the strong ecology of the recent generations of artists
operating in Scotland,” DCA's Exhibitions Curator Graham Domke
explains. “Rob, Tony and Raydale - an Englishman, an Irishman and a
Scotsman - have as many connections to one another in terms of
underground music as they do as artists.
“Social connections and intellectual discourses lead to healthy, lively
communities, and Le Drapeau Noir was my absolute highlight of the 2010
Glasgow International, and it profoundly acknowledged the importance of
collaboration and conversation. The idea for DCA is to have three
distinct solo presentations by the artists alongside space to
contextualise what Le Drapeau Noir was about and, just as importantly,
programme new gigs, zine launches, events, interventions and keep true
to its original spirit.”
In recent times, as well as Cabaret Voltaire, such kindred spirits to
habitues of Le Drapeau Noir may have been found in Greenwich Village
Beat cafes in the 1950s and 1960s, Glasgow's original arts lab, The
Third Eye Centre, in the 1970s, which so influenced the flowering of
contemporary artists across all artforms in the city before being
transformed into the far glossier Centre of Contemporary Arts, and
Richard Strange's recently revived Cabaret Futura club, which first
appeared on the London scene in the early 1980s. Like all of these, Le
Drapeau Noir was a DIY temporary autonomous zone to hang out in as much
as anything, and was founded on a Punk Rock aesthetic prevalent in the
ever fertile art/pop crossover in Glasgow which Churm, Dower and Swain
are key players in.
Swain has had solo exhibitions at the Fruitmarket Gallery and
Inverleith House in Edinburgh, and was a member of the influential band
Hassle Hound. Dower is a graduate of Duncan of Jordanstone College of
Art and Design in Dundee, where he was involved in the city's skate
scene which used the derelict garage that was on the site of where DCA
now stands as a base. Dower also featured in the DCA tenth anniversary
exhibition, The Associates, and has had solo exhibitions at Changing
Room Stirling, and Tramway, Glasgow. He is currently a member of
avant-pop troupe, Tut Vu Vu, and was a founding member of leftfield
blues hollerers, Uncle John and Whitelock.
Churm has shown at venues such as GoMA, Sorcha Dallas and the Glasgow
Project Room, and recently had a residency at Cove Park, in Argyll.
He's played in bands Park Attack and the Gummy Stumps, and still
programmes the events at the now permanently christened Old
Hairdressers venue where Le Drapeau Noir took place.
“DCA is a social space, a combined arts centre and is also a part of
the legacy of the last twenty-five years of contemporary art in
Scotland,” says Domke. “Since 1999, DCA has presented artists at key
points in their practice to flourish on an international platform
whilst also fostering audiences for trailblazing art. Generation as a
nationwide celebration of contemporary art in Scotland has the
opportunity to take underground or under the radar activities and make
them accessible to a larger community.
In Continue without losing Consciousness, then one should “expect nods
to revolutionary art movements such as Surrealism, Dadaism and Fluxus,
channelled through with contemporary influences. The biggest
celebration of the Scottish contemporary art scene is unthinkable
without artists like Rob, Raydale and Tony, who keep on keeping on.”
Scottish Art News, January 2014
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