★★★★★

While one of the world’s most famous music festivals was taking place 400 miles away, Dundee embraced a festival atmosphere of its own last week, hosting Art Night as if born for the role. Normally based in London, this was Art Night’s first journey to another city; the close-knit and collaborative nature of Dundee’s cultural scene proved a big draw for organisers.

Galleries and public buildings across the city presented ten new commissions while Inwith (a programme of projects involving local arts and community organisations) ran alongside. From a rave in a multi-storey car park, a gig in a shopping precinct, music aboard the 120-year-old RRS Discovery, and a community flower show in another car park, public spaces were transformed into new venues for this free one-night event.

At Dundee Contemporary Arts, Saoirse Amira Anis opened proceedings with a performance in the gallery space against the backdrop of her own exhibition, symphony for a fraying body (running until Sunday 6 August). Dressed in an impressive crimson costume, embodying a mythical amphibious creature, she led crowds to the arts centre’s courtyard and beyond. At Generator Projects, Inefficient Solutions dished out free drinks while people queued theme-park style to don hi-vis vests, hard hats and safety glasses, eventually rewarded with a photo memento capturing them in front of a rubbish pile.
Video installations came in the shape of Heather Phillipson’s Dream Land at Cooper Gallery. Walking over chipped wood, which permeated the air, viewers sat on logs to watch her film, featuring everything from carpet bugs to flying ants. The artist used old archival footage from the BBC showing extreme close-ups of small species which coexist with humans, weaving it into a hallucinatory journey into a parallel universe. This will eventually be gifted to the city’s McManus art gallery.

The Little Theatre presented a fierce and fantastical film by Turner Prize-winning artist Tai Shani and, at V&A Dundee, Lucy McKenzie showed Náhrdelník (Necklace) a film made with old footage of a 90s Czech TV drama of the same name. Screened in the museum’s Charles Rennie Mackintosh Oak Room, its subject matter was somewhat less whimsical than most daytime shows.

Dundee Rep Theatre showed Maria Fusco and Margaret Salmon’s experimental opera-film The History Of The Present, which will also be at Edinburgh Art Festival in August. This disquieting piece was created on the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement and focuses on narratives of women in Fusco’s native Belfast.
Out of the city centre in Stobswell was Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s dystopian interactive computer game at the beautiful Arthurstone Community Library, and ending the night in a near-perfect way, Baxter Park Pavillion was awash with bean bags on which to relax while listening to recordings by Richy Carey.

The midsummer weather was superb, the mood celebratory, but artistic director Helen Nisbet has revealed the future of Art Night is sadly uncertain. The legacy it will leave Dundee remains to be seen, but the festival was undoubtedly one of the city’s greatest cultural happenings to date.