ATLAS Talking Art Series: Chris Dooks

Saturday 1 September 2012

2.00 – 3.00 PM
Tigh-na-Sgire, Park Lane, Portree, Isle of Skye

POLYMASH ARTIST & COMPOSER CHRIS DOOKS OVERCOMES M.E.  IN PURSUIT OF "CHAOTIC MULTI-DISCIPLINARY PRACTICE"

Chris Dooks is a Scotland-based audiovisual artist and doctoral researcher at UWS.  He is also a composer of electronic music and sound art. His recent work includes Moons or These Knots are Not Knots, an installation commissioned by Ayr Renaissance, for Ayr Open Doors Weekend 2011. Visitors to an isolated room in the former poor house, Holmston House, were presented with a Victorian chest of drawers on top of which the word “MOONS” was balanced. Chris has created an audio track to accompany the work and states “It is especially suitable for the chronically ill and incarcerated and was written for them…”

Dooks’s other work includes the Studio1824.com Exhibition at Timespan, in Sutherland, Scotland. In 2008, Timespan selected Dooks for an artist’s residency focusing on the Helmsdale Icehouse. Dooks's project comprised several pieces of work including a live sound performance, an exhibition and a net label to promote recordings made in or around the Helmsdale Icehouse.

Dooks worked in television as a director of arts programmes until 1998, when he fell ill. On his web site, he describes the “intense learning curve” of coping with chronic ill health and his return to his training as a photographer: “Over the following decade, I developed a successful art practice sympathetic to my new life which has been the foundation for academic enquiry since 2010. My forthcoming PhD deals with creative strategies regarding the illness Myalgic Encephalomyelitis or M.E, asking how such an art practice may serve to offset or augment the relationship between the cultural practitioner and the illness.”

Emma Nicolson, ATLAS, director commented: “This is an artist who has faced considerable challenge after embarking on an exciting career in the media producing programmes for such as ‘the South Bank Show’. Illnesses of this kind can undermine our belief in our ability to succeed in having a worthwhile life and achieve our ambitions. Chris is a truly imaginative artist whose work crosses many areas of interest; film, music, mapping, and photography and who more than a decade on Chris Dooks reminds us what can be achieved.”

ATLAS is an arts organisation working “without walls.” We are keen to offer our audiences insight in to the work of creative practitioners. This is an exciting opportunity for the public to come along and hear about the many ways in which artworks come into being.