Mary Modeen is an artist/printmaker who also works in artist books, installations, and recently, in video and sound. She is also an academic of nearly 30 years full-time experience in higher education, residing in Scotland where she convenes the Art, Philosophy and Contemporary Practices at the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, University of Dundee. Born in the USA (Madison, Wisconsin) of Scandinavian and Native American ancestry, she lived and taught in many states, latterly in New Hampshire where she lectured at Dartmouth College until moving to Scotland in 1989.
As a committed interdisciplinary scholar, Modeen’s academic background included degrees in literature and music as well as art, and two postgraduate degrees, one in aesthetic education and a Master of Fine Art in printmaking. She is interested in the nexus of traditional and visual culture, and contemporary art, in Aotearoa/New Zealand and other island cultures, both literal and metaphorical. In work ranging from Mannin/Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Aotearoa/New Zealand as physical islands, and Native American/First Nation Canadian, Maori, and Basque peoples as indigenous cultures, she has been examining the interplay between cultural identities and art, combining creative practice with critical writing. While Modeen appreciates critical writings which examine similar material from the standpoint of visual anthropology or post-colonial philosophy, for example, her interests lie in the intersection between art-making, visual representation, and perceptual perspectives. She reappraises aspects of Indigenous peoples’ identity and how this is manifested visually; the land and its role in shaping life; and questions how ‘locational memory’ functions and its subsequent visualisation and representations; in short, the aesthetics of land, place and its people. In Modeen’s research place is the locus for philosophical reflection contested values made visible.
In 2007 she was a Senior Research Fellow and artist-in-residence in New Zealand at the University of Otago, Dunedin, working with Maori Studies scholars. In conjunction with this, an exhibition of prints and videos entitled Tangata Whenua (translated as either ‘local people’ or ’people of the land’) was held.
Her artwork is represented by the Graphic Studio Gallery of Dublin, Ireland
and has been exhibited widely across the world. Two recent books are This
Place Called Home, published by Manx National Heritage, and Remembered
Places, published by Ballarat Fine Art Gallery.
She is currently a co-investigator on an interdisciplinary AHRC (Arts
and Humanities Research Council)-funded large research project entitled
“Poetry Beyond Text: Vision, Text and Cognition”.
Current positionSenior Lecturer, Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone
College, University of DundeeFellowships/ Residencies
Senior Research Fellow and artist-in-residence in New Zealand at the University
of Otago, Dunedin, working with Maori Studies scholars.
Selected Exhibitions - Solo
2007 Te Whenua Maori,
Auckland University of Technology, Auckland, New Zealand, with acquisitions
for the permanent collection
Tangata
Whenua, Te Tumu Arts Ctr., University of Otago,
Dunedin, New Zealand.
Remembered
Places I and II, (two simultaneous solo exhibitions)
Ballarat Fine Arts Gallery, Ballarat, Victoria, Australia: 5-6/2007
Old Post Office Galleries,
Ballarat. With book publication: Remembered Places.
2006 What Is This Place Called Home?,
Manx National Heritage Museum, Douglas, Isle of Man. With book publication
This Place Called Home.
2004 Patterns of All Our Days,
Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, Northern Ireland, in collaboration with
the Ulster Folk & Transport Museum.
Followed by Gracefield
Arts Centre, Dumfries, Scotland.
2003 Layers of Time
(prints), Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards, Northern Ireland
2000 Mary Modeen.
University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. Solo exhibition of prints
plus a commissioned sculpture in a Public Art context for the campus
1998 The Eternal Contemporary,
Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, Washington
1998 Fifteen years of lithographs,
Lithographiska Akadamin, Tidaholm, Sweden - in conjunction with the International
Lithographic Symposium and group
exhibition of international
lithographs
1997-98 East of the Sun, West of The Moon,
Sculptural Installation, in conjunction with the Scottish Sculpture Open
Number 9, juried by Prof. Duncan Macmillan;
sited at MacRoberts Art
Centre, University of Stirling. Subsequent siting at Lumsden, Aberdeenshire
1997 Graces, Fates and Furies.
Main Editions Gallery, Hahndorf, Adelaide, South Australia
Mary
Modeen. Impact Gallery, Buffalo, New York USA
1996 Artspace Gallery, Peacock Printmakers, Aberdeen
Crawford Arts Centre,
St Andrews
Malaspina Printmakers
Society, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Kari Baas Gallery, Seattle,
Washington, U.S.A.
1995 Graces, Fates & Furies,
Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington, USA
Fenix Underground, Seattle,
Washington, U.S.A.
1994 Vesica Piscus (an
installation) University of Aberdeen, Visitor Centre, Aberdeen
1993 International Arts Symposium (an
installation) Hermit Foundation, Czech Ministry of Culture, Plasy, Czech
Republic
Text
and Subtext, University of Aberdeen, Senior
Common Room, Aberdeen, Scotland
1989 Recent Work,
Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New
Hampshire, USA
1988 Prints and Drawings from Scotland,
Richard Demarco Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland
1988 Works on Paper,
Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museum, Aberdeen, Scotland
+6
other solo shows internationally since 1979
Selected Exhibitions - Two-Person
1996-98 One Woman,
One Man, collaboration folio de luxe with John
Burnside, Writer in Residence, University of
Dundee; launched at the Nordic Heritage Museum,
Seattle, Washington
1992 Arcane Knowledge,
Artspace Gallery, Aberdeen, Scotland with Ian
Howard
1987 Rooms for Thought,
Recent paintings, Woodstock Gallery, Woodstock, Vermont, USA, with James
Watkinson
Selected Exhibitions - Group
2004-7 Symbolic Sites: The International Archive of Humanist Art, Guernica, Spain; Counihan Gallery, Melbourne, Australia and Ballarat Fine Art Gallery, Australia;
Portadown and Belfast Northern Ireland; Durban, South Africa; Tiblisi, Georgia; and Kent State University, Ohio, USA. With colour illustration in book: Art and
Humanist Ideals: The International Archive of Humanist Art, William Kelly, Ed. Published by Palgrave-Macmillan, c. 2003. ISBN.
2000 The Road to Meikle Seggie: 70/2000 Kingston on Thames, Group exhibition; plus extensive tour following
1998 Contents and Contexts: Lithography After 200 Years, juried international exhibition, Academy Art Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA
1998 Continental Shift an exhibition of six American artists resident in Britain, Peterborough City Art Gallery, England
1998 Lithographs:Scottish/Swedish, Lithographiska Akademin, Tidaholm, Sweden: with second venue in Stockholm
+ 47 other group shows internationally since 1979
Selected Public Collections
International Archive of Humanist Art, Melbourne, Australia
University of Ballarat, Victoria, Australia
Swedish Hospital, Seattle, Washington, USA
Nordic Heritage Museum, Seattle, Washington, USA
Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Aberdeen, Scotland
Scottish Equitable PLC, Edinburgh, Scotland
McManus Gallery, Dundee City Art Galleries, Scotland
Scottish Conservancy Council, Glasgow, Scotland
Hungarian National Museum of Art, Budapest, Hungary
Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum, Aberdeen, Scotland
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Arts & Humanities Council of Greater Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
Old State Capitol, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA
webite: www.marymodeen.com
e-mail: modeen@dundee.ac.uk
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