Your own personal Jesus

The National Portrait Gallery of Scotland will be hosting an exhibition later this year entitled Rough Cut Nation.

This unique multimedia project draws together a group of young artists from around Scotland to create a dramatic collaborative installation. For the Edinburgh Festival they will construct a remixed version of Scottish history as informed by street art and graffiti culture, painted, pasted and projected directly onto the walls of the Portrait Gallery.

The project updates William Hole's original decorative mural scheme of 1889-1898, depicting important events from Scotland's past. This new installation exploits the empty space produced by the Gallery's current closure for redevelopment.

The original mural by William Hole portrays elements of Scottish history with strong religious and at times Protestant overtones.

As one of the artist duos involved, we are interested in exploring religious iconography and the use of Jesus as a moral or social catalyst within both Scottish history and contemporary culture.

With that in mind we would like to ask you three questions:

1. In one word, describe who was/is Jesus?
2. In one word, what does Jesus have to do with Scottish History?
3. What impact has Jesus had on Scotland past, present and future?

The answers that we collect from these questions will potentially form part of the final artwork, but will not be attributed to any one individual.

If you feel like taking part please give your answers either in the comments section below or email them to DUFI.JESUS@GMAIL.COM

Maybe it's alright to turn you on - turn you on to something new

Our trip South to the East Midlands was an adventure and well worth the effort. We spent a good couple of days gathering some information about the town and also getting a feel for the place as well as meeting some of the good folk of Alvaston. We do mean "good folk" - we were made most welcome and found people enthused by the idea of regeneration in the place they love to call home. We are looking forward to putting our final proposal together and then hope we are selected ... we know we could all create something that we can be proud of!

As regular site visitors know, our blog titles almost always revolve around lyrics or song titles. Try as we might we couldn't find any for Alvaston although we did get Glen Campbells "Galveston" - a blast from the past for me (what is it about growing up in the Highlands and country music?!) Anyhow, the blog title is from the lyrics from a track called "Jet Set" by a rather good band called Derby from Portland, Oregon (home of many a good band...). Think these lyrics represent something of what we feel about the place.

Rather than giving a rundown of everything we did, we have written OUR LIST - a short collection of some highlights...

OUR LIST
- no. 43 Bus
- baseball caps
- £3.50 turkey dinner at The Blue Peter
- sweet corn growing in the allotments
- John and Lucky the dog
- pint of Tetley's
- trying to buy The Scotsman at David's newsagents
- Pride Park
- 'bab shop and biggest "small" kebab ever (thanks J and Shazz)
- Swift Cabs
- caramel doughnut from Bird's bakers
- "because it's home"
- armed robbery at The Derbyshire!
- meeting folk and the buzz in The Mind shop
- skylink from the airport, perfect for getting to Alvaston
- rain downpour and rainbows
- South Gate Youth Centre and the most aptly named worker "Tank" (built like one!)
- working man's club
- double vodka and sparkling apple
- being questioned on why we weren't wearing kilts by AORTA
- hippopotamus bone sculpture
- Bonnie Prince Charlie
- councillors you can speak to!
- making plans in the pub...
- old Horrace at the Alvaston Boulton OAP Club
- Derby Pride
- parking problems...
- "Alvo girls"
- trolley bus
- "Derbyshire born and Derbyshire bred, Strong i' th' arm, and weak i' th' head."
- take it or leave it
- 1866
- Derby Telegraph
- a HUGE breakfast from Big Breakfast!
- "honest and down to earth"

The ghosts in every town...

The works on Baron Taylor Street (BTS), in Inverness, are now well underway. We have been working with the kids at Cauldeen Primary and they have come up with some great poems - two of which we are placing into the stonework on BTS. There will be a poem at each end of the street, sandblasted into the edges of a large central drainage channel.

The first poem went is just before Christmas, and the second will be installed in the next few weeks.

The pupils also came up with five word pairs for us, one of which will be placed next to each of the drains on BTS.

Its raining icepicks...

The last couple of years have seen some rather interesting shifts in media for DUFI. We have gone from working with spray paint to sandblasting stone, and now our latest ventures have taken us in a new direction again... cast iron!

We have recently designed the original drain gullies for Baron Taylor Street in Inverness. We worked in conjunction with Ballantines Creative Ironworks in Bo'ness.

Here are a few images of the gullies going through the production process!

Lay it down slow.

The Inverness Old Town street project is moving along nicely - and although we have not posted about it recently, it has been very much alive!

To date we have posted five of the street text slabs on the blog, but over the last few months the project has been motoring along and we are now at the stage of laying the last few of the 24 total stones.

Listed below are a few tasters of some of the recent stones as well as some images to give you an idea of how they look once installed.

I saw a sign in the sky: seven swans.

One of the DUFI projects that has been simmering on our little creative back burner for several months (like a good old pot of stew!) is a commission we recieved to produce works for the new health centre in Fort William.

As part of our research and development for this project we worked with Lochaber High School Support for Learning Department. We spent a morning with the young people in the department, and had a lot of fun doing chalk stencils as well as some great chat.

In the end, we decided to make our commission a tribute to these young people. Using their stories and anecdotes as inspiration and texture for the piece. As some of you might remember, when we mentioned this commission before, we said that it was going to be a series of four works, but in true DUFI style this has grown limbs! The final work is one piece called BELLASQUEAKTHUMPER, a series of seven portraits!

Countin' flowers on the wall.

As some of you might remember - last summer we worked with some of the youngins in Brora to produce a stencil piece for the wall of the local co-op. As the shop was in the process of being renovated it was agreed that the hanging of the work would be postponed.

Well, time does fly! But the panels were finally fixed to the wall and, hat's off to the group, it looks good!

I wanna hold her wanna hold her tight.

We were asked to produce a temporary installation in the newly refurbished Eden Court.

To combine our love for stencil art and music we decided to create "Teenage Kicks".

The installation included 22 LP’s mounted on the wall (as a rather large DUFI!), as well as a living room opposite (yes that is right, we created your gran's front room in the lobby of Eden Court), which included an record player, an 80's medical handbook (our instructions) and the school jotter (our visitors book).



Three of the records were spray painted, the other 19 were removable and could be played on the retro record player.

Now we would love to say that we grew up listening to early hip hop and alternative music, but the truth is it was a whole lot uglier than that.



The albums included in this collection were as follows:

Elvis – The U.S. Male (1970)
The Sound Of Music (1965)
A-ha – Hunting High & Low (1985)
Michael Jackson – Bad (1987)
The Family Brown – The Best Of Country Gospel (1978)
Nana Mouskouri – Alone (1985)
Simon & Garfunkel – Greatest Hits (1972)
Runrig – Heartland (1985)
Holst – The Planets (1981)
Blondie – Eat To The Beat (1979)
Dayuma – From The Stage Production (unknown)
Def Leppard – Hysteria (1987)
Scottish Metrical Psalms (1966)
Rush – The Spirit Of Radio (1980)
Dire Straits – Brothers In Arms (1985)
Deacon Blue – When The World Knows Your Name (1989)
Hits 5 (1986)
The Great Johnny Cash (1970)
Country & Western Jamboree (unknown)
Marillion – Misplaced Childhood (1985)
U2 – The Joshua Tree (1987)
Disneyland Christmas Carols (unknown)

Got ma nuts from a hippy.

Inverness is getting all holier than thou! The great artist Matt Baker has recently completed leading a team in the installation of the Three Virtues on Church Street in Inverness. The artwork was created after a year long process with local people suggesting ‘Virtues’ for 21st Century Inverness.

To help mark the launch (on 6 March) several artists were asked to create installations in the shop windows surrounding the virtues. As part of this, we created a two week long narrative in the shop front of a empty shop unit.

But do not fear, with DUFI the surreal is always near. We decided to characterise the virtues and ended up writing our own fable of the forest. The story was written in instalments, on the shop window, over the two weeks leading up to the event. And yes, the animals are real - but as exciting as all this was, I am sure they all felt a lot friskier before they were stuffed! (However, the badger seems to be a somewhat more sociable creature then we all expected – he now has his own bebo page).

Thanks to Inverness Museum for lending us the critters.

I got my head checked, by a jumbo jet.

Ok, we admit it, we have a problem. DUFI stencils are not getting any smaller. We have just completed our biggest DUFI to date - a 14.3x2.1M wall at Malliag High School.

The group we were working with were not the noisiest bunch we have worked with, but they had some great ideas, worked like weevils and created a stencil to be proud of.

I can't get no, cooperation.

Well, another DUFI has been born. We recently completed workshops with a group of future stencil artists in Brora. The project was sponsored by the Brora Cooperative and the 2x2M paneled stencil will be fixed to the side wall of the building.

Thanks to the COOP for being such great sponsors – and for cooperating (badum-ching!) – the blog title is the only song lyric I could find with the word cooperation. Yea I know the song is ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’, but thanks to Sesame Street we have the alternative lyrics – go on YouTube it, you know you want to.

Like a bridge over troubled water.

Here is the fifth stone to go down in Inverness, located on Bridge street, just at the top of Church street.

Way back in the year of yon, the River Ness flood severely, and swept away the main bridge. However, like true Invernessians most folk stayed in the lofts of their crofts.

What's that coming over the hill, is it a monster?

The street texts in Inverness are chugging along nicely. Here is the text for the fourth stone to go down. It has been placed outside the Old High gates, a site with a lot of history - St Columba apparently had a church here. On his way to Inverness the saint met the big bad Loch Ness Monster, but duly chased the beastie off. Hence the text on this stone.

Jazz at the bookstore.

Here is the third street text to go down in Inverness, on Church Street just outside Leakey's bookshop (a great place, an absolute Aladdin's cave of old books!).

The other day I heard someone say that "every third book you read should be from outside your own century."

I think it's high time we laid it out there...

Ok, first things first - sorry! Sorry it has taken us an age and a half to update this. Thankfully that is because we have been busy, as opposed to sitting playing the new PS3.

Here are a couple of photos of the stencil we did for Go North. As we as an image of banners on the Go North Stage at Rock Ness. As you might guess, we were not so bothered about taking photos as we were about dancing like myrmecophobics on an ant hill.

Bugs in my pockets, Bugs in my shoes.

Well, it has been busy time in the DUFI den lately. We have just completed a guerrilla marketing campaign for the Go North music festival.

The festival was over four days, 7-8 June in Inverness and 9-10 June at one of the stages at the Rock Ness music festival. Some absolutely brilliant music. I think the best act for us was Oppenheimer (www.oppenheimermusic.co.uk) - if these guys don't become huge I will eat one of Fin's hats.

Anyway - our campaign included: limited edition A2 Posters, A3 fly posters, badges, limited edition T-shirts, badges, info packs and two stencils that we sprayed directly onto the road in Inverness city centre.

There are a small number of posters left - if you want one, drop us an email and we will post one out to you.

We will post more images over the next couple of days.

You'll never break it darlin', you won't break this heart of stone.

Put down the spray cans and pick up the sandblasters!

DUFI are in the process of producing approx 30 stencilised quotes to be sandblasted into the streets of Inverness. Here are some sample images, and a press cutting.

Doctor, there's something wrong with me.

DUFI have recently been commissioned to produce four permanent artworks for the new Fort William Health Centre. As part of this project we will be working with Lochaber High School Support for Learning Department, involving young people with physical and learning disabilities.

We will post updates and sketches as the project progresses.

Born down in a dead man's town.

We have just completed a set of workshops with a group of seven kids in Alness Academy. Despite being warned that it might be one of our toughest groups to work with, we had a great time and the group worked really hard.

However, it turns out that David (one of the smaller members of our group) was a diehard Springsteen fan and insisted on playing ‘Born In The USA’ on repeat for the three painting sessions. So on a very modest estimate we must have listened to that song over 30 times in six hours - resulting in us permanently deleting it from iTunes!

Ambition is a dream with a V8 engine.

Here are some more DUFI poster samples from 2004 - Enjoy.

Every generation needs a new revolution.

Here are a few more images of The One Day Revolution. Thanks to Tom Baker for these.
We will hopefully have more for you shortly.

The T-shirt as a social catalyst.

Over the course of The One Day Revolution we have had several requests for t-shirts. So here are a couple of designs that were popular on the day, and if you would like to buy one, just drop us an email and we will contact you for details

Stop the music and go home, I repeat, stop the music and go home.

The One Day Revolution is over – and I think it would be fair to say it was a success.
The banner worked beautifully and the stencil seemed even bigger than imagined. We had a really good response from the public, even if most of them were a little confused!

We will post more details when we have our professional photos through, but for now here are a few snapshots.

It takes more courage to retreat than advance.

Today is the day of revolution - and DUFI is ready. We will be hitting the streets of Inverness with stencils, placards, banners, badges, balloons, and - thanks to the help of screenwriter Sophie McCook - The Little Red Book Of Inverness!

If you are in Inverness, be sure you come and join The One Day Revolution.

We all want to change the world.

So tomorrow is the big day. 09.09.06 The One Day Revolution - Inverness. Look out for the posters, banners, balloons, books, badges and the mural... oh and the mob. Keep on the alert or you might just get caught up in the moment!

The revolution may not be televised.

Well it’s true - there's going to be a revolution. Voices are going to be heard. The day of change is coming to Inverness. But don't worry, it’s only going to last for a day!

Without going into too much detail, lets just say that DUFI has organised a revolution for Inverness - it's called The One Day Revolution - and on 09.09.06 Inverness city centre will be coloured red. We will post more details later, but here are a few graphics to wet your appetite. It's time to make a change. It’s time to let your voice be heard. It’s time to shout. And don’t worry if you don’t know what to shout about, we have pickets/poster and badges all ready for you. Come on it’s time to join the revolution.

The Wall in the Hall - Seaboard.

Here are some images of a rather large stencil we just completed with a group of 12 teenagers from the Seaboard villages.

The Doors to the Decks.

DUFI were asked to paint two walls in a new music room in Brora. We were asked to work with three lads from the community, and before we even met them they came up with a concept for the painting - The Doors to the Decks.

Here are a few images - enjoy!

The Wall in the Hall - Scourie.

Well a couple of years ago, something happend. People started to hear about DUFI. People started asking us to paint their walls!
Here are some photos of our first public work, we ran a bunch of workshops and let the kids design their own stencils and helped them paint it.

Leaves and Sunshine.

Here is another early DUFI work. Starting to play around with multiple layers, different paints and spot varnishing!

In the beginning.

Well DUFI all began back one cold winter’s night in 2001. After a day of creative work, for other people’s profit, Fin and AL were sitting having a drink and talking about how they both felt the need for some creativity for creativity’s sake. The next evening - some spray cans, cardboard boxes and Stanley blades later - the wall in Fin’s spare room was the proud receiver of the first DUFI! Unfortunately all that now remains of those first steps is this small Polaroid and a few sketches.

DUFI-ART

Well, here we are - DUFI now has a blog!

Over the next few days I will post some samples of our past adventures into the world of stencil graffiti as well as some plans we have for the future. To any one who has taken the time to read this - I hope you enjoy it, and please come back again.

Cheers

AL