Glasgow-born artist Alan Dunn has been based in the Liverpool City Region since 1995 and he creates artworks using sound and digital images, collaborating with thousands of citizens to unlock the hidden narrative in communities. Alan is a Reader in Art and Design at Leeds Beckett University and has been involved in a number of projects including a current AHRC-funded Network that is sailing between Liverpool and Isle of Man to consider Wirral-born writer Malcolm Lowry in relation to increased care of our oceans.

Alan Dunn studied at Glasgow School of Art and Art Institute of Chicago and develops projects in which communities, students and professionals present work together, including Bellgrove Station Billboard Project (Glasgow 1990-91), tenantspin (FACT, Liverpool 2001-7), the RAY + JULIE sculpture on London Road (1995-) and his PhD on sound art at Leeds Beckett University, The sounds of ideas forming, the relationship between sound art and the everyday.

He has developed projects with ICA, BBC Radio, Tate Britain, National Science & Media Museum and Liverpool Art Prize. He has a long-standing relationship with the Bluecoat, exhibiting here for the first time in 1996 as our Euro ’96 Football Artist In Residence.

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Where the Arts Belong: Making Sense (Of It All)

Dunn is among a group of leading artists who have been involved with our ongoing Where the Arts Belong project with Belong Villages. The artists work creatively with people who are living with dementia. What the artists created and their responses to the project so far has been showcased in an exhibition, Where the Arts Belong: Making Sense (Of It All).

Dunn's contribution to the exhibition is an audio piece called Conversations which you can listen to on a vinyl record player in the gallery. The work is a collage of recordings of experimental sound art sessions between the artist, Belong staff and Belong at Home (Wigan) residents from their houses during lockdown. The recordings are mixes of laughter, sound effects, misheard conversations and tongue twisters.

You’re invited to donate a piece of audio or swap a vinyl record for something you think others would enjoy in exchange for a copy of the work. Alternatively, you can make a new recording and email it to the artist directly at alandunn44@gmail.com.

Experience the work before Sun 12 Jun.