Jan Patience

If you visit Dundee's McManus Art Gallery and Museum before February 17 next year, there's a treasure trail of ten texts by artist Bronx-born conceptual artist, Lawrence Weiner, to be tracked down. You might not notice them at first, but all around the building, curators have placed blue vinyl signs with distinctive white capital letters fringed by funereal black. Graphic design geeks please note the name of the font is Margaret Seaworthy Gothic. Weiner, considered a key player in the development of conceptualism in the 1960s, created the font himself because he didn't want to be locked into a particular style.

There's a vinyl on the wall of a stairwell beside a stained glass window etched with portraits of poet Robert Burns and inventor James Watt, which declares: STRAIGHT DOWN TO BELOW. Another is in front of a fifth century log boat excavated from a bog on the nearby River Tay and reads: DAUBED WITH MUCK AND MIRE. Nearby, beside a collection of ancient Pictish standing stones another sign states: WIPED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH.

My favourite text is plastered over a glass case containing items relating to Dundee's now defunct jute industry, which reads: ROUGHLY RIPPED APART. Elsewhere in the room, there are a couple of distinctive blue and white Dundee signage for KING STREET and WEST PORT. According to Anna Robertson, The McManus' fine and applied art section leader, Weiner had no idea that the style of Dundee street signs resembled his vinyls and it's a happy artistic accident they bear a passing resemblance.

The new signs have been created especially for the exhibition which opened in Dundee last month. A collaboration between The Tate, The National Galleries of Scotland and Artist Rooms, a touring collection of over 1,600 works of modern and contemporary art by more than 40 major artists, it's the first time an Artist Rooms has shown in Dundee. It has been attracting legions of fans of the 76-year-old artist, who was at the forefront of the development of conceptual art in his home city of New York in the 1960s. Weiner describes himself as a sculptor and text is his chosen medium. His text pieces have taken on many forms over the last fifty years but the core principle remains the same; his ideas should not be confined to the gallery but taken up by the viewer to a place of their own making.

As curatorial assistant, Lili Bartholomew, tells me when we start rooting out the signs in the McManus, Weiner's influence on contemporary art is easily comparable to David Bowie's influence on popular music from the 1970s onwards.

Speaking of his early experiences of art, Weiner recalled: “I did not have that advantage of a middle-class perspective. Art was something else; art was the notations on the wall, or art was the messages left by other people. I grew up in a city where I had read the walls; I still read the walls. I love to put work of mine out on the walls and let people read it. Some will remember it and then somebody else comes along and puts something else over it. It becomes archaeology rather than history.”

The layers in Weiner's work run deep, but in the Dundee exhibition there's a twist which sees the ten texts translated into Scots by novelist, James Robertson, who lives in Angus. Robertson has a track record in translating work into Scots, having translated several books for children and young people. He jumped at the invitation to work with Weiner, who is a hugely influential figure on the international contemporary art scene.

Weiner's cycle of ten texts were created in 1988 as standalone artworks. All were produced in his studio with no specific site in mind and have been exhibited in various ways since their creation.

The artist – who spends much of his time in Amsterdam – was unable to travel to Dundee but the two men corresponded intensively about the translation of his texts prior to the opening of the show. The fruits of the Robertson/Weiner collaboration are on display in a rare Weiner mini-retrospective in the McManus, which includes a selection of his works on paper, archival material and ephemera. This room offers an overview of five decades of the artist’s prolific career, and features material on loan from the Tate and the Artists' Books Collection Dundee (abcD) at the University of Dundee.

According to Robertson, translating Weiner's words into Scots prompted many questions about words and their meanings. "I’m hoping that my Scots versions of Mr Weiner’s texts at The McManus contain both familiar and challenging elements, and so will encourage visitors to the exhibition to think about what language is and what it does, how we use it and how we react to visual representations of it.”

The Scots texts dominate the room and they bring a meaty heft to Weiner's words. STRAIGHT DOWN TO BELOW becomes STRECHT DOON TAE THE FOONDS, while DAUBED WITH MUCK AND MIRE becomes SLAISTERED WI CLART AN GLAUR. WIPED OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH translates as WHEECHED AWA OOT O THE WARLD. My favourite English text, ROUGHLY RIPPED APART, becomes RIVEN AW TAE TAIVERS.

Roberston has also "recast" a 2005 text work in black and gold by Weiner. And so, TAKEN TO AS DEEP AS THE SEA CAN BE into TAEN TAE THE NETHERMAIST GRUND O THE SEA. It is the first work which greets the viewer as they walk into this artist room, complete with trademark Weiner "squiggle", which separates the text from the action of reading it.

All the new vinyls will, as per Weiner's instructions, be destroyed when the exhibition ends on February 17 next year. It's going to be hard for staff and visitors alike, who have grown to love them. But as a conceptual gesture… it is entirely in keeping with Weiner's approach to making – and remaking art.

ARTIST ROOMS Lawrence Weiner, Albert Square, Meadowside, Dundee DD1 1DA, 1382 307200, www.mcmanus.co.uk. Feb 17, 2019, Mon – Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 12.30-4.30pm. Free

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Scotland's impact on the world of design and innovation on a global stage is significant and the new Scottish Design Galleries at the V&A Dundee tell this story with added bells and whistles. From Charles Rennie Macintosh's Oak Room, designed for Miss Cranston's Ingram Street tearoom in Glasgow, to the Falkirk Wheel and original designs for the videogame, Lemmings, more than 300 items in this 550 square meter space on the upper floor of the museum tell the richly patterned story of Scotland's relationship with groundbreaking design.

The first section of The Story of Scottish Design looks at design as a collaborative process and includes examples of textiles used around the world by fashion designers and movements, such as the Glasgow Style and industries like Fife-based linoleum.

The second section, Design and Society, shows hoe designers influence how we live. There's a model of Frank Gehry's undulating Maggie's Dundee and a look at engineering achievements, like the building of the Forth Road Bridge.

The final section, Design and the Imagination, talks out the ways in which designers tell our everyday stories. Notable items here include video games and original Dennis the Menace artwork from The Beano by David Law. Both video games and comics are in-with-the-bricks of Dundee cultural and commercial life.

This display, which has drawn on the V&A's world-famous collections of art, design and performance, as well as other collections throughout Scotland, has come together to tell a story which until now remained untold.

There's something for everyone in these galleries. Maybe, like me, you'll be slightly underwhelmed by Mackintosh's Oak Room, which seems oddly dead in the space, but in the next breath you'll be gasping as you come across something which almost makes you weep with delight, such as David Band's designs for record sleeves; including Aztec Camera's high land, hard rain album. My head also swivelled in awe at the sight of a Hardy Amies suit made with mohair tweed designed by Borders-based designer Bernat Klein.

Scottish Design Galleries, V&A Dundee, Riverside Esplanade, Dundee, DD1 4EZ, 01382 411 611, www.vam.ac.uk Daily from 10am-5pm (10am-7pm on Fri Dec 21). Free

DON'T MISS

Strange Foreign Bodies forms a contemporary counterpoint to themes in the epic William Hunter and the Anatomy of the Modern Museum exhibition, which has been running in tandem for the last few months at The Hunterian in Glasgow. Both displays mark the tercentenary of the birth of The Hunterian founder. A group exhibition of films, prints and sculptural works by artists such as; Claire Barclay, Christine Borland, Sarah Browne, Alex Impey and Phillip Warnell, it offers a 21st century perspective on Hunter, with processes of mutation, metamorphosis and technological transformation central to many of the works. There's the story of a woman who has turned into an octopus, the philosophical reflections of a heart transplant patient, and the simulated breathing of an animatronic medical mannequin. Strange foreign bodies are everywhere.

Strange Foreign Bodies, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow 82 Hillhead Street Glasgow G12 8QQ, 0141 330 4221, www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/. Until January 13, Tue-Sat, 10am-5pm, Sun, 11am-4pm. Free.