Visual Artists' News Sheet - 2013 March April

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

issue 2 March – April 2013

Published byVisual Artists ireland Ealaíontóirí Radharcacha Éire

Curating Partnerships

The LAB, brought to you by Dublin City Council, presents:

A Roundtable Discussion Event

Image: Ruby Wallis, Imminence, medium format photography, 2011

Saturday 11 May 2013 | 14.00–16.30 Limerick City Gallery of Art FREE

ing t a r Cu ships er n t r Pa al tion

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ude incl

EXILES Mark Garry / Stephen Loughman / Rhona Byrne / James Hanley / Ronan McCrea / Ruby Wallis Curated By Alison Pilkington Preview on 14th March 6 – 8pm Exhibition runs from 15th March – 20th April 2013

The LAB T: Foley Street, Dublin 1 T: 01 222 5455 E: artsoffice@dublincity.ie H: Monday – Friday, 10am –6pm Saturday 10am – 5pm W: www.thelab.ie

!"#$ %&'() !$)*"#&+

THE ARTIST’S OVERCOAT 16 MARCH – 8 JUNE 2013

EXPLORING THE STUDIO AND COLLECTIONS OF F.E. MCWILLIAM

F.E. MCWILLIAM GALLERY & STUDIO 200 Newry Road Banbridge Co. Down Northern Ireland BT32 3NB T: +44 (0)28 4062 3322 W: www.femcwilliam.com E: info@femcwilliam.com F.E. McWILLIAM GALLERY & STUDIO

4

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

Introduction

Contents

"Has the artist been paid? Ask!", the logo at the head of the cover, refers to one of the key articles in this edition – Moving Beyond Token Fees, in which Noel Kelly, CEO Of Visual Artists Ireland, reports on the findings of VAI's Survey On Payments For Visual Artists, undertaken in December 2012. The results are sobering: the survey captured 580 exhibition opportunities – 79.66%of these provided no fee to the artist for their participation. Visual Artists Ireland has provided details to both Arts Councils, government representatives and the directors of leading galleries, and has began dialogues on issues arising from the survey.

On page 12, along with friends and colleagues, we celebrate Valerie Earley, Visual Artists Ireland’s Membership Manager, who sadly passed away on the 9th of January 2013, after a two-year fight with cancer.

The words of love and appreciation printed on these pages represent only a small fraction of the tributes to Valerie that we have received. Further contributions can be read at www.visualartists.ie/visual-artists-ireland/ valerie. VAI has also announced the creation of the Valerie Earley Residency Award. We hope that this award is one way that Valerie’s care for our artist members will continue on into the future.

This edition features two 'Career Development' case studies, by Peter Richards and Dennis McNulty. The public art sector, an important source of work for artists is addressed in Remco De Fouw’s detailed account of conception, fabrication and installation of a major commission. Elsewhere, Ciara McMahon discusses in a ‘How is Made’ feature, her project The Aesthetic Screening Clinic and Bridget O'Gorman profiles ‘Dig Where You Stand’, a year-long residency-based project in South Tipperary.

Annette Moloney showcases the depth of knowledge and experience amassed by artists collaborating with the public / communities, as facilitated by the Arts Council’s Artist in the Community scheme, managed by Create – which was recently celebrated at the ‘AIC10’ event at IMMA. Further exploring the public realm, Michelle Browne discusses the outcomes of her research project, prompted by her experience of being a mother and an artist – Walking (with a buggy) in the City.

International perspectives are provided by articles on Brian O’Doherty’s keynote speech at last year's Frieze Art Fair and Dublin City Council Arts Office's project at the 2012 Liverpool Biennale. Closer to home, our regional focus profiles visual arts activity and resources in Mayo.

We are delighted to present Commemoration – A Forward-looking Act by Joanne Laws, the winner of the Visual Artists Ireland / Dublin City Council Arts Office critical writing award, that addresses the theme of the visual arts responses and contributions to the ‘decade of centenaries’.

This issue includes the first of three thematic articles by Sinead Hogan exploring art and philosophy, prompted a recent growing mutual interest between the disciplines. This first text addresses the nature of this relationship as well as considering the question ‘why now?’

All this as well as the roundup, columnists, news and opportunities…

1. Cover Image. Cecily Brennan. Man with Eczema. Egg tempera on gesso. Image courtesy of the artist.

Recently shown at 'Living Loss', Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (23 Nov 2012 – 10 March 2013).

5. Roundup. Recent exhibitions and projects of note.

5. Regional Column: Northern Ireland. Feargal O'Malley. Artist Residencies.

6. Column. Jonathan Carroll. The Life of Ryan.

8. News. The latest developments in the visual arts sector.

9. Regional Profile. Visual arts resources and activity in Mayo.

12. Tribute. Valerie Earley. On these pages, with friends and colleagues, we celebrate Valerie Earley, Visual

Artists Ireland’s Membership Manager, who sadly passed away 9 January 2013, after a two-year fight

with cancer.

14. Art writing award. Commemoration – A Forward-Looking Act. Joanne Laws, winner of the Visual Artists

Ireland / Dublin City Council Arts Office critical writing award (2013), addresses the subject of the

visual arts responses to the ‘decade of centenaries’ 16. How is it made. Time, Liberty And Atonement. Remco De Fouw details the conception, fabrication and

installation of his commissioned work ‘A Voice’ for the Irish Prison Services headquarters in Longford.

17. Art and philosophy. Art & Philosophy – Why Now? In the first of three articles prompted by a growing

interest in certain strands of philosophy by artists and curators, Sinead Hogan considers the nature of

the relationship between art and philosophy.

18. International. O’Doherty Un-Freezes A Beating Heart. Mary-Ruth Walsh reflects on Brian O’Doherty’s

keynote address 'Strolling With The Zeitgeist: Five Decades' at last year’s Frieze Art Fair (11 Oct 2012).

19. Critique. Reviews of recent exhibitions, events, publications and projects.

23. Advocacy. Moving Beyond Token Fees. Noel Kelly, CEO Of Visual Artists Ireland reports on how the

findings of VAI's 'Survey On Payments For Visual Artists' show the direct results of the cutting of

public funding for the arts.

24. Residency. Language That Tells. Bridget O'Gorman profiles ‘Dig Where You Stand’, a year-long

residency-based project in South Tipperary.

25. Career Development. Creating Work & Context. Peter Richards tracks the development of his career as

an artist, highlighting how he has combined this with his work as a curator.

26. How is it Made? Doctor in the House. Ciara McMahon discusses the concepetion and delivery of her

project The Aesthetic Screening Clinic.

27. Project Profile. Productive Perambulators. Michelle Browne discusses some of the initial outcomes of

‘Walking (with a buggy) in the City: A Research Project in the Public Realm’.

28. Opportunities. All the latest grants, awards, exhibition calls and commissions.

30. International. Breaking Bread . Sheena Barrett, Arts Officer And Gallery Curator For The Lab, Dublin

profiles Break Bread Open, an event held at the 2012 Liverpool Biennale as part of Liverpool and

Dublin's Cultural Corridor.

31. Art in the Public Realm. The Mercurial Challenge Of Collaborative Arts. Annette Moloney reports on

'AIC10’, an event held at IMMA (27 Nov 2012) marking a decade of collaborative art projects funded

through the Arts Council Of Ireland’s Artist In The Community Scheme and managed by Create.

33. Art in the Public Realm: Roundup. Public art commissions, site-specific works, socially-engaged

practices and other forms of art outside the gallery.

34. Career Development. Alphaville to Anti-Tour. Dennis Mcnulty retraces some formative projects and

experiences that have contibuted to the evolution of his working methods.

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The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

REGIONAL column: Northern IRELAND

Feargal O'Malley

5

Roundup

photographic work by Breda Lynch (9

The Mystery of Things

Feb – 2 Mar), featuring a body of drawing

Artists in Residence

on research begun by the artist while on residency in the Cill Rialaig artist village in Kerry early in 2012. The press release explained that the images referenced “the language of hysteria as described in the extensive collection of photographs

Bart O'Reilly, still fromBefore and After

shot by nineteenth-century neurologist An artist-in-residence scheme is not a new idea, but it has been a welcome one at the

Jean-Martin Charcot at Saltpetriere

of stills from video presentations. Born

University of Ulster School of Art and Design. Since 2010, 14 committed artists /

Hospital in Paris of his medical muses”.

in Dublin, O’Reilly has an MFA in studio

www.126.ie

designers have been selected from a highly competitive application procedure that range of disciplines, helping the recently-graduated artist develop their individual

Fiona Mulholland exhibited ‘The

practice and move from study into a professional career.

Mystery of Things’ at Monster Truck (8

Dougal McKenzie, Lecturer in Painting on the BA Fine Art course said “We had planned to have only one artist this year in a bigger space on their own, but we really could not choose between two of the strongest applicants so decided to offer them a shared studio space. This seems to be working well as it maintains the group spirit in the studios in general, and more importantly has the artists-in-residence working side

Feb – 9 Mar). In these new and revisited works by Mulholland, “elements are reduced to their component parts to present poetic configurations made from common mass produced materials that

cross

references

conflicting

by side with the undergraduate students. This is one of the key features of the

narratives of 'nature' and 'culture' and

residency from the staff point of view – that the students can observe and learn from

which operate as archetypal artificial

what the resident artists are doing alongside them. The residencies are drawn from the

'landscapes'”.

newly graduating student body, quite often giving them extra time and space before

www.monstertruck.ie

they progress on to Master’s study or go out into the professional world of contemporary practice”.

One of the most important aspects of university life that the artist-in-residence can tap into is the direct daily contact with other artists. In an academic environment, it’s as much about learning as it is about figuring out and practising your ability to communicate ideas verbally to other people. A passerby can provide you with

art from the Maryland Institute College of Art and Design. O’Reilly’s work has

takes place annually. The residency scheme covers all BA / BDes programmes across a

Fiona Mulholland,Do I believe in Magic?, 2012

A Longing

been show in Baltimore, New York,

‘A Longing’, at Signal Arts Centre, Bray

Philadelphia, Washington DC, Ireland

(28 Jan – 10 Feb) presented new

and Northern Ireland.

paintings by NCAD graduate Carol O’Connor. The paintings were described as representing the artist's view “of the

Shift / Merge

broad and accelerating changes in the world around us”. O’Connor commented that “colour plays an important role and images which appear to be playful are often filled with emptiness and a feeling of loss. Real and fantasy worlds collide in an effort to evaluate and draw some meaning from an often perplexing and

OUT / TOU ‘OUT / TUO’ at Catalyst Arts, Belfast (17

increasingly chaotic world”. www.signalartscentre.ie

Jan – 7 Feb) presented work by Niall de Buitléar, Erin Doherty, Clodagh Emoe, Helena Hamilton and Peter Marley. The

Mane Na Joso (Don’t Look At Me)

Jane Butler, 'installation shot from Shift / Merge'

show was described as bringing together

The University Gallery, Belfast, hosted

the work of artists “who use their work

Jane Butler’s first solo show ‘Shift /

as a way of enquiry into the abstract

Merge’ from 31 Jan – 28 Feb. The works

nature of human thought. Working in

everybody is in the same position and genuinely receptive to new ways of thinking is

in the show were described as being

an ephemeral nature these artists

hugely beneficial.

“caught between form and function, art

explore their inner workings that are

and design, inside and outside”.

immediate feedback when the aleatory flutter of a new idea takes hold and you need somebody to act as a sounding board. In an environment where it’s fine to stumble and stammer your way through explaining your current body of work, knowing that

Artists also contribute to university life, delivering talks to undergraduates and assisting with campus activities where appropriate, broadening their experience and acquiring the new skills they need for their future in the professional world of art and design. Strangely, hearing yourself think out aloud in front of other people is often one of the best ways to get to the crux of what you are really thinking.

One artist-in-residence told me that attending lectures through choice and not through a specific programme had been a great help in developing his practice.

made accessible to the external world, often in an engaging manner”. A range of workshops were held in conjunction with the show, exploring a range of professional development topics and also including performance events and talks by Brian Patterson and Clodagh Emoe. www.catalystarts.co.uk

Clearing time to define a personal language style to add text to his work, without the added pressure of coursework and hand in dates, was a great source of freedom.

Paradoxically, he used the library more after graduation than before it, finding it an

Jorge Ruiz Villasante, from 'Mane na Joso'

Jorge Ruiz Villasante’s exhibition ‘Mane Na Joso’ was presented at the James Barry

Centre,

CIT,

Bishopstown, Cork (28 Jan – 21 Feb).

Jorge,

a

former

student

of

the

photography course at St John’s College, showcased a selection of photographs taken

At 126

Exhibition

while

“following

Ghandi’s

footsteps” in Gujarat, India.

The Bon Secours Bariatric Surgery Team

overspend, helping young artists escape the gravitational pull of their own taste and

and Sheelah Moloney, Director, 2020

motivating them into an alternative form of production or contemplation. The

Art Gallery, Cork, devised and curated

selected artists and designers have been a good indicator of the high degree of talent

‘Mirror, Mirror - Beauty & Perception’

being produced at the university – as demonstrated by the displayed work in the main

(29 Jan – 28 Feb), an exhibition of

foyer area.

artworks addressing the subject of body image. ‘Mirror, Mirror – Beauty &

Belfast Arts Collective recently got together and arranged the exhibition ‘On the

Perception’. The following artists' works

Waterfront’, curated by Ben Groves and Susanna McConville – two artists that

were featured in the show, selected via

currently share a painting residency studio. The show provided a clear indication of

Scottish artist, Olivia Irvine. Irvine commented, “I get my inspiration from my immediate surroundings, including domestic interiors, street, gardens and family holidays. Pattern, colour and

and surprises”.

The previous exhibition was (6 – 23 Feb) featuring paintings by fourthyear Art and Design students from GMIT, Castlebar. The show was instigated and co-ordinated by Seamus Burke, a sufferer of multiple sclerosis and a current fourth-year Fine Art student at the institution.

www.thelinenhall.com www.themissingpark.com

an open-submission process: Marie Connole, Ann Duggan, Cliona Fox,

Matthew Doherty,Characters, 2012

at the Waterfront, Belfast was showcased (yes some work still to be done on the titles

126's sixth annual members’ show (26

front!) Ben Groves said, “The Artist residency program appealed to me as I knew it

Jan – 2 Feb) presented works by 21

would give me the boost I needed to keep up the momentum I had built up from third

artists, selected by an open submission

opportunity. I would highly recommend pursuing the residency program and I have

oil and tempera paintings on linen by

making process itself throw up choices

Mirror, Mirror

environment? It serves as a naturally evolving homegrown biennale without the huge

year. Having a studio space within a creative environment seemed like a great

Arts Centre, Mayo (1 – 23 Feb) presented

narrative, as the dynamics of the picture-

Who wouldn’t get inspired and enjoy the distraction of the bustling creative academic

The work of current students, resident artists and recent graduates from the University

‘Some of These Places’ at the Linenhall

gesture play as much a part as ideas and

amazing resource that he felt he didn’t fully utilise while studying.

some of the professional skills learnt being learnt within the creative industry sector.

Some of These Places

process. It was noted, “many of the works in the exhibition emphasised the

found it highly rewarding”.

ongoing re-engagement with the

The disconnect between the educational biosphere of university life and the real

perceived challenges created by a

professional world is daunting. Providing a vital period of breathing room at one of

dematerialisation fostered by the

the most important transitional periods of an artist’s career provides a fantastic

virtual, and sought to explore the

opportunity and one that should be acknowledged.

disintegrating boundaries between

materiality of the object in the face of

technology, nature and the human”.

The following show was ‘Thursday’s Clinic’

an

exhibition

of

new

Eileen Healy, Anna Hearne, Jack Hickey,

Space of Appearance

Anne Lowen, Lorraine Masters, Jenny Monks, Mateusz Nowakowski, Katie O’Donoghue, Maria O’Donovan, Lana Shuks and Sabine Weisbach. www.202artgallery.com

Bart O’Reilly The Drawing Project, Dun Laoghaire, invited Bart O’Reilly to exhibit a series

Object from 'State of Appearance'

of works (30 Jan – 6 Feb), which

The exhibition ‘Spaces of Appearance’

addressed

marked

“questions

relating

to

the

culmination

of

a

abstraction, drawing and painting

collaboration between postgraduate

through a mulit-disciplinary practice”.

students from Art in the Contemporary

The exhibition included digital prints

World, NCAD, independent curator

6 COluMN

The Visual Artists’ News sheet

March – April 2013

ROuNDuP

Jonathan Carroll

Vaari Claffey and the Joinery. The

have been living in temporary reception

The exhibition draws on the collections

exhibition ran for two days (7 Feb, 10

centres, such as Mosney near Drogheda,

of the Irish Museum of Modern Art and

The Life of Ryan

Feb) in the Joinery, Arbour Hill, Dublin

for more than seven years”.

Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane,

www.highlanes.ie www.milleniumcourt.org

and examined the value of objects as artworks and the thought processes that such examinations might provoke. This I had one of those typical New Year nightmares where you imagine explaining to your family what you actually do to earn a living. In the dream I approached a group of the family and, apropos of nothing, explained that one artist I was working with presented empty space as his contribution to an exhibition and another contributed a spoon. The dream then took another anxious turn and I found myself frantically trying to pack all my art books and years of collected art material for an imagined Ryanair flight. Many artists will have experienced this anxiety for real when travelling between various far-flung residencies. The early part of the residency is

live event saw a group of participants

on completing his residency in IMMA, had no option but to hide the enormous

Irish artists, along with archive material, photographs and unfinished paintings

WInTER shoRTs

from Francis Bacon's Studio. Featured

convene to whittle thirty-two objects

artists include: Orla Barry, Gerard Byrne,

down to one via five fast-paced rounds

Nina Canell, Dorothy Cross, Willie

of discussion. It also presented a series

Doherty, Fergus Feehily, John Gerrard,

of mini-exhibitions which incorporated

Patrick Graham, Katie Holten, Brian

a selected object, during which various

Maguire, Alice Maher, Martin & Hobbs,

curatorial approaches were tested out

Niamh McCann, William McKeown,

within the space.

Richard Mosse, Gavin Murphy, Alan www.thejoinery.org

spent collecting material and absorbing local knowledge and the final weeks spent wondering how to get it all back to base camp. I recall one artist in particular who,

Phelan, Garrett Phelan, Eva Rothschild

livestock poster image

On Friday 11 Jan, Livestock presented

MEMoRy of ABsEncE

‘Winter Shorts’, a live art event featuring

canvases he had painted in the weeds in a derelict part of the grounds.

Francis Fay, Ciaran O'Keefe, Alan

I was to witness this latter part of my dream become a reality for one emigrant artist

Seamus Bradley, Aoife Stokes, Katherine

returning to Ireland after three years away. Peter Cabocky (Košice, Slovakia), a serial

Atkinson, Peter Duffy and Leah Smith.

emigrant, returned to Ireland (where he had lived for 10 years) in order to retrieve

Formed in 2009, Livestock is an initiative

some of his stored possessions. He told me that he had suitcases weighing up to 50kg

of artists based at the Market Studios,

each stored in friends’ houses and former lodgings. Peter studied art in IADT, worked

Dublin and “supports, encourages and

at IMMA, had a studio in TBG&S, exhibited widely in Ireland and then decided to

promotes artists to present experimental

study for an MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art and Design in London. He

and performance based work in front of

subsequently tried to make it as an artist in London, which, as anyone who has lived in London knows, is a very difficult thing to achieve.

Ironically, Peter found work in two areas relating to my theme (wait, you didn’t know I had one?) The first was as a data collector for the UK census in the multiethnic Whitechapel area. The second was in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Technical Services Department. This often involved hours working in former World War Two army bunkers where some 70% of the 220,000 objects owned by the V&A are stored (surely this might encourage the reduction of ones own collections?)

Peter described sorting hundreds of century-old prosthetic legs on one day and recreating priceless early Renaissance works the next. Many of these would never see the light of day.

For the first week of January, weighing scales in hand, Peter gathered mounds of possessions in Dublin to be narrowed down to two suitcases bound for Košice. I itemised some of the excellent books in his library and his collection of DVDs and CDs. Here are some examples: Soren Kierkegaard’s The Sickness unto Death and Either / or A Fragment of Life Life; Dodge Ball (I wonder did he start with Kierkegaard or vice versa); George Perec’s Species of Spaces and Other Pieces Pieces; Walter Benjamin’s On Hashish; John Steinbeck’s Travels With Charley; and Non-Places: An introduction to an anthropology of supermodernity by Marc Augé. There were of course books relating directly to art (Peter is a painter) and one book in particular – Gerhard Richter’s The Daily Practice of Painting: Writings 1962 – 1993 – that I tried to persuade him would be better left

Delmar, Vanessa Daws, Eleanor Lawler,

Paddy lamb, Lackan Hill / Interior VV, oil on gessoed paper

a live audience”.

entitled ‘Memory of Absence’ ran at press

release

states,

narrative

based

on

his

own

circumstances as both an emigrant and an immigrant”.

cITIzEn

On a recent visit to the James Joyce Museum, I was struck by an image of Joyce and

of detouch”.

Filmbase, Dublin hosted this group

installations that engage with this idea

show (4 – 12 Jan) which featured work

of the distance of touch. The artists

by Sinéad McDonald, Glen Neath,

featured in the exhibition were AK

Melissa Campbell, Lee Barry and Sarah

Burns, Alice Channer, Sunah Choi,

Flynn as part of the First Fortnight arts

Dennis Oppenheim and Seth Price.

and mental health festival. This multidisciplinary exhibition "attempts to deconstruct both the metaphysical

www.projectartscentre.ie

ccA DERRy-lonDonDERRy

and physical aspects of toxicity and and the spaces in which unspoken histories occurred.”

exhibition of Andy Warhol’s work in

Conal McStravick, GDR work-in-progress still, 2013

Northern Ireland (8 Feb – 28 Apr). The

CCA Derry-Londonderry presented Lee

Warhol’s most well known imagery,

a beautiful round table once owned by Léon at which himself and Joyce would sit

including Chairman Mao, Hamburger, Hamburger

for hours working on a translation of Finnegan’s Wake. This table, as well as many of

Peggy Guggenheim who tried to bring the Léons to safety in America.

The show presented

drawing, moving image and sculptural

MAC’s galleries and features some of

were purchased by the National Library of Ireland in 1996. The Joyce Museum have

holds some of Léon’s wife’s correspondence including a letter of condolence from

Huberman,

'De:tox', image by Mark O'Connor

show takes place over all three of the

one of his translators and friend Paul Léon. Over 3500 books from Léon’s own library

behind in an asylum at Ivry-sur Seine – died in Zurich. The National Library also

Anthony

MAC, Belfast is hosting the first major

annual reports of mining companies.

camp in Silesia and Joyce – sick, exhausted and worried about his daughter left

by

W hol AT ThE MAc WAR

represented in his collection – Beckett, Joyce, Shaw and Yeats – but there were also

Neither was successful in saving themselves for long. Léon died in a concentration

www.bozar.be

www.firstfortnight.ie

his mind through anything he had consulted. All the great Irish writers were

turn Léon held his, as they both tried to get out of Paris and away from the war.

and curator, Christina Kennedy.

detached sense of proximity, or a sense

was itemised and analysed by several scholars for evidence of his thinking, tracing

being lost in the turbulent times of the early 1940s. Joyce held Léon’s stuff and in

Gibbons, Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher

draw parallels between toxic attitudes

Smithson died at the young age of 35, his personal library of well over 1000 books

Léon’s possessions, were shipped between various friends to help save them from

Dawson, Margarita Cappock, Luke

contemporary technology generates a

history, social culture and memory. It is

and history and adding a personal

catalogue with essays by Barbara

merging the hand with the machine,

approach is strongly influenced by

and similarities in terms of geography

show is accompanied by an illustrated

mean the same thing it used to. By

exploration of several themes. His

western Canada, offering up differences

Cappock (Francis Bacon Studio). The

notion that “today, to touch doesn't

paintings and drawings continue an

hs relaationship with Ireland and

Art), and Barbara Dawson and Margarita

Dublin (25 Jan – 30 March) explores the

of specific location, Paddy Lamb’s

differences and similarities in terms of

Christina Kennedy (Contemporary Irish

‘Detouched’ at Project Arts Centre,

“Using

Ireland and western Canada, offering up

Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane,

Curated

landscape as a foundation, and regardless

also effected by his relationship with

‘Changing States’ is curated by Michael Dempsey, Head of Exhibitions,

DETouchED

DE:Tox

Custom House Studios (24 Jan – 17 Feb).

The

and Paul Seawright.

www.themarketstudios.ie

An exhibition of Paddy Lamb’s work,

behind in my care.

You can tell a lot about someone from what they have in their library. When Robert

presenting the work of 20 contemporary

Anthony haughey, still from 'Citizen'

Cow Wallpaper along with portraits. A parallel programme of “Warhol-inspired

Anthony Haughey’s exhibition and

events” is running in conjunction with

installation, ‘Citizen’ (8 Feb – 6 Apr)

the show including screenings, theatre,

takes the form of a collaboration

live music and DJ events.

between the artist, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda and Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown. The show explores issues of borders and transnational

Has all this encouraged me to desist from collecting suitcases full of possessions?

migration, which has been a major

Not yet, but I am seriously thinking about it, if only to avoid that January nightmare

theme of Haughey’s art practice for

of having to pack. Instead, I became the new guardian of much of Cabocky’s

more than 20 years. As the press release

collection. My reward was a previously admired painting by Cabocky aptly entitled

notes, for this project the artist “worked

Mr. Dabic (Unfinished Business). Košice is one of two European Capitals of Culture for

collaboratively with individuals and

2013. You should look up Peter if you do visit. But make sure to drop me a line first

groups who have left their countries of

and I can give you some books to bring back to him.

origin in the most urgent of times, many

www.themaclive.com

IRIsh ART In BRussEls ‘Changing States: Contemporary Irish Art and Francis Bacon’s Studio’ is on show at BOZAR Centre for Fine Arts, Brussels (28 Feb – 19 May). The show has been devised as a key event in the culture programme on the occasion of Ireland’s Presidency of the European Union supported by Culture Ireland.

Welch's commissioned project ‘If what they say is true’ (1 Dec 2012 – 13 Jan 2013) an exhibition described as “a series of recurrent motifs that take shape in printed matter, arrangements and displays, objects, texts and unwieldy social situations, that index a larger structure”. A jury comprising artist Locky Morris, writer Paul O’Neill and curator Emily Pethick selected Welch from a shortlist of applicants. Lee Welch was the first recipient of CCA’s annual commission for an emerging artist with a connection to our region. The opening of If what they say is true coincided with the official opening of CCA’s new space at 10 – 12 Artillery Street.

The current exhibition is ‘The Grand Domestic Revolution GOES ON’ (26 Jan – 23 March) – “a multi-faceted

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

7

Roundup exploration of the domestic sphere”.

media installation where inanimate

The Heart is Deceitful

The show features works by Pauline

household detritus merges and collides

The Copper House Gallery, Dublin

Boudry and Renete Lorenz, Domestic

with the territory of the garden. A series

showcased work by Amy Hanrahan, the

Workers Netherlands with Matthijs de

of drawings, assemblages and manmade

Fire Propeller Award winner 2012. The

Bruijne, Andrea Francke, Nicholas

nests occupy the gallery space and are

press release describes 'The Heart is

Keogh, Conal McStravick, Christian

supported by a soundscape of 'birdsong'

Deceitful Above All Things' as a

Nyampeta, and Haegue Yang. Running

that uses the human voice."

“photographic series inspired by the

This Must be the Place

alongside the exhibition is a series of

idiosyncrasy of the family unit.” With

www.kunstvereinbaden.at

events including design workshops, lectures, and movie nights.

Enda O'Donoghue, Reno, 2011, oil on canvas

images that “interpret the conventional

Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford recently

Hovering between the realms of

bound by kin or kind”.

showed two interrelated exhibitions,

abstraction and representation, between

and unconventional tribe, allied or

Art & Writing

www.cca-derry-londonderry.org Gavin Murphy, Light cares can speak but heavy ones are dumb, 2008

Backwards into Paradise Flood, Dublin recently opened their second exhibition ‘Backwards into Paradise’ (16 Feb – 24 Mar). As the press release notes, the show brings together works by artists working with video, to offer “an exploration of light and darkness, facts and fictions via narrative and metaphor”. The exhibition features work by Seamus Harahan, Lorraine Neeson, Tom Smith, Nadim Vardag and Michael John Whelan. Flood is a not for profit exhibition space curated by Paul McAree. Flood is supported by Dublin City Council, Arts Office and Lismore Castle Arts. www.flooddublin.com

‘Field-notes’ by Iwan Bala and Menna

Curated by Sara O’Gorman, ‘This Must

the mathematical encoded and the

Elfyn and ‘Like Life Itself’ by Gerda

be the Place’ ran at the Golden Thread

organic, O’Donoghue’s paintings are the

Teljeur’s (20 Jan – 23 Feb). ‘Field-notes’

Gallery (7 – 23 Feb). Four artists (Jamie

result of a process that is highly

originated from the Oriel Myrddin

Buckley, Justyna Gruszczyk, Barbara

analytical and methodical and yet

Gallery in Carmarthen, Wales and was

Knezevic and Gavin Murphy) “reflected

invites errors, misalignments and

inspired by the shared interests of artist

on the visual, philosophical and

glitches. The imagery comes almost

/ writer Iwan Bala and poet / playwright

symbolic

the

exclusively from found photographs

Menna Elfyn. As the press release

landscape and the transformative power

sourced from the internet, where

outlined, “…working closely, they

that humans have on the physical

O'Donoghue

endeavoured to bring words and images

environment. The act of viewing, be it

throwaway moments of everyday life,

together in a creative dialogue that

nature, built-up areas or the things that

merging them together in various

explores their interest in language,

surround us, is an experience that is

interconnected themes.

identity and place” .

representations

of

with

Snapshots

random

www.endaodonoghue.com

Leah Beggs, Waterlogged, 2013, oil on board

Leah Beggs’s ‘Snapshots: A Journey

partially determined by our culture.

Gerda Teljeur’s show ‘Like Life

The works in this exhibition explore

Itself’, comprised over 300 pen and ink

Spatial Dialectics

Through Connemara’ ran from 11 Jan –

how places and objects can instigate

drawings produced over the course of

This exhibition by Adele Stanley ran at

9 Feb at the Market Place Arts Centre,

one year. The artist’s process was

the Higher Bridges Gallery, Fermanagh

Armagh. The press release states that

described in terms of “a technique

(4 – 26 Jan). The artist is concerned with

the work was “based on fleeting glimpses

forms and as contested discursive sites

which is similar to the act of free form

“the intrinsic and the extrinsic nature of

of Connemara captured in a ‘snapshot’

for remembering”.

writing and as such the drawings serve

things. She is interested in objects, their

frame of time. Leah’s paintings are

to integrate and rework the hidden

varying

potential

inspired by journeys through the

activity of the subconscious and in

placements, the spaces they inhabit and

Connemara countryside. From the

doing so form an abstract”.

how these spaces can be made tangible.

mountains at dawn or the bog at dusk to

By making interrelated series of objects,

the beach on a summer’s day, this

where ideas, forms, colours and images

collection of work will engage the

memories of past events, providing visions of the future, as both spatial

Neues Bauen

plays

www.thecopperhousegallery.com

www.goldenthread.org

Gerard Byrne

www.wexfordartscentre.ie

Irish artist Gerard Byrne’s exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, London (17

Gems and Whispers

contexts

and

are repeated and revisited, the artist

viewer and bring them on a journey

works that explore “the way we

aims to continually re-contextualise,

through Connemara”.

Eamon O'Kane, Weissenhofsiedlung (Hans Scharoun), 2013

understand

displace and pursue limits”.

Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco

revisiting the past”. The exhibition

recently exhibited new works by Eamon

features the UK premier of A man and a

O’Kane (3 Jan – 16 Feb). The press release

woman make love (2012). This multi-

states that “O’Kane’s paintings offer the

screen

viewer meditations on the influential

discussions

and

ran in the Gerard Dillon Gallery in

legacy of early buildings by European

eroticism held in the 1920s by the

Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich in Belfast

architects Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der

Surrealist group of artists and writers

(18 Jan – 28 Feb). “This body of work

Rohe, Hans Scharoun, Albert Frey, and

including André Breton, Jacques Prévert

Richard Neutra, as well as their influence

and Yves Tanguy. Also on show is A

on architectural innovation in the

thing is a hole in a thing it is not (2010),

United States. The title of O’Kane’s show,

which borrows its title from a statement

Jan – 8 Mar) featured a selection of the

present

installation about

through

'Neues Bauen', translates to ‘New

by sculptor Carl Andre and re-examines

Building’, and provided an aegis for the

seminal moments from 1960s debates

modern architecture that emerged in

around Minimalism. The exhibition has

Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.

been supported by Culture Ireland as

www.gregorylindgallery.com

part of Ireland’s EU Presidency Culture Programme 2013. www.whitechapelgallery.org

EU-topia Curated by Aoife Flynn as part of the Market Studios Curatorial Award,

(12 Jan – 24 Feb). The exhibition featured works by Mainie Jellet, Patrick Scott, Michael Farrell, Tony O’Malley, Aideen

working together with curatorial mentor Maeve Mulrennan (Galway Arts Centre) and supported by Butler Gallery and Director Anna O’Sullivan”.

and physicality to this discourse. They

www.butlergallery.com Sue Morris, from 'Hortus Conclusus', 2012

observations on radical difference and

Sue

otherness in thought, perception and

Conclusus’ was shown in Kunstverein

economy at a time of economic upheaval

This

Galerie, Baden bei Wien, Austria (25

in Europe”.

O’Donoghue ran at the Limerick City

Nov 2012 – 27 Feb 2013). The press

Gallery (30 Nov 2012 – 18 Jan 2013).

release states, “The work explores a set

O’Donoghue is interested in the medium

www.themarketstudios.ie

Morris’s

exhibition

‘Hortus

Last Days of Gravity solo

exhibition

by

Enda

of oppositions – nature versus nurture,

and process of painting and mediates

the innate versus the fabricated, the

images through digital technology.

wild versus the cultivated – in a multi-

in

Ireland,

the margins of society. It examines notions of ‘home’ and explores how art

Kathy Herbert,

The Drawing Project, Dun Laoighaire recently showcased work by Kathy Herbert. The artist “sees drawing as a means of inquiry, a reflective process

may produce a deeper and more enduring

understanding

straightforward means of capturing an idea and giving it substance. Drawing has the potential to create meaning by, for example, juxtaposing or morphing images together, or by presenting a combination of seemingly unrelated issues. It can be immediate and

the

images do.” www.emacl.com

Repeat Please Group exhibition ‘Repeat Please’ ran at the Nag Gallery, Dublin from 11 – 31 Jan and featured works by Olive Barrett, Louise Marlborough and Margaret O’Brien. www.nagallery.ie

responsive, it can be meditative, or logical and structured”.

of

contemporary experience than media

which is central to her practice. It is a

painter painter

Education Curator Bairbre-Ann Harkin

their work as means to give visibility and

Critics and Red Square Critics’ Group

“first foray into the curatorial process,

“EU-topia presents four artists who use

systems

curated by the Butler Gallery Adult

outlined, this show marked the groups

Commenting on the show, Flynn noted,

alternative

Whispers of the Future’, an exhibition

in May 2012 and, as the press release

Hendrick and Ann Marie Webb.

present

Collection: Echoes from the Past and

collapse

empathising in particular with those on

showed ‘Gems from the Butler Gallery

were formed during Bealtaine Festival

Anne

economic

The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny recently

The Butler Gallery Adult Critics

exhibition featured works by Anthony McMorrow,

explores the human dimension to the

Michael Farrell, La Ruche / Press Irlandaise, 1975

Hortus Conclusus

and Gallery, Dublin (18 Jan – 2 Feb). The Laura

This exhibition of paintings and installations by Eoin Mac Lochlainn in

Barry and James Turrell.

‘EU-topia’ was shown at Market Studios

Murphy,

Didean / Home

Kathy Herbert

reinterprets sexuality

www.marketplacearmagh.com

Irish artist Fergus Feehily took part in Heartlands

the group show ‘Painter Painter’ at the

Barbara O’Meara’s show 'Heartlands' ran

Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis (2 Feb

from 7 Jan – 1 Feb at the Alley Arts

– 27 Oct). “‘Painter Painter presents new

Centre, Co Tyrone. “Barbara’s latest

work by 15 artists from the US and

body of work is inspired by her current

Europe in a focused survey of emergent

interest and investigation of a sunken

developments in abstract painting and

yew forest on the Irish coastline.”

studio practice.

www.alleytheatre.com

www.fergusfeehily.com

8

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

News eva international director EVA International, Ireland’s biennial of contemporary art, is pleased to announce that Bassam El Baroni has been appointed as Curator of the 36th edition of eva International (12 April – 6 July 2014).

Bassam El Baroni is a curator and art critic based in Alexandria, Egypt. In 2005 he co-founded the non-profit art space Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), and was its Director until December 2012. In 2010, he was co-curator of Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain, and is currently a PhD researcher in the Curatorial / Knowledge program at Goldsmiths, University of London. www.eva.ie

national gallery refurbishment Minister Deenihan has announced plans for a refurbishment of the National Gallery of Ireland. The refurbishment is expected to cost €20 million and will create hundreds of jobs. Minister Deeniham commented: “I am delighted to announce this extensive refurbishment, which will deliver both a world-leading national gallery and also generate 300 full time construction and specialist skills jobs”.

Completion of the project is expect by late 2015.

Plans for the refurbishment of the historic core of the gallery include: the installation of new climate, heating, fire suppression, electrical, lighting and security systems, the reopening of Victorian features and spaces wihtin the building previously unseen by the public and the conversion of spaces between the wings for public use as exhibition spaces.

Tenders for the completion of the refurbishment works are currently being drafted and will be issued to the market as soon as possible. www.nationalgallery.ie www.ahg.gov.ie

prism magazine The new spring issue of prism Photo Magazine will be available online from 8 March and features 12 carefully selected profiles of both established names and emerging talents from the contemporary photographic scene. This upcoming issue will feature an interview with Emma Campbell and Dana Lixenberg, along with the work of Alexandra Hunts, Fiona Yaron Field, Justin Maxon, Simone Lueck, Juuso Noronkoski, Tony Kinlan, Ursula Jernberg, Ulrike Schmitz, Elizabeth Moran, and Mark Hartman.

Current and previous issues can be viewed at: www.prismphotomagazine.com

culture ireland The new Expert Advisory Committee for the Culture Ireland programme of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht held its inaugural meeting in January. Under the Public Service Reform Plan, the work of the Culture Ireland programme is being aligned closely with the work of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the IDA and Tourism Ireland. The Minister said his purpose in selecting the Expert Committee is to ensure that “the Committee brings a focus not only in the promotion of Irish arts abroad, leading to further career

opportunities for Irish artists, but also delivers wider benefits of tourism and enhanced global reputation for Ireland as a centre of creativity and innvation.

There are many shared interests around the table who will now be working together to achieve a shared goal”. www.ahg.gov.ie

maurice ward shannon Cathal Murphy from Maurice Ward Art Handling has moved to the company's Shannon office to expand art handling services in the West. Cathal will operate a full Art Division alongside the imports and export team, who have been servicing the Shannon area since 1994. Cathal has installed many exhibitions, working with artists such as Alice Maher and Aideen Barry and in galleries / arts centres all over Ireland including: Crawford Gallery in Cork; Butler Gallery, Kilkenny; RDS Art Fair; and with the Tulca festival in Galway. The following services will be available: Art Box, crate manufacture, packing, loading, transport (including air-ride, temperature control, satellite tracking), storage (bonded secure monitored warehousing), air and ocean freight, customs brokerage service, project management and installation.

kinsale festival Marie McPartlin is the new Artistic Director of the Kinsale Arts Festival, which will run from 6 – 14 July. As cofounder and director of London World Festival, an annual celebration of words, text and language across spaces in east London, she was a recipient of a Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough Award for outstanding cultural entrepreneurship in 2009. McPartlin succeeds Gemma Tipton, who stepped down after two years as Guest Artist Director to return to her

VAI News

work as a writer and curator. www.kinsaleartsfestival.com

acni funding Support for the Individual Artists Programme (SIAP) offers a collection of schemes designed to meet the needs of individual artists working in Northern Ireland. A number of schemes will be open for applications and applicants should check the Guidance Notes when available for details of changes. SIAP opened on 18 February and the deadline for applications is 4pm 14 March, with decisions announced in June. Online application forms available. curator. www.artscouncil-ni.org

Jason Ellis, photos by Trish McCormack

Tadhg McGrath

Ciaran O'Keefe (aka Smilin' Kanker)

second 'show and tell' event

Visual Artists Ireland has tried to negotiate a solution that minimises costly legal proceedings. We have spoken to a number of debt collection agencies. For a fee (usually a percentage of the monies owed) they will take on responsibility for recovering the debt and will initiate legal proceedings and incur costs of same if necessary. We have partnered with a leading solicitor and debt collection agency as a referral service for artists. For more information, please refer to our website.

On February 19th, Visual Artists Ireland held its second Show and Tell Evening,

entrepreneur awards BLOCK T have been announced as the winner of the Arts Category in this years David Manley Emerging Entrepreneur Awards. This award recognises and rewards emerging arts, business and social entrepreneurs with the ‘Gift of Time’ from some of the country’s leading experts in key business fields. Managing Director of BLOCK T, Laura G Dovn said, “It’s a great honour to be recongised by this important award and we will be sure to work hard and use it to its full poten-

126 At the Galway City Council meeting on 11 February 2013, councillors voted 14 to 1 to reverse an earlier fundingdecision and give 126 the €8,000 shortfall in 2012 funding. 126 sends thanks to everyone who wrote a letter, signed the petition or tweeted their support. These efforts, support and quick response to challenging this funding shortfall when announced in December 2012 made all the difference!

which was held at the VAI Offices.

Initiated and organised by Listings Editor and Membership Assistant Adrian Colwell, the event was a relaxed informal

evening

of

fast-paced

presentations by 10 VAI members.

Presenting artists were: Brendan Earley, Ann Marie Curran, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Jason Ellis, Brian Duggan, Ben Readman, Tadhg McGrath, Siobhan

presentations varied widely, from a practice overview by Cliona Harmey to

World Art Day

an introduction to visual arts initiatives

April 15th 2013, Leonardo da Vinci’s

at Block T by Ben Readman, a live

project space award Mary Cremin is the second recipient of BLOCK T’s Project Space Award. The Project Space Award entitles an artist or curator to a free studio at BLOCK T for a period of time to work on a specific project or to facilitate the production of new work. Cremin is a curator based in Dublin who graduated with a Masters in Visual Art Practices from the Institute of Art Design and Technology, Dublin. She is currently Project Manager of the Irish Pavilion, Venice biennale, 2013. Prior to this she was Project Curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Director of the Green on Red Gallery, and was awarded the Visual Arts Curator Residency

561st birthday, will be the second ever

performance by Ciaran O'Keefe and a

World Art Day – as declared by the

specific project focus by Brian Duggan.

2013 from the Arts Council. www.blockt.ie

nla iv Emmanuelle Marion has been announced as curator of the fourth annual New Living Art Exhibition, launching November 2013. Marion is Co-Director of D.Ploy Dublin, and Curator Director of Bio.Space033. Her curatorial vision will see the NLA IV continue to develop as a multi-venue exhibition and grow as an event of international interest on the occasion of Ireland’s EU Presidency. www.imoca.ie

www.visualartists.ie/resources

Clancy, Cliona Harmey and Ciaran O’Keeffe (aka Smilin’ Kanker). The

www.126.ie

tial”. www.blockt.ie www.davidmanleyawards.ie

March – April 2013

International Association of Art, IAA /

Each presentation comprised 10

AIAP. The idea was devised and proposed

slides, which advanced automatically

by the Turkish committee of IAA / AIAP

after 30 seconds. This gave all speakers

at the 17th general assembly of IAA

an equal amount of time to take – five

world congress in Guadalajara, Mexico

minutes in total. It forced each speaker

in October 2011. It's a fledgling concept

to be as concise as possible, not to spend

– an annual day-long international time

too long on one subject and sometimes

zone spanning celebration of the visual

to find new things to say about a

arts – but an intriguing one. It is certainly

particular image. Attendees reported

a welcome dose of positivity. As the

that the event proved interesting,

World Art Day website notes, “The

relaxed and enlightening – providing an

turmoil our world is currently living

insight into diverse practices.

VAI 'introducing' series The Visual Artists Ireland ‘Introducing’ series provides artists with a great opportunity to meet gallery directors, art centre managers and curators in an informal stress free setting. The series begins in Northern Ireland where you can join Feargal O’Malley, Visual Artists Ireland’s Northern Ireland Manager, for a unique insight into the galleries exhibition policies and to put a face to some of the key cultural providers in Northern Ireland.

We are inviting artists to attend this free unique art series of introductions. For details see our website or the professional development listings on page 29. www.visualartists-ni.org

Has the artist been paid?

through, needs the power that freedoms

The Show and Tell is part of a new

At the end of 2012, Visual Artists Ireland

of thought, and speech can bring to this

series of events for members at VAI,

undertook a survey of visual artists who

tumultuous world. And who better to

which will provide opportunities to

are actively exhibiting and supporting

lead this effort than the artists of this

network and share ideas. The third

visual arts programming through

world”.

Show and Tell will take place in April

support services. The initial results are

The ambition is that, as international

and feature Belfast-based artists. It

printed in this edition. Based on

awareness of the project grows, that each

promises to be an interesting evening

feedback, we are creating an awareness

year on 15 April, museum and gallery

and will be advertised via our website

campaign ASK! HAS THE ARTIST BEEN

entry will be free of charge worldwide,

and e-bulletin.

PAID? We have made submissions to Minister Deenihan, the Arts Council,

art books / films / catalogues will be

and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

discounted, panel discussions will be held and “after midnight needless to say that parties all over the world would be launched to prolong the celebrations after hours…” www.iaaworldartday.com

legal advice / debt collection In order to address the recurrent issue of galleries, other organisations and private individuals not paying artists for work sold or delaying payments to artists,

that we hope to report on soon. We will provide more details of the campaign and how to engage with discussions around it over the coming weeks.

The Visual Artists’ News sheet

March – April 2013

9

Visual Arts Resources and Activities: Mayo linenhall Arts Centre

Mayo Arts Office MAyo A Ayo County Council was one of the first local

emerging artists Jennifer Brady and Fionnuala

authorities to appoint an Arts Officer, and we now

Hanahoe

possess a strong team comprising an Arts Officer,

commissions in the last 12 months alone have

two Assistant Arts Officers, a Public Art Co-ordinator

included artworks by Aideen Barry, Yvonne

and a part-time Disability Arts Co-ordinator. Our

Cullivan and Rachel Joynt. There was also the

aim is to ensure a progressive, responsive and

‘Remnant’ Performance Art Symposium with Nigel

diverse service. In addition, as part of the service,

Rolfe, Amanda Coogan and Dominic Thorpe, an

the Mayo County Council Artsquad, established in

initiative of the public art programme in

1997, has continued to provide excellent training

collaboration with Ballina Arts Centre.

in community arts skills for 15 participants annually.

'let it Roll' official opening at the linenhall Arts Centre

ThE Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar is Mayo’s

on the theme ‘Sense of Place’. This show was very

longest running arts centre. As one of the earliest

positively received by visitors young and old alike.

regional arts centres to be funded by the Arts

Other recent projects include ‘May on our Doorstep’,

Council, we offer a year-round programme of

an exhibition by photographer Michael Gannon in

multidisciplinary

and

conjunction with ‘3D Paper Constructions’

workshops catering to all sectors of the community.

presented in association with the National Museum

With over 250 individuals currently registered as

of Ireland: Country Life, and ‘Let It Roll’, an

visual artists with Mayo County Council’s Arts

exhibition created by Western Care service users

Office (a fact confirmed by the huge response to

and GMIT Castlebar Fine Art students in association

the callout for the Mayo Artists Show, held

with the Linenhall to mark International Day of

biennially at the Linenhall) since the 1970s, there

Persons with Disabilities 2012, which subsequently

has been a strong tradition of visual art practice in

toured to Áras Inis Gluaire in Belmullet and

the county, and one of the core strands of the

Custom House Studios in Westport.

events,

exhibitions

Linenhall’s activities has been an active engagement with the visual arts.

The Linenhall also presents an extensive workshop programme, part funded through Mayo

As the name suggests, the Linenhall is located

County Council Arts Office and FÁS, in which the

in a traditional linen hall, built in the 1800s as part

visual arts feature strongly. A major feature of this

of the local linen industry. It is a listed building

strand is the Visual Art Programme for Schools

that now incorporates the neighbouring Town Hall

devised by the Linenhall’s team of arts workers and

as part of its infrastructure. The Linenhall offers

based around aspects of concurrent exhibitions.

two exhibition spaces: a formal gallery on the first

These workshops, which run throughout the

floor, and a foyer space that also serves as a

school year, are aimed at students aged five to

concourse for the centre’s theatre. These spaces

twelve years and offer a gallery tour followed by a

accommodate

of

hands-on workshop session to over 3000 students

exhibitions that reflect our engagement with visual

per year, delivering an invaluable visual art

art at the local, the national and the international

experience exceeding what is provided in the

level, and a diversity of media encompassing video,

school environment. Additionally, visual artists are

installation, sound and performance as well as the

invited to devise and facilitate visual arts workshops

more traditional disciplines of painting, drawing

throughout the year, catering to all ages. In recent

and sculpture. Submissions are welcomed on an

months these have included early years visual art

ongoing basis, with a selection committee meeting

workshops, portfolio preparation classes for

three to four times annually to assess expressions

prospective third-level students, documentation

of interest. Recent gallery exhibitors have included

workshops for visual artists and wire sculpture

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Lucy McKenna, Engage Art

workshops for adults. These workshops not only

Studios, Eoin Butler, Catalyst Arts and a major

offer participants access to experienced art

retrospective of Westport artist Owen Walsh

practitioners,

(subsequently exhibited at NCAD); recent

employment opportunities to the artists who

performance by contemporary music duo Fractal

delivering those workshops.

an

ongoing

programme

but

also

provide

valuable

included theatrical screenings of new works by a

While the Linenhall Arts Centre is by nature

number of Irish video artists. In addition to

multidisciplinary, the visual arts remain a

providing exhibition opportunities for professional

significant component of our activities. In recent

artists, the Foyer Gallery also offers exhibition

years, the core funding delivered by the Arts

space for local creative groups and individuals,

Council has seen a significant reduction, the result

from local schools and healthcare settings to

of forces both economic and ideological, but the

community-based initiatives.

Linenhall continues to maintain a robust and

As well as hosting shows, we also instigate

imaginative visual arts programme not only as a

and curate exhibitions, for our own gallery spaces

nationally recognised venue for exhibition and an

and also for touring. As part of the Linenhall ethos,

active supporter of the Mayo Artists Network, but

‘arts for all’, we have a strong interest in arts

also as an instigator and deliverer of projects and

provision for young people and maintain an

initiatives for Mayo and beyond.

innovative programme that includes the visual arts. Part of this programme is an annual visual art exhibition curated or commissioned for young audiences. Last year the Linenhall curated an

were

also

incorporated.

In order to maximise opportunities for artists and the wider creative sector, Mayo Arts Service is

The service is based on the core principles of

actively involved in creative and cultural industry

quality, access and inclusion, sustainability and the

initiatives. Examples include the Creative

importance of the artist. The effectiveness of the

Industries Support Network (CISNET) (www.

service is maximised through networking and

cisnetwork.eu), which is a European project funded

strategic partnerships, with emphasis on the

by the Atlantic Area Transnational Programme.

integration of arts into everyday life. Involving

Providing a range of services to professionals and

local people in meaningful ways is always of key

enterprises working in creative sub-sectors, CISNET

importance; we never underestimate a community’s

brings together partners from the Atlantic regions

ability to engage with, and understand, complex,

of Europe including Ireland, Wales, France Portugal

contemporary artwork. This has resulted in many

and Spain. Mayo County Council was also part of

positive experiences for both artists and the

the successful partnership bid for Creative

communities they work with.

Challenge Celtic Crescent North West (4CNW) led

Given the geographical scale of County Mayo,

by Sligo County Council. We have been engaged

a network of excellent, dedicated arts venues has

with European partners in the development of a

been developed in the county. These include: the

bid for Culture Funding for a major public art

Linenhall Arts Centre (Castlebar), Ballina Arts

project, 'Changing Tracks', which, if successful, will

Centre, Ballinglen Arts Foundation (Ballycastle),

take place on the Great Western Greenway in

Áras Inis Gluaire (Belmullet), the Custom House

collaboration with Northamptonshire, UK and

Studios (Westport), the Heinrich Böll Cottage

Catalonia, Spain.

(Achill) and Town Hall Arts Centre (Charlestown).

In times of diminishing resources, the Arts

Each provides different opportunities and supports

Service seeks to find additional, strategic

for visual artists and all receive ongoing support

opportunities to engage with visual artists. For

from the Arts Office.

example, funding was recently secured under the

A huge number of artists (of all disciplines)

Arts Council’s EU Local Partnership Scheme and,

live and work in County Mayo, with the largest

in 2013, Mayo County Council Arts Office and

cohort being visual artists – there are currently

Mayo Artsquad will work with Dead Good Guides

over 250. In light of this, the Mayo Artists’ Network

and local artists to develop an integrated art project

was set up in 2011 in response to an identified need

and public event in Ballycroy National Park. ‘I

for a regular space for artists to meet up informally

Could Read the Sky’ will respond specifically to

to network, socialise and have guest speakers,

this rural space and actively engage with local

demonstrations, information sessions etc. Further

communities. Dead Good Guides are internationally

development will take place this year following

recognised for their groundbreaking work as artists

in-depth consultation to ensure that it is relevant,

who rigorously explore the boundaries of art and

artist-led and well supported. Where possible,

where it engages with society.

training opportunities will also be developed.

Furthermore, with support funding from the

Professional development for Mayo artists is

Arts Council, in partnership with Leitrim Arts

constantly reviewed and encouraged. This was

Office and a range of agencies, we will be working

seen clearly in the Landmark Public Art Programme

on developing an intercultural project over the

(www.landmarkpublicart.com), which included a

coming year, providing training and opportunities

specially designed professional development

for the arts sector.

programme, Connect, devised with the support of

The careful consideration of artists we

artist Aideen Barry. This initiative included the

commission and work with, and the high quality of

hugely successful Fake Public Art Panel, the Art

all output, is crucial within all areas of the service.

Connect app (developed in collaboration with VAI

Thus, reduced budgets in recent years have not

and available to download for free from iTunes),

resulted in compromising our dedication to

workshops, talks and networking sessions.

supporting and promoting the best in contemporary

Mayo County Council has always been proactive in the use of the Per Cent for Art scheme.

The Landmark Public Art Programme included, among others, works by Cleary + Connolly and the Performance Corporation. Bursary schemes for

art practice, or the value placed on the work artists do in the county.

Anne McCarthy is the Arts Officer for County Mayo and Gaynor Seville is the Public Art Co-ordinator.

Marie Farrell is Director of the Linenhall Arts Centre. www.thelinenhall.com

exhibition from the Ballinglen Arts Foundation collection with a young audience in mind, based

Other

Pat Youell, Dandelion Clocks, 2009

James hayes, 2012

Cindy Cummings and MYT

10

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

REGIONAL PROFILE: Mayo

Norah Brennan As first-year fine art students, we were constantly

Ballina Arts Centre addition to providing classes and workshops.

reminded that on entering the real world of the

I cannot write about art in Mayo without

artist we would be in competition with “all the

mentioning the Claremorris Open Exhibition. Set

other artists out there”. Since graduating in 2011, I

up in 1978 by John Kirrane, it has become an

have found that to be true. That competition,

annual event. From very humble beginnings, it

however, is not the great negative that it seemed.

survived the recession of the 1980s and has

Competition inspires development and compels

established a reputation for showcasing cutting

progression in the work that an artist produces.

edge contemporary artists. Over the years it has

I consider myself lucky to specialise in

continued to adapt and reinvent itself in a way that

printmaking, as there are numerous opportunities

has imbedded it in the consciousness of the local

to show work abroad. Prints can be posted unframed

population and brought an awareness of the ability

to the four corners of the earth at a fraction of the

of artists to be relevant even in the midst of

cost of couriering heavy framed pieces. I have sent

recession. Despite severe cuts to its funding it will

my prints to Canada, Australia, France and England

survive, providing artists from all over Ireland and

at reasonable rates. That is not to say that it is all

abroad the opportunity to exhibit and sell their

easy. The flip side comes when I exhibit in Ireland.

work.

Images on paper are considered more presentable

Making a living as a full time artist is difficult,

when framed and the need for glass protection

if not impossible at present. Mayo Arts Office funding has been cut by 38% since 20072 and this

adds to the cost.

While I work from my home studio in

has had a knock-on effect for artists. Access to

Claremorris, I also travel at least once a week to

exhibition assistance or materials assistance,

Lorg Printmakers, Galway to avail of specialist

opportunities to exhibit in the county or take part

equipment required for some printmaking

in the annual programme of community arts

processes. Had I the equipment at home, I would

projects, have all been restricted. Conversely, many

still be inclined to travel as it is impossible to

people have more time on their hands and are

exaggerate the value of a good network of fellow

seeking new outlets for their creative abilities.

printmakers. Lorg provides opportunities for me to

While paint is often the first port of call for hobby

learn and share ideas, and in addition keeps me

artists, a growing number are looking for an

motivated and excited about producing new work.

alternative and printmaking can be both novel and

Let’s face it, isolation is not good for artists, and we

exciting. Furthermore, a number of professional

all need that buzz that comes from talking to other

painters seek to complement their practice through

artists.

engagement with printmaking. Facilitating both

In this regard, another welcome development came in 2011 when the Mayo Arts Office in Mayo

groups with classes and workshops has provided a welcome supplement to my income.

County Council initiated the Mayo Artists Network

Working as an artist in Mayo, therefore, is not

(MAN). Public Art Co-ordinator, Gaynor Seville,

as devoid of opportunity as the casual observer

recognised a lack of opportunity for Mayo artists to

might have imagined. Surprisingly, I am one of 250

meet, network, receive training and hear talks.

“Following discussions between the Arts Office and

visual artists working either professionally or parttime in the county.3 Times are hard and there isn’t

the Custom House Studios, it was agreed that the

a lot selling at the moment but we are persistent;

Custom House, as an artist’s resource organisation,

this was probably the virtue that our one-time

would facilitate and administer the network with

lecturers were keen for us to acquire. So I intend to

financial support from the Arts Office and in

keep doing what I love and trust that better, more

cooperation with the network of arts venues county wide.”1 This network has become an

prosperous days are ahead for me and for “all the

invaluable resource for all artists in Mayo and is

makes you stronger.

responding to their needs.

In 2011, the Greenway Artists Initiative was also set up, spearheaded by Maureen O’Neill and Tony Pilbrow. It provides gallery space in both Newport and Westport. This arts group is inclusive and gives professional and part-time artists the

other artists out there”. What doesn’t kill you

Norah Brennan is a printmaker / painter based in Mayo.

Notes 1. Mayo Arts Office 2. Ibid 3. Ibid

opportunity to regularly exhibit their work in

Hughie O'Donoghue, North Mayo Retrospect, 2011

Alan Cunnane, Eventul Horizons, 2011, all photos by Stephen Doyle

'Strange Days' Amy McGovern, Michelle Considine, Margo McNulty, 2011

Since opening its doors in the mid 1990s, Ballina

spare on either end!

Arts Centre has developed a national profile as a

Unfortunately, the redevelopment budget was

venue with a daring, eclectic visual arts exhibition

relatively small and could not extend to

programme. In recent years, the venue has become

improvements in the existing structure. While I

something of a springboard for young emerging

might see that as a ‘phase two’ initiative somewhere

talents, featuring artists such as Maria McKinney,

down the line, fate has dealt us some good fortune

Ruby Wallis, Seamus McCormack and Peter Spiers.

in the form of the proposed Mayo County Museum

Recently, we have also held some inspired, curated

gallery space located in the Ballina Civic Offices

shows pitching young artists together with some

building. This large, windowless gallery space has

spectacular results.

been built for the purposes of developing the

Interspersed with all this derring-do has been

mooted Mayo County Museum, but that project

a smattering of more established names: Bernadette

has been temporarily stalled for a number of

Keily, Laura Gannon, Susan Tiger, Chris Doris,

reasons. Ballina Arts Centre moved into the space

Hughie O’Donoghue and, shortly, Paul Mosse. This

during the time of the redevelopment work at

approach has formed the basis for much of our

Barrett St. Since leaving, Ballina Arts Centre has

visual arts programming over the past few years.

used the space to present a number of large-scale

As Director of the centre, I favour this mix-and-

exhibitions, including Varvara Shavrova and the

match approach. However, this should always be

Horse Show exhibition (curated by Gemma Tipton

underpinned by a commitment to quality. In areas

and Patrick T Murphy). For the ‘Remnant event,

such as ours, there is often a danger of alienating

Thorpe performed in the space. Connolly + Cleary’s

the audience. Having worked hard for a number of

‘Hall of Mirrors’ is currently installed there.

years building up a robust audience, I’d like to

While Ballina Arts Centre will continue to try

think we have passed through that phase now. This

and bring the best work possible to North Mayo

gives us a degree of comfort, knowing that we have

through our exhibitions programme, there are a

developed an audience for visual art in the area

few other important visual arts developments

who have experienced a wide range of approaches.

afoot. We are currently putting the finishing

Last year, we presented our first proper

touches to our new Printmaking Studio, available

performance art event. The ‘Remnant Performance

for members of the Ballina Printmakers group,

Art Symposium’ – a partnership between Ballina

which will open early this year. The studio was

Arts Centre and Mayo County Council’s Public Art

created with support from the Visual Artists’

Co-ordinator, Gaynor Seville – was a one-day event

Workspace Capital Grant scheme, and will become

that combined a number of new performances

an important resource for local artists working in

from some Ireland’s leading performance artists

print.

(Amanda Coogan, Aideen Barry and Dominic

We are also developing a Visual Arts Resource

Thorpe) and a talk by the legendary Nigel Rolfe.

Library that will open in 2016 (fingers crossed!)

The day was a resounding success, with attendees

and provide valuable resources to second and third

from outside the county and many locals. We

level students, artists and anyone with an interest

hoped that this will become a bi-annual event.

in visual art. In conclusion, Ballina Arts Centre is

In 2011, we re-opened our doors, having

quite satisfied with the developments we have

undergone substantial redevelopment. This

made as a venue for visual art. The gallery space

comprised a massive extension to the existing

and exhibition programme play a major role in

building that houses a 240-seat theatre space, a

what we can offer the public. There is always an

dance studio, a drama rehearsal space, as well as

exhibition on, and it is open from morning to

dressing rooms, technical areas etc. At the time,

evening with free admission. It is a place where one

there was some criticism about the lack of a similar

can visit, block out the ‘real’ world and enter a

redevelopment of the visual arts space. The gallery

space of contemplation and thought. (As long as

space we have is relatively small and its low roof

your visit doesn’t coincide with a scheduled school

can be quite limiting. When the building was

visit.) In the past five years we have developed a

re-opened in May 2011, the opening exhibition

very successful Schools’ Gallery Visits programme

was

a selected retrospective of Hughie

with primary and secondary schools, and are

O’Donoghue’s North Mayo works. While the show

working hard developing the North Mayo visual

did consist of relatively small-sized works (by

arts audience of tomorrow.

Hughie’s standards), one piece loaned by IMMA Norah Brennan, Oiche Amhain, 2012, silk screen with wood cut

Norah Brennan, Expectations, 2012, silk screen with monoprinting

did literally just fit on the wall, with an inch to

Sean Walsh is the Director of Ballina Arts Centre.

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

11

REGIONAL PROFILE: My MAy AyO yO

Dominic Lloyd

Dominic Lloyd,Corrigan's Barn

Dominic Lloyd,Entrance to St Fintan's

Dominic Lloyd,Keels

I’ve been asked to write about my experience of

So I quietly started my studio thinking I

working as an artist in Mayo and, I have to say, my

wouldn’t be troubled much by the locals, but soon

first thought, and my initial reaction when I moved

kids were hanging round wanting to know my

here from Britain was surprise. I’d lived in London

working methods and then their shyer parents

for a while and there they have so many world-

started to appear nervously at my studio door. I

class galleries full of extraordinary work, but

invited them in but for a long time they held back.

they’re all completely empty because, well, the

At first I couldn’t really understand why; I was

English are Philistines. Things are so bad that

being perfectly welcoming. It wasn’t until later that

galleries have taken to employing urchins to bring

I discovered it was out of reverence for the artist. I

in customers; they get sixpence a punter or a

was, to them, a kind of spiritual king, a parochial

farthing for a Russian oligarch. It’s terrible, these

pope if you like. But after a while they started to

amazing places are just empty, with gallerists at

relax around the studio and it was then I realised

their doors saying things like “got some lovely art

just how much they knew about the subject. I

gov’ner just give us five minutes of your time!”

mean, my main body of work is abstract

Pretty pathetic stuff but that’s what they’ve been

expressionist, not the easiest of approaches to

reduced to.

working. It requires a certain restrained aesthetic

Anyway, when I moved to Mayo it was almost the complete opposite: not many great galleries,

and what you might call an emotional intelligence, but the locals here take it all in their stride.

not compared to London, but they were absolutely

I’ve just started branching out into sculpture

crammed with art enthusiasts – and not just for the

and my latest work is outside and can be seen from

openings. I went to see an exhibition by a local

the road. It’s become the most congested part of the

artist in Westport and it was so crowded that I

local road network. Not Grafton Street or anything

couldn’t see the work over the heads of the heaving

like that – this is Mayo after all – but still pretty

throng. And this was a Thursday, a Thursday

busy.

afternoon in January. People were just so excited

So to sum up, as I said at the beginning, it was

and hungry to see new work. A couple of days later

a real eye opener coming here. I think the Irish are

I was told that after I’d left a fist fight had broken

missing a trick if truth be told. They should

out during a bidding war.

advertise themselves a bit more. People around the

It’s all just unimaginable to an English artist

world need to be told how great it is here and how

but, of course, the Irish painters take it all in their

the Irish are real art lovers. It would be a shame

stride. I know of one who carries a bull-whip and

that just because of the Irishman’s natural

it’s not some affectation, he uses it to keep back the

inclination to undersell his homeland this great

crowds. It’s not just in the towns either, I live way

story didn’t get out.

out in the middle of nowhere in fact you have to drive a while from my studio just to get to nowhere.

And it’s just the same here. There is a real enthusiasm for and understanding of art.

It’s so quiet where I live in Ballycroy that passing drivers will occasionally stop to chat to each other and many’s the time I’ve been stuck behind two farmers discussing Dadaism or some such subject. Once I was out for a Sunday stroll with my wife and we came across a couple of country gents leaning on a gate. Now, in Britain you can almost guarantee they’d be discussing stock prices, sheepdog training or some such farming topic. Not here though; these two were having an engrossing debate about the legacy of Paul Klee.

Dominic Lloyd is anti-materialist, a syndicalist and loves to poke fun at accepted mores and assumptions. He moved to the wilds of Mayo five years ago, which allows him to work away from the deafening noise of consumerism and the shallow values of the chattering classes. He sells his prints for a day’s wage or he barters. If you like these ideas he would love to hear from you. www.dominiclloyd.org

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is pleased to announce its 30 Year Anniversary programme 2013/14 Full programme guide available to download at www.templebargallery.com

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios 5-9 Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland Tel: +353 (0)1 6710073 www.templebargallery.com Admission Free Gallery open Tues - Sat 11am -6pm

12

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

Tribute: Valerie earley Work-life isn’t life, even in the art world, but it must be said that Valerie was excellent at her job. It is no exaggeration to say that thousands of members of the VAI can attest to this. But I also mean to say Valerie was excellent in her approach to this regrettable dreary human business of having to have some kind of job. She managed an enviable work-life balance, with the scales tipped emphatically towards life. Valerie was someone who had things worked out.

Valerie had life down.

Love to you Valerie – and to Dermot, Jenny, Regina, Derek and all of us you made life better for.

Jason Oakley, Publications Manager, Visual Artists Ireland

From the very first time I met you at the VAI offices, I knew that here was a kind, humane, friend, in the true sense of the meaning of that word. We had spoken several times by phone and I had already experienced your happy, positive, inclusive nature.

There were lots of things I wanted to say about Valerie, like when you would meet her it didn’t matter how long it was since you had met – it was still the same immediate openness and chat the sense that you were talking and laughing and that it was real. No pretence or when the stubs came back from the VAI with little well wishes, or the time the stub said she had cancer and was dealing with it – straight up, no self-pity or sentiment. Or how striking she looked with amazing eyes and always seemed to be lively and energetic and was hard to pin what age she was because she had an energy about her that was ageless. Or simply to say she was a lovely person and is sadly missed.

Patricia McKenna, artist, former SSI / VAI board member

Valerie Earley On these pages, along with friends and colleagues, we celebrate ValerieEarley, Visual Artists Ireland’s membership manager, who sadly passed away on 9 January 2013,after a two-year fight with cancer.

Valerie was more than a colleague to all of us. She was a friend, a confidant, a bundle of mischief wrapped up in an orderly, precise, and immaculate package. As our Membership Manager, Valerie had contact with all the members of VAI over a very long period of time.

Many members have told us about the small notes that Valerie slipped into with their membership cards asking after family or sending best wishes. It was these personal touches that show the care that Valerie had for everyone that she came in contact with.

The precise orderly and considered manner in which she managed our membership showed her overwhelming love of order, but this was only part of the Valerie that we knew. Perhaps in the last few months of her illness we became even more aware of the calm love of life that Valerie embraced. Tales of her trips away for weekends always included laughter, and indeed our own staff get-togethers included more than their fair share of Valerie stories in the days after.

She had a joy for living that is given to few. Her calm stories of her various treatments were never told with any desire for sympathy.

Instead they were matter of fact, and came with the suggestion that we could all do with some of her mindfulness therapy.

I have shed many tears since Valerie’s death. Looking back, these tears were for the loss of a friend, and I’m not sure that Valerie would have tolerated them. Now the tears are replaced with warm memories as I can hear her tell us all to continue being strong.

Noel Kelly, CEO Visual Artists Ireland

When I graduated from art school in 1994, I found myself wondering how to go forward, where to be. I joined the Sculptors' Society of Ireland and signed up with a friend to attend the AGM-conferenceweekend away at the Newpark Hotel in Kilkenny.

Upon our arrival at the hotel, we made our way with a degree of nervousness and certain trepidation to registration. It was here that I first encountered Valerie, holding court, the master of ceremonies welcoming one and all to the gathering. She, with her welcoming smile and her bright eyes, was an expression of warmth and friendliness. With a kind efficiency she dealt with our formalities and officially welcomed us to the event, but more than that, through the warmth of her personality she had exorcised my anxieties, my nervousness, my shyness. It was a memorable weekend and the beginning of my long acquaintance with Valerie.

It’s hard to think of people in the past tense... she was... they were... you never expect to find yourself trying to find words to describe what has largely gone without description or even analysis!

Valerie was great... she was... always there, reliable... we loved her.

Why was that? I have no poetic words within me to describe why

Valerie was so great, why she shone so brightly, why she was loved by so many. I never thought to consider that; she was always here, bright and friendly, funny, welcoming and warm... always the same, lifting a little of the weight off your shoulders just by being herself.

And so here we are. Remembering Valerie. I could, as the Chairman of the board of VAI, write about the important role Valerie has played in the organisation over two decades, how in the best of times and the worst of times, she has been at the core of the organisation, remaining constant while all has changed around her. I could talk about her loyalty and support for her colleagues. All of these things are true, but if you met Valerie you would know that they would be true, you would know that she could not have been any other way. I will remember the smile in Valerie’s eyes, the sparkle in her smile, the embrace of her presence and the humour in her words. I will miss Valerie, but not with sadness... she wouldn’t stand for that.

Liam Sharkey, Chairman, Visual Artists Ireland

I am writing this on a rainy Thursday morning, sitting at my desk in the VAI office – all around me are my VAI friends and colleagues. Just like me they are missing our dear Valerie. It is a really sad time here at VAI, but we are not sombre. Dermot, Valerie’s partner, reminded us in his profoundly moving and heartfelt words of tribute at the funeral, that Valerie’s priorities in life were “to be surrounded by good people and have a great laugh”. Here at VAI we can all regard ourselves as privileged to be counted, for some of the time at least, as good people in Valerie’s estimation. And we’ve all certainly had some great laughs with Valerie. Dermot also emphasised that up until the end, in the dark days of her cancer, that they had a blast. So in honour of Valerie we are above all mindful to keep the good times rolling.

As someone who has had a recent brush with cancer, Valerie was inspirational. On the precious occasions I was lucky enough to have time with Valerie to share our experiences and I was reassured that overall positivity is the way to go, for the benefit of not only of myself, but that of my friends and family. It is Valerie’s joyous spirit that is helping us all through our grief at her passing. Valerie’s spirit, I recommend it to all.

Valerie and myself started work at the Sculptors' Society of Ireland (the previous incarnation of the VAI) within weeks of one another; we were hired by the then director Aisling Prior – some (gulp) 19 years ago. With Aisling we found ourselves working for a tightly knit organisation that was equally nurturing during office hours and party hours. We were introduced to the wonderful world of exhibition openings and other forms of launches and shin digs.

The first time I met Valerie was in the old offices of the, then Sculptors' Society of Ireland – up the dreaded four flights of stairs of 119 Capel Street. Valerie was interested in getting back to work having taken time off to look after her young daughter Jenny. She started working with us in the SSI in a general admin capacity but her amazing memory and her attention to detail soon became evident. It was this remarkable ability that made her the very backbone of the SSI / VAI that she was to become.

But Valerie will not only be missed and remembered for her work as the Membership Manager of the organisation, but also for her lack of pretension in what often considers itself a rarefied world. Her infectious laugh and warmth extended beyond the office to the art opening, to many the ‘after-party’! And she was a great friend, discreet, wise and full of humanity.

Valerie was a true free spirit, who lived in a beautiful old house with Jenny, her brother Derek, sister-in-law Regina, niece Holly and their dogs, in an enviably loving and bohemian household. Meeting Dermot a few years ago and knowing that Jenny is due her own baby this Spring, made her even happier still.

Aisling Prior, Director, Sculptors’ Society of Ireland 1991 – 1997

I guess we take our colleagues for granted and it's so true that we only know what we've lost and how we've been touch by someone, when they are gone. Valerie was so courageous all through her illness that I think we fooled ourselves that she would come through. Just as Val managed the membership records she was also the keeper of all SSI legends, I will fondly remember her stories, love of cats, salt of the earth humour and weak milky tea. She had a unique ability to be both meticulousness and laid back and I will always admire her no bullshit attitude. Our Val was a person who knew how to have a good time, lived life on her own terms and knew what was truly important in life. After my Dad passed away in 2011 Valerie would often ask how my Mam was doing, something that will always remind me of her caring empathy toward us all. I will miss her immensely; she was a very special soul.

Monica Flynn, Professional Development Officer, Visual Artists Ireland

It was an honour to work with Valerie in Visual Artists Ireland. The commitment and the professionalism she gave to her work were evident. The bravery with which she faced her illness was inspirational.

Her energy and liveliness is greatly missed, it is not the same without her.

Bernadette Beecher.

VAI Administrator

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

13

Tribute: Valerie Earley

Valerie EarleyResidency Award

www.visualartists.ie/visual-artists-ireland/valerie/

The words of love and appreciation printed on these pages represent only a small fraction of the tribut Visual Artists Ireland announce the creation of the Valerie Earley Residency Award for Visual Artists. Visual to Valerie that we have received – more can be read at: Artists Ireland wished to put in place a commemoration of our late friend and colleague Valerie Earley www.visualartists.ie/visual-artists-ireland/valerie/ who worked with us as Membership Manager for over 17 years.

We wanted to provide a lasting memory of Valerie and hope that this award is one way that Valerie’s care for our artist members will continue into Visual Artists Ireland would like thank the following people, who also expressed their sympathy: Joy the future.

Duffy, Brian Fay, Margaret Tuffy,Claire Doyle, PaulineBeades, Suzanne Geraghty, Toby Dennett, Margot Kenny, PaulaCampbell,Christabel Atkins, Amanda Ralph, Therry Rudin, Leo Higgins andCast, MarianBaruch, The award is open to all Visual Artists Ireland members and will be in the form of a two week residency Caroline LouiseSmyth,Brian Connolly, Noel Molloy, Paula Pohli, Mark Cullen & Gavin Murphy, John Maguire, in the Tyrone GuthrieCentre. The residency will be self-catering based, and will provide accommodation Eoin MacLochlainn,Sean Hanrahan, Padraic McQuaid, Maeve Mulrennan, Lisa Fingleton, Annette Hennessy, and a studio facility. Further details on dates and the application process will be announced in the next Brian Connolly, Victoria Durrer, David Turner, Backwater Artists, Geraldine Folan, Anne Harkin-Peterson, Mo few weeks.

McDevitt, Anne Rigney,Betty Newman Maguire, Eilis O’ Baoill, LorraineWall, RinaWhyte, MaryClarke,Sarah Walker, LouiseWalsh, Joanne McCarthy, TaraWalsh.

The day after receiving the sad news of the passing of Valerie I was cathartically cleaning out my car when I came across an envelope in the glove compartment. It had inside it my VAI Membership cards signed by her. She had added a note asking for myself, Eamon and “little Reuben”. She, at the time, must have known of her own illness, but she still enquired about me and my family life without indulging in her own story.

The cards held no photograph and were not stuck together. Years of knowing the eccentricities of artists meant that her knowing that I wouldn’t “get around” to sending her my photo to enable my membership cards to be processed in-house, meant that she sent me the component parts to DIY it myself. This knowing is something special. It takes years to understand and accept. No doubt Valerie had many the exacerbated moment of not knowing why artists can’t just do as they are supposed to. But she learned over a long and dedicated time working in the Sculptors' Society of Ireland, which became Visual Artists Ireland, to know the foibles of artists like myself.

This familiar knowing, in an organisation with so many registered artists, is amazing. It is people like Valerie who make you feel like more than just an anonymous name with a number.

I will fondly remember her high spirits during an amazing time spent in Paris when I was exhibiting there. She dared me to dance with Eamon in a nightclub dedicated to what could only be described as the best exhibition of swing-dancing I have ever seen. Always one to try anything once, the dare was acted upon. My best efforts, though with a certain level of humiliation, dancing amongst the 'professionals' added to the group's amusement, but I will always remember Valerie’s infectious laugh at the spectacle. Valerie you are sadly missed, but not forgotten.

Pauline O’Connell, artist, former board member of SSI

Whenever we talk now of Valerie we smile, half-remembering some late nights in Keating’s or Nealon’s after some exhibition opening or other, and Valerie’s mischievous sense of humour that would have us rolling around in laughter. We remember a truly free spirit, easygoing, unflappable, most often to be seen wearing her favourite denims and docs.

Valerie often talked of her home life – the house in Pim Street and her family, especially her daughter Jenny of whom she was bursting with pride. Valerie’s passing is a terrible loss for her family and for the VAI – she really is irreplaceable. And we can only imagine that, wherever she is now, she is enjoying herself. We’ll miss you Valerie.

Carissa Farrell and Winnie Ryan, former SSI staff members

I worked with Valerie at Visual Artists Ireland for just over a year and a half and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that someone who was so full of energy and life and fun is gone. Val was one of those people who, when you met her, instantly put you at your ease. She was kind and generous, always ready to share funny stories, ask you about your weekend, listen to your problems and offer advice and support. She loved her cats, her daughter Jenny and her partner Dermot very much, and it was easy to see that she was a person who gave a lot of love to the people in her life and who was loved very much in return. I will always remember her laugh, or laughs, because she had a fantastic range of laughs that were impressively varied, from mischievous cackle to uncontrollable belly-laugh. The common feature among these various laughs was that they were all contagious – when Val laughed you couldn't help joining in. Valerie was a huge part of Visual Artists Ireland from the very beginning, valued not only as a colleague but also as a friend, and I know she will be missed terribly by all VAI staff, past and present.

Sabina McMahon, artist, former VAI staff member

I will always have the memory of the support and friendship given to me by Valerie during my time as Chairman of the Artists' Association of Ireland, whilst I was also on the board of the Sculptors' Society of Ireland. She understood instinctively the dilemma that a working artist has when sitting at meetings that go on for hours. After such meetings she would have a coffee at hand and a get-a-grip-on-life chat.

In 1997, while in conversation with Valerie about 'Sculpture In Context', which that year was to be held at the Conrad Hotel, she suggested that I make a proposal. A painter entering a sculpture exhibition – what a thought! The gauntlet was down and so I made a piece entitled Jack Daniels drank a bottle of his own hooch and did a magical mystery tour of Ireland (always one for long titles – even now!) These 12 painted drunken portraits were painted onto actual Jack Daniels beer mats, mounted under glass were accepted. At the opening, Valerie came to me enquiring about buying one. They were in a set of twelve and her apprehension was in seeing if she could split up the set. She was nervous and excited about buying one and I was delighted it was going to a good home. I will always remember her smile and humour; she always had laughing eyes.

Eamon Colman, artist, former SSI / VAI board member

I met Valerie when I started working in the SSI back in 1994. It hard to believe that’s nearly 20 years ago – it’s a long time – but Valerie’s joyful personality left an impression in my memory that the years have done little to dull. Valerie was just such great craic, and always full of laughter. We had many, many fun-filled nights out together, going to openings all over town. I only worked in the SSI for a year, but I was in touch with Val for many years after I left. Over time we drifted apart, but whenever I met a mutual friend, or was somewhere that reminded me of her, I could feel a smile come across my face thinking of her, and I would resolve to get back in touch and meet up for a chat, as I knew jollity would be guaranteed. Unfortunately I never did get to meet Val in recent years, and didn’t even know she wasn’t well. However I am very grateful that Dara, a mutual friend, let me know about her funeral, so I was able to go along, and say goodbye to my old mate, and hear Dermot’s wonderful eulogy. Goodbye again Val, I’ll miss you.

John O’Malley, former SSI staff member

We first met Valerie when we joined the staff at the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland in 1995. Valerie was a fantastic person to work with, always happy, joyful and full of positive energy. She really had it cracked on how to enjoy life. Valerie loved her job at the SSI and took huge pride in it. She knew the artists well, most on first name terms, and took great care in managing their affairs as members in the days before computerisation. For newbies coming in, Valerie was really welcoming, helpful and knowledgeable – we learned a lot from her.

Very quickly and easily, we became good friends.

I miss Valerie dearly. She became both a colleague and my good friend on the very first day I started working at Visual Artists Ireland. She made me feel warmly welcome and any ‘first day’ apprehensions or anxieties dissipated fairly quickly. I instantly loved her straightforward, practical, easy going, no bullshit and unbelievably positive attitude which she applied to both work and life in general.

Valerie loved going travelling or ‘going on adventures’ as she use to called it. After every weekend away, and I am sure she covered most of the country during her time, Valerie would regale me with tales of

book fairs, festivals, fabulous friends, or eccentric cat ladies who inevitably ran whatever accommodation she stayed in. Valerie loved cats – a ridiculous amount. Being a dog lover myself I used to think she was completely barmy, but over the years and via her stories, her infectious adoration of the feline kind rubbed off on me a little bit.

And that was Valerie; her sincerity, positivity and passion for the things and people that she loved, along with her great laugh, were contagious.

I loved listening to her stories. They were always characterised by friends, family, her partner Dermot, fun, great conversations, good food and wine and an ever-present sense of contentment and love of life. I am thankful and grateful that over the years I had the pleasure of being part of these stories many times over at various exhibition openings, VAI events, drinks after work or whatever.

With Valerie, we were a great VAI team. Meticulous in her work and so very very attentive to detail, Valerie’s knowledge, support and reliability meant that we undertook even the most challenging of projects easily. We had some great times both in and out of the office.

I will never forget her.

Niamh Looney, VAI Information and Communications Officer

What a great person to meet on your first day in a new job. A welcome smile and a few reassuring words, Valerie was just the tonic for an apprehensive newbie starting out in the Sculptors' Society. Over the years I would see that ability to put people at ease time and time again. A genuine interest in people (and a seriously impressive memory for names) makes for a great Membership Manager. It amazed me just how many of our members Valerie knew personally.

Similarly, I think most members felt they knew Valerie, even if they hadn’t actually met her. She was so precise and meticulous in her work (her card index is a work of art!) yet she managed to make the professional feel absolutely personal. A really rare gift. I miss Valerie’s energy, her positivity and her contagious desire to just have a laugh and never be really serious. I take comfort that wherever she is, she’s probably got a glass of wine in one hand (and a cat in the other) and is having a bloody good laugh.

Alex Davis, VAI Advocacy Officer / IVARO services

I first met Valerie in the mid 1990s. She was always good humoured and empathetic and had an incredible memory for detail. She was the one person who members had most contact with and as such projected a wonderfully positive and friendly face of the organisation.

When I joined the board and later became Chair, I gained a deeper insight into her unwavering commitment and loyalty.

Valerie always pitched in when things needed to be done and did trojan work helping in whatever way she could, particularly when the organisation was going through some difficult times. It was this unrelenting loyalty that helped us so much in weathering the storm and making sure we went from strength to strength. She will be sorely missed by members and staff alike.

– Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam Niall O Neill, sculptor, former Chairman, SSI/VAI

14

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

Art WritingAward

Commemoration: A Forward-looking Act Joanne Laws, winner of the Visual Artists Ireland / Dublin City Council Arts Office critical writing award (2013),addresses the subject of the visual arts’ responses to the ‘decade of centenaries’

'The 1913 Tapesty Project', work in progress, January 2013, image courtesy Cathy of Henderson

At a national level, commemoration is a complex proposition,

many of the challenges of this period might actually lie not a

Visual Artists Ireland &

existing not just in history, but also across modern-day social,

reconciliation of the past, but in an acceptance of the present. As also

cultural, political, economic and religious spectrums. In areas of post-

stated by President Higgins, for many people the commemorations

Dublin City Arts Office

conflict, where these factors offer contested and multiple readings of

for the decade of centenaries will go unnoticed, as they struggle to

events, the commemorative task often necessitates difficult questions,

cope with the “severe impact of the current recession”. Ireland’s

Annual Visual Art Writing Award

such as “how do we remember?” or even “what should we chose to

twenty-first-century globalised status, against the current backdrop

forget?” Last year Ireland entered a decade-long phase of historically

of economic crisis, government-imposed austerity and instability in

significant centenary dates (2012 – 2022) and the concept of

the Euro-zone overall, has prompted many to comment on the irony

commemoration has been intensely scrutinised, with fear of

of celebrating Ireland’s historically hard-won independence, in light

turbulence in Northern Ireland remaining of upmost concern.

of current and ongoing threats to fiscal autonomy and national

Visual Artists Ireland and DublinCity Arts Office are pleased to announce Joanne Laws as the recipient of the 2012 Annual Visual Art Writing Award. The award was first launched in 2011 and has been devised as a developmental opportunity for writers, as part of Dublin City Council Arts Office and Visual Artists Ireland’s commitment to encouraging and supporting critical dialogue around contemporary visual arts practices.

For the 2012 award, applicants were asked to propose a themat ic article looking at how the visual arts might respond to the upcom ing ‘decade of commemorations’ taking place across the island of Ireland. Joanne’s article is scheduled to appear in the March / April edition of the Visual Artists' NewsSheet.

Joanne received editorial support and mentoring from VAI and an honorarium from DublinCity Council Arts Office of€800 – comprising a €500 commission to write for this edition of the Visual Artists NewsSheet and a €300 commission to write a short essay as part of the LAB’s 2012 / 2013 programme.

These commemorative anniversaries, which include the Easter

sovereignty.

Rising, the Battle of the Somme, and the War of Independence, denote

The principle task of this article is to outline how the visual arts

not only defining moments in Irish history, but also legacies which

might respond to the decade of centenaries 2013 – 2023. Rather than

are shared with the North of Ireland and the United Kingdom.1 In

speculating on what this could hypothetically entail, I’m offering an

negotiating this shared ownership of history, various official

overview of the types of activity currently being engaged by artists

government-led commemoration programmes have been set up

actively probing the idea of commemoration. Interestingly, many of

north and south of the border, with each affirming a commitment to

these projects have used the 1913 Lockout as a basis for their

inclusivity and interdependence.2 A “spirit of tolerance and mutual

inquiries, stimulating discussions around labour and capital. Given

respect” should foster ongoing reconciliation, urged President

that Ireland doesn't have a strong history of socialism, the subject of

Michael D Higgins in a lecture at the University of Ulster in Derry last

the Lockout seems particularly well placed to activate notions and

April. Commentary in the mainstream media since then has called

questions around citizenship, protest or resistance within

for the programme of commemorative events to “respect all factions”,3

contemporary Ireland.

cautioning against “glory commemorations” and nostalgia, and

The Dublin Lockout of 1913 was one of the most significant

warning of the importance of historical accuracy and the danger that

industrial disputes in Irish history, with the right to unionise being a

the commemorations could be “hijacked by certain individuals or

central concern for the 20,000 workers who took part in the seven

organisations” or become a touristic and “commercial imperative”.

month long general strike. Under Jim Larkin’s new Irish Transport

4

5

Such pressurised debate surrounding the rules of engagement

and General Workers' Union, mobilisation and solidarity amongst

for these commemorative anniversaries suggests that “how we

workers marked an important chapter in Irish labour history,

remember and mark them is not only remembering ‘then’, but

denoting a class-based struggle, which paved the way for nationalist

defining us ‘now’ ” and what transpires will in turn be archived and

victory in the 1916 Rising. This revolutionary period in modern Irish

remembered in the future. Commemoration in this way becomes a

history is being widely debated in academic events nationwide,

forward-looking act. In using history as an opportunity to reflect,

including a conference entitled ‘The Cause of Labour: 1913 and

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

15

Art Writing Award Beyond’ (8 – 9 March 2013) organised by the School of History,

range of site-specific issues, documenting labour history and social

is emphasised, as the city grows into its role of UK City of Culture

University College Cork, which focuses on the implications of home

dissent, tracking global capital, probing environmental, democratic

2013. In translating the economic language of ‘culture-branding’ into

rule and partition for the labour movement at the time. Elsewhere,

and judicial boundaries and defining citizenship and the nation-state

something meaningful and sustainable for Derry-Londonderry, the

many community organisations, such as the North Inner City

in the wake of globalisation and the Celtic Tiger. In devising ways for

role of socially-engaged, site-specific art practice will prove

Folklore Project, are planning to mark the anniversary with

their activities to become visible in the public domain, the group

paramount, supported and extended by the city’s arts initiatives

community participation and youth-orientated projects.

developed the Public Poster Campaign for Dublin city centre in

which will play an integral role in providing diverse and challenging

In acknowledging the role of the labour movement in the

September 2011, with a public hearing in Liberty Hall that provided

programmes of exhibitions, events and offsite projects.

development of the Irish State, SIPTU, Ireland’s largest trade union,

a platform for the participants to reflect on the think-tank process. A

South of the border, the task of the arts in mediating economic

have collaborated with NCAD to commission a large-scale

major exhibition in Limerick City Gallery is planned for October

forces is equally urgent. The National Campaign for the Arts has

commemorative tapestry depicting the Lockout. The visual narrative

2013. The poster campaign reflects a wider revival of the principles of

articulated its concerns that the decade of commemorations “may

has been developed by painters Cathy Henderson and Robert Ballagh

commonage within contemporary art practice, which situate as

coincide with the single most dramatic assault on our cultural

in the style of a comic strip. The 30 mixed-media textile panels are

counter-cultures to neoliberal enclosure. In opposing political forces

infrastructure, and the legacy of this government may be one of

currently being crafted by volunteers in a range of contexts including

and the privatisation of resources, socially-engaged art seeks to raise

curtailing our artistic independence for future generations”.10 The

the Irish Guild of Embroiderers, local youth initiatives, several

civic awareness and develop co-operative structures, which support

NCFA has recently embarked on a shift away from the ‘Economic

Dublin schools and Limerick prison. In acknowledging the power of

active citizenship.

Argument’ initiated by the campaign in 2009 – a worthwhile activity

collective action that mobilised the strikers of 1913, President Higgins

With this in mind, an invitation to participate in ‘The Future

which sought to penetrate political discourse by quantifying the

described it as very fitting that it is through collective action,

State of Ireland’ conference at Goldsmiths, University of London (17

contribution of the funded arts sector to the Irish economy, lobbying

collaboration and community involvement that they are being

– 18 November 2012) was an opportunity for ‘Troubling Ireland’ to

local TDs at constituency level in light of cuts to the sector. Concerned

remembered. It is envisaged that the tapestry will be finished by

adopt an external vantage-point, viewing Ireland’s recent history

that the arts would be seen as a solely ‘economic instrument’, a

August 2013, and will be housed in the SIPTU Headquarters, with a

from a critical distance.9 The event, which was organised by

second phase of the campaign was devised, producing a Research

trust currently being established to facilitate a tour of civic spaces

researchers Dr Derval Tubridy and Stephanie Feeney, sought to

Strategy (2012), which connects artistic research to public policy-

including the National Library, and Liberty Hall.

examine “cultural responses, in order to gauge the effects of a

formation, facilitated through meaningful consultation with the arts

As Ireland’s first major urban-centred conflict, it seemed

traumatic transition from Celtic Tiger prosperity to post-bailout

sector. Following a two-day debate on the arts conducted in both

appropriate that the LAB Gallery, situated in Foley Street in the north

austerity”. With keynote contributions from leading intellectuals and

houses of the Oireachtas last July, the Department of Arts Heritage

inner-city, should commemorate the Lockout with an exhibition last

cultural commentators such as Professor Roy Foster, Fintan O’Toole

and the Gaeltacht withdrew certain aspects of the planned merger of

October entitled ‘Digging the Monto: An archaeology of tenement

and Dr Elaine Byrne, Ireland’s post-crisis future was debated and

the National Cultural Institutions. This insistence on political

life and the 1913 Lockout’. Foley Street – formerly Montgomery Street

framed by a diverse programme of artistic activity. This included a

accountability and transparency, informed by consultation, is one

– was once one of Europe's largest and most notorious red-light

screening of Kennedy Browne’s film How Capital Moves (2010) which

way for civic resistance to be vigilantly practiced in a modern

districts, and provided an interesting location in which to view

was originally commissioned for the Lodz Biennale, Poland and was

democracy.

photographs, records and artefacts from the area’s vivid history,

conceptually inspired by the relocation of the Dell Corporation’s

From the nature of contemporary labour and the occurrence of

complied by a community archaeology group led by resident

manufacturing plant from Limerick to Lodz in 2009, shedding 1900

industrial dissent, to culture post-conflict and role of the artist in

researcher Dr Thomas Kador. A panel discussion, ‘From the Lockout

Irish jobs. Given that an unhealthy reliance on foreign direct

imagining future states, these insights provide a crucial opportunity

to the Rising and the Treaty: (How) should we commemorate?’

investment in Ireland’s economy was a determining factor in Ireland’s

to scrutinise the unfolding present, in order to assess what will in

presented historical, academic and artistic insights into the function

financial crisis and subsequent insolvency (when multi-nationals

turn be contributed to history’s long trajectory. The next phase in the

of commemoration. Director of Limerick City Gallery, Helen Carey,

like Dell shifted eastward, enticed by lower labour and manufacturing

decade of centenaries will focus on the 1916 rising, with debate

offered an illuminating account of her ‘1913 / 2013 Lockout’ visual

costs), placing emphasis on this same model for economic recovery

already underway regarding its legacy for contemporary Ireland. An

art research project which began in 2009 and was formed out of a

seems unsustainable, but few alternatives are being proposed by

upcoming conference on material and visual culture entitled ‘Object

deep interest in Irish Labour History, with the power relationship

current government. How Capital Moves currently forms part of the

Matters: Making 1916’ aims to robustly engage with the objects,

between citizen and state central to her curatorial inquiry. In marking

‘United States of Europe’ project, a touring exhibition aimed at

images, myths and paradoxes of the Rising, under the premise that

this ‘pivotal moment’, contemporary visual art practice seeks to

probing notions of European identity, culture and citizenship, now

history is ‘made and re-made over time’.11 With shifting contemporary

probe perceived notions of work, civic engagement and resistance. A

showing at Crawford art Gallery, Cork (7 – 13 March 2013). Kennedy

socio-political conditions generating new readings of the past

specially commissioned series of lens-based works by Mark Curran

Browne’s ongoing research project ‘Ireland is Good for You’ is based

engaging with recent and distant history in this way allows us to

entitled ‘The Market’ will form part of the ‘1913 / 2013 Lockout’

on the little-known fact that “nine of the world’s top ten global

become more connected with what is actually happening right now

commemorations. Focusing on the function of the global stock

pharmaceutical companies are located in Ireland”. Using Ringaskiddy

– to be alerted to what we are allowing to happen through apathy or

market, artworks are being developed by Curran in response to sites

in Cork – once a picturesque village, now an industrialised hub for

a lack of insight, vigilance and action. This particular form of

of the international financial crisis, including Dublin’s financial

logistics, transport and pharmaceutical manufacturing – as a site for

commemoration being explored in the visual arts denotes a particular

district.

much of this investigation, this location itself functions as an

clarity of vision, and becomes potentially liberating, as a lens through

analytical tool for addressing the conceptual links between labour,

which to understand the past, amidst attempts to engage in the

landscape and globalisation.

present and visualise the future.

Using the centenary of the 1913 Lockout as a point of departure, Limerick City Gallery has embarked on a yearlong programme of exhibitions, which seek to further probe the relationship between

If the process of commemoration is about assessing the present

labour and capital. The current exhibition ‘Strike!’ (25 January – 15

in relation to the past, then the legacies of labour disputes such as the

March 2013) features Jeremy Deller’s The Battle of Orgreave (2001) and a collection of archival material from the Limerick Soviet, 7 alongside

1913 Lockout (where the distribution of wealth and the right to

a programme of documentary films curated by artist and researcher

take stock of current living and working conditions, as the crippling

Anthony Haughey depicting workers’ resistance and international

repercussions of Ireland’s recent short-lived prosperity continue to

labour disputes, many of which have been filmed by the workers

unfold. With a shift away from agriculture, manual labour and heavy

themselves in keeping with the social realist film genre. Most

industry, towards information technology, commerce and the service

compelling for an Irish audience is the recent film 161 Days (directed

industries, Ireland’s economy is more heavily reliant on foreign

and produced by Declan and Barra O’Connor), which documents the

investment than ever before. Strategies by multi-national companies

Cork Vita Cortex workers’ dispute and sit-in during 2011 / 12.

to thwart trade union activity amongst employees have been well

Haughey, who was also present during part of the protest, recalled

documented, while pay cuts, tax-hikes, outsourcing, unstable

being particularly struck by the workers’ “use of their own products

temporary contracts and an emphasis on up-skilling are all

unionise were integral to the campaign) provide an opportunity to

– foam material to make beds on the factory floor”. Modern industrial

characteristic of the western work-force under late capitalism.

disputes such as these, he claims, “are as relevant as any historical

Growing income inequality, extensive household debt and negative

account of the 1913 Lockout”.

equity further exemplify the poverties of twenty-first-century

8

In constructing dialogues around this type of artistic activity,

Ireland.

platforms for dissemination are crucial. ‘Troubling Ireland: A Cross-

As the Republic acts to regain its globalised status at any civic,

Borders Think Tank for Artists and Curators Engaged in Social

cultural and environmental cost – a model for progress that is

Change’ was set up to probe and unravel perceived “notions of Irish

floundering, even on its own terms – the North attempts to live up to

identity, history and politics, and Ireland’s relationship to global

its inscription as a post-conflict zone with efforts that are clearly

capitalism”. Commissioned by the Fire Station Artists’ Studios, and

ongoing. The centennial commemorations of the 1912 Ulster

conceived by Danish curatorial collective Kuratorisk Aktion,

Covenant (a mass unionist opposition to home rule) last September

‘Troubling Ireland’ was a yearlong project that brought together six

was carried out peacefully, with one of the highest policing efforts

socially-engaged artists and curators, convening north and south of

ever deployed in the North. In Belfast, media coverage has focused on

the border in several locations to collectively reflect on their practices

the periodic outbreaks of violence over the Union flag controversy,

and the “social realities of the two Irelands and their relationship to

while regeneration in Derry-Londonderry continues to inspire

the global world order”. In each location, the group engaged across a

mainstream coverage in which its touristic and cosmopolitan appeal

Joanne Laws is a critical writer based in Leitrim. She has been published in Afterimage Journal of Media, Arts and Cultural Criticism, Axisweb, Cabinet and Variant.

Acknowledgments I would like to gratefully acknowledge and thank the following people for their insights and contributions: Sheena Barrett (D.C.C Arts Office), Valerie Connor (NCFA), Helen Carey, Stephanie Feeney (Future State of Ireland), Anthony Haughey, Cathy Henderson (1913 Tapestry Project), Kennedy Browne, Tone Olaf Nielsen (Kuratorial action), Padraig Yeates (SIPTU).

Footnotes 1. List of centenary dates (not exhaustive): 2012, Ulster Covenant, 100 years; 2012, Titanic, 100 years; 2013:, the Plantation of Ulster, 400 years; 2013, the Dublin Lockout, 100 years; 2016, Easter Rising, 100 years; 2016, Battle of the Somme, 100 years; 2017, Belfast Strike and the rise of the labour movement, 100 years; 2017 / 18, Lloyd George's Convention, 100 years; 2018, universal male and limited women's suffrage, 100 years; 2018, general election, 100 years; 2019 / 21, War of Independence, 100 years; 2021, Government of Ireland Act, 100 years; 2022, Civil War and Partition, 100 years.

2. In the South, the Oireachtas Committee (chaired by the Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan) is managing the National Commemorations Programme, in consultation with an Advisory Committee of historians 3. John Green, ‘Decade of centenaries must respect all factions’, the Irish Times (27 December) 4. Rosita Boland ‘Caution against 'glory' commemorations as centenary of crucial decade beckons’, the Irish Times (25 June 2012) 5. John Gibney ‘Yes, centenaries are tourism gold but let’s not forget our past for a quick buck’, journal. ie (29 January 2012) 6. Remembering the Future: A Decade of Anniversaries, discussion paper, the Community Relations Council (September 2011) 7. The Limerick Soviet – also known as the Limerick General Strike (1919) grew out of a workers solidarity movement. A self-declared, self-governing soviet was formed, which took control of the city for 12 days, internally organising food distribution and printing its own money 8. Informed by email correspondence with Anthony Haughey, January 2013 9. Ibid 10.Information obtained from NCFA website and email correspondence with Valerie Connor (Chairperson NCFA) January 2013 11. ‘Object Matters: Making 1916’ (26 / 27 April 2013) Wood Quay, Civic Offices, Dublin, supported by GradCAM, the NCAD, UCD and Dublin City Council

16

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

How is it made?

A Voice, view overhead

Remco De Fouw, A Voice, rings in stone

Remco De Fouw, A Voice, view from outside, all images courtesy of the artist

Remco De Fouw, A Voice, work in transit

A Voice, in the studio

Time, Liberty & Atonement

2010 marked three years from the original selection panel meeting, and the budget could not be increased to facilitate major work on the damaged sections. However OPW did provide some funding for me to undertake a report and present recommendations. Following this I

REMCO DE FOUW DETAILS THE CONCEPTION, FABRICATION AND INSTALLATION OF HIS WORK, A VOICE, commissioned FOR THE IRISH PRISON SERVICES HEADQUARTERS IN LONGFORD.

undertook the necessary repair work myself.

Installation Installation commenced in March 2012 and was completed in December 2012. The building had been formally opened in 2008 and

Back in November 2006, the Office of Public Works issued a briefing

20mm-wide strips with no gaps expanded to over 40 brass strips,

now, in the absence of a main contractor on site, I found myself

document to seven artists on their panel for a commission for the

80mm wide with 50mm gaps between. This seems complicated, but

responsible for project supervisory work during the installation

new decentralised headquarters of the Irish Prison Services outside

the aim was simple: to create an elegant single entity, an extremely

stage, providing all the up-to-date inspection and safety-testing

Longford town. My response to the brief was simple enough and

long and curved cone expanding gradually and steadily to finish with

paperwork for every rope, harness, power tool and piece of lifting

quickly took the shape of a fairly formal horn or trumpet-like

a large open mouth.

gear. While I did have a Working at Heights Pass and a Safe Pass, this did not constitute sufficient qualifications.

structure. This appears to leap from a large granite boulder, through

Luckily, I had the help of fellow artist Michelle Byrne who has a

a glass sidewall, with the main portion then suspended overhead in

good eye, lots of patience and is no stranger to metalwork. We worked

I had to dig my heels in at the pre-installation meeting and point

the buildings huge (100 x 15m) glass atrium area. The concept was

on and off over six months, cleaning and spraying the subframe

out that I did not have the expertise or level of insurance cover

partly a direct response to the rectangular physical space, its

sections after wrapping them in a layer, contra-swirl, of stainless steel

necessary for this onerous roll. I made the point was that this was ‘big

architectural and metaphorical grid-like conformity.

mesh. This lead to some interesting skewing problems as the mesh

boy’ stuff and not appropriate for a self-employed artist. The situation

I wanted the work to appear partially transparent, lightweight

adapted itself to the curved and tapered circumferences so it could

was resolved when an independent safety consultancy was hired and

and playful while remaining relevant to the context and the brief,

then be stitched together with stainless thread sourced from jewellery

the OPW, my team and I worked in co-operation to solve these

which mentioned only three words: time, liberty and atonement. The

suppliers.

installation and fabrication issues.

The problems and subsequent solutions of 3D helical geometry

The complex installation, which involved me, two engineers

contrast to the glazed grid but also as a symbol of transformation,

and how it determines the behaviour of the materials made the work

and a crane operator working for eight ten-hour days straight. We

representing an alchemical journey from inside a stone toward the

very challenging but also satisfying. This is what I really enjoyed

drilled and fixed eyebolts into the ceiling beams, 15m overhead, from

sky, from blackness toward light. The implication of ‘release’ is

about this job: being totally immersed in invention and problem

a mobile access platform. Each section was then hoisted into position,

articulated through the idea of sound, voice or of ‘finding one’s voice’

solving. Following this detailed development process I was formally

fixed to the suspension cables and bolted together, and so on and so

but, somewhat contrarily, from the outside to the inside of the

awarded the commission in 2008.

on. I then attached brass cover collars over each joint. It was difficult

idea came about quite quickly, not only as a great sweeping gesture in

building.

Design and Construction The artwork would measure 63m, divided into 10 sections. First, the form was sketched out in AutoCad from my pencil and string proposal drawings. I then made a 1:20 3m model and the engineers produced a trial sub-frame section to test for flex and strength and for me to experiment with how best to achieve the surface. They proposed a fuselage-type construction with no need for an inner core, made entirely of stainless steel hoops and flats. Over these tubular skeletons I wrapped a stainless mesh, creating a semi-transparent surface to give shape and support to almost 3km of brass strips.

Constructing work on this scale meant that I had to do a lot of

Each of the 6m sections were skewered on a ‘spit’ of scaffolding

and potentially dangerous but came off without any major hitches.

pole and supported at each end on trestles. Once we had eliminated

What a relief after nearly five years! In the weeks thereafter, a

all the wrinkles from the ‘sock’ of stainless mesh, we then tensioned

granite stone was installed into an exact position, angles and

12 hoops of bungee-cord elastic at regular intervals around the

measurements taken and a 300 x 600mm hole core drilled for the

circumference of each section. The brass strips were pulled through

final 8.5m section secured into place. This lined up exactly with the

an abrasive cloth and degreasing bath, then spread out under the

main horn suspended inside and came to rest 100mm from the glass

bungee cords, which held them in place while we spaced them out

curtain wall. Again, this was tricky as its full weight and length were

equally. They were then stretched tight with modified vice grips and

cantilevered from the stone.

fixed in place. Lots of pop rivets, sewing and gluing held the surface

I decorated the 6-ton granite stone simply with various core

in place. Each section was then hand sanded, lacquered with Incralac

drill, ring cut marks. It acts as a solid earthy origin point. I am very

and wrapped in pallet wrap ready for transport.

pleased with the overall effect: the sculpture appears as a single

Logistics

continuation from both below and outside through the glass – as a massive 60+-metre trumpet. A Voice was finally installed in the Irish

tests and trials to refine both the look and method of its construction.

Moving the 10 x 6m sections around was a big part of the planning. I

Any unforeseen problems could be very costly both in time and

had an 8m purpose-built trailer made up, which had adjustable

money. The biggest headache was to try to predict the line of a 63m

supports at each end. This gave me the freedom to move each section

curved and tapering multi-ply helix. My studio could only take 2 x

in and out of the barn / workshop and bring them all to Longford

6m sections side by side, so I had to work ‘blind’ from one section to

more cost effectively. The two largest sections and the granite stone

Many thanks to David Magee, Chisco Ruiz and the lads of Trench

the next in terms of setting out the frequency and continuity of the

had to be delivered by lorry.

Control Ltd, Michelle Byrne and Ger Lucy of Mobile Crane

swirl of brass, as it would be seen from underneath and at a distance.

Once the first sections were ready for delivery, I learnt that

With the help of a friend and a solid works expert, we made a

indoor storage on site was no longer available. As a short-term

computer model, which provided one of several insights into how the

arrangement, I covered the sections in tarpaulins, rope and weights as

thing would actually turn out. The other factor that led to some

best I could. I was anxious leaving months of painstaking work and

serious head scratching was trying to create a smooth increase in

delicate lacquered brass outdoors and rightly so, as it ended up

brass strips and the gaps between them. These were to increase

staying there due to various reasons for 18 months.

gradually along its length, starting at the small end with a diameter

After two winters of flapping tarps, the largest section was

of 250mm increasing to 2000mm at the large end. Therefore, 25 x

finally flipped up side down and into the nearby pond. September

prison services headquarters. The piece itself is a simple and dynamic form, in such contrast to the sometimes-agonising process from which it was born.

Services, Bryan Leech Fergus Doyle and Fenelon Engineering Ltd, Longford.

Remco De Fouw (ARHA) has had six solo exhibitions and public commissions at Waterford regional Hospital and Festival Square, Edinburgh, among others. He works as a part time lecturer in sculpture and photography at IT Carlow. www.remcodefouw.net

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

17

Art & Philosophy

Art & Philosophy: Why Now? In the first of three articles prompted by a growing interest in certain strands of philosophy by artists and curators, Sinead Hogan considers the nature of the relationship between art and philosophy.

Everyone involved in contemporary art believes in a ghost, even if few admit to it.

It’s called the Zeitgeist.

Dan Fox, senior editor, Frieze, 20101 A few months ago, Jason Oakley asked me if I would be interested in

Since the start of the 1990s, ie since the internet and since the

the terms ‘critique’ and ‘critical’ in all of this? Are we dealing with

writing a few articles whose “broad remit is to cover and comment on

immateriality of knowledge became a location and storehouse, the

what Derrida described as “the very notion of comprehending as a

the current interest being taken by the visual arts world in philosophy”,

need for an article in a print publication to list the key names or

kind of incorporation”?14

aimed at “an interested but not necessarily informed reader”. Helpful

words as indicators seems redundant. It would be sufficient for any

as always he added, “with this in mind, it would be good to cite a wide

moderately interested reader to track the archives found on the

range of artworks and artists’ practices as a way of explaining and

Internet, for example of e-flux, to generate an informed profile of the

illustrating philosophical ideas in action”. We discussed, as relevant

most referenced writers and artists engaged with the art and

models, two articles that give a general but informed overview. Both

philosophy dialogue. Or they could trawl the archival content of

appear in Frieze, one by Jörg Heiser in 20092 and one is from 2011 by

print journals such as October, Artforum and Frieze and try to

Simon Critchley, Nina Power and Timotheus Vermeulen.3

identify the ‘new origins’ of the contemporary form of this relationship

I left our conversation with a set of bullet points from Jason as a helpful outline and I indicated that I would like to respond to them as springboards rather than mere guidelines. Those questions were: 1.

What is the nature of the relationship between art and philosophy – mere illustration / explanation or real mutual enrichment? Who leads and which influences which? 2. To what ends is the relationship between art and philosophy working – merely aesthetic definition and understanding or real change / action in the world in political, ethical, social terms? 3. What is really in it for artists – how and what can philosophy help artists think and do about the whole business of art making?

started with Foucault’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe. Post-structuralism was then the loosely governing term for a set of references, relations and identities exploring the relationship between art and philosophy. In 1979, in the same iconic journal, a text by the philosopher Lyotard on artist Daniel Buren proposed a ‘pragmatics’ rather than ‘aesthetics’ and drew on Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘language games’ stating that “the arts cannot claim a unified field: not only do they speak numerous languages, but within each language different games are played”6. Lyotard then curated the famous exhibition ‘Les Immatériaux’ at the Pompidou in 1985.7 Now, the most recent issue of October has Hal Foster writing about a possible “fatigue of the ‘post-critical".8

So, without presuming I’d be able to answer these questions at all, let alone with a limited word-count, I thought it would at least be easy to put together a casual journalistic article on this evidentially topical topic. But as I sat down to write, I felt I didn’t actually have anything to say about the relationship between art and philosophy. This is, in part, because I would prefer to avoid the impossible attempt of a meta-commentary and also avoid becoming overly self-reflexive about a dialogue I find immersive, fascinating and perplexing at the same time. This is not to try and be clever or affect a style of obliqueness, nor an ironic and knowing non-committal. It just reflects the phenomenological sense that when asked to write something on this topic, in my guts, instinctively, I didn’t ‘feel’ like it.4

There are also the great recent archival resources such as the Tate talks and lectures, where the most current art and philosophy relationships could be tracked through sessions such as Bruno Latour: Nature Space Society in March 2004 or in February 2006 the Contested Territories: Arthur Danto, Thierry de Duve, Richard Shusterman.9 We could then visit Artforum’s issue on Rancière, 'Regime Change: Jacques Rancière and Contemporary Art' in March 2007, or the e-flux journal’s republishing of a 1990s interview between curator Daniel Birnbaum, poet Anders Olsson and philosopher Jacques Derrida in 2009.10 We could also encounter the ongoing art and philosophy works, exhibitions and lecture series curated – as his practice – by philosopher Marcus Steinweg in collaboration with artist Thomas

with the ideal of transgression have been key critical models in our recent past, this does not mean that art at any point in its history crossed over into, or wanted to ‘become philosophy’ in any way.

‘Conceptual art’ evidently still requires material to both work with and to draw from (even if this is ‘merely’ text and white space) a gesture or declaration of intent. Then there is the political philosopher Maurizzio Lazarroto’s notion of ‘immaterial labour’, which has been a regularly referenced point in recent art world discussions.15 In such a sense, we can ask: is there at work, as a new interest for contemporary art, an operation to engage with the immaterialities of thinking? And is this operating as a practice and / or as a resource?

To respond to Jason’s questions, as impolite as it might sound, I therefore want to re-iterate that I would still prefer not to 1.use specific reference to artists or works as exemplary illustrations of where art and philosophy meet 2. list and respond to philosophers ‘on the radar’ in current discourses, or list and respond to the most relevant keywords 3. have to define art or philosophy in anything more than a way that loosely indicates identifiably different disciplines of practice, method and styles of approach.

In the next article, therefore, I would prefer to look at the notion of new materialities or, more specifically, the question asked about why ‘speculative realism’ or ‘object oriented ontology’ are new terms on the horizon of the current field of discussion? As I am no expert here, I propose to have a conversation with philosopher Paul Ennis who has been publishing for some time in this area and has recently participated in some art and philosophy discussions.

Sinead Hogan teaches visual arts practice at IADT

Hirschhorn. Entitled ‘Friendship Between Art and Philosophy’, it took

This led me to consider that, perhaps, I am not really interested in the relationship as such – that is, as a theme. What I find more interesting is why the question “what is the relationship between X and …?” is being asked. However, I really do want to respond to Jason’s kind invitation to write on this; I don’t want to refuse in this situation where I have respect and admiration for him, but also a real fondness for the ethos of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet. And I can already feel, welling up, the self-consciousness of the expectation that this would be a good point to capitalise on the situation and introduce (as the classic, almost clichéd, starting point) the etymology of philo-sophy as a form of ‘friendship’.

(albeit honestly) that ‘I would prefer not to’. Overriding my gut instincts, I chose to reformulate Melville’s Bartleby 'the Scrivener' (a regularly referenced ‘ambiguous character’ in recent dialogues between art, literature and philosophy)5 and decided that I would prefer to say yes and make a response while at the same time acknowledging my misgivings that, along with the excitement and potentials of re-new-ing an ancient dialogue, there are also many false

analogies,

place at Neuer Berliner Kunstvereun in 2011.11 It would also be hard not to come across the ubiquitous Slavoj Zizek who wrote, for example, in the e-flux journal of February 2012, 'Hegel versus Heidegger'.12 And to keep us very current we can keep popping in online to the latest Tate lectures and for example engage with philosopher Peter Sloterdijk’s talk Spaces of Transformation: Spatialised Immunity from June 2012.13 Compiling the list above only took an hour or two of browsing at my desk to highlight some key points that could comprise the beginning of a wider survey. Anyone could do this and I hope one day someone with a sociological / anthropological interest – and most of all a

So I felt it would be rude to respond to an invitation to write by saying

pitfalls,

between art and philosophy. For example, October’s first issue (1976)

Although both the ‘dematerialisation’ of the artwork and a fascination

metaphoric

and

non-metaphoric

appropriations, differing interests, intentions and presumptions at work. Dead ends, well-worn tracks and uncharted paths map such a space of the relations between art and philosophy.

diligent archivist’s frame of mind – might take it on as a task to track the flow of references to philosophy since the birth of ‘contemporary art’. I would find it fascinating to read that book. In the meantime, the footnotes to this article are designed to provide enough of a hyperlinked rough guide to start any interested reader on an informed path.

I propose instead to unpack the initial questions. It becomes evident that there are many things going on in formulations such as ‘art and …’ or ‘… and philosophy’. Most pertinent here may be examining why the question identifies ‘philosophy’ rather than ‘theory’, which was the more common term around the 1990s. Does this mean that it, in turn, is replacing or displacing ‘theory’? What is the role and status of

Notes 1. www.frieze.com/issue/article/spirit_guide 2.www.frieze.com/issue/article/sight_reading 3. www.frieze.com/issue/article/theoretically-speaking 4. Phenomenology, a branch of philosophy that enquires into the embodied consciousness has had much to offer the art and philosophy relationship, particularly in its focus on embodiment and perception. See, for example, Robert Hobbs '“Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology and Installation Art' in Claudia Giannini (ed) Installations Mattress Factory, 1990-1999, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001, 18 – 23.

5. Examples include: Gilles Deleuze, Bartleby: Or the Formula, Essays Critical & Clinical, Verso, 68 – 90 and Giorgio Agamben, Bartleby or On Contingency and Potentialities: Collected Essays in Philosophy (trans) Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford, 1999, 243 – 271. See www.bartleby.com/129 for the text 6. Jean-Francois Lyotard, 'Preliminary Notes on the Pragmatic of Works: Daniel Buren' in October, Autumn 1979, no. 10, 59 –67 7. www.tate.org.uk 8.Hal Foster in October, Winter 2012, no 139, 3 – 8.

9. www.tate.org.uk 10. Derrida interview on the limits of digestion, www.e-flux.com. The curator Daniel Birnbaum studied philosophy and wrote his PhD on Husserl, publishing a book The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl's Phenomenology, Almqvist & Wicksell International, 1998, which was accompanied by illustrations by Olafur Eliasson. Republished by Sternberg Press, 2008 11. www.e-flux.com/announcements/art-and-philosophy/ 12. www.e-flux.com/journal/hegel-versus-heidegger/ 13.www.tate.org.uk 14. Derrida interview on the limits of digestion, www.e-flux.com 15. www.generation-online.org/c/fcimmateriallabour3.htm

18

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

international

O'Doherty Un-Freezes A Beating Heart Mary-Ruth Walsh reflects on Brian O’Doherty’s TALK 'Strolling With The Zeitgeist: Five Decades' at last year’s Frieze Art Fair (11 Oct 2012).

Brian O'Doherty delivering his keynote address at Frieze, London 2012, Strolling with the Zeitgeist: Five Decades, original photograph by Polly Braden, courtesy of Polly Braden / Frieze

One could be forgiven for thinking that Marcel Duchamp was still alive after attending Strolling with the Zeitgeist: Five Decades, the keynote address at Frieze Art Fair, London given by artist, writer, theorist and filmmaker Brian O’Doherty.1 Duchamp’s dictum, that every work begins to die at the very moment of its exhibition, is refuted in a gentle but relentless way by O’Doherty’s 1966 portrait of him. This portrait was ‘taken’ when O’Doherty famously invited his friend Marcel Duchamp to lie on a bed and then took his electrocardiogram, which resulted in “the transformation of the very evidence of life itself”. “O’Doherty had transplanted a medical record of the heartbeat, the very signature of life, into a body of a … work of art.2 O’Doherty’s presence and address at Frieze was significant as this was his inaugural engagement in the UK since he buried his altered persona Patrick Ireland at the age of 36, in the grounds of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2008.3 O’Doherty took the name Patrick Ireland as a protest against the 1972 Bloody Sunday Massacre when British troops shot 14 civil rights marchers in Derry.4 From that date, O’Doherty signed his artwork as Patrick Ireland “until such time as the British military presence is removed from Northern Ireland and all citizens are granted their civil rights”. The Irish Museum of Modern Art performance was a declaration and celebration of peace.

The performance photograph was the lead article on the front page of the New York Times.5 In the darkened auditorium in London’s Regent’s Park, O’Doherty projected onto a large screen Duchamp’s single moving heartbeat, repeated and beating indefinitely. The effect was extraordinary. Hans Belting noted, on seeing the portrait, that he “felt [Duchamp’s] discrete presence”.6 Indeed, one felt that Duchamp was alive. As a spectator, watching the portrait heartbeat, its distinct rhythm and cadence, I became sensitive to the organic body and the silent rhythm of my heart that beats (I imagined) in tandem with Duchamp’s. The empathy and sensitivity of portraiture reached new depths of awareness and blurred the physical boundaries of the inner and outer body. O’Doherty then played a voice recording he made of Duchamp reading from The Creative Act; hearing his voice, its clarity and distinctive French timbre re-emphasised Duchamp’s presence.7 This delicate portrait was deeply life affirming and fused the spectator to Duchamp in a very different way to that of traditional portraiture.

It may seem surprising that O’Doherty introduced us to such a life-asserting portrait at Frieze Art Fair, which is the quintessential modern museum exhibition space that Duchamp referred to as a “vast necropolis”.8 What is extraordinary is that, amid this ‘necropolis’, where Duchamp declared that the artwork “freezes on the museum wall” and “decays by half lives”, is that O’Doherty’s works seemed, by contrast, replete with life.9 O’Doherty is no stranger to life and death situations in both art and medicine as he is a qualified medical doctor with a Harvard scholarship.10 At Harvard he studied perception and memory and

made the text and ink drawing entitled Between Categories (1957 – 68).11 The amorphous area ‘between categories’, where things have no definite name or definable shape, appears to be a highly fertile space for O’Doherty. Wittingly, he noted that he “always had category trouble”, describing this position as a place where he spent most of his life.12 O’Doherty negotiates and enlivens this uncharted space in remarkable ways. Some see such in-between spaces as voids, yet voids themselves can be replete with life and rich in content, as in Beckett’s Texts for Nothing,13 a work O’Doherty used in his now renowned Aspen 5+6 (1967) which comprised a magazine in a box, also known as a ‘thinking box’.14 O’Doherty’s Duchamp portrait has the effect of closing the gap in time between when the work was made and when it is viewed by the spectator. It's a portrait that is ageless, and as such the work somewhat sidesteps the traditional ‘vanitas’ quality of the representational portrait. The spectator stands in for the absent figure of Duchamp; he / she perceives the work in a sensuous / physical and conscious way. Hence, the portrait is alive.

This is one aspect that makes O’Doherty’s work noticeably different. Anne-Marie Bonnet describes O’Doherty’s spectator / artwork relationship as recognising the “heightened complexity of the world” and notes that the “awareness of it demands a heightened concept of self”. Furthermore, she writes that O’Doherty’s “respect for the recipient, rather than self-expression, is the keynote of the work”.15 Lucy Lippard has recorded some of the early conceptualists’ works from the 1960s in Six Years: The Dematerialization of the Art Object from 1966 – 1972. However, as noted by Anne-Marie Bonnet, the book did not include O’Doherty.16 This oversight may, in part, be explained by O’Doherty’s preference for working in the invisible yet fertile space ‘between categories’. As one of the co-authors of early conceptualism and a major contributor to that exciting decade, O’Doherty’s colleagues included Mel Bochner, Sol Le Witt, Robert Smithson, Peter Hutchinson,17 Lucy Lippard, Ruth Vollmer, Dan Graham and Eva Hesse. During the keynote talk, O’Doherty noted that Hesse, though not a conceptual artist, was “one of the most original artists” he ever met, with particular reference to her work Hang Up (1966).

While these avant-gardes were part of a paradigmatic shift – when the idea became paramount and the art object dematerialised – it is important to recognise other significant differences in their thinking processes that are curiously paradoxical. For example, the entropic sensibilities of Robert Smithson’s work were at odds when viewed alongside O’Doherty’s emphasis on a positive aliveness that fore-fronted the spectator. Furthermore, Le Witt’s illogical paradoxes are opposite to O’Doherty’s inherent logic, which rewards the curious, investigative spectator as noted by Bonnet.18 During Duchamp’s life and since his corporeal death, many artists have made homage works. Few, however, have challenged his

views and none have countered Duchamp’s “dazzling intelligence” with such sophistication, elegance and wit as O’Doherty.19 These qualities were much in evidence at the keynote address, which included many interesting works sans Duchamp, notably “the horizon of language”, which has occupied O’Doherty for over 30 years. Language has been developed as a rich source for O’Doherty through his adoption of Ogham, the ancient Celtic script that possesses distinct Minimalist characteristics and that Al Held referred to as “Brian O’Doherty’s iconography”.20 One of the notable highlights of the keynote talk was a wonderful live Vowel Performance by O’Doherty, described as “primal utterances born on gusts of air from chest to glottis”.21 Such a performance seems contradictory within the intricacies of the gracious keynote address.

Yet vowels have a purity of their own, and as a verbally articulated artwork it translated into every language, which seemed appropriate for the cultural mix in the London auditorium. Vowels are untranslatable and thus lose none of their original meaning; the faithfulness of their intent is secured. On the other hand, complete words can have their meaning worn down through overuse or come with their own ghosts.

Finally, before I leave the last word to O’Doherty, I suggest that his development of ‘between categories’ – which is infectiously alive within the permutations of his work – was transmitted to Frieze Art Fair. Viewing Frieze through ‘an O’Doherty lens’ resuscitated the art works, hence dispelling the Duchampion death knell that tolled for more than half a century. This transmittable vigor extended to the new addition of Frieze Masters, which perhaps recalibrates Frieze’s position in the context of art and art history. Brian O’Doherty’s individually developed links, which flow between New York and Europe, added further connections and ideas to the overall event. And yet…amid the vast array of art and the multiplicity of materiality, O’Doherty noted, “what matters now are ideas… and what has changed about ideas is the ways they are spread and shared”.22 Mary-Ruth Walsh is an artist and sometime writer. She has a studio in Wexford. Recently her work was exhibited in Miami Scope and forthcoming shows include a solo in RUA/RED. She teaches part-time in Visual Art in the Department of Performing and Creative Arts, WIT, Waterford.

Notes 1. Jennifer Higgie’s remarks prefacing O’Doherty’s Frieze talk, introduced the artist as a true polymath: “… he originally trained as a doctor, is a conceptual artist, art critic, journalist, Bookershortlisted novelist and award winning documentary filmmaker. After working as an art critic for the New York Times in the 1960s, he produced and hosted two art series for television, edited a special edition of Aspen, the magazine in a box, in 1967, for which he commissioned Roland Barthes to write 'The Death of The Author', and continued to make work as an artist … O’Doherty served for 19 years as director of the Film, Radio and Television section of the National Endowments for the Arts where he funded artists and exhibition spaces working with new media. His hugely influential book Inside the White Cube was published in 1976. Some details of the extensive implications of O’Doherty’s work at the National Endowment for the Arts has been researched and documented in Whitney Rugg’s PhD thesis. For a comprehensive overview see Brenda Moore McCann, Patrick Ireland / Brian O’Doherty: Between Categories, Lund Humphries, UK, 2009 2. Hans Belting’s essay in Beyond The White Cube: A Retrospective of Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland, Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane, 2006 3. Prior to 2008, in a beautiful curatorial gesture, Caoimhín Mac Giolla Leith replaced the intended Patrick Ireland drawing for a gallery in London with a note on the exhibition wall. The note stated Patrick Ireland’s work could be seen in a corresponding gallery outside of the UK as the artist would not show in the UK 4. In 1972, Brian O’Doherty changed his name by deed poll to Patrick Ireland during a performance in Project, Dublin, see Brenda Moore McCann book as above and David Moos’s essay in Beyond the White Cube: a Retrospective of Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland as above.

5. www.nytimes.com, 22 / 05 / 2008 6. Hans Belting’s essay as above 7. The Creative Act recording was made by O’Doherty and included in Aspen 5+6, 1967 8. Patrick Ireland Lecture, at the Hugh Lane, Irish Art Historians’ first annual talk, 2009, organised by Brenda Moore McCann.

9. Ibid 10. Nuffield Fellowship to Experimental Psychology Laboratories, Cambridge University, 1957, SmithMundt Fellowship, School of Public Health, Harvard University, 1957, Graduates – Master of Science (Public Health), Harvard, 1958 11. O’Doherty noted the physician Sir Frederic Bartlett’s book Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology,1932, as one of this three favourite books 12. www.friezefoundation.org/talks/detail/brian-odoherty 13. Katherine Waugh noted, on seeing O’Doherty’s structural plays at Frieze, that they pre-dated Beckett’s Quad by some 14 years; she expanded on this the following day in the Drawing Room conversation between O’Doherty and Margaret Iversen 14. A talk using film, audio and text is scheduled in Whitechapel Gallery, London, titled Unfolding Aspen 5+6 by Katherine Waugh and Mary-Ruth Walsh, 28 February 2013 15. Anne-Marie Bonnet’s essay 'The Man without Qualities' in the catalogue of Beyond the White Cube: a Retrospective of Brian O’Doherty / Patrick Ireland Dublin City Gallery, the Hugh Lane, 2006 16. “O’Doherty must be regarded as one of the co-founders of this particular art form, although he is missing from Lucy Lippard’s important account of that exciting decade”.See Anne-Marie Bonnet’s essay above 17. O’Doherty suggests Hutchinson’s work should be researched and reconsidered 18. Another radical difference between Sol Le Witt’s structures, specifically his use of the grid, is their imperviousness to language, whereas O’Doherty’s grids are alert to language and to the spectator 19. Patrick Ireland Lecture at the Hugh Lane, Irish Art Historians’ first annual talk, 2009 20. www.friezefoundation.org/talks/detail/brian-odoherty 21. Ibid 22. Gemma Tipton, the Irish Times, 10 November 2012, 9

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Critique Supplement Edition 10 March / April 2013

Elaine Byrne 'RAUM' Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin 10 January – 9 February 2013 An airy and hauntingly familiar structure greeted

inhabitant’s humble belongings within that

viewers upon entry into ‘RAUM’, Elaine Byrne’s

sophisticated space. Moreover, the objects displayed

latest exhibition. The structure was reminiscent of

within that volume fall into two distinct groups.

a Mondrian painting. Its elements, painted in

Byrne has grouped a collection of dust laden and

bright tones of red, white, yellow and blue, seemed

dilapidated artefacts that includes practical objects

to have been greatly magnified, pulled apart and

and kitsch in one half of the structure. Artfully

re-assembled to create a dynamic spatial

arranged, these items simultaneously complement

arrangement with a chimerical presence. Floating

and contradict the pristine planes of colour on

a few centimetres off the floor, it suggested a

which they have been placed. The other half of the

strange type of cloud. The eye-catching construct

structure holds a set of C-prints that document the present state of decay in the cottage. Just the idea of these pictures suggests lifelessness, but rather than reveal materials denuded of colour and purpose, these vibrant images bristle with detail and provide ample evidence of activity. The eye gets joyfully lost surveying the tonal richness and textural intricacies, and the plant growth sprouting from decaying furnishings, signs of insect infestation, and actively flaking layers of paint and peeling wallpaper all belie any notion of stasis. An accompanying wall text shows how Kiesler decries the state of the urban environment. In this excerpt, taken from his 'Manifesto on Horizontalism', which appeared in a 1925 issue of De Stijl, he likens houses to coffins and views the city as a place defined by its walls, walls and walls. In response, he sought to disengage the city from its earthly mooring.

The conjunction of Harty’s dwelling and Kiesler’s exhibit design engenders speculation on the various ways we think about and manage space. It, for example, juxtaposes elements that urge consideration of what is real or imagined, long-term or provisional, private or public, retrograde or progressive, simple or complex. One setting has been cobbled together by a woman with little formal education who found security in a domain cluttered with religious pictures and wistful decorative objects. The other was developed by a university-trained architect and designer. Its bright, unadorned and suspended partitions redefine space and, by extension, our experience of it. Rather than define limits, it advocates spaciousness. Kiesler described these stripped down forms as ‘architecture on a diet’ and attributed its development to the austere conditions of postwar Vienna. His designs are linked to notions of hygiene and form an aspect of the war against germs and grime.2 Yet, despite being poles apart, the co-occurrence of these two structures exacts a kind of synthesis that echoes in the strange mix of traditional and modern that informs much

Elaine Byrne, That was her bed, she'd have no other, 2012

contemporary domestic architecture. These newly

Elaine Byrne, 'RAUM', 2012

was made up of an interconnected set of partitions,

constructed buildings typically distort and

open framework, platforms and shelves, and had

romanticise the past. Byrne’s presentation, on the

been modelled on the exhibition design ‘Raumstadt’

other hand, conveys poignancy in the way that it

(City of Space) Austrian architect Frederick Kiesler

speaks about the dreams and desires of two people

devised for the 1925 Exposition Internationale des

from from very different times, places and cultures.

Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris.

The installation never seems trite, nor is it jarring.

But, whereas Kiesler’s structure showcased

Subtle correspondences of colour between the

proposals for new theatres, stages sets and costumes

by Austrian architects and artists,1 Byrne’s

objects and the surfaces that support them also

re-articulation contains objects, images and sounds

an air of melancholy, its impact is thoroughly

drawn from a ramshackle and abandoned County

illuminating.

Limerick dwelling once occupied by Hanni Harty, an Irish traveller. As such, it forms a most incongruous presentation that nevertheless draws viewers into its maze of spaces and treats them to oft startling views of a domestic space in the process of being re-appropriated by nature.

Bi-lateral relationships, in fact, inform all levels of this exhibition. Byrne has, for example, scaled the size of the structure – which operates both as display system and sculpture – to that of Elaine Byrne, Suppose that was the thing then, everyone did it, 2012

Elaine Byrne, No, she never went anywhere, 2012

Harty’s cottage and situated examples of the former

mitigate the disparities. Though the work conveys

John Gayer is a writer and artist based in Dublin.

Notes 1. Austrian Frederick and Lillian Kiesler Private Foundation www.kiesler.org 2. P Ovary, Light, Air & Openness: Modern Architecture Between the Wars, Thames and Hudson Ltd, London, 2007, 53

The Visual Artists’ News sheet cRITIQuE suPPLEMENT

March – April 2013

Sandra Johnson 'The Shadow of a Doubt' Golden Thread, belfast 13 December 2012 – 2 February 2013 the idea of consubstantiation is that in the communion, the body and blood of Christ and the bread and wine coexist in union with each other.

“Luther illustrated it by the analogy of the iron put into the fire whereby both fire and iron are united in the red-hot iron and yet each continues unchanged.”1 Diverse elements make Sandra Johnston’s ‘The Shadow of a Doubt’ something of an unusual construct, with the union of autobiography / communal history, of elements of past performance / new gallery-based work, of disparate gallery works and traces of sitespecificity.

While the artist is primarily known for performance work, this project for the Golden Thread Gallery features several non-performancebased gallery installations and interventions. There is a sense of autobiography and reference to past practice, featuring motifs developed in previous works such as making marks with charcoal and video of past performance. These carry a sense of personal and communal history. The artist chose not to present works in the exhibition as single disparate pieces with separate titles, so that the exhibition is intentionally situated on the boundary between constituting a single complete new work and a collection of individual works. It is telling that Johnston’s past work has been described as always site-specific; in a sense, the transitional nature of this project – solo or disparate works, new or past works – deals with the specificities of the gallery as a site.

Two text pieces printed on cards at the entrance to the exhibition, Cuttings 1 and Cuttings 2, act both as initial indicators of this stream-ofconsciousness or near-Proustian technique of recalling autobiographical and familial and social history, and also as brief sections of narrative that identify re-occurring elements. The texts recount personal and childhood memories of growing up in rural Northern Ireland, dreams, those Proustian accounts of childhood sensations, a family death, the deaths of the Hunger Strikers and of Bobby Sands in particular, the deaths of British soldiers and the British media response. Within these texts and across all the elements of the show, there are sensations of dislocation and displacement. One screen, also at the entrance, displays the artist repeatedly standing and holding a chair behind her, very slowly lowering to sit on it then suddenly and dynamically rising to fully stand again.

Another screen in the final room displays the artist sat on a chair, moving her body repeatedly from the natural sitting posture by very slowly arching her back and neck upwards until her shoulder is uncomfortably arched on the back of the chair.

Anita Groener 'State' RhA, Dublin 11 January – 28 April 2013 In each instance, the body is displaced from any natural state of comfort.

In another room, a large screen built across the room played old video footage of the queen of England inspecting the Household Cavalry in 1962, her first royal duty after coronation. Along the bottom of the screen run the lyrics of David Bowie’s 1972 song Jean Genie. At a space some distance from the screen in the same room are three sets of three yellow plastic chairs, which the artist salvaged from a skip at the Maze prison. They are laid out, fixed and connected by metal bars, as two chairs facing a single chair in front of them – like the chairs of a prison visiting room – and in front of them at floor level are horrible municipal-officestyle fluorescent strip lights.

Johnston’s text piece Cuttings 1 recounts that Bowie’s Jean Genie – which is both nonsense verse and a homage to that attacker of the status quo, Jean Genet – was released in 1972, and that it was hunger striker Bobby Sands’ favourite song. Nine years after it was released, Sands starved to death in the Maze prison.

There is a consubstantiation – coexistence in union – within the connectedness of the diverse elements in this gallery room. It is their coexistence that gives a sense of an encounter with the power dynamics of the Northern Ireland conflict in particular, and of the performativity of the self in these power relations. There is the performativity of the self as prisoner, the immeasurable dynamic of the performativity of the self as body as hunger striker, the institutional power invested in the performativity of the self as ceremonial head-ofstate. Running as a subtext within this configuration, Bowie and his creation Jean Genie act as the apotheosis of the performativity of creating the self. The disparate elements of this coexistence also act as the contextual backdrop for the autobiographical traces of the artist and her years growing up in Northern Ireland.

It is striking that the primary conceptual element at play within this gallery room – the performativity of the self – connects specifically to Johnston’s primarily performance-based practice.

Johnston primarily articulates an art practice through performativity of the self. In this instance and across this show, Johnston demonstrates that she can use that same element in non-performance based work.

Anita Groener, Land, 2011, ink and one pin flag on paper, 57 x 76.5cm and Moon, 2012, video, looped, 4 x 4cm, image courtesy of the artist

as a Dutch artist living and working in Ireland,

Groener’s adoption of the grid as diagrammatic

Groener’s work has been characterised by a search

device is influenced by her 2010 residency at the

for belonging, while exploring the duality of the

Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut,

artist’s past and present selves in the context of

where Anni Albers’ archive of textiles and weaving

modern geopolitical realities. This is evident in

in particular record her extensive use of the form

earlier works such as Crossing (2006) and Land

throughout her career. Like fellow Bauhaus

(2011), the latter of which is shown in this

member Mondrian, Albers interrogated the grid’s

exhibition. Crossing explores Groener’s experience

reflexive nature again and again. In this context,

of visiting and revisiting her homeland over long

Albers’s belief that “the thing itself [becomes] the

period of time, while Land achieves a broader, even

meaning” offers a reading of the work as one which

universal dimension, evolving to be not so much a

is free of narrative. Groener’s work, however, is rich

visualisation of what Ciarán Benson calls “time as

with what Russian Futurist David Burylik described

locations in a landscape” as tacitly addressing

as ‘minimalistic realism’, in that it is both eloquent

more imposing notions of being.

and spare.

The integration of the 2012 work Moon, a

The grid has recently been the focus of two

4x4cm colour projection on the wall behind the

major exhibitions: ‘Object: Gesture: Grid: St Ives

painting, is the actuation of this reinterpretation of

and the International Avant-Garde’ at Tate St Ives

the earlier work. The delicate casein marks and

in 2010 and ‘Tracing the Grid: The Grid in Art after

single pin flag assimilate the qualities of a

1945’ at Kunstmuseum, Stuttgart In 2012. Both

moonscape as envisioned by the popular media’s

explored the freedom that emerges, paradoxically,

presentation of the 1969 lunar landing. The large

through the use of the grid and scrutinised the use

black cloud – the vast dark cosmos – painted on a

of the form as a kind of visual algorithm that

wall behind the drawing further enforces this

liberates the artist.

perception. Yet there is a growing feeling of

Declan Sheehan is a freelance curator and was recently awarded a 2013 Arts Council Visual Art Curator Residency.

For Groener, the grid imposes a conformity

apprehension with the realisation that we appear

that corrals the vulnerability revealed by her

to be simultaneously standing on and looking at

tentative marks, dots and dashes; the sense of

the moon.

isolation explored in her earlier work is no longer

Notes 1. F L cross (ed) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, London and Oxford, 1958, 337

In Lost (2011), tiny figures exist alone or in

localised or personal, but huge and vast. This

twos and threes, as distant from each other as they

sensation of teetering, of being poised to plummet

can be between the Morse-code-like sea of marks

into an unknown too great to comprehend, is

separating them. There is no vast universe here,

tempered by the reassuring presence of lines

but an equal sense of the diminished self prevails.

crossing lines and marks following a predestined

The dominant and eponymous work, State

Like its purpose in architecture, the matrix in

silhouette, most frequently alone and engaged in

Groener’s work offers a design for living; a paradigm

dynamic endeavours – jumping, lifting, reaching,

to enclose and confine the chaos of existence and

hefting, pulling – or prone, either dead or sleeping.

the duality of lives lived in two places. State, Land

Sometimes the figures appear in twos and threes,

and Lost offer a refuge of order and patterns – the

often carrying or supporting one another.

seduction of safe and ordered worlds to escape to,

Like butterflies in a display case, they are frozen and pinned to an immovable surface, the motion of the nameless hundreds captured in a neat grid drawn by the shadows of the pins securing them in place. Linked in this way, through tentative threads created by the absence of light, these miniature people are filled with the all pathos of human agency, their world a microcosm of man’s collective experience. This circular matrix is held within a corona of brightness and bathed in a soft Installation view of 'The shadow a Doubt' at the Golden Thread Gallery, image courtesy of the artist and GTG

path.

(2012), offers a vast field of tiny, 2cm-long figures in

pink light like a firmament of souls.

alternate realities where one can consider still other, stranger worlds.

Anne Mullee is an artist and emerging curator currently working as LAB Gallery and Public Arts Assistant Intern at DCC Arts Office.

Notes 1. c benson, From Here to Where? Roads as Metaphors for Self & the Work of Anita Groener Groener, from Crossing, 2006, RhA Gallagher Gallery 2. A Albers, 1939, www.albersfoundation.org

The Visual Artists’ News SheetCriTique ique SuppleMeNT

March – April 2013

Sarah Browne 'Diabolic Loop' Galway Arts Centre 27 December 2012 –27 January 2013

'Living Loss' The Glucksman, Cork 23 November – 10 March 2013

Jo Spence, Terry Dennet,Illness Face

'living loss' oss' installation view featuring Theproject Twins, Oh Great! , image by Jo Spence

Cecily Brennan, Bandaged Heart Heart,, 2001

For her work, Bandaged Heart (2001), Cecily

breast. The artist’s body is portrayed as a contested

Brennan casts the eponymous heart in stainless

zone between the forces of the disease and its

steel. Isolated on a plinth, the cast muscle wears a

treatment. Who owns the body? Her portraits seem

binding of twisted fabric, the ‘bandage’ a pathetic

to ask. And who am I in relation to it?

solace for a battle already lost. The wrapping,

Paul Seawright is represented by a single

however, might stand for resilience, a bulwark

photograph, Untitled (woman and child) (2006),

against physical or emotional odds. The exhibition

while the German photographer Thomas Struth

is constructed as a chronological narrative, a travelogue through “the kingdom of the sick”,1 a

outweighs his fellow exhibitors by sheer force of

journey from the experience of “Feeling Sick”

blossom and water lilies are juxtaposed with wider

towards an eventual encounter with “Recovery,

views of fields and cultivated landscapes. The

Rehabilitation and Loss”. Brennan’s sculpture, an

photographs were originally commissioned by a

object under duress and capable of several different

Swiss hospital and installed in patients’ rooms to

readings, might serve as an emblem for the

encourage thoughts beyond the confines of their

exhibition as a whole.

sickbeds. Struth’s flora and fauna compete with the

numbers. His colour-saturated images of cherry

Curated by Fiona Kearney, the show is plotted

gallery environment too: the dramatic windows

like a Stations of the Cross: a journey from the

providing crisply framed images of the city

relatively benign – Work No 78 (1993) by Martin

beyond.

Creed is a characteristic stacking piece comprising

Laura Potter and Damien Hirst also explore

2.5 cm squares of band-aid – towards a more

notions of escape in their works. In his series of 13

harrowing, though in some respects equally

large screen-prints, The Last Supper (1999), Hirst

laconic, final work by Jo Spence. The pairing of

employs the graphic designs of medicinal

artworks and text (vinyl wall text punctuates each

packaging and replaces their pharmaceutical terms

stage of the show) provides orientation but can

with names of everyday British foodstuffs like

seem overdrawn. Creed’s tiny cube of plasters

steak and kidney, dumplings, and beans and chips.

might be a metaphor for the endless round of life’s

Hirst’s pharmaceutical pop art pokes fun at false

little injuries, but I can’t help feeling that he hadn’t

redeemers – drugs, religion – while acknowledging

thought of it that way.

his debt to Andy Warhol. Concerned with ritual

Showing a number of works allows the

and adornment, Laura Potter also matches familiar

concerns of individual artists to emerge. A set of

iconography with drug culture. In Rosary (1998), a

egg tempera on gesso paintings depicts the results

crucifix strung with painkillers and vitamin pills

of eczema and psoriasis on the skin. While medics

looks like a necklace of sweets, a candy-string-

use images to aid with the diagnosis and treatment

comforter for the spiritually malnourished.

of disease, Cecily Brennan’s small paintings go

The show feels inevitably incomplete. We are

further in their analogy between the surface of the

invited to meditate on life accompanied by loss – of

skin and the painted surface. They can be difficult

loved-ones, of vitality, of time – and life, ultimately,

to look at but Brennan’s visceral studies are imbued

as a precursor to loss. Mary Rose O’Neill’s series of

with haptic empathy. The physical act of painting

mixed-media works on paper, Lost at Sea (1999),

the skin, the close scrutiny and mimetic gestures

evokes loss through the depiction of associated

required, reveal the pained surface while

objects. A final photograph – Hospisis (1992) –

simultaneously offering it a kind of metaphoric

shows Jo Spence a year or two on from the defiant

absolution.

images we’ve seen downstairs. A thin black cable

Three large works on paper by the Project

extends to the artist’s weakened grip; lying depleted

Twins offer a more playful meditation on affliction.

within a phalanx of hospital pillows she holds the

Figures rendered in graphic silhouette slump under

shutter release aloft, her pale hand squeezing out

the weight of too much medication or beneath

the exhibition’s concluding image.

their own deadened weight. On the opposite wall a series of black and white photographs chronicle Jo Spence’s experience of breast cancer. Her selfportraits, taken over a period of several years (with Terry Dennett) can seem almost artless in their informal candour. In Property of JS she looks directly into the camera lens, the words “Property of Jo Spence?” written with a marker across her naked

John Graham is an artist based in Dublin.

Notes 1. “everyone veryone who is born holds duel citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick” , Susan Sontag, Illness as Metaphor Metaphor,, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 1978.quoted by professor Fergus Shanahan in the catalogue essay.

‘Diabolic Loop’, Sarah Browne’s exhibition at the Galway Arts Centre, brings together two projects / exhibitions: ‘Second Burial at Le Blanc’ and ‘Cognitive Radio’. Each title covers a multiplicity of related events, texts, films and objects.

The first room holds a photographic print of a book, Stone Age Economics Economics, by Marshall Sahlins. It is part of a series, entitled How to Talk About Riots in Birmingham, but the book is a recurring figure in Browne’s work. In the publication On Hoarding, Accumulating and Gifting, she quotes: “To understand our economy requires the same kind of anthropological sensibility we bring to the study of others. We are one of the others”, which is as good a definition as any of the artist’s practice.

‘Second Burial at Le Blanc’, on the ground floor of the gallery, comprises two main elements: a series of publications that have accompanied the exhibition since its first showing at Project Arts Centre in May / June 2011 and a 16mm film recording a procession of people carrying a tickertape countdown clock through the streets of Le Blanc. The premise of the project was an initiative – led by the town’s trade association – to accept Francs as currency, until they were finally decommissioned on February 17, 2012. This was a commercial scheme to attract stray or hoarded francs. Prior to this date, the exhibition included the ticker tape, whose live feed recorded the trading of the franc and counted down the time before its final withdrawal.

The realm of associations that the artist conjures up around this initial event – particularly through the publications – is fascinating and suggests different ways of reading our reality. But on the whole it failed to convince me. I perceived two problems. Firstly, the Le Blanc residents' decision to continue to trade in francs initially suggests a form of resistance to a normative economy where the Euro is presented as the only choice – recalling the famous opening to Asterix "All Gaul is occupied, only one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the invaders". But the film and accompanying publications reveal it to be no more than commercial venture abiding to conventional economics. The second difficulty was the superficiality of the engagement with the Le Blanc inhabitants. Browne's practice often foregrounds discussions with participants and includes them in the making process. But in this case the inhabitants are relegated to a purely representational / figurative role in the burial procession devised by the artist.

On the first floor are assembled works belonging to three interconnected projects involving pirate radios, geology and riots in times of austerity. How to Use Fool’s Gold (Pyrite Radio) is a primitive crystal radio where the crystal serves as a receiver. A lump of pyrite (Fool’s gold) is earthed to the gallery, providing a power source. A series of drawings, Geology for Electronics Electronics, detail the properties of minerals used in telecommunication technologies. In the next room, prints of media images under the generic title How to Talk About Riots in Birmingham illustrate how riots have been mediated at different periods from 1981 – 2011 and explore the role of pirate radio stations during periods of unrest. The work that brings these strands together is an HD film, Cognitive Radio, made in collaboration with participants in the Ikon Youth Programme in Birmingham as part of a yearlong residency entitled Scarcity Radio. The film alternates shots of four youths seated in a geology museum reading out ‘The Original Affluent Society’ from Stone Age Economics with shots of a young woman selecting a lump of pyrite, connecting it to a receptor and listening to different broadcasts. The reading eventually leads to a

discussion of the riots that took place over the summer of 2011 and the four of them work their way through media representations and ideological prejudices to try and make sense of what happened.

Exhibited alongside this film is the contract signed by the artist, the Ikon programme organisers and the participants in an attempt to “make explicit such conditions of artistic production, rather than obscuring them”. It was redacted by the artist and illustrates the conditions of production, distribution and ownership of the art project. The screening of Born in Flames (Lizzie Borden, 1983) during the exhibition, with its political fiction of social revolution, resistance through pirate radios, the setting up of a Women’s Army and the sharing of work draws another ring of interpretation around the works. It also opens a space for discussion in the gallery that is not ring-fenced by the artist’s production.

As an exhibition, ‘Diabolic Loop’ comes in and out of focus depending on the different planes of reception and interpretation it activates. Each item is part of an ongoing process of collaboration and in constant reconfiguration with the others, which makes it difficult to consider them as discrete entities. This fluidity of meaning is perhaps best described by Bruno Latour in We Have Never Been Modern: “In works produced by anthropologists abroad, you will not find a single trait that is not simultaneously real, social and narrated.”

Michaële Cutaya is a writer and co-editor of Fugitive Papers. She lives in Galway. www.sarahbrowne.info www.scarcityradio.org www.ikonslowboat.com

Sarah Browne,The Cognitive Radio, 2012, HD video, 24’32”

Sarah Browne,The Cognitive Radio, 2012, HD video, 24’32”

Sarah Browne,How to Use Fool’s Gold (Pyrite Radio), 2012

The Visual Artists’ News SheetCritique Supplement

March – April 2013

'Into the Light: The Arts Council – 60 Years of Supporting the Arts Crawford Art Gallery, Cork 4 December 2012 – 23 February 2013 Dublin City Gallery, The HughLane 28 November 2012 – 24 February 2013 Limerick City Gallery 30 November 2012 – 18 January 2013 The Model Niland, Sligo 7 December 2012 – 24 March 2013

Mark GarryFolds 2010. 'Into the Light' Installation view. Model Niland, Sligo

Maud Cotter, work shown atInto ' the Light'. Model Niland, Sligo

‘Into the Light: The Arts Council – 60 Years of Supporting the Arts’ marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Arts Council and comprises a series of four exhibitions at Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, Limerick City Gallery and The Model, Sligo, respectively. ‘Into the Light’ was developed by Lead Curator, Karen Downey and is accompanied by a publication, which features illustrations of works by over 100 artists and commissioned essays by Diarmaid Ferriter and Caoimhín MacGiolla Léith. Each of the four partner curators was invited to select works from the Arts Council collection to create a discrete exhibition that would reflect the interests and the ethos of each specific institution. Partner institutions were chosen, who themselves had a history of collecting and, in two cases, works from the institutions’ own collections are on view side by side with works from the Arts Council collection.

It is interesting that, although the four partner curators were free to select the works that they felt best reflected their own concerns, and a variety of curatorial approaches are certainly apparent, there are still some overarching themes that run through the four shows. For example, all four venues address the concept of the institutional frame, albeit from different perspectives.

‘Into the Light’ also commissioned four contemporary artists: Mark Clare (Crawford Art Gallery), Karl Burke (The Hugh Lane), Emmet Kierans (Limerick City Gallery) and Sean Lynch (The Model) to respond to the works selected at their particular venue and all four commissioned works are very different in form and approach. Nevertheless, of the four, three are quite focused on the concept of framing and the relationship between viewer and object and how that might be activated.

At Limerick City Gallery, director Helen Carey considered the selection from the point of view of a city gallery with the possibility for citizens to become involved and chose a long list of 120 works from which a panel selected 67. There were two public talks, with Oliver Dowling of the Arts Council and a second with John Logan (historian and author) and Paul Tarpey (lecturer at LSAD), who, together with Ann Horrigan (Askeaton Contemporary Arts) and Baz Burke (visual artist, dancer), made up the panel. This very democratic selection process was filmed and is being shown in the space, while Cliodhna Shaffrey’s essay on this selection is available in an accompanying booklet.

Carey framed the exhibition in relation to unlocking a connection Limerick had with psychedelic rock and beat vibe in the 1960s and

1970s. There was, at the time, a strong music scene to which a lot of artists had connections, so this space and time have particular local relevance.

Commissioned artist Emmet Kieran’s work responded to this vibe and to the process, exploring the limits of what painting can be. The works selected are almost all from the 1960s and 1970s, although bookended by two landscapes, The Black Lake by Gerald Dillon (1940s) and Green Landscape

by Basil Blackshaw (1980), and exemplify the period of transition taking place at the time. Many connections are made forwards and backwards in history, from the wonderful archival material on the first Rosc exhibition at the RDS in 1967, for which Patrick Scott did the graphics as well as designing the space,1 and of which Mr Gill, New York art critic, said at the time, “it is a marriage of room with paintings”, “a tour de force of architecture in terms of museum design”2 to the rebellion against Academic Realism by students at NCAD in the late 1960s, backed up by artist Alice Hanratty, whose work is also on show. This exhibition performs a role; it is celebratory, highlighting contexts and relationships between works and artists, covering abstraction, modernism, landscape and how they were treated. There is an energy around it, a real sense of knowledge and history being transferred, and this is evident in the large numbers of students and school tours visiting the space.

The exhibition at the Crawford Art Gallery, where Dawn Williams was the partner curator, examines a very different period of Irish art history.

The Crawford’s own collection was well represented by much of the Arts Council Collection up to the 1990s and Williams wished to complement that, resulting in a selection made entirely from works since 2000. Williams’ selection is comprised of works which she feels look backwards in order to go forwards in their work. Among these, Gerard Byrne’s 1984 and Beyond (2006) explores and exposes assumptions and predictions made at a discussion in 1963 about what the future post-1984 might hold.

Eoghan McTigue’s Empty Sign TU (2002), a to-scale photograph of a now empty institutional notice board, questions accepted notions of display and context. Commissioned artist Mark Clare’s The Two Horns of Phaedrus (2012) is a kinetic work in two pieces, which becomes activated when a viewer comes close. This work raises questions about the resonance of art works, how certain pieces might work together in groups or in a collection, and explores the importance of context and framing, as well as the perspective of the viewer.

At the Model Niland in Sligo, curator Emer McGarry incorporates three collections, as some of the works shown, are on loan from the Graeve Collection to the Niland Collection. In this respect McGarry was able to pull at threads to see what connections exist between different works from the same time period, as well as between works spanning three generations and at least three different periods in Irish art: contemporary works, works displaying a modernist approach and works of early twentiethcentury painters, who were associated with the school of Academic Realism.

McGarry’s curatorial approach was to take Mark Garry’s Folds (2010) and Kathy Prendergast’s The End and the Beginning (1997) as a starting point, visually and thematically, from which to highlight trains of thought, threads which connect various approaches and concerns central to the artists whose works are on display here. The three main strands emphasised are: the use of craft, with its references to domesticity and by extension the work of Irish women artists over this period; the different approaches to landscape; and the inner world of reflection and emotions. The intergenerational nature of the selection allows themes to be drawn together in unique ways, mapping possible routes and progressions through recent Irish art history.

A number of artists represented in the Arts Council Collection also had pieces from the Niland Collection exhibited. These pieces, often from a

different period of work, had the effect of joining the dots, of showing how a single artist could embrace various or similar themes with different approaches, tying in and crossing over with other works by other artists hanging in the same space. This resulted in a very satisfying overview of Irish art practice, with many doors through which to approach the work on show.

A reading room featured four films, supported by the Arts Council and RTE, which respond to the collection, including a film on reactions within The Model to Alice Maher’s Nettle Coat, and a film on the making and hanging of Karl Burke’s Arrangements at the Hugh Lane Gallery.

Sean Lynch was the commissioned artist at The Model and his work A Church without a Steeple (2012) – a series of slides with voiceover – explores the responses of the Irish public to modernism in Ireland, examining how the changing views of the artwork itself vary depending on the position of the viewer in relation to the piece, whether that be physical, social or economic: a mutual reflection or lack thereof between viewer and work. One anecdote recounted in this work is that of a form, floating down the street looking for the exhibition, looking to “enter the frame”. This piece also ties in very well with the curatorial approach of Michael Dempsey at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and Karl Burke’s framing devices.

The curatorial approach of partner curator at the Hugh Lane, Michael Dempsey, was to think of the exhibition as one installation. He saw this as a rare opportunity to put two collections together and, as the Arts Council Collection contained a lot of abstract work, began to think about themes in 1970s post minimalism and wall and floor relationships. Dempsey’s interest in the creative process of exhibition-making is apparent throughout.

Using the institutional frame, literally, as a backdrop, he draws attention to the content of the frame, the architecture of the institution through the painting of walls, moving them optically around corners and creating vanishing points on walls behind the works.

This strategy has multiple effects. First, it creates rather than informs, making this a very experiential exhibition. It has the effect of debunking rigid, chronological categories, raising questions for the viewer about the nature of abstraction and art history. It also creates echoes with many of the works, making them seem almost hyper-real and heightening the viewer’s awareness of the flat wall.

This sensation is emphasised still further by the work of commissioned artist Karl Burke, whose Arrangements (2012), sculptural framing devices which intervene dramatically into the space, subvert and frame the works. These steel and wooden frames create spaces between viewer and frame, beyond the frame, between frame and work(s), and force the viewer to experience the space differently, to look at the work differently, singly and in groups. These very successful pieces might draw the viewer in, and out the other side and heighten the sense of self and of position in space. Dempsey’s research included Richard Wollheim and this exhibition certainly has that kind of intimate intensity.3 Dempsey sees the collection as a resource, which could be engaged with on many different levels and emphasises the importance of “making it current. This collection still has relevance to artists and audiences today.” These four exhibitions, in four very different ways, have achieved that.

Fiona Fullam is an artist and writer based in Dublin. She has been published in Rubric, News Views and Fugitive Papers, and has exhibited in Tate Modern and the Berlin Reading Room.

Notes 1. Dorothy Walker,Modern Art in Ireland, The Lilliput Press, 1967, 114 2. Rosc ’67,RTE Archives, film shown atInto ' The Light' at Limerick City Gallery, November 2012 – January 2013 3. Richard Wollheim,Art and its Objects: An Introduction to Aesthetics, Harper and Row, New York, 1968

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

23

ADVoCACY: Artists' PAY

Moving Beyond Token Fees Noel Kelly, Ceo Of Visual Artists Ireland, reports on the VAI 'Survey On Payments For Visual Artists'.

"It is a good opportunity for you to have your work seen."

"We aren’t in a position to give you a fee, but we would like to show your work."

"We can offer you a token gesture."

The types of statements above have become more and more familiar as artists are approached to show their work in exhibition spaces.

They have become clichés, and with them comes an expectation of understanding about the plight that venues find themselves in. This is not a new phenomenon but, in recent years, the payment of artists for their contribution to the national exhibition programme has sharply decreased.

With this decrease, Visual Artists Ireland has seen an increase in the number of artists contacting us with stories of being expected to deliver exhibitions and other events such as talks and education programmes either for free or with just their travel expenses covered.

It is obvious that this mode of practice is not only inequitable but also fails to recognise the professionalism of visual artists. It has lead to an increase in the number of artists living under the poverty line, or seeking to create new lives either outside of Ireland, or outside of the visual arts sector as a whole.

Survey In October, November and December 2012, Visual Artists Ireland undertook a survey to look at the reality of artists being paid for work and exhibitions. In total, 147 artists who are actively exhibiting completed the survey. The survey took into consideration exhibitions and work in Ireland both in publically funded not for profit spaces as well as the commercial sector.

Not for Profit Sector In terms of exhibitions in the not for profit sector, this equated to 781 exhibition opportunities realised. We use this term as different artists may have appeared in the same exhibition. The survey asked artists to give details of the exhibition fee that they received from their top five shows in the year.

Top Five A total of 580 exhibition opportunities were captured in the artists’ top five exhibitions. 79.66% of these provided no fee to the artist for their participation. Further figures indicated that production costs were not met in many cases, and in a large percentage (43.3%) of cases, artists were asked to either pay or contribute to the administration costs of their exhibitions.

Only 29% of the exhibitions provided for installation costs; 77.8% of artists received no fee for education or outreach programmes.

Of these 31.9% received a contribution towards travel expenses for these events.

These figures speak for themselves. To give the artists’ own perspectives we are also including some case studies at the bottom of this document, with comments directly from the artist involved.

Moving Forward The financial reality of exhibition spaces and visual artists needs to be taken into consideration, especially in comparison to the state funding received by other art forms.

Visual Artists Ireland also asks that urgent attention is given to the level of funding being made available for exhibition production in publically funded spaces and the provision of payment rates for artists.

We also ask that spaces in receipt of public funding are required to show meaningful payments for artists who contribute to their programme, and that this payment should be guided by the contribution of the visual artist as the key member of each exhibition team. This form of analysis needs to be fed back to central government for consideration as they allocate funds during the budgetary process.

Levels of Payments In setting the level for payments, we see a case for the creation of a national scale. It is not adequate to take this figure as a proportion of programming budget. To take different situations into consideration, the national scale could be prepared as a percentage of the overall turnover of the institutions involved, and that it is proportional to the contribution of the artist to the programme.

In addition, there is a need for recognised daily rates for production and creative time costs, with further exhibition and education / outreach fees being set based on a similar recognised national scale.

Actions VAI has provided the detailed report to the Arts Council for their consideration and to look at options that will change the environment in which we have found ourselves regarding payments.

Artist Case Studies Artist 1 Age group: 55 – 64, with a job to subsidise their work as an artist, with studio rent, heat, and electricity costs of between €250 and €299 per month had four solo exhibitions and six group exhibition in 2011 / 2012. Out of these, three of the solo exhibitions had no artist’s fee, and one provided €500. Out of the six group exhibitions (six plus artists in show), one offered a fee of €700. No production costs were paid, but the galleries covered the administration costs. One show was in an Arts Council and Local Authority funded space, one exhibition was in a non-artists’ space, and eight were in Arts Council only funded spaces. The maximum fee of €700 was received from an Arts Council only funded space. Installation costs were fully funded, but no venue offered travel expenses or took into consideration the production time required to prepare for the exhibitions. They received an extra fee for a speaking engagement, but also had to cover travel and subsistence expenses for this.

Exhibition Income: €1200 for 2011 / 2012 Artist Comments: “Leaving the payment of artists’ fees to the discretion of the Arts Council funded organisations does not and will not work. Fixed fees should be set, agreed nationally and Arts Council funded organisations should be told by the Arts Council that their ongoing funding is dependent on them budgeting for and paying agreed fixed artists' fees. If they don't budget for and pay artists’ fees their funding should be withdrawn. Nothing else will work. The time of relying on good will is over; it patently doesn’t work. Artists need to be paid adequately for their labour and the use of their work. This is an urgent issue. We need VAI to negotiate fees as a matter of urgency with the Arts Council. As the major state funding body of all not for profit organisations, the Arts Council is the only body with the capacity to put pressure on the funded organisations and deal with this problem for once and for all. Leaving it up to the organisations to behave fairly and professionally towards artists won’t work. Artists will just continue to be exploited. Thank you for doing the survey.

Much appreciated.”

Artist 2 Age Group: 35 – 44, with a job to subsidise their work as an artist, with part time access to a studio, studio rent of between €100 and €149 per month. Had one solo exhibition and eight group exhibitions in 2011 / 1012. The solo exhibition had a fee of €1000. Out of the eight group exhibitions, one offered a fee of €200. No production costs were paid. Some galleries covered the administration costs but some were paid for out of the artist’s own pocket.

Two shows were in Arts Council and local authority funded spaces, two exhibitions were in Arts Council only funded spaces, one was in a local authority only funded space, one was in an art space that receives no public subsidy, and two were in independent artistrun spaces. The maximum fee of €1000 was received from an Arts Council only funded space, with a fee of €200 from a local authority only funded space. No other spaces provided fees. Installation costs were fully funded in an Arts Council only funded space, the others either partially covered these costs or expected the artist to cover in full. One Arts Council only funded venue offered travel expenses.

Venues with other forms of funding didn’t cover these costs. None took into consideration the production time required to prepare for the exhibitions. They received no extra fee for speaking engagements.

Exhibition Income: €1200 for 2011 / 2012 Artist Comments: “In all cases, I have had to borrow money in order to fully realise the exhibition and always end up using the artists fee (if any!) to purchase materials needed for the installation.”

Artist 3 Age Group: 45 – 54, full time professional artist, with part time access to a studio, studio rent of approximately €50 per month. Had three group exhibitions in 2011 / 1012. They were not paid for any exhibition. Some production costs were paid, and in all cases administration costs were covered.

One show was in an Arts Council and local authority funded spaces, and one exhibition was in a non-publically funded space.

Installation costs were fully funded in both space, but only the nonpublically funded space travel expenses. They received an extra fee for speaking engagements as well as travel and subsistence.

Exhibition Income: €0 for 2011 / 2012 Artist Comments: “I have willingly exhibited without fees in emerging spaces (those with no or little public funding) as the situation was made clear from beginning. Spaces that have established funding, even in time of cutbacks, should assign (even small) fees from their budget. Clarity of information about all aspects of the "exchange" between artist and gallery are of great importance.

Unfortunately this often revealed only when a problem arises, with assumptions a main cause.”

Artist 4 Age Group: 22 – 34, part time professional artist support practice with other work, with no specific studio space or set up works from home. Had three solo exhibitions and eight group exhibitions in 2011 / 2012. They were paid for €150 for one of the group exhibitions.

Some production costs were paid, and they were asked to contribute to the administration costs through their own money and money received through an Arts Council grant.

Three shows were in Arts Council and local authority funded spaces, two were in Arts Council only funded spaces, two were in local authority funded spaces, four were self organised group exhibitions. Installation costs were not funded in the Arts Council funded space, partially covered in the Arts Council and local authority run space, and fully covered in the independent artist run space. Only the local authority funded space covered travel expenses. They received a fee for speaking engagements, including travel expenses.

Exhibition Income: €150 for 2011 / 2012 Artist Comments: “Making my work and exhibiting it forces me to go into debt. I wouldn't mind breaking even, then I would be very happy. I don't necessarily want to make a profit from my art practice but running up debt is making it extremely difficult for me to survive.”

Noel Kelly is the CEO of VAI.

24

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

residency

Bridget O'Gorman All Places Are Distant From Heaven Alike (video still)

Joanna Billing,This is how we walk on the moon, 2007, DVD, 27.20 min / loop

Jennie Moran,Hot Furniture, 2012, Workman's Boatclub, Clonmel

Language That Tells

excavation of the structure and contents of the Bolton Library

BRIDGET O'GORMAN PROFILES ‘DIG WHERE YOU STAND’, A YEAR-LONG RESIDENCY-BASED PROJECT That took place in SOUTH TIPPERARY.

groups. I returned to the county in 2011, having spent much of my

situated on the grounds of Cashel Cathedral, where we had congregated in April for one of the ‘Dig Where You Stand’ reading previous adult life developing a practice elsewhere. Although the Bolton Library was a place I had grown up only a few miles down the road from, until now it had remained unknown territory for me.

“It is language that tells us about the nature of a thing, provided that we respect language’s own nature.”

1

In an essay from 1951, Martin Heidegger explores the etymology of the word buan or bauen. He maintains that in Old English and High German the true meaning of this word, belonging to the imperative form bis – to be or to build, is really ‘to dwell’ – “this signifies: to remain, to stay in a place”.2 The philosopher intimates that the very nature of being is rooted in the earth below us. What can be found in raising questions about location, its history and the significance of evolving or forgotten languages? These were some of the themes investigated by South Tipperary curators-in-residence Eilís Lavellle, Sarah Lincoln and Rosie Lynch through their curatorial residency project entitled ‘Dig Where You Stand’.

Initiated in 2011 by Sally O’Leary and The South Tipperary County Council Arts Service, the goal of the residency was to create a platform whereby the curator would “engage imaginatively with the public and local communities, developing a new approach to the commissioning and presentation of visual arts within a local context, while maintaining a critically challenging environment for a contemporary art exhibition of national and international status”.3 The curatorial team was appointed after three stages of an advertised open submission competitive process that included submitting a project proposal, shortlisting and interview.

The projects total budget was €19,000. €13,788.20 (72.5% of the budget) was allocated for artists’ fees and production costs for the reading events and publication. The balance covered curators' fees, expenses and administration. The South Tipperary County Council Art Service, The Arts Council of Ireland and the Department for the Environment, Community and Local Government funded the project under the Percent for Art scheme.

This ambitious task was undertaken with conviction, sensitivity and spirit by the selected residency team. It was their aspiration that “the visual arts speak in strong and original ways to a locale, and strengthen a sense that inspiration does not have to reside elsewhere, but exists in latent form under one’s feet”.4 The result of this enquiry unfolded gradually throughout 2012, taking the form of a series of reading groups, an exhibition and a publication.

As one of the artists commissioned to make work as part of the project and a native of South Tipperary, I was excited about the prospect of re-discovering the well-known terrain of my birthplace as a site for inspiration or new, potentially enriching dialogues. This was fortified through a series of reading groups initiated through the residency at various venues throughout South Tipperary over the following months. Poised at the core of these gatherings was a subtle balance of elements: a connection between place, text, film, artwork and those individuals present. The selection of site and material were often charged one against the other – the context allowing each to be viewed imaginatively and in a different light.

In March 2012, the Workmen’s Boatclub in Clonmel hosted the first of these events, featuring artist Jennie Moran’s Hot Furniture and a screening of Joanna Billings’ This Is How We Walk On The Moon. The latter is a film that documents the story of a group of musicians who are invited to a coastal area in Scotland to be taught how to sail. This narrative of working and learning together somehow set the tone for

gatherings to come – which involved engaging with often challenging

All Places Are Distant From Heaven Alike takes its title directly

historical and philosophical texts, to share alternative perspectives,

from Robert Burton’s 1621 exploration of depression (often deemed

to navigate a way forward.

‘the twenty-first-century disease’) in The Anatomy Of Melancholy.

Headed by Sarah Lincoln, this journey took us to the Bolton

Exploring the library and its surrounds, the work was created out of

Library in Cashel for our next meeting, where we looked at excerpts

ideas of human resilience, of past knowledge, epochs and their

from Walter Benjamin’s A Thesis on the Philosophy of History and Jan

relevance today. The video reveals medieval manuscripts and bound

Verwoerts The Crisis of History. According to political theorist John

literature preserved and entombed in a silent space. The piece

Keane, “crisis periods… prompt awareness of the crucial importance

alternates between imagery of the interior of the library, a place of

of the past for the present. As a rule, crises are times during which the

reflection or stasis and the continuous movement of life outside in

living do battle for the hearts, minds and souls of the dead”.5

the exterior graveyard: views of open skies at dawn, cathedral

Considering the seemingly hopeless destruction of the twenty-first

structures pointing heavenward over earthy tombstones, dewy

century and the fallout after the economic catastrophe in 2008, there

foliage, birdsong and insects. In the seventeenth century, Burton

began to emerge a sense that this kind of meditation or supposition

posited the notion that we as human beings are always searching for

might somehow be cathartic in finding ways to face our future.

a ‘greater other’ an imagined place, rather than simply being happy in

Sitting among the vitrines of ancient manuscripts and artefacts, our

our immediate surroundings. A first edition volume of this work in

discourse led us to consider the potential value in uncovering silent

Old English is housed within the Bolton Library, as part of a unique

historical moments or the importance of finding new ways of

and little known collection of antiquarian books collected by

6

articulating our past. Verwoert argues that such ‘speculative histories’

Archbishop Theophilis Bolton from 1730 – 1744. The collection also

could provide us with “a counter narrative to the big epic narratives”7

includes pivotal works by Machiavelli, Dante, Swift and Erasmus. It

and that this could somehow lend us a more realistic or balanced

was the Archbishop’s stipulation that these books should never be

version of ourselves.

moved from Cashel.

Verwoert’s concept of ‘theatrical gesture’ provided an apt

The project was prevented from becoming an esoteric discourse

foundation for our next gathering at a movie theatre in Tipperary

through the willingness and generosity of the people of South

town in April.8 Congregating in this space, one that is used traditionally

Tipperary to facilitate and engage with ‘Dig Where You Stand’, as well

to transport us to fictional realms or to provide an escape from

as the curators who fostered those new connections. While aspects of

everyday life, we read through extracts from Fredric Jameson’s

the project were transient, the resulting publication exists as lasting

Archaeologies of the Future and Alan Weisman’s Earth Without People. We

evidence of this multi-faceted collaboration. This is reinforced

focused on “the potential utopias and the genre of science fiction… in

through an additional text by curator / writer Sean O’Sullivan, who

helping to re-vivify our imaginings of the future” and these texts led

also worked closely and intuitively with the ‘Dig Where You Stand’

us to contemplate the role of the imagination, desire and creative

team in its design and realisation.

freedom in activating real change for the future.

9

On a final meeting in July we gathered on the shores of Bay

While artist and writer Sarah Lincoln investigated a text and

Lough in The Vee. The purpose was to share ideas about the place and

related publication, curators Eilís Lavelle and Rosie Lynch were

also to launch this book. My memory and imagination was reignited

formulating how ‘Dig Where You Stand’ might exist through the

once again as Philippa Sutherland read a local folk story about the

structure of an exhibition. The resulting four-person show featured

area that I had heard often from my grandmother as a child.

work by both Irish and international artists and diverse approaches to

I grew up close to this place on a farm where the physical act of

talking about the progression of time, its residual effect and how this

digging, to cultivate the soil or in the retrieval of food was a

can be used to question the present moment.

commonplace activity. Albeit a different kind of ‘unearthing’, the

The exhibition was housed within the South Tipperary County

opportunity to contribute to ‘Dig Where You Stand’ brought with it a

Museum and was also titled ‘Dig Where you Stand’ (6 July – 28

renewed sense of purpose to my returning here – to work in my

September 2012); it pertinently incorporated the adjoining museum

native county this time as an artist. This was what felt like a

collection. Philippa Sutherland (Ireland) created a series of thoughtful

serendipitous offering, a chance as Heidegger puts it, ‘to remain, to

interventions within the museum, placing found objects and artworks

stay in a place’.

throughout the display and alongside specifically selected artefacts.

Bridget O’Gorman is a visual artist based in Cork and Tipperary.

The exhibition also presented poignant archival recordings of the only remaining speakers of a series of extinct or endangered languages in The Last Silent Movie (2007) by Susan Hiller (UK). Through lensbased media Swiss artist Uriel Orlow explores multiple perspectives of an incident on the Suez Canal in 1967, resulting in a fleet of cargo vessels being marooned there for eight years. Yellow Limbo (2011) and Anatopism (2011) are indicative of Orlow’s practice – researching quiet yet significant details in history that might otherwise remain hidden in a blind spot.

My contribution to the exhibition consisted of a metaphorical

www.digwhereyoustand.com

Notes 1. M Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’ 1951 in A Hofstadter (translated from German) Poetry, Language, Thought, 1971, Harper Colophon Books, New York 2. M Heidegger, 1951 3. S O’Leary, 2012, I‘ntroduction’ in S Lincoln (ed), Dig Where You Stand, South Tipperary Count Council, Tipperary 4. Eilís Lavelle, SarahLincoln, Rosie Lynch Dig Where You Stand statement, 2012 5. C Lorenz, 2010 U ‘ nstuck In Time’, in K Tilmans, F Van Vree F and Jay Winter (ed) Performing The Past – Memory, History & Identity in Modern Europe, AmsterdamUniversityPress 6. J Verwoert, 2006 ‘The Crisis of History’ in T Joyce and S Steiner (ed), Cork Caucus: on art, possibility and democracy, Revolver / National Sculpture Factory, Cork 7. J Verwoert, 2006 8. Ibid 9. S Lincoln, Dig Where You Stand, 2012, South Tipperary County Council, Tipperary

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

25

career development

Creating Work & Context Peter Richards tracks the development of his career as an artist, highlighting how he has combined this with his work as a curator. focus on being either an artist or a curator. To be honest, this isn’t a choice I feel I want or have to make. My dual role does complicate things at times. I was directed to the artfacts.net website a couple of years ago; the site charts artist’s world rankings in graph form. I searched my ranking, finding a graph indicating a steady decline – I suppose that this should have come as no great surprise! It would be interesting to see if the Golden Thread Gallery’s ranking had been raised proportionally.

Not too long after joining the Golden Thread Gallery, I moved from Flax Art Studios. Given the amount of time that I dedicate to the Golden Thread Gallery, it no longer suited me to have my studio within a collective space, which entailed shared responsibilities in relation to their programme. So I moved into Orchid Studios (coincidently, both studios are now in the same building, though they occupy different floors). The size of the space I have now is similar to the first space I had at Flax. At Orchid there are a smaller number of studios. They are all good spaces that are occupied by artists who have chosen to have their own space dedicated to their own projects.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t say hello or have some modest shared resources, but it is a different working environment and one that suits

Peter Richards, Cause of context: one and four trees, 2012

me now.

Admittedly, I don’t get to go the studio every day, but my practice has always involved periods of planning and research, followed by intense periods of realisation. For a number of years I made new work in response to exhibition opportunities. Typically, I fabricated a new camera as a part of each new project. Sometimes there was a live element as part of the opening, and on other occasions the audience became the subject of the work, or I invited them into the camera to Peter Richards, Artist as Subject: the Bankers in collaboration with Gerry Gleeson, 2010

I am both an artist based in Orchid Studios, Belfast and the Director of the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast. I’ve attempted to approach this text primarily as an artist. Throughout my career I have attempted to balance a relationship between making work and working with the work of other artists to create exhibitions. I was born in Cardiff in 1970 and grew up in Newport, where my art college education began.

Then, in 1991, after two years out dabbling in ‘attribute common coding’ and ‘independent financial advice’, I found my way back to art college and to Cardiff to study for a degree in Fine Art. Having based myself in the time-based area, headed by Anthony Howell, I worked my way through introductions to film, installation, performance, photography and video. The real appeal of this area was Thursday afternoons, when there was an opportunity to try things out and present them for peer review. I got to spend the majority of my second year in New Jersey, as part of an international student exchange programme. Most days I travelled into Manhattan, having my eyes opened further at spaces such as Thread Waxing on Lower Broadway, the Franklin Furnace and the Philip Morris temporary programme at the Whitney project space opposite Grand Central. It was time spent looking and experiencing, and I got to do a 16mm film course as well.

My final year in Cardiff was spent cutting up film, mostly old newsreel from the BBC Wales archive, and constructing slide dissolve performance works in an attempt to understand something of the relationship between the conceptual space and the physical experience of film. I was heavily into reading back issues of Screen, in particular issues from the early 1970s.

In 1994 I relocated to Belfast to continue my studies at the University of Ulster. I completed a part-time post-graduate diploma in 1996 and then enrolled later that year onto an MPhil titled ‘Representing Representations of Representations’, a research project centred on my understanding of performance art, its history and its mediation. I’d set out to question whether there was a history of performance art or just its mediation, given that my understanding was informed by Peggy Phelan’s observation that “performance’s only life is in the present. Performance cannot be saved, recorded, documented, or otherwise participate in the circulation of representations of representations: once it does, it becomes something other than performance”.1 Over two years, as part of my research, I created over 20 new performance / performance documentation works in venues across the UK, Ireland, North America and Canada.

witness the process.

Peter Richards, Reservations, 2009 / 2012

Throughout my practice I have worked with a range of

1996 was really the beginning of my formative years. I started to receive a bursary for the MPhil (and was able to sign-off) and it was in early 1996 that I joined the board / management committee of Catalyst Arts. At this time I first began to exhibit my work consistently; 2

I also moved into my first studio at Flax Art Studios.

3

My memory of what I had signed up for when I joined Catalyst was primarily the creation of opportunities for exciting emerging artists to show their work, to create the type exhibitions I wanted to have my work shown in. Catalyst Arts was a kind of live learning lab – a very ‘hands on’ job-training programme. The first project that I got to have a lead role on at Catalyst Arts was ‘Fix 96’, a 10-day-long timebased festival. Through conversations with the visiting / participating artists, I refined the subject of my own research project. At Catalyst I got to develop approaches to planning, budgeting, researching, and realise the importance of building networks.

At Flax Art Studios I had a great space – it was affordable, offered a range of shared resources, was big enough to house a purpose built walk-in pinhole camera and there were interesting artists and curators based there or visiting. I finished at Catalyst Arts in the summer of 1998, submitted my MPhil in 1999 and then had a couple of years working mostly in the studio. I exhibited widely during that time, taking part in a number of group shows, such as: 'the New Contemporaries', EV+A, the National Review of Live Art and ‘A Show About Time’ at Milch. I also started to develop bodies of works for solo exhibitions, such as: ‘Memorials’ at Belfast Exposed, ‘Cartoons’ at the Proposition Gallery and ‘Another Something Other’ at the Golden Thread Gallery.

In 2002, I took over the running of the Golden Thread Gallery.4 At first this was in a quite ad hoc manner – there were no other staff and only a modest amount of project funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. We now have four core members of staff and a variety of funding sources. Over the years I have developed a way of

collaborative approaches involving audiences, agreed participants and other invited artists, curators and writers. I suppose, in this way, there are strong parallels with my work at the Golden Thread. More often than not an aspect of my work is engaged with my understanding of authorship and this too carries over into my work within the gallery – and is undoubtedly informed by it. There have been occasions when I’ve been working on a project in the studio, that I’ve then abandoned in favour of curating an exhibition looking at the subject instead.

For my art practice, my dual role in fact brings many positives.

I’m able to test out my thinking with others in a variety forms, share problem solving, keep up-to-date and informed of what’s going on, be enthused by the energy and commitment of others and get plenty of experience of application writing / reporting, contracts, shipping, framing, insurances and all those other practical and production issues.

On the other hand, it does cause some confusion and can get in the way of opportunities. In recent years I’ve been more likely to meet visiting curators or galleries or to be out and about meeting / networking as the Director of the Golden Thread Gallery rather than as an artist. I think, apart from finding it more comfortable personally, it is more appropriate to be out there promoting artists from the region and to be playing matchmaker, than to start introducing my own practice at this time. As a result, as an artist I tend to work with curators and galleries that I have worked with previously, often going back to the late 1990s, early 2000s, or new contacts that don’t know that a I have a ‘day job’.

I see my career as an artist as being part of a practice that is completely interrelated. I’ve found that being able to provide clarity is important. So I now keep both separate and combined CVs, statements, biogs and portfolios at hand, ready to respond to various requests and opportunities. In short, I am now neither an artist nor a

balancing making my work; and working with the work of other

curator. I practice as both simultaneously.

artists. Having exhibited in a variety of public galleries and artist-run

Peter Richards is a belfast-based artist and Director of the Golden

projects, I’ve appropriated the best aspects of my experiences and

Thread Gallery.

adapted them to inform how we work with artists at the Golden Thread Gallery. Our approach has also been shaped in partnership with our principle funders and our strategic vision has developed as the gallery has grown.

Since taking on the role of Director the Golden Thread Gallery, it has been suggested that I should make my mind up and choose to

www.richardspeter.co.uk Notes 1. Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: the politics of performance, Routledge, London and New York 1993, 146 2. www.catalystarts.org.uk 3. www.flaxartstudios.com 4. www.goldenthreadgallery.co.uk

26

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

HOW IS IT MADE?

Ciara McMahon, 'Aesthetic Screening' forms, 2012, all images courtesy of the artist

Ciara McMahon, 'Aesthetic Screening', 2012

Doctor in the House ciara mcmahon dicusses her project 'the aesthetic screening clinic'.

"As day follows trivial day, the eye learns how to see, the ear learns how to hear, the body learns how to keep to rhythms. But the essential lies elsewhere. What is most important is to note that feelings, ideas, lifestyles and pleasures are confirmed in the everyday. Even, and above all, when exceptional activities have created them, they have to turn back towards everyday life to verify and confirm the validity of that creation. Whatever is produced or constructed in the superior realms of social practice must demonstrate its reality in the everyday, whether it be art, philosophy or politics.”1 In December 2011, I was invited to create a collaborative participatory work for the community arts festival, PhizzFest 2012. The work was to function within a group show entitled ‘Creative CheckUp’, curated

by Laragh Pittman. My art practice is both collaborative and participatory, and often uses conversation as a way of teasing out existential questions. The work manifests through a combination of installation, video, photography and ‘performanativity’. I came to art as a mature student; my primary degree was in medicine and I worked as a GP before retraining. I continue to work in general practice and (unsurprisingly) these two areas – art and medicine – influence each other in my praxis. For me, the potential for hybridity between disciplines within a work is intriguing.

So, in response to Laragh’s invitation, I found myself musing about what exactly ‘creative health’ is, which led me on to the semispurious notion of screening for ‘aesthetic health’, a concept which might allow me to push a point of contact between art and medicine, creating a work which would sit uncomfortably between the two.

Health screening is designed to ascertain and evaluate the health of a person in an attempt to assess their potential risk for ill health, so it made sense to appropriate and reconfigure the medical model of history-taking in health screening for a fine art setting. This is one of the basic skills that medical students learn: a ritualistic activity that frames and grounds the patient-doctor relationship. Typically, medical doctors organise a patient’s medical and social history into a series of subsections: presenting complaint, medical / surgical history, family history, social history, known allergies. The doctor will then move on to a physical (sensory) examination and hopefully come up with a treatment plan. I anticipated that the screening consultations would follow this well-worn path.

However, thinking about screening brought me to a brick wall.

Medically, I have a sense of what ill health is and how to screen for it.

But despite bracketing the wider philosophical debates of what constitutes aesthetics per se, I realised that I had no working definition of what an aesthetic experience is, let alone how to define aesthetic health, ill or otherwise. Attempting to define aesthetic health is, perhaps, a highly suspect scientific goal but in the spirit of a good medical case study, it became obvious that I needed a control population to provide a sense of the ‘norm’ for the project. So, I undertook a vox pop, asking acquaintances, friends and strangers for single-line responses to the question “How do you define something as an aesthetic experience?” The broad range of replies appeared to have little in common with each other, apart from the frequent reference to a subjective intensity of experience. To my surprise, the vox pop suggested that the aesthetic screening consultation focus on this experiential intensity. The shift represented a move from quantitative to qualitative data. This realisation led me to look at research done by cognitive psychologists into peak aesthetic

experience. These provided a vocabulary to discuss these experiences, which tend to be singularly resistant to specificities of language.

I now had a) a model for taking an oral aesthetic history and b) a conceptual framework for aesthetic experience in all its forms. All that was left was the physical examination, which raised the contentious question “How necessary – if at all – are our senses for aesthetic experiences?” Given my romantic attachment to a phenomenological approach in both art and medicine, I drew up a series of simple screening tests to facilitate discussion on the role of sensory experience in aesthetic experience. Participants would be offered screenings that I could perform easily, with minimal invasion of privacy, which might also be fun: colour vision screening and taste / vibrational sense testing, for example.

I knew that this work would be sited in a single office inside a disused TSB building without natural light – not unlike many doctors’ surgeries. This nullified my concerns about visual and auditory privacy during the consultation. In the room there was a formal office desk, two chairs, a table with needles and syringes, an aesthetic screening history form and various pieces of medical paraphernalia. To push the surreal or disorientating nature of the space a little further, the walls were dressed with blank tea paper.

Once ready, the Aesthetic Screening Clinic (ASC)2 was open for formal surgeries during the weeklong show. A receptionist at the desk outside booked appointments in advance. I was aware that at times the installation space would be empty so I installed a two-track audio installation to run outside of clinic hours. This consisted of voices competing for the listener’s attention by listing the statements provided in the vox-pop and the elements of a peak aesthetic experience as defined by cognitive psychologists. Overall, the installation had a low tech feel.

Appointments lasted 15 – 30 minutes. Wearing a white coat, I commenced by inviting participants to talk about – in aesthetic terms – past experiences, family history, presenting concerns and allergies. Next we discussed how cognitive psychologists analyse peak aesthetic moments. I then described my own aesthetic experiences and encouraged participants to discuss theirs as we sought a common understanding of the issues raised by the ASCs. Participants were then offered the sensory physical screening tests mentioned above. We discussed further the role of our sensory faculties in aesthetic experiences and, by inference, aesthetic health.

Finally, we talked about the negotiation of an aesthetic prescription.

I wrote these out but participants themselves were invited to decide what the prescription should in fact be. Naturally, each consultation was different and the conversations moved erratically back and forth depending on the thoughts, ideas or aesthetic background of the participant.

A conversational work like this only exists (quite literally) when both parties commit to the exchange. This commitment creates a potential space, the qualities of which are completely dependent on the level of trust and engagement both parties bring to the work. An atmosphere of trust is vital to genuine exchange. Such trust demands an awareness of the ethical dilemmas arising from a conversationbased work where, potentially, highly personal experiences are shared. It was important that conversations remained undocumented and that participants left the consultation room with both the prescription we had agreed on and any notes I made during our consultation process. Thus, I don’t have an exact record of the

Ciara McMahon, 'Aesthetic Screening', 2012

discussions. However, participants commonly cited a lack of time – being busy, stressed or overwhelmed by their work and home commitments – as the single biggest limit on aesthetic engagement with their surroundings. Clearly, they came low on the long list of demands on participants’ time. The majority of participants noted that their parents had actively encouraged their involvement in cultural activities. Past personal aesthetic histories ranged widely; some participants were cultural producers themselves but many were not. Aesthetic allergies included: poorly-thought-out public architectural planning, incomprehensible contemporary art, chintz ornaments or the sound of chalk on a board. Prescriptions were likewise diverse but included: spending one hour a week ‘slow’ gardening, walking the rain once a fortnight or reading a novel uninterrupted for 30 minutes twice weekly.

The ASC process was offered seriously on my part but I was acutely aware that the very concept of aesthetic health screening is deeply problematic. In health screening, the assumption is that if ill health can be ruled out then the subject is likely to be healthy. Within medicine, most population screening tests require a high level of specificity and sensitivity to allow the sample population to be subdivided into appropriate groups, eg this person might have colonic cancer but this person is unlikely to have it. The problem with such tests is the financial and emotional cost, particularly if they yield inaccurate results. Thus, including aesthetic health screening means opening a can of worms. Who isn’t a little uncertain about their aesthetic engagement with life? Surely it is such a subjective experience that developing a sensitive screening questionnaire is virtually impossible?

Secondly, when we screen for something, we hand authority over to the test, the screener etc to prognosticate. And while engagement with sensory and intellectual stimuli is important for our health, I am nervous about deferral of authority regarding aesthetic engagement to another practitioner. I felt uncomfortable at times during the ASC consultations where the potential for projection of such power was present. Nonetheless, perhaps by talking about aesthetics in a consultation, some tentative conclusions could be drawn about another person’s mental health. Whether such a consultation could constitute a statistically significant screening process, with all the implications that entails, is highly debatable.

The conversations I had with participants discussing aesthetics of the everyday were genuinely revelatory. The clinics were heavily booked and participants were keen to talk about their understanding of aesthetics. Again and again participants openly discussed how peak aesthetic moments had played an important role in their lives.

Obviously this was a self-selected group and it’s impossible to draw wider inferences from these conversations, but it became clear that, despite the prevalence of such moments in our lives, the jury remains very much out on exactly what constitutes a meaningful aesthetic experience and, perhaps, how to publicly facilitate the occurrence of such experiences.

Ciara McMahon is a practising artist and GP who has recently established DeAppendix exhibition space and artist residency programme co-located with a GP surgery in Blackrock, Co Dublin. www.amarantafamilypractice.com www.ciaramcmahon.wordpress.com Notes 1. Henri Lefebvre, ‘Clearing the Ground, Johnstone’ in The Everyday: Documents of Contemporary Art, Stephen (ed), Whitechapel Gallery and MIT Press, London, 2008 2. This work was commissioned by Laragh Pittman ‘Creative Check Up’ as part of PhizzFest 2012 (www.phizzfest.ie/2012), and received the Arts Council funding via the Arts and Health strand.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

27

project profile

Productive Perambulators

nineteenth-century Paris, city gardens, the department store and the

Michelle Browne discusses some of the initial outcomes of ‘Walking (with a buggy) in the City: A Research Project in the Public Realm’.

Elizabeth Wilson notes, “bourgeois consumerism invaded the public

shopping mall became the domain of bourgeois women; being seen on the street at that time was to put ones ‘virtue’ into question. As sphere, and the very spaces that were permitted to respectable women were in many cases devoted to purchase and sale”.7 There is an interesting correlation here with current practices as many of the mothers felt that their needs are being catered for more in the peripheral shopping centre, with seating, changing facilities, space and a sense of safety and welcome not present in city centre quarters.

Jan Gehl, in his book New City Life, based on his study of the city of Copenhagen, speaks of a changing use of the city. He notes that those choosing to come to the city centre are now going specifically to experience the city.8 Where does this leave the mother? How does society allow for the comfort of families within the city so they too can partake in this urban experience? It was also noted by many of

Baby on Board meeting, the Lab, Dublin

the participants that there was a distinct lack of welcome in some city centre restaurants and cafés (the ultimate location for Flânuerie), which also changed the places they frequented and the type of experience they would have. Even in city centre locations, department stores seemed like the obvious choice when wheeling a baby due to the space and facilities they provide.

Alongside the discussion-based research, I have also undertaken individual walks with mothers, mapping the route using GPS mapping apps for smartphones. Discussing their particular route and the choices they make along their route has garnered some interesting information on a variety of locations in the city. Often, it is also the interactions with other members of the public that have struck me.

Michelle Browne Walking (with a buggy) in the City, research image.

Michelle Browne Walking (with a buggy) in the City, research image.

Erving Goffman writes, in Embodied Information in Face to Face Interaction, “Each individual can see that he is being experienced in

"What is missing from the current debate about the demise of public

The female role in the city is something that has been written

space is an awareness of the loss of architecture’s power to represent

about in great depth by Elizabeth Wilson in The Sphinx in the City,

the public as a living, acting, and self-determining community. Instead

which looks at nineteenth-century Paris onward. This period brought

the debate focuses almost exclusively on the physical space of public appearance, without regard for the social action that can make the

the advent of the flâneur: the male urban wanderer. I am interested in relating my work to the feminist discourse around this.2 The existence

environment come alive or change its meaning."

of the female version of the flâneur – the flâneuse – has been widely

S Torre in The City Cultures Reader, Miles and Hall (ed), Routledge, London

My practice has always been involved with the use of the city. I am interested in how the design and provision of the built environment impacts on the way we live. I have worked with cyclists, commuters, teenagers, older people and a variety or professionals working in fields relating to the design of the city, to develop artworks relating to the their experience of it. Much of my work has been developed site specifically and through performative methods to explore our relationship to the spaces we inhabit in our everyday lives.

As the mother of a small child I have been struck by the changing nature of my engagement with the city. Where I once took to the streets by bicycle, I now wheel my child in a buggy through the city centre, ducking and diving, swerving and manoeuvring through the heaving mass that is the pedestrian flow. I am interested in the buggy as another vehicle in the city and the skills and provisions that are needed to allow for a smooth journey through the centre. As a new mother I am interested in how I have quickly learned the way of the buggy and how I am now adept at moving at a quick pace through a crowd without hitting anyone and still get to my destination on time. The ‘urbanist’ William H Whyte, in his book City: Rediscovering the Centre writes of “the skilled pedestrian”: “He is really extraordinary

debated among the critics. Writers like Janet Wolf and Virginia Pollock claim that she can’t exist, because she can’t show the same behaviour as the flâneur, wandering aimlessly around town. Deborah Parsons and Anne Friedberg argue, however, that the flâneuse does exist, but in a different form than the flâneur: “The flâneuse was simply not noticed by male history writers.”3 Through this research, I want to think particularly about the relationship of the flâneur to mothers and their buggies. There are a whole series of changes to the way one is viewed in the city. You no longer can take the position of an invisible presence in the city; you are out there, part of society, in a new and sometimes uncomfortable way. From pregnancy onwards you protrude into space in a way previously not part of your experience. With a buggy you take up three times more space and are often louder and more in need of help than your individual counterpart. This idea of space and need is quite important in that your needs are different. Meeting with the group this became very apparent. During round table discussions, the group highlighted their changing needs; where they once would have spent a lot of time in city centre areas, there is a distinct move to other quieter spaces with wider paving, even if it is less attractive or lacks the same atmosphere of the city.

There are two considerations that arise from this information.

in the subtleties of his movements, signals and feints… crossing patterns and averted collisions”.1 I like to think of myself as a skilled

The first points to the fact that many of the needs of mothers and

urban parent who has adapted to my changing use of the city.

Bodies, Disability and Spaces: “In disability theory, a second usage of

I was fortunate to receive funding through the Art Council’s Artist in the Community Scheme for researching the potential to develop an artwork around these concerns, working with the Baby on Board group that meets at Dublin City Council Arts Office, the LAB. The group was formed during the run of my solo show at the LAB gallery in 2011 following conversations with Arts Officer and curator of the LAB, Sheena Barrett, into ways of attracting new audiences to the gallery. Baby on Board is an open group with some consistent members and new members joining all the time. The group profile included a lot of artists, many of whom found that conventional mother and baby groups didn’t provide the support they sought at this time of change. For several of the artists, their ability to move through the city, make decisions about their schedule independent of others, network late at night and have quiet research time were eliminated without a clear ‘maternity leave’ schedule cut off point around these dramatic changes. The group is largely made up of city dwellers and all are women.

buggies also relate to those with disabilities. Peter Freund writes in disability emerges – a restriction on activity generated by an impairment transformed by a particular socio-cultural context into a disability… more non-disabled people are coming to see that people with disabilities do not constitute an other. In a sense, many individuals have ‘deviant’ bodies that are not easily accommodated in ‘standard’ spatial arrangements. It is possible to arrive at a tentative… context bound… insight into how various cultural norms and sociomaterial environments can be disabling.”4 The female body with its buggy appendage can be seen as part of this temporary impairment when confronted with narrow streets, with paths that are not wide enough to push a child on, or paving that does not have dips for wheels when crossing the road.5 As a result, places like the city’s cultural quarter, Temple Bar, are seen by many of the participants as no go areas.

The second consideration is the move outward to large shopping centres by mothers who are looking for ease of access and safety.6 In

some way and he will guide at least some of this conduct according to the perceived identity and initial response of his audience”.9 This is particularly noticeable when with a baby, as there is often positive and negative attention directed at mother and buggy. Many of the participants talk of how they find themselves talking to people more, as the child is often a catalyst for conversation. But there is also the flip side, with many people feeling inconvenienced by the presence of this vehicle and the pace and space that is taken by mother and child.

Any notion of remaining an aloof observer of society becomes impossible.

The research continues as I write, and I plan to undertake further analysis of routes and experiences. I see this work as part of what Teddy Cruz calls “citizenship as a creative act”. I am interested in this intersection between life and artistic practice and how this can relate to the wider experience of the city. Through this socially engaged practice I am working towards “new critical interfaces between research, artistic intervention, and the production of the city”.10 Furthermore, through my work with Dublin City Council I hope to effect some change in the thinking behind the design of city centre locations with an eye to the particular experience of women and their children.11 As Freund write in Bodies, Disability and Spaces: "Once people shift focus from their bodies and their capacities, and see such capacities linked to the organisation of the spaces they utilise, their attendant mode of being in space, and how they relate to it, changes. Resistance then becomes possible. Inhospitable spaces can become a focal point of resistance."

Michelle Browne is a Dublin-based artist who works in performance. www.michellebrowne.net Notes 1. W Whyte, City: Rediscovering the Center, Doubleday, New York, 1988, 3 2. The term flâneur comes from the French noun flâneur, which has the basic meanings of ‘stroller’, ‘lounger’, ‘saunterer’, ‘loafer’. The flâneur was, first of all, a literary type from nineteenth-century France, essential to any picture of the streets of Paris. It carried a set of rich associations: the man of leisure, the idler, the urban explorer, the connoisseur of the street. It was Walter Benjamin, drawing on the poetry of Charles Baudelaire, who made him the object of scholarly interest in the twentieth century as an emblematic figure of urban, modern experience. G Shaya, ‘The Flâneur, the Badaud, and the Making of a Mass Public in France, circa 1860-1910’ American Historical Review 109, 2004, par 10a 3. A Van Nes and T M Nguyen, ‘Gender Differences in the Urban Environment: The Flâneur and Flâneuse of the 21st Century’ www.sss7.org 4. M Fraser and M Greco (ed), The Body: A Reader, Routledge, Oxon, 2005, 182 5. Such design features make up part of what is know as ‘Universal Design’: “Universal Design is the design and composition of an environment so that it can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people regardless of their age, size, ability or disability” www. universaldesign.ie 6. Mothers also spend more time in parks on the periphery of the city, which most would not have frequented before motherhood. Similarly, in nineteenth-century Paris, the city gardens and parks were also places where women could promenade in safety and away from ‘moral danger’ 7. E Wilson, The Sphinx In The City, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1991 8. J Gehl, et al, New City Life, The Danish Architectural Press, Copenhagen, 2006 9. M Fraser and M Greco, (ed), The Body: Reader Routledge, Oxon, 2005, 83 10. T Cruz, ‘Democratizing Urbanization and the Search for a New Civic Imagination’ in Living As Form Socially Engaged Art from 1991-2011 N Thompson (ed), Creative Times Books, New York, 2012, 6 11. I am currently artist advisor on the design team for the Grafton Street Quarter Improvement Plan

28

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Opportunities competitions the digital hub The digital hub is holding a competition to design a new banner image for the website’s homepage.

With a diverse audience and wide access, the website is a great platform to showcase design skills.

The person / organisation that designs the best banner each month will be awarded €300. All specifications and details about the competition can be found on the website.

Deadline 5.30pm 30 November Web www.thedigitalhub.com Email exhibit@thedigitalhub.com

print, drawing, performance,

contemporary art. The symposi-

Deadline

ing, please send information on

and upcoming talent to showcase

sculpture, glass, metal and plas-

um will take place on 1 – 11 Aug.

29 March

craft practice, website and images

at the event that will take place

tics. The Open West 2013 will

On 10 Aug, an exhibition will be

Web

to the email below.

on 23 – 25 Aug. Interested indi-

tour two venues: Newark Park (6

held showing the results of the

www.signalartscentre.ie

Email

viduals and companies can sub-

Jul – 18 Aug) and Cheltenham

symposium, which will be open

sarahbracken@hotmail.com

mit as many proposals as they

(25 Aug – 22 Sep). Four award

until 31 Aug. The symposium is

the dillon gallery

Web

like in any art medium eg visual

winners will each be offered

an opportunity to work with

The Dillon Gallery is seeking sub-

www.brackensarah.com

art, literature, dance, music,

£500. Full application details on

your own artistic project as well

missions from artists willing to

Telephone

drama, or cultural activities eg

website.

as expanding your networks. The

contribute to an open submis-

0879720 639

crafts, baking, history. Please

Deadline

focal point of this project is the

sion exhibition in Nov / Dec.

2 April

artist’s work in a public space,

Email

linking the audience and the

www.theopenwest.org.uk

Emerging and established artists

activity in submission, and also

will be represented. Interested

The Mill Cove Gallery are look-

the duration of event, maximum

work place. Apart from Aabenraa,

artists should review our website

ing for entries for the Irish

numbers per class, age require-

there will also be town spaces in

and submit a current CV, short

Sculpture Awards, an open sub-

ments, budget, or any other

aesthetica

Tinglev, Padborg, and Flensborg.

exhibition proposal and images

mission exhibition for indoor

requirements. With submission,

Aesthetica Short Film Festival

Closing date for participation in

of recent work. Post or email

and outdoor sculpture. For more

please attached a recent CV. For

2013 is now open for entries.

Aabenraa Artweek is 2 Apr, upon

applications.

information and details on enter-

further inquiries please contact

ASFF allows for both budding

which a professional art jury will

Web

ing visit website.

Anna via email.

and established filmmakers to

select the participants on 2 May.

www.culturlann.ie

Deadline

Deadline

connect with worldwide audi-

Deadline

Email

30 March

28 March

ences and interact with some of

2 April

prionsias@culturlann.ie

Web

Email

the biggest personalities in the

Web

Address

www.millcovegallery.com

feilecarraigarts@gmail.com

film industry today. Over 200

www.artweek.dk

Visual Arts Panel, Dánlann Dillon,

films will be screened at the event York from 7 – 10 Nov. In addition to great exposure, the winner will

Changchun is now seeking sculptors

for

the

14th

residencies / studio exchanges

China

Changchun

(Nong’an)

International

Sculpture

Symposium. 20 sculptors will spend 40 days in Nong’an county, Changchun, China to take part in the sculpture symposium, working with the theme ‘yellow dragon culture’ – the glamour of an ancient town through sculpture.

The purpose of this event is to improve Nong’an County’s urban cultural taste, expand influence and popularity at home and abroad, accumulate urban culture intension and perfect the county’s investment environment so as to further economic development. The organising committee will review all proposals. Once a proposal is accepted, the artist will receive an official invitation to Nong’an to create the sculpture on site from early Aug – Sept. Accepted sculptors will be provided with free fights, free accommodation and a budget of $3,000. Information on proposal submissions are available on the website and via email.

Deadline 10 April Web www.en.changchun.gov.cn Email cccsculture@163.com open west The Open West is an annual open competition and exhibition inviting work from national and international artists practicing contemporary and conceptual art.

Submissions can include painting, installation, film and sound, textile, photography, ceramics,

Telephone

Cultúrlann, 216 Bóthar na bhFál,

irish ceramic awards

An Cheathrú Ghaeltachta, Béal

Call for submissions for the Irish

Feirste, BT 15 5DH

Ceramic Awards 2013. The Mill Cove Gallery continues to pro-

black church print

mote and highlight the excel-

at a number of other UK festivals.

Waterford Healing arts

Black Church Print Studio invite

lence and diversity of Irish ceram-

The People’s Choice winner will

The Waterford Healing Arts Trust

submissions for ‘Circulation’, an

ics with the aim to present the

receive £250. A shortlist of final-

(WHAT) invites artists to apply

exhibition to be held at both

artworks to a wider audience and

ists will be included on the ASFF

for its 2013 Artist-in-Residence

Monster Truck Gallery and

to promote the ceramic artists in

Sampler DVD, which will be dis-

programme. The successful artist

FLOOD in Aug 2013. Curated by

Ireland. For more information

tributed with the Dec issue of

will produce a body of work for

Paul McAree, the exhibition will

and details on entering visit web-

Aesthetica magazine. Finalists

exhibition in Waterford Regional

focus on ideas around modes of

site.

will also be included in an edito-

Hospital and engage part of the

‘production’ and ‘distribution’,

Deadline

rial feature in the magazine.

patient population of the hospi-

with a particular interest in art-

4 May

Entry fee: £15.

tal in a collaborative arts project.

ists whose work uses an economy

Web

Deadline

WHAT sets out to engage hospi-

of means to question and look at

www.millcovegallery.com

31 May

tal users in contemporary art

social or political themes. The

Web

practice, enhance the environ-

exhibition will involve artists

sculpture in context

www.asff.co.uk

ment of Waterford Regional

who use accessible and cheap

Sculpture in Context Annual

Hospital and offer opportunities

means of production eg leaflets,

Open Exhibition 2013 will be

i-park environmental art

to emerging artists for profes-

photocopies, posters, printmak-

held at the National Botanic

The I-Park Foundation (East

sional development within a

ing, flyers and collage, to look at

Gardens, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.

Haddam, CT / USA) is pleased to

healthcare context. The residency

and subvert an approach to social

The exhibition will run from 5

announce its fourth internation-

programme has accommodated a

or political issues while at the

Sep – 18 Oct. Entry forms and

al,

multi-disciplinary

range of art forms including visu-

same time displaying an aware-

conditions of entry are available

Environmental Art Biennale to

al arts, music, writing and dance

ness of and relationship to art

for print on website. Typed, A4

be held on 21 September 2013.

since its inception. The success-

historical practices. No work will

proposals with entry form and

The event will be preceded by an

ful artist will receive a studio

be refused and every proposed

appropriate fee should reach pro-

onsite residency. I-Park is seeking

space for a six-month period in

work will be displayed. Fee: £15.

vided address on or before 12 Apr.

original, site-responsive projects

the WHAT Centre for Arts and

Deadline

Artists will be informed whether

from the following fields: visual

Health, a small bursary and mate-

5pm 5 April

their work has been selected or

arts, music / sound, sculpture,

rials budget, and the opportunity

Web

not. Any enquiries regarding the

performance, moving image /

for a solo exhibition.

www.print.ie

exhibition should be directed to

photography, architecture, land-

Deadline

scape / garden design, language

2pm 13 March

craft book submissions

members, and not to the National

arts and inter-disiplinary practice.

Web

Sarah Bracken is in search of five

Botanic Gardens staff.

Successful applicants will be

www.waterfordhealingarts.com

Irish crafters to feature in a book

Deadline

on contemporary craft. The book

12 April

focuses on new contemporary

Web

twists to crafting but does not

www.sculptureincontext.com

neglect traditional craft. Each

Telephone

crafter will be interviewed and

Ana 0876258258 or Beatrice 086

receive £500 as well as screenings

sculpture symposium

include an outline of proposed mill cove gallery

in 15 locations across the city of

international opportunities

March – April 2013

awarded an artists fee of $2,000 as well as limited transport reimbursement. Entry fee: $30. To access the online submission sys-

opportunities ireland

tem and for further details please

Sculpture in Context Committee

visit website.

signal arts centre

studio spaces will be visited. Each

8942851

Deadline

Signal Arts Centre is currently

crafter will also be asked to pro-

Address

1 April

accepting submissions for their

vide a short ‘how to’ tutorial to go

Sculpture in Context, PO Box

Web

second Short Film Fest. The 10

alongside their section of the

10054, Dublin 16

www.i-park.org

shortlisted films will be screened

book. Bracken is also looking for

at the Mermaid in Bray on Wed

one craft workshop in Ireland to

feile carraig arts

aabenraa art week

22 May. A professional panel will

feature in the book – it can be

Feile Carraig Arts and Culture are

Aabenraa Artweek is presenting

award prizes for the top three

glass blowing / weaving or some-

currently programming events

Danish and international visual

films. The winning film will be

thing completely new. Bracken

for its annual festival in Carrigart

artists with the opportunity to

shown on 3e. For application

will attend each workshop and

and the surrounding locality in

apply for and take part in a 10-day

details please visit the website.

record her experience in the

Donegal. Feile Carraig Arts and

book. If interested in participat-

Culture are in search of new ideas

international symposium for

0877698653

studios / space a4 towers A4 Towers want to expand their space to enable access to facilities for more artists and build a greater community. On 1 Feb they started a new type of membership which includes access to facilities, opportunities to exhibit, organise events, hold workshops / classes, access to the online A4 forum to collaborate with other artists, musicians, etc.

With a maximum of 30 places, get in touch via email or contacts page to ensure a membership, a viewing time may also be arranged via these details. Fee: €50 per month to cover cost of materials, bills, rent and new equipment.

Email a4sounds@gmail.com Web www.a4sounds.org Address A4 Sounds, 19 Mountail Avenue, Harold’s Cross, Dublin 6 richmond road Richmond Road Studios are currently looking for new studio members. Our spaces are approximately 12 x 14ft and are affordable and secure. There is also ample free parking available.

Please forward your CV and images of your work.

Contact Maeve Brennan Email richmondroadstudios@gmail. com Address Richmond Road Studios, Fairview, Dublin 3 studio space exchange Artist looking for free studio

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

29

opporTuNiTieS space in exchange for providing

previous

course

participant.

weekly print-based workshop.

Email

Email

Aimed at people wishing to fur-

Will either provide free work-

lindacondon1@hotmail.com

obriencolette1@hotmail.com

ther their photographic skills,

shop to other studio based artists

Web

Web

this course focuses on the history

or use earnings from workshop to

www.screenexpressions.com

www.coletteobrienartist.com

of contemporary photography,

pay for studio space. Willing to

Telephone

Telephone

studio sessions, street photogra-

negotiate. Please contact via

0872865020

086691443 or 0568830720

phy, and a review of participants

email.

Address

Email

Coast Guard Cultural Centre,

Print block

tutor team. Louise Smyth will be

margot_quinn@hotmail.com

Tramore, Co Waterford

Print Block in Dublin, Cork Street

running a course focusing on

offer a six-metre textile printing

young people – Using Your

Slane StuDioS

black church Print

table with registration bar, wash

Digital Camera – on 6, 13 and 21

Converted studios to let, situated

Black Church Print Studio’s

out room, dark room, acetates

Apr from 11am – 2pm. 12 places

on Crookedwood farm in the cen-

Winter / Spring programme of

and printer, exposure unit and

available. Fee: £100. Aimed at

tre of the Boyne Valley, suitable

printmaking courses and work-

dry area, with technical assist-

young people aged 12 – 18, this

for numerous activities ie work-

shops has been running since Jan

ance if required. Print Block’s

course will give participants an

shops, creative writing, music,

and will finish in Apr. Including

open access day facilitates inde-

introduction to their camera’s

drama, art or dance classes.

screenprint, etching, lithographic

pendent access to the studio for

manual controls, getting to know

Central location – on the main

and linoprint techniques, the pro-

users with some printing experi-

the potential of their camera as

road between Slane and Navan –

gramme includes a range of

ence. Binder and emulsion not

well as taking the hit and miss

enables access to the M2, M3 and

courses suitable for all level of

included in fee but available to

out of picture taking.

M50 motorways, with Dublin

skill, from the novice to the pro-

buy on the day. Limited number

Email

Airport a 40-minute drive and

fessional. To book please email or

of screens available (four per ses-

training@belfastexposed.org

Dublin City Centre 59 minutes

telephone.

sion) so please reserve a place via

Web

away. Operated on an hourly /

Contact

email, including your full name,

www.belfastexposed.org

daily rate.

Rachel Gilbourne

address and contact details.

Web

Email

Participants with own screens

art theraPy

www.slanestudios.com

info@print.ie

please bring along. Dates of avail-

Klaus Klier is holding a number

Telephone

Web

ability are Sat, 6 Apr from 10.30am

of art therapy workshops in

086312 872

www.print.ie

– 4.30pm and Sat, 11 May from

Dublin City Centre. From 28 Mar

Address

Telephone

10.30am – 4.30pm. Fee: €65.

– 16 May, an introductory evening

Slane Studios, Slane, Meath

016773629

Email

course entitled Steps into Art

printblockstudio@gmail.com

Therapy will run, made up of

work from the Belfast Exposed

Dcc StuDio SPace SP

Fire Staton

Dublin City Council's Arts Office

Fire Station Artists’ Studios are

national Print MuSeuM

anyone interested in art therapy.

is please to make this open call to

running a number of digital

On 9 Mar, the National Print

Four Saturday introductory work-

Irish and international artists and

media workshops from Mar – Jun.

Museum is running a Linocut

shops on 13 and 17 Apr and two

arts organisations who are inter-

Advanced Audio Post-Production

Printmaking workshop, taught

open dates, entiltled Saturday Art

ested in suggesting projects or

(22 and 23 Mar), fee: €70 / €80

by Caroline Byrne, which will

Group Therapy will take place

applying for the use of artist resi-

with

iMac.

examine the techniques of relief

for those interested in art therapy.

dential studios.

Introduction to User-Friendly

printmaking using the lino block.

Art Therapy meets Goethean

Deadline

Web Design (12 and 13 Apr), fee:

Over the day (10.30am – 4.30pm)

Science will take place on 27

5pm 29 March

€70 / €80 with Fire Station iMac.

transferring the image to the

April from 10.30am – 4.30pm.

Web

Using DSLR HD Cameras and a

block, use of tools, inking up and

This workshop will comprise a

www.artresidenciesdublin.com

look into Final Cut Pro X (11

printing on the press will be dem-

small group with a maximum of

May), fee: €40. Beginners Guide

onstrated. Individual tuition will

eight people, suitable for anyone

PowerScourt townhouSe

to Audio Recording and Editing

follow as students go on to pro-

who wants to discover nature

The Powerscourt Townhouse

(14 and 15 Jun), fee: €70 / €80

duce their own plates. Blind

through imagination. For further

Centre is please to announce the

with Fire Station iMac.

Embossing, a technique which

information please include the

availabilty of exhibition space in

Email

lends itself to the relief plate, will

course name you wish to enquire

the centre of the building. There

artadmin@firestation.ie

also be discussed and students

about and send via email or text.

is a particular interest in the pro-

Web

will be encouraged to incorpo-

Email

motion of photography, interior

www.firestation.ie

rate this into their work. Limited

klaur.klier@yahoo.com

architecture, fashion and textiles.

Telephone

places available (maximum of

Telephone

Proposals will be accepted from

018069010

six) so booking is essential. Fee:

0863734662

both amateur and established

Adress

€70.

groups. If you are interested in

Firestation Artists’ Studios,

Web

DatajournaliSM

viewing the space please contact

11 Buckingham Street Lower,

www.nationalprintmuseum.ie

Recyclism Hacklab is hosting an

Ciara via email.

Dublin 1

Fire

small groups and be suitable for

Station

Email info@powerscourtgallery.com

CourSeS / TrAiNiNG / WorKSHopS Screen Printing Coast Guard Cultural Centre, Tramore is offering a screen printing workshop on 7 – 8 Mar from 6pm – 9pm, and 10 Mar from 10am – 4.30pm. Small groups of students will work with a fine art screen printer in an encouraging atmosphere. Booking is recommended.

investigative

datajournalism

belFa F St exPoSeD Fa

workshop, led by Dave Young on

MoDern MoSaic

Belfast Exposed is offering vari-

19 Apr, from 10am – 4.30pm. In

Modern Mosaic workshop with

ous training courses throughout

this workshop, participants will

Micro Mosaic Master Saad R

Mar, Apr and May. Chris Barr will

learn how to use processing to

Mikhaiel. Two workshops are on

run the first course – Using Your

explore a database and create a

offer, both for a duration of five

Digital Camera – on 9, 16 and 23

useful visualisation that might

days. A Portrait Mosaic workshop

Mar from 11am – 2pm. 12 places

expose new insights into the

will take place between 5 – 9 Aug,

available. Fee: £125 or £100 if

dataset. Participants will work

from 10am - 5pm, and a Landscape

previous

participant.

with a database of donations

/ Abstract Mosaic workshop will

Aimed at beginners, this course

given to the Irish political parties

run from 12 –16 August, from

will introduce your camera’s

from 1997 – 2008. A laptop is

10am - 5pm. Fee: €800 per work-

manual controls and give an

required to partake in this course.

shop including materials and

understanding of your camera’s

Online booking mandatory. Fee:

lunch. For more information con-

potential. Barr will also run the

€65, non refundable. Please visit

tact Colette by email or tele-

second course – Developing Your

website for further information.

phone, or visit her website. To

Practice – on 11, 18, 25 Apr, and 2

Web

view Saad's work, please visit

May from 6pm – 9pm. 12 places

www.hacklab.recyclism.com

www.saad-mosaic.com.

available. Fee: £150 or £100 if

course

professional development training & events 2013 for more information or to register visit: northern ireland www.visualartists.org.uk/services/professionaldevelop www.visualartists.org.uk/services/professionaldevelop-ment/current republic of ireland www.visualartists.ie/education/register-for-our-events/

rePublic oF irelanD DuBliN

installation Skills for visual artists Digital Media with angela halliday Wed 1 May (10.30 - 16.30) @VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 €80 / €40 (VAI members) 10 places Issues relating to exhibiting mediabased installations, including best practices, planning, equipment and technical concerns

costing and Pricing your work with Patricia clyne-kelly In partnership with Dún LaoghaireRathdown County Council Thurs 7 Mar (18.00 -– 20.00) 20 – 25 places Free @ Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, Marine Road, Dun Laoghaire An introduction to basic financial accounting to assist artists with money matters Follow-up clinic - Projects and Proposals with eilis lavel and helen carey Wed 13 Mar (day-long session) @VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 Cost: €100 / €55 (VAI Members) 8 places (fully booked) Follow up session intended as an opportunity to meet and hear about each others work development following clinic writingabout your work with kerry Mccall In partnership with the Crafts Council of Ireland @ VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 €80 / €40 (VAI & CCoI Members) Thurs 18 April (10.30 - 16.30) 12 places Writing about your work for publicity and marketing purposes installation Skills for visual artists - traditional Media with gillian Fitzpatrick Thurs 25 April (10.30 - 15.00) @ VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 €80 / €40 (VAI members) @ VAI Spaces: 10 This workshop is aimed at artists with an interest in developing installation skills and knowledge

northern irelanD BelFAST Projects & Proposals clinic with Marianne o'kane-boal and Peter richards Wed 24 April (10.30 – 16.30) £40 / £20 (VAI members) 10 places @ Digital Artists Studios

'a year in the Field': a Public art case Study with christine Mackey artist & hans visser (biodiversity officer Fingal county council) With assistance from Fingal County Council Wed 8 May (time tba) €20 / €10 (VAI Members) @ VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 20 – 25 places The first in a series of talks discussing public art projects Presenting your work & your Practice Speakers include: Mark Garry, Cliona Harmey and Jonathan Carroll Thurs 16 May (14.00 – 17.00) @ VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 €20 / €10 (VAI members) 25 places Speakers will discuss their experience of presenting their work both visually and verbally Self-assessment & Filing online – roS with gaby Smyth In partnership with the Crafts Council of Ireland Thurs 6 June (10.30 – 14.00) @ VAI, Dame Court, Dublin 2 €60 / €30 (VAI & CCoI Members) 12 places This session will focus on Revenue Online Services and filing your taxes online Further topics in 2013 will nclude: Public Art Case Studies, Health & Safety for Visual Artists, Insurance for Visual Artists, Preparing Proposals Artists’ Agreements & the Artists’ Charter

introducing... at golden thread gallery Wed 27 Feb 15 places introducing... at F e Mcwilliam gallery and Studios Wed 20 Mar 15 places

viSual artiStS irelanD 'introDucing' SerieS: The Visual Artists Ireland 'Introducing' series provides artists with great opportunities to meet gallery directors, art centre managers and curators in an informal and stress-free setting. It provides a unique insight into the galleries’ exhibition policy and puts a face to some of the key cultural providers in Northern Ireland.

P Partner ShiPS with vai Visual artists Ireland works in partnership with a range of organisations at regional level. We welcome approaches and expressions of interest from artist studios, galleries and local authority Arts Officers who might wish to partner on future events including: workshops, talks, seminars and Visual Artists Ireland Information Clinics. Partnerships work best where topics and needs are mutually agreed upon and where programming can continue at intervals in response to local needs, contexts and synergies. viSual artiStS anD tutorS Panel P Visual Artists Ireland has an ongoing open submission process for artists and arts professionals interested in being part of an available panel of tutors contributing to the VAI Professional Development Training Programme.

For details go to our training registration page and click on Register for the PDT Artists Panel: www.visualartists.ie/education-2/current-programme

www. www. @

Monica Flynn, professional Development officer Visual Artists ireland, Central Hotel Chambers., 7–9 Dame Court, Dublin 2 T: +353 (0)1 672 9488 e: monica@visualartists.ie www.facebook.com/VAiprofessionalDevelopment www.visualartists.org.uk visualartists.ie www.thecommonroom.net VisArtsireland

30

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

international The presentations made by Paul O’Neill and Declan Long, along with the essay provided alongside MOUTH’s menu by Edia Connole and Scott Wilson, will be published by Dublin City Council Arts Office this spring and will also include a piece by Kathy Tynan, a guest at the event whose written response is entitled An Uncertain Community. The publication has been designed by three MA Professional Design Practice students from DIT: Liza Kelly, Michael Cannon and Laura Farrell as part of their course work, and draws on the idea of the unexpected, hospitality and the gift. They have also designed a logo based on the shipping route and distance between the two cities.

From Dublin City Council’s Arts Office’s perspective, the event provided an important opportunity to work with our current partners in Liverpool but also to seed possibilities for future collaborations.

We were delighted to be able to support this event, collaborate with other organisations and to introduce Dublin-based artists, writers, academics and curators to a Liverpool audience, while also providing an opportunity for Liverpool to extend its familiar welcome to a Dublin audience.

Sheena Barrett, Arts Officer & Gallery Curator, Dublin City Council Arts Office.

Mouth All Fingers and Tongues Buffet. Presented at 'Breaking Bread Open' cinema lounge FACT, Liverpool. October 2012. Photo: Mia Wilson & Emer Roberts

Breaking Bread

The Liverpool Ireland Cultural Corridor

Sheena Barrett, Arts Officer & Gallery Curator For The Lab, Dublin profiles 'Break Bread Open', at the 2012 Liverpool Biennale as part of the Liverpool / Dublin Cultural Corridor.

end of 2011 by Mary Cloake, formerly Director of the Arts Council

The Liverpool Ireland Cultural Corridor took its inspiration from journeys made across the Irish Sea. In particular, those made at the relocating from Dublin to Liverpool as CEO of the Bluecoat, and Patrick Fox, who returned to Dublin after 10 years in Liverpool to take

Dublin has been formally twinned with Liverpool since 1997 and, in

surrounds of the cinema lounge – with its soft lighting and comfy

connection with this relationship, Dublin City Council Arts Office

couches – and the evening’s menu of such unfamiliar delicacies as

was invited by the 2012 Liverpool Biennial curators to consider

duck tongues, ladies' fingers (okra), sea slugs, pigs’ trotters; along with

presenting some form of participation in the exhibition.1 The theme

cast human tongues and chicken feet for dessert. The buffet was

of the Liverpool Biennial 2012 was ‘Hospitality and the Unexpected

colleagues, both of them identified an opportunity to potentially

greeted with a mixture of unease and curiosity, but ultimately

Guest’ and, taking our cue from this, I began discussions with Dr

build on the collaborations already going on between individual

openness and garnered an immediate effect of encouraging

Mick Wilson of the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media

artists, practitioners and arts organisations in Liverpool and Ireland,

conversation between strangers. This food provocation seemed to

by facilitating a more strategic approach to joint-working, cultural

(GradCAM) on behalf of the arts office, about the possibility of

create an atmosphere of trust amongst the assembled community.

development and creative exchange.

manifesting one of school’s collaborative research projects – The

This, in turn, made them receptive and sensitive to other aspects of

So the Liverpool Ireland Cultural Corridor came into being. The

Food Thing – in Liverpool.2 We thought that such an event would be

the event, which included performances by Jesse Jones and Ruth

purpose of this project is twofold. Firstly, to enhance and support

a good platform to explore ideas of the host, the guest and the roles of

Lyons, screenings and talks.

existing cultural links between Ireland and Liverpool. And secondly

up his post as Executive Director of Create. Exchanging information on their collective professional and personal experience of working in the arts in both cities, and inspired by various conversations with

the ‘public’. The result of our discussions was Break Bread Open, an

The performance by Ruth E Lyons was facilitated by Static in

to take an overview of activity and identify opportunities for

initiative that brought together the artists, writers and educators

Liverpool. The organisation has been working in partnership with

development through resource sharing, advocacy and longer-term

involved in The Food Thing, who would conceive an event and devise

TBG&S for some time and had invited the artist on a two-week

planning. The programme was launched in Liverpool by Minister

a menu and serve food in order to temporarily activate a community

production / guest residency to coincide with this event. Rather than

Jimmy Deenihan in June 2012, with the follow-up meeting of

of guests from both cities.

present her findings from this short residency, Lyons showed research

potential partners, artists and arts organisations in October of that

previously included in her solo exhibition at the LAB, Dublin in 2011,

year.

This idea of creating and bringing together a community in order to explore existing and emerging relationships between the two cities also gained a new impetus with the launch of the Liverpool / Ireland Cultural Corridor, led by Create in Dublin in partnership with the Bluecoat, Liverpool. Break Bread Open sought to celebrate existing bonds between arts organisations in both cities, while seeding future possible collaborations. With this in mind, I met with Patrick Fox, Director of Create and Claire Power, Development Manager at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, to consider how best we might draw together an event with limited resources but a lot of good will, that would best utilise our respective networks.3 Dublin City Council agreed to provide financial assistance for the event.

In October 2012, artists, writers, academics and representatives from a range of Dublin-based arts organisations travelled to Liverpool on a Ryanair red eye flight, to take part in this unique event and visit the biennial and the city. The generosity of the speakers and artists in particular in responding so positively to our invitation to take part in the event and the welcome we received in Liverpool from the biennial, as well as two other key cultural institutions in the city, the Foundation for Art and Creative Technology (FACT)4 and Static gallery, who were also critical in the delivery of an ambitious event on lean resources.5 Break Bread Open took place in the cinema lounge of FACT, where Patrick Fox had worked prior to his return to Dublin. In this location, the event brought together a group of invited and casual participants to share ideas over food. Break Bread Open sought to create a convivial atmosphere that celebrated a range of exciting contemporary practices taking place in Dublin, with a level of criticality befitting of the biennial context.

At the venue, MOUTH (Edia Connole, co-curator of The Food Thing and Scott Wilson) presented a buffet, entitled All Fingers and Tongues: Hosting the Divine along with a reading by the writer Charlie Gere. There was an incongruous mis-match between the plush

when she invited a community of artists, writers and thinkers to

Following meetings in Dublin and Liverpool, involving a range

converge on a small island in Clew Bay once owned by one of

of many partner institutions key outcomes have included the

Liverpool’s most famous sons, John Lennon, for a project entitled

establishment of an EU funded partnership as a between Tate

Every Man is an Island. Jesse Jones, also a TBG&S studio artist, shared

Liverpool, Dublin City Arts Office and Create in the European

the process of making a new work for exhibition in Korea and devised

Learning Network which also brings Live Art Development Agency,

6

a script reading performed by audience members from both Liverpool and Dublin.

The Food Thing screened In the Place of Mloukhieh, filmed by Martin McCabe and edited by Jeanette Doyle. This film captured one of the GradCAM Food Salons, deliciously inspired by Palestinian artist Larissa Sansour’s art video Soup over Bethlehem, in which the group decided to simultaneously explore Palestine’s national dish Mloukhieh while paying homage to this young Palestinian artist by re-enacting her food-based art video.

Paul O’Neill presented a discursive paper that considered forms of attentiveness or disembodied participation and ideas of participatory escape. Declan Long responded to the arduous task of pulling together the disparate nature of the evening’s range of events with his presentation, A Brief, Hesitant Homily on Kindness.

After the event, most of the members of this temporary community were brought together to attend and participate in Break Bread Open, continuing on to the Static Social, a club-like environment that visitors to the city could utilise as their temporary ‘local’ on Friday and Saturday nights for the duration of the biennial. Ruth Lyons and Paul O’Neill took to the decks and conversations started over the food and events at FACT continued into the late hours. The general feeling seemed to be that, all of these disparate presentations, performances and proceedings (that wouldn’t normally happen in one place), when convened in a cinema in Liverpool, created a unique atmosphere of anticipation, surprise and humour. Plans were hatched for a similar Dublin event to be held in 2013.

UK and M-Cult Finland into the mix.7 Initial funding has been secured through the EU Presidency Cultural funds and a conference will be held in the Wood Quay Venue in Dublin on 29 May this year.

At the Dublin meeting, the World Café event was attended by 74 artists and cultural workers from Ireland and Liverpool, and aimed to develop support for the Liverpool Ireland Cultural Corridor, gather information to map out current collaboration, identify areas for potential growth and group interests, and provided a useful networking opportunity across art forms.8 Later this year, Dublin will host events and meetings with Liverpool organisations with an opportunity for artists across all art forms to showcase their work and to highlight the diversity of arts practice in Ireland with the aim of extending opportunities for programming and residency exchanges.

Katrina Goldstone, Communications Officer, Create.

Notes 1. www.biennial.com 2. www.gradcam.ie 3. www.create-ireland.ie 4. www.fact.co.uk 5. www.statictrading.com 6. www.ruth.ie 7. The institutions involved were: Dublin City Council Arts Office, The LAB Gallery, Create; Static Liverpool, GradCAM, MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD; Liverpool City Council; Arts Council South West, Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Bluecoat, Liverpool, Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership, Youth Arts South Dublin County Council, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool John Moore’s School of Arts and Design, University of Liverpool, Edgehill College 8. At the Education Partners breakfast (Tate Liverpool, Create and Dublin City Council) Irish and Liverpool based artists and academics presented their research interests: Juan Cruz (Liverpool John Moore’s School of Arts and Design), Professor Simeon Hunter, (Head of Fine and Applied Art, University of Liverpool), Victor Merriman (Edgehill College), Paul Sullivan (Static Gallery), Martin McCabe and Lisa Godson (GradCAM), Declan Long and Francis Halsall (MA ART in the Contemporary World). A number of common research themes emerged from the ‘Education breakfast’ including Irish modernism, archives and the histories of exhibition-making

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

31

Art in the public realm: collaboration

The MercurialChallenge Of Collaborative Arts

Annette Moloney reports on 'AIC10’,an event held at IMMA (27 Nov 2012) marking a decade of collaborative art projects fundedthrough the Arts Council Of Ireland’s Artist In The Community Scheme and managed by Create.

I believe,I believe,I believe in work that’s moved beyond the gallery work that engages and negotiates its own space practice that makes work that creates dialogue with itself and within its context ...

I Believe (extract) fromGood Works John Byrne, 2012 Collaboration is a word that has become quite commonplace.

On one hand, the term indicates a way of working – a commitment to teamwork, to openness and to listening. An indication perhaps of a sharing economy, not so much in a social media ‘too much information’ kind of way but more aligned with the principles of active citizenship advocated by President Michael D Higgins.1 Social and commercial leanings towards collaboration have grown rapidly, evident in the worlds of science, technology and innovation and also in the language (and at times rhetoric) of governments working under pressure, not least in coalition circumstances. Working collaboratively demonstrates a commitment to the cross-pollination of knowledge and experience, while the realities of dwindling resources also make it a necessity. Sometimes, you just have to work together to get things done.

But how does this new focus on collaboration fit with the concept of the individual artist, who is at times a sole practitioner working in isolation to realise a singular creative vision? While the need for commercial developments to embrace collaboration is more urgent in times of recession, for some artists the commitment to developing contemporary art projects in social and community contexts indicates a different intention: to include the richness and depth that a community can bring to artistic research and projects.

The area of collaborative arts in Ireland has its roots in the community arts movements of the 1980s and 1990s 2 and since 2002 has received specific funding from the Arts Council of Ireland through the Artist in the Community scheme (AIC) managed by Create.3 In November 2012, Create brought together over 120 artists, educators, community and institutional representatives to explore and reflect on the experience and learning that has emerged from the AIC scheme over the last decade. The projects showcased at AIC10 revealed the diverse range of contexts where artists and communities chose to collaborate including, for example, patients at an acute mental health hospital, women from a Traveller Development Group and members of a pigeon club.4 Working collaboratively clearly requires artists to have a certain skill set, not least in the areas of negotiation and project management, along with sufficient patience and flexibility. Ailbhe Murphy’s keynote presentation at AIC10, entitled Situation Room: Critical Cartographies for Engaged Practice, explored this further and presented an honest and impassioned analysis of some of the true challenges facing an artist working collaboratively – the productive, the disruptive and the downright difficult. She shared experiences from her own practice and her presentation acted as a visceral anchor for the overall day. Ailbhe spoke about collaborative arts as a “shared cultural venture” and considered the nature and “choreography of these encounters”, often developed though discursive processes such as “meetings, meals, talks, workshops, actions”.5 The outcomes of participatory projects can be as much about who is absent as well as who is present and Ailbhe spoke about the breadth of collaborative relationships and how these are seldom fully represented in the collective artwork. She referenced the artist Susanne Lacy’s observation that much of the collaborative process “takes place in private”6 while also drawing on other key thinkers, among them curator Miwon Kwon, art historian and critic Grant H Kester, educator Aida Sanchez and educational theorist Patti Lather.7 Elaborating on the hidden histories of collaborative arts, Ailbhe touched on Claire Bishop’s most recent book Artificial Hells, in which she states that collaborative outcomes “rarely provide more than fragmentary evidence, and convey nothing of the affective dynamic that propels artists to make these projects and people to participate in them”.8 Ailbhe spoke of the fluidity of projects as they progress and was keen to acknowledge the “shifting identities of everyone involved in the collaborative encounter”.9

Her presentation didn’t shy away from what she described as the “attendant problems” that can arise in participatory work and touched on the shortcomings in its critical framework; it is often viewed in purely art historical terms, with a tendency towards boastful hype as opposed to honest critique. Her recent research has uncovered “significant lacuna in the critical armature for describing the kinds of institutional complexities and the particular kinds of attendant problems they give rise to” and she has found instead “a certain tendency towards an uncritical, celebratory rhetoric or experience of collaborations described more in terms of epiphany”.10 Clarifying that she was not proposing a “place for a good moan”, she outlined four levels of criticality, within which collaborative practice could be examined. These encompassed the perspective of the lived experience or phenomenology of the artist and the related phenomenology of socially engaged practice.

She encouraged us to review the “social encounter’ and group process, the level within which “we might begin by considering who the ‘other’ is in socially engaged arts practice”.11 Ailbhe spoke of her own work in the context of the research platform Vagabond Reviews, which draws on feminist and post-colonial perspectives and which questions certain “acquisitive ethnographic tendencies”, thereby challenging “attempts to fully know the ‘other’ and rejects the claim to total representation of the ‘other'.12 Ailbhe outlined two further registers within which collaborative arts could be viewed, in what she described as the micro-political or the inter-organisational framework for the project itself and also the macro-political – the project within its wider social and political context. She connected these to writing by artist David Beech, who prompts us to make links between the art of the encounter and the opportunity to rethink society itself.13 Ailbhe spoke from deep within the collaborative experience and examined the dark, unnerving aspects inherent in moving forward together – the slow, tentative, hesitant, confusing but nonetheless discursive and enlivening steps which ultimately shape the resulting collective artwork. This level of honesty was echoed by a number of artists and panelists over the day and, above all, artists in the room appreciated the sincerity of the presentation.

A number of other recurring themes emerged during the AIC10 day. Artists and community representatives who had worked in partnership recognised that projects tapped into expertise that was already there as opposed to expertise imposed from the outside. The knowledge base came from within the collaborative relationships.

AIC projects were described as not purely about a particular community of interest or place but more a project developed with the people it's about, a shift that realigns the balance in the collective encounters from subject to equivalent citizens. Artists spoke of the need for ample time and flexibility in their approach to projects – they felt that ideas could percolate creatively for a long time, before the means to make them a reality was found. On the day, the topic of failure was portrayed as a specter, looming large and at times all consuming.

However, the artists believed that failure or points of tension in the midst of a process could be useful and often led to a better outcome.

Another artist who disclosed her collaborative practice was choreographer Ríonach Ní Néill, whose presentation profiled her experience of receiving the Arts and Older People AIC Bursary. She presented footage of a work developed in collaboration with video maker Joe Lee titled The Area,14 which looked at ways of representing limits: perceived social limits of how older people “should be no bother”.15 Ríonach’s reflections echoed Ailbhe Murphy’s, particularly when she spoke of how older people can at times be treated as ‘other’. She linked this to the recurrent social perception of the artist as ‘other’ and how her role extended empathy and understanding to fellow others. The Area was developed in partnership with people with Dementia and as it evolved she was keen to safeguard each session with her elderly col-

laborators as one-off performances – as artworks in and of themselves.

She was less focused on looking for things to use later in a performance than on being ‘in the moment’.

Overall, the AIC10 day presented firsthand experiences from both artists and community collaborators on what Ríonach Ní Néill described as their “communal explorations” of a range of social and political circumstances.16 The programme included a performance by the Sense Ensemble, featuring composer George Higgs, percussionist Sean Carpio and girls from St Mary's School for Deaf Girls.17 The work, entitled The Lost and Found Sound Assembly – Construction No. 3 was presented as an absorbing site-specific sculptural installation – offering a direct example of collaboration.

The day closed with a final example of the mercurial challenge of collaborative arts with a performance of Good Works by artist John Byrne. As a fitting tribute to the creative approaches within the area of practice, the artist presented a unique 'art service' featuring participation by a host of invited orators, the singers from Carlow Choral Society, the Dublin Bach Singers and their director Blanaid Murphy.18 In a number of passages and reflections, Good Works teased out the actualities of collaborative arts and, by association, the condition of contemporary society, in language which was at times masked in a mix of bureaucratic policy lingo and academic speak – a narrative that was nonetheless very familiar to the gathered creative congregation. Was the artist trying to dismantle contemporary art rhetoric? Or was he making an honest statement from his own perspective on how and why collaborative arts projects are developed and presented? Herein lies the creative tension of the work, an intriguing conundrum to mull over – one that is hopefully illustrated in this extract from the Good Works performance: "I believe, I believe, I believe in work that’s moved beyond the gallery work that engages and negotiates its own space, practice that makes work that creates dialogue with itself and within it's context, making marks, sound works in the dark defining and that’s not there and all that can be imagined, I believe, I believe, I believe in the visual".19 Annette Moloney is a socially-engaged artist, curator and collaborator based in Limerick. Her arts practice includes exhibitions, critical writing, talks, mentoring and public art projects.

Notes 1. The Taking Charge of Change declaration,November 2012 states, “We envision high levels of soci and community cohesion and cooperation, and a sense of active citizenship” www.president.ie 2.Sandy Fitzgerald (ed), An Outburst of Frankness – Community Arts in Ireland – A Reader, New Island Press,Dublin, 2004 3. Create, the national agency for collaborative arts in social and community contexts www.crea ireland.ie 4. At the event,Create launched a Vimeo channel as a resource for artists to discuss their experienc of working collaboratively www.vimeo.com/channels/artistinthecommunity 5. Ailbhe Murphy,Situation Room: Critical Cartographies for Engaged Practice, research developed through an Artist in theCommunity Scheme: Arts andCommunity DevelopmentBursary Award.See http://tinyurl.com/bk8ra5q 6. S Lacy, S Steinman,Y Kobayashi,Beneath Land and Water – A Project for Elkhorn City, Groundworks Conference,Carnegie MellonUniversityPittsburgh,USA, October 2005 wwwgroundworks.collinsand goto.com 7. Grant H Kester, The One and The Many – Contemporary Collaborative Art in a Global Context, Duke UniversityPress, 2011 8. Claire Bishop,Artificial Hells – Participatory Art and the Politics of Spectatorship, Verso Books, 2012, 5 9. Ibid, Ailbhe Murphy 10. Ibid 11. Ibid 12. Ibid 13. Ailbhe Murphy quotingDavid Beech, Don’t Look Now. Art after the Viewer and beyond Participation in Searching for Art's New Publics, Jeni Walwin (ed),University ofChicago Press, 2010, 28 14. The Area byRíonach Ní Néill and Joe Lee in collaboration with members of the Macushla Dance Club for +50s, www.vimeo.com/51964976 15. Ríonach Ní Néill speaking at the AIC10 day 16. Ibid 17. The performers involved in theSense Ensemble performance wereSeán Carpio, Shauna Hathaway, George Higgs, Amylee Mulvey, AbiOsa and Helen Ward 18. Good Works was supported by theCavan County Council and theInternationalFund for Ireland as well as the AIC scheme and was originally performed inCavan Cathedral with ThePalestrinaChoir in August 2012. www.john-byrne.ie/project 19. John Byrne,I Believe from Good Works, 2012.

A networking, learning and social event for artists

Friday June 28th 2013

National College of Art and Design 100 Thomas St, Dublin 8

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is pleased to announce its 30 Year Anniversary programme 2013/14 Full programme guide available to download at www.templebargallery.com

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios 5-9 Temple Bar Dublin 2 Ireland Tel: +353 (0)1 6710073 www.templebargallery.com Admission Free Gallery open Tues - Sat 11am -6pm

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

March – April 2013

33

Art in the Public Realm: Roundup Team Johnswell, Larkin’s Bar TOW Team Caines-

created his own contemporary interview with four

bridge, Sheerin’s The Ridge Bar TOW Team, Local

teenage boys, posing the questions asked in the

Community

1975 documentary. This interview was interwoven

Date Sited: December 2012

with the original sound piece. Boss also produced a

Description: Heave-Ho is a socially engaged art

video of the four boys on Foley Street. This footage

project by artist Pauline O’Connell. In the realm

was interrupted with 1970s photographs of Foley

of history and the archive, it retells an otherwise

Street by Derek Spiers. The piece was show as a

undocumented story of a 1970s Tug O’ War team

large-scale projection on the side of a local building

the perfect stomping grounds and territories for

from Coan, Kilkenny. It posits the re-introduction of

and could also be viewed from Connolly Station.

children, as they are undiscovered aspects of urban

the game Tug O’ War as a rural community-building

experience. Street corners and back alleys have

exercise, and questions the interdependence of

a unique beauty that is a vital part of the urban

individuals – as it cannot be played alone. Heave-Ho

fabric. They represent dormant community spaces

delves into physical areas, excavating the crevices

that have the potential to offer multiple economic

of memory, mapping and archiving individual

and social benefits.

versions of the same place and event from different

Art in the Public Realm public art commissions, site-specificworks, socially-engaged practices,and other various forms of 'art outside the gallery'.

Golden Apple

carpet man

perspectives, blurred and erased by time.

In celebration of two non-events Title: In celebration of two non-events Artist: James L Hayes

The Blackbird of avondale

Location: Various Commissioner: Cork County Council Commission Type: Open submission Title: Golden Apple

Project Partners: Cork County Council, Rescue

Artist: Rachel Joynt

Fort Camden Committee / Project

Location: St Nessan’s Community College

Date Advertised: September 2010

Commissioner: Limerick City VEC

Date Sited: June – September 2011 and June –

Commission Type: Per Cent for Art

September 2012

Date Advertised: November 2010

Budget: €10,000

Date Sited: June 2012

Description: Hayes’s two-part sculptural sound

Budget: €64,000

installation utilises a range of found materials

Unveiling: Scheduled for spring 2013

from the former Fort Camden site at the entrance

Description: The piece consists of a large 2-metre-

to Cork Harbour. The interactive sculptural works

high bronze apple that appears to have landed /

in each of the rooms of the casemate buildings

Title: The Blackbird of Avondale

rolled onto the campus, leaving a silver arc wake

in the Fort Camden barracks respond and reflect

Artist: Eleanora McNamara

in its path. Radiating from the ‘eye piece’ or stem of

upon the previous function of the site itself, whilst

Location: Rathdrum

the apple are lines of text embossed into its surface.

embodying fragments and remnants of its history

Commissioner: Rathdrum Tidy Towns

These are lines of prose written by the fifth-year

by way of recasting and reusing the found material,

Project Partners: Rathdrum Tidy Towns, County

students on the theme of ‘future dreams’. The viewer

primarily iron and wood. Abandoned objects and

Wicklow Partnership, The Parnell Society

can look through a lens eye piece into the dark void

furniture found on site are also resituated and

Date Sited: August 2012

of the apple to see illuminated glowing apple seeds

reemployed to complete the visual and conceptual

Budget: €3400

made of glass and suspended in a star-shaped pod

narrative of the work. The works in each room

Description: This large scale blackbird is sited

housing. The glowing seeds symbolise potential,

explore the materiality of cast iron an often

on the hairpin bend as you enter Rathdrum. He

growth, mystery, nurture and beginnings.

overlooked and nearly outmoded casting process

is perched proudly on a locally-found granite

within contemporary art.

boulder. The blackbird has strong significance to

Title: Carpet Man Artist: Thomas Brezing Location: Various Commissioner: Self-initiated project Budget: None Description: Carpet Man is a performative work that the artist intends to turn into a short film.

The artist, ‘dressed’ in an old carpet and unable to see, is on a journey; in his woolly socks and with his old suitcase he pops up in unexpected, remote and abandoned places. His appearances are not announced in advance and only a small number of friends and colleagues are asked to be present for the performances, but people passing by are welcome to stay and watch or even take part. This idea was first introduced at Brezing’s Highlanes Gallery solo show ‘The Art Of Failure Isn’t Hard To Master’ (November 2011 – January 2012). The concept of Carpet Man is to change the environment he is placed in for a brief moment.

the area and is found on most club and association

back alleys Odourific Odyssey Title: Odourific Odyssey Artist: Jan Uprichard Location: Belfast Budget: £2,429 Commissioner: SIAP funded by ACNI Project Partners: Abridged

crests in Rathdrum. Charles Stewart Parnell was

Big Egg

referred to as the Blackbird of Avondale, and the boulder features a quote from the eponymous song.

Brennan Memorials, a local memorial company, completed the work on this boulder. The piece was sculpted in clay and cold cast in blackened metal effect.

Date Sited: February 2013 Description: Over two days at the beginning of

Title: Back Alleys – Trying to get into my mother's shoes Artist: Amanda Jane Graham Location: Old Motor Taxation Offices, Chancery Street, Dublin Commissioner: Dublin Contemptibles Commission Type: Open submission Date Advertised: June 2012 Date Sited: September 2012

October 2012, Jan Uprichard travelled around

the boys of foley street

Belfast with perfumer, Geza Schoen. In search of

Title: The Boys of Foley Street

distinctive smells that people would relate to a

Artist: Owen Boss

aparticular place, the focus was on smells that

Location: Foley St, Dublin

exist in Belfast now, avoiding nostalgia. Uprichard

Project Type: Per Cent for Art

writes, “The project considers how we perceive

Commissioner: Create

a place. Most of the smells that are distinctive in

Project Partners: Dublin Theatre Festival, The

a place come from its geography and industries.

Dublin City Art Programme with funding from the

Title: Big Egg

When these things change, that identity changes

Department of the Environment, Community and

Artist: Paul Darcy

too. The evolution of a place is also evident in how

Local Government

Date Sited: February / March 2013

it smells.”

Date Advertised: September / October 2012

Description: February and March 2013 saw Ireland

Budget: €10,000

host a large scale interactive egg hunt, the quarry

Description: The Boys of Foley Street is the third

being 100 painted fiberglass egg sculptures, artists,

of a four-part geographical project spanning the

fashion designers, architects and jewellers, on the

history of Dublin’s North inner city over the past

streets of Dublin and locations around the country.

century. The Boys of Foley Street examined the area

Among the contributing artists was Paul Darcy

from 1971 to 1981. In the midst of a chaotic period

whose contribution is illustrated above. The hunt

of time, an RTÉ radio documentary was produced

culminated with two auctions, each one an event

in 1975, featuring Pat Kenny interviewing four

in itself, raising funds for the Jack & Jill Children’s

local teenage boys. Boss explored the area and

Foundation.

Budget: None Description: This work revolves around urban space, narrative and childhood memories, where the viewer completes the experience.It is a playful and accurate recollection of moments, incidents and events throughout childhood, bringing into focus the contribution that back alleys make to

Heave-ho Title: Heave-ho Artist: Pauline O'Connell Project Type: Socially-engaged project

social experience. Back alleys contain the capacity

Project Partners: MA-Space 2012, Jim Kehoe, Coan

to both intrigue and threaten. This makes them

Tug O’ War Team Members, Brennan’s Bar TOW

34

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

March – April 2013

career development

Alphaville to Anti-Tour Dennis Mcnulty retraces some formative projects and experiences that have contibuted to the evolution of his working methods.

Dennis McNulty performing under the Marquise in Ibirapuera Park as part of Ireland's representation at the 2004 São Paulo Bienal, photo courtesy of Estado de São Paulo

People talk about storytelling as a mechanism for storing and transmitting information. After giving this invitation to write about the development of my working methods some consideration, it seemed like telling a story might offer an interesting approach. And so, in an attempt to describe the indescribable, I have decided to relate the story of an experience, which was, in retrospect, 'formative'. I thought it might be useful to revisit that experience in this article, to reconsider what happened and where it led.

Almost 10 years ago now, I was one of four people that commissioner Valerie Connor invited to represent Ireland at the 2004 São Paulo Bienal. We had previously worked together on ‘The Captain's Road’, a group exhibition around the idea of television1 and the artist's film c oblique o: A film for Evelyn Byrne.2 In response to her proposal I began developing what would become http://alpha60.info, a deliberately diffuse project comprising three inter-related strands: the website to which the title refers, a CD and a series of space-specific sound-performances.3 My use of Alpha 60 was a tip of the hat to the city controlling computer in Jean Luc Godard's lo-fi sci-fi classic, Alphaville.

At the time, I was operating mostly in the realm of music – electronic, experimental and by then, almost entirely improvised. I was also making installations, which used media flows (radio and television) and / or the acoustics of particular spaces as raw material. A couple of years previously, I had completed an MPhil in Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College4 and nine years before that, I had graduated from the same institution with a degree in Civil Engineering.

My project for São Paulo was partly motivated by a pedagogical impulse and the URL (.info) reflected that, pointing the audience to a place that attempted to contextualise the work. I was aware that a visual arts audience, while potentially interested in the sonic, might not have the frame of reference to 'read' it and with the website, I tried to produce, among other things, a possible framework for understanding or interpretation.

Following on from the David Toop-curated ‘Sonic Boom’ exhibition a few years earlier, there was much hype at that time about sound art, a hype which has thankfully subsided in the years since, to the point where it seems almost incongruous to mention it. Around this time, I also remember reading a short critical essay in which artist Max Neuhaus playfully compares the category of sound art to the imaginary category of ‘steel art’.5 As someone who was more and more interested in working in visual art contexts, I was somewhat wary of the effects of categorisation and sensitive to the possibility of my work being placed in a neat sound-art-shaped box. That said, I was simultaneously conscious that it was the slipperiness of sound as a material, and the manner in which its reception slid between the categories of experimental music and what was then understood as sound art, that was actually enabling me to transition towards the visual art world as my principle context of production.

There were five sound-performances: one in Dublin, in the canteen on the top floor of Busáras, and four in São Paulo, at the parabolic

modernist Baby Barioni swimming pool, in a domestic space, downtown at Galeria Vermelho and under Niemeyer's Marquise, a huge concrete roof structure adjacent to the vast pavilion in Ibirapuera Park where the Bienal is hosted.6 In each case, I improvised a sound piece by manipulating fragments of an acapella version of a song from the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds album. That's Not Me is about migration, about a boy who goes to the city only to realise that it's not what he expected: “I once had a dream, so I packed up and split for the city.

I soon found out that my lonely life wasn't so pretty.”

Each of the performances was recorded with a microphone, capturing a mix of my computer generated sound and its interaction with the acoustic signature of the space, its reverberation. I set up a feedback loop, not sonically, but in terms of process, a nod to Alvin Lucier's seminal composition I am sitting in a room.7 Each of these recordings became available as raw material for the performances which followed, producing a kind of audio / spatial accumulation, so that occasionally a fragment of a recording made in the space of a previous performance would materialise through the speakers for a moment before being absorbed back down the cables into the computer: Each space. A PA system. Good bass response. Low system noise. Delivery. Set up. Sound check.8 Waiting. Audience arrive. Sit down. Begin making sound.

In Brazil, the PA rentals were facilitated by our man on the ground, Alvaro Petrillo and his friend and electronic musician, Renato Patriarca.

Alvaro who is a Paulistano, had previously worked in Venice on the 2002 Architecture Biennale with Irish National Coordinator Jenny Haughton. The performances were publicised by word of mouth and the web, and via a series of poster / flyers designed by Peter Maybury.9 The Brazilian electrical grid supplies both the European standard of 220 volts and the American standard of 110 volts, with every possibility that two sockets in the same room will be supplied with different voltages. This caused us a bit of trouble at Baby Barioni swimming pool, where the hire company brought us a PA system rated at the wrong voltage, an issue that was resolved by wiring it directly into the pool's lighting fuse-board.

In advance of the reconnaissance trip I made to Brazil in January 2004, I made contact with São Paulo-based experimental music label Bizarre Records through the microsound mailing list. They agreed to help manufacture the CD in Brazil, knowing full well they were facing into an incredibly bureaucratic process involving registering each track individually over a slow internet connection using a Windows 3.1 DOS programme. The CD's 27 tracks were produced using various strategies, some of which were collaborative and some of which were not. Each of the website's 27 pages corresponded to a track on the CD.

The original version of the site used some JavaScript code and cookies to emulate a CD player on shuffle, turning up a random webpage each time the NEXT link was clicked.10 Around the time of the Bienal, I struck up a friendship with Angela Detanico and Rafael Lain, two Paris-based Brazilian artists who had work in the curated section of the show. The following year, my application for a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris was accepted, and while there in Summer 2005, Angela and Rafael invited me to collaborate on a performance piece with them. They had already been working onWeightless Days before I became involved.

The piece, devised with dancer / choreographers Takeshi Yasaki and Megumi Matsumoto, was performed in Paris, Osaka and finally at the 2008 São Paulo Bienal.

The Marquise in Ibirapuera Park at dusk on a Sunday afternoon, a cool shadowy space thronged with people. A sound system pumping out a twisting stuttering flow of vocal / spatial recordings, reverberating between the parallel concrete surfaces, overhead and underfoot. Families, skaters, groups of teenagers all drifted past the knot of people who were intentionally present to listen and observe. The project's final sound-performance began in daylight, but at a certain point, the fluorescent lights overhead flickered into life signalling the slip into night.

In the 1990s, Carlos Farinha ran a record shop in one of the arcades downtown. By September 2004, the shop had shut and he was one of the two guys running Bizarre Records. As well CDs and records, Bizarre were also producing an e-mail based fanzine of experimental and indie music reviews, which they were sending to about 10,000 people all over Latin America twice a week. Farinha was there at the Marquise performance and had also made it along to Baby Barioni a few days earlier. We were standing around chatting afterwards when he told me to get in touch if I needed help with anything else in São Paulo in the future.

Back in Ireland, thinking back on the experience of making the work in Brazil, I formulated an idea for another project there. I wanted to take Farinha up on his offer. I was also motivated by a desire to take control of my situation, to produce something myself, something that had an existence outside of any institutional structures.

In mid 2005, Galeria Vermelho invited me to accompany Rafael in a performance with Carlos Issa from Objecto Amarelo. I applied to the Arts Council for some funding to cover my travel back to Brazil.

Anti-tour No. 1 – Magic Hour, (as the project was later titled), piggybacked on this opportunity. The idea was to do a series of sound-performances in domestic locations at magic-hour, inverting the usual parameters of a rock tour.11 The venues, ideally apartments near the top of tall city-centre buildings, would be located by sending an email to Bizarre's mailing list. My hosts would invite their friends and then make me a meal as payment for playing. But initially, they would email me a photo of the back of their stereo system so that I could be sure that I would be able to use it to amplify my computer's sound. I also asked for a photo of the view from the room where they wanted me to play and one of the room itself. Farinha sent my proposal to his list in late December 2005 and I received the first reply a couple of days later on Christmas morning.

In January 2006, I travelled to Brasilia, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre, doing a series of 10 sound-performances. The antitour became a tour and others followed in Dublin, Derry and Colombia.12 Since that time, I have produced a body of work, which has occasionally incorporated sound and / or music alongside other media, but always with an interest in the relationship between 'space experienced through the body' and 'space experienced as information', which was central to http://alpha60.info.13 What has also remained consistent is the importance of the kinds of informal peer networks and friendships that emerged from the opportunity to make work for the Bienal.

Berlin-based Dennis McNulty is an artist whose work is generated through an investigation of embodied knowledge in relation to intentionally or formally acquired knowledge. www.dennismcnulty.com Notes 1. www.valerieconnor.com/captains-road-stairwell.html 2. www.valerieconnor.com/c-oblique-o.html 3. I came up with this phrase a year or two later as a way to more accurately describe an activity which was not physically performative in the traditional sense and whose outcome was not related to specific qualities of the site, so much as of those of the space.

4. www.mee.tcd.ie/mmt 5. www.max-neuhaus.info/soundworks/soundart/SoundArt.htm 6. www.flickr.com/photos/kassapian/5193364174/ 7. www.ubu.com/sound/lucier.html 8. www.valerieconnor.com/sao-paulo-bienal-alpha-60-2004.html 9. www.petermaybury.com 10. The site is still live and I've recently uploaded the CD tracks to soundcloud 11. A Hollywood term for the hour just before nightfall.

12. See 'The Cinematic Condition' by Chris Fite-Wassilak, in Dennis McNulty, Obscure Flows Boil Underneath 2004 – 2011, distributed by DAP 13. www.dennismcnulty.com

Martina O’Brien

Gloria Perry

Barbara O’Meara

INVITATION TO EXHIBIT The Alley Arts and Conference Centre invites applications for exhibitions to be programmed within our gallery space

Selection will be based on a consideration of an artist’s CV, exhibition proposal and 6 – 12 examples of previous work (which can be submitted in hard copy, slide or CD format).

Deadline for receipt of submissions: 4.00pm on Wednesday 1st May 2013

SPRING 2013 EDITION FEATURING MAINIE JELLETT - CUBISM AT IMMA ON SALE NOW www.irishartsreview.com

Sara Greavu And your feet unable to find the ground: studies in speculative re-enactment

Opens Saturday 23 March 3pm Artlink Fort Dunree Inishowen Co. Donegal T: 074 93 63469 W: www.artlink.ie Sara Greavu, And your feet unable to find the ground (collage test 2), 2012

for directions see:www. fortdunree.com/findus.html

To receive an information pack including gallery dimensions, programme schedule and terms & conditions please contact Jacqueline Doherty: Alley Arts & Conference Centre Strabane Co. Tyrone Northern Ireland BT82 8EF T: +44 (0) 28 71884760 E: jdoherty@strabanedc.com W: www.alley-theatre.com

which is the:

49 Views

A new publication project

by Nick Stewart, based on a nine day drive along the Irish border.

Published by the John Hansard Gallery, www.hansardgallery.org.uk Designed by Danny Aldred www.dannaldred.com Pdf available at, www.nickstewart.org.uk

Call For Entries

Deadlines RDS National Crafts Competition – April 30 RDS Student Art Awards – June 13

Enter online www.rds.ie/arts @TheRDS

RDSdublin

Works shown, top: Catherine Keenan – Eye Candy, Turquoise & Orange Striped Bottom: Barry Mulholland – Emerging From Dystopia

“It is a truly lovely thing and i think a true collaboration between artist and designer on an artists’ book”. Stephen Foster, Director, John Hansard Gallery.

LUCHEZAR BOYADJIEV

APOSTOLIS POLYMERIS

KYRIAKI COSTA

KENNEDY BROWNE

REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT

25 January – 18 March 2013

DEIMANTAS NARKEVIČIUS JEAN-CHARLES HUE

National Craft Gallery, Castle Yard, Kilkenny T + 353 (0) 56 779 6147 E info@nationalcraftgallery.ie W www.nationalcraftgallery.ie

KAARINA KAIKKONEN ANU PENNANEN

GERDA LAMPALZER

Untitled, Jennifer Hickey

ANNA KONIK

NATIONAL CRAFT GALLERY TOURING EXHIBITIONS: Large Inverted Ovoid, Sonja Landweer

Apprentice, Róisín de Buitléar

TANJA MURAVSKAJA MARIA LUSITANO-SANTOS

United States of Europe

BETWEEN ART AND INDUSTRY

OUT OF THE MARVELLOUS

28 November 2012 – 8 April 2013

9 February - 6 April 2013

Galway City Museum, Spanish Parade, Galway

T +353 (0)91 532 460 E museum@galwaycity.ie W www.galwaycitymuseum.ie

ARTUR ŻMIJEWSKI

Solstice Arts Centre, Railway Street, Navan, Meath T +353 (0)46 909 2300 E info@solsticeartscentre.ie W www.solsticeartscentre.com

8 - 30 March

In partnership with Cork Civic Trust and National Sculpture Factory.

United States of Europe is part of the Culture Connects Programme of Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This project was initiated by the Goethe Institut Paris.

CRAWFORD ART GALLERY EMMET PLACE, CORK, IRELAND T: +353 (0)21 4805042 E: info@crawfordartgallery.ie W: crawfordartgallery.ie Open: Monday-Saturday 10am - 5pm, Thursday until 8pm (Closed Sunday and Bank Holidays)

Dreams of Freedom?

Conversations on Aesthetics, Ethics & European Democracies.

Art & Public Space, Aesthetic Resistance, Social and Political Transformation, Demonstration, European Hybridity.

A 2-day symposium organised by the National Sculpture Factory to coincide with the opening of United States of Europe.

Crawford Art Gallery Friday 8 and Saturday 9 March 10:00am – 4:30pm Participants include: Augustine Zenakos (Journalist, Activist - Greece) Anna Bitkina (Curator - Russia) Anna Konik (Artist, Lecturer - Poland) REINIGUNGSGESELLSCHAFT (Artist Group - Germany) Kennedy/Browne (Artists - Ireland) Maria Lusitano-Santos (Artists, Portugal) Daniel Jewesbury (Artist, Curator - Northern Ireland) Anthony Haughey (Artist, Lecturer - Ireland) Stephanie Feeney (Future States - England) Liz Burns (Firestation Artists Studios– Ireland) John O’Brennan (Sociologist - Ireland) More speakers to be announced This event is free and no booking is required.

Seating is limited so it will be on a first come first served basis.

More details on www.nationalsculpturefactory.com

Detail: Mary Swanzy, Woman with white bonnet, c. 1920, Oil on canvas, 99 x 80 cm, Private Collection U.K. Courtesy of Pyms Gallery, London © Artist’s Estate. Photo © Pyms Gallery, London

ANALYSING CUBISM Mainie Jellett, Evie Hone, Mary Swanzy and masters of European Modernism

20 FEBRUARY – 26 MAY 2013 Admission Free.

See www.imma.ie for talks and tours.

Irish Museum of Modern Art – New Galleries, Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8 tel: +353 1 612 9900 email: info@imma.ie

THE SOVEREIGNS Ffrench / Harte 7 March – 11 April 2013 Screening Event: 28 March 7 – 9pm A collaborative work by artists Anne Ffrench and Brian Harte.

The exhibition includes installation, photographs and film.

trouble = progress Emma Donaldson 8 February - 30 March 2013

Mermaid Arts Centre A: Main St, Bray, Co Wicklow T: 01 272 4030 H: Monday – Saturday, 10am –6pm (later on performance evenings) W: www.mermaidartscentre.ie Funded under the Arts Council New Project Award

Millennium Court Arts Centre Portadown www.millenniumcourt.org COUNTY WICKLOW ARTS CENTRE

trouble = progress has been made possible through Arts Council of Northern Ireland ACES award

2 Solo Shows

23 MAR -11 MAY

Mark Joyce New Works

PREVIEW 21 MAR, 6PM-8PM

15th February—13th April

WWW.RUARED.IE 01 451 5860

Hindu Kush, Acrylic on Panel 2012

Holis Frampton;

THE MODELLED CONSCIOUS Gallery 1

An exhibition by Lucy Andrews to launch a series of new commissions for the space at RUA RED

Gloria!& Zorns Lemma 15th February—13th April

Copyright the Estate of Hollis Frampton, Courtesy of Marion Faller and Anthology Film Archives

Upcoming Exhibitions The Art of Music Donal Dineen, Guillermo Carrion & Hector Castells 19-25 April 2013

STAMP

Tues— Fri 10 am / 6pm

A print exhibition

Saturday 10 am /5pm, Closed Mondays

Gallery 2

www.thedock.ie

Image: Debra Ando, Alterations

CAST LTD Transforming Bronze Into Fine Art Since 1986

!

!"#$%&$'()"'*+',%-'''''''''''''''''''''''''''./'012./22' /%'3"4$5'6+"7#'3$8'94:;<#'=>'''''''''777>&%?$><)'

Fire Station Artists’ Studios Skills Programme 2013 —

s s s s s s

Audio Post-Production – 22nd & 23rd March Web Design – 12th & 13th April DSLR HD Cameras – 11th May Performance Art – Marilyn Arsem – 28th & 29th May Audio Recording & Editing – 14th & 15th June Glass – Joseph Harrington – 16th to 20th September

New Publication — Fire Station Artists’ Studios and Arts & Disability Ireland publication on the Studio Award for an Artist with a Disability (2011 – 2012) following the residencies of Ruth Le Gear and Hugh O’Donnell.

—

Available to download: www.firestation.ie/programme

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The Skills Programme is constantly being updated.

—

Further information: www.firestation.ie/skills

Fire Station’s Facilities — Sculpture Workshop space available to hire.

(Newly installed heaters, refurbished canteen and free WiFi) €50 per bay per week.

—

Further information: www.firestation.ie/facilities —

Enquiries: artadmin@firestation.ie or Tel: 01 8069010

FSAS_180x262mm_VAN_Feb_2013.indd 1

07/02/2013 12:24

05.04.13—20.04.13 4 Cumberland Street Dun Laoghaire

EXHIBITION

Preview Thursday 04.04.13, 6pm—8pm Exhibition continues 05.04.13—20.04.13, 12pm—6pm Closed Mon/Tues 06.04.13

Disenchanted Spaces: Public vs. Private Space Talk & Discussion with Guest Speakers 4 Cumberland Street, Dun Laoghaire, 2pm.

13.04.13

Desire Lines Performance Event The Peoples Park, 12pm.

20.04.13

Lines of Light Guided Public Tour Meeting at 4 Cumberland Street 2—3pm.

All events are free of charge and open to all.

Katherine Atkinson, Bernadette Beecher, Anne Cradden, Leona Lee Cully, Claire Behan (curator) edgesandmargins@gmail.com