Visual Artists' News Sheet - 2014 July August

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet issue 4 July – August 2014 Published by Visual Artists Ireland Ealaíontóirí Radharcacha Éire

West Cork: Resources & Activity Maud Cotter talks to Bernadette Cotter Barbara Knezevic Belfast Print Workshop Iron R 2 Taipei Artist Village painting’s place within contemporary art practice MART Critique: Susan Connolly,Kennedy Browne,Conor Foy & Nicky Teegan,Sinéad ní Mhaonaigh, Reframing the Domestic Tom Climent Victoria Wright Sven Anderson VAI Graduate Award 2014 VAI Professional Development ROI & NI

Standard Utilities: landline, mobile, internet ‘Golden Thread Gallery is delighted to recommend Standard Utilities as an excellent telecoms provider.

Not only have they improved our telecoms systems in the gallery without increasing costs but they have also agreed a continued sponsorship programme.’

Peter Richards, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast

E: info@hellosu.com

W: www.hellosu.com

UK: 028 9051 1266

RoI: 01 893 4922

SUMMER RISING: The IMMA Festival is a celebration of art, music, food, and performance with day long family events and night time events you will not want to miss... and the grand finale IMMA’s Summer Party! To celebrate the exhibition Propositions by Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica.

Highlights include: THISISPOPBABY / WERK GRACELANDS Up & Over It Hare Café Cake Café Banquets Free family & teen workshops Live Music: Gang Colours The Line Up Choir Sean Mac Erlaine DJ’s: Donal Dineen David Kitt 11:11 Emmet Condon

All day-time activities free, tickets starting from €15.00 for food and night-time events. Tickets on sale on www.imma.ie from 24 June.

For full programme visit www.imma.ie Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Military Road, Kilmainham, Dublin 8 T +353 (0)1 6129900 E info@imma.ie W www.imma.ie Hélio Oiticica, Parangolé P4 Cape 1, 1964.

Photo Sergio Zalis

The Dock presents:

Exhibition

Maggie Madden Far Wide

RDS Concert Hall, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4

July 30, 31 & August 1 - Free admission (10am to 5pm)

John brady

August 6 – 10, Discover Ireland Dublin Horse Show admission fee applies (times vary)

Travelling, Drawing

Travelling Exhibitions RDS National Craft Awards 4 Sept – 10 Oct The Hunt Museum, Limerick RDS Student Art Awards 4 Sept – 10 Oct Bourn Vincent Gallery, University of Limerick

For further information

Friday 4 July – Saturday 30 August, preview: Friday 4 July 6.00pm (Open Monday – Friday 10am – 5.30pm, Saturday 10am – 5.00pm)

T: 01 240 7255 E: arts@rds.ie

www.rds.ie/arts

@TheRDS

RDSdublin

Works shown by Adam Frew & Joe Scullion

The Dock A: St Georges Terrace, Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim T: 071 965 0828 W: www.thedock.ie

4

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Editorial

July – August 2014

Contents

WELCOME To the July / August edition of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet. Observant readers will have noticed our new logo / visual identity. It’s much more than a vanity exercise; this new branding aims to deliver the utmost visibility and legibility for all of VAI’s work and collaborative ventures. The design work was carried in house, on a no-cost basis.

Much bigger news of course is Get Together 2014 (23 May), a gathering of over 400 visual art workers, which took place in IMMA’s historic, spacious rooms at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham. A full report on page 26 gives a taste of the talks, discussions, workshops and networking events that comprised the day.

As ever, our columnists address urgent contemporary cultural issues. Respectively, Treasa O’Brien, Mark Fisher and Emily Mark-FitzGerald discuss: the Irish State’s retrograde attitudes to abortion; boredom, compulsion and anxiety as the pervasive contemporary malaise; and the need to challenge conventional framings of Irish identity and nationhood.

West Cork is under the spotlight in our regional profile. Here, artists Wendy Dison and David Bickley, West Cork Arts Centre, Bluehouse Gallery and Kinsale Arts Festival portray the region’s visual art resources and activities.

Sculptor Barbara Knezevic and painter Tom Climent are the subjects for this edition’s Career Development features. There’s further focus on painting in James Merrigan’s report on a seminar at Lismore Castle focusing on the medium’s place within current art practice. Sculptural matters are further considered in a report on the National Sculpture Factory’s experimental iron casting event / seminar ‘Iron R 2’.

The Critique section reviews the group show ‘Reframing the Domestic’ along with solo exhibitions by Susan Connolly, Kennedy-Browne, Conor Mary Foy & Nicky Teegan and Sinéad ní Mhaonaigh.

The relatively young visual arts platform MART (established in Galway in 2006 and now based in Dublin) is profiled, as is Belfast Print Workshop, which has been in operation for 37 years. We’ve also interviews with gallerist Kevin Kavanagh and Ann Mulrooney, the new Chief Executive Officer of Visual, Carlow.

Further artists stories are told in Sven Anderson’s account of a project based on embedding himself within Dublin City Council as an urban acoustic planner / sound designer. Maud Cotter interviews Bernadette Cotter about the making and thinking processes involved in her work. Kevin Gaffney describes his residency at the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan.

A wide range of VAI’s services and activities are profiled in this issue: there’s a focus on VAI’s Local Area Groups; our work and campaigning to develop the quantity and quality of media coverage of the visual arts; and an article tackling the misuse of Per Cent for Art schemes. London based painter Victoria Wright offers an account of her peer critique session conducted for VAI’s professional development programme. Winners of the VAI Graduate Award 2014 from DIT, NCAD and IADT share their thoughts. We’ve also full listings of VAI’s extensive professional development, information and networking initiatives in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (page 34).

All this and the customary ‘more’: exhibition and public art roundups, the latest news from the sector and current opportunities.

Cover: Tom Climent, Acrobat, oil on canvas, 30x30 cm

5. Column. Treasa O’Brien. Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A. 6. Column. Boredom, Compulsion & Anxiety. Mark Fisher.

7. Column. Constructing Migration. Emily Mark–Fitzgerald.

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

8. VAI News. Visual Artists Ireland’s research, projects and campaigns.

9. Regional Profile. West Cork, Resources and Activities – Blue House Gallery; Kinsale Arts Festival, West Cork Arts Centre, David Bickley; Wendy Dison.

12. How is it made? Expansion & Transformation. Maud Cotter talks to Bernadette Cotter.

13. Career Development. Material Negotiation. Barbara Knezevic’s approach to professional practice.

14. Organisation profile. Championing a Medium. Ben Crothers profiles Belfast Print Workshop.

15. Project profile. Ultra Violet Orange. Sarah Kelleher profiles ‘Iron R 2’ at NSF, Cork.

16. Residency. Fluid Identities. Kevin Gaffney describes his residency at the Taipei artist Village in Taiwan.

17. Seminar Report. Helium for Lead. James Merrigan reports on a discussion about paintings placed within

contemporary art practice, Lismore Castle Arts.

18. Organisation profile. Very Berlin. Barry Kehoe profiles MART. 19. Critique. Susan Connolly, The MAC, Belfast; Kennedy Browne, Crawford Gallery, Cork; Mary Foy &

Nicky Teegan, NCAD Gallery; Sinéad ní Mhaonaigh, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery; ‘Reframing the Domestic’

Highlanes, Drogheda.

23. VAI Professional Development. Networking Networks. The Visual Artists Supports in Local

Communities event at Get Together 2014

23. VAI Help Desk / Letters. Art vs Utility. Visual Artists Ireland is tackling the misuse of percent for art

schemes to support architectural / design commissions.

24. VAI Advocacy. Courting the Mainstream. Developing the quantity and quality of media coverage.

25. Career Development. Consolidated practice. Carissa Farrell talks to painter Tom Climent.

26. VAI Get Together 2014. Common Causes. Lily Power reports on Get Together 2014 28. VAI Professional Development. Painting as Embodiment. Victoria Wright’s VAI peer critique.

29. Profile. Scale & Potential. An interview with Ann Mulrooney, Chief Executive Officer of Visual, Carlow.

29. VAI Northern Ireland Manager. Development NI Rob Hilken’s recent activities and concerns.

30. Art in Public.Between Inquiry & Control. Sven Anderson outlines a project based on embedding himself

within Dublin City Council as an urban acoustic planner / sound designer.

31. Art in Public Roundup. Commissions, site-specific works, socially engaged practice and other forms of art outside the gallery.

32. Gallery Profile. Challenges and Experience. Lily Power interviews Kevin Kavanagh.

33. VAI Graduate Award. What Now? Highlighting graduates recommended as outstanding by the

Join

Dublin art colleges: DIT, NCAD and IADT.

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

35. VAI Professional Development ROI & NI. Current and upcoming workshops, peer reviews and seminars.

Production: Publications Manager: Jason Oakley. Assistant Editor: Lily Power.

News & Opportunities: Niamh Looney. Invoicing: Bernadette Beecher.

Visual Artists Ireland

Contributors: Treasa O’Brien, Mark Fisher, Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Brian Lalor, Marie McPartlin, Ann Davoren, David Bickley, Wendy Dison, Maud Cotter, Bernadette Cotter, Barbara Knezevic, Jason Oakley, Ben Crothers, Sarah Kelleher, Kevin Gaffney, James Merrigan, Lily Power, Barry Kehoe, Anne Mullee, Gemma Carroll, Dorothy Hunter, Susan Campbell, Alison Pilkington, Alex Davis, Tom Climent, Kevin Kavanagh,

Visual Artists Ireland provides practical support, services, information & resources for professional visual artists throughout their careers.

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2014

COLUMN

Treasa O’Brien

5

Roundup

‘Didean / Home’ was an exhibition of

Personal Effects

painting and installation by Eoin Mac

Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A Have you seen the women in red? They turn up at Irish events in London and make a spectacle of themselves. They shout about choice for Irish women in the middle of the street. They annoy priests, they have bad taste in clothes and their politics are out of fashion. They first appeared in early 2014, and go by the name Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A. Imelda breaks the silence; she speaks the unspeakable and is not ashamed.1 Imelda’s first outing was on International Women’s Day on 8 March when she arrived unannounced at the Camden Irish Centre, London to address a conference called Dissonant Voices: Faith and the Irish Diaspora, led by a group of Catholic clerics who see themselves as “radical”, and “politically and socially engaged”.

Dressed in red and pulling suitcases, Imelda interrupted the afternoon panel, demanding that this ‘radical and socially engaged Irish church’ listen to the actual needs of Irish women and cease lobbying politicians to restrict women’s reproductive rights and power over their own bodies. One surprised young man shouted: “They’re not your bodies”. Two women applauded in support of Imelda.

At the London St Patrick’s Day Parade, Imelda wove her way through the parade asking folk if they knew the way to the abortion clinic and informing them about her lack of rights. People proved to be sympathetic, showing that the opinion of Irish people on the ground is not the same as those in power. Imelda decided to take the long way round to Trafalgar Square but somehow ended up crossing the front of the parade and, being a cheeky lass, she took the opportunity to lead the parade into the square, banging her red suitcases on the ground and shouting her catchphrase: “We are speaking of IMELDA: Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for Abortion.

Choice for Women. Choice for Ireland.” As broadsheet.ie later reported: “They’re not majorettes.”

What did Imelda do next? Not one to sit on her laurels, she looked towards the state visit of Michael D Higgins to London in April. She is, of course, proud of Michael D, in particular his pro-choice stance. However, the rhetoric of ‘our shared history’ was beginning to make her queasy when she thought of it in relation to our shared present, ie the 12 women a day from the North and the Republic that come to England to seek a safe abortion. This time she waved a red cloth that symbolised the Irish Sea, while singing the Enya classic Sail Away. Imelda is a bit of a crow but got her message across.

Michael D gave her a big wave as he left the Irish embassy on 8 April, which she took as a sign of solidarity. On 10 April, she performed again outside the Royal Albert Hall before the Ceiluradh concert.

Imelda has found that public reaction to her has been largely positive, with people saying they agree with what Imelda wants: of course women should have the right to decide whether they want to carry a pregnancy through or not. Of course they should have safe and legal access to abortion in Ireland without having to travel or be criminalised. Sure, hasn’t that right already been fought and won by so many women all over the world?

After a UK high court ruling in May barred women in Northern Ireland from accessing abortions through the NHS, Imelda was angry. She found out that the UK Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, holds an advice surgery in a Farnham supermarket on Fridays. She bought a bag of apples and hopped on the train from London. She gave them to Jeremy Hunt, taking a bite of each apple and giving him advice on how to change legislation so that women from Northern Ireland can access safe and legal abortions in the UK and not be criminalised nor discriminated against by being forced to travel and pay for what is a free and accessible service to any person in the UK. Imelda wants to upset the patriarchal applecart.

Imelda has been back and forth between Ireland and London too many times.

She remembers the 1980s when the Irish Women’s Abortion Support Group (IWASG) would receive calls from Irish women in need, saying the name ‘Imelda’ as a codeword to get advice and support. If they traveled to London, a woman in a red skirt might meet them at the airport or train station, accompany them to the clinic and give them shelter. Imelda remembers the shame of even saying the word abortion and how many women did not give their real names at the clinics. Once back in Ireland, neither state nor society was going to give any follow-up support – remember that this was the time of the Magdalene laundries.

“That was then”, you say, “things are much better now with abortion airlines and the ‘right’ to travel”. But actually, the 2013 Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, while allowing for abortion in exceptional circumstances, doesn’t provide for a woman to make her own choice on her own reproduction. And, despite being hailed as a milestone of progress when it came in, the Bill also introduced a 14-year prison sentence for anyone seeking or giving an abortion, outside the highly restrictive set of conditions outlined in the 2013 act.

My body my choice? My arse.

Lochlainn, held at 69 O’Connell Street, Limerick (formerly the Belltable Arts Centre) from 8 – 30 May. This body of work explored the human dimension to the economic situation in Ireland, empathising in particular with those on the margins of society. Mac Lochlainn described how his work “examines Alan Counihan, image from ‘Personal Effects’

notions of ‘home’ and explores how art

Saidhbhin Gibson, In Spades, 2014

may produce a deeper and more enduring

Saidhbhín Gibson’s work In Spades was

Alan Counihan’s ‘Personal Effects: a

understanding of the contemporary

exhibited as part of the ‘On Sight project’

history of possession’ was a site-specific

experience than media images”.

at Turlough Park, Co Mayo (24 May – 31

installation held at Old St Brendan’s

Aug), which focused this year on the

Hospital, Lower Grangegorman, Dublin

traditional fare of farmhouses. 15 artists

(1 – 10 May). The work was based on the personal effects of dead or discharged

and art groups were invited to respond to this topic through the realisation of

Shrouded Spirits

patients of Grangegorman Mental

outdoor installations placed around the

Hospital, discovered in the attics of that

grounds. Gibson’s work contained 14

institution in 2010, and followed two

individually decorated butter spade

years of research and development. The

forms made of stoneware clay. The artist

artist’s goal, the press release noted, was

looked at historic wooden carved butter

to “allow an imagination of life – both

prints and represented a variety of these

within and without the institutions, as

while also referencing the surrounding

‘others’ might have experienced it”. A radio documentary tracking the project

natural environment.

Image from ‘Shrouded Spirits’

is currently in process for RTE’s Documentary on One.

‘Shrouded Spirits’ was an exhibition of

Residues of Time

photographs by Betty Gannon (curated

by Ian Wieczorek), installed in McGing’s Lakes & Glens

Bar, Westport, Co Mayo (17 – 27 Apr). The show opened on Holy Thursday (but closed on Good Friday) and depicted various Mayo emporia and their attempts to conceal alcoholic products on Good Friday last year in compliance with the 1927 Intoxicating Liquor Act. www.bettygannon.com, www.ianwieczorek.com

Heidi Nguyen, Yellow Sunshine, 15 x 27cm

Hanneke van Ryswyk, The Reveal

Rewriting History The Little Museum of Dublin featured a

French artist Heidi Nguyen exhibited a

specially

graphic

‘Residues of Time’, a solo exhibition of

collection of her abstract landscapes in

installation by Fergal McCarthy, which

paintings by Hanneke van Ryswyk, was

her first Dublin solo show at Gallery 27,

ran until 31 May and reflected the artist’s

presented at the Olivier Cornet Gallery,

Dublin (8 – 13 May). The Donegal

unique take on the Battle of Clontarf. The

Dublin (11 May – 14 Jun). The exhibition

landscape where Nguyen works, the

exhibition comprised a giant graphic

was part of van Ryswyk’s ongoing body of

press release noted, informs the “intense,

novel of the event on the walls of the

work responding to the immediate

lucid colour that has become the

museum, created, the press release stated,

results of glacial melt. A catalogue, with a

signature of her landscapes”. In this

“with a healthy dollop of irreverence”.

foreword by Jeremy Hill of the Norman

exhibition, Nguyen presented a series of

Rewriting the story with dozens of

Gallery, accompanied the exhibition.

small panels that are a close up of

humorous drawings with text, the black

saturated colours and textures and

and white images covered the walls of

canvases that relate more to a sense of

the downstairs gallery and continued

Plot

space and dimension using gesture and

across the floor in vinyl cutouts.

Bea McMahon’s exhibition ‘Plot’ ran at

commissioned

fluidity.

www.littlemuseum.ie

www.oliviercornet.com

two locations in Dublin – Green On Red Gallery, Lombard Street and Unit 4, James

Didean / Home

Treasa O’Brien, director / writer : www.vimeo.com/treasaobrien Executive Director, Open City Docs Fest: www.opencitydocsfest.com Note 1. Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A. is a direct action feminist performance group founded in early 2014 that seeks to challenge the ongoing problem of Ireland Making England the Legal Destination for Abortion. Watch her videos on youtube and join the conversation on Facebook: Speaking of Imelda.

In Spades

The Heart Rocker

Joyce Street from 22 May – 28 Jun. The

Japanese-born artist Shiro Masuyama

former will hold props and plot drawings

exhibited ‘The Heart Rocker’ at Engine

and the latter will house moving image

Room Gallery, Belfast (5 – 28 Jun), an

work The Fixed Point. In McMahon’s new

installation that focused on his relocation

works, the press release stated, “the

from Berlin to Belfast. Dismayed by

gallery space becomes the site of

repeatedly finding dog excrement in his

translation or metaphor or legislative

garden, Masuyama created a mural

definition, the traces left by enacting /

banner, which read “a simple action to

uttering a fixed text on the spatial sets

prevent

become the material that drives a plot or

re-occurrence

while

also

reflecting on my identity as a Japanese outsider” and filmed himself disposing of Eoin MacLochlainn, I Don’t Think I’ll Ever Forget

the “metaphorical landmines” while wearing a forensic suit. www.engineroomgallery.blogspot.co.uk

plot matrix”. www.greenonredgallery.com

6

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Column

ROUNDUP

Mark Fisher

Eminent Domain

The Hare of Ben Bo

July – August 2014

Towards a Dialogue

Crona Gallagher presented a series of

Boredom, Compulsion & Anxiety

new works at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre (16 – 29 May). Over the past three

One of the most intriguing and provocative pieces on politics and culture this year was We Are All Very Anxious by the Institute of Precarious Consciousness (the essay gained a great deal of attention when it was republished on Plan C’s website).1 It argues that the key problematic affect capitalism now faces is anxiety. In an earlier, Fordist era, it was boredom that was the “dominant reactive affect”. Repetitive labour on production lines engendered boredom, which was both the central form of subjugation under Fordism and the source of a new oppositional politics.

It could be argued that the failure of the traditional left is tied up with its inability adequately to engage with this politics of boredom, which wasn’t articulated via trade unions or political parties, but via the cultural politics of the Situationists and the punks. It was the neoliberals, not the organised left, who were best able to absorb and instrumentalise this critique of boredom. Neoliberals quickly moved to associate Fordist factories and the stability and security of social democracy with tedium, predictability and top-down bureaucracy. In place of this, the neoliberals offered excitement and unpredictability – but the downside of these newly fluid conditions is perpetual anxiety. Anxiety is the emotional state that correlates with the (economic, social, existential) precariousness which neoliberal governance has normalised.

The Institute of Precarious Consciousness were right to observe that too much anti-capitalist politics is locked into strategies and perspectives that were formed in an era when the struggle was against boredom. They are also correct both that capitalism has effectively solved the problem of boredom, and that it is crucial that the left finds ways of politicising anxiety. Neoliberal culture – which came to dominance as the anti-psychiatry movement was waning – has individualised depression and anxiety.

Or rather, many cases of depression and anxiety are the effects of neoliberalism’s successful tendency to privatise stress, to convert political antagonisms into medical conditions.

At the same time, I believe that the argument about boredom has to be somewhat nuanced. It is certainly true that one could feel almost nostalgic for boredom 1.0. The dreary void of Sundays, the the night hours after television stopped broadcasting, even the endless dragging minutes waiting in queues or for public transport: for anyone who has a smartphone, this empty time has now been effectively eliminated. In the intensive, 24-7 environment of capitalist cyberspace, the brain is no longer allowed any time to idle; instead, it is inundated with a seamless flow of low-level stimulus.

Yet boredom was ambivalent; it wasn’t simply a negative feeling that one simply wanted rid of. For punk, the vacancy of boredom was a challenge, an injunction and an opportunity: if we are bored, then it is for us to produce something that will fill up the space. Yet, it is through this demand for participation that capitalism has neutralised boredom. Now, rather than imposing a pacifying spectacle on us, capitalist corporations go out of their way to invite us to interact, to generate our own content, to join the debate. There is now neither an excuse nor an opportunity to be bored.

But if the contemporary form of capitalism has extirpated boredom, it has not vanquished the boring. On the contrary – you could argue that the boring is ubiquitous.

For the most part, we’ve given up any expectation of being surprised by culture – and that goes for ‘experimental’ culture as much as popular culture. Whether it is music that sounds like it could have come out 20, 30, 40 years ago, Hollywood blockbusters that recycle and reboot concepts, characters and tropes that were exhausted long ago, or the tired gestures of so much contemporary art, the boring is everywhere. It is just that no one is bored – because there is no longer any subject capable of being bored. For boredom is a state of absorption – a state of high absorption, in fact, which is why it is such an oppressive feeling. Boredom consumes our being; we feel we will never escape it. But it is just this capacity for absorption that is now under attack, as a result of the constant dispersal of attention, which is integral to capitalist cyberspace. If boredom is a form of empty absorption, then more positive forms of absorption effectively counter it. But it is these forms of absorption which capitalism cannot deliver. Instead of absorbing us, it distracts from the boring.

Perhaps the feeling most characteristic of our current moment is a mixture of boredom and compulsion. Even though we recognise that they are boring, we nevertheless feel compelled to do yet another Facebook quiz, to read yet another Buzzfeed list, to click on some celebrity gossip about someone we don’t even remotely care about. We endlessly move among the boring, but our nervous systems are so overstimulated that we never have the luxury of feeling bored. No one is bored, everything is boring.

Mark Fisher is the author of Capitalist Realism (2009) and Ghosts Of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures (2014). His writing has appeared in the Wire, Frieze, the Guardian and Film Quarterly. He is Programme Leader of the MA in Aural and Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London and a lecturer at the University of East London. He has also produced two acclaimed audio-essays in collaboration with Justin Barton: londonunderlondon (2005) and On Vanishing Land (2013).

Note 1. www.weareplanc.org

years, Gallagher has worked on a new volume of poetry, which she developed through a series of etchings and visualtext compositions for the exhibition that engage, the press release noted “with the rich heritage, wildlife and unique weather patterns of north County Leitrim”.

Image from ‘Towards a Dialogue’, 2014

www.leitrimsculpturecentre.ie Gillian Lawler, Eminent Domain

Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray and curator

Gillian Lawler’s exhibition ‘Eminent

Eilis Lavelle presented group show

Cloy

Domain’ was held at Galway Arts Centre

‘Towards a Dialogue of the Possible’ (10

(6 Jun – 5 Jul). Lawler’s new work was

May – 5 Jul), which featured work by

inspired by a visit to Centralia,

Christine Mackey, Anna Macleod, Orla

Pennsylvania, which was devastated in

McHardy, Méadhbh O’Connor, David

the 1960s when coal deposits under the

Madigan, Seoidín O’Sullivan and Karol

town caught fire and the whole town was

O’Mahony. The work covered animation,

declared unsafe. Lawler looks at natural

video, architectural design, sculpture and

phenomena and its possible effects on

installation. The press release described

the design and architecture of built

how the work on show aimed to explore

structures. The press release described

“the way in which artwork can be said to

how the exhibition “explores human response to environmental crises and

set up certain discussions for discovery and how through art we can encounter

Sinead Kennedy, ‘Cloy’, 2014

creates imaginary structures which play

shifts in thinking. These discussions, or

and hypothesise possible architectural

Sinead Onora Kennedy, winner of the

discursive fields in art, can produce new

solutions”.

Talbot Gallery’s Most Promising Graduate

conversations

Award 2013, held her solo show ‘Cloy’ at

disciplines”.

www.galwayartscentre.ie

across

the gallery (4 – 15 Jun). Kennedy’s work

different

www.mermaidartscentre.ie

examines our perception of ugliness, the

Underline

press release noted, and “the concept that

Meat Option

people exist twice, both as themselves and as representations of themselves”.

She is interested in Aristotle’s ideas about objects and beauty, applying these to our contemporary attitudes to fat. www.talbotgallery.com

Haunted

Image from ‘Underline’, Occupy Space Sean Guinan, Skipper, oil on canvas

‘Underline’ showcased the work of artists Janine Davidson, Frank Wasser, Séamus

A series of paintings by Seán Guinan

McCormack, Elaine Leader, Tanya

titled ‘Meat Option’ were shown at Luan

O’Keeffe and Olivia Hassett, running

Gallery, Athlone (2 –29 May). The title,

from 6 – 28 Jun at Occupy Space, Limerick.

the artist explains in the press release,

Working site specifically, the artists

“alludes to a hypothetical shift in the

reacted and responded to the underground

collective consciousness, wherein human

basement of the historically significant

beings can transcend innate and

Leamy House, exploring its ever-changing societal functions as a school, factory,

animalistic impulses”. The paintings Kelly Richardson, image by Paola Bernadelli

expand on this idea and blur the lines

museum, snooker club and venue for the

between abstract and figurative painting,

arts. The aim of the show, the press

‘Haunted’, an exhibition of work by Kelly

creating a “visual passage between the

release stated, was to investigate the

Richardson, ran at Millennium Court

past and the future, reality and fiction”.

“public and private in our society,

Arts Centre, Portadown and VOID, Derry

deconstructing and reconstructing that

(24 May – 18 Jul). The show comprised

which is hidden and revealed in our past

three large-scale video works and was

present and future”.

curated by Gregory McCartney of www.occupyspace.com

www.athloneartandheritage.ie

Kin

Abridged magazine. Richardson, the press release noted, “draws on science-

Permission Granted

fiction cinema, literature and the history

Marje O’Brien’s exhibition of drawing

of landscape painting in works that

works, ‘Permission Granted’, ran at

interweave fine art, animation, real

Ennistymon Courthouse (6 Jun – 3 Jul).

footage

The artist described how “the joy and

wildernesses and Hollywood special

sorrow, ebb and flow, balance and fragility

effects, to create highly sophisticated and

of emotion” inspired the works on show,

immersive works realised over several

which were created on newsprint paper.

months, and sometimes years”.

www.thecourthousegallery.com

of

spectacular

natural

www.derryvoid.com

Richard Gorman at The Mac

The Mac, Belfast held a solo exhibition by the painter Richard Gorman titled ‘Kin’

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2014

7

Column

ROUNDUP

Emily Mark-FitzGerald

(9 May – 27 Jul). In the press release,

explored the contexts in which children

The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny exhibited a

Gorman said of his work: “I paint alone in

learn, and the psychological and

series of works by Felicity Clear (14 Jun

Constructing Migration

my studio where I solve problems that

physiological transformations that take

– 27 Jul), which included wall drawings,

did not exist until I began painting. A

place through different methods of

structures and animation. In her previous

painting is a conflict with disorder. A

learning.

work, Clear was interested in structures

Few nations bear a history so marked by migration as Ireland, and perhaps few countries have so enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to publicly commemorate and explore the creation of diaspora in recent years. Yet the proliferation of ‘diaspora engagement strategies’ (such as The Gathering) and the ‘cherishing’ of Ireland’s immigration history (to borrow Mary Robinson’s phraseology) can also be situated within a worldwide trend that has seen phenomenal acceleration in the last decade. This is the growing number and scale of migration / diaspora heritage initiatives, not only in Ireland, but across the world, and the close entanglement of these public projects with broader social and political agendas.

What distinguishes many of these ventures are two significant developments. The first is a shift away from presenting migration as a nation-building enterprise towards new ‘transnational’ perspectives. Transnational history takes into account interrelationships between diasporic countries, and the back-and-forth impact of migration on multiple communities and across time. Such an approach presents migration as a fluid social experience, and problematises (rather than declares) relationships between national and personal identities. Second, it is to contemporary art that migration museums have increasingly turned as a means of exploring migrant and diasporic identities, both historical and contemporary.

Museums such as the Cité Nationale de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris, opened in 2007, have made such features core (and not peripheral) aspects of their interpretative strategy. Following the recommendation of its planning commission, the museum is structured using a three-pronged ‘hybrid’ design: a historical approach (comprising the collection and presentation of archival information documenting two centuries of migration to France), an anthropological approach (collecting and presenting migrants’ own views and oral histories of their experiences) and the artistic approach (where contemporary art is marshaled to evince what its director has called “a subjective, aesthetic, even emotional interpretation of the migratory event”).

Thomas Mailaender’s photographic series Voitures Cathedrales (Car Cathedrals) (2004), featured at the museum, is one example of this third approach. Mailaender worked for a summer at the Société Nationale Maritime de la Méditerraneé in Marseilles, photographing the immigrants arriving at the port with cars heavily laden with the material possessions and commercial goods of their occupants, often with considerable ingenuity and feats of balancing and compression. As the artist noted in his account of the work: “The title given to the series underlines the monumental aspect of these vehicles and confers the status of an icon upon them. It renders homage to these heaps of merchandise which defy the laws of gravity .... In constant transition between two territories, North and South, these containers on four wheels are the evident materialisation of a concept of the frontier or border and the cultural proliferations that result there.”

Increasingly such ‘hybridized’ approaches are common to new migration museum designs, for several reasons. In the first instance, they allow for a de-centred interpretative approach that diverges from older migration museum models (such as Ellis Island, opened in 1990), which tended to rely on monolithic concepts of the nation and static ethnic identities, and portrayed migration as a ‘natural’ rather than constructed form of experience and process. Furthermore, such ‘hybridized’ designs accord with the values of ‘new museology’ that has influenced museum practice particularly since the 1990s: the desire of museums to reflect non-elite culture, encourage direct participation by their visitors and, as institutions, that museums should adopt a more self-reflexive and transparent approach to collection and display. The inclusion of contemporary art in migration exhibition design is therefore one means by which such engagement is proctored, and institutional subjectivity foregrounded.

What does this have to do with how migration is narrated in Ireland and elsewhere?

Dynamic approaches to exhibiting social history are rare within the Irish heritage sector, where passive consumption of static exhibitions or simulation remain the norm. In the Republic and in Northern Ireland – despite active and extensive historical research into Irish diasporic assimilation and social mobility, including contentious debates on Irish ‘whiteness’, racial identity and intra-community division – such issues and tensions are still rarely visualised within heritage settings, let alone connected to present domestic racial and migrant politics.

Although to date there is no substantial engagement with immigration or diaspora histories in a national cultural institution (at least in the Republic), some domestic initiatives are currently in development. One such project is ‘The Exchange’, a diaspora attraction proposed by Dun Laoghaire Harbour Company as part of the redevelopment of Carlisle Pier. However this project’s proposition to include visitor DNA testing to calculate proportional Irish ancestry – to be 3D printed as a visitor souvenir – suggests that outdated (and deeply problematic) framings of Irish identity and nationhood persist.

We have much to learn from international dialogues, and experiences concerning the production of public migration histories, and the possibilities that contemporary art and other means of visitor engagement hold for recognising that cultural citizenship of an imagined Irish nation should bear contradiction as well as celebration.

Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, School of Art History & Cultural Policy University College Dublin

painting is not a message to anyone. It

www.belfastexposed.org

may not tell a story, it may not even represent an idea. It means only that it

such as high-rise modernist building schemes, suburban parking lots, and ghost cranes hovering over building sites,

Real & Imaginative Worlds

signifies what I spend my time doing – it

but has shifted her focus. The works in

is the outcome of that process of making

this show examined “abstract ideas of

and remaking on the flat surface in search

structure, stability and failure,” the press

of a precarious balance.”

release noted, describing structures that are “untenable, and ambiguous as to their

www.themaclive.com

beginning, middle and end”.

The Workers

www.butlergallery.com

We Live by the River

Jonathan Sammon, from ‘Real and Imaginary Worlds’

Work by Hilary O’Shaughnessy, Jonathon Sammon ‘The Workers’, Roscommon Arts Centre

and

Vivienne

O’Byrne

comprised the exhibition ‘Real and Imaginative Worlds’ at Highlanes Gallery,

‘The Workers’, held at Roscommon Arts

Drogheda (2 May – 21 Jun). The press

Centre (24 May – 18 Jul), comprised work

release described how the show was

by past participants in the art@work

inspired by video game culture and the

scheme, which was developed by

“multi-faceted nature of playing games”.

Roscommon Arts Office and connects

Several of the featured works were

Selected members of Backwater Artists

businesses and artists. The exhibition

interactive and explored concerns about

Group collaborated on an exhibition

examined how each artist’s practice has

communication, isolation and identity.

exchange with three artists from Gedok

developed since taking part in the

www.droicheadartscentre.com

scheme. The artists featured were: Michelle Browne, whose two channel

Image from ‘We Live by the River’, CIT Wandesfor Quay

Cologne as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival 2014. The exhibition celebrated the 25 year twinning relationship

This Attentive Place

film Risk engages with the risk takers in

between Cork and Cologne and drew on

society who invested their lives and

themes of coming and going, specifically

family’s future in property and precarious

in relation to the river, a landmark feature

business transactions; Gareth Kennedy,

which dominates both cities. Anjelika

whose IKEA Butter Churn for Gneeveguilla

Wittek, Beate Gordes and Hiltrud Gauf

considers traditional working processes

exhibited at CIT, Wandesford Quay

and relationships to work; and Elaine

Gallery (15 Jun – 6 Jul), while Susanne

Reynolds, whose video Fuzzy Aggregates

Leutenegger,

brings together the voices of multiple

Fitzgerald, Jo Kelley and Maureen

migrant workers seeking their fortune in isolated, barren, mining regions of

Caoimhe Kilfeather, ‘This Attentive Place’, TBG+S

Tony

Magner,

Tracy

Considine presented their work in Rathaus / Spanischer Bau, Cologne from

Western Australia working in harsh and

Caoimhe Kilfeather’s solo show of

(28 May – 9 Jun). Both shows were curated

physically difficult conditions.

sculptural work, ‘this attentive place’, ran

by Tina Darb.

www.roscommonartscentre.ie

at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin

www.backwaterartists.ie

(19 Jun – 20 Aug). In this exhibition, the How We Learn

press release stated, familiar materials are

Where there are people ...

used in unexpected ways” and the gallery

Eamon O’Kane’s exhibition ‘Where there

becomes a place “where elements of

are people there are things’ ran at CCA,

artworks are arranged and rearranged,

Derry (7 Jun – 19 Jul) that centres around

privileged or overlooked … Kilfeather is

a derelict plant nursery in Odense,

interested in how the characteristics of

Denmark, where the artist lives and has a

habit and familiarity, memory and

studio. The exhibition comprises an

observation,

installation of photographs of the interior

can

be

captured

sculpturally”.

of the nursery, displayed on light-boxes www.templebargallery.com

made from recycled light components that were once used in the greenhouses

Wendy Ewals, images from ‘On Reading’, 2003

Drawings, Plans, Projections

to help plant growth. The photographs,

The multidisciplinary group exhibition

taken over a period of several months,

‘How We Learn’, held at Belfast Exposed

depict details of the place in a state of

(3 Apr – 24 May), featured work by

abandonment. The press release noted:

Wendy Ewald, Julian Germain, James

“We see subtle signs of human

Russell Cant, Wendy McMurdo and

interference. The photographs represent

Marysa Dowling, who collaborated with

these different and overlapping rhythms

pupils at St Malachy’s Primary School,

of change”.

Meadowbridge Primary School, Sacred

www.cca-derry-londonderry.org

Heart Primary School and Loughshore Educational Resource Centre. The work

Felicity Clear, from ‘Drawings, Plans, Projections’

8

News VAI Deplores Censorship In May Banbridge District Council’s Director of Leisure and Development instructed that work by Ursula Burke be removed from the then forthcoming exhibition ‘The Past is Unpredictable’ at the F E McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge (31 May – 17 August). Burke is known for her work exploring identity and representation. She has exhibited widely and is considered one of the important artists of her generation in Northern Ireland.

The image in question is one of a series of nine studies in the style of Arcadian landscapes that were prominent in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Burke has placed each with a contemporary Northern Irish context. For example, one landscape contains an armoured police vehicle with a broken lamppost.

A second contains youths attacking riot police, and the image that has been removed contains an image of a same sex couple intertwined and naked with a voyeuristic onlooker set in an idealised landscape.

In a statement, Jeff Byers, Communications Assistant at Banbridge District Council, wrote: “Following a review by Banbridge District Council’s Director of Leisure and Development, it has been agreed that the artwork entitled After Frans Van Bloeman – Arcadian Landscape by artist Ursula Burke would not be included in the forthcoming exhibition ‘The Past is Unpredictable’, which is due to open at the FE McWilliam Gallery and Studio, Banbridge on 31 May 2014. This decision has been taken on the basis that the artwork in question depicted a scene of a sexual nature, which was deemed inappropriate for display to minors in a public gallery…”

This trend by councils to interfere with the curatorial and artistic autonomy of their funded spaces is a direct attack on the freedom of artistic expression.

It is clear that galleries in Northern Ireland have found ways to deliver on their child protection policies, which all publically funded spaces must have.

Exhibitions can be clearly marked as to having content that parents may wish to control their children’s access to.

Cases in point are the recent Kara Walker exhibition in The MAC, which contained scenes of sexual intercourse in Walker’s shadow puppetry style, and the current exhibition by Alan Phelan in Golden Thread Gallery, which contains scenes of extreme sexual practice in found video footage. Both exhibitions were open to the public with clear warnings to parents about these works.

This type of action is a direct parallel with the recent attempts in Newtownabbey to cancel the performance of the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s Bible, which led to outrage not only in the United Kingdom but also internationally. An online petition is available on change.org.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Arts Council Project Award The Arts Council will only be running one round of the Project Award in Visual Arts in 2015. This means that the upcoming deadline of 28 August 2014 for the Project Award Round 1 2015 will be the only available award for visual arts projects taking place in 2015.

Please note that any application made under this round must commence by November 2015 at the latest.

help craft makers pursue their careers.

Originally from Belfast, Rosy had a lifelong commitment to the arts and, following her death in 2010, a fund was set up offering a unique bursary to help craft makers develop their careers.

It will allow the recipient to create work that would otherwise have been unachievable and buy them time to explore new ideas and develop a new body of work.

www.artscouncil.ie

www.artscouncil-ni.org

Fire Station – New Living Spaces Dublin’s Fire Station Artists’ Studios opened two new residential studios in June in a major expansion to the organisation which brought the number of combined living and working studios it offers to artists increase from eight to ten. President Michael D Higgins officially opened the two new studios in June, which will each offer an artist nearly three years of subsidised and secure living and working accommodation.

Irish Arts Abroad Funding Funding of just under €500,000 has been announced by Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, for the promotion of Irish arts abroad in the remainder of 2014 and into 2015, through his Department’s Culture Ireland programme. Announcing the funding, Minister Deenihan said he was determined to build on the success of Irish artists internationally over the past year. A visual arts programme will be supported, which includes Richard Mosse’s Venice presentation. www.cultureireland.ie/applications

UNESCO Art Camp Michelle Boyle has been selected by the National Commission and Permanent Delegation (Ireland) and the Andorran National Commission for UNESCO to represent Ireland at the 2014 UNESCO Edition of Art Camp which will broadly address the strategic issue of Cultural Diversity and Peace.

33 nominated artists from around the world will gather to promote dialogue and understanding in this unique project promoting multicultural diversity and intercultural dialogue through art. Works created by the participants at this year’s Biennial will be exhibited in 2015 / 16 in the UNESCO headquarters in Paris, in the Moya Museum, Vienna, at the OSCE headquarters in Vienna,and the Office of UNESCO Venice www.artcampcolorsplaneta.blogspot.ie

Silversmith Bursary A new annual craft bursary, the Rosy James Memorial Trust Award, worth £15,000, has been awarded to silversmith Stuart Cairns. Administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the new award came about thanks to the generosity of Rosemary James (Rosy), a colourful patron of the arts who bequeathed over £500,000 to

Sean Lynch at Venice The team to represent Ireland at the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice in 2015 has been announced. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council.

The Commissioner for 2015 is Mike Fitzpatrick, who will work with the Curator Woodrow Kernohan to present the work of artist, Sean Lynch. Both the Commissioner and the Curator have extensive experience of presenting high profile international exhibitions.

Mike Fitzpatrick, currently Director of Limerick City of Culture, was Commissioner / Curator for the 52nd Venice Art Biennale, which saw a very successful exhibition of the work of Gerard Byrne. Woodrow Kernohan is Director of EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Art. Sean Lynch, who has just opened his first UK museum exhibition at Modern Art Oxford, has already attracted strong international interest and has exhibited in many public galleries and institutions throughout Europe, as well as being known for several high profile public art projects, including O’Connell Street, Dublin. www.ahg.gov.ie www.seanlynchinfo.com

Art Spaces ON AIR Art Spaces is a new six part radio series produced for Near FM. The aim of the series is to promote awareness and an appreciation of the visual arts in North Dublin. Each week a different space is examined and discussed, considering the history, the struggles and challenges of each space. The programme details are: PrettyvacanT (7 July); Block T (14 July); The Joinery (21 July).

The series will feature interviews with: Alan Phelan, Jesse Jones, Maria McKinney, Dominic Thorpe, Miranda Driscoll, Deirdre Morrissey, Louise Marlborough, Sven Anderson, Paddy Graham, Francis Fay, Bernadette Beecher, Francis Quinn, Gillian Fitzpatrick, Neil Carroll, musician Gavin Prior, Rob McGlade and Andrew Doyle (Fathers of Western Thought), Olive Barrett, Linda Phelan,Grace McEvoy, Aisling Conroy, Ruth Clinton, Niamh Moriarty, Daniel Tuomey and others. www.nearfm.ie

July – August 2014

VAI News

Artists’ Café will be at the Armagh

Get Together: Thank You!

Market Place Theatre & Arts Centre,

Visual Artists Ireland would like to say a

offering a networking and professional

big thank you to all attendees, speakers,

development with a focus on writing

curators, guests, funders and our hosts

proposals and making presentations.

IMMA for making Get Together 2014 such

For bookings / information contact

an enjoyable, insightful and productive

Rob Hilken, Northern Ireland Manager:

day. It is extremely rewarding for us to

rob@visualartists-ni.org

be able to provide a platform for our artist members, partners, collaborators and colleagues in the sector where ideas

Professional Development ROI

are generated, issues raised, projects

VAI’s

promoted and most importantly new

programme in the Republic of Ireland

friendships and networks are formed. You

starts up again in this September so book

can see lots of photos of the event on our

now to avoid disappointment! Events

website. Special thanks to Fiona Dowling

are taking place in Roscommon, Louth,

and Hazel Coonagh for photography on

Laois and Dublin. The programme

the day. There is a full write up of the day

spans the following topics: Creating

on page 26.

Opportunities for your Work; Presenting Yourself

Professional

Development

and Your Work; Socially

Engaged Visual Art Practices; Web and De Sousa & Stampe VAI’s

Professional

Social Media Strategies; Writing the Development

Artist’s Statement and CV; Developing

Programme is delighted to announce that

Proposals; Selling Your Work; Peer

it will be hosting visits from international

Critique; Public Art Project Case Studies;

curators Beatrice De Sousa and Jonas

VAI Help Desks.

Stampe. Jonas Stampe – critic, curator

Details can be found on page 35. For

and art historian specialising in live art

bookings / information contact Monica

– will attend the Dublin Live Art Festival

Flynn,

(September 2014) to see work and meet

Officer: monica@visualartists.ie www.

artists. Full details will be announced

visualartists.ie

Professional

Development

closer to the time of the event.

In early November, VAI is facilitating a range of research visits and meetings

NI Collectors

with artists for Bea De Souza, Founder /

On 27 June, Visual Artists Ireland

Director at The Agency Gallery, London.

presented an information day for

De Sousa’s schedule will be focused on

budding art collectors at R-Space Gallery,

encountering artists and organisations

Lisburn. The day featured talks by

based in Northern Ireland and a regional

R-Space Gallery curator Robert Martin;

venue in the Republic of Ireland. Artists

private art collector Ian Bickerstaff and

will be nominated by the VAI Advisory

Belfast Print Workshop Declan Byrne and

Panel and the partnering venue in

Jonathan Magee. 10 artists showcased

response to Bea’s curatorial interests.

their work in ‘Show & Tell – Affordable Artwork’. The programme also included a screening of Megumi Sasaki’s 2008

Professional Development NI

documentary Herb & Dorothy about

Visual Artists Ireland is rolling out an

legendary New York collectors Herb and

exciting

Development

Dorothy Vogel – respectively a postal

Programme in Northern of Ireland of

clerk and librarian – who have built one

networking and resource events. Details

of the most important collections of

of all the sessions – which are FREE to

minimalist art in the world.

Professional

VAI members in Northern Ireland – can

www.rspacelisburn.com

be found on page 35.

The new initiative was launched

FUNDING survey

on 2 July at The MAC, Belfast at a

At the time of writing Visual Artists

day-long Visual Artists’ Café event

Ireland is collating the findings of its

featuring presentations by: Noel Kelly,

most recent survey: Funding for the Visual

CEO Visual Artists Ireland; Rob Hilken,

Arts and Visual Artist Led Initiatives in the

VAI Northern Ireland Manager; Sean

Republic of Ireland. The survey looked at

Kissane, Curator at IMMA; and a Show

the current available funding and asked

& Tell event showcase / networking

if the current systems are adequate, and

session. In July and August Digital Art

what potential changes are needed.

Studios, Belfast (DAS) will be hosting

The survey was broken into two

VAI Help-Desk events. In Derry VAI and

sections: Individual Artists and Artist

the CCA have organised an ‘Introducing

Led Initiatives (Exhibition Programmes,

Derry Galleries’ day.

Community Groups, Workspaces, and

On 1 August VAI present a Visual

Events / Projects). The findings will be

Artists’ Café event at Catalyst Arts,

presented in report format to the Arts

featuring sessions on: setting up and

Council.

growing your own business; pricing your work; and a graduate Show & Tell. On 29 August the VAI Visual

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2014

9

West Cork: Resources & Activities Film, Music, Light

Books, Art, Chocolate

Keith Payne, Maybe Dick-

John Doherty, Resting

Cormac Boydell, The Lion’s Den

The Blue House Gallery on Schull’s Main Street opened in 2013 – adding to the cultural crucible of West Cork, already noted for the West Cork Chamber Music and Literary Festivals in Bantry, the Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival in Schull and the Ballydehob Jazz Festival. Our aim was that the gallery would provide a focus for professional artists on the wild shores of the Atlantic. Since the 1950s artists, musicians and writers from all over the world have been gravitating to West Cork, and the cultural community is now a robust and wellintegrated one.

The Blue House Gallery emerged from a series of annual exhibitions organised by John Pettersen, and an artists’ website created by Chris O’Dell – both local residents. The initial purpose of the gallery was to provide a permanent venue and showcase for the artists in the region. The project was funded by the 35 artists involved, who bought shares in the enterprise at €100 a piece. With this fund we were able to acquire the premises: a former dwelling house on Main Street, Schull between the bookshop and the chocolate shop. Books, art and chocolate, what more could you need?

The dwelling was transformed into a smart gallery – with a slightly strange retro atmosphere due to the 1950s embossed wallpaper in shocking scarlet along the stairs and the department store deep pile carpets in two of the rooms. Blue House Gallery opened in June and ran a successful season of solo and group exhibitions until late September.

For the first season, we limited ourselves to work on the walls: painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and textile art, but plan to include other mediums in future seasons. Over the 2013 exhibiting season upwards of 3,000 people visited the gallery and sales were spread across the majority of exhibiting artists. This ‘shares system’ proved a success as a means of seed-funding the project. Not only was the principal investment paid back to the artists involved, there was also a small dividend.

This first season proved to be a good example of community self-funding to get an arts project off the ground.

The second season of Blue House Gallery began with structural changes to the organisation and of the leading personnel. Painter John Doherty became

chairperson of the and a triumvirate of myself, Doherty and Keith Payne (who sat on the hanging committee during 2013) became the curators for 2014. Alyn Fenn became secretary and John Pettersen PRO. The 2014 season opened on Good Friday, earlier than in the previous year, and a bumper crowd attended the inaugural group exhibition. The new season marked a significant change of direction.

Blue House Gallery, initially open to all, is now being run as a professional gallery for the professional artists of the region. This means an upping of standards and improvements to display facilities. The inaugural exhibition featured a range of 3D works – ceramics by Etain Hickey and Jim Turner, as well as bronze sculptures by Holger Lönze. Sculpture and high-grade ceramics will be prominent in various shows during the coming year, including a major solo exhibition of the ceramic artist Cormac Boydell and scrimshawincorporating conceptual work by Keith Payne.

Landscape has always occupied a central role in Irish contemporary art and the gallery will show an extended list of fine work in this area from artists with a wide range of approaches: Donagh Carey, John Doherty, Damaris Lysaght, Helen O’Keeffe and Terry Searle. Our fresh direction will also be evident in the Ox Herding series of mandalas on paper by Buddhist Monk Terrance Keenan.

As the sole printmaker in the group, I will show a new suite of etchings. There will also be work on show from distinguished colourists Alyn Fenn, Kym Leahy, Ann Martin and Birgitta Saflund and textiles by Julia Zagar. During July, a group of well-known artists – Colin Harrison, Brian Bourke and Martin Gale among them – from the Taylor Gallery, Dublin will show at the Blue House Gallery.

Photography, which has had a place here since the beginning, will continue to be represented by three distinguished practitioners – Ulrike Crespo, Sheena Jolley, Nuala Mahon – who between them represent a mini-survey of contemporary photographic trends.

I am an ‘intermedial’ artist working primarily with film, music and light. I have lived and worked in West Cork since 1995. The region has been central to my artistic practice, not only as inspiration and source material for my film and audio art, but also in terms of professional and financial support and the dissemination of my work.

My most recent work of film art, MATERIALS, was made using an Arts Council Project Award.1 It is a landscape film that uses various cinematic techniques to play with time and space and create a psychological journey. The film was originally inspired by my time growing up in the English West Country, but producing it in West Cork changed both my approach to the art form and my relationship with the landscape around me.

My intended approach was to go back to the source – Dorset – but it soon became apparent that this wasn’t possible; the film uses a lot of motion time-lapse, moving the camera very slowly over many hours. For this to work best it’s necessary to have the right light and weather and it was too risky to gamble all my resources on arriving at a remote spot and finding the right conditions. I decided to limit my locations to places within a one-hour car ride. My visits were then frequent and numerous, allowing me to slowly build up the correct raw material. In this respect West Cork has been an immensely valuable resource; within this area I could gather footage in a high glacial lake, a ferocious mountain stream, a lush verdant river, the wild Atlantic coast and a mysterious ancient grove.

Having the locations to work with is one matter, but oiling the production machine is another, and this project wouldn’t have been possible without Arts Council support. It allowed me to access equipment and crew and gave me time to make mistakes and learn how to use these resources in direct alignment with the creative outcomes of the project.

I have also received help through local grants, both in direct aid and as facilities in kind. The Arts Office at Cork County Council has been a great help, and I am particularly indebted to the Arts Officer Ian McDonagh for his approachability and advice over the years. The Arts Office has assisted a number of my projects: the permanent traveling device The Glassbook; and more recently the installation World Riddle, which was also exhibited at the purpose built video space within County Hall. I also used this space to launch and run MATERIALS.

Another valuable resource is the West Cork Arts Centre under the directorship of Ann Davoren.

WCAC commissioned and funded my immersive installation MIRE and also ran two of my other works within the eclectic Sound and Vision strand, as part of Skibbereen Arts Festival.

I live and work, as I suspect most artists do, in a state of selective isolation, connecting with individuals, events and organisations that resonate with my practice at a particular time. Besides the abundant landscape and robust arts infrastructure, the region also has an incredibly diverse range of resident creative practitioners. It has been said that if you lift any stone in West Cork you’ll find a world class violinist, a best selling novelist or a revered fine artist, and this isn’t just a pishogue; when I first took part in the Schull film festival I was astounded at the profusion of eminent attendees, wondering how on earth they managed to attract such names, only to find out afterwards that most of them live here.

This cornucopia has enabled me to work with the likes of Colin Vearncombe, aka Black for both music and film projects, Fergus O’Farrell of Interference for several music projects and photographer John Minihan, with whom I made The Man Who Shot Beckett.

Besides being valuable creative assets to the region, these artists also have equipment and studio space, which are used extensively in collaborative projects and often as access points for new young artists. This access, coupled with experience, advice and feedback is an unaccounted-for addition to the creative prosperity of the arts scene, both locally and nationally.

Good broadband is also invaluable and has allowed me to also collaborate remotely with people such as Fabio Esteban at National Geographic in Washington to create HUACA LUNA, and Hans Joachim Rodelius in Austria to produce a number of ambient audio works. It also means I can email links to exhibition copies of my work for shows such as the recent ‘Phase One’ in Leitrim and ‘Nuit Blanche’ and ‘Mamuska’ in Dublin. MATERIALS is on show at St Finbarre’s Cathedral, Cork 1 – 27 July.

David Bickley www.davidianbickley.com

David Bickley

David Bickley, Green Flow

Note 1. MATERIALS was shown at the Centre for Creative Practices, Dublin (6 –13 June).

Brian Lalor, co-curator of Blue House Gallery. www.bluehousegalleryschull.com

10

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2014

Regional profile: West Cork

Kinsale Arts Festival Charles Fort has always played an important role in Kinsale Arts Festival. It served as one of the largest military installations in the country and is a classic example of a late seventeenth century starshaped fort. Located on the water’s edge of Summer Cove, it looks out across Kinsale Harbour to James Fort, its big brother in years if not stature, built shortly after the Battle of Kinsale in 1601.

These sites are the icons of the town, emblematic of both its colourful history and stunning coastal landscape, and in some sense inspired the genesis of the Kinsale Arts Festival in its modern incarnation.

When the festival was revived in 2005 (it had existed for three years in the late 1980s), it was part of a project titled ‘The Calling’. This installation by British artists Tony Heywood and David Toop featured a series of bejeweled, anthropomorphic ‘creatures’ emerging from the sea to occupy Charles Fort, exploring local myth through a mix of projection, living material and the music of Limerick’s Glenstal monks. Artistically, the project set the agenda for where the festival would go next and what would ultimately become its calling card: art in unconventional spaces, with the fort providing a unique physical and conceptual subject for artists to respond to.

Two years later Kinsale hosted the first major Irish exhibition of the artist Eilis O’Connell, held at the fort, with a series of large-scale sculptures in bronze, cast iron and stone. The following year, Scottish artist and Turner Prize nominee Anya Gallaccio was commissioned to create a site responsive work for the same location. Gallaccio sealed up the remaining windows of the fort, which was partially destroyed by a fire in the 1920s, effectively ‘mending’ the original structure with coloured glass. The installation cast a constantly evolving theatre of shadows upon the adjacent buildings as the sun rose and set – a stunning introduction to Gallaccio’s work that is fondly remembered by those who live in the town.

In a relatively short space of time, Kinsale established itself as an exciting context to see new work by leading artists, and when Brian O’Doherty created A Fort Within A Fort for the festival in 2009, this reputation was cemented. It was the artist’s first major installation since ceremoniously burying his alter ego Patrick Ireland and his first major outdoor installation in several decades.

In recent years, the challenging economic climate has made the commissioning of large-scale works much more difficult, but we have never stopped finding new ways to explore the locality and landmarks as a context for making and presenting artistic work across disciplines, even

Anya Gallacio

West Cork Arts Centre when resources have been limited. Though private galleries abound, the town has just one public gallery space – a stunning restored mill and grain store located in the centre of town – so thinking outside of conventional spaces has been integral to our mission.

This autumn, we celebrate a landmark 10 years.

After months of long conversations with artists and several mini residencies in the town, we are preparing to announce our largest visual arts programme to date. We’ve used our anniversary to reflect on what we have achieved so far and taken the time to contemplate what it is that distinguishes us from similar organisations – there is certainly no shortage of festivals in Ireland. This reflection re-attuned us to our sense of place with a fresh perspective, and ultimately led us back to our roots.

The 2014 festival will take place in September with several newly commissioned installations from some of the most exciting Irish and international artists working today.

We’re fully opening up the visual arts programme across the whole town, with new commissions at both Charles Fort and James Fort, a gallery built from shipping containers and several works for unconventional spaces including an operational metal factory, a bed and breakfast and the town museum. Times remain tough, but the arts are now more vital than ever. We know it’s not enough to simply be the circus that rolls into town each year – a festival about place must also be a festival about people. In reasserting that commitment to site responsive work, that process must include a meaningful programme for community involvement and collaboration, and several of our big projects will have this at their heart.

Curating a festival within a small town is not without its tensions. In a place so steeped in history, it remains a challenge to create a programme that points to the future and celebrates the past without stagnating. How do we make an asset of that tension between innovation and preservation that also embraces the potential for engagement afforded by working outside of conventional spaces? We may not always get it right but we know we must keep striving in this direction, keep asking why we’re here and keep evolving. And at least some of those answers lie with the artistic talent we hope to keep bringing to the town for years to come.

Marie McPartlin, Director, Kinsale Arts Festival.

The full 2014 festival programme will be announced on 1 August. www.kinsaleartsfestival.com.

Brian O’Doherty, The Lookout, photo by Brian O’Reilly

Artist’s impression of the new WCAC building

Fundraising campaign for WCAC

West Cork Arts Centre (WCAC) plays a vital role in the development of visual arts in the region.

Funded by public money to provide a communitybased arts facility and arts programme for the entire west Cork region, WCAC has evolved from an exhibition space for local artists to an important cultural institution within the local community and also in the world of contemporary visual art.

We are located in Skibbereen and currently housed in the ground floor of the VEC-owned Sutherland Building. Originally a bank, then a school, the ground floor of this building was converted into galleries, office and work space for WCAC in 1985. Since then our programme has outgrown the existing space so in 2005 we embarked on a major project to construct a purposebuilt arts building on a site in the centre of the town. Through funding secured from Cork County Council, the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht’s ACCESS II Scheme and over €400,000 from the local community, our new home is finally under construction and we aim to open in November this year.

We worked with the Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland on an international architectural design competition to ensure highquality. The design addresses a number of issues particular to the project, such as: the location of the building in the heart of Skibbereen town; the emphasis on visual art; the broad and vibrant education and community programme across a range of art forms with children, youth, adults and older people; and the potential that a new building might have to cater for new art forms and new approaches by artists working in various fields.

The ghost of the original stone bakery on the site, which was partially demolished, has been recast in new materials to house the double height ground floor gallery and the artists’ studios. A new bridge will be constructed over the Caol Stream which borders the east of the site, leading to a small sheltered courtyard and to the entrance foyer and a second gallery within a tall, cantilevered structure.

This five-storey section is finished in Corten Steel, which creates a striking rust-brown finish. The materials used throughout (Corten Steel, lime render, concrete, cedar) are enduring and low maintenance to create a stimulating visual and tactile environment, responsive to light and the elements.

The volumes and spaces are simple and adaptable: the two gallery spaces form an interlocking L-shaped space connecting the two volumes and incorporating a workspace as a mezzanine to the upper gallery. These spaces, while simple, are arranged to provide a variety of spatial experiences and opportunities for occupation and exhibition. As the visitor passes through the galleries, orientation and views change, with different aspects and light sources that can be closed off and adapted depending on the exhibition.

The new artists’ studios will provide much needed space for artists to work, develop projects and engage with the public. Having artists working on site creates unique opportunities for people to experience how artworks develop over a period of time. It will add an extra dimension and attraction to the visitor experience at WCAC. The flexible dance / performance / lecture / film space will also allow for a range of different activities to take place and expand our programme.

WCAC regards itself as an arts facility for the West Cork community. Our programme is not confined to the physical space of the current building and, although we are working on this major capital project, it will not it be entirely located in the new building either. One strategy for dealing with the restrictions of the space we are currently inhabiting, and one which also engages our context (rural, remote, coastal, peripheral, scenic, diverse population etc) is that of artists working with communities and locating artworks and arts projects within those communities. The new facility will open up opportunities that will have a very positive impact on the aesthetic, cultural, social, economic and educational fabric of the region. Whatever the move to a new building will bring, context will continue to shape programme content and WCAC’s approach. We will continue to work outside of our physical location in the town of Skibbereen to engage with communities from across the West Cork region, and will strive to remain a catalyst for people accessing and engaging with art, artists and artworks.

Ann Davoren, Director, West Cork Arts Centre. www.westcorkartscentre.com

The Visual Artists’News Sheet

May – June 2014

11

Regional profile: donegal

Earagail ArtsFestival

Glebe Gallery

Selena Mowat,Burnt Until the End, oil in plywood, 2013

Glebe House andGallery

James Dixon,West End Village

The Glebe House and Gallery is the former home of the renowned artist and collector Derek Hill. In the early 1980s Hill gave his house, along with his collection, to the people of Ireland and it is now open to the public during the summer season.

Hill was working as the Artistic Director of the British School in Rome when he first visited Donegal in 1949. He instantly fell in love with the county and had made his home here by the mid 1950s. As an artist he was drawn to the quality of light and the landscape, which he painted constantly over the course of the next 50 years. He brought many leading cultural figures to stay in Donegal and experience the county for themselves.

Sometimes they came to sit for portraits and were often inspired by the place. Indeed Benjamin Britton composed A Hymn of St Colomba, Sidney Nolan came in search of his roots and Pietro Annigoni painted View From Lough Salt. They each took something with them but also left their mark in various ways.

Derek Hill first went to Tory Island in 1956 after hearing about its rugged beauty. His paintings there are amongst his very best; the seascapes are dramatically beautiful and the portraits he painted of his islander friends are extraordinary. It was on this first visit to Tory that he met James Dixon, the cantankerous old islander who dismissed Hill’s painting, saying that he could paint better if he tried. Dixon’s masterpiece West End Village is one of the great Irish paintings of the twentieth century.

Hill encouraged and championed Tory art and these paintings are perhaps Derek Hill’s greatest legacy.

Since opening to the public in 1984, the Glebe House and Gallery has continued Hill’s work by nurturing and supporting the local artistic community and by bringing exhibition of international importance to the region.

Currently on show is the exhibition ‘Belonging’

by Selena Mowat (30 May – 29 June). Mowat is a Scottish-born artist who has lived in Donegal since 2010. After visiting the county briefly in 2009 she immediately fell in love with its ‘timeless charm and character’, inspired not only by its diverse and captivating terrain, which has attracted so many artists before her, but by its preserved culture and welcoming community spirit.

A former lecturer in Drawing and Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone, Dundee University, where she graduated in 2002, Mowat has exhibited extensively throughout Scotland, the UK and Europe and was recently the Irish winner of Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year. Since moving to Donegal Mowat has immersed herself in the local artist community, founding local art zine ZWEEF and co-founding local artists’ collective Avant Garda, which last year participated in a Culture Ireland funded residency at the Vasarely Foundation in Aix de Provence, France. Mowat works primarily with oil paint, but is an adamant supporter of collaboration, working regularly with filmmakers, musicians and performers to produce a number of films, music projects and events outside of her professional painting practise.

For her first solo show in Ireland – here at the Glebe Gallery – Mowat will be exploring what it means to ‘belong’ through her work as a painter and as a collaborative artist. Mowat was born in Scotland and travelled extensively throughout her childhood; her approach to making art is to act as a kind of conduit for information, gathering memorabilia (photographs, postcards, folktales, album covers, magazine clippings) in much the same way that she would have absorbed the world whilst travelling in her youth. As the artist puts it, “I’m interested in what defines cultural identity … the commonalities that bind us, what makes us feel that sense of belonging as individuals and as part of a community and how our sense of place affects this. For the exhibition at the Glebe I will be addressing these themes from a personal perspective and in collaboration with other local artists, musicians and performers.”

Work for the show will include paintings produced this year in Ireland, Scotland and Germany, where the artist will spend time retracing her childhood memories, utilising the local landscape and folklore, creating a wall installation of portraiture and developing some experimental moving image pieces made in collaboration with musicians and performers from Donegal. For a short time Mowat will also be on site producing live portraits within the gallery.

Adrian Kelly, Director. Glebe Gallery.

The Earagail Arts Festival (EAF) is a multidisciplinary arts festival that takes place every July throughout County Donegal. This year’s festival takes place from 12 – 26 July. EAF has an impressive track record of presenting an annual thematic visual arts exhibition programme over the past 15 years. The festival’s thematic focus has ranged across media – including focuses on print and photography – and addressed subjects such as time, conflict and diaspora.

This year a Patrick Scott exhibition will be the main focus of the programme. The Patrick Scott exhibition will be shown at the Regional Cultural Centre (RCC) (14 July – 27 September) and the Glebe Gallery (14 July – 29 August), drawing on works recently show at Visual, Carlow and IMMA. In addition, An Gailearaí, Gweedore will present an exhibition of Scott’s work drawn from the Taylor Gallery, Dublin.

The festival’s exhibition programme is jointly co-ordinated by Donegal County Council, the Regional Cultural Centre, OPW, the Glebe Gallery and participating galleries An Gailearaí Gaoth Dobhair, Artlink, An Grianan Theatre and Donegal County Museum. The scale and the quality of the exhibitions are only made possible by the yearround work done by this network of participating publicly-funded galleries, all of which have been in operation for over a decade and for almost three decades in the case of the Glebe Gallery.

The EAF has provided an important platform to showcase visual arts in Donegal and has attempted to combine some of the best work by local artists alongside high quality national and international work. Each year’s programme has featured a significant number of locally-based artists. International artists featured over the years include Henry Moore, William Orpen, Sidney Nolan, Peter Blake and Richard Hamilton.

Earagail exhibitions and all the participating galleries also play an important developmental role in providing opportunities not just for local audiences but also for local artists to experience high quality international art on their doorstep.

Victor Vasarely,vega-arl, 1968

The festival has very successfully presented major international exhibitions such as ‘Victor Vasarely’ (2008) and ‘Hungarian Constructivism’ (2009). The Glebe Gallery and the Regional Cultural Centre, which jointly exhibited both shows, attempted to carefully disseminate information about the art on display and the wider context from which it emerged. The RCC also ran a programme of ‘hands-on art rooms’ that attempted to create an understanding of European art movements in an accessible form and language, enabling children and adults to make their own artworks in the style of the exhibition. ‘Contemporary Artists of the Donegal Diaspora’, the main Earagail exhibition at the RCC in 2013, featured specially commissioned new work by Turner Prize winner Susan Philipz and Turner nominees Liam Gillick and George Shaw, among others.

Back as 2004, Aidan Dunne touched on one the EAF’s focal points – engagement – in a review for the Irish Times, writing: “… not that the Earagail Arts Festival visual arts programme is about bringing high art to the masses in some missionary sense. Rather the issue is one of engagement. Time and again festival events gave the sense that visual culture was something living, something rooted in the world rather than an embellishment of it, something open to debate and up for grabs”.

The festival features a broad exploration of art rather that being confined exclusively to contemporary work. The programme includes work by artists of the past as well as living artists and is drawn from collections as well as featuring new (sometimes commissioned) work. Exhibitions are not confined to fine art and include design, architecture and applied arts on occasion. The festival attempts to present the wider relationships between visual art and other disciplines, such as art and science, art and conflict, and art and the diaspora.

Sean Hannigan, Director, Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny.

12

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

PROJECT Profile

Spark & Grit RGKSKSRG (RACHAEL GILBOURNE & KATE STRAIN) DISCUSS ‘TONIGHT, YOU CAN CALL ME TRISH’, AN EXHIBITION AT THE LAB, DUBLIN (7 FEBRUARY – 22 MARCH), DEVELOPED FOR THE DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL / THE LAB EMERGING CURATOR AWARD 2013 / 2014.

created by Mary-Jo and James have no physical presence in the gallery, while the work of other artists, such as Alan Butler, manage to take over the entire sensory experience. Pilvi, Rachel, Oliver and Brenna have a staged presence – but you two devised this. In some ways your work is the entire show, and in others your work is the stage upon which the show is displayed. Can you talk us through finding a balance for all of that?

MD: It required a duality of thinking. On one hand we wanted to show the artists’ works in a way that they would never have anticipated – but to elucidate materially and spatially some of the values we drew from our experiences of those works. On the other hand, we looked at the works as raw materials for our larger installation, to make something of value for ourselves. So, we felt respect and empathy, while at the same being self-centred and strategic. There’s fertility in a contradiction like this: occupying many ways of thinking and feeling at the same time while being true to them all seems to produce complex and rich results.

EM: For me this kind of duel state is what we were aiming for. If there is confusion and ambiguity about the visual result then it means that the ecosystem of our work is healthy. Everything works in tandem, fuses and reflects back on each other. If you were to take any of the works out, the whole show would fall apart. The works rely on each other to create the environment they inhabit.

‘Tonight, you can call me Trish’, installation by Eilis McDonald and Mark Durkan, with sculptures by Brenna Murphy and video by Rachel Maclean, curated by RGKSKSRG; photo by Denis Mortell

In late 2012 we established RGKSKSRG, our joint curatorial practice.

Core activities include commissioning, presenting and contextualising contemporary art. Through our mobile working model we devise experimental projects, acknowledging the significance of the institution whilst also, in some ways, challenging it.

Our recent project, ‘Tonight, you can call me Trish’, was developed with the support of the Dublin City Council / The LAB Emerging Curator Award 2013 / 2014.1 Following the open submission process in February 2013 and an interview in May, we were notified that our application had been successful.

The award offered us the opportunity to present an exhibition at The LAB, with administrative, technical and marketing support from the venue, together with financing for artist fees, production, design and artwork transportation. Mentoring from Clíodhna Shaffrey (Director, TBG+S, Dublin), and assistance from Sheena Barrett (Curator, The LAB) were key elements of the award. We secured additional support from Irish Art Courier and Kunstverein Dusseldorf.2 Our proposal considered the spatial challenges of the gallery; through exploring ideas around performance and precarious labour, the show developed into a layering of roles, works, practices and encounters. The group exhibition featured an audio piece by Alan Butler, sculptures by Brenna Murphy and videos by Rachel Maclean, Oliver Laric and Pilvi Takala. Newly commissioned ephemeral works by Dublin-based artists Mary-Jo Gilligan and James Ó hAodha extended the possibility for engagement, with an audio-walk through the city and an exhibition tour designed for birds.

The exhibition’s scenography was devised by Dublin-based artists Eilis McDonald and Mark Durkan, who arranged the artworks in the space on and around a selection of tailor-made platforms or islands.

Some of these structures had been elements of ‘I’m astonished, wall, that you haven’t collapsed into ruins’, Durkan’s exhibition at The LAB, which preceded ‘Trish’.

As key players within the exhibition, we decided to pose McDonald and Durkan a set of questions, in the hope of untangling some of the core concerns of the show. And, vice versa, they returned some to us…

RGKSKSRG: You have collaborated before … what’s the difference in your individual and collaborative approaches?

Eilis McDonald: We have very different aesthetics and ways of working.

We’re almost complete opposites. I like to leave a lot to chance and

work quite loosely but I’m strict and exact in the smaller details. I find starting with a detailed plan and an expected outcome can be quite stifling. But I think Mark flourishes in the planning and imagining process. Knowing we can pick up each other’s slack and use each other’s strengths means we can be freer in our approach.

RGKSKSRG: Were you familiar with the other artists in the show?

How did our discussions work for you in describing the ideas behind the exhibition and the potential for staging these through your scenographic interventions?

Mark Durkan: We were familiar with all the artists bar Rachel Maclean and we were delighted to be introduced to her work. You provided a lot of reading material and background information on your thought processes and what you wanted to achieve. One of our first group conversations made an impression on me – we went from talking about layers and exhibitions-within-exhibitions to role-playing and identity crises. These were exciting conversations.

EM: We also talked about how collaborating and taking on a combined role as artist-cum-interior designer / merchandiser could be liberating…

RGKSKSRG: Eilis, you’ve incorporated other artists’ work into your installations, but usually they would be of your choosing, right? Was it difficult to work with someone else’s selection?

EM: I started developing this way of working in 2011 for a show called ‘Offline’ at TBG+S, Dublin, curated by Rayne Booth. I worked with the selections Rayne had made to incorporate the whole show into my installation. So for me, the immediate practicalities of ‘Trish’ were quite similar. The main difference was my formal collaboration with Mark and how that changed and opened my ideas about the concepts and possibilities. Your selections were objects for us to work with, like a bedrock of context on which our world could evolve.

MD: It was important for us to consider how each artwork would relate to the others and how those relationships would help build a narrative.

At times certain works become really intimate with each other and at other times they seem conflicting or even adversarial.

RGKSKSRG: There are strange hierarchies at play in any group show, but in this one they’re keenly felt. The ephemeral events

EM & MD: As curators, how was it to give over much control over how RGKSKSRG would look and feel? Is it something you would do again?

RGKSKSRG: We trust the artists that we work with and likewise, ideally, the artists trust us. In this sense, it is a core part of curatorial practice to give over control and enter into a conversation – otherwise it would be the curators making the art, right? We are passionate about the concepts, the aesthetic and the attitude of the projects we develop, yet ultimately it is about what happens in the creative space, which our ideas and research can conjure through supporting the artists to produce work and the discussions that can occur in between.

In this way, the exhibition is built upon a common vision. Trust is inherent. Of course, there is always risk, but this is what makes the spark and the grit that can create something richer than purely working in isolation either as curators or as artists.

EM & MD: Working as a team on your projects, do you find that you divide jobs or roles according to your individual strengths and experience? Is this something that happens for you naturally or tactically? Or is it something you avoid?

RGKSKSRG: We first met and worked together professionally at Project Arts Centre, Dublin, as the visual arts team for 2012 (covering curator Tessa Giblin’s maternity leave). To some degree many of the roles and tasks that each of us gravitates toward now developed organically during our time there. We’ve never discussed this, or tactically divided these roles up, and they tend to be unfixed, switching back and forth depending on what is happening at particular times. It is also a strength that each of us knows that there is an inherent flexibility – trust in one another’s ability to succeed in any one task – but there is also the knowledge of what is best for each of us at a given time.

EM & MD: Where does the role of curator end and the role of artist begin?

RGKSKSRG: We’ve been asked this question before and as far as we can recall we’ve given a slightly different answer each time. For us, there is always a line between the role of the artist and the curator. This line may break, blur or vanish for a moment, but it is always fixed back in place again, since it’s always there in the first place. That’s not to say that it’s an open-shut black-and-white case. Now, ask us this question again, so we can offer up a new answer…

Notes 1. ‘Tonight, you can call me Trish’ was the first major manifestation of RGKSKSRG’s practice. Upcoming projects include a nine-month residency award at studio 468, Dublin, to culminate in a solo project by artist Emma Haugh at NCAD Gallery, Dublin in 2015. Recent projects include: ‘a choreographed performance through gesture to music’ at ‘(((O)))’, Clonlea Studios, Dublin (2013); various text-based pieces including for The Naked (NL); and a year-long experiment in retro-programming at Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2013 – 2014) 2. The sculptural works of Brenna Murphy were commissioned and first shown at Kunstverein Dusseldorf in 2013

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

13

RESEARCH Profile

The Double-Edged Sword

Small-scale production isn’t just a promotional asset, however, it is a

susan monagan outlines her recent research project, which focuses on the activities, skills and assets of ‘artist-entrepreneurs’ working across the west of ireland.

and organisations struggle to be as quick and nimble.

In autumn 2013 I used a Fulbright Award to take leave of my duties in the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College, New York to live in Galway and interview ‘artist-entrepreneurs’ in the West of Ireland about their experiences running creative enterprises. My research is linked to the Creative Edge project, funded by the European Union’s Northern Periphery Programme. Creative Edge has sought to identify the current breadth and future scope of the creative economy in peripheral regions.

Little creative economy research has been conducted in rural areas, though these are often areas of great economic need. In many rural regions, a rich cultural life is an underdeveloped economic asset. But how do we avoid using artistic activities as ‘bait’ for other enterprises in a community? When we support ‘cultural tourism products’ benefits the most, the artists or the hotels, restaurants, shopkeepers, etc who reap the benefit of the ‘multiplier effect’ of art events and facilities? Ideally, the

I know my market, because that’s who I am. I make art.

I know what’s needed.

competitive advantage. Being small allows companies and organisations to connect directly with their market, gauge its reaction to offerings and quickly adjust their products and services accordingly. Large companies

2. Develop undergraduate degree programmes Though these artist-entrepreneurs have taught themselves the skills they have needed to succeed in their enterprises, many would have preferred some foundational training to a career of constant trial and error. Third level institutions should consider developing degree programmes to include coursework and experiences in: project management, company management, producing and resource development (fundraising, investment etc). These career paths could be explored with those unable to find work and specially-tailored finance and management courses could be encouraged among students pursuing fine and performing arts degrees.

3. Measure intrinsic impact Traditional measures of audience engagement are attendance numbers, money spent on tickets etc, but these numbers hardly tell the whole story.

Theatres in the US have begun to measure intrinsic impact and find out

experiences of the artist-entrepreneur can and should inform discussions and policy that is equitable and helps sustain creative enterprises over

be difficult to describe or understand and markets are fickle and hard to

what really happens to the audience member as they sit in a theatre

time.

activate. As one interviewee put it, “Without being an artist, I wouldn’t

during a show or enter a gallery. WolfBrown has conducted research in

know my business; I know my market because that’s who I am. I make art;

this area and they make their research protocol available at no cost.

The motivations and objectives of creative economy actors may appear irrational from a traditional economics point of view. Are they

I know what’s needed”.

motivated by money, social justice, community development – ‘all of the

Understanding both the market and the product for artistic products

above’? I conducted in-depth interviews with 26 individuals who are

and services take specialised skill and knowledge, and the artist-

Though all the interviewees described the arts networking centre of the

engaged in producing cultural projects, products, events and services. I

entrepreneur role is an evolving hybrid and, perhaps, a double-edged

country as Dublin, many had developed models to turn their remote

sought to probe the interviewees’ values and priorities, and understand

sword. One interviewee described herself as having “more the skills of an

location into an asset. Several rural artist entrepreneurs described

the ways in which rural location has presented each person with obstacles

entrepreneur but respect for the art,” continuing, “you have to understand

successfully ‘networking in place’ by bringing artists and patrons to them

and opportunities as well as unique approaches to networking.

how artists work and be able to facilitate the creative process and if you

and giving them an immersive experience. One artist residency director

were to take a pure business line on it, I don’t think it would work. There

described herself as having only ‘one degree of separation’ from major

has to be heart in it as well”.

galleries in Berlin, London and New York because she had made lifelong

My interviewees were ‘artist-entrepreneurs’: those who understand their activity to be directly linked to the economic health of their rural

4. Reframe networking for the rural context

connections with the artists they represent.

community, by way of job creation and / or attracting external funding to

I asked questions targeted to uncover some of the artist-entrepreneur’s

their region. For example, two of the interviewees run countywide craft

values, because this is a place where creative industries and market

20 out of 26 interviewees currently work internationally. Rural

collectives, several manage performing arts venues, four run visual or

economics often diverge. Though artist-entrepreneurs want to make a

venues and festivals bring international artists to Ireland; crafts people

performing arts festivals, etc. A few of the interviewees wanted to distance

living, they are less motivated by money than by the successful

and filmmakers sell and distribute their work abroad. Rural artist-

themselves from the term ‘entrepreneur’ because of its association with

dissemination of creative work. As one interviewee said,

entrepreneurs can collaborate to network internationally, especially if

for-profit business. In the United States and elsewhere, the concept of a

“This project has always been, for me, about the music. I suppose my

‘social entrepreneur’ is well established and used to describe one who uses

career has always been. It’s not a career to make money; it’s a career to

the characteristics of a business entrepreneur to move an agenda for

make music – art. If I had wanted to make money I would have gone to

social change forwards.

the bank like my dad”.

they find Dublin unresponsive to their need for grants, press and access to markets.

Artist-entrepreneurs can develop the capacity of their local networks even if they include mostly non-artists. Because of low density, rural

The difficulty of operating in Ireland’s current economic climate was

Many are deeply disturbed that their work is not widely understood

networks need to be loose and broad and travel across areas of expertise

reported to me by many of the interviewees. Traditional sources of public

and appreciated, and see it as their mission to overcome the perception

and interest. Artist-entrepreneurs can lead their rural communities in

funding have dried up and a decline in personal discretionary income

that art requires specialised skill or knowledge to understand and

developing ‘locovore’ synergy and finding the opportunities that serve

means people have less money for ballet tickets or hand-made gifts.

appreciate. “I think it’s really sad when you have something world class

their specific context. An opportunity might find its way into the

Where the financial future is far from certain, planning has become short

like (our organisation) and local people say ‘oh it’s not for me, I wouldn’t

community by way of a green energy initiative, for example, but that

and medium term. The silver lining of this dark economic cloud may be

go up there’… that’s something I really want to try and put right.”

doesn’t mean an artist or group of artists doesn’t have a role to play in

that people are more willing to listen and collaborate than they were during the boom time.

The artist-entrepreneurs I encountered were all sophisticated and

bringing that initiative forward.

tireless in their pursuit of strategies that will keep their work flourishing.

The art-workers I spoke to also indicated that the economic situation

From my limited vantage point, I present some strategies that Irish artist-

During the five months I was in Ireland, I was deeply impressed by the

had pushed them away from their artistic roots and toward developing

entrepreneurs and creative industries policy makers might want to

way in which Ireland’s artist-entrepreneurs are digging in and adapting to

entrepreneurial characteristics – such as motivating others, taking risks,

consider.

meet changing circumstances. Policy makers in Europe look to the creative industries as the bright spot on the economic horizon. A creative

and being stimulated by challenges. Several people identified their ability to think ‘laterally’ as an asset during times of uncertainty; they are able to

1. Develop cottage industries

approach to leading our communities and considering solutions to our

think around a problem rather than tackling it head-on. Though many

Many of the artist-entrepreneurs I met have chosen a rural lifestyle by

most pressing social problems is sorely needed. Policy makers can succeed

had formal training as performing or visual artists, fewer had formal

moving to the rural west from elsewhere in Ireland or the UK. They work

in tapping into the potential of creative industries by developing

training in business or management.

in their homes or in offices / studios that they have constructed on their

programmes that fan the fires of rural Ireland’s artist-entrepreneurs.

Many identified themselves as ‘life-long learners’, continually figuring

property. Many work with family members to create products and deliver

out how to do things in a new way, on an as-needed basis. All of these

services that are then distributed worldwide. In this way, their sites of

Since 2005, Susan Monagan has been the Manager of Audience

characteristics have allowed these artist-entrepreneurs to face the

production look like the twenty-first-century version of a cottage

Development in the Department of Theatre Arts at Ithaca College,

challenges of the current uncertain climate. As one put it, “I think to

industry.

New York. She teaches courses in Cultural Policy and Politics,

survive now you have to use entrepreneurial skills … you have to think of

Artist-entrepreneurs can do more to connect their place of production

Promotion and Publicity, and the Creative Economy. During Autumn

new ways to invent and get money because funding has been reduced to

with the unique characteristics of their place, be it their family or their

2013, supported by a Fulbright grant, Monagan worked with the

such an extent … whatever you do you have to try and keep reinventing

rural county and its people, traditions, history and landscape. As a

Creative Edge project team at NUI Galway’s Whitaker Institute.

the whole organisation in a way that you’re going to try and get some

response to the extreme standardisation of our contemporary modes of

Monagan has also been a team member of Cornell’s New York

return”.

communication, this ‘do-it-yourself’ aesthetic appears to be growing.

Creative Economy research project that explores the potential of

Even in the best of economic times, flexibility, creativity and lateral

Artist-entrepreneurs can build narratives about their products that link

creative economy initiatives in upstate New York, particularly

thinking are requisite skills in the creative industries where products may

them to place and highlight the small-scale production of the work.

those with colleges and universities as strategic partners.

14

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Career Development

Ann Quinn, Impression of Isfahan, Central Iran, oil on canvas, 98.5 x 122.5 cm, 2014

Ann Quinn, Rice Fields Forever in the Sky with Diamonds, oil on linen 37.2 x 51 cm, 2013

Ann Quinn, Bridge onto Armenia, oil on panel, 13 x 18 cm, 2014

The Eye of the Storm

Pyrenees, Catalonia in 2010; a three month artist residency at

ANN QUINN CHARTS THE DEVELOPMENT OF HER PAINTING PRACTICE

Glenveagh National Park, Donegal in 2007; and most other artist residencies in Ireland. I recently finished a three-week artist residency at the VCCA, Virginia, US in April 2014.

I have been earning my living for the past 12 years working as an

In the summer of 2000, I graduated from the National College of Art

maturing and developing my own practice as a painter. I didn’t

arts facilitator, teaching art to older people (aged 67 – 101) in a few

and Design with a degree in Painting at the age of 22. During my first

understand much about the art world but kept my head down and

nursing homes and day care centres in Dublin. This has made me very

few years at NCAD I lived mainly in Dublin, learning to survive in an

painted. My work slowly started to be noticed by galleries in Dublin

diciplined with my time and has taken me out of the insular world of

urban environment after coming from a rural farming background in

and across the country. As I became more and more focused,

the studio. Working alongside healthcare assistants and nurses –

Donegal. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do after leaving art

opportunities increased; doors opened, just as they had in the

these people, I believe, are the highest spirits in Dublin – I continuously

college, despite the fact that I’d had a sell out degree show. I always

beginning with the studio and the teaching.

learn from their unassuming natures, and from their selflessness in

wanted to be an artist and to see the world outside the small green

I have never really had any career-orientated ambition in my

caring for the most vulnerable. Over the years I have met many

valley where I grew up, but it seemed that my aspirations were

journey as a painter, though I have a burning desire to push myself

colourful characters from old Dublin in the twilight of their lives and

unfocused. I took up, in a full-time capacity, my hitherto part-time job

and do the very best work. The art world can sometimes be very

these memories have stayed with me. I feel privileged to have

as a cleaner in a psychiatric hospital in the city.

confusing and distracting, but I have always followed a philosophy: to

introduced to them a passion for painting, which many didn’t know

keep my eyes only on making strong work. The rest will take care of

that they possessed. I have attended several funerals of the patients

itself, like focusing on the eye of the storm.

where a painting of theirs was displayed on the coffin by their

I remember long hours spent trying to take charge of the floor cleaning machine’s buffer as it spun furiously out of control while I

relatives, who thanked me for bringing happiness into the person’s

shined the already squeaky-clean corridors. There was the daily

From 2002 – 2006 I got to live my dream of traveling the world.

pointlessness of cleaning toilets and scrubbing already glittering

With the money saved from sales of my work I traveled throughout

surfaces amongst the noise and havoc of the wards. My existence was

South East Asia, Central America, Iran, East Africa, India and Europe.

My work starts with abstraction; often, I don’t plan the outcome of

a permanent re-run of a scene from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

At the time I saw it as an investment in my work and this proved true.

what a painting will be. I enjoy the power of abstraction, whereby the

During that period I felt low, as if I was criminally neglecting an

Certain places held a particular resonance: some landscapes and

vision of the painting’s particulars can be lurking in the background

essential part of who I really was.

atmospheres in Iran, also places in Spain. Years after visiting Iran I am

– a kind of prophesy of a more tangible outcome. Using my own

After many months of what in retrospect seems to have been a

still making work influenced by my time there, such as recent works

photographs as a source material I enjoy going back to the moments

kind of a glorious degradation, I got a phone call one day from a fellow

Impression of Isfahan, Central Iran and Bridge to Armenia. This urge

when I took the photographs and investigating the richness of those

graduate and great friend Gillian Lawler, urging me to join her in a

to see new places developed into a necessity for artist residencies.

visions. The power of my dreams and inner visions also seeps into the

last years. This has been a most rewarding way of life.

studio she had just found; there was a space going beside her and she

Every piece of work I have made is based on a specific place I have

activity of painting and the outcomes are often quite unexpected. It

thought of me. I said yes and began painting again on my days off

spent time in. My paintings are about places, but in fact I am going for

can take me up to three years to finish a painting; sometimes I leave

from the long corridors of insanity.

the atmosphere. I use places in order to instil an atmosphere; this is

works aside to return to years later.

One hot sunny afternoon a few weeks after moving into Gillian’s

the main element that I go for. It is the same atmosphere that appears

Since 2012 I have been exhibiting my work at the Taylor Galleries

studio, I threw off my ‘Calvary’ uniform and marched out of the

in works of literature and in films. This is the reason why I cherish

in Dublin. I had a solo exhibition at the gallery in June 2013 – ‘Subtle

psychiatric hospital during the middle of my shift. I had no plan for

literature, films and paintings so much; it is the essence of the book,

Correspondence’ – the ninth solo exhibition of my career. Taylor

what I should do next. The following day, as if according to some

the film or artwork that I seek out.

Galleries was established the same year I was born, in 1978. I feel very

ordained and invisible script, a neighbour knocked on my door

Artist residencies are a vital part of my work practice; they enrich

privileged to work with such high caliber gallerists. They understand

looking for an art teacher. The next day I was employed as a part-time

me with an endless source of research material for future projects.

the scope of what I am doing and where I am going in terms of the

teacher of art and now 14 years later I have continued to earn my

Residencies provide the space and time away from the routine of my

development of my practice as a painter.

living this way.

daily existence to fully open up the creative mind. I have undertaken

Ann Quinn

After I joined the studio with Gillian there followed an incubation

many artist residencies over the years, including: the Fundacion

www.annquinn.org

period of seven years when I painted quietly and continuously, slowly

Valpairoso, Almeria, Spain in 2008; the Centre Art I Natura in the

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

15

Award profile

Lesley Cherry, High Quality Guilt, 2013

PRIME Peer Reviews at Flax Art Studios 1 March 2014, presentations by Karine Talec & Ryan Moffett

Aces High

LESLEY CHERRY AND ALISSA KLEIST, RECIPIENTS OF 2014 ACNI ACES AWARDS, OUTLINE THEIR PLANS. In January the Arts Council of Northern Ireland announced the 12 recipients of the 2014 Artists Career Enhancement Scheme (ACES).1 Awards under the ACES scheme are made annually to professional artists working in music, visual arts, literature and participatory arts, and are among the most prestigious awards bestowed by the Arts Council each year.

Each ACES artist receives a bursary of £5,000 and is partnered with a professional arts organisation to help them to deliver a major new creative work. Three individuals working in the visual arts received ACES awards: artists Lesley Cherry and Ian Cumberland, along with curator Alissa Kleist. Respectively they are developing projects in association with: Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast; Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown; and the Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC), Belfast.

Lesley Cherry and Alissa Kleist offer accounts below of the impact the award will make on their practices and their initial plans for projects with their partner organisations.2 ALISSA KLEIST I received the 2014 Arts Council of Northern Ireland ACES award to support my development as a curator. I will use the grant specifically as a means to analyse my curatorial practice to date and to facilitate a number of forthcoming research trips nationally and internationally; this will enable me to see new work, visit various organisations, events, exhibitions and biennales, and hopefully make interesting and rewarding contacts as a result.

The ACES funding has also enabled me to work in partnership with the MAC, and I will have the opportunity to assist the MAC curatorial team – Hugh Mulholland and Eoin Dara – as an associate curator during the administration and delivery of the MAC International, the venue’s new open-submission biennial exhibition. This is an exciting prospect.

The meetings I have had with Hugh, Eoin, and the MAC marketing team to-date have provided me with valuable insight into the development of this ambitious international project.

At the time of writing, the MAC International deadline is fast approaching (30 April), and once the deadline has passed, work will begin on preparations for the exhibition, and a jury of international curators:

Judith Nesbitt (Head of National and International Partnerships, Tate, London); Francesco Bonami (Artistic Director of Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin); and Hugh Mulholland (Curator, the MAC) will decide on a shortlist of artists for the MAC International exhibition, scheduled to open on 30 October, 2014. From this shortlist, the jury will select one artist deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to the exhibition, who will be awarded a substantial prize of £20,000.

Part of my proposed programme of activities has included a residency this February at the University of Ulster MFA Project Space, run by MFA lecturers and artists Mary McIntyre and Dan Shipsides. The residency has proved to be extremely beneficial. For the first time in over two years of working for and with various arts organisations – as a freelance curator, and as part of the collectives Household and PRIME – I had the opportunity to evaluate these activities in a concentrated manner.

Through simple mind-mapping exercises and research I’ve been able to critically assess my own practice specifically, but also developments in the broader curatorial field.

As a curator-in-residence I undertook a number of studio visits with several artists and enjoyed impromptu conversations and discussions with students, staff and visitors. It culminated in a lecture I gave to 100 students and staff members at the university.

In April, I will use my ACES funding to visit Glasgow International.

Other planned, ACES-supported activities on my agenda include: visits to the Berlin Biennale, Liverpool Biennial and EVA International in Limerick; studio visits in Dublin and Helsinki; a visit to Manifesta 10 in St Petersburg later this year; and further research into Istanbul’s grassroots and experimental scene, as well as larger, more established, art organisations and events.

I feel privileged to have received an ACES grant and appreciate that the Arts Council of Northern Ireland supports curators in this way – and that provisions are made for invaluable research time and travel, during which new practices and artists can be viewed and discovered, connections made and future collaborations planned.

LESLEY CHERRY Applying for ACES was a natural progression for me after completing an MFA at the University of Ulster in 2011 and then being awarded the ARCH Development Residency in Washington DC in 2012.

The ACES award is providing me with time to concentrate, research and create new work and to define my practice. I also have the opportunity to work with one of Northern Ireland’s leading contemporary art spaces, Golden Thread Gallery.

Using video and digital photography, as well as domestic and found items, I create tangible 3D works, which transcribe real and imagined stories. These stories are informed by real life: personal stories, political events, popular culture, history and fiction. I like to bring out the humour, hurt, triumph and endurance within human stories. I highlight the ‘small’ happenings, which have meant a great deal to the people they have directly affected. There are recurrent symbols and themes within my work and each story has a definitive title such as The Knitted Word Project, The Blue Lamp Disco Sessions, It’s All About Us and High Quality Guilt, which I believe adds to the story-type feel of the work and its accessibility to the viewer / audience.4 The Blue Lamp Disco installation (2010 – 11) recreated a Royal Ulster Constabulary youth disco in a disused police station in Belfast. The irony that these discos were held at the height of The Troubles, as part of the RUC’s youth outreach programme, was not lost on the participants or me.

The actual discos brought in massive crowds – yearly numbers of up to 300,000 according to official reports. In addition to staging a disco, I also presented a performance, whereby I mimed to law related songs, running in conjunction with the disco. The songs commented on abuse, law breaking, prison offenders and the plight of prisoners’ wives.

Forming relationships with individuals is an important element of my work. In the case of the Draw Down The Walls / It’s All About Us project (2013 – 14), men and women from the Shankill Estate in Belfast recorded stories of domestic abuse, loyalist feuds and paramilitary involvement.5 In the presentation of the work, by eliminating the storytellers, I created a sense of security for the participants, allowing them to tell their stories in a frank and unapologetic manner. This work was recently shown at Golden Thread Gallery and at the North Belfast Interface Networks Towards Peace European Conference in March 2014.

The ACES award, alongside Golden Thread Gallery’s support and mentoring, will assist me in developing my practice and career as an artist further. Golden Thread Gallery has a strong community outreach programme and with the support of the gallery’s team I hope to gain experience that will be beneficial to my career – both as an arts facilitator and as a practising artist. The award will also allow me the time to research new topics for my work, give me the opportunity to learn additional video and audio techniques and help me to develop a career plan; all of this will give me the direction I need in order to continue to both sustain and support my practice. www.creativeexchange.org.uk www.lesleycherry.wordpress.com Notes 1. The 12 artists are: Sid Peacock (composer & music producer) Lesley Cherry (visual artist); Ian Cumberland (visual artist); Alissa Kleist (curator); Pauline Burgess (author); Nathaniel Joseph McAuley, (poet); David Quinn (performance artist); Kenneth Gregory (fantasy fiction author); Matt Kirkham, (poet); Jan Carson (writer); Kate Guelke (music director & producer) from Belfast; Anthony Quinn (writer). The Arts Council launched the Artists Career Enhancement Programme in 2010 to provide development opportunities for career artists.

2. Ian Cumberland’s report will appear in the July / August edition of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

3. www.lesleycherry.wordpress.com 4. www.facebook.com/pages/Draw-Down-The-Walls

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16

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Career development the growing importance of Chinese art and its art world, in terms of collectors and institutions.

JO: Have sales meant that you can make a living being an artist?

BE: Recently I’ve done well, but in terms of income it’s been just enough to survive and get by, nothing more. If I believed in the idea of an art career, I’d have to say that there are easier ways to make money than by being an artist.

Times are tough now; before the crash, I had more ways to support myself: installation work, teaching – but that’s scarce now. So I’m very fortunate to be represented by a gallery who go to international art fairs and meet buyers.

JO: You undertook PhD research at NCAD from 2006 – 2010; how did this impact on your practice?

BE: It was a chance to get my work supported by an institution for a length of time, but it sometimes felt like doing open-heart surgery on myself. To my mind, the academic approach of working back from a research proposition is the reverse of how I work. My process is to work out what I’m doing as I go along. Like most artists, once I’ve made something, it ceases to be interest to me; I’m on to the next thing.

It did help to develop the writing aspect of my work. I’m now confident and determined to articulate very clearly what my work is about or what’s behind it. I have a big problem with the opacity of a lot of current art writing. Another consequence is that narrative has become important – not just in text form – but in the objects, drawings and installations I’ve been making. I’m interested in an ongoing diaristic approach, both visual and textual.

Brendan Earley, ‘Before the Close of Day’, Mother’s Tankstation (19 February – 12 April 2014), installation view courtesy the artist and Mother’s Tankstation

Making & Momentum BRENDAN EARLEY DISCUSSES THE IDEA OF AN ‘ART CAREER’.

Jason Oakley: Would you say your career is in a good place? I was really struck by the opening lines of your text for your exhibition at Mother’s Tankstation: “Walking along a dusty road in New Mexico ... my walking companion was Lucy Lippard.”1 I also had in mind your 2013 residency in Beijing, the 2012 solo RHA show and the fact that you were selected for the 2008 DHG / VOID Curated Visual Arts Award …

Brendan Earley: That’s a tricky question. I’ve built up a significant body of work, so a certain momentum has come out of that. Whether I’m in a good place in terms of ‘success’ doesn’t interest me. I’ve never actually thought of being an artist as a career or in terms of strategic professional development. I have always seen making art as work rather than a job, and most definitely not as a career – whatever that is.

Studios (set up in 1996) and Lee Welch’s ‘FOUR’ (2005 – 2009) would be a couple of examples.

JO: How did you go about making things happen?

BE: Things have always happened to me or have ‘come up’ on the strength of the work I’ve made. If people ask me for advice on how to get exhibitions or signed with a gallery, I have to say frankly that I’ve no idea, other than to say: make good work and the interest will come to you. I’ve never methodically sought out opportunities. The fact that I now work with a gallery obviously helps a lot.

Over the years I’ve applied for and been awarded Arts Council Awards – project grants, travel bursaries etc. They provide me with dates, targets to keep in mind. When a deadline comes up, I’ll sit down and consider if I have anything relevant on the go.

JO: So avoiding the word ‘career’, when would you say that you began to take being an artist seriously?

BE: I’d pinpoint 1997, when I applied for and received a Fulbright Scholarship to do an MFA in Combined Media at Hunter College in New York. I’d graduated from NCAD in 1995 and, like most people, I left art college without a plan.

The teaching at Hunter College was completely different from what I’d previously experienced. It wasn’t a matter of playing around with masking tape and sticks, it was serious – you were made to feel as if you were part of and connected to a greater discourse about art.

Robert Morris, an artist I admired a lot, was one of my tutors.

After graduating I did a residency at the Centre for Experimental Video in upstate New York. It was an amazing facility, set up pioneers like Gary Hill, in an isolated farmhouse set in woodlands and filled with analogue audio-visual equipment, including modular synthesisers and sequencers. But, ironically enough, it was where I actually started drawing again. Video had started to become too ethereal; I was looking for a more hands-on medium at that point.

JO: I’d imagine that encountering and working with leading figures such as Robert Morris, Lucy Lippard, Brian O’Doherty and Mike Nelson (who was a mentor for the DHG / VOID Curated Artist Award) has been an important factor in your practice?

BE: Yes, I’ve learnt so much from them all. Mike Nelson was very generous with his time and we had an affinity in terms of our interest in objects and working processes. And I’ve had a connection to Brian O’Doherty for some time. He was the external examiner at NCAD at the time of my degree show and liked the work. He later supported my Fulbright application. At this stage we are friends, but there was certainly a period of courting, of sussing me out.

Brian put me in contact with Lucy Lippard.2 My first conversation with Lucy was interesting. She asked me why I was so interested in conceptual art. That was 40 years ago. I replied that, as an artist, I was very conscious that there were too many things in the world, yet I still felt compelled to connect with the world through making; for me, conceptual art suggested ways to deal with this paradox.

JO: I’d imagine the New York art world was pretty inspiring and affirming …

BE: Yes. I came back to Ireland in 1999. In New York I’d seen artists set up galleries in their living rooms, but back here there was still a mentality of not doing things without funding, or waiting for opportunities to arise. Things were changing though: Pallas Projects /

JO: How did last year’s residency in Beijing come about?

BE: The Swiss gallerist Urs Meile bought my work at Liste in Basel when Mother’s Tankstation were there. Meile has spaces in Lucerne, Switzerland and Beijing, China. We started a conversation, which resulted in a generous invitation to do a three-month residency at his gallery in Beijing. It was an amazing opportunity, not least because of

JO: What about research informing your practice?

BE: I’ve been thinking lately that the idea of ‘research’ is a bit overplayed in terms of art making. I’m honestly still thinking about books and ideas I encountered when I was a teenager. For the residency in China I just brought 10 or 12 books I’d first read when I was 16 and it was really interesting to read them again – to see my new work as part of something I began some time ago.

JO: Back to the business of making then. What’s your studio setup like?

BE: My studio is in a former sweet factory in Inchicore. I’ve been working there since 2007. I found the space myself. It is now under NAMA ownership, so for very little rent I’ve got something like 2,000 square feet to play with. I share the building with one other artist, Finbar Kelly. I’m attracted to working on my own and enjoy the level of concentration it gives me. I don’t like the idea of someone knocking on my door, asking me if I’d like a cup of tea. When I’m working I operate on a nine to five, Monday to Friday routine.

It’s great to have the space to make a mess and to try things out. In essence, you could say that my work comes about from ‘tidying up’ – putting the materials and objects that I’ve accumulated in order. It all starts with objects for me; I’m a collector of stuff, so the space is important for that as well.

I’m terrible at ‘archiving’. Things are in shoeboxes: DVDs, DAT and VHS tapes. And, as I work with technology, it’s inevitable that things will become outmoded and redundant – but of course that’s not a reason to not to work with technology.

JO: A big art / life balance question to close with: As the father of three young children, has parenthood had any particular impact on your practice?

BE: Well yes, of course. Having children totally changes your life, whether you are conscious of it or not. One thing I can articulate is that I started to take my work even more seriously; consequently things started to happen for me. I started with Mother’s Tankstation around the time that my first child was born. Practically, I might spend less time in the studio, but I’m focused and secure about artmaking as my work – OK, career.

Notes 1. ‘Before the Close of the Day’ (19 Feb – 12 April 2014) Mother’s Tankstation, Dublin.

2. The artist recorded Lucy Lippard reading Arthur C Clarke’s The Sentinels (1948), which later became the basis Clarke’s 1968 novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, developed concurrently with the famous Stanley Kubrick film. The artist’s introductory text for ‘Before the Close of the Day’ notes,“With Lucy as narrator, an otherwise dull and generic story opens up and builds a certain imperative through the narration.

Her spoken words engendering a wish for better things to come, driven by a lifetime of activism. This project is a companion piece to a work I made in 2009 with Brian O’Doherty titled 9 Reports. Their presence, either through the timbre of their voices or the connections made to the writing, envelopes the text and gives the fantastical structures of the fiction a very real foundation”.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

17

project profile

‘I Can Say This With Absolute Certainty. I Was There’ , installation, view Crescent Arts Centre

‘I Can Say This With Absolute Certainty. I Was There’ , installation view, Crescent Arts Centre

Stepping Across Boundaries SUE MORRIS PROFILES HER COLLABORATION WITH MEDIA ACADEMICS GREG MCLAUGHLIN AND STEPHEN BAKER ON THEIR PROJECT ‘I CAN SAY THIS WITH ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY. I WAS THERE’, WHICH EXPLORED ISSUES AROUND MEMORY AND HISTORICAL RECORD.1 My collaboration with Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker from the University of Ulster developed from a knowledge and understanding of each other’s practice and concerns – specifically where they intersected and diverged. Early on, it became clear that working together could offer us interesting insights and alternatives to how we approach, conceptualise, rationalise and materialise our respective practices – artistic and academic – as well as the opportunity to present these findings to a wider and more diverse audience.

The starting point for the project was in early 2013 when Greg and Stephen were writing their book, The British Media and Bloody Sunday (Intellect Books, 2014). Some of the ideas and preoccupations in this text chimed with those that inform my art practice – especially the connections they were making between notions of the private and public, and the inherent conflicts that define the domestic space in the midst of civil conflict. In this regard, they were developing ideas explored in their previous book, The Propaganda of Peace (Intellect Books, 2010). My work has been informed by internal / external ‘realities’ – of the individual act of remembering, often in direct opposition to more formal, authoritative accounts. Recent work, such as Hortus Conclusus2 and Seomra Úna ,3 have questioned the oppositions of truth / untruth, public / private space, the dynamics within the domestic space and how the outside world encroaches upon it, pushing it beyond the personal.

Our debates were always lively and I found it easy to engage with Greg and Stephen’s openness and their concern to appeal to an audience beyond the academic, particularly in the area of community education, in the North and the South. They were keen to communicate their ideas in the very different form and discipline of contemporary visual art – an opportunity perhaps to explore the possibilities of what they call ‘research by practice’. The collaboration has been, we think, a fruitful crossover of discipline, form and approach, and here I want to reflect back on its formation and development, funding and placement, as well as consider its implications for my future practice.

Formation and development The first few months of 2013 were about dialogue: an exploration of the conflict between first-hand, eyewitness testimony to violence and the noise of distraction and distortion, ie official / unofficial propaganda, media reporting and the casual, domestic consumption of media messages. To that end, we decided to open up the scope of our inquiry and make connections between Bloody Sunday in Derry,

‘I Can Say This With Absolute Certainty. I Was There’, installation view, Crescent Arts Centre

1972, the miners’ strike in Britain in 1984 and the Hillsborough football stadium disaster in Sheffield, 1989.4 The work situated this consumption in the everyday setting of the kitchen, a space with which the viewer could immediately identify. It alluded to the public / private oppositions and contradictions that the stated events provoked both for those directly involved and those who received information about the events in highly mediated contexts. Thus, the title I can say this with absolute certainty. I was there, paraphrased rather than transcribed verbatim the words of Father Daly moments after the shootings on Bloody Sunday – an ironic commentary on what happens to the language of the eyewitness account over a period of time.

These ideas and concerns were re-presented and re-articulated within an audio-visual framework requiring research of original sources – news reports, eyewitness testimonies and photographs – and the outline design of a multimedia installation.

Funding and placement The scale and ambition of our project were very much determined and shaped by the level of funding and also the space that we obtained. We first submitted our proposal to EVA International, Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary Visual Art in Limerick City, 2014.

While we were shortlisted for the event, we were ultimately unsuccessful, but by that time we had made a successful application for funding to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland / National Lottery

Fund, who awarded us a modest but invaluable grant to cover specified material costs, with additional funding support from the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster.

We secured the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast as a venue for March 2014. An initial site visit to the Crescent to review the space proved instrumental to the progression and shape of the work. The gallery space comprises three interconnecting rooms, allowing for three autonomous elements that could be experienced both separately and as part of the whole. The two smaller, more intimate spaces at either end, linked by the main gallery, accommodated reconstructions of a kitchen with one reflecting the other. The table and its settings in the far room stood in semi-darkness under a stark spotlight, rendered almost entirely in black and white; the detritus of the table – crockery and condiment containers – were embedded in pâpier maché newsprint. In direct contrast, the first room was brighter, more homely, with the table and its detritus situated in a more naturalised context.

Accompanying the installations were two sound pieces. In the first room, whispered eyewitness testimonies alluded to the inner voice of the individual witness in an act of remembering and forgetting, of asserting the facts of what he / she had seen. The soundscape in the far room mixed the din of domestic life – vacuum cleaner, washing machine, kettle on the boil, etc – with incoming radio news, insidiously seeping into the everyday. The central space had two slideshow montages of images from Bloody Sunday, the miners’ strike and the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, projected in a continuous loop on opposing walls. Working in opposition both within and between the two montages, the images spoke of the deliberation, manipulation and noise that disrupt original representation.

Implications for future practice Throughout this one-year project, our meetings often ended with a discussion of the benefits and implications of our collaboration for our practice and our modes of research, which up until then differed in some significant ways. As a visual artist, I work on a very unstructured, connotative level, looking to present to the viewer layers of ambiguity, ambivalence and opposition without seeking to explain. Greg and Stephen, on the other hand, operate on a set of explicit research questions, progress a logical, structured inquiry based on evidence and, finally, assert an argument. Nonetheless, it became very clear to us as we progressed with this project that some of these disciplinary boundaries were beginning to blur and open up new modes of inquiry, research and practice. Instead of tentatively reaching across boundaries, we found ourselves able to step across them in an act of creative exploration of each other’s terrain. The collaboration also allowed us to be more ambitious with the work, to exploit to the full our different disciplinary skills and craft and also the extensive space that the Crescent Arts Centre provided.

While interdisciplinary collaboration is common practice amongst academics like Greg and Stephen, my art practice has been more solitary and independent – though more recently I have collaborated with other visual artists in various projects. My work with Greg and Stephen, however, has marked something of a new departure for me in terms of crossing disciplinary boundaries and exchanging ideas and perspectives in a new and dynamic praxis.

Sue Morris is a contemporary visual artist from London and has practiced in Ireland since 1992. She has exhibited in Ireland, the UK, the USA and most recently in Vienna as part of the International Cultural Programme for Ireland’s Presidency of the EU. Greg McLaughlin from Derry and Stephen Baker from Belfast are lecturers in Media at the University of Ulster, Coleraine. They are authors of ‘The Propaganda of Peace: The role of media and culture in the Northern Ireland peace process’ (Intellect Books, 2010) and ‘The British Media and Bloody Sunday’ (Intellect Books, 2014).

Notes 1. The installation was shown at the Crescent Arts Centre, Belfast, 4 – 23 March 2014; it was supported by an award from the Arts Council Northern Ireland / National Lottery Fund, with additional support from the Centre for Media Research at the University of Ulster 2. Kunstverein, Baden bie Wien, Austria, 24 November 2012 –13 March 2013; MuseumOrth, Austria, 27 April – 23 June 2013 3. Site-responsive installation, AIR Cló and the Living Archive, May 2013 4. 2014 marks the 25th Anniversary of Hillsborough (15 April) and the thirtieth anniversary of the miners’ strike

18

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Residency report

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Bund, Shanghai, July 2013

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Bund, Shanghai, July 2013

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Bund, Shanghai, July 2013

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Bund, Shanghai, July 2013

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Bund, Shanghai, July 2013

Saoirse Higgins, Overview, Shanghai Exhibition Centre, International Art & Technology exhibition

Scale & Difference SAOIRSE HIGGINS DESCRIBES HER RESIDENCY AT THE SWATCH ART PEACE HOTEL, SHANGHAI, CHINA. The Swatch Peace Art Hotel residency in Shanghai is a three to six month residency opportunity sponsored by Swatch, the makers of 1980s retro-cool plastic watches and worldwide owner of much of the watch movement manufacturing industry. The residency is widely advertised and I came across it by simply googling ‘residencies in china’ (www.swatch-art-peace-hotel.com).

Following a juried assessment of my work and my project proposal, I was offered a six-month residency. However, I wasn’t able to take that length of time out, so I opted for a three-month stay. In hindsight, I think the full term would have been better in order to properly get to grips with the overwhelming scale and difference of Shanghai.

The residency provides return flights, visas, studio space and accommodation – along with a buffet breakfast every morning, free espresso coffee and as much bottled water as you can drink. As plush as the residency is, it isn’t suitable for artists with families, as it is not set up to accommodate children, partners or visitors.

They also don’t organise exhibitions or studio visits by curators.

Establishing contacts and networking has to be done by the artist, which I actually found quite easy to do – via artists already on the residency. I developed enough connections with local curators to have a couple of exhibitions during the time I was there. The only thing Swatch asks for in return is for you to leave some sort of ‘trace’ for the Swatch Art Collection before you leave.

During my time in Shanghai (18 June –18 September 2013) there were approximately 20 artists at various stages of their residencies present in the building. I was lucky enough to become good friends with some of the artists who had arrived roughly at the same time as me. The resident artists came from all over the world: Italy, Hungary, Macedonia, China, UK, Germany, Switzerland and Brazil. Everybody had different plans and reasons for being there. Some went off travelling to gather research material or had specific projects they needed to complete and some people had no end goal for the residency apart from experimentation.

I was there because of a fascination with China: its diverse culture; its increasing wealth and expanding economy; the giant scale of the architecture; and intriguing cultural attitudes to both technology and nature. The size of China is difficult comprehend. 23.9 million people live in Shanghai – the entire population of Taiwan in one city. During my stay, the second highest building in the world – 2,073 feet high – was being built directly opposite the Swatch Peace Art Hotel.

The day I arrived, a limousine picked me up from the airport – exactly the type of treatment I could get used to. The residency hotel

is right on the Bund and the main up-market tourist street in Shanghai. The Bund is the promenade running alongside the Huangpu River, a tributary of the Yangtze River. Every weekend a huge number of Chinese tourists, mainly young families from other parts of China, walk down the street to go and look across the river at Pudong, an uber-modern, space-age-style cityscape. Not surprisingly perhaps, this location is featured in Her, Spike Jonze’s recent sci-fi movie.

Air pollution wasn’t too bad when I was there, but I was told that come winter it gets severe. The American embassy has an independent monitoring facility and you can download an app to check the pollution levels.

The project I developed was a response to the environment I found myself in, along with broader considerations of future human survival – in terms of climate change, over-population and dwindling natural resources. I was also interested in the idea of the ‘overview perspective’, a particular feeling of euphoria and profound connectedness experienced by astronauts when viewing the earth from space.1 Entitled Overview, the work comprised a set of wearable technological elements, intended to offer users a kind of out of body experience and, quite literally, a new perspective on their situation.

These included a custom made headpiece with headphones that was attached to a helium balloon suspended several meters above the user’s head. The balloon was equipped with a webcam, which transmitted video and sound via a local wi-fi network to the user’s tablet or smart phone.

In July during the residency I showed Overview with the Shanghaibased Little Victories project – a mobile exhibition space comprising a converted waste collection bicycle, with an ethos of “bringing the art to the people and building a foundation for greater acceptance and accessibility of different creative practices” (www.littlevictories.com).

The work was also featured at the city’s International Art and Technology Exhibition (28 August – 2 September).

The residency premises are located in beautiful 1930s art deco building. My space comprised a studio with a double bedroom, an allglass bathroom and an ample storage area. At first I was paranoid about the cleaning staff having listening devices in their mops; they always seemed to ‘look busy’ as I walked around the corner. I managed to persuade myself that they were not government spies, but we were certainly monitored in a subtle way. I think it would be difficult but not impossible to be overtly political in your work within this residency. The building is government owned, so you are inevitably under a spotlight. I went out with my Overview headgear on to walk

the Bund and the street police looked on at me with a mix of curiosity, surprise and wariness.

The electronic markets in Shanghai are geek heaven. Everything can be made up and copied. I really got into the whole concept and I got pretty good at drawing out what I wanted and miming the rest. It was fun to negotiate the purchases and bargain for them, despite the fact that even counting on your hand is different to western counting.

I found a friendly guy in the local electronic market and handed him my list, which he took to his colleagues and came back with everything I wanted and charged me very little for the lot.

There are markets and shops for everything and anything. I came across a market that sold every type of elastic band you could think of.

I also bought a lot of kit off Taobao (www.taobao.com) – the equivalent of ebay, but much better – including helium and various screens and electronics.

It seemed to me that the Chinese people get used to new and different ways of doing things very quickly; they seem to have no fear of adapting and trying out new gadgets. Their culture is naturally hacker-friendly. I saw a lot of DIY culture there, with mopeds literally taped together with gaffer tape and very individual attempts to repair and customise things in general.

Getting around China is difficult if you do not have the language.

I went on a trip to Xiamen, a city south of Shanghai, two weeks into my residency, which was an adventure and a test. I took the train there and flew back. I realised when I was in the train station that I had no clue how to read any of the departure boards, but luckily there was somebody to help me and I managed. Google Chrome’s translator app was also really essential. The staff at the residency reception also assisted me in translating travel plans and any websites.

I’m planning to return this summer and travel further out into the countryside – despite the fact that it is hard to manage without Mandarin. I may hire a translator to travel with me, ideally a person drawn from the network of artists I made contact with. I also have a short residency lined up in Iceland, connected to the Overview project.2 Saoirse Higgins www.saoirsehiggins.tumblr.com Notes 1. Frank White, The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution, Houghton-Mifflin, 1987 2. Another outcome from the residency was a presentation of Overview as part of the exhibition entitled ‘Seamless’ at the Museum of Design, Llubiana, Slovenia (17 Sept – 7 Nov 2013). At the time of writing I will soon be travelling to Iceland to utilise a version of the work on a mountain walk in Listhus.

Later this year the piece will also feature in the Asia Triennale in Manchester (Sept – Nov 2014).

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Critique Supplement Edition 13 May – June 2014

Dorothy Cross ‘Connemara’ Royal Hibernian Academy Gallery, Dublin 13 March – 27 April Moving into semi-darkness in the RHA’s Gallery 1

today’s catch. Yet the skeleton rises like some kind

for Dorothy Cross’ ‘Connemara’ initially feels like

of totem pole and casts a large shadow on the

entering a museum: silent and still. The only light

gallery wall, at once beautiful and ominous.

comes from two video pieces projected on the walls

Tabernacle resembles a tiny marine chapel, with a

and from overhead spotlights, which pick out the

handful of small seats and a currach for a roof. The

works dotted across the floor and walls. Cross

seats face a video installation projected on the wall,

initially went to Connemara due to an interest in

shot from the depths of a cave looking out towards

scuba diving and, at a glance, this darkened room

the daylit sea and tracking the water as it surges in

with spot-lit works calls to mind underwater

and out of the cave. The installation evokes the

footage allowing us glimpses of what lies far

ceaseless shifting in nature, the ebb and flow, as the

beneath the ocean’s surface. Yet Cross’s artistic

water slowly erodes the stone.

interest lies not in what rests at the depths of the

‘Connemara’ first opened last year at the Turner Contemporary (Margate, UK) alongside a number of landscapes by Turner and Constable. Shark Heart Submarine, probably the most talked about work in the show, consists of a splattered antique painter’s easel supporting a model submarine, which we are told contains the heart of a shark. This work reflects on a number of things: it juxtaposes traditional and contemporary approaches to art inspired by nature; it aligns art history with natural history; and presents a shark to us from a different viewpoint, its tiny heart encapsulated like the engine in this shiny machine.

Throughout Cross’s oeuvre death and loss are transformed; once living beings and inanimate objects are reborn in a new context. A collaboration exists between artist and the natural world, which reflects on man’s interaction with nature. In Basking Shark Currach, death is turned into something new, as a shark skin is used in the place of a traditional cowhide to line the overturned boat, the fin resembling a boat’s keel. The currach represents a way of life closely linked to, and dependent on, nature – an increasingly rare occurrence in many parts of the world.

Despite the sea being the show’s primary inspiration, it makes only a few fleeting direct appearances – the two video pieces and a print – and is for the most part conjured up through the

Dorothy Cross, Shark-Heart Submarine, 2011, 19th century oak painters easel, model submarine, laminated wood, oil-gilded in white gold, shark’s heart in glass jar with alcohol, dimensions variable installation view ‘Connemara’ RHA, Dublin. Photo courtesy of Bryan Meade / Sunday Times

Dorothy Cross, Basking Shark Currach, installation view, ‘Connemara’, RHA, Dublin, photo courtesy of Bryan Meade / Sunday Times

objects accumulated. This subtlety forms an important part of many of the works on display,

oceans but rather what occurs at that point where

where an impetus is in place for the visitor to

ocean and the land that we inhabit meet. Navigating

reflect on our position in and relationship to the

the exhibition, the initial stillness is replaced by a

natural world around us. But for a richer experience

sense of nature’s rhythms.

our understanding and imagination are encouraged.

Cross often works with found objects and

This stands in marked contrast to art inspired by

materials, a process facilitated by the movements

nature in more sensational or direct ways – think

of nature. Skins consists of a selection of man-made

Damien Hirst’s infamous shark.

objects washed up on the beach, which were cast in

The exhibition offers a chronological path to

bronze and neatly hung up in a row on the wall:

follow, which I choose to do in order to see if there

rubber boots, insoles and fins. Incorporating found

was some sense of story to how the works were

objects into the works brings a sense of where they

ordered. Sapiens, the final piece, consists of an

came from into the gallery, embodying the history

adult skull on an antique tripod; as you move

of that place.

around the work, you find a baby skull protruding

The shark has recurred in Cross’s work to

from the back of the larger one. Perhaps this work

represent a number of things: our fears, that which

considers our place in the world characterised by

repulses us, desire and misunderstanding. In Everest

its transience amidst the ultimate cycles of life and

Shark this fearsome fish pauses at our feet and at

nature. ‘Connemara’ offers but a glimpse of Cross’s

once appears vulnerable, its fin replaced by a model

extensive collection of works that respond to what

of Mount Everest. This vulnerability recalls the

the natural world offers her in terms of source

point made by countless marine experts that sharks

material and inspiration, but it’s enough to affirm

are not the mythical monsters we have created and

an artist working with a wealth of curiosity and

are probably more afraid of us than we are of them,

sensitivity to explore encounters on the threshold

while also positioning the shark, like a mountain,

where man and nature collide.

as our long time predecessor on this planet.

In Whale, a whale skeleton hangs from the

Roisin Russell is a writer based in Dublin and

ceiling, its skull stretching towards a rusted bucket

her work has featured on Paper Visual Art

and marble plinth on the floor. This once beautiful

Journal, Vulgo and Circa.

sea creature is present in a rather dejected position:

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet Critique Supplement

May – June 2014

‘Overworlds’ The Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon 14 March – 3 April

Patrick Altes ‘A Story of Revolutions’ Triskel, Cork 14 March - 20 April Connections between writing and image are a major component in Altes’s exhibition of digital imagery, paintings and texts at Triskel. The show’s title states the exhibition’s goal: to tell ‘A Story of Revolutions’. One particular mode of sequential visual story telling is suggested by the venue’s former life as a church. The 13 digital prints and the 6 paintings are placed around the walls of Triskel’s gallery space, which brings to mind a kind of Stations of the Cross.

Altes employs wall texts to provide the viewer with information in order to contextualise his images.

He uses a collage technique in his digital prints, which bring together photographic images taken at different times. Altes’s sources include photographs taken by his family in Algeria prior to its independence in 1962, as well as contemporary photographs he has taken on recent visits.

The digital collage Chronology comprises photographs of a city at night – generic city lights and high-rise buildings stand as signs for any fairly developed city. The upper section of the collage is an image of a barren landscape; palm trees depicted in silhouette stand out against it. The blue sky has been decorated with graffiti flourishes and stenciled with the words “This isn’t democracy”. The style of this slogan and the fact that it’s in English brings to mind the recent Arab Spring revolutions. It also reads as a discrete nod towards jubilant Western references to ‘twitter revolutions’ along with globalisation in general and English as the language of international commerce and communication.

The main focus of this image is on two groupings of people. Three children wearing school uniforms and, to their right, another grouping of three – a smartly dressed couple, and an older woman in traditional dress. Altes’s text describes how the older woman, a stranger, became incorporated by chance into the photograph of his parents. The collage also contains elements that have been vertically flipped, both architectural features and figures. This obvious digital manipulation stresses the highly constructed nature of the piece and emphasises that it is not a document of a particular time and place. It functions critically due to its close understanding and manipulation of the technologies of photography, Another of the digital works, Mal, incorporates what at first glance appears to be Arabic script; on closer examination, the resemblance is only superficial.

Altes’s text describes it as being a “mock appropriation of Arabic”. The collage incorporates different modes of representation: x- rays, photography and writing, but ultimatly blocks our attempts to unlock the image.

Patrick Altes, The Process of Civilisation

The paintings on show are drawn from a series entitled No Country for Nomads (The Myth of Origins). In an accompanying text by Dr Helen Jacey, it’s suggested that these works “serve as an imaginary reclamation of a mythical geography of birthright which is fantastical, evocative and surreal”. The paintings are overall compositions with no particular area of focus; in a number of them the ground has a gritty look, suggestive of sand. They allude to both maps and topography seen from above and are reminiscent of certain aspects of indigenous Australian painting, as well as work by Miro and Chris Ofili. They are decorative, the application of paint and their compositions suggesting vegetation, rivers, veins and blood flow. There’s a linking made between land and body, which could be read as problematic.

Though large in scale – all measuring 150 x 130cm – the paintings seem to be weightless, as much of the imagery is quite generic, which I suppose could be read as an expression of rootlessness. Though the paintings are more unified compositions than the collaged digital works, ultimately they don’t seem entirely necessary – they’re almost simulacrums of painting – paintings as signifiers of ‘painting’.

The digital works are more interesting; they are assembled in a fairly crude manner, with no attempt made to hide the joins. The rough collaging can be read as a metaphor, an attempt to assemble an art that articulates Altes’s conflicted relationship with his identity and his family background. Combined with the text they are confrontational. In Classroom Picture, an old family photograph of his mother’s school class has been superimposed onto a lurid green and white background and overlain with a text about the exodus of Pied-Noir from North Africa to Europe.

Altes’s project is a very ambitious one – an exploration of “representation, diaspora and transition within the context of the colonization of Algeria and the Algerian revolution”. Based on the works in this show, it’s debatable just how successful he has been in achieving this aim. There’s always a danger when an exhibition’s contextualising material makes grandiose claims; it directs viewers to read artworks in a certain way and the work can be found lacking if it doesn’t live up to textual promises. In fact the most successful works in this show are those that fail to ‘represent’ and instead express the fragmentary, unreliable and unstable nature of representation itself.

Catherine Harty is a Cork-based artist and member of the Cork Artists’ Collective as well as being an activist with the Socialist Party.

Patrick Altes, Droit d’entree

Ailbhe Barrett, -10 C, Oil on Canvas, 30 ins x 40 inches

In We Have Never Been Modern, the French sociologist of science Bruno Latour observes that climate change is simultaneously material, discursive and socially constructed. It is at once a product of natural phenomena, of power relations and of the effects of language, a hybrid of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’.1 I mention this because these days I find that the act of looking at landscapes, both real and pictorial, is suffused with the knowledge that what I am looking at is not just what I am looking at. Every leaf and blade of grass carries within it microscopic traces of human activity, whether from pollution, chemical fertilisation, genetic modification or something else. Wild animals, including those in my immediate environment, have become increasingly like the mythical lost tribes of the Amazon, modern anomalies set to disappear under the advancing wave of capitalist growth. International protocols determine the right to pollute the air. It’s not that I am nostalgic for some previously ‘pure’ state of nature – as though natural phenomena could exist independently of human actions and effects – it is just that I anticipate, as the artist Mark Dion has recently said, that the world is going to get grottier, and that there is very little that we can do about it.2 Looking at the seemingly ‘innocent’ landscapes created by Ailbhe Barrett, on show as part of ‘Overworlds’ at the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon, it seems unlikely that the artist was working from such a pessimistic viewpoint. While the majority of her works focus on the sky, they feature “silhouettes and shapes of human activity and built structures” at the edges of the compositions, described by the artist as “both comforting and threatening”.3 The sense of threat that I detected in the work seemed to come less from these small indexes of human presence, however, than from the very real awareness of this sky, this enveloping atmosphere, as the locus of some pretty awesome and destructive forces in formation. The sublime is back, but not as we knew it.

The painful fact of beauty and its imminent loss may be a Romantic theme, but it is no less current for that. Two of Barrett’s larger paintings, The Weir, Maigue River and -10 o C, stood out in this regard.

Scenes of trees and water, strangely lit, the images were built up through a fine lattice of brushstrokes painstakingly applied, the surfaces charged with an intensity of looking. In the weird, crystal stillness of these works, the hybrid reality of ‘nature’ seemed somehow close to the surface.

The work of Joan Sugrue, also on show as part of ‘Overworlds’, engaged more consciously with the complexities of representation. Concerned with overlapping perceptions of time, place and space, Sugrue generates painted images that appear like multiple exposures. Each layer of the image seems to reference an entirely different visual language: photographic, hieroglyphic, sometimes cartoonish, in keeping with the artist’s interest in the heterotopias that result when elements of place and time are “out of sync”.4 Sugrue’s Broken is a striking evocation of the space of ‘otherness’ that Foucault described in the heterotopia. Taking the form of a double image, the lower canvas operates as a reflection or inversion of the one above, suggesting something seen and seen again as though through a wormhole in spacetime. Similarly, Portal creates a void in the representation of an otherwise straightforward scene, exposing the instability of the image and its internal workings.

Sugrue’s series of six small, pinhole photographic prints, titled for the length of their exposure – 88 days, 21 days and so on – added something significant to the cumulative effect of the exhibition. Through the analogue process of pinhole photography, the world imprints itself directly onto the surface of the paper, which is most obvious in the tracks left by the passage of the sun across the sky. This evidence of the indifferent, relentless turning of the world placed the miniscule significance of human time in a cosmic perspective, partially offsetting the melancholy of representation that so permeated the other works.

The fictional constructs of ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ have allowed the human species to conceive a makebelieve separation between our actions and their consequences. ‘Overworlds’ acknowledged this artifice while seeming to maintain a thread to the material reality from which it derives.

Fiona Woods is a visual artist recognised for her curatorial and collaborative work in rural contexts. She is currently developing a new work by invitation for Action on the Plains, a Coloradobased programme of socially engaged art with US collective M12.

Notes 1. B Latour, B, We Have Never Been Modern, 1993, trans C Porter, Harvard University Press, 1993, 6 2 M Dion in S Lookofsky, Trash on the Beach, 2013, Dis Magazine, www. dismagazine.com 3 A Barrett, artist statement,‘Overworlds’, The Courthouse Gallery, 2014, www. thecourthousegallery.com 4 J Sugrue, artist statement, ‘Overworlds’

The Visual Artists’ News SheetCritique Supplement

May – June 2014

Richard Gilligan ‘DIY’ The Copperhouse Gallery, Dublin, 13 March – 3 April

Richard GilliganWarsaw, Poland

Secluded down a quiet laneway off Synge Street, Dublin the ‘Copper House’ is wrapped in thin sheets of the eponymous metal, an eccentric cladding for an otherwise nondescript industrial block. The twostorey structure houses a photographic studio and digital printing service with a ground floor gallery offering a showcase for the company’s output. This immaculate exhibition space provides a pristine air for the 16 colour photographs that make up Richard Gilligan’s exhibition, ‘DIY’.

Gilligan is a commercial photographer who also pursues more personal projects. As a skateboarder, he has travelled widely in Europe and America photographing skateboarders and the unofficial, cobbled together skateparks that they build. The small (42.5x51cm) and medium (79x96cm) sized photographs are simply mounted and framed without glass. The exhibition combines images of the gerry-built parks themselves (including an occasional skater or two) and shots of individual skaters taken in or around these locations. There is little or no action as such and, contrary to expectation, barely a single skateboard in evidence.

A spirit of gung-ho optimism may be synonymous with ‘DIY’ but in Gilligan’s exhibition title the term becomes more nuanced. His portraits of lone figures and isolated parks suggest that doing it yourself may also mean doing it by yourself, when you move away from the conventions that govern elsewhere. Munich, Germany depicts a hooded figure in the shadows of a darkened space. Standing pensively in a shaft of light, he’s like a backstage actor waiting for his cue. In New Orleans, USA a young boy leans forward with arms on hips. He seems oblivious to his surroundings, his downward gaze ignoring the blurry edifice behind him and the weedy verge delineating his concrete patch.

All the photographs are titled after their locations: Brooklyn, USA, Liverpool, UK. But despite these varied locales the pictures reveal a common topography, a similar landscape of dead-ends, underpasses and vacant lots – a sort of Esperanto hinterland where the useful and the useless intersect.

In Warsaw, Poland a cultivated slope sweeps down to a rectangle of grey concrete, marked here and there by low platforms and ramps. A group of tiny figures is dwarfed by a row of tower blocks behind, standing like sentinels with so many eyes.

The light is eerily even, lending everything an equal status under the cloudy expanse above. I was reminded of Pieter Bruegel’s painting, Hunters in the Snow, and how, viewed from an elevated vantage point, his silhouetted ice-skaters draw your eye into the distant valley and a sense of the intimate life there. Gilligan’s skateboarders seem more remote, frozen by the camera on the edge of an indifferent metropolis.

The photographer’s view is oblique, taking in tangential spaces and the incidental moments around events. In Philadelphia, USA two young women sit cross-legged on a hard slope. Beside them a curve of blue concrete marks the rim of a skateboarding ‘bowl’. Though together, the women seem alone in their thoughts. There’s a darkness on the edge of town, or a twilight at least, an atmosphere of pensive separation hovering over the off-piste terrain. In the distance a road sign glows orange, lit by electricity or by the dying rays of the sun.

One of the pleasures of the exhibition is to see how the dips and pours of these temporary playgrounds can soften the hard edges of urban infrastructure. Gilligan notices how ramps can resemble natural features. In Memphis, USA the picture is dissected by a rain-soaked wall. Behind the wall a line of telegraph poles gives measure to the watery sky. In the open space in front there is a single white ramp, its undulating mass like a snowdrift melting into the ground.

Skateparks that colonise neglected space can themselves become neglected. In Derry, Northern Ireland a scrubby field is bordered by conifers and a broken fence. A wooden ramp appears abandoned in a gap between the trees. Whatever energy was here has now gone, the bucolic and the alcoholic mingled in a scrubland of discarded beer cans.

At the turn of the millennium Shaun Gladwell’s Storm Sequence (a slow-motion video of a skateboarder (himself) spinning on the edge of a rain-lashed pier) proved that you could make art by combining boyhood enthusiasms with notions of the romantic sublime. The ‘street’ and its vernaculars are by no means strangers to art (and I’m not talking about Banksy) with photographers in particular frequently finding treasures there. Another millennial work, the sequence Heads by the American photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia, renders ordinary pedestrians monumental by ingenious lighting techniques.

Gilligan’s photographs don’t have the dramatic impact of these examples, but they have something of their mixture of insouciance and conviction.

Serving as an anomaly in a set otherwise focused on the outside, a second image titled Munich, Germany shows a skatepark tucked inside a barnlike structure.

A cropped view makes a powerful arrangement of black and brown interlocking shapes. An area of pale concrete scooped out from the surrounding level completes the abstract composition. The picture’s formal qualities made me think of George Braque, particularly his ‘Atelier’ paintings and their symbolic birds, locked into the painted surface but not bound to it. Already in its second edition print run, a handsome volume, also titled DIY, offers a fuller spectrum of these quietly engaging photographs.

John Graham is an artist based in Dublin.

Robert Kelly ‘Interconnectedness’ Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda 9 March – 25 April ‘Interconnectedness’, the title of Robert Kelly’s exhibition of abstract prints at the Droichead Arts Centre, alludes not only to the visual links created between works through the repeated use of plates, but to the persistence of motifs and themes that have informed his practice since the 1970s. Geometric forms and grid patterns are infused with less taut characteristics to explore the tension between order and chaos in a modern-meets-postmodern interplay.

Hidden spaces, perception and the impact of time and motion are also pitched within a resonating set of relationships.

The works on show span four years of output and show variety in both technique and aesthetic as a counterpoint to cohesion in themes and to some extent formal content. A set of four sugar-lift etchings with Pop Art leanings, entitled Liminality in CMYK, manipulates cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black) to explode the illusion of unity promoted by commercial four-colour printing. Rather than align the chromatic elements, Kelly applies them in various overlapping combinations, creating entities that are at once graphic and calligraphic, gestural and structured.

This chimes with the artist’s stated wish to celebrate the unique character of print processes, while deconstructing and laying them bare, referencing spaces that would otherwise elude perception. Both Sides Now, a lithograph featuring chine collé collaged elements, harnesses this idea. It comprises a work printed with the same component back and front, aligning either side of the midpoint, like the folded paintings that teach children about symmetry. It takes close observation to detect the tonal differences, which demonstrated that the reverse of the paper had been printed – drawing attention to a place that would otherwise go unnoted.

A small but important component of Liminality in CMYK is a latticework of squares, which, to varying degrees, anchor the imagery across the suite of works, but in themselves are rough-hatched and destabilised by competing elements. Such allusion to ‘the grid’ is a keynote in other works, though sometimes only conceptually, through the deployment of horizontal and vertical dynamics.

In The Spirit of Amergin, a trio of distinct soapground etchings, vertical forms derived from the incised marks on Bronze Age pottery are married with (possibly landscape-inspired) horizontal compositional devices and mark-making. The intrusion of the former into the latter conveys a timeless tussle between order and disorder, while the deployment of a sombre palette evokes a sense of deep history.

Most significant among the remaining exhibits is a recent body of work that provides clear evidence of process-led decision-making and the evolution of an idea. 3D elements are incorporated through

printing onto folded paper, which is then opened to reveal hidden parts, articulating the artist’s interest in unseen spaces. In The Space Between with Triangles, where both folded paper and background are printed in carborundum, the predominant element is a sharp-edge yellow triangle derived from a card template. This shape was then overprinted from carborundum in a complementary colour, after the fold was opened.

The resulting visual deconstruction of a geometric form associated with mathematical rigour and certitude is advanced in The Space Between with Triangles, Circles and Squares, through slight movement of the inset paper; because the crisp geometric shapes bled onto the background, the movement caused them to mis-register, further undermining their integrity and referencing a tension between reality and illusion.

Observed from a distance, given their threedimensionality and the alchemy of complementary colours, these works seem calligraphic, even graffitilike. Placed on the opposite wall, the largest of the series, The Space Between with Squares, encourages this viewpoint. In this work, the artist offsets the ‘inset’ to reveal a misshapen, blind-embossed square with the imprint of the folds – an inspired move. In another positioning manoeuvre, the creases in The Space Between with Circles I, II and III (an etching and carborundum series) are exploited to comment on perception. Placed at staggered intervals and arranged on the basis of suitability for viewing from above, on the level and below, time and motion are introduced to the process.

A collection of standalone 3D works is displayed in glass cases. These included printedpaper sculptures, which merge origami with complex geometric forms, such as the hexaflexagon favoured by school-age girls. These were flanked by Chinese Whispers I and II, lithograph-printed artist books shown tumbling from their covers to reveal their visual narratives.

On a final note, a chance encounter with the artist provided valuable insight into nuances of technique and intention that would otherwise have been difficult to glean from the work. This enrichment of the viewing experience would ideally have been extended to all visitors through well-chosen text. The absence of such material is understandable given the expense of mounting an exhibition in straitened times, but it would have helped to build the audience for print, through revealing the processes behind works by an artist clearly immersed in its versatile and investigative potential.

Robert Kelly,The Space Between With Circle, Square, Triangle

Robert Kelly,The Space Between With Triangles

Susan Campbell is a freelance art writer and visual artist.

Ireland’s national day for visual artists

Friday May 23rd 2014

Irish Museum of Modern Art Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin The 2014 Get Together will include a wealth of discussions, talk and events. Our various information sessions will include: Artists Talk, where Daphne Wright, Locky Morris and Elizabeth Magill discuss career development; Local Area Group meetings; a talk on Artists as Parents with the Mothership collective; and the Little Theatre, where leading experts – including both Arts Councils, Axis Web, IMMA’s residency programme, the Design Council and Rua Red – will present on day to day professional matters that affect visual artists.

The Common Room will be held in IMMA’s Great Hall, featuring the Artists’ Books & Supplies area alongside and array of stalls from relevant arts organisations and service providers. The whole day will wrap up with an informal Wine Reception and a chance to discuss the day’s events.

Art and Ethics is the chosen topic for the VAI / AICA panel discussion, featuring Paul Wood, James Merrigan and Cliodnha Shaffrey. In the afternoon, Elaine A King, Fionola Meredith and Gemma Tipton will consider the theme Art in a Time of Transition.

There will also be opportunities for artists to present their work at our popular Speed Curating or to a selection of Documentary and Film producers. The Show & Tell will take place in the beautiful IMMA chapel, and is an open event, providing a platform for peer sharing. tickets available now at www.visualartists.ie

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

23

VAI professional development

VAI activity

Stepping Up

Plus ça change …

ADRIAN COLWELL REPORTS ON ‘EARLY DAYS’, A VAI PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT EVENT HELD AT MCAC , PORTADOWN (1 MARCH 2014).

ÁINE MACKEN REPORTS ON VAI’S SCREENING OF !WOMEN ART REVOLUTION!

Rob Hilken talking at VAI’s ‘Early Days’

On 1 March, Visual Artists Ireland held a day of talks and presentations entitled ‘Early Days’ at the Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown. The day comprised three separate strands, each focusing on early career development strategies: a series of presentations by Belfast-based artists, curators and directors; a Show & Tell event; and a Common Room Café. Organised by VAI Professional Development Officer Monica Flynn, ‘Early Days’ was held in conjunction with the exhibition ‘Presently’, curated by former Visual Artists Ireland Northern Ireland Manager Feargal O’Malley, which showcased the work of 18 emerging contemporary artists based in Northern Ireland.

The day began with a series of presentations from Belfast-based ‘self starters’ – artists, curators and directors. Rob Hilken, who has recently finished two years as co-director with Catalyst Arts, kicked off the event. Rob talked about his involvement with Catalyst, which, in accordance with its constitution, is run by unpaid volunteers. Catalyst seeks to adopt a poly-vocal strategy towards the promotion of contemporary art practices by selecting a large number of artists and projects from the widest possible range of disciplines.

Tonya Mc Mullan, founding member of the PRIME Collective (www.primecollective.wordpress. com), spoke about the mutual support that the group provides its members with: assisting new projects and partnerships, creating networking opportunities and placing emphasis on learning amongst the group as well as with other creative professionals.

Michael Weir, Director of the Belfast Photo Festival, gave the final presentation. He discussed the origins of this major photographic event, which celebrates some of the finest national and international contemporary photography and visual culture. In particular, Michael mentioned the festival’s Youth Edition, which launched in April and aims to encourage and present future talent, while providing training and skills development for young people through photography.

Following these presentations, Geraldine Boyle, Exhibitions Officer (MCA) and Feargal O’Malley chaired a short Q&A with each of the speakers. The contributors emphasised several important elements: the satisfaction of developing a platform for their work and interests; the benefits of self initiated projects in the development of professional networks, professional affinities and support from the artistic community; proving your creative abilities to yourself and others; building a track record as an artist-curator.

The Show & Tell event took place after the presentations. Five of the artists featured in ‘Presently’ gave short, fast-paced presentations about their work – Dorothy Hunter, Eamon Quinn, Brian Morison and Peter Spiers, who each spoke about their respective practices and recent projects. Organised by VAI Membership Manager Adrian Colwell, the VAI Show & Tell provides artists with the opportunity to talk about their practice in an informal setting where they can network and meet people with similar ideas and

interests. VAI has so far rolled this event out in Dublin, Galway and Limerick.

‘Collaboration and Inter-Disciplinarity’ was the theme for the first of the afternoon sessions, which began with presentations from directors and curators of three artist-led spaces from the Republic of Ireland.

Hollie Kearns, an independent curator based in Callan, Co Kilkenny, was first up. She presented on recent curated projects including Workhouse Assembly (2013), a twelve-day participative research workshop exploring the complex social history and future development possibilities of a semi-derelict wing of the Callan Workhouse. Artist-curator Miranda Driscoll, co-founder and Artistic Director of The Joinery, Dublin discussed a number of collaborations that have taken root at The Joinery. She went on to explain how the organisation has established itself as a platform for artists, curators and musicians to experiment and try out new working practices. Ben Readman, artist and Artistic Director of Block T, Dublin, tracked the organisation’s trajectory from small beginnings to the present day and shared some of the ideas and practices that underpin their sustainable studio model.

Following these presentations, the speakers were joined by Monica Flynn, Professional Development Officer VAI, and Jackie Barker, Arts Director MCAC, for a discussion on the benefits of collaboration and the issues surrounding the sustainability of artist-led spaces. One of the key issues that emerged was the challenge faced by artist-led spaces in sustaining the voluntary energy needed to run them and their financial resources.

Readman and Driscoll both highlighted the benefits of multi-disciplinary approaches to programming, including the opportunity for cross-fertilisation between artistic practices as well as the diverse audience that this approach fosters. Conversely, the benefits of this approach are difficult to communicate to funders where funding streams are aimed towards single artform programmes or venues. Collaboration and collective approaches were key in all three presentations and Kearns in particular highlighted an innovative model of curatorial praxis that aligns itself within a community and works collaboratively with this community.

The day culminated with a Common-Room Café discussion on the recently launched Payment Guidelines for Artists, Northern Ireland. The Common Room Café is a series of pop-up events providing an informal and social space for artists to network, share skills and knowledge and discuss issues of common interest and concern. Alex Davis, Advocacy Officer at VAI, outlined the development of the guidelines and how they can be applied in practice.

Keep an eye out for upcoming VAI networking events happening as part of the annual Get Together, which will take place at IMMA, Dublin on 23 May. Adrian Colwell, VAI Membership Assistant.

Spain Rodriguez, !Women Art Revolution!, poster

Back in February artists Gráinne and Eimear Tynan, members of Market Studios, Dublin contacted Visual Artists Ireland and suggested collaborating on a VAI Screening event to explore feminist issues relating to the visual arts sector. The Tynans were interested in expanding on issues raised by their research into issues of gender equality in the Irish visual arts sector. Myself and Adrian Colwell (VAI Membership Manager) felt this was a relevant and important topic, and set our minds to programming an event around the time of International Women’s Week.

We decided on !Women Art Revolution! (2010), a film by Lynn Hershmann Leeson, who spent 40 years collecting hours of footage and interviews centred on the development of the Women’s Liberation Movement through the lens of feminist visual art. Through intimate interviews, footage of works and rarely seen archival film and video pieces, !Women Art Revolution! traces major developments in women’s art of the 1970s.

The screening took place in Goldsmith Hall, Trinity College on Thrusday 6 March in collaboration with Claire Doyle of TCD’s Visual Arts Society. The event was free to members of VAI, Market Studios and VisArts Society; it quickly booked out, with over 50 people attending on the day. Áine Macken, Admin / VAI Events Assistant.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT & CHANGE GRÁINNE TYNAN In 1989, the Guerilla Girls famously asked: “Do women have to be naked to get into the Metropolitan Musuem of Modern Art collection?” A quarter century on from this statement, I had hoped that this question had become redundant. So I decided to check out the current situation in Ireland, vis-à-vis gender balance in the visual arts sector. I sat down with my laptop and a cup of tea and began to look through the websites of various Dublin art institutions, counting up the visibility of male versus female artists. 1 Some of my results were encouraging. Of the 10 arts organisations I looked at, 6 had female directors, and on average 55% of visual arts strand Arts Council funding (individual bursaries and project awards between 2012 – 14) was awarded to women artists.

I then looked at five private contemporary art galleries in Dublin. Of the artists they represented, an average of 37% were women (ranging from 28% – 43%). While this is not ideal, it’s not terrible either, and it indicates that the market supports women artists. Buoyed up with hope, I went on to look at six publically funded art galleries in Dublin, imagining that their figures would reflect current policies around participation and diversity. However, of the 163 solo exhibitions that took place from 2009 – 14, an average

of only 23% were by women (ranging from 0 – 35% between galleries). So for every one solo exhibition by a female artist, there were three by male artists.

Initially, the figures for the three high profile, publically funded studios / residencies in the city looked positive. Of the 89 awards given between 2009 – 13, an average of 42% went to women artists. However, while two organisations had 47% and 53%, one had only 26%, ie just over a quarter of awards went to female artists. The membership of the RHA and Aosdána are made up of over two thirds male artists. (Editor’s note: VAI membership is 69% female and 31% male).

Could it be that women aren’t interested in becoming artists? This argument is often trotted out in other spheres to explain away gender gaps. Yet when we look at ratios in art colleges, that theory goes out the window: 60 – 88% of fine art students are female. The Guerilla Girls noted this anomaly in 2009, declaring: “71% of Irish art students are women. If you’re not going to exhibit them, collect them, or let them join academies, why bother educating them?”

We would also expect that the number of women in art education would impact the gender breakdown of senior lecture staff. I looked at the fine art departments in two and found that out of the 11 senior staff members (directors / deans / department heads), only one was a woman. Lecturing positions at this level are highly paid, so what about the other end of the teaching spectrum: secondary school teachers? Of the 1507 art, craft and design teachers in Ireland, a full 84% are female (compared to an average of 60% in other subjects).2 In the words of the great sage Dr Phil, “You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge”. As a community of artists, we need to admit that gender inequality continues to be a real problem. Recently, the Noble Call speech delivered at the Abbey Theatre by Panti (aka Rory O’Neill) asked us all to look at our own internalised biases, and I think that people of all genders need to ask themselves when making decisions, “Am I being sexist here?” It is fantastic that 60% of the institutions I looked at have female directors, but this doesn’t seem to be filtering down to equal participation at the ground level. One suggestion could be to introduce quotas for publically funded institutions. Another is to do further research on the barriers to equal participation, not just in terms of gender, but also in terms of all the other forms of discrimination.3 Gráinne Tynan Notes 1.The results presented have not been cross-checked with the organisations and should be interpreted as indicating general trends rather than specific results.

2. Statistics from the Teaching Council of Ireland, 2014 3. Further reading: themothershipproject.wordpress.com, www.enemiesofgoodart.org, www.irishfeministnetwork.org, www.nwci.ie

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

How is it made?

Cecily Brennan, still from The Devil’s Pool: Madness, Melancholia and the Artist, 2014

Balancing Act CECILY BRENNAN DISCUSSES THE MAKING OF ‘THE DEVIL’S POOL: MADNESS, MELANCHOLIA AND THE ARTIST’, WHICH WAS SUPPORTED BY THE ARTS COUNCIL’S REEL ART AWARD 2012 AND PREMIERED AT THE JAMESON DUBLIN INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL IN FEBRUARY 2014.

Jason Oakley: What was your starting point? Thematically and visually ‘The Devil’s Pool: Madness, Melancholia and the Artist’ relates to aspects of previous works, but the documentary format is a new departure – the commentator’s interjections interrupt the flow of a powerfully dramatised performance work.

Cecily Brennan: The starting point was simple. I wanted to make a documentary with two elements. The first: a description of an artist, a young man in his 30s, losing his mind. The second: an examination of the long-held public belief in a connection between madness and artistic creativity.

In the final film, the contrasting worlds of the artist and the interviewees grind against each other – we’re made aware of the distance between the two worlds by their lack of contact.

The role of the artist is played by Marty Rea. The interviewees are Dr Simon Kyaga from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, Patricia Waugh from Durham University, playwright Frank McGuinness and poet Paul Muldoon. In the edit we didn’t overlap the voices of the artist and the interviewees. They were kept separate so that the audience, hopefully, would be shifted from emotion to reason and reason to emotion – a deliberate disturbance to prevent them from getting locked down to one view or another.

JO: The performance sections are very powerful; was there a mix or tension between scripted direction and improvisation in the process?

CB: There was no improvisation in the delivery of the script. I really knew what I wanted there and I had rehearsed with Marty intensively for five days. So there was no mix there, but there was a tension. I guess there always is on film shoots. You have to organise everything in advance, including spontaneity. The actor and all the crew must be assembled, the location set up and all technical aspects ready to go.

We only had the location for four days and we were working on a limited budget, so I was very conscious that we only had one chance in our white set to splash the black pigment around. I’d had experience of that in the past with Unstrung (2007), so I knew that once we started we couldn’t go back and start again. There just wasn’t the time or the money.

So I think there was a tension between the stability of the structure, rehearsal and so on and the complete instability of the elements: the paint, his body and the special FX. JO: How did you approach writing a script and editing the audio and visual elements?

CB: When I had finished the script I brought it to a great script editor,

Lauren MacKenzie, who helped me enormously. She understood the piece and in particular taught me about not having to say everything – to let the audience see what’s happening. She’d say to me – your protagonist doesn’t need to say “Oh the pain”. We can see he’s in pain. Though now that I think about it, we did argue about those words and I kept them in.

But having to argue and defend my position was really useful.

And this was also the first time I’d really had a chance to work with a film editor. After a pretty extensive search, I asked Nick Emerson, who edited Good Vibrations, a great movie, to edit The Devil’s Pool with me.

In terms of the person you need to get on best with, I think the editor comes very far up the list. You are working side-by-side for weeks. It took Nick and myself five weeks, five full days a week, to edit The Devil’s Pool.

This was pretty good going as the film has a complex structure. He was great to work with.

The Digital FX for the ‘storm’ sequence – a whirlwind of black debris that occurs in the artist’s studio / mind – was done by a company called BAIT based in Wales. I’d worked with BAIT’s director Jon Rennie before.

He did the work turning the tears black in Black Tears (2011). Rennie’s team at BAIT built the tornado / storm digitally. Jon Stevenson, a sound designer at Ardmore Sound, created the sound.

Nick and myself talked through some of the conventions of the documentary format – what would and wouldn’t work. That’s why the film starts off with an introductory section using an existing work by Gerald Barry, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit. It’s wonderful, with long drawn out textures and an intentional instability that seemed to mirror the work that I wanted to make; it also signalled that perhaps something was amiss. I always planned to use Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder.1 I chose a recording by Bryn Terfel, the Welsh bass-baritone.

JO: Was the collaborative nature of film production of interest?

CB: Well I don’t actually think it is collaborative – you certainly work with a lot of people but you have to be the one making the decisions; you have to take that on. It is an intense process and there were some hairy moments. But I really like working with other people, like the cinematographer Seamus Deasy, and it gets you out of the solitary studio.

JO: Could you give an overview of the timeline for the project?

CB: Prior to putting in an application for the Reel Art Award, you need to get a producer on board. A friend of mine suggested Cormac Fox from Vico Films and we met up and got on fine right from the start.

With Cormac in place we were ready to pitch to the funders, ie the Arts Council, Jameson Dublin Film Festival (JDIFF) and a panel member

who was from Curzon Cinemas in London. I’d never done this before.

It essentially requires that while you’re sitting in front of them, you have to convince them to give you the money. Working with Cormac as producer was really helpful though. As an artist, to have someone to look after the organisation and financial side of things – getting things together – gave me the freedom to mostly concentrate on the creative aspects, which was a real privilege.

In terms of making the film, the whole process took a year. We got the Arts Council Reel Art Award in February 2013 and from then on there was a lot of organisation involved, especially in terms of finding the interviewees, contacting them, seeing if they would be available, all that stuff.2 Location work and auditioning for an actor, that was difficult, along with getting the crew together, writing the script, storyboarding, script editing, organising the shoot, editing the footage. The film was then outputted as a file Digital Cinema Package (DCP) file.

JO: What are your plans for distribution?

CB: We’ve had a really good start as the Reel Art award includes a screening for The Devil’s Pool in the programme of the 2014 Jameson Dublin Film Festival. That went very well, selling out Screen 1 at the IFI – it was really exciting. Future plans include further screenings in festivals with a documentary focus. Grainne Humphries of JDIFF and Fionnuala Sweeney from the Arts Council were so supportive throughout the whole process, which was really important to me. It was such as positive experience.

JO: You’ve been making moving image for over 10 years now and I get the sense that you’re motivated by the possibilities the medium, and that you are never daunted by the prospect of moving into unfamiliar territory …

CB: Well, I don’t think medium or media matter at all, as long as there is clarity about you want to say. The choice of medium has to make sense in terms of the work and you do have to search for that.

As for being daunted, no, not at all – what’s the worst that can happen?

It wouldn’t be a disaster, once a good process is in train. I’ve never felt I had to have technical expertise in all the aspects of filmmaking: editing or operating a camera. Why should I? I just have to really know what I want and be able to communicate that. An artist filmmaker friend of mine is always nagging me to get my own camera, but I’m just not that kind of person. I think it’s more important to work with the best creative people – who have perfected skills in their own area – that you can.

Just before we started talking, I was thinking about what’s really important for me in making a piece of work. To be as clear as possible about what I am trying to make and what I’ll need to make it; to research everything and seek out the best people that I can find and afford. And I really try to find people that I like personally and would like work with – this process can get stressful and you need to be able to have a laugh.

Notes 1. Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder / Songs on the Death of Children (1901 – 1904) are orchestral settings of five poems by Friedrich Rückert, written in response to the death of two of his children from scarlet fever.

Poignantly, Mahler lost his daughter, Maria, aged four, four years after writing these works.

2. www.reelart.ie

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

25

institution profile

Rachel Warriner and James Cummins performing at the Guesthouse (upcoming resident writers and hosts of SoundEye (12 – 14 July 2014)

The Quiet Club’s Mick O’ Shea, Danny Mc Carthy and friend

Maximilian Le Cain, Esparanza Collado, The Consecutive Imposters

Years of Promise

improvised music, sound art, live electronics, installations and more, which is now in its eighth year. This year, Sonic Vigil takes place from the 2 – 4 May, both in the Guesthouse and in St Anne’s Church, which is a fantastic sonic space with wonderful people; they are really encouraging.

‘Seesound’ is another ongoing event – a collaboration between video and sound artists. It will take place in November, leading up to it there will be two Iranian filmmakers Barhara Sandie and Rouzbeh Rashidi , who are involved with the Experimental Film Society (www. experimentalfilmsociety.com) in residence Rouzbeh is a return visitor who has both produced and shown work here.

CATHERINE HARTY in conversation with MICK O’SHEA & IRENE MURPHY, DIRECTORS / FOUNDERS OF THE GUESTHOUSE, CORK – an artist-led residency, meeting and production space.

The Guesthouse, located in Cork’s Shandon area is an artist-led initiative that offers a residential space for production, meeting and cross-practice peer exchange – including various forms of public discourse and encounters. The Cork Artists Collective in partnership with Cork City Council founded the Guesthouse. The Guesthouse’s residency programme accepts applications once a year, usually in spring and the venue also hosts projects by nonresident artists throughout the year.

Catherine Harty: What were your thoughts when you founded The Guesthouse in 2004?

Mick O’Shea: It started organically as one thing, but became another. The Guesthouse emerged from the Cork Artists Collective (CAC), who were looking for a project / public space, while the City Council were offering us a number of spaces. Those were the good times!

Irene Murphy: Around 2003 CAC member Dobz (David O’Brien – now Programme Manager in the National Sculpture Factory) was interested in setting up and programming a white cube gallery space – looking ahead to coincide with Cork City of Culture in 2005. We contacted Liz Meany (Cork City Council’s Arts Officer). She was very approachable. The Council was buying properties at the time and engaged in developing the area of Shandon as a cultural center. None of the buildings we were shown were suitable for a white cube space, but the former guesthouse space seemed to have the most possibilities.

CH: What happened then?

MO’S: Irene and Billy Foley really got the thing going. Claire Guerin and Irene then worked very hard at the beginning stages.

IM: We took an experimental approach in the first year of operation to see how the space could function. The Council was very open to this and they gave us a huge amount of freedom. At the beginning we were still trying to figure out what the project was – we called it the Guesthouse Project.

Clare Guerin was another important person who came in at an early stage, just after she’d left Art College; she was so encouraging and invested a lot of time and energy in the project. Claire and I began by interviewing people, travelling to Dublin, Galway and Belfast; that continued when Colette Lewis joined.

The Guesthouse didn’t formally open as a space until 2009 when we began to kit it out and start the seed of projects such as ‘Tuesday Lunch’, ‘Sunday Lunch’ and ‘The Gramophone Sessions’. We also began the residency programme and started up the website. Then the directors came in: Matt Packer, Trevor Joyce, Colette Lewis, Claire and myself. The City Council had been on board since 2004, but it needed that amount of time to take on the work and adjust to the commitment of keeping it going. But once you work with the right people, things happen very fast.

CH: Did you see the Guesthouse as running in tandem with or separate from your respective practices?

MO’S: I knew it would benefit my practice, whether it was to do with the food or sound collaborations, it worked on all levels for me.

IM: I could see that it was going to change my practice and, in a way, I wanted to change. It took me away from strictly studio-based work; it was a catalyst. But initially I did have doubts about getting involved and the amount of time I’d have to invest.

CH: Were hospitality-based events an element right from the beginning?

IM: Well, it was a natural development to think about this building as an intersection, where people cook, meet and pass through. The Guesthouse projects come out of the residencies. Hosting artists is a really important idea for us – the Guesthouse embodies an ethos of conviviality.

MO’S: Yes we thought of it as a social and performative space; it ticked all the boxes, even though it was, and remains, quite domestic in scale, yet manages to have its own atmosphere and integrity.

CH: Speaking of the social, did the ‘Domestic Godless’ – the collective culinary / art collective yourselves and Stephen Brandes are involved in – start from the Guesthouse? 1 MO’S: No, it actually formally started with the show ‘Artists / Groups’ (15 – 22 November 2003) at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin. But I suppose there was a Guesthouse dimension – the three of us had earlier that year made a contribution as Domestic Godless, to the exhibition ‘Pavilion’ (14 – 28 June 2003) that CAC did at the Crawford in the same year.2 IM: Incidentally, the physical framework of ‘Pavilion’ was a scale model of my studio at CAC. By then I was really battling with the idea of the studio. The quandary for me was that what was happening in the studio wasn’t reaching the public.

CH: How does the Guesthouse operate now?

IM: Once the resident artists have been chosen and confirmed for the year, we can then use that as the basic structure around which everything else can be built. This gives us a lot of space – events can weave in and around our interests and those of the resident artists. We don’t do any particular marketing, but we’re successful in getting audiences in; our audience is growing all the time.

MO’S: We have a very open policy; there is no heavy bureaucracy and satellites of activities occur. These would include some reoccurring, longer-running events, such as ‘Sonic Vigil’ – a marathon of new and

CH: And what about funding?

MO’S: Funding is very interesting this year, because Cork Artists Collective runs two spaces, the CAC studios in the Library House and the Guesthouse. We’ve gone from a high of €30, 000 annual funding to €9000 this year – and that’s specifically designated for The Guesthouse, with nothing going towards the studios, which actually run the place. It’s a bit of a knock; we see The Guesthouse as offering tremendous benefits to many artists – all those who stay or pass through – so we’re facing a challenge. We’ve no administration costs; the space is run collectively and voluntarily.

IM: It’s tough. Part of our ethos is to host a cross-section of disciplines and provide a space that is not specific to one medium, even though we come from a visual arts background. I think we are difficult to categorise.

CH: What new developments are on the horizon?

IM: Our involvement with other groups is really growing as a way of utilising and supporting the Guesthouse space to full effect. There’s enough space for a few people to stay in the building – offering a really productive time and context. Maximilian Le Cain and the Experimental Film Society stayed last year for a few weeks prior to making contributions to ‘Seesound’.

MO’S: This year we have Helen Horgan with a version of her ongoing project, the LFTT library (www.thelfttlibrary.com), which is going to be here for a year. Helen had developed this work during a previous residency with us. The overall library encompasses around 4,000 books, some of them 400 years old. This time at The Guesthouse she’s curating a space within a curated space – like the Russian doll effect: a project within a project. www.theguesthouse.ie www.thecollective.ie Notes 1. The Domestic Godless is a collective of three artists – Mick O’Shea, Irene Murphy and Stephen Brandes – who explore food in terms of cultural values, taste and presentation, as material for artistic endeavor and experimentation. www.thedomesticgodless.com 2. ‘Pavilion’ (14 –28 June 2003) – curated by Grant Watson as part of Cork Mid-Summer Festival – was an installation at the Crawford Municipal Gallery produced by a group of artists: Una Quigley, Irene Murphy, Dobz, Stephen Brandes and Louise Walsh. For ‘Artists / Groups’ at the Project (15 Nov – 22 Nov 2003) Irene Murphy, Stephen Brandes, Una Quigley, Dobz and Mick O’Shea reinstalled this structure at Project and used it as a departure point for their work.

26

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Residency profile

Space of Activation JANICE HOUGH ANNOUCES THE RECOMMENCMENT OF IMMA’S RESIDENCY PROGRAMME.

Current IMMA resident Albert Weis in studio 11

residency, which we hope will enhance the flow of cultural exchange and opportunity.

I recently spoke to current residents Albert Weis and Jesse Jones, who gave me a brief synopsis of what this residency means to them.

Weis offered insightful comments about balancing a flexibility of approach, consciousness about place and the pursuit of specific interests: “I can concentrate on city sites and structures in a different way to if I was just here for a short visit. By revisiting places and doing research in archives, I’m gaining more knowledge about topics – and thus I’m able to develop a more complex perspective. Dublin has specific places, buildings and agglomerations of urban structures, which are related to my practice. Doing a residency abroad means being away from my home studio and the usual context of my work, but there are connections to be discovered which will have resonance with my work after my time here. To do a residency successfully you have to adapt the way you look and experience accordingly; I’m in a new studio, broad and empty, and full of new possibilities. It’s a chance to concentrate on just a few projects, to stay focused and complete them during this period of time.”

Jesse Jones likewise commented on the value of context and place: “I think the residency is wonderful and a great place to think and be embedded in the city but still have enough space and distance to focus on your work. I’m in a group show at IMMA later in the year, so it is great to be sited in the grounds and to have the access to the institution in preparation for this. It’s also an exciting interface between national and international practices with artists coming and going.”

At IMMA there is a wealth of people passing through the Museum and the Royal Hospital Kilmianham site every day, there are galleries, artworks located throughout the grounds, the gardens and meadow spaces and of course the studios. We have works from the collection to research, temporary exhibitions to respond to, knowledgeable and experienced staff with specialised interests and numerous connections, various programming departments, fellow residents and Dublin city itself as a resource. The list goes on …

With the right approach, dependent on how each artist works, participants can set up their ‘stage’, activate audiences, conduct research and network, both formally and informally.

The more successful residency experiences have been a result of the artist’s inspired thinking – trying and testing, pushing and pulling the rich context of resources surrounding them and discovering innovative and efficient way to use these discoveries.

RESIDENCIES: POINTERS & QUESTIONS IMMA Residency living quarters

IMMA Residency Studio 3b – current resident Jesse Jones

IMMA’s Residency Programme is back. To be precise it recommenced in January, following a range of redevelopments to the museum’s facilities, which were completed in 2013. We’ve reopened our living quarters, refreshed the studio spaces and put together a full schedule of activities for 2014. For nearly 20 years IMMA’s residency programme has supported more than 250 artists and projects from 50 countries worldwide.

Applications for our 2014 / 2015 residency programme will be accepted throughout June, and approximately 10 residencies will be awarded, depending on the selection of individual or collaborative projects. The application process itself is an important opportunity for Irish and international arts practitioners to showcase their practice to IMMA. The selection panel will comprise an international curator, an established artist and key programming staff from IMMA. Our last open call generated more than 1,000 applications from around the world. The selection is always a very challenging and exciting process; it’s a privilege to see the vast range of practices and proposals that come up for consideration and to programme from a variety of artists and projects proposing significant commitment to immersion in a space, context and time at IMMA. Our 2014 scheudle include residencies by Isabel Nolan, who is working towards a solo show at IMMA opening in early June, and Jesse Jones, who’ll be exhibiting in a group show at IMMA in the autumn. Painter / sculptor Sonia Shiel has just come from a residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York and will focus on research garnered from the Art & Law Program at Fordham Law School. German artist Albert Weis is a current resident and is pursuing his interest in the connections and disparities between public and private spaces. French artist Stephanie Nava will use the representation of the Famine in Irish history as a departure

point for her residency. Australian artist Mikala Dwyer intends to use her studio to research and test new materials used in her large-scale installations Other 2014 participants include: Becca Albee, Özlem Altin, Nicholas Byrne, Amanda Coogan, Priscila Fernandes, Fischer + el Sani, David Horvitz, Mee Ping Leung, Antonia Low, Deborah Luster, Nastio Mosquito, Vittorio Santoro, Naomi Sex, Edward Clydesdale Thompson, Nick Thurston and Lee Welch – with further guests and projects to be confirmed throughout the year.

In addition to the open call for residencies we have also developed new programmes offering opportunities for arts practitioners at various career stages. This year we will introduce a 12-month studio award for a selected artist / project from Ireland – further details will be announced soon on IMMA’s website. A studio award for a recent graduate is also in the pipeline – this will be a shorter residency aimed mentoring an emerging artist, providing a chance to work alongside an exciting mix of national and international artists. Hopefully, this will result in an inspirational and practical experience for the artist during a transitional and formative stage in their career.

The residency programme will also continue to invite arts practitioners nominated through professional recommendations from partner institutions, independent projects and affiliated curators.

So far this year we have supported projects with Temple Bar Galleries + Studios, Project Arts Centre, EVA International, the RHA and the Goethe-Institut, Dublin. In collaboration with NCAD we will also host a visiting research fellow.

The development of international partnerships with established residencies and institutions overseas is also at the forefront of IMMA’s objectives, with the aim to generate more mobility for arts practitioners based in Ireland. Inviting international curators for short research trips to connect with artists and projects is another developing aspect of the

To close if you are considering applying to the IMMA’s residency programme or any other residency opportunities, here are few useful pointers and key questions to bear in mind: ■■

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Do some research around residencies – think about what might suit you and consider the context you would like to engage with, whether it’s rural, urban, quiet, dynamic, institutional, a creative co-operative, self-motivated.

Ask the following questions: Is it funded or self-funding? Do you know anyone who has participated on the residency who can give you some advice on what to expect? Will you be asked to produce a finished piece of work? If not, how will your work be supported?

What will be expected of you?

Will language or culture be an obstacle? This is a particularly relevant consideration if your practice is very participatory led or relies significantly on other technical or specialised supports.

Problems can be overcome, but you should address them with your host so suitable preparation and connections can be made.

Do you require a lot of technical support? Can you invite a partner, family or guest? Where or what is your studio? Is it a state of mind? Is it a physical space? Is it the connections you make?

Knowing your goals and how best you operate will help you make a decision on what is suitable for you. How do you work?

What do you like to be surrounded by? Are you looking to face a challenge or are you looking for progress on a particular project?

Please check in on IMMA’s website for more details on forthcoming programming opportunities and updates on residency activities at www.imma.ie. Janice Hough, Co-ordinator of IMMA’s Residency Programme, Irish Museum of Modern Art. Janice Hough Artists’ Residency Programme Co-ordinator, Irish Museum of Modern Art.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

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Residency report

SOMA patio and meeting area, photo by Kim McAleese

SOMA patio and auditorium. Photo: Kim McAleese

SOMA interior foyer, photo by Kim McAleese

Critical Margin

using post-internet strategies. They show not only international artists, but a generation of younger Mexican artists they feel are overlooked.

Following in this trend, is the ad hoc space Bikini Wax, which hosts experimental exhibitions lasting for maybe a couple of days at a time, in a restricted space with a quick turn around time. It is intuitive and responsive, showing dynamic local artists and people passing through for perhaps a few days.

Close by is the newly created Lulu project space in another domestic environment, hosting a wonderful selection of mid-career international artists who have never been shown before in Mexico City. While visiting I was exposed to the most intimate viewing of a solo show by Nina Canell, with four small pieces in the tiny gallery space. Not far away is the Galeria de Comercio, one of the side projects of Abraham Cruzvillegas, which has been running for five years. Public artistic projects take place in a temporal and ephemeral way once a month on a street corner for a couple of hours, and disappear leaving no trace behind for the residents in the area of Colonia Escandón.

The socially engaged organisation Casa Vecina is housed in the historical centre of Mexico City, as part of effort to regenerate the once desolate streets of the area. Casa Vecina’s mission is to facilitate large coparticipation projects between artists invited to their residency programme and the surrounding people in their locale.

Besides researching artist-led initiatives, another element of my residency was engaging in dialogues with MA students at SOMA. Each week I was scheduled to have four one-to-one meetings, talking to the artists about their practice, conducting portfolio reviews and helping with the development of their ideas.

My residency at SOMA has formed starting points for broad cultural communication and exchange between the projects I’m currently engaged with in Northern Ireland (Satis House and Household). I fully intend to build upon various dialogues I have already initiated. For example, next year will represent the year of official collaboration between Mexico City and the UK as agreed by The British Council and the Mexican National Council for Culture and Arts.

In what can appear at times to be a difficult cultural climate, Mexico City boasts a rich and diverse art scene. Moreover, it’s a scene that looks critically at itself and at broader contemporary contexts, including international models. Overall there is a thirst for change – artists and art workers are self organising with enormous drive. Institutions like SOMA are providing artists with the knowledge to explore their own agency and help diversify the arts infrastructure in the city.

KIM MCALEESE REPORTS ON HER CURATORIAL RESIDENCY AT SOMA, MEXICO CITY Mexico City is a megalopolis housing 21.2 million inhabitants, with over 100 museums and countless more art institutions spread across the heaving urban area. Historically it has always brandished a marginal reputation and it’s a place always on the point of redefinition. This pliancy is seductive – it’s precisely the reason for many to visit or relocate to the city.

Throughout February and March 2014 I completed a six-week residency in SOMA, a non-profit educational institution tucked away in the sleepy neighbourhood of San Pedro de Los Pinos (www.somamexico.org/en). The organisation was created in 2009 by a group of artists, most notably Yoshua Okón, the founder of one of the first and arguably most visible artist-led spaces in Mexico City in the 1990s: La Panadería.

Following La Panadería’s closure in the early 2000s, Okón having spent prolonged periods of time abroad and enjoyed international success, the artist identified a huge void upon his return to Mexico City. In the wake of the absence of La Panadería there was no space for meaningful dialogue, intergenerational communication and ideas exchange. After inviting 20 artists on to an advisory board, Okón forged the structure that became SOMA. Eduardo Abaroa was appointed director of the educational programme and Barbara Hernández the general director.

Each year SOMA invites 12 practicing artists to attend their 2-year master’s programme, which is 85% subsidised for students by public foundations and private donations. The artists are in the early stages of their careers and their acceptance into the programme is based on merit and the potential of their artistic trajectory.

SOMA’s programme also functions as a response to the lacking educational infrastructure in Mexico City – where no accredited master’s of fine art programme exists. Recent decades have witnessed a decline in the standards of public education and educational policies in Mexico, in terms of both institutional resources for students and teachers alike.

SOMA employs a structure of diverse economic support, enabling nondependence on public money – Okón and Abaroa utilise their international connections with patrons and donors. Based on the needs of the students, Abaroa tailors a programme comprising lectures and workshops from practitioners in all fields, hand chosen because of their specialised skill set, that includes artists, curators, critics and academics to guide the students through each trimester.

The second strand of SOMA’s programme is residencies, one of which I was undertaking during the six-week period (1 February –15 March 2014).

The residencies are open mostly to international practitioners, in order to encourage and maintain a flow of knowledge production and dialogue in and out of Mexico City. They also provide ‘content’ for other areas of the educational programming.

SOMA regularly advertises the residencies and MA programme through their own website and online platforms such as E-flux. My reasons for applying for the SOMA residency were multifold: to become acquainted with a unique organisation employing the strategy of an artist-instigated educational program to effect culture; and to get a sense of both institutional and self-organised practice across Mexico – in all of their intricacies. Also, I was seeking to engage with a Spanish-speaking institution as I have a degree in Hispanic Studies from Queen’s University (Belfast) and I wanted to maintain the knowledge of the language.

My first week in Mexico City was spent scanning Zona Maco, the largest art fair in Latin America. After hours spent scouring commercial booth after commercial booth, I left somewhat deflated by the unashamed excess of wealth being flaunted in the space.

Running concurrently alongside Zona Maco was the first incarnation of Material, an art fair showcasing a broad range of artist-led activity in North and Central America. This fair, whilst perhaps an awkward fit for some of the smaller galleries and project spaces involved, was an opportunity to gauge the range of self-organised activity, the individuals involved and the reasons for their inception.

Following these initial introductions at Material, I spent the following weeks visiting the practitioners in their working spaces and project spaces, becoming acquainted with their methodologies. A collective of note was Cráter Invertido, who were currently looking for a space, but deeply committed to their involvement with leftist politics and self-publishing as a means for disseminating their ideas. Similarly, another collective I encountered, Neter, came together because of their common interest in the social values of cooperation and respect for the ideas of others. Whilst they offer exhibition opportunities to artists, they often facilitate workshops and prioritise working collaboratively.

In the relatively ungentrified area of San Rafael, there are a number of artist-led projects hidden like tiny gems between two streets. Each has been conceived by international artists or Mexican artists returning from education in North America and they position themselves differently to other spaces by offering a spectrum of innovative contemporary practice within domestic settings.

Casa Maauad occupies a breath-taking old house divided into numerous exhibition and residency spaces, with the focus on an international dialogue and the production of a final exhibition for the resident with a sizable budget.

Across the street is Lodos Contemporáneo, a newly converted garage space with an impressive roster of international artists usually working with new modes of production. Around the corner is No Space, another gallery in a domestic setting, where the directors are keen to explore ideas with artists

Kim McAleese lives and works in Belfast. McAleese is a co-curator of Satis House, and a member of the curatorial collective Household.

This residency was made possible through the 2013 Arts Council of Northern Ireland Artist Career Enhancement Scheme.

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

career development

New Thinking / New Processes DESIGNER / MAKER KATE ORAM OUTLINES HER EXPERIENCE OF THE HARNESSING CREATIVIY INITIaTIVE.

Kate Oram – 3D design prototyping process

I am a designer-maker based betweeen Roscommon and County Down.

The materials I use, which are often recycled and reclaimed, directly inspire my work. I’ve developed this approach over the years to include work cast from recycled bronze, which often gives unexpected variations in colour and texture. The form my work takes often reflects this rebirth that the materials themselves are undergoing: seed / pod forms; growing, organic shapes; or the ever-changing shapes of the sea – swells, waves and surf. Besides making work for gallery exhibitions, I’ve made works for corporate commissions – my clients have included: Diageo, Belfast Telegraph, Northern Irish Tourist Board, UTV, North West 200, Phoenix Natural Gas and Bulmers / Magners.

Almost a year ago I walked into my first Harnessing Creativity ‘Creative Lab’ in Manorhamilton.1 In my application to the Harnessing Creativity I’d expressed an interest in collaborations with other creative industries. I heard about the programme through the Visual Artists’ News Sheet and the Leitrim Sculpture Centre.

The first Creative Lab meeting was scheduled very soon after I was notified about my selection. Delayed by a previous commitment, I arrived part-way through the day’s proceedings to be met by a bunch of friendly faces and a long wall of coloured Post-It notes. There was a conspicuous white gap where my contribution should have been, which I rapidly made efforts to fill in order to catch up. This first workshop allowed us to introduce ourselves and our creative backgrounds in readiness for the next ‘lab’ which would happen in two weeks’ time.

In total there were six ‘blank slate’ lab events where we were invited to unleash our mental scribblings. Our sometimes rather too lateral

ramblings were ably reined-in and propelled forward by facilitator Leo Scarff. The second meeting – a field trip to the Cavan Burren (who knew?!) – was like a return to art college. We headed off along trails in the woods, alone or in pairs or trios, crossing paths occasionally, peeling off from one companion and joining another, exchanging thoughts and ideas. Back in the warmth of the studio after lunch we talked about our impressions and inspirations from the morning. This outing was a welcome and thinly disguised ploy to relax our wired-for-business minds, and in a few labs’ time, we left the Cavan Burren way behind us as we marched onwards to projects new.

If I had been told a year ago that I would soon be developing a way to weave 3D printing into my sculpture practice, it would have been unexpected news. After a particularly stimulating and animated brainstorming session during the third lab, we formed pairs and selected a subject that ignited our imaginations from the busy mindmap. My co-creative and I chose ‘Connectedness with Materials’ (and / or disconnections). Half an hour later we had some ideas germinating in our minds: I began to ponder how to keep hands-on techniques alive in the face of rapid prototyping and 3D printing; how to incorporate new technology into the ancient technique of bronze casting; and how to make an attractive, commercial product from an idea.

It was probably at about this stage in the lab process that the participants either formed collaborative groups or began to radiate off on their own; two other labs were running concurrently in Enniskillen and Omagh and several of these participants synergised into pairs or groups; but within our Manorhamilton Lab there were only solo projects.

While the reality of 3D printing was crashing into my consciousness I heard about the well-timed IDEATE festival in Kilkenny. IDEATE was devised and produced by the Crafts Council of Ireland and the National Craft Gallery, described on the website as a “multi-disciplinary mini-festival about making,” it explores and celebrates “craft, design and creativity through experimentation and collaboration and aims to build a community of practice actively engaged with innovation, technology and design”. Perfect for me! I attended several lectures and masterclasses in 3D computer-aided design as well as a tantalising 3D printer demonstration – the excitement! Most importantly, I established contacts at IDEATE, who continue to be involved in my current work.

I defined my project as ‘Online Tutorials and 3D Printing’ in an effort to take all my nebulous ideas and solidify them into something demonstrable, for the purpose of the next stage of Harnessing Creativity – the showcase exhibition called ‘Expanded Territories’. All the participants were given a budget to create their exhibits. The paperwork was unfortunately very arduous, requiring two written quotes for every bit of expenditure and the time-frame was extremely tight, so it was an intense and often frustrating lead-up to the opening night. Culture Night, 20 September 2013, was chosen as the date, and The Dock, Carrick on Shannon as the venue, so the attendance was good and the atmosphere buzzing – not least with a sense of achievement from the exhibitors.

The exhibition toured in December to the Civic Offices in Dublin and in January to Letterkenny, and during this time there was a pause in activity, to be resumed in February with an application to progress to the next stage – Product Development and Mentoring funding. Only 6 participants (from the original 26) would receive this funding, so another frustrating wait was upon us, as we awaited the decision.

It was with huge relief and some pride that I found myself opening a fat envelope with the good news in the middle of February. And then it was all systems go to put the wheels in motion and trial the process I had proposed.

Through IDEATE as well as the Creative Labs contacts, I engaged the interest of tutors in two institutes of technology, Carlow and Omagh.

Some of their students are currently designing files to be printed in 3D; I will interact with them through Skype and email in order to guide them in their designs – the first step towards online tutorials. Once their prints have been made, they will come to my sand-casting class in the foundry in Manorhamilton where they will use their prints as patterns to reproduce their designs in bronze.That will complete the process: from the Bronze Age to the Digital Age, reconnecting computer-aided designers with some of the materials and processes that have shaped their world they live and work in.

As my project is only now entering the second phase, its future shape is still undefined. It is fluid enough to adapt to unforeseen applications and demands, yet it has a clear path to follow for the coming months. The next phase will involve the development of an online element to link the 3D design and print technology with the foundry process. A MOOC (massive open online course) will be created, enabling participants to broaden and advance their design skills in order to progress from ‘the drawing board’ (or computer screen) to the foundry via the 3D printer.

Here, another collaboration will evolve, this time with Sligo IT, a centre of excellence in online learning.

Thus far I feel that the Harnessing Creativity project has been stimulating and beneficial both to me and to the other participants that I had the pleasure of meeting and working with. The project has come at a time when many artists may be struggling to balance the commercial and creative sides to their practices – in my case a decline in corporate commissions left me with a lower income but a new wealth in hours, giving me a welcome opportunity to indulge in creative processes and new thinking.

Kate Oram (born Galway 1968) has a BA in Wood, Metal, Ceramics and Plastics from Brighton (1991). She studied bronze foundry practice part-time in Belfast for seven years and was granted an Enterprise Start-Up Allowance in 1994 and a Northern Ireland Arts Council Award in 2002. www.kateoram.com Note 1. Harnessing Creativity has been devised to connect the creative and business talent of Counties Leitrim, Fermanagh and Tyrone and the surrounding region, with the aim of revitalising the border region economically in a way that can be replicated elsewhere in Europe. The project received funding of €799,880 through the European Union’s INTERREG IVA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB). Harnessing Creativity is being delivered by Leitrim County Enterprise Board in partnership with Leitrim County Council, Fermanagh District Council, Omagh Enterprise Agency, Tyrone Donegal Partnership, Leitrim Design House and has been developed by the Irish Central Border Area Network (ICBAN) through their Multi-Annual Plan. The project runs until May 2015.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

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Profile

Create, Exhibit, Exchange Cliodhna Shaffrey discusses her new role as director of TBG+S. JO: What about the gallery programme?

CS: Myself and the curator Rayne Booth want to further define the shape of the gallery programme.

Clearly TBG+S support Irish and international artists with solo and group exhibitions, and we don’t want to ‘over-brand’ the programme, but its coherency is being considered. In this regard I think the organisation’s legacy of speaking out for risk and experimentation is interesting.

I’m really excited by the upcoming shows, including exhibitions by Caoimhe Kilfeather, Nathaniel Mellors and the group show ‘The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream,’ curated by Paula Naughton.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, photo courtesy of TBG+S

Jason Oakley: What attracted you to the job?

Cliodhna Shaffrey: I’ve always been focused on the artist and their place in the world. Temple Bar Gallery and Studios is a place where artists have been making and showing work in the heart of Dublin for 30 years. And I’ve been an avid follower and occasional participant in their work for a long-time.

JO: What’s your perception of TBG+S’s profile?

CS: It’s a flagship studio and exhibition space of national and international repute. It’s recently come through a period of re-organisation and has strongly positioned itself. TBG+S describes its three pillars of activity and ambition under the headings ‘create’, ‘exhibit’ and ‘engage’. I’m really impressed with the organisation’s ability for long-term planning.

Credit is due to the studio members, board, staff, and especially the outgoing Director Claire Power. It’s an organisation in very good shape – a sharp, lean organisation that has achieved a lot.

JO: What particular strengths do you bring?

CS: I’d just say that I have a range experience that hopefully adds up to a useful combination.1 This is a new direction for me; I’ve never been directly involved in a venue before. My formative years were spent working with local authority arts offices, and I’ve worked with the Arts Council and running projects.

I’ve always enjoyed working very closely with and for artists – be it in a curatorial or a production / administrative mode.

JO: Could you outline some of your specific priorities for TBG+S? CS: Bear in mind, everything depends on resources, so I might give you a different answer next year. Right now I’d say that this is a chance to begin thinking about the importance of artists’ supports. Artists say again and again that they need networks. The studio artists to some extent already have this in place between each other – and TBG+S has always attracted visiting curators – but ideally we want to structure this and to seriously demonstrate that this is a formal part of our programme – that TBG+S is committed to offering connections and networks for artists.

So it would be great to set up another international residency opportunity, akin to the existing HIAP scheme, that would be open call – not just for studio members.2 The organisation will soon be researching other European studio models and residency programmes. This raises the possibility of becoming part of wider European networks and in turn sourcing possible EU support …

JO: Are there any plans for the building?

CS: I believe that good buildings are always adaptable, and the TBG+S building is full of potential. For example, taking down the plaster around the pillars in the gallery space for the Pricella Fernandes show created another atmosphere for the space, akin to a ‘found space’. More could be made of the atrium area.

It’s always been an ambition at TBG+S to make it a ‘softer’ space and create a place where people can gather, making the interaction between studio and gallery more visible.

JO: We’ve covered ‘Create’ and ‘Exhibit’, what about developments under the ‘Engage’ heading?

CS: The education programme, sponsored by the legal firm Mason Hayes & Curran, is a partnership between TBG+S and three city centre schools (St Patricks National School for Girls, St Patricks National School for Boys and Ringsend Technical College) which will remain a key engagement activity. And the recently announced Supporters’ Club is an extremely significant development that will be built upon.

TBG+S has always offered spaces to collectives – reading, criticism and screening groups etc. There’s scope for these to be more publically manifested.

I also really value the role that studio membership can play. There’s a collective wisdom and experience there, in terms of how to both further artist supports and engagement with audiences.

JO: To close, what’s your overall directorial vision for TBG+S? CS: A director’s role, obviously, is to lead, drive and develop an organisation, but I’m also coming into a context that’s already been very well thought out.

My role is to steward the enactment of what is largely already in the mind of TBG+S as an organisation.

As TBG+S are coming to the end of their last strategic plan, it will be important to put together something for the next phase, based on what is now a very clear direction. In the wider context, Temple Bar itself is undergoing a transition, so the time is ripe for rethinking the area in terms of the cluster of cultural institutions and the invaluable contribution they make to Dublin being somewhere unique.

Notes 1. Clíodhna Shaffrey has over 20 years experience working in the arts in Ireland and was recently Visual Arts Advisor to the Arts Council Ireland (2011 – 2014). Curatorial projects include: ‘Unbuilding’, County Wicklow, cocurated with Rosie Lynch & Eilis Lavelle; ‘BodyCity’, commissioned by Dublin Docklands Authority, co-curated with Nigel Rolfe and Shelagh Morris;‘Artistsas-Traveller’ and ‘TRADE’ which were both developed out of a curator-inresidence programme with Leitrim County Council. In 2009 – 2011, Shaffrey worked with Sarah Searson and Jenny Brady to establish publicart.ie. Shaffrey was local authority arts officer for Cavan (1990 – 1994) and Dun LaoghaireRathdown (1994 – 2000).

2. TBG+S, in partnership with HIAP–Helsinki International Artist-in-Residence Programme, run an annual exchange programme. For further details see: www.templebargallery.com.

meeting room@vai Visual Artists Ireland’s meeting room is available to hire for workshops, meetings, presentations, discussions groups etc.

• •

Room capacity: boardroom style, 14 people; theatre style, 20 people Rental: €10 per hour

For more information visit: www.visualartists.ie

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Art in Public: Roundup

Art in Public Public art commissions, site-specific works, socially engaged practice and various other forms of art outside the gallery.

Dogs on the Street

Artist’s name: David Turner Title of work: Dogs on the Street Commissioning body: Self-initiated project Date sited / carried out: July 2013, ongoing Budget: n/a Brief description: Dogs on the Street is a project that highlights waste and needless re-cycling by companies who continually buy and then recycle cardboard boxes. The title was inspired by a political phrase often used in Northern Ireland, ‘Even the dogs on the street know’. The artist decided to borrow cardboard from the piles of boxes left in front of shops and make cardboard dogs sculptures out of them, based on a toy bought for his son. The dogs would then be returned to the same place. “In this way”, Turner stated, “I could highlight the continued use of the box in some other way than continually recycling it”.

System Tree

Artist’s name: Shane Holland Title of work: System Tree Commissioner: IDEA Design for Systems Biology Ireland, Conway Institute at UCD Date Sited: 10 December 2013 Budget: €10,000 Brief description: This sculpture aims to express some of the systematic approaches to research and the strands and connections central to medical research. The colours of the various branches connect with branches of other colours and therefore affect them so the modes take the colour of the branch it connects with. This is somewhat like a chameleon merging the colour of a rock. The system tree was an outcome of discussions between the artist and design company IDEA, who introduced Shane to the UCD research staff and discussed the idea of scientific flow charts or strands or branches used in the testing of bloods at this site. Holland’s resulting sculpture uses bright painted stainless steel branches and coloured acrylic discs all fixed into a waterjet cut black quartz plinth with black acrylic sides in a hexagonal format.

Landwork 16 / Rose Windows

Transition (Foyle Boats) Artist’s name: Holger C. Lönze Title of work: Transition (Foyle Boats) Commission type: Public art commission, Percent for Art Scheme Commissioning body: The Holywell Trust, Derry Date advertised: August 2013 Date sited: 29 January 2014 Budget: £6,000 Brief description: The design for three 1.9m high wall-mounted sheet bronze reliefs is based on the lines of the 20ft Lough Foyle Punt – the traditional fishing boat used on the Foyle for centuries. The pieces have distinct anthropomorphic qualities and proportions – a reference to the local legend of Mannanan Mac Lír – while the strakes of the boat gradually transform into breaking waves. The works were fabricated using a combination of repoussé sheet metal, traditional boat planking techniques and TIG welding. The works are internally lit using blue LED lighting and are installed in the facilities of the new premises of the Holywell Trust, Bishop Street Within, Derry.

Dead On Artist’s name: David Tully Title of work: Landwork 16 (rose windows) Commissioning body: Self-initiated project Date sited: ongoing series, commenced March 2013 Budget: roughly €1,100 Brief description: Landwork 16 (rose windows) is site-specific series of work by David Tully. The first is (currently) at Sir John Rogerson’s Quay and Lime St, in the Dublin docklands. The second is on Strand Road, Bray, Co Wicklow. Landwork 16 addresses themes of both mystery and reflection through ‘anonymous discovery’. A rose window is an attempt to see / reach the unseen. It is circular like a lens or an eye.

It suggests something continuous and questions the building’s inner ambiguity. Tully’s practice includes this ‘anonymous discovery,’ where content is anonymously added to environments, interrupting, re-directing, playing with set psychologies, even going unrecognised or labelled as art.

Nelson, Bradbury, HEALY Artists’ names: Kathryn Nelson, Helen Bradbury and Beverley Healy Title of work: Untitled Commissioning body: Northern Health and Social Care Trust Organ Donation Committee Date advertised: Spring 2013 Date sited: December 2013 (to be unveiled in spring 2014) Budget: approximately £3600 Project Partners: Arts Care, Northern Health and Social Care Trust Organ Donation Committee and the Northern Health and Social Care Trust Brief description: The project was initiated in spring 2013 by Mary McAfee and Joanne Byrne, both specialist organ donation nurses, who contacted Arts Care Artists in Residence Helen Bradbury and Kathryn Nelson. The brief was to create artwork to remember and to thank all of the people who have transformed the lives of others through the gift of organ donation.

Kathryn Nelson came up with the concept of doves flying upwards painted on layered clear acrylic. Letters written by the patients and their families played a vital role in Nelson’s concept. Helen selected sentences, phrases and words from these letters to be added to the lower section of the art. The three artists worked together to produce four pieces, two for Causeway Hospital, Coleraine and two for Antrim Area Hospital.

The doves have a peaceful nature to them, while the shadows on the wall draw the viewer closer to read the phrases delicately hand painted in pastels. The paintings are spiritual in nature and address great loss as well as the utmost kindness from one family to another.

The work is painted on layers of clear acrylic to give depth, and which also creates shadows to give realism and gravity.

Artist’s name: Locky Morris Title of work: Dead On Location: Brooke Park, Derry Commissioner: Void Gallery, Derry Date commisioned: December 2013 Date sited: Spring 2014 Brief description: Dead On was created as part of Void, Derry’s ‘Artists’ Gardens’ project, which extends the gallery’s activities to various locations around the city and its hinterland. Locky Morris focused an elm in Brooke Park, situated a few hundred metres away his current studio (something of the star of the park and like all stars more appreciated after death) that was killed by Dutch Elm Disease.

The disease is spread by elm bark beetles, Scolytus Multistriatus, which burrow their way into the dying or dead tree.

Drilling and boring has been at the essence of Morris’s approach to Dead On, mimicking the bark beetle’s invasion on the conscious and subconscious level. Many of us have a terror of drilling, often caused by the fear of the dentist’s drill, so much so that we’d rather endure the pain of toothache than go to the dentist.

There’s even a term for it: Odontophobia – a state of denial, a terror of invasion even that of a supposedly benign nature. So if we’re afraid of what’s good for us imagine how terrifying the indifference of nature is, how the insectoid, the fungal, the viral care nothing for our civilization or superiority. As we listen to the tree, something is alive in there. The sounds are familiar yet unsettling; something seems to be eating its way out.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

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Art in public PROFILE

Joanna Hopkins, work from FIND, film / video still

Amanda Rice, research image for FIND, original hat factory tug of war team

Chris Leach, work from FIND

Nuala Clarke, work from FIND

Finders / Keepers GIANNA TOMASSO PROFILES ‘FIND’, A MENTORED SERIES OF PUBLIC ART PROJECTS for Castlebar.

FIND, the first iteration of the Mayo County Council Public Art Initiative, presented a series of artworks and events in locations across Castlebar (29 March – 26 April).1 The project was curated by Gaynor Seville, Mayo Public Art Manager, and developed in association with Marie Farrell, Director of the Linenhall Arts Centre. FIND was devised to produce temporary public artworks that engaged with local histories and to function as a developmental platform for Mayo-based artists. Alice Maher and Aideen Barry acted as mentors for the project.

The selected artists were: Ian Wieczorek, Amanda Rice, Chris Leach, Nuala Clarke and Crystal Gandrud, Exterus (Alice Dixon and Anthony Champa) and Joanna Hopkins.

FIND began in March 2013 with an open call-out to artists based in Mayo, publicised via local press, the Linenhall Art Centre website and the VAI website / e-bulletin. Alice Maher, Aideen Barry and Marie Farrell assessed the submissions. The initiative was funded the via Per Cent for Art scheme and the Linenhall Arts Centre. Each of the selected artiststs were asked to prepare a budget for their proposal including their fee and all materials / installation costs not to exceed €2000.

The thematic concerns of FIND focused on ideas around the experience of temporary artworks – including issues of documentation and legacy. Artists were encouraged to consider the idea of creating discrete or hidden works that would be ‘unravelled’ by audiences who would encounter the works on guided tours of the various sites via publically distributed maps and information.

In June 2013, prior to the selection process, Gaynor Seville facilitated a series of talks and workshops covering the public art commissioning process and proposal writing. Those whose proposals had been successful were notified in September 2013. Alice Maher and Aideen Barry conducted group workshops and peer-to-peer meetings with the selected artists throughout the initial developmental months.

During this process the presented proposals were modified and expanded, working through the scope and possibilities of each idea.

Commenting on this developmental stage, artist Ian Wieczorek praised what he felt was a “particular pressure to produce contemporary work of a certain standard,” continuing, “the advice regarding the development and technical practicalities of my video work, Everything That Rises Must Converge, from the mentors gave me a strong sense of confidence and support, creating a feeling of the possibilities within

the project and the possibilities and future of my own practise”.2 FIND’s outcomes encompassed performance, film projection, installation, interactive light display, historical re-enactment and site-specific miniature cityscapes. An accompanying exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre (29 March – 26 April) presented the artists’ background work and also functioned as temporary studio space for some of the participants engaged in research relating to their projects.

Amanda Rice’s re-enactment of the 1958 All Ladies Tug-of-War at The Mall in Castlebar was the first event on the tour itinerary. In the process of Rice’s research on the Western Hats Ltd Factory – a prominent source of employment in Castlebar for four decades – the artist had unearthed a photo of the winning tug-of-war team.

She then set about finding contemporary accounts of the event from relatives, eyewitnesses and participants. Entertaining the large crowd of attendees – as well as drawing in bemused members of the public – Rice’s re-enactment cast a group of students from St Joseph’s secondary school in a tug-of-war battle with Ireland’s strongest man, Paul Roberts.

Chris Leach installed miniature paintings featuring aerial views of townscapes in shop fronts and public buildings across Castlebar. Both the siting and creation of these works was devised in collaboration with the owners and staff of these various premises. Each tiny, meticulously crafted image related to journeys undertaken by these individuals. Located in window spaces, lane ways and amongst shop displays, Leach’s work had a ‘treasure hunt’ quality, which really stood out during the opening tour of FIND. Each work in turn highlighted the rich social, cultural and industrial past of Castlebar. Nuala Clarke and her collaborator Crystal Gandruds presented an installation of linen flags, overlaid with text and images, flying over Castle Street. The flags echoed Castlebar’s former historical relationship with the linen industry. Accompanying research by Clarke and Gandrud was displayed at the Linenhall Arts Centre. This material included drawings, flax plants and limited edition booklets for sale.

Exterus (Alice Dixon and Anthony Champa) created a sensoractivated light installation, entitled between the raindrops, which transformed the façade of an unoccupied shop in the centre of the

Alice Dixon and Anthony Champa, research image from FIND

town. At twilight the windows of this building were transformed with raindrop shapes illuminating as passers-by triggered the sensors.

Dixon and Champa’s accompanying work in the Linenhall Arts Centre featured remnants from inside this unoccupied building, including two framed pieces of exquisite wallpaper.

Artist Joanna Hopkins conducted research for the FIND project, which included a history of the Star Picture Palace, a silent cinema on Main Street that closed in 1923. As one of the outcomes of this research, Hopkins commissioned an original piece of music from Deirdre Gavin, the great granddaughter of the cinema’s pianist Grace Delaney. The commissioned piece was performed and filmed in the old cinema, referencing the eviction scene from the 1918 Irish film Knocknagow, the first film that was screened in the Star Cinema in 1919. The video piece was then installed in the shop front where the cinema once stood. The video could only be viewed through a star-shaped screen in the shop window, encouraging viewers to peer deeper to access the work. The artist’s on going research, including large-scale photographs and other process works, was presented in the Linenhall.

Ian Wieczorek video / audio work was displayed in the passageway linking the foyer of the Linenhall Arts centre from Linenhall Street.

Beginning at 6pm daily and running until 11pm the video appeared to show a billowing flame – in actuality torrents of water – and evoked notions of alchemy and dynamic force. The siting of Wieczorek’s work in the confined passageway location, added to the visual and aural intensity of the piece.

Commenting on FIND Alice Maher stated: “I’m not a fan of permanent public art works, as the process toward their completion is often so tortuous and riven with compromise for the artist. So this use of public funds to make temporary art interventions in our local town was an ideal way for people to encounter up to the minute contemporary work, for young artists to get funded to make their work and for the arts centre to have contact with new ideas and movements in art. FIND was possibly one of the most positive public art experiences I’ve had. Here you had artists, art and the public – all three at long last involved in real and meaningful dialogue.” Aideen Barry echoed these sentiments, and expressed the hope that the she’d like to see FIND “rolled out as a public art initiative scheme by local authorities nationwide”.

Gianna Tomasso is a Scottish visual artist based in Co Galway.

Notes 1. www.findartproject.com 2. All quotations from conversations with the author

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

VAI West of ireland representative

Moving the Discourse AIDEEN BARRY HIGHLIGHTS THE IMPORTANCE OF REAL WORLD CONTEXTS AND THE CONTRIBUTION THAT ART WORLD PROFESSIONALS CAN MAKE TO VISUAL ARTS EDUCATION.

2014 DCC / VAI Critical Art Writing Award ‘FESTIVALS & CITIES’ DCC / VAI Critical Art Writing Award was launched in 2012 and is a developmental opportunity for writers. The award reflects the commitment of Dublin City Council Arts Office and Visual Artists Ireland to encouraging and supporting critical dialogue around contemporary visual arts practice.

Festivals, biennials, high profile cultural events / designations and creative industry gatherings are an important feature of any capital city’s cultural identity. For the 2014 DCC / VAI Critical Art Writing Award, art writers are invited to consider the significance of cities as contexts for festival-type visual arts programming. Writers are asked to propose an abstract that considers issues around ‘festivalisation’ – nationally and internationally – with an emphasis on Dublin as a context in terms of history, current events and / or future potential. For submission dtails and information on previous winners please see www.visualartists.ie.

Application closing date 5pm, Friday 4 July 2014 Applications should be addressed to: jason@visualartists.ie Late applications will not be accepted; applicants will receive confirmation of receipt

Alan Casey, Rubbing, Frozen Notebook (research photograph)

The DCC / VAI Critical Art Writing Award is supported

by Dublin City Council Arts Office, The LAB and VAI’s Professional Development training programmes.

Martha Llewellyn, Dress Dance 1935, digital video still, 2014

Shauna Shanahan, Exploration (research image), 2014

Over the last few years the fine art departments and art colleges in the West and South of Ireland have been moving their ‘discourse’ from the campus out into the real world. It’s been especially evident with undergraduate students occupying studio spaces outside of the colleges and curating projects in redundant / make shift sites.

In 2011 third year students from GMIT memorably showed work at The Shed complex in the docklands area of Galway City, presenting eclectic mix of performance, video and sculptural installation work. The Crawford College of Art in Cork has been especially successful in facilitating offsite projects, with student projects occupying some of the city’s prime locations, such as the former FÁS Training building on Sullivan’s Quay in 2012. More recently, MA students created a series of very visible public projects in and around Cork city centre.

Likewise, students of Limerick School of Art & Design have been taking ownership of the cityscape.

As a staff member at Limerick I’m hugely supportive of such initiatives – I applaud the ambition and inventiveness of students who re-imagine or reconfigure sites for artistic use. This year LSAD’s curator-in-residence Eilís Lavelle has been working closely with the students to orchestrate ‘Recurrence’ (1 – 5 May), a project in the former Krups Factory at the Roxboro Industrial Estate, Limerick.1 This is certainly a challenging role for a curator – trying to find a cohesive direction in the conceptual mass of diverse student work. In the case of ‘Recurrence’ Lavelle has considered the work of over 20 students. In addition, the turn-around time for this project was less than three months. Lavelle has a wealth of experience as a curator: she was Gallery

Manager / Curator at Mermaid Art Centre for eight years, devised her own independent offsite projects, and recently completed the ‘Dig Where You Stand’ curatorial residency project in Clonmel.

As Lavelle put it to me, a key issue was how to “translate a developing or new studio art practice into a resolved artwork, that considers contemporary display strategies while understanding the role of the viewer and the situation of the exhibition. Exhibition making is a complex activity, and for undergraduates to present work that has clarity of intention in a coherent form can be a minefield. It takes time to develop the necessary skills and it’s a learning process, but considering the role of the viewer and context of the site where the work will be received are concepts best introduced early into the curriculum”.

Bringing practicing professionals into the teaching environment is a two-fold strategy. Not only do students get the benefit of professional viewpoints and advice about their work, experienced practitioners also contribute massively to students’ understanding of their own professional development, along with insights into current critical and contextual issues.

These tremendous benefits for students can only happen with the generous support of professionals like Eilís Lavelle. As a tutor in LSAD I’ve seen many other visual arts professionals contribute value to projects of this nature – it’s something that shouldn’t go without praise.

Aideen Barry VAI West of Ireland Representative Note 1.‘Recurance’ artists – Helen Carey, Alan Casey, Joe De Burca, Aileen Nix, Niamh Ryan, Emma Healy, Cira Huwald, Laura Walsh, Robyn Long, Emma Mc Namara, Shauna Shanahan, Brendan Finnerty, Ethan O’Brien, Sara Dowling, Martha Llewellyn, Claire Rayner, Claire Redmon, Aran Crotty, Nicole Roche

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

May – June 2014

Opportunities courses / training / workshops Stained Glass Weekend Taught by experienced glass teacher, Linda Mulloy, this course will give you all the skills you need to make your own stained glass, and you can always contact Linda after the course if you need support or more information. 17 – 18 May, 10:00 am – 3:00pm.

Contact Linda Mulloy Website www.blueglasshouse.com Telephone 0877981123 Address The Glasshouse, The Quay, Westport, Co Mayo Continuing Education at NCAD Continuing Education at the National College of Art and Design offer short courses in July for adults and school leavers interested in three and five day courses. The wide range of courses includes: jewellery design, painting, drawing portfolio preparation, bronze-casting, letterpress, digital photography and creative sewing. Courses cater for beginners and advanced students. Applications are on a first come basis with bookings up until late June. Experienced tutors lead the courses, which are located on the NCAD campus.

Email cead@ncad.ie Website www.ncad.ie Telephone 016364214 Address NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8 The Constant Knitter The Constant Knitter will offer several courses in May and June. The Five Week Quilt Course will teach participants to make their own beautiful patchwork quilt in five weeks. The class is limited to six students. Some sewing know-how is an advantage. Tuesdays: 6, 13 and 27 May; 10 and 17 June . 6:00pm – 9:00pm .

Cost: €245. Beginners Creative Embroidery is a three-hour hands-on workshop that explores the creative techniques of hand embroidery using traditional stitches with a contemporary approach.

Saturday 3 May, 10:30am – 1:30pm. Cost: €35 (includes all materials). The Sewing Workshop aims to help participants reinvent themselves and their wardrobes. It caters for first timers and those who want to further their skills with commercial patterns, cloning garments, alterations, upcycling or making patterns. Sewing machines are supplied can be brough alongr. Small classes limited to six or eight students. Saturday 3 May, 2:00pm – 6:00pm.

Email mariakarintapper@gmail.com Website www.theconstantknitter.ie Telephone 0877690873 Address 88 Francis Street, Dublin 8 Commonplace Drawing Group New members can enroll in the Commonplace Drawing Group from Saturday 24, Wednesday 28 or Saturday 31 May. Workshop sessions take place every second week, so paying in advance for four weeks will bring you to the end of July 2014 when the next enrollment will take place. Young members are welcome to join the group during the summer months. The drawing workshops are a fun way to experiment with materials while exploring and generating creative ideas. Rather than being a skills class, the group uses materials to think in a visual and creative way. Portfolio preparation / tuition for college entry will be available at Commonplace during the summer months also. Please get in touch for further info. €36 for four workshops over eight weeks.

Website www.commonplace.ie/news Telephone 086 3963845 Beginners Stained Glass This is a beginner course for those wishing to learn the basics of stained glass.

The course will be run over two days, Saturday 31 May and Sunday 1 June from 10:00am – 5:00pm in Mary’s stained glass studio in the picturesque foothills of the Slieve Mish mountain outside Tralee.

The course will cost €180. This covers course materials and lunch. Places are very limited; please book by email. The course content will include: introduction to stained glass, safety issues, technical considerations; stained glass design; layout and drawing of your design; glass cutting; glass grinding; leading; soldering; presentation of stained glass.

Website www.maryjleenart.com Email artistmaryleen@gmail.com Life Drawing Professional life model Clare Broome runs regular long-pose life-drawing sessions in her dedicated life studio in Belfast. Sessions run every Sunday from 10:30am – 4:30pm, with a single pose being held for the whole day. The sessions are intended for experienced artists so there is no tutor, although peer interaction is encouraged. Backdrops and directional lighting are provided along with tea and coffee. Clare’s life studio is fully equipped with easels, art horses and boards; artists bring their own canvas and paints. Sunday sessions cost £40 pp

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and numbers are limited to allow every artist sufficient space to work. For those wishing to work on portraiture or the complete clothed figure, Clare Broome provides long-pose, costumed workshops each Wednesday in her dedicated life studio in Belfast. Sessions are untutored and run from 10:30am – 4:30pm.

Email info@clarebroome.co.uk Website www.clarebroome.co.uk

funding / awards / bursaries Emerging Visual Artist Wexford Wexford Arts Centre and Wexford County Council announce a call for submissions for their annual Emerging Visual Artist Award. The award is a partnership initiative between Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford County Council and the Arts Council. The initiative supports promising visual artists in Ireland with an award of €5,000 and a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre. It is aimed at recognising and supporting the development of committed emerging artists, kick-starting their career and achieving professional recognition. The successful recipient will be required to create a new body of work during the period December 2014 – December 2015, which will be exhibited at Wexford Arts Centre during January – February 2016. Submissions must be emailed and include the following: up to date CV; work statement detailing themes, working methods and medium – 300 word limit; proposal in relation to the body which will be undertaken – 350 word limit; timescale breakdown – research, production, delivery; budget breakdown – materials, travel, studio hire, etc; examples of work to date ie documentation in the form of 10 jpeg images.

Full details for each image is required, ie title, medium, measurements, date of work. Three copies of each film, video or audio work can be sent by post.

Deadline 4.00pm Thursday 15 May Email emergingvisualartistaward@gmail.com Website www.wexfordartscentre.ie Address Wexford Arts Centre, Cornmarket, Wexford Town RDS Craft & Student Awards The Royal Dublin Society (RDS) is now calling for entries for its 2014 RDS National Craft Awards (formerly RDS Crafts Competition) and its RDS Student Art Awards. Regarded as one of the largest competitive platforms for craft in Europe, the RDS brings an international panel of judges to Ireland to adjudicate its 20 category RDS National Craft Awards.

Open to craftspeople living in Ireland and Irish makers abroad, the competition has a prize fund of €24,000 and sets the standard for craft on the island of Ireland to the highest possible level of skill

and design excellence. The RDS Student Art Awards has a prize fund in excess of €17,600 and includes the €5,000 Taylor Art Award, which has been awarded since 1860. The RDS Student Art Awards is open to full and part-time art students at degree and postgraduate level registered in art colleges in Ireland. Entries are open to students whose artwork ranges from digital film, to the more traditional disciplines such as drawing, painting and printmaking. There are two new awards this year; the RDS Lens-Based Art Award of €2,200, open to film and photography based entries and the RDS Monster Truck One Year Studio Award (non-cash prize worth €2,500) open to graduate and post graduate students completing their studies in 2014. For more information visit the website.

Deadline 12 May (craft), 18 May (student) Website www.rds.ie/arts

commissions Dunclug Partnership Tender to commission the appointment of an artist to design, produce and install an artwork in the public realm. Dunclug Partnership seeks expressions of interest from experienced and suitably qualified artists or design teams in developing a new public artwork. The total budget available for the artwork is up to £45,000 (inclusive of VAT). Details can be found via the VAI website listing.

Deadline Friday 23 May Address c/o Rosalind Lowry, The Braid Arts Centre, 1 – 29 Bridge Street, Ballymena, BT43 5EJ St Francis National School This newly constructed primary school is commissioning an artist through the Department of Education and Skills Per Cent for Art scheme. The school is interested in receiving proposals that will place a distinct emphasis on working with pupils over a period of time resulting in a work or works that reflect the school ethos. It is envisaged that the finished work or works would engage the children on an ongoing basis. The piece should be suitable for outdoors and incorporate St Francis and his love for animals and birds. Budget, €24,000 inclusive of all costs, expenses, VAT, insurance and other charges.

Deadline 30 May Email stfrancisnsblackrock@gmail.com University Hospital Limerick University Hospital Limerick, Dooradoyle is being transformed into a major university hospital and the major acute centre for the mid-west region with significant capital developments being pro-

gressed at the site. The HSE is now inviting artists to tender for the provision of original art work(s) for public display at the main entrance internal roundabout at the Hospital, under the terms of the government Per Cent for Art Scheme. The available funding is €51,000. Please note that the HSE is not obliged to accept any proposal submitted and should the standard of work or insurance or proposals be deemed unacceptable then no art work commission may be awarded. Details can be found via the VAI website listing.

Deadline 3pm on Friday 16 May

conferences / lectures / talks Higher Education & the Arts Jimmy Deenihan TD, Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, and Ruairí Quinn TD, Minister for Education and Skills, will host a day-long symposium entitled ‘Engagement between the Higher Education and the Arts Sectors – Why is it important, how does it happen, and how do we benefit?’ This symposium – organised with the assistance and support of the Higher Education Authority – will involve a range of speakers, including those drawn from the higher education and arts sectors. The symposium will examine the engagement between the higher education sector and the arts sector and pose three core questions: Session 1 – Arts in Higher Education: Why is it important? Session 2 – Arts in Higher Education: How does it happen?

By sharing positive experiences, can we learn from each other? Session 3 – Arts in Higher Education: How can Ireland benefit from the Creative Europe 2014 – 2020 programme to deepen the engagement between the Higher Education and the Arts Sectors? Space is restricted and early registration is advised.

Website www.artsunit@ahg.gov.ie Telephone 064 66 27213 Visual Arts Workers Forum Project Arts Centre is proud to present the 3rd conference of the Visual Arts Workers Forum. Designed to engage and give a platform for debate to workers across the visual arts – artists, writers, curators, educators, funders, gallerists, shippers, framers to name a few – the VAWF is a day packed full of stimulating debate, presentations and networking. Key issues for the 2014 forum include a session devoted to the case for artistic leadership, a session aimed at accounting for the visual arts’ contribution – artistically, structurally and economically – and a session devoted to analysing good governance. The forum is ticketed, includes lunch, and booking in advance is essential. Tickets are limited so early booking is advised. Booking opens Wednesday 9 April, online or by calling the number below. Tickets are €10 for independent practitioners and €20 for those institu-

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

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opportunities tionally affiliated. Proceeds from ticket sales help to fund independent speakers’ participation.

Email contact@vawf.ie Website www.vawf.ie Telephone 018819613

jobs / opportunities Artist Facillitator Belfast City Council wishes to recruit an experienced artist facilitator or facilitation team to carry out community consultation and creative engagement to inform a re-imaging project for Belfast City Cemetery. Interviews will take place in Belfast City Hall on Thursday 15 May 2014. The Building Peace through the Arts – Re-Imaging Communities Programme themes are community cohesion, regeneration through the arts, positive relations at the local level, peace and reconciliation, connecting communities.

For more information on the programme including the guidelines refer to thewebsite below. Submissions must be returned in an envelope and addressed to: Lisa Mackle, Parks and Leisure Department, Belfast City Council, 2nd Floor, Adelaide Exchange, 24-26 Adelaide Street, Belfast BT2 8DG. Deadline 12 noon, Tuesday 6 May Website www.artscouncil-ni.org DLR Libraries Dun Laoghaire – Rathdown Libraries announce an opportunity for artists, lecturers and facilitators to submit proposals and coordinate projects suitable for festivals such as Bealtaine, Children’s Book Festival, Science Week and a wide range of one-off events, series of themed talks / events or more long-term projects.

Projects can include artistic, cultural and educational forms and target user groups can be children, young people or adults.

A panel will be formed for programmes taking place from Autumn 2014 – Spring 2016. Creative practitioners and facilitators will work within the dlr branch library context, including the Central Library & Cultural Centre. Further details and submission information is available on the website below.

Deadline Noon, Friday 9 May Contact Maeve McElligott Website www.dlrcoco.ie Email mmcelligott@dlrcoco.ie Telephone 012147970 Address: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Public Libraries HQ, 1st Floor, Harbour Square 1, Crofton Road, Dún Laoghaire, Co Dublin

residencies IMMA Residency In 2014 IMMA’s onsite residency is expanding its actvities to complement the many ways that art practitioners develop and research their practices. The residency comprises of both invited and open strands of programming and supports arts projects within the museum, nationwide and internationally. Through the provision of excellent working and living conditions at IMMA the residency works to intersect and connect with arts practitioners such as visual artists, critical writers, curators, architects, creative institutions etc. From short research trips to long studio-based projects it covers a wide range of activities all vital to the growth and expansion of individual and institutional development. The wide range of opportunities for arts individuals and groups on offer includes: IMMA Open Call, the yearly open call from national and international arts practitioners (closing date 30 June); the studio award; IMMA Invited, a programme of artists nominated through professional recommendations from partner institutions and projects; IMMA Emerging, featuring a selected recent undergraduate; National Production Residencies; International Residency Partnerships; the Fellowship Residency: In collaboration with NCAD; and the International Visitors Programme. See website for more information.

Website www.imma.ie Telephone 016129900 Address Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin 8

Visual Artists Ireland

Professional Development At the get together Irish Museum Art, Friday 23 May 2014 VAI’s Professional Development programme will present a series of short professional practice talks in the Common Room area at Get Together 2014.

Arts Council of Ireland The Arts Council’s visual arts team will talk about the funding available to individual visual artists and groups of artists. The team will discuss making an application for each of the awards and schemes, including the purpose of each, who is eligible to apply and assessment and decision making processes.

Maurice Ward Art Handling Mary McLoughlin, Director of Maurice Ward Art Handling, will talk about MWAH services to artists and offer advice and information on what artists can do for themselves when packaging and transporting work.

Axis Web Axisweb will be leading a discussion on how you can present your practice online, develop an audience, and use social media.

Rua Red RUA RED offers a range of residency opportunities for visual artists, dance artists and curators. Rebecca Fitzpatrick will give a short talk about RUA RED’s residency opportunities, studio spaces and gallery programme, followed by a short Q&A session.

Dónall Curtin Dónall will present on corporate governance in the Little Theatre space. This will be of particular interest to artists who sit on boards, are forming studios or other groups, and those within arts organisations. Dónall will also be available for oneto-one financial advice sessions, available for you to book with him on the day.

IMMA Residencies Janice Hough, the IMMA Residency Coordinator, will talk about the programme, and the facilities and supports available to artists undertaking a residency, discussing what artists should consider when applying for a residency at IMMA’s.

Fire Station Artists’ Studios Fire Station Artists’ Studios will give a talk on their residential studios, skills programme, sculpture workshop and digital media facilities for visual artists.

Burren College of Art Conor McGrady, Dean of Academic Affairs and Dr Áine Phillips, Head of Sculpture at the Burren College of Art will talk about ‘Artist Engagement in a Rural Context’, covering aspects of their work, including making and showing work as part of BCA Art & Ecology programme and the Emerging Artist Residency, open to recent graduates and emerging artists as part of the Burren College of Art’s twentieth anniversary celebrations.

Burren College of Art is a not-for-profit independent art college specialising in graduate fine art education. (www.burrencollege.ie.)

Arts Council of Northern Ireland Deirdre Robb, Arts Council of Northern Ireland Development Officer in Visual Arts, will talk about the funding and other supports offered by ACNI to visual artists including SIAP and travel awards.

Centre for Creative Practices Monika Sapielak, Director of CFCP, will talk about the organisation’s programme and supports for migrant artists working in a range of art forms. She will discuss: integration, promotion and mentoring for migrant, experimental and emerging artists; CFCP artistic training; and ArtConnected, the innovative tool for artists, arts organisations, venues and service providers.

ArtClash A presentation on how artists can become Art Clash tutors – an initiative whereby ’night classes become night life’. Art Clash fuses night life with night classes, presenting workshops in underground live art and music venues, in a multitude of disciplines such as: film, performance art, illustration, animation, fashion and street art. (www.artclash.net.)

Book a place at the Get Together now! www.visualartists.ie

forthcoming VAI Professional Development events:

Caution!

We strongly advise readers to verify all details to their own satisfaction before forwarding art work, money etc.

Roscommon – Roscommon Arts Centre Presented in partnership with Roscommon Visual Artists Forum.

Developing Proposals Annette Moloney (June ) Presenting Yourself Kerry McCall (Autumn) Presenting your work Alan Raggett (Autumn) Creating Opportunities for Your Work Geraldine O’Reilly (Autumn) Places: 10 per session Cost: FREE to visual artists in Roscommon Portlaoise – Dunamaise arts centre In partnership with Dunamaise Arts Centre Web & Social Media Strategies for Visual Artists Mary Carty (Fri 5 Sept) Places: 10 per session Cost: €80 / €40 (VAI Members)

Dundalk – Louth creative community hub Events in partnership with Creative Spark Louth Socially Engaged Visual Art Practices Niamh O’Connor (Wed 10 Sept) Presenting Yourself & Your Work Kerry McCall (Autumn) Creating Opportunities for your Work (Autumn) Places: 10 per session Cost: €80 / €40 (VAI Members) bookings / details Northern Ireland www.visualartists.org.uk/services/professionaldevelopment/ current Republic of Ireland www.visualartists.ie/education/register-for-our-events

Art Research Collaboration MA The Institute of Art, Design & Technology (www.iadt.ie) is currently developing a two-year taught Master of Arts Programme, titled Art Research Collaboration MA (ARC), to commence in September 2014.

The programme will be delivered by IADT teaching faculty such as Dr. Maeve Connolly and Dr. Sinead Hogan. This innovative programme will incorporate research groups developed in collaboration with project partners such as Dublin City Council Arts Office, led by the LAB (www.thelab.ie), the Irish Film Institute (www.ifi.ie) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (www.imma.ie).

The ARC MA programme is open to artists, writers and curators, or those whose research focus identifies art thinking and practices as a significant component. The course intends to support a strongly interdisciplinary enquiry into areas that through research might be related and/or be applied to art, such as philosophy, psychology, media production, film, education, history, literature, archaeology, geography, publishing, design and architecture.

Modules will be taught primarily off-campus but students will also have access to art production workshops and the extended facilities on the main IADT campus. In year one, students complete a series of taught modules, participating in tutorials and critiques designed to support the development of their chosen research projects, and also work in small groups toward the realization of public-oriented projects. In year two, they can either work independently, supported by regular meetings, or as part of the research groups developed in collaboration with the Dublin City Arts Office, IFI and IMMA.

Applications should be received by IADT’s Admissions Office by

4pm Friday May 9, 2014.

Subject to places remaining available, late applications may be accepted. Please note that as this is a new programme it is subject to validation. For entry requirments and application details see: www.iadt.ie or contact celine.blacow@iadt.ie.

Re-Framing the Domestic in Irish Art 29 April – August, 2014 Open: Monday - Saturday 10.30-5.00pm, Closed Sunday.

Admission free, donations welcome William McKeown Cloud Cuckoo-Land, 2004 Detail of an installation for The Paradise, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin: wallpaper and Hope Painting. Courtesy of the Estate of William McKeown and Kerlin Gallery, Dublin

Highlanes Gallery, Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland T.+ 353 (0)41 980 3311 | W. www.highlanes.ie | E. info@highlanes.ie

Leslie McNicholl

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 Friday 13 June 2014

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

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Arts Council of Northern Ireland, MacNeice House, 77 Malone Road, Belfast BT9 6AQ. T: +44 (28) 9038 5200. W: www.artscouncil-ni.org. E: info@artscouncil-ni.org

Image: Brendan Jamison, Green JCB bucket with holes. Arts Council Collection

Arts Council of Northern Ireland Developing the arts in Northern Ireland

The LAB, brought to you by Dublin City Council, is pleased to present

supErnATurE Linda Shevlin Preview: 19 June, 6 – 8pm Exhibition runs: 20 June – 30 August

The LAB A: Foley Street, Dublin 1 T: 01 222 5455 E: artsoffice@dublincity.ie W: www.thelab.ie T: @LabDCC