Visual Artists' News Sheet - 2016 July August

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet ISSUE 2 July – August 2016 Published by Visual Artists Ireland Ealaíontóirí Radharcacha Éire

M12, Last Chance Module Array, 2015; Washington County, Colorado, USA

GET TOGETHER Ireland’s national day for visual artists Friday 26 August 2016 Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital, Military Road, Dublin 8 visualartists.ie/visualartists-ni.org 01 672 9488 info@visualartists.ie

4

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Editorial

July – August 2016

Contents Cover. M12, Last Chance Module Array, 2015; Washington County, Colorado, USA

Welcome to the July – August 2016 issue of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

For this and the September – October issue we have invited artist and curator Linda Shevlin to be the guest editor. Shevlin has worked on a theme of ‘centre and periphery’, which she discusses in her column and which is evident in several of the articles, including ‘Residency’ reports by Niamh O’Doherty and Patricia Farrelly, as well as both the column by Lisa Fingleton and ‘Career Development’ piece by Anna Macleod.

5. Column. Linda Shevlin. Periphery & the Centre.

6. Column. Lisa Fingleton. A Vision From the Verge.

7. Column. Ann Davoren. Out There.

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

9. Regional Focus. The visual art resources and activity in Roscommon are outlined by

Roscommon Arts Centre, Boyle Arts Festival, Working Artists Roscommon and artists Noel

Molloy and Naomi Draper.

12. Organisation Profile. Situated in the Present. Linda Shevlin talks to Richard Saxton of M12, based

Our ‘Regional Profile’ for this issue is Roscommon, a county in which Shevlin has worked as both an in Colorado, USA. artist and curator. Features come from artists Naomi Draper and Noel Molloy, alongside updates from the 14. Career Development. One Water Laughing in a Thousand Thousand Fields. Anna Macleod discusses Roscommon Arts Centre, Boyle Arts Festival and Working Artists Roscommon. her practice and recent residencies undertaken in Australia.

Further ‘Residency’ reports come from far afield: Damien Duffy at the British School in Rome, Sinéad 15. Residency. Manifestations of Time. Niamh O’Doherty describes her time on residency in Iceland.

O’Donnell in Thailand and Patricia Farrelly at the Burren College of Art. In her ‘How is it Made?’ article, 16. How is it Made? Exile & Perception. Curator Sandra Križic Roban talks to artist Dragana Jurišic Aoibheann Greenan discusses her recent installation work, ‘The Perfect Wagner Rite’, with Alice Planel, about her book YU: The Lost Country and the artist’s personal history as an exile. curator of Import Projects, Berlin.

17. Residency. Re-appropriation in Rome. Damien Duffy talks about his recent residency at the British School in Rome..

Janice Hough profiles the upcoming collaboration between Grizedale Arts, based in the Lake District, 18. Residency. Up From the Country. Deirdre O’Mahony describes her recent residency at IMMA and and IMMA, which will take place this summer and see the courtyard at the Royal Hospital transformed into an imagined village. Deirdre O’Mahony’s ‘Residency’ piece about her time at IMMA complements the development of her work A Village Plot.

19. Critique. ‘Post Office’, Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin; ‘The Hopeless End of a Great Dream’, Temple Hough’s article and gives further insight into the IMMA/Grizedale collaboration.

Bar Gallery and Studios; ‘1916: Ireland in Contemporary Art’, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork; ‘The On page 31, VAI Director/CEO Noel Kelly gives an update on the organisation’s recent advocacy work Respectful Distance’, Oliver Sears, Dublin; ‘Paper Bloom’, Ballina Civic Offices, Mayo and plans for the future.

23. Project Profile. Discipline, Resistance, Resilience. EL Putnam reports on the performance art event ‘Future Histories’, which took place at Kilmainham Gaol in June.

Reviewed in the ‘Critique’ section are: Katie Moore at Ballina Civic Offices and the Jackie Clarke 24. Seminar Report. AlterRurality. Dominic Stevens and Sophia Meere detail the conference they Collection, Mayo; Declan Clarke at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin; Corban Walker at Hillsboro organised in rural Connemara in June.

Fine Art, Dublin ; Michael Canning at Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin; and the group show ‘1916: Ireland in 25. Residency. Comparative Isolation. Patricia Farrelly describes her time on residency at The Burren Contemporary Art’ at the Crawford Gallery, Cork.

College of Art. As ever, we have details of upcoming VAI Professional Development Programme, exhibition and public 26. How is it Made? From Libretto to Operetta. Aoibheann Greenan talks to curator Alice Planel about art roundups, news from the sector and current opportunities. her work ‘The Perfect Wagner Rite’, created at Import Projects in Berlin.

28. Residency. Gender Politics & Performance. Sinéad O’Donnell details her experience on residency in

varous locations across Thailand.

30. Project Profile. Trading Places for a Fair Land. Janice Hough introduces the upcoming collaborative

Join

for going forward.

33. Northern Ireland Manager. Think Globally, Act Locally. Rob Hilken introduces artists’ collectives in

Northern Ireland.

33. Public Art Roundup. Public art commissions, site-specific works, socially engaged practice and

other forms of art outside the gallery.

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

36. VAI Professional Development. Current and upcoming workshops, peer reviews and seminars.

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

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

NORTHERN IRELAND

Standard €50 / Concessions €25

Standard £44 / Concessions £22

Discounted Direct Debit Rates

Discounted Standing Order Rates

Standard €48 / Concessions €24

Standard £43 / Concessions £20

BRITAIN Standard (no concession) £44

EUROPE & REST OF WORLD Standard (no concession) €70

T: (00353) 01 672 9488 E: info@visualartists.ie W: visualartists.ie/join

project between IMMA and Grizedale Arts.

31. VAI News. Advocacy Leads to Results. Noel Kelly summarises VAI’s recent advocacy work and plans

Production: Guest Editor: Linda Shevlin. Production Editor: Lily Power. News/Opportunities: Siobhan Mooney, Shelly McDonnell. Invoicing: Bernadette Beecher. Contributors: Linda Shevlin, Lisa Fingleton, Ann Davoren, Naomi Draper, Paul McKenna, Averyl Dooher, Janice Hough, Anna Macleod, Niamh O’Doherty, Sandra Križic Roban, Dragana Jurišic, Rob Hilken, Damien Duffy, Deirdre O’Mahony, EL Putnam, Dominic Stevens, Sophia Meeres, Aoibheann Greenan, Alice Planel, Noel Kelly, Sinéad O’Donnell, Áine Phillips, Mary Catherine Nolan, Sarah Lincoln, Gemma Carroll, Richard Saxton.

A: Visual Artists Ireland, Ground Floor, Central Hotel Chambers, 7–9 Dame Court, Dublin 2, D02 X452 T: 353(0)1 672 9488 E: info@visualartists.ie W: visualartists.ie A: Visual Artists Ireland, Northern Ireland Office, 109 –113 Royal Avenue, Belfast, BT1 1FF W: visualartists-ni.org Board of Directors: Linda Shevlin (Chair), Naomi Sex, Mary Kelly, David Mahon, Michael Corrigan, Niamh McCann, Donall Curtin, Richard Forrest. Staff: CEO/Director: Noel Kelly. Office Manager: Bernadette Beecher. Publications: Lily Power.

Advocacy Programme Officer: Alex Davis. Professional Development Officer: Monica Flynn. Bookkeeping: Dina Mulchrone. Membership Services Officer/Listings Editor: Siobhan Mooney/Shelly McDonnell. Licensing Officer: Adrian Colwell. Northern Ireland Manager: Rob Hilken (rob@visualartistsni.org).

Principle Funders

Project Funders

Corporate Sponsors

Project Partners

International Memberships

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

COLUMN

Linda Shevlin Periphery & the Centre

LIVING in Roscommon, I have obviously been thinking a lot about the impact my location has had on the work I do as a cultural producer. This move to rural Ireland was a catalyst for reconsidering my work environment. It led me to really question the relationships between rural and urban producers and venues, both in terms of the type of work being produced by rural practitioners, and the national and global representation of artists who choose to position themselves beyond the pale.

Being based rurally, away from the cultural agglomeration areas, means that developing work that is both regionally and nationally oriented is a challenge. For rural dwellers, huge concerns remain, such as how to balance the relationship between urban and rural communities, how to safeguard a plurality of ways of life, how to sustain a balanced ecology and agriculture, and how to navigate a path between protecting history and promoting economic development. Many artists have positioned themselves in rural locations in order to address these issues through their work.

As a curator working in rural contexts, I’ve attempted to create a space that is a discursive site for non-instrumental forms of thought and action. My enforced peripherality has certainly informed this position, so I’m using this issue of the VAN to seek out the views and experiences of my co-exiles. Rest assured, this issue won’t be presenting a romanticised vision of bucolic bliss, nor will it be a soapbox for airing our grievances about lack of rural infrastructure, insufficient governmental or departmental support, or invisibility in the broader networks of the art world. In fact, I was surprised at the restraint of the artist contributors when pressed to comment on these issues. With this in mind, the peripheries will form the centre in this issue. Among the contributors are producers, artists, architects and venue directors. They are all faced with similar challenges but employ various methologies to deal with them.

In 2015 Deirdre O’Mahony came to Roscommon and developed a project with me at the National Famine Museum titled ‘SPUD-X’. Rooted in traditional knowledge around the cultivation of food, land usage and commemoration, her 30-metre ‘X’ shaped plot of potato ridges sat very comfortably in the field adjacent to the museum. I invited Deirdre to write about how this project transferred to the more urban setting of IMMA’s manicured lawns.

While trying to build relationships with the centre, the periphery often finds itself excluded both on a structural and physical level. Regardless of the centre/ periphery model, and whether it’s defined in terms of space or relations of power, this sense of exclusion still exists.

In her column Out There, Ann Davoren, director of Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, discusses how, within their ‘situation’, centre and periphery are relative.

This is discussed in relation to their recent relocation from the edge of the town to a purpose-built facility in the centre. Davoren notes the marked effect this has had on the community’s perception of the space and how it’s impacted on their footfall.

It is not an easy task to carve out a critically reflexive position for oneself in the periphery of a global art world dominated by discourses distinguishing only crudely between the binary opposites of ‘centres’ and ‘peripheries’. But it amounts to constructing a kind of third space that enables other positions to emerge. This issue of the VAN will look at various components that I believe make up that third space. These tensional in between positions are seen to be occupied by those who, on the one hand, have internalised the forms of knowledge and institutional structures of the Western art world and thus enjoy access, as well as a geographic proximity, to this world. On the other hand, they are familiar with the fact that the hegemonic discourses of the Western art centres are frequently at odds with the divergent discourses of the rural/peripheral art scenes. Arguably, despite the apparent lack of knowledge that the centre has about non-metropolitan peripheries, rural practitioners look to their hegemonic discourses and find them eminently useful in understanding regional or local art in a more global context. The ‘production of locality’ in peripheral art often comprises an amalgam of indigenous and international elements.

Through an articulation of the experiences of our contributors of working in the periphery, of presenting or supporting projects from the periphery, or having traveled to the periphery, I hope this collection of articles will ultimately form a discourse around rural art practices and their unique relationship to cultural centres and institutions.

Linda Shevlin is an independent curator and artist.

5

Roundup

SYSTEMA NATURAE

MADE & CONSIDERED Dorothy Smith’s exhibition ‘Made and Considered’ ran at the Dublin Gallery of Architecture (DARC Space) 19 May –17 Jun. The show comprised drawings in pencil which explore place and space, and look at our constructed, built everyday environment. The experiences and subject matter reflected in the work were all encountered by Smith on the routes and routines of her everyday life. darcspace.ie

David Dunne, Unique Form of an Electrical Charge in Space, 2015

Katie St. Clair, Evanescent, 2016; acrylic, collage and an assortment of experimental techniques with dye

dia interpretations of the stones of The Burren area of Ireland give us the sense that there is more to rocks than mere mass”. Her Glacial Erratics multi-media pieces “reveal a sure, artistic vision of stone transformed upon a mutable ground, just as the soil of The Burren shifts constantly around the karst outcrops of that region”.

CITIZEN

An exhibition of work by David Dunne titled ’Systema Nuaturae’ ran at Not Quite, Maskinhallen, Fengersfors, 28 May – 19 Jun. The exhibition comprised video, audio, installation, sculpture and print works, based on separate writings by Carl Linnaeus concerning natural selection and the architecture of the human condition. Dunne’s work, he stated, “investigates the arbitrary nature of selection in all its manifestations, random or otherwise, in the biological and specific traits of human behaviour”.

WORKS

notquite.se

Jude, image from ‘Citizen’, 2016

‘Citizens’, the inaugural exhibition by Derry-based artist Jude, ran at Warehouse Gallery, Derry (18 Mar – 14 Apr). The exhibition featured 10 new oil paintings representing work made over the last year.

ANY OBSERVER Ramon Kassam, New Work; acrylic, inkjet prints, stretcher bar, plastic and staples on linen, 213 x 180 cm

Jason Deans, Any Observer, 2016

The installation Any Observer, by Jason Deans, was launched at Draiocht, Blanchardstown, on 9 Jun and runs until 10 Sept. His work was made from raw natural materials that will deteriorate and collapse over the duration of the exhibition, evoking ideas of “social-political instability, the property bubble and the collapse of the property market which disastrously afflicted the Irish economy, leaving historical damage for future generations,” the press release explained. The artist described how “the use of raw, natural materials can resonate, respond and retort to human interactions on the contemporary world”. draiocht.ie

ERRATICS A series of paintings by American artist Katie St. Clair were exhibited at the Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Clare (27 May – 25 Jun). The press release noted how “St. Clair’s mixed me-

Ramon Kassam’s exhibition ‘Works’ ran at Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, from 20 May to 2 Jul. In this new series of paintings Kassam “continues to develop invented narratives that centre around an artist’s supposed activities, environment and viewpoints,” the press release stated, with “a particular focus on the creative output (works) of his hypothetical practitioner”. greenonredgallery.com

PAUSAL

Deidre Robb, ‘Pausal’, 2016

Deidre Robb’s exhibition ‘Pausal’ ran at Framewerk, Belfast, 24 – 30 May, as part of the 2016 Tether Festival. Robb’s work in ‘Pausal’ is based on the “personal and shared experiences of the process of entering menopause, visually representing transitions relating to the body”. framewerkbelfast.com

HARD GIRLS Soma Contemporary, Waterford held Jennifer Mehigan’s exhibition ‘Hard Girls’ (28 May – 1 Aug), described by the artist as “a celebration exhibition of surfaces and the superficial, the damaged and the disastrous”. Mehigan’s paintings, sculptures and videos reference “gyms, makeup tutorials, bodybuilders’ Instagram feeds and a general sense of fatigue” as part of her ongoing interest in “abjection, anxiety and queer femme aesthetics”. somacontemporary.com

PIG SHOP

Simon Fennessy Corcoran, ‘Pig Shop’, 2016

Higher Bridges Gallery, Fermanagh, presented ‘Pig Shop’ by Simon Fennessy Corcoran, which looked at “the idea that animals have lost their naturalistic value in the eyes of society”.

Fennessy Corcoran is interested in anatomy and the physical materials of nature which stems from his own genetic anomaly.

UNTITLED (BLACK ON GREY) Liam Crichton’s Untitled (Black on Grey) was shown at Townhall Cavan 3 – 25 Jun. Based on the Rothko painting of the same name, the press release noted, “the work follows the artist’s developing research into contemporary ideas surrounding the void and the sublime, and is in response to the built environment of Cavan Town and county”. townhallcavan.ie

6

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

COLUMN

ROUNDUP

Lisa Fingleton

OFFER

Paul Moore’s humorous public social media event ‘No Narnia’ took place as part of the East Belfast Arts Festival.

Taking its premise from C.S. Lewis’s 1950 children’s novel The Lion the Witch and The Wardrobe, Moore invited members of the public to photograph their own personal wardrobes to present an online document through the hashtag link #nonarnia.

A Vision From the Verge I have been a member of the vibrant and dynamic Rural Arts Group (RAG) for the last 10 years. Since our foundation we have really focused on developing a collective vision and sense of purpose. While people often point out the disadvantages of living in such a peripheral location, we see it an opportunity to develop our creative careers in a stunningly beautiful and inspiring context. From here on the West Coast of Ireland it is an eight-hour round trip to Dublin and the next stop west is New York.

Much to the surprise of visitors, we have a great rural arts infrastructure with custom built, professional exhibition spaces. We used to rely heavily on pop-up spaces but we got tired of DIY, cleaning, invigilating and incurring debt. We now have a clear transparent process for accessing the local arts infrastructure. RAG operates as a collective and has a rotating membership made up of artists, curators and representatives from each of the local arts organisations. Together we contribute to the arts programming in the county, ensuring that the resources and spaces provide opportunities for local, national and international artists. The arts programme reflects our concerns and interests, and vigorously supports the role of contemporary art in the wider world. This shared programming has led to far greater engagement with the arts locally. We also strengthen and build the capacity of local artists by providing feedback on proposals and opportunities for professional development. Everyone’s contribution is equally valued and we are all financially remunerated for our contributions.

We are proud of our dynamic residency and visiting artists programme, which bring vitality and energy to the community. We invite a number of artists but are also committed to an open submission process. We find that international artists are attracted here by the remoteness of the region, the opportunity to experience real rural Ireland and the potential for collaboration. We regularly invite selected curators and arts managers from outside the area for a day of organised studio tours, local organic food and cultural experiences. The feedback has been extremely positive and this initiative has led to a number of creative projects such as the Feminist Farmers’ Luncheon and the ‘Digging the Dirt’ exhibition series.

We have worked closely with local agencies to develop a good broadband infrastructure. This has been a great relief as we used to have to travel to our nearest town to upload large files. We find that this has greatly enhanced the possibilities for home working and setting up new creative businesses. We have a number of individual and shared studios in the area but we find that our more flexible coworking venues, Imaginate and Share, are really popular. Artists can rent an open studio or desk space by the day or the month, which greatly expands the sense of creative community and reduces the risk of isolation. The co-working venues are multifunctional and cross-disciplinary. They act as performance spaces where artists, musicians and other practitioners can experiment and share works in progress as well as completed projects.

The childcare services in these spaces are critical, supporting parents to develop their practice without disruption. This service has also attracted a number of younger creative people to relocate to the area, which has had a positive knockon effect. We are fortunate to have the only official publicly funded retirement accommodation for artists in the country. The eco friendly passive homes at La Retraite overlook the sea and have direct access to the beach. Each artist has her/ his own private living quarters and studio. The intergenerational programme at the centre provides invaluable opportunities for younger artists to learn from those with more experience. The art therapy and creative activities also provide opportunities for employment for local artists.

Linking in with the local community has really helped us to develop a sustainable creative network. We have a number of socially engaged creative projects with asylum seekers, Travellers, people with disabilities and other youth and community groups. Artists who enjoy working with children are active in developing the creative capacity of the next generation through workshops and artistic programmes.

Working with local businesses and social entrepreneurs has led to a patronage scheme that financially supports artists at all stages of their career. We have a purchase scheme where local businesses, hotels, cafes and pubs are supported in buying original artworks directly from artists. We’ve also witnessed the development of murals and public art projects, which have further enhanced the area and received positive reviews from tourists.

All in all we are delighted with the progress over the last 10 years. We have learned the valuable lesson of creating a collective vision with clear and achievable goals in order to achieve real change for artists in our area.

Claire McCluskey, ‘Offer’, 2016

THE GLORIOUS MAIDS OF THE Claire McCluskey’s exhibition ‘Offer’ CHARNEL HOUSE took place in Mart Gallery, Dublin, 2 – 7 May. Each evening, McCluskey performed a candle-lighting ceremony in Gallery 1, while a light, earth and water installation inhabited Gallery 2.

On the 5 and 6 of May, Isadora Epstein performed a dramatic response to the work. ‘Offer’ was curated by Siobhán Mooney.

sculpture. In the triptych of large-scale drawings, three pairs of delicately rendered gloves hang poised. “The gloves have a distinct presence,” the press release stated, “but we are also meant to contemplate the space around them in three dimensions …. a vast space that expands beyond the edge of the physical paper”. goldenthreadgallery.co.uk

THE ENDURANCE DRAWINGS The Jerome Conor Sculpture Centre, Annascaul exhibited a series of drawing works by Medbh Gillard depicting the crew of The Endurance for the centenary of the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition under the command of Sir Ernest Shackleton.

ON MY GREEN WAY I WEND

mart.ie

FLEXIBILISM

Alice Maher, The Great Version

Poster image for ‘Flexibilism’

Alice Maher’s exhibition ‘The Glorious Maids of the Charnel House’ ran at Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin, 2 Jun – 2 Jul and comprised nine large drawings.

The works, the press release noted, reflect a continued exploration into metamorphosis in the human body.

Maher’s maids “stand guard in a vis- Maria O’Brien, Parasols in Sugar Beach, 2016; oil on paper; 10 x 14 inches ceral universe, where human, animal and vegetal intermingle, co-evolve and Maria O’Brien’s new body of work ‘On My Green Way I Wend’ was shown at overlap in intense, hybrid forms”. kevinkavanagh.ie Laois Arthouse (7 May – 3 Jun) and explored landscape painting inspired by photography from social media. As LIGHTWORKS overall winner of the Dunamaise Open Exhibition 2013, O’Brien was awarded a month-long residency in Laois Arthouse, during which she developed a renewed interest in landscape. By working directly from photographs the artist offers us glimpses into other people’s worlds.

Catalyst Arts, Belfast, presented the group show ‘Flexibilism’, featuring work by Liam Slevin, Mark Buckeridge, All Choir, and Clawson and Ward (2 – 25 Jun). The artists were invited to “develop and reconfigure a previously made or designed work in relation to explicit, esoteric and existential aspects of Catalyst Arts and its site in Belfast as a public space,” the gallery stated. The aim of this was to “interrupt the field of perception associated with a gallery space, resisting the familiarity of selected works in a groups show and instead espouse to reconfigure civic, social and cultural frameworks for considering our role in public, as Sean Grimes, ‘Lightworks’; installation view artists, citizens, communities and creative labourers”.

‘Lightworks’, an exhibition by Talbot catalystarts.org.uk Gallery’s Most Promising Graduate Award recipient Sean Grimes, ran 2 – 15 NO NARNIA Jun. The exhibition consisted of works on paper, photographs and sculptural works based on a code language developed by the artist. As a backdrop to the works. Grimes also constructed blinds to “gently illuminate and isolate the environment”.

talbotgallery.com

lisafingleton.com Note Lisa Fingleton is an artist, filmmaker, writer and facilitator based on a small farm on the Wild Atlantic Way. When she was invited to write this column she very briefly considered subjecting the reader to a factual account of the sometimesbleak experience of rural artists. Having rejected this option, she decided to imagine a currently fictional but ultimately desirable vision for rural artists 10 years from now.

July – August 2016

Paul Moore, ‘No Narnia’, 2016

TODAY I WROTE NOTHING Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, held an exhibition by Leo Devlin titled ‘Today I Wrote Nothing’ (2 Jun – 9 Jul) comprising drawing, performance, video and

arthouse.ie

THE LOOKOUT TREE

Martin De Porres Wright, ‘The Lookout Tree’, 2016

‘The Lookout Tree’, an exhibition of abstract paintings and sculptures by Martin De Porres Wright, was shown at the City Assembly House, Dublin, 25 Feb – 13 Mar. Wright was inspired by a tree he visited as a child in the Phoenix Park “to gaze, to dream, to look out and use [his] imagination”.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

7

ROUNDUP

Anne Davoren Out There A large red dot painted on to the studio wall at the centre of a tidy sprawl of red lines denotes ‘Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre’. Michael Holly (mickholly.net), one of Uillinn’s current artists in residence, is mapping the town and environs of Skibbereen using ‘deep topography’, a term coined by London perambulator Nick Papadimitriou to describe the process of walking, wandering and drifting through an urban space in order to get a sense of the place. It combines careful observation, local knowledge and intuitive thought to build a kind of psychic map that is both subjective and objective.

Alongside the wall maps is a growing display of objects collected along the way. One of these is a US Foxcliff Golf Club ball, which Michael tells us in his accompanying Strategy Against Signposts website, “was found at the North end of the (suspensionbridgethatneverwassupposedtobe), an unfinished bridge now under NAMA”. He continues: “The convergence of the Ilen and the Caol [two rivers that flow through Skibbereen], the apparent centre of the place, the trading post, contested space #1. There is liberty and a slight civil disobedience in driving a golf ball through a wasteland, towards the centre of power. A slight misbehaviour wrapped in an accepted middle-class leisure activity driven with malice towards the centre of the universe”.

West Cork Arts Centre is located in Skibbereen (population c. 2500) with a catchment area that stretches from the tip of the Beara peninsula in the west to Oileán Chléire in the south. We are located at the southern edge of Ireland, distant from the capital and about an hour and a half drive from Cork, the nearest city, train station and airport.

Even within our own ‘situation’, as artist Claire Doherty terms it – ‘situation’ as a convergence of site, non-site, place, non-place, locality, public space, context and time – centre and periphery are relative terms. In early 2015 we moved from our home of 30 years on the edge of the town to Uillinn, a new purpose-built facility in the centre at the aforementioned convergence of the two rivers. The architecture of the new building itself, but also the central location, has made a marked difference, not only to how the arts centre is perceived by locals and visitors alike, but also to our footfall, which has increased from c. 10,000 to over 36,500 annually.

In the month of IMMA’s 25th anniversary, I’m also reminded of the controversy back then around the siting of the new museum in Kilmainham rather than in the city centre. Even in a capital city, ideas of centre and periphery come into play. The cry was that Kilmainham was too far from the city centre, too far from the people who frequent museums. However, it certainly wasn’t too far from the communities of Inchicore and Kilmainham, communities with which IMMA has regularly engaged. Likewise our communities, both of interest and of geography, are at the centre of what we do at Uillinn.

May was also the month of the BA in Visual Art Degree show on Sherkin Island. This full-time honours degree programme is based fully accredited, managed and delivered by the Dublin School of Creative Arts, Dublin Institute of Technology in partnership with the island development group (SIDS) and ourselves. Every two years, the graduating students, working closely with the island community, hold their degree show in various locations across the island, the place that is both the subject matter and the location of the four-year programme. This year over 1200 people made the trip by ferry to see the work of the 17 students. For many, the journey itself, or the idea of journeying ‘out there’, is an integral part of the experience.

In exploring the dialogue between local artistic practices and wider global discourses, Indian poet, cultural theorist and curator Ranjit Hoskote asserts that the periphery is often a far more dynamic theatre of development than the centre.

A tiny island off the southern-most coast of an island on the edge of Europe is a hub of creative learning; the most significant public building to be built in over 100 years in a small town is a building for the arts. These developments, along with other long established and new initiatives such as the many small galleries, artist collectives, arts festivals and community-based arts projects in West Cork, demonstrate the dynamism of activity and engagement at the periphery.

Hoskote also argues that artists do not confine their imagination to their place of origin. I think that this is amply demonstrated by the practice of many artists who have moved to this part of the world. London-based artist William Bock will shortly join Michael Holly on residency. For his residency, Bock will explore ideas of home, identity and immigration. Brought up near Skibbereen by parents with Swedish, German and Polish heritage, he is connected to the wider story of migration, the experience of living between cultures and issues of community. Returning home to Skibbereen is an opportunity for Bock to connect with this story by initiating an artistic collaboration with locals, and in particular the emerging Polish community, about their experiences of making West Cork their home.

Ann Davoren, Director, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre

NSK STATE FOLK BIENNALE Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the SomBurren College of Art hosted the sec- me and personal research into the Irishond NSK State Folk Art Biennale as part men who fought in World War One. of the Burren Annual exhibition. The helenheron.com NSK State Folk Art Biennale brought together over 30 international artists and THE PLURALITY OF EXISTENCE IN THE collectives, including special guests INFINITE EXPANSE OF SPACE & TIME and NSK founding members IRWIN. The NSK State was created in 1992 as a project of the Neue Slowenische Kunst artists’ collective (founded in Ljubljana, Slovenia, in 1984). In response to the break up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, the NSK collective “created a virtual state in time and without territory, to examine”, the press release stated Clodagh Emoe, ‘The Plurality’; installation view “and question nationalism, national boundaries and the utopian desires un- Cloadagh Emoe’s project ‘The Plurality derpinning social formations”. Artists of Existence’, developed in collaboraparticipating in The second NSK State tion with a group of asylum seekers livFolk Art Biennale engaged with the ing in Ireland, was exhibited at Visual, ongoing aesthetic and conceptual de- Carlow, 19 Jan – 19 Jun. This multi-layvelopment of the NSK State, and with ered project comprised a series of texts ideas of the contemporary nation state at Visual as well as a site-specific audio and 1916. installation that will be sited on the River Barrow, Carlow, Shandon Bridge, Cork, The Boardwalk, Dublin and CladBROKEN TALE dagh Bay, Galway. In the press release, Emoe stated: “Representation is crucial to our identity and our place in society in the way that it informs our being in the world and how we participate in the community”. The project aimed to give voice and representation to those who are excluded from cultural and political discourse. visualcarlow.ie

Still from Broken Tale

Kasia Zimnoch and Pawel Kleszczewski’s animated film Broken Tale was selected for the final of the inSPIRACJE 2016 visual art festival in Szczecin Poland (24 – 26 Jun). The animation is based on a Swedish folk tale about a girl and a moose. It shows her journey into the heart of the wilderness towards a lake hidden deep in the primeval forest. Her guide and mystical guardian is a moose. Broken Tale, the artists stated, “is a story about adolescence, passing through the stages of life, the thresholds and the life cycles of women”.

MIDSUMMER SHOW Dana Winder exhibited recent landscape paintings at the Pearse Family Home, Dublin (19 Jun). danawinder.com

HANDS

Tadgh McGrath, image from ‘The Way Things Are’, 2016

around environmental protests attended by the artist in Mayo, 2006 – 2007.

The press release described how the paintings were made “in shallow relief in wire and plaster, and then painted in oils,” with the surfaces then treated to create a mixture of textures. thelinenhall.com

PRECIPICE

Amelia Stein, image from ‘Precipice’

Amelia Stein’s photographic works were exhibited at Áras Inis Gluaire, Belmullet, 10 Jun – 10 Jul. ‘Precipice’ was a collection of black and white photographs of the sea cliffs and majestic rocky headlands of Dún Chaocháin as they meet the North Atlantic Ocean.

“Stretching from Port a’ Chlóidh to Cill Ghallagáin, a 13km vista of spectacular rock formations, promontories, headlands, islands, sea-stacks and sheer cliffs,” the press release noted, “the artist questions our emotional response to the mesmerising dangers conjured up in placenames like The Point of Deliverance and The Fool’s Hollow”. arasinisgluaire.ie

PALIMPSET

THE CENTENARY EXHIBITION John Keating, image from ‘Hands’

Helen Heron, work from ‘The Centenary Exhibition’

Cavan County Museum held an exhibition of work by Helen Heron. The exhibition comprised 30 pieces of work made in fabric and thread, focusing on the Easter Rising 1916 and the Battle of the Somme 1916. Heron was inspired

by Frank Mc Guinness’s play Behold the

10 works by John Keating from the series Hands were shown in Qing Zhou in the Shandong Province of China from 26 Apr to 30 May. Keating has previously exhibited in China at the 1st Beijing Biennial in 2003 and at the Art Water Cube Museum in Beijing in 2014.

THE WAY THINGS ARE ‘The Way Things Are’, an exhibition of large textural fresco secco paintings

by Tadhg McGrath, ran at the Linenhall Arts Centre, Mayo, 11 Jun – 9 Jul. The works are derived from imagery

Hugh McGettigan, ‘Palimpset’, installation view

‘Palimpsest’ was an exhibition of sculpture by artist in residence Hugh McGettigan that ran 18 – 25 Jun at The Dock, Leitrim. Exploring the physical structure of found and salvaged materials, ‘Palimpsest’ makes reference “to both found and imagined architectural structures, creating works that play with balance, both compositionally and with physical sculptural equilibrium,” the press release stated. thedock.ie

8

News

culture to 0.3% of GDP, taking us half way to the European average; publish the NCFA/DAIL DEBATE cultural policy document Culture 2025 in The National Campaign for the Arts have draft form for interrogation by the released a statement (23 June) about Oireachtas Arts Committee; maintain on their ongoing work for the arts in Ireland, an annual basis the €50 million allocated following the Dail debate on 22 June. to the Department of Arts for 2016 com“Government announces change of memorations and ring fence it for the Department title to Arts, Heritage, Rural, Arts Council and the Irish Film Board; Regional and Gaeltacht Development. implement tax efficiencies/strategies to Unanimous support for motion on the stimulate cororate and philanthropic Arts as presented by Niamh Smyth TD giving; create a new arts fund from (FF) by all parties to a full public gallery.

National Lottery funding; appoint an Richard Boyd Barrett TD added an expert panel of artists/cultural managers amendment to the motion calling for an to function as policy and strategy adviincrease in arts funding, to bring it in line sors to the minister and the department. with the European average of 0.6% of ncfa.ie GDP. The National Campaign for the Arts DEPARTMENT OF ARTS, CULTURE was represented by a full public gallery AND HERITAGE PETITION in the Dail and overflow rooms on the Over 7,500 people to date have signed a occasion of a private members motion as petition calling for the establishment of set out by Niamh Smyth TD (FF). We a dedicated Department of Arts, Culture welcomed the debate and motion as set and Heritage and improved funding and out by Niamh Smyth TD and the fact supports for the arts. The petition is that this motion was accepted by all paraddressed to Minister Heather ties in the house.

Humphries of the Department of Many of the speakers remarked Regional Development, Rural Affairs, how unusual it was to have such a large Arts and the Gaeltacht and makes the number of people in the public gallery, following demands: demonstrating the importance of this a) Create an independent, adequately campaign. resourced department; The campaign noted the strong b) make a commitment to raising fundcommitment on all sides of the house to ing the arts, cultural and heritage sector the development and agreement of a to European average GDP spend of 0.6%; new national cultural policy with a real c) publication of a national cultural polivision, ambition and concrete targets, cy that has the endorsement of the comand looks forward to a rubust, democratmunity. ic process of policy making, involving all The petition is ongoing and can be found parties through the Joint Committee for here:my.uplift.ie/petitions/restore-thethe Arts as well as the Dail. department-of-arts-culture-and-heritageThe NCFA also welcomed the as-a-stand-alone-department. amendment to the motion by Richard Boyd Barrett TD, which included an increase in funding for the arts to 0.6% of W.A.G.E. GDP, which, if adopted, would have a There have been important achievetranformative efffect on the arts in ments for artists’ rights in the United Ireland.

States, developed and encouraged During the debate there were conthrough an independent artist led organtributions by the following 26 ministers: isation Working Artists and the Greater Niamh Smyth (FF), Minister Heather Economy (W.A.G.E.).

Humphreys (FG), Minister Finian There are now 27 W.A.G.E.-certified McGrath (ind.), Peadar Tobin (SF), organisations across the U.S., in Chicago, Aengus O’Snodaigh (SF), Maurice Denver, Houston, Ithaca, Los Angeles, Quinlivan (SF), Carol Nolan (SF), Joan Marylhurst, Miami, Minneapolis, New Burton (Lab.), Richard Boyd Barrett (AAA York, Providence, Saint Paul, San PBP), Maureen O’Sullivan (ind.), Thomas Francisco and Seattle. In these cities you Pringle (ind.), Catherine Connolly (ind.), will find non-profit organisations that Michael Healy-Rae (ind.), Michael have chosen to pay the artists they work Collins (ind.), Danny Healy-Rae (ind.), with according to minimum standards of Catherine Murphy (Soc Dem), Catherine compensation.

Martin (Green), Micheal Martin (FF), W.A.G.E. certification is a proHildegard Naughton (FG), Tom Neville gramme initiated and operated by (FG), Junior Minister Marcella Corcoran Working Artists and the Greater Kennedy (FG), Junior Minister Helen Economy that publicly recognises nonMcEntee (FG), Kevin Keeffe (FF) and profit arts organisations demonstrating a Aindrias Moynihan (FF). history of, and commitment to, voluntarEstablished in 2009 as a response to ily paying artist fees that meet a minithe McCarthy Report, the National mum payment standard.

Campaign for the Arts is a nationwide, Its specific goal is to establish and volunteer-led, grassroots movement that guarantee standards of minimum commakes the case for the arts in Ireland. The pensation and organisational support for NCFA’s pre-election manifesto included artists in the non-profit arts economy. Its calls on government to: commit to broader goal is to work toward the fairer increasing annual investment in arts and and more equitable distribution of

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

resources in the contemporary art field and in society at large.

View the list of W.A.G.E. certified organisations on the organisation’s website.

agreement for artists when participating in and contributing to an exhibition. The draft can be the basis for an agreement with all museums in Iceland and galleries financed by the public sector, in part wageforwork.com or in whole.

A report on the campaign can be found in the fifth edition of the publicaTBG+S MEMBERSHIP STUDIOS Temple Bar Gallery and Studios tion STARA and can be viewed online at announced five new studio artists for the issuu.com/stara-sim. year 2016. The studios were awarded to Gerard Byrne, Maria McKinney, Isabel Nolan, Stephen Loughman and Alan THE GOOD HATCHERY Phelan. These artists will take up their In May the Good Hatchery announced tenancy at TBG+S in late 2016 and early that after nine years of ambitious, experi2017 and will maintain their studios for mental and in-depth work in the boga three-year period. lands of North Offaly, the residential stuTBG+S is an artist-governed organi- dio project and art space at this location sation. Membership Studios give artists is now coming to an end. thegoodhatchery.com full membership status and voting rights at the AGM and are awarded for a period of three years with the possibility of a LATE NIGHT ART BELFAST one-year extension.

Late Night Art Belfast continues on the The new artist members were first Thursday of every month, with over awarded their studios by a selection a dozen galleries opening their doors for panel, following an open submission an evening celebration of the vibrant application process which took place in visual arts scene in Belfast. View images May 2016. and updates with the hastag #LNAB. templebargallery.com

ACTING PROGRAMME CURATOR Temple Bar Gallery and Studios announced the appointment of Mary Cremin as Acting Programme Curator.

Mary will begin her year-long contract at TBG+S in early July 2016.

Mary Cremin is a writer, art historian and curator based in Dublin. She graduated from University College Cork with B.A. in History of Art and Political Geography (2004) and a Masters in Visual Art Practice (curating) from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin (2007). Most recently, she worked as Visual Arts Producer for Galway 2020 and curator of the DCU art collection. In 2016 she curated ‘Duality of Form’ at Solstice Arts Centre, and in 2015 she curated TULCA Festival of Visual Art, ‘Seachange’. templebargallery.com

NCAD FINE ART STUDIO NCAD School of Fine Art announced artist Níamh McCann as recipient of the inaugural NCAD Fine Art Studio Residency 2016/2017. Níamh will be based in the Annex postgraduate hub and NCAD are looking forward to her contributions to the MFA Fine Art programme. ncad.ie

SIM ICELAND The “We pay artists” campaign has been launched in Iceland. Its purpose is to improve the working conditions and status of artists. SÍM, the Association of Icelandic Artists, hopes that, through this campaign, it will be able to make a significant impact on museum and gallery representatives, on other cultural institutions, the government, the public and on visual artists themselves.

The core of the campaign is an

LUCIAN FREUD @IMMA Minister Heather Humphreys has announced that she is approving a grant of €371,000 to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). The money will be used to carry out essential improvement works at the Garden Galleries at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham which will be used to house a world class Lucian Freud exhibition later this year.

Speaking on Wednesday Minister Humphreys said: “Securing 50 works by Lucian Freud for a five year exhibition is a major coup for IMMA, and I believe this exhibition has the potential to open up the Museum of Modern Art to an even wider audience....The works, which are on loan from private collections, will be presented in a dedicated Freud Centre in the Garden Galleries for five years. They will include a selection of Freud’s finest paintings as well as numerous etchings ranging across six decades.

This funding injection will upgrade the Garden Galleries to a standard fit for art work of the calibre of the Freud exhibition, and will also of course expand IMMA’s exhibition space for the years ahead. The Freud project offers huge opportunities for Irish audiences of all ages to experience the work of this great artist and I look forward to seeing how the project evolves over the next five years. The works on the Garden Galleries will include: the installation of new gallery lighting and the upgrading of environmental conditions.”

NEW EQUIPMENT AT VAI One of the many benefits of becoming a member of Visual Artists Ireland is access to a wide range of equipment for hire, available exclusively to members at

July – August 2016

affordable rates. Institutions, organisations and non-artist individuals may also hire equipment by becoming members of VAI as an ‘organisation’ or ‘friend’.

Equipment is regularly updated, serviced and at rates far below standard commercial hire. New equipment at VAI includes our Canon WUX 500 – 5000 lumens projector. Full HD: 1080p (1920 x1080). Brightness 5000 lumens (3800 lumens in Eco Mode). Contrast Ratio 2000:1 (full on/full off). Projection Distance Coverage 1.2m – 16.2m. (3.0m – 5.4m). Screen Size 40” – 300” (86 x 54cm – 646 x 404cm). Digital Zoom Magnification 1.39 – 2.51:1. Commercial or organisation rate: €50.00 per day/ €100 per day; €200 per week /€350 per week; €800 for up to 5 weeks /€1,500 for up to 5 weeks; €1,200 for up to 7 weeks/ €1,800 for up to 7 weeks. A deposit of €100 is payable for this projector with a deposit of €30 for remote control and a deposit of €20 for cables.

ARTISTS IN POVERTY Visual Artists Ireland calls on government to alleviate poverty in the visual arts. 80% of visual artists in Ireland who depend on their creative income live under the poverty threshold. The government must act now to ensure that arts funding is increased to a level that supports the Arts Council and other funding bodies as they work with artists and arts organisations.

Since 2008 there has been a 27% increase in funding for the Department of the Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht.

During that same period there has been a 28% decrease in funding to the Arts Council which has resulted in damaging cuts to artists and arts organisations, some of which have had to close. The 2016 commemoration saw a rise in oneoff funding. The retention of that 2016 funding is important and needs to be in addition to the Arts Council’s current allocation. Commitment through confirmed action is needed now so that artists and arts organisations can reduce the highly precarious financial situation that they find themselves in.

Speaking in May 2016, Noel Kelly, CEO of Visual Artists Ireland, said: “We find it hard to understand why there is so much talk of support for the arts and yet when we ask for the most fundamental support there is no confirmed action.

The situation is now made more desperate by the further dilution of the arts at the cabinet table through the expansion of the brief of the department.” He continued: “We need to see a dedicated Department of Culture and clearly stated and guaranteed supports that will provide us with the means to move the creative people who provide us with the arts from beneath the poverty level.”

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

9

Roscommon: Resources & Activities Working Artists Roscommon

Practice, Practice, Practice

WAR members with Arthur Duignan at the launch of their 25th anniversary exhibition

ON 28 April 2016 Working Artists Roscommon (WAR) celebrated 25 years as a group with an exhibition of members’ work, and the launch of our new website, workingartistsroscommon.weebly. com. The guest speaker on the night was Arthur Duignan from Create.

During this period we have worked tirelessly, educated the next generation of local artists, supported and encouraged one another, travelled together and disagreed on many issues, but we have always maintained our core commitment to bringing contemporary art practice to our town.

I was born in Waterford and lived for 10 years in Dublin, where I studied fine art at NCAD. During that time I exhibited widely, namely with the Project Art Gallery. When I moved to Roscommon in 1984, seeking an alternative lifestyle, I felt isolated and removed from all the supports and connections I had formed in my earlier career. However, it did not take too long to meet and become firm friends with a group of likeminded individuals. After bumping into one another at social functions and events we decided to form a group. In 1990 WAR came into being.

Meetings were held and the group decided that membership would follow the criteria used by the Artists’ Association of Ireland and the Sculptors’ Society of Ireland. A chairman, an administrator, a secretary and a treasurer were elected. We decided to seek venues for exhibitions, workshops and live events, looking at both galleries and alternative spaces. On hearing about a vacant building in Roscommon Town – an RIC barracks built in 1702 called Edenville House – WAR applied to Roscommon County Council for use of the building. We hoped to provide studio spaces and workshop facilities for the group.

Roscommon County Council provided much support and in particular Derry O’Donnell, then County Secretary, had the foresight to see the benefits that supporting WAR would bring to the area.

Roscommon County Council were in fact the first local authority to support and maintain studios for an artists’ group. WAR provided public liability insurance and paid a peppercorn rent. In return free electricity and heating were provided. As part of the original proposal for the building, WAR aimed to renovate and develop the building into a community arts centre. An application was made

in collaboration with Roscommon County Council to the then Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht and Minister for Arts at the time, Michael D. Higgins TD. The application was successful and we received £250,000 to begin work on the building of Roscommon Arts Centre. When a county arts officer was appointed, Roscommon Arts Office took over the proposal, as it was not financially viable for WAR to continue the application process, but we continued to have an input. The second stage of the application identified a green field site for a new building to hold the Roscommon Arts Centre, while WAR retained the studios. Over the years many projects have taken place in Edenville House, most notably the ‘Crossroads’ symposium in 1995, which involved national and international artists. The symposium, organised

by Noel Molloy and supported by WAR, allowed renowned artists the opportunity to engage with spaces and people in Roscommon town (crossroads95art.weebly.com).

WAR artists have toured many exhibitions nationally and, through individual members, we have made international connections, allowing us to hold events and exhibitions in Germany, Poland and Scotland. In turn, we have hosted international artists in Roscommon and invited them to create events within the county. Working Artists Roscommon remains active to this day, while individual members continue to pursue personal projects. For our 25th anniversary members hosted an exhibition to launch a new website archiving our achievements. After all these years the aims of the organisation remain the same: to support members with group and individual projects, to promote the arts in the midlands by bringing contemporary art to various venues, and to initiate and support community groups and schools through workshops, teaching, exhibitions and live events.

‘BEST practice’ was a popular phrase in the early 1980s when I graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design and started out in Dublin looking for work (which was non-existent) and studio/ workspace (which was scarce and expensive).

Sound familiar? Some things have a habit of repeating themselves.

Galleries, exhibition spaces, curators, fashions and charlatans come and go, but for me there is one constant: the work. I have always strived to follow the best practice attitude and the advice “always be true to yourself”, and it hasn’t let me down yet. After trying to work from my apartment in Rathgar for a time, my wife and I decided to move to the country, to her hometown of Roscommon. There was the possibility of some non art related work and of somewhere to work from. For a number of years we worked from our house, but in 1990 I discovered a vacant building, Edenvale House. After forming Working Artists Roscommon, we put a proposal to Roscommon County Council to use it for studios. They accepted and sponsored us with nominal rent. At Edenvale we created an atmosphere where contemporary art was experienced and thus created work for ourselves.

My practice involves sculpture, found objects, mixed media and performance. My inspiration comes from my personal history, as well as memories and history in general that touch on both the mundane and the political. The found object sculptures can start with manipulation of a particular object, adding other objects or allowing it to speak for itself. The idea for the finished work comes from the object itself.

Alternatively, I might decide to take on a particular theme or commission and then seek out relevant objects, again manipulating them to fit the work. Depending on the scale of a project the work can take a couple of weeks or several months.

I source my material from recycling centres, charity shops and friends.

My performance is similar in that the ideas come from the same sources and can be sparked by a phrase, a news headline or a memory. I don’t work

to themed exhibitions, festivals etc. If the work suits then that’s all well and good.

My performance involves the use of objects as props, which I make myself or go in search of, alongside sound and video. Sound plays a big role and I will often work on this for months until I have exactly what is needed for the performance.

Every second of sound must be in the right place and at the right volume. I record sounds and also use found sounds, such as songs that I feel evoke a time, place or attitude. I sometimes use projected video or slides to add to the atmosphere and as a visual aid. Working directly and interacting with the video can become an important part of the performance.

In my performance I pose questions. I sometimes become devil’s advocate to evoke a reaction that can be muted or vocal. I created a performance in Minsk, Belarus at Navinki 1999, titled 26 Years of Sundays, the Twilight Zone. It related to Bloody Sunday, 1972, and made the national newspapers.

A fellow performer from Denmark who understood the Belarussian language told me that I had started a mini revolution.

I have in a few cases introduced a performance with a prologue translated into the host language. This provides a background to my inspiration for the performance, as some may not be familiar with Irish history or politics, as was the case in Minsk.

My work has provoked similar reactions in English speaking countries where no prologue was required, so for me it is exciting that someone can be affected to that extent. Being a couple of hours from Dublin Airport means that I often travel to symposia, festivals and events to perform.

I relish the opportunity to perform in alternative spaces outside the white cube as I feel I am not preaching to the converted. I also find I get a more genuine and honest reaction.

I continue to sculpt and to take on projects that excite me, like landfillart.org in the US, which is on tour, or the Eglington Canal project in Galway with the William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia. A work I made from found objects retrieved from the canal, titled The Book of Eglington Cover, is now in the collection of the William and Mary College at the Muscerelle Museum of Art. The Eglington Canal Project is ongoing and I’ve been invited to create workshops using found objects. In 2015 I was invited as a guest to the Global Film Festival in Williamsburg where a documentary featuring the Eglington Canal Project, my work and studio practice premiered.

Galleries and exhibition spaces are becoming scarce and finding funds to complete projects is difficult too. I am lucky that after a lot of work I have my own studio. But I will continue with my best practice philosophy and to sculpt and to perform, because you do what you are, not you are what you do.

Frances Crowe

Noel Molloy

francescrowe.com

noelmolloy.weebly.com

Note Original members: Batty O’Brien, Frances Crowe, Joe Cunniffe, Honor Fitzgerald, Helen Gibb, Anne Rigney, Dympna Molloy, Noel Molloy.

Current members: Frances Crowe, Joe Cunniffe, Honor Fitzgerald, Anne Rigney, Dympna Molloy, Noel Molloy. The WAR website was created by Noel Molloy, who also curated the 25th anniversary exhibition.

Noel Molloy, The Book of Eglinton Cover, 2015; found objects; Muscrelle Museum Collection, William and Mary Collage, Williamsburg VA

10

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Preserve & Press MY work explores the fragility of our built and natural environment, investigating what defines space and how it is lived and activated by humans and non-humans. Combining a range of mediums and processes, I examine the structures and boundaries, limitations and new potentials of public and private environments.

Over the past two years I have been working on a series of drawings, sound works and sculptures, and undertaken various forms of research through residency opportunities at Botkyrka Konsthall (Stockholm), The Model (Sligo) and The Harrington Studios (Boyle, Roscommon). Fields, meadows and hedgerows have been important sites of research, where I have focused on exploring the roles and functions of particular species that inhabit these landscapes. Gathering materials within a specific setting, the natural particles I find and collect inform processes of experimental construction and drawing techniques to become subjects for study, drawing implements, or elements for sculptures.

The residency at Botkyrka Konstall was carried out over three visits, each for a week to 10 days at a time, culminating in an exhibition and seminar event. The residency was situated in the Fittja suburb, in a ‘Million Programme’ apartment block.1 In response to this context I created a sculpture and a drawing exploring the process of planning, plotting and surveying of built architectural spaces, while making connections between the buildings and the surrounding natural environment in Fittja.

Following the residency at Botkyrka Konstall I was awarded a project space at The Model for a two-month period. This opportunity enabled me to develop what I had started in Stockholm, and explore new methods of working. The Marram species of grass played an important role in the works I developed in Sligo. Planted as a building structure to stabilise and prevent coastal erosion, its root structure acts as a supporting scaffold.

Among other things I am interested in the metaphorical potential of this material, and the duality of its strength and fragility.

The work I created at The Model explores our relationship with land: issues of ownership and the impermanence of our possession of nature. To document this I created a vinyl record postcard, the image and sound on the postcards acting as a memento of the physical space and sonic activity from a situation that no longer exists.

July – August 2016

North by Northwest Since June 2015 I have been working as artist in residence at the Harrington Studios, Boyle. I grew up in Boyle, and after a period of studying and working in Belfast and Dublin, I returned to live there again in 2011. The long-term nature of the residency at the Harrington Studios has allowed for more protracted explorations. Here I have been developing works that involve stretching and consolidating the potential of particular plants and processes. A number of these works reference activities and pieces of material culture that emerged during the Victorian era, such as the pressing and preserving of flowers, the extraction of pigment from plants and the introduction of non-indigenous plant varieties. This era marked a significant shift in our relationship with plant life in that it celebrated our ‘triumph over nature’. This concept has dominated and limited our thinking for over 150 years. This body of work looks at our historical, scientific, associative and symbiotic relationships with plant life, exploring forms of exchange that have occurred between species. It questions the fragility of the relationship between humans and nature, and explores the potential of plant species.

The flower press has become a crucial piece of equipment for me. This process has expanded and now occupies my full studio table. May and June are busy and exciting months. After a long wait, the materials I require emerge, growing in abundance again. I gather, collect and save hundreds of flowers for new works. This time is very precious.

Carrying these materials back to the studio, I spend hours, days, weeks and months cutting, arranging and composing works. And then I wait.

The works disappear into the press and it will be weeks before I see them.

Working in this space for a full year has allowed me the time to observe a full cycle of nature, as plants bud and blossom, grow, flourish, bow, fade and then disappear. This year in the studio has allowed me a place to wait, research and prepare for these materials to reappear again.

Naomi Draper

naomidraper.com

Note 1. The period between 1965 and 1974 saw a new phase in Sweden’s architectural history: the Million Programme (Miljonprogrammet), during which one million homes were produced to meet a significant shortage of housing.

Naomi Draper, Beach Meadow, 2015; chalk line drawing installation, dimensions variable

Clement McAleer, Seafront; oil on canvas, 61 x 76cm

BOYLE Arts Festival, which will take place from 21 to 31 July 2016, is now in its 27th year and has built a significant reputation, earning it a place as one of Ireland’s most anticipated summer celebrations of the arts. Since the festival’s inception, the visual art exhibition has remained its centerpiece, bringing established and emerging Irish artists together under one roof.

The Boyle Arts Festival exhibition takes place in the magnificent setting of King House, Boyle. It is held in high regard, not only by artists who recognise the importance of having work shown in these grand surroundings, but also by the many visitors who travel from all over Ireland to visit this exhibition.

When visiting the Boyle Arts Festival in the past, I’ve always been impressed by the cross section of work, which ranges from established names to young emerging artists. The sense of grandeur within King House also makes the visit extra special.

In March of this year I was asked to select work for the main exhibition at the Boyle Arts Festival. The remit was simple: to focus on the north and northwest, and particularly Roscommon.

The northern counties have produced some of the finest artists of the last century, including Roscommon-born Roderic O’Conor as well as Patrick Collins, Paul Henry, Sir John Lavery, William Scott, Jack B. Yeats and more recently Basil Blackshaw.

The raw, rugged beauty of the landscape of the north and the northwest has been a fertile source of inspiration for many artists. From the Antrim Coast to Benbulben in Sligo, many artists have relocated from the major cities and chosen to live and work here. Taking the geographic position as a cue for the title of the exhibition, ‘North by Northwest’ will present some of the finest artists working in this region.

There is a sense that the northern counties are often overlooked by the media, who tend to focus on what is happening with the visual arts in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. ‘North by Northwest’ hopes to highlight the quality of art being produced in this part of Ireland.

The exhibition will feature over 80 acclaimed artists and rising stars from the region. Presenting works in a range of media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, textile, ceramics, photography and video. ‘North by Northwest’ will be an exhibition that aims to engage, enthuse and inspire.

The Roscommon-based artists featured in the 2016 ‘North by Northwest’ exhibition are: painters Declan Butler, Malachy Costello, Annette Gaffney, Vera Gaffney, Leonora Neary, Vida Pain and Kate Wilson; ceramicist Peter Fulop; sculptors Cathy Carman, Billy Moore and Kate Oram; textile artists Frances Crowe and Brigitta Varadi; photographers Padraig Cunningham and Matthew Gammon; printer Susan Mannion and multi-disciplinary artists Naomi Draper and Christine Mackey. Other exhibiting artists include: Diarmuid Delargy, Melita Denaro, Rita Duffy, Comhghall Casey, Jacinta Feeney, Mary Theresa Keown, Clement McAleer, Kenny McKendry, Martin Mooney, Philip Moss, Cormac O’Leary, Mark Shields, Jennifer Trouton, Colin Watson and Keith Wilson.

The Boyle Arts Festival was established by local businessman Fergus Ahern many years ago.

Passionate about his hometown, he saw no reason why talented artists and their audiences should not make the trip to Boyle, where they could take the stage alongside local artists. Building on this sense of local pride, ‘North by Northwest’ will be an exhibition that showcases regional artists at all stages of their career on a national platform.

Paul McKenna, Curator of Visual Art, Boyle Arts Festival

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

Roscommon Arts Centre

Simon Carman, Helen Sharp, Pauline O’Connell, ‘Agri_Culture’, installation view, Roscommon Arts Centre

ROSCOMMON Arts Centre first opened its doors in 2000 on the outskirts of Roscommon town. The county’s first, and to date only, purpose-built arts facility, it includes a 194-seat auditorium with retractable seating and a first floor gallery and workshop space.

The venue is part of Roscommon County Council, which is also its primary funding source.

We are also in receipt of an annual programming grant from the Arts Council and have in the past also successfully been funded via other Arts Council initiatives for projects, tours and residencies.

Roscommon Arts Centre provides a yearround, multi-disciplinary programme of events, which provides opportunities for the local community to actively engage with a range of art forms through participatory and performance-based activities. The centre presents work by professional and community-based artists in theatre, dance, music, comedy and literature, along with a programme of cinema in the auditorium space. The visual art programme includes exhibitions in the gallery space and also sight-specific projects at locations around the county.

We act primarily as a receiving house, recognising the importance of supporting artists, companies and practitioners at all stages of their careers, through commissioning, co-producing and touring.

For specific projects we also provide complementary use of our space, along with administrative and technical support. To date, this has included projects in theatre, visual art and music.

We’ve developed a number of initiatives with the Roscommon Visual Artists’ Forum (RVAF) that was established in 2014 by Linda Shevlin, our curator in residence. Supported by Roscommon County Council Arts Office, RVAF was set up to provide visual artists based in or from the county with a platform to develop their practice through professional training, events, talks and exhibitions, while also providing access to information and opportunities from beyond the region.

In response to the needs and requirements of the artists in the county, the RVAF award was set up in 2015. Vida Pain was selected from an open call and was supported with a production budget of €2000, a solo exhibition at Roscommon Arts Centre, organisational support and curatorial assistance.

In 2015 we developed an artist hub in our gallery in conjunction with Roscommon Visual Artists’ Forum, providing artists with free access to creative software, internet, books, magazines and informational publications relating to the visual arts.

We have a strong commitment to supporting the creation of new work for youth and family audiences and have facilitated a number of short artist residencies. More recently these have focused strongly on working with older people.

Our performance programme is complemented by workshops, post and pre-show discussions and other initiatives that are designed to allow audiences to engage with the art forms on a different level, while the exhibition programme is supported by free tours and workshops for school and community groups. We have worked closely with our curator in residence (a role that is currently funded by the Arts Council) and colleagues in the Roscommon County Council Arts Office to develop and support the roll out of a visual arts strategy for the county.

Our annual programme includes two festivals aimed at families. The Lollipops Children’s festival is a multi-disciplinary event that runs throughout the month of October, both at the centre, and in schools and other venues around the county. In conjunction with artist/curator Jennie Guy we have developed an off-site educational project, Artschool, in which professional artists work remotely with schools in the county. The outcomes of these workshops were installed in our gallery during the Lollipops festival, allowing our younger audiences to engage with the work created by their peers. The centre also works closely with the Irish Film Institute on its schools programme, titled Filmed, which is geared at second level students.

The Roscommon Arts Centre has forged strong links with Roscommon County Youth Theatre, Roscommon County Youth Orchestra and Roscommon Visual Artists’ Forum. This summer sees the launch of our new pop-up visual artists’ cafe, designed to provide opportunities for local artists to meet up and catch up over coffee once a month.

Averyl Dooher, Director, Roscommon Arts Centre roscommonartscentre.ie, adooher@roscommoncoco.ie

11

12

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

ORGANISATION PROFILE

Situated in the Present LINDA SHEVLIN DISCUSSES M12’S (USA) WORK WITH ITS CO-FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR, RICHARD SAXTON.

M12, ‘The Breaking Ring’, Ring Actions, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, USA

M12, ‘The Breaking Ring’, Ring Actions, Centre for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, USA

The Feed Store, Byers, Colorado

July – August 2016

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

13

ORGANISATION PROFILE

The Feed Store, Byers, Colorado

Interior of The Feed Store, Byers, Colorado

Linda Shevlin: Richard, since spending some time in September 2015 at M12’s base, The Feed Store, in Byers, Colorado, I’ve been curious about your relationship as a collective, not just to your surrounding community, but to the wider rural art community.

Has this fixed, rural base intrinsically influenced the projects you undertake or do you harbour more nomadic tendencies in your methodology?

Richard Saxton: The Feed Store is our base of operations. It’s a wonderful old country main street structure, a false front. It is stout and exudes a deep feeling of rootedness. It seems like that building has always been there – whether in our town of Byers or any other small community like it on the American Plains. The Feed Store has been half burned down and rebuilt. It was once a post office, a grocery store, a bank, an auto mechanic’s shop, a pinto bean dry storage facility and a ranch supply shop. Now it’s our office and studio. It’s a nice lineage to be a part of.

It’s a bit like what I talked about in the Decade of Country Hits book about being nomadic and firmly rooted at the same time. Situated in the present, comfortably within the past and future – that’s one way rural space operates for us. It has a deep pull from the root, the earth.

Of course, for us and many people, rural space as an idea conjures up a strong relationship with rootedness, but we recognise fully how tentative and temporary that really is since it’s so close to us every day. A space like The Feed Store and absolutely the surrounding landscape (social, cultural, environmental and built) have a big impact on the work we make. It’s also a work in itself of course (The Feed Store), the building being a hub for lots of different modes of collaboration and creative inquiry. We can house groups of up to 15 people there. We run an experiential summer rural arts school, host potlucks, screenings, performances and of course guest artists, curators and researchers like yourself.

Beyond The Feed Store, our home terrain comes out in the many readily available themes of our region: imagery, the color palette, the textures and materials of the region all impact the work. The majority of the regional population, and especially urban folks, have little direct experience with this landscape. I think you can see a lot of the depth of the High Plains region through the projects we’ve taken on.

thing – like the art is over here and the programme for the public is over there. It’s all one thing.

I guess my thinking is that, in the end, it’s important for us to work with larger institutions, even if I don’t like it. If the larger cultural narrative goes into the world written by urbanity, elitism and through the cult of personality, there has to be an antidote. Working in rural communities with small budgets, and through connective means, allows us to access a different type of practice. It’s slower, more collaborative, moves with the seasons and has a quieter presence.

Those things seem needed to me right now. I see a lot of art or social practice, or my most disliked term, ‘creative place-making’, being done now – it’s a popular thing. Luckily there aren’t too many rural areas this new breed of art/urban planner has infected. But it’s coming. If we roll over and let the real estate developers (who are usually partners of or on the boards of these art institutions) write the narrative, the artists and real community will lose. Art is currently existing as a marketing tool. The system is totally absorbed by capitalism and the commodified system you’re talking about. So I think it’s important for us to work with larger institutions simply to provide that alternative perspective, or antidote, however you prefer.

As of the turn of the century, the world’s population was about 75% rural and 25% urban. In just over 100 years we’ve completely reversed those numbers. That’s a really crazy time/space ratio. The arts are of course highly urban-centric in both funding and practice in the US. And as we continue to move towards these heavy urban-based conversations, I think it’s critical that we keep the rural, land-based, location-based perspective activated.

LS: It’s interesting that you mention the rural/urban population reversal. We’re currently experiencing a major crisis in the housing rental market in our cities. Rent in Dublin is increasing exponentially while basic housing standards are barely being met in many of these properties. I’ve always thought artists are ideal candidates for the bucolic life, as the cost of living is generally lower than in cities, the pull of the commercial world is marginally less prevalent and spaces to work and live are abundant. We have some infrastructural issues, obviously, but with investment in basic services in rural towns I think cultural initiatives and LS: As a group your output ranges from experiential, one-off building arts communities could break the cycle of depopulasocial events to social sculptures in gallery contexts. You’ve tion. Are there any initiatives in the US that support and build recently been commissioned to produce new work titled ‘The communities around the arts in rural locations?

Breaking Ring’ for the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe RS: Well, there are, but I don’t really know all that much about them. and have shown components of other projects in institutional More often than not I see those types of initiatives in the US breed one situations too. How do you negotiate your relationship with of two things. First, either a craft or hobby artist kind of community. these institutions in terms of how they represent work produced It’s usually painters, which is great, all forms are needed. And, you around rural issues? Do you select institutions who inherently know, a blacksmith shop or the plein air painter and their studio/galunderstand M12’s ethos? Or do you think there is scope for a dis- lery kind of thing. It’s mostly for the tourists. The second, and I think ruption in the programming of the more formal, culturally cen- the more critical type, are the larger, funded ones. I was just talking about this with another writer the other day. We have this monster of tred institutions in the form of non-commodified artworks?

RS: We approach our exhibitions and commissioned projects collabo- a thing now, ‘creative placemaking’ in the US; it’s huge. Funders are all ratively. We want to work with people and places that can think lined up behind it. It seems to make everyone feel good. Artists get beyond pictures on the wall, and who are interested in extending the seduced by ‘support to make work‘ and ‘help develop small communiideas of M12 as a collaborative experiment to their own spaces. So in ties or neighbourhoods’. Here’s the catch: nobody is supporting artists the show you’re talking about it was important to work with curators to actually own that property so that they can build a sustainable that could ‘programme’ as a material of the project, not as a separate ‘place’. More often than not, the developers have already knocked

down whatever culture and place there was before launching their ‘place making’ project.

The whole idea is that artists build the ‘place’. Well, in the early 2000s an artist friend of mine lived in one of these types of artist/placebased buildings and I would visit often. That place was humming with artists and musicians at the time; there was a coffee shop, a bar, and it was gritty. The artists all loved it and fixed up their lofts, and I’m sure made a lot of good work. I recently visited there and you know what there are about 10 artists living there – the ones that have gotten older and can’t move anywhere else. The place is now outrageously expensive and no emerging artist could ever live there. They are now ‘lifestyle lofts’ for the business sector. So, here’s the deal: if you want to support artists and the community, do it. Don’t simply recognise artists as a convenient method for further gentrifying areas. Who paid for the rent, upkeep and bettering of those live/work spaces and the surrounding community for the last 20 years? The artists did. And where are the artists now? Pushed out, some having to go to low-income housing situations without any studios. That’s not place making and it’s not supporting the arts. It’s capitalism and real estate development using the arts as bait.

LS: M12, along with other US rural practitioners, have been gaining national and international recognition for their projects over the last decade or so. You were recently invited by Lucy Lippard to participate in one of a series of panel discussions organised by her during her time in residence at the University of Wyoming Art Department. How did this invitation come about?

RS: Lucy has been a great supporter of our work over the last several years. She is someone who really believes in place and integrity.

Kirsten Stoltz, who was our programmer for four years, also worked with Lucy on a project about art and climate change, and Kirsten had lived in Santa Fe for years, so they might have gotten to know each other there as well. You know, that whole New Mexico draw is really interesting. That’s a place where I think a lot of people are sensitive to the issues we’re talking about.

Two years ago we participated in a project through the Santa Fe Art Institute. We were looking at wild horse issues in the American West and drawing an arch from the image of the romantic wild horse to the slaughtering of horses for food production, making connections through various means. We made a book and vinyl record about it called An Equine Anthology. You know Lucy’s work is also somewhat about drawing connections through seemingly disparate sources. I imagine inviting all of us was a natural extension of her writing.

LS: Your comments about ‘placemaking’ are really interesting, as public art and projects that involve a level of participation from communities can be misappropriated for this purpose. The expectations and perceived outcomes can often be linked to a notional idea that art can gentrify or drastically change communities. It can, of course, to some degree, but the investment doesn’t always equal the expectation and, as you’ve said, the artist or their livelihood isn’t always fully considered in these transactions.

RS: In some ways change and how art can facilitate change, is tied to the people and place you work with. For us, we’ve worked in a number of different communities and I think all of them have experienced change in some way through the projects we’ve initiated. But, that said, change is something we think of as being constant – rural communities are in so much flux these days – so good change, or bad change, or lasting change, or systematic change, that might be something to explore further.

Too often it seems that as a larger social being we’re moving away from a collective awareness, away from the small, intimate and poetic; away from being a supportive and sustainable species. I think in our projects we are trying to get closer to an idea of elemental awareness that exists outside of the city, both for ourselves and for those who engage with our work. We see our practice as a series of connections, much like an aesthetic network or terminal with many ideas, people and experiences interfacing. Maybe you can get closer to change the further down the road you’re willing to drive.

Richard Saxton is an artist and educator, currently an Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the founder and director of the M12 Collective, an interdisciplinary group based on the High Plains in Colorado, USA. m12studio.org

14

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

One Water Laughing in a Thousand Thousand Fields

1

ANNA MACLEOD DISCUSSES HER CAREER AS AN ARTIST BASED IN RURAL LEITRIM AND RECENT RESIDENCIES UNDERTAKEN IN NEW SOUTH WALES, AUSTRALIA.

Anna Macleod, Junction Mine performative walk, October 2015; Broken Hill, NSW, Australia; photo by Susan Thomas

I live in Leitrim, which is considered peripheral by some, both in terms of its geographical location and its perceived distance from the Dublin art scene. “Where exactly is Leitrim?” some TV pundits quip when attempting to ridicule the county.

One definition of ‘periphery’ is ‘an area lying beyond the strict limits of a thing’. The historical and geographic fluidity of the global art scene suggests that there is no longer such a thing as a centre for the art world. The internet has changed the former model in which everything was mediated through a centre. According to the art historian, Piotr Piotrowski, “the challenge we are facing now is to find the relationships – not necessarily the influences – but the structural relationships between the previous so-called peripheries”.2 Two years ago I left full time teaching in the Fine Art department at the Dublin Institute of Technology to concentrate on my visual arts practice. During these two years I have found Leitrim a perfect base for my independent art and research practice. Overall it’s cheaper to live in rural Ireland. I have a studio in the Leitrim Sculpture Centre (LSC) in Manorhamilton, which offers a vibrant working environment and technical support for making work. The extremely active workshop, residency and exhibition programme at LSC brings a constant flow of new faces to the town. I travel frequently to participate in residencies and exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. These are mostly in rural locations where I can research the dynamics between local and global commonalities of land use and resource management. I am interested in the struggles faced by communities in the light of climate change, water issues, mining and fossil fuel extraction. I have been researching the strategies developed by rural communities and indigenous groups to resist and to protest against the contamination of land and water bodies by extreme energy processes, intensive farming practices and governmental economic initiatives.

The support of the Leitrim County Council Arts Office is invaluable to artists living in the county. Most Leitrim-based artists have benefitted in some way from the schemes, bursaries and residencies that are on offer. The Dock in Carrick on Shannon and the Leitrim Sculpture Centre in Manorhamilton both have vibrant residency, workshop, training and exhibition programmes.

Despite these supports, I have found it difficult to survive financially as an independent artist in Ireland. Being a rural dweller can make accessibility to national opportunities more difficult. A lot of time is spent in the car, so having one is a necessity, given that public

transport in the west of Ireland is very poor. Dublin remains the hub for rail transport and the bus network can be circuitous and time consuming. It once took me seven hours to travel by bus from Limerick to Sligo!

In terms of practice opportunities I have had more success recently with applications for international residencies. The concerns within my practice seem to resonate in regions where climate change, energy production, environmental human rights and the contribution that artists can make to these fundamental questions are taken very seriously. I often work with artist-led organisations and institutions that rely on a range of funding streams, from governmental agencies to corporate/individual sponsorship, in order to survive, and to provide practical and financial supports for visiting artists. Artists in Ireland have seen a significant reduction in income since 2008 and with the situation worsening it seems that more and more artists will have to seek opportunities overseas.

My research and project work has involved collaboration and consultation with artists, scientists, historians, archivists, indigenous elders and environmental activists, among others. The most recent residency, undertaken last October at Broken Hill Art Exchange (BHAE) in the Australian mining town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, was an intensive experience and led to a collaborative sister project, ‘Dam Empty? Damn Right!’, with artist Wendy Murray the following month in Sydney.

Broken Hill is an isolated mining city in the far west outback of New South Wales. The first Australian city to be awarded heritage status, its ore rich mines provided much of the early wealth for settlers in Australia from the 1840s. With most of the mines now depleted, Broken Hill is a post-industrial city with a diminishing population and is currently experiencing a severe, almost total, failure of its water supply from the manmade lake system of reservoirs on the Darling River.

The project in Broken Hill, titled ‘Broken Flow: One Water Laughing in a Thousand Thousand Fields’, led to working partnerships with Dr Beryl Philp Carmichael, an elder of the Ngiyeempaa people, members of the Broken Hill Community Voices Choir, who “use music to give voice to social justice issues and promote freedom and respect for all people”, Menindee Lake: We Want Action group, writer Melinda Rackham and Director of BHAE Susan Thomas. I constructed and carried a portable sculpture through two performative walks in the rain-stressed environs of Broken Hill. One walk brought

water from the almost empty Darling River to the dry Menindee Lake bed. The second was a community walk around the closed Junction Mine in the centre of Broken Hill with members of the Broken Hill Community Voices Choir.

Inspired by a climate change poster-making workshop I held during my residency, BHAE have started a social enterprise project using one of the poster designs, “Value the Rain”, to make bags from recycled fabric, the proceeds of which will go towards future environmental projects in Broken Hill.

‘Dam Empty? Damn Right!’, the self-funded collaborative project with Sydney- based New Zealand artist Wendy Murray, began immediately after the Broken Hill residency. With a shared interest in the potential of art to bring about change through direct action in sitespecific public arenas, Wendy and I developed a street poster, zine and performance project devised to draw attention to climate change, infrastructural failure and state mismanagement of the water systems in rural New South Wales. The history of water management in Australia’s water Murray-Darling Basin demonstrates what happens when profit is prioritised over sustainability and cultural use.

The unfolding water provision crises in rural New South Wales in places such as Broken Hill and Menindee has had little nationwide media coverage in Australia despite the seriousness of the situation facing the communities along the Darling River. For ‘Dam Empty?

Damn Right!’ we drew on the legacies of agitprop visual art practices of hand-printed poster and zine production as well as performative public action to highlight the water plight facing communities within the Murray-Darling water catchment area and to try to build solidarity in urban areas such as Sydney for water-stressed rural Australian communities.

Our work in Sydney was in support of the Menindee Lakes: We Want Action Group and Watershed Alliance groups, who are agitating for a fair and equitable potable water system. We posted the hand printed posters around the streets of Sydney, also using social media and interviews on ABC radio as a way to reach broader audiences.

On 29 November 2015, the day when thousands of people gathered to march from Speakers’ Corner on the Domain in Sydney in support of action on climate change at the Paris Climate Change Conference, we distributed the hand-printed zines and read out the 2010 UN Declaration on Water as a Human Right. The zine and performance urged Australians to take action by signing a petition to the Senate to enshrine Water as a Human Right in the Australian constitution.

Right to water Water is a right, Write to water Water is a write, It’s time to write It’s time to right, Dam empty? Damn right!

From February to April 2017 I will be participating in the Water Rights Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico. Here I will continue to explore human resilience to the threats of climate change and what that means for communities who live in semi-arid, high altitude locations. Santa Fe is 7,000 feet above sea level and the Santa Fe River is considered by the conservation group American Rivers to be the most endangered river in the United States. The length of the residency, which will last three months, encourages interdisciplinary collaboration and community engagement. This will be a fantastic opportunity for me to spend time with a group of artists interested in the broader context of water rights and the complex relationship between embodiment and landscape.

Anna Macleod is a recipient of the Fire Station Digital Media Award 2016 and currently has work in a group show touring Ireland, titled ‘What if we got it wrong?’, curated by Nora Hickey M’Sichili, Director, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. Wexford County Buildings will host the show from 10 June – 29 July 2016.

It will then travel to Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton in September and West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen in October.

Notes 1. Rumi, from the Rubaiyat in The Essential Mystics: The Soul’s Journey into Truth (ed. Andrew Harvey), Castle Books, New York, 1996 2. ‘A Way to Follow’, interview with Piotr Piotrowski, Art Margins, published 29 January 2015 annamacleod.com, wendymurray.com.au, www.facebook.com/damemptydamnright, sfai.org

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

15

RESIDENCY

Niamh O’Doherty, The Airport, 2015

Niamh O’Doherty, The Enlightenment, June 2015; still frame

Niamh O’Doherty, Fragments of a Landscape, 2015

Manifestations of Time NIAMH O’DOHERTY DISCUSSES HER RECENT RESIDENCY, WHICH TOOK PLACE ON HRÍSEY, A SMALL ISLAND OFF THE COAST OF ICELAND, AND EXPLORED THEMES OF TIME AND LIGHT.

IN June 2015 I travelled to Hrísey, a small island off the northern coast of Iceland, to the Old School Art House Residency run by Norðanbál art group. Hrísey is set in a narrow fjord, Eyjafjordur, which is flanked by jagged snow-capped mountains on three sides and opens onto the Arctic Ocean to the north. Situated at a latitude of 66 degrees North, just south of the Arctic Circle, it experiences 24 hours of day light for 3 weeks each summer, contrasted with just 2 hours of daylight in mid winter.

My practice is an ongoing investigation into the nature of time.

In 2013 I began a body of research titled Reflections on, a study of time in the landscape. Looking for a landscape where measured time had no business, I undertook the first iteration of the research in Portnoo, County Donegal, a place where time is signified by the changing light, the path of the sun on the horizon and the movement of tides across a peninsula. There I set out to see and record on Super 8 film a single day from sunrise to sunset, documenting the shifts and changes in light and tide through the course of the day. This research, and the resulting work, emphasised the cyclical nature of time, which is particularly visible in the movement of the sun and the shift from day to night.

This work posed a question: how does time exist in a landscape in which the most basic form of time, the movement of day to night, is absent? In October 2014 I received project funding from Rehab Ireland to further my research into the nature of time in the landscape and set about finding a residency that would allow me to further explore this new question. Visiting the Old School Art House Residency in June provided this opportunity, facilitating prolonged engagement with the landscape, but this time in an environment where the sun never sets.

The village lies to the south of the Island of Hrísey, protected by the mountains of the mainland to the south, east and west and by the island itself to the north. With a population of about 200 people, the village consists of a church, a shop, a cafe, a fish factory, a swimming pool/community centre, a village museum and a few scattered houses.

The northern half of the island is a bird sanctuary with a single yellow lighthouse marking the tip. The Old School Art House is set in the old school building and is located right in the village about five minutes walk from the harbour. It can accommodate up to four artists each month. The local people are warm and welcoming; over the years they have become accustomed to the presence of artists in their community. Through various exhibition openings and events, a social outlet for the Islanders has been created and they have come to respect the work of the visiting artists by regularly attending these happenings. In a small community the presence of four different artists each month

Niamh O’Doherty, Untitled, 2015

also provides monetary benefit to the village and ultimately assists with maintaining the Island shop and cafe.

From 10 June to 7 July each year, the sun remains constantly above sea level, moving incrementally higher from the horizon at midnight with each passing day, reaching its highest turning point on 21 June, the summer solstice. After this, it begins its descent on the horizon once again. Due to the shallow angle of the June sun, the descent and subsequent assent of the sun is long and drawn out. The warm tones of the late evening and early morning linger for hours and the island is bathed in a seemingly endless hue of warm, rich colours that are reflected in the sea and the snow on the mountain tops.

At that time of year, both sunrise and sunset occur in the north.

With the village nestled to the south of the Island, the sun’s journey across the northern horizon was only visible at a clearing set high on the hill behind the village. On each clear night, I set out along the gravel path to the clearing and photographed the sun as it crossed over the horizon. The sun shifted its position on the horizon with each morning that I returned to photograph and film in that sublime landscape. I saw that the extent of that shift denoted the changing angle of the earth with each day that passed. I noticed that in early July, once the sun disappeared under the horizon once again, the change in the angle of the earth would be visible, not in the height of the sun above

the horizon, but in how far around the earth, the sunrise and the sunset would appear. Rising and setting occurred to the north in summer, to the south in winter, and due east to west at the equinoxes in September and March.

I had come to Iceland to see how time manifests itself in a landscape where the movement from day to night doesn’t happen.

However, in the incremental shifts of the position of the sun, I saw not the day, but the year, as I photographed the sun dipping over the northern horizon. The island being positioned so close to the Arctic Circle meant that in mid winter the sun would rise and set in the south. This makes the yearly cycle very apparent in the landscape. On the last day, as the sun approached the mountain to the west, I turned the camera and took a series of photos making up a 360-degree panorama of the landscape around me. I began thinking about how I could get the contrasting image of the winter sun rising and setting in the south. As I left the island I was already planning my return.

When I returned in December a pristine blanket of white snow covered the landscape and the island was steeped in a near-constant night. On clear days the sun was just visible behind the mountain tops; the landscape bathed in deep pink and bright orange hues.

Temperatures dipped as low as minus sixteen degrees. With the cold constricting the amount of time I could spend photographing, the darkness dictating when I could venture out and the snow and ice limiting my movement, I found that working on the island in December had to be much more focused. I picked one thing each day to try and attain and kept a close eye on the weather forecast.

With only three days to go I finally got my opportunity to return to the clearing. I walked out of the village towards the spot where I knew the gravel path began and turned off the road. With the untouched snow six feet thick on the ground, the landscape seemed strange and unfamiliar. As I approached the clearing, the southern sunset came into view and I took a moment to take in the sublime landscape that surrounded me.

These two residencies provided me with the chance for a prolonged engagement with the landscape and my time on the island brought my investigations into the nature of time in the landscape to a conclusion. This immersion in the landscape created an awareness of the cyclical nature of time, visible in the movement of the sun through the course of the year and in the subtle changes in light through the course of the day.

Note The June residency to the Old School House was funded by Rehab Ireland. The Arts Council of Ireland funded the residency in December.

16

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

HOW IS IT MADE?

Exile & Perception CURATOR SANDRA KRIŽIC ROBAN TALKS TO ARTIST DRAGANA JURIŠIC ABOUT HER BOOK AND EXHIBITION ‘YU: THE LOST COUNTRY’, AND HOW HER PERSONAL HISTORY AS AN EXILE DETERMINES HER WORK AND HER PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD.

Dragana Jurišic, image from YU: The Lost Country; all photos courtesy of the artist

Sandra Križic Roban: In the last couple of years we have witnessed a surge in the number of publications and research works that deal with the former Yugoslavia. While some focus on the legacy of post-war modernism, and others on the post-1990s period and the social divisions that transpired as a result, there are also a significant number that deal with the writer’s own family history and the pursuit of identity. I want to know about how you came to do it. Why is heritage important to you? What have you found out about yourself during this research, and how did you perceive your own family? Did anything change from the things you already knew?

Dragana Jurišic: I am the child of a Serbian mother and a Croatian father, from Slavonski Brod, a border-town with Bosnia and Herzegovina. Until 1990 I was registered as a Yugoslav. Since Croatia proclaimed its independence I can only register as ‘other’. Yugoslavs have been written out of history. I wondered what happened to 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Where have they disappeared to? I also wanted to deal with the politics of forced amnesia that many independent states of the former Yugoslavia adopted. My memories and emotions about this lost country were very conflicting. I tried to engage with the meaning of identity. Is identity tied to a nation or a place, or can a person build his or her own metaphysical home, one that can’t so easily be annihilated and taken away?

SKR: The need to determine one’s own identity by exploring the past – of one’s family, friends, immediate surroundings, state, and nation – is becoming a global trend. Is it a generational issue?

At a time of mass migrations, the uncertainties in the political and the economic realm, what is actually being changed? Is this a case of dealing with personal insecurities or the need to, despite all the instabilities, define one’s personal identity?

DJ: It is a reasonable presumption, in this era of globalisation, that the concept of identity as tied to the nation state is rendered obsolete and redundant. This, unfortunately, is not the case, and we can see that if we look at what happened in the former Yugoslavia. If the national identity is worth killing for, it must be important! What I found out about myself, through experiencing war and losing my national identity, is that this experience, although traumatic, freed me. I believe that people are not trees; the importance of roots is something I left behind.

I also learned that nationalism is the ideology of idiots; it points to a significant lack of confidence in yourself as an individual.

I really admire the work of Dubravka Ugrešic, and when you ask this question I am reminded of something she said in an interview with Svetlana Boym: “The identity policy is a toy; it could be benign, it could be dangerous, it could be liberating, it could be enslaving. When people realise that they were given a cheap toy identity, and that the real problems are somewhere else, maybe they will start to search for

Dragana Jurišic, image of the artist as a child in YU: The Lost Country

ways to be equal, not different. Because perpetuating the trauma of repressed ethnic and other identities produces a thick and manipulative ideological fog.” (Ugrešic, 2002)

SKR: Why have you decided to base your research on Rebecca West’s book? Some of her political statements are questionable and subjective. Are her political views important to you, or just the fact that she ventured on a journey that still provokes interest and serves as a kind of a model?

DJ: I find Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941) extraordinary. It’s a masterpiece of twentieth-century writing. I look at it as a work of art, not as a history book. She said she knew that the country would disappear so she had to write about it (and it did disappear twice since the book’s publication: first in 1941 and then in 1991).

Black Lamb and Grey Falcon is a repository of memories, and we all know how factual memories are. Look, for example, at the collective memory of our Yugoslav past and what happened to that?

Yes, I was well aware of some of the exaggerations and inconsistencies in West’s writings. I am also well aware of her politics after the book was published. The key for me is that in this book she never ‘others’ Yugoslavs, unlike the majority of the writers who wrote about it.

Some of these writers even used Black Lamb and Grey Falcon as their guide during the 1990s conflicts, and still ended up writing patronising, stereotyping publications such as Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan.

YU: The Lost Country is a conceptual artwork in which I present my point of view. It is my personal history. Following the thought that this is a conceptual artwork, I could have invented a story in which Alice from Alice in Wonderland came to visit ex-Yugoslavia and documented her fictional journey; it really would not matter. I just chose the book I loved, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. This book provided me with a map to follow.

SKR: Your book begins with a photograph of a girl at the moment of her becoming a Pioneer. Although you belong to a younger generation, who perhaps did not even enter the Pioneers, you use this symbolism that probably has a completely different meaning to you than it has to my generation. What motivated you to open your book in this manner?

DJ: Well, actually, the little girl in the photograph is me. I was 16 when the war started so I did experience that whole narrative and symbolism you speak about. I think constructs like national identity, belief systems and core values are bestowed upon us. These are strong currents to swim in and not many people have either the strength or courage to make their own way. I chose this motive as a ‘beginning’ because the photograph was all shades of wrong: it’s blurry, my Pioneer hat is falling off my head and my fist is clenched. I am looking very uncomfortable with the whole scenario.

Dragana Jurišic, image from YU: The Lost Country

SKR: You first studied psychology, and later you started studying photography. What is photography to you? Your book ends with a ‘delicate’ scene captured from a plane. Does photography provide assistance in the transition to ‘other’ states, different ways of understanding? Is it a medium that makes research easier and spices it up with bits of reality?

DJ: Photography is fleeting, which allows it to capture that sense of rootlessness and dislocation with relative ease. I consider myself an exile, because the country I refer to as my home does not exist anymore. There is no home to return to. Both exile and photography intensify our perception of the world. In both, the memory is in its underlying core. Both are characterised by melancholy. As Salman Rushdie said, exiles live “more comfortably in images, in ideas, than in places”.

Dragana Jurišic works predominantly through the medium of photography and video. Jurišic has won several awards including the Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor Award’s Special Recognition from Duke University. In 2013 she completed her PhD and presented ‘YU: The Lost Country’, a critically acclaimed touring exhibition and a book. Her work is in many collections including the Irish State Art Collection.

Sandra Križic Roban is a Croatian curator, art historian and critic.

She developed a digital archive of conceptual photography projects and is responsible for the programme at the Spot Gallery, Zagreb. Since 2000, she has been the Editor in Chief of the magazine for contemporary visual arts Život umjetnosti. Roban has authored numerous books including ‘At Second Glance: Positions of the Contemporary Croatian Photography’.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

17

RESIDENCY

Damien Duffy, Sea Ghost Audit, 2016; oil and acrylic canvas; 300 x 250cms; all photos courtesy of the artist

Damien Duffy, work on Operation Gladio, 2016

Re-approriation in Rome

Daniel Buren’s early institutional critique and in this case a wry adaptation into the profile of the Twin Towers. Foregrounding the flag is a memorial ‘helmet’ of the fallen, which is in fact a hat made from bronze foil and placed on a plinth. This is an allusion to other memorials to the fallen as well as to the denigrating headgear of the conspiracy theorist.

Another work made in Rome points to the nefarious politics of Italy’s anni piombo or Years of Lead in the 1970s and 80s and Operation Gladio.3 It is a less didactic, more ‘open work’ (to use the name of a critical tome of the period).4 Being in a city as rich and layered as Rome has been liberating and hugely productive. The luxury of the residency – the ‘assisted living’ and having the time to disentangle various threads of thinking – has allowed me to gain a broader perspective.

The year at the academy is made up of four terms. Residents are here for three, six or nine month stays and these can occur once or twice a year. For the artists, each three-month visit results in an exhibition of work in the BSR Gallery. These group shows are open to the public and provide a platform for work to be presented to the wider Roman public as well as to curators and collectors.

Though Rome is the capital, Milan seems to have a more dynamic contemporary art scene. Nonetheless there are strong contemporary spaces in Rome: Gavin Brown has a unique project space in an old church which recently showcased Mark Lecky, T293, originally from Naples, has recently opened, while Indipendenza, one of Rome’s most idiosyncratic spaces, is currently showing Marc Camille Chaimowicz.

There is also Gagaosian, Maxi, Cura and numerous independent foundations. Rail travel within Italy is relatively cheap and worth using to visit other cities.

Rome is an encounter that is uniquely and irrevocably tied up with the past and this serves to amplify and spotlight the shape of the present. It’s this perspective that is distinctive to Rome and this residency. The BSR has opened up numerous opportunities for me, one being an invitation to lecture at the Universita Bocconi in Milan. This also provided the opportunity for a visit to Fondazione Prada and other institutions. Further lecturing opportunities have opened up in London as well as another residency later in 2016 with a Foundation in Rome. The residency is an unrivalled opportunity that has helped me forge new friendships and firm links with both the British School and the City of Rome.

DAMIEN DUFFY TALKS ABOUT HIS RESIDENCY AT THE BRITISH SCHOOL IN ROME. THE Academia Britannica is one of the most prestigious research academies in Rome, providing a base for visual arts, humanities, architecture and archeology. Seven artists at a time live and work amongst the various scholars in doctoral and post-doctoral research. The whole building has recently undergone a refit, completing a sustainable building project that has modernised the 1901 Lutyens design.

Despite the grandeur of the neo-classical facade, the Academy is designed around a cortile with a fountain and four grand cypresses that give the place a rustic charm and provide an open air space in the heart of the building. There are around 25 residents along with a continual flow of shorter-term visitors.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) fellowship is advertised through their website biennially.1 The opportunity to apply arose following a sustained period of studio work that was drawing to a close. The work I made during that phase was well placed to benefit from continuation in Rome, specifically the Cy Twombly appropriation works. This idea was put forward in my proposal, alongside several others around Walter Benjamin’s ‘dialectical image’. The application went through to the shortlist, which was followed by an interview and finally selection. Having been in Rome on several other work related projects, the chance to live and work there for a sustained period was very appealing. It would also allow me to firm up connections I had previously made in the city.

Through the generous support of ACNI the residency provides full board and a stipend that goes toward making work. The artist studios are well finished, double height rooms, each with a moderniststyle mezzanine, bedroom and bathroom. There are seven such studios attached to the British School in Rome. As an institution, it seeks to foster a community that allows for cross-disciplinary exchange. This happens informally over meals each day and more formally as part of the numerous events that the British School at Rome (BSR) hosts.

A rich and varied programme of weekly public lectures in humanities and visual arts attracts visiting artists and leaders in a variety of research fields. This public platform creates an interface of learning and exchange between the international scholars and artists from the various other academies in Rome. William Kentridge gave a talk recently on his public art piece Triumphs and Laments, which was accompanied by a major performance on the banks of the Tiber. Other talks have come from Tim Marlow (the Royal Academy), Andrew Stahl (the Slade), author and educator Dame Marina Warner, artist Akram Sakari and Eyal Wiezman, who spoke about his theory of ‘forensic aesthetics’.

Almost all those visiting artists and researchers are available for studio visits and more often than not are a part of the conversation over dinner, so the opportunities to discuss work and to make invaluable links are abundant. Being a resident at the Academy provides not

just the live-in studio and 24-hour access to the phenomenal library, but also means numerous visits to sites, buildings and archives that are inaccessible to the general public. It encourages an immersive relationship with the city and with Italian culture. In addition, Italian language classes are provided once a week for beginner to intermediate level.

It’s said that one could spend a lifetime in Rome and only scratch the surface, a feeling that can be overwhelming when the purpose of the stay is to make work. Having the good fortune of being in Rome in early January afforded me an insight into the city outside of the tourist season. The wind down after the festival of Christmas reveals a city that takes on a more relaxed tempo.

This element of my stay felt like a real privilege, especially this year as the weather in mid January onwards was unusually warm and dry by normal standards: an early spring. The luxury of having this space gave me an opportunity to see the city, the museums and palazzo without the crush. Finding a balance and managing time seems somewhat ironic in a city known for its ‘eternal’ nature.

On applying for the residency the applicant is asked to design one or a number of projects that engage fruitfully with the city. Inevitably the experience of Rome dramatically changes things. Much is made of how transformative the Rome Fellowship can be; against the backdrop of such cultural grandeur, history and art, it is inevitable that one undergoes a reassessment of planned projects. This goes to the core of the stay here. It can be something of a sensorial overload. The grandeur and elegance of the city is striking, from Empire and Renaissance up to the grand public parks of Borghese, coupled with its cinematic and political history. Rome provides a cityscape that is unlike any other European capital.

The work I have been making here is directly linked to a series of appropriations of landmark artworks that started in 2012, a form of ‘ventriloquism’ that shifts the agency of certain works in order to address different contexts and meaning.

In the work Sea Ghost Audit I unpick the painterly indulgence of the American artist Cy Twombly, employing elements from his work in order to address the ongoing refugee crisis in the Mediterranean.

Twombly was himself a migrant who lived in Rome for most of his life.

This was then paired with the poetry of C.P. Cavafy, a source used frequently by Twombly, looking in this instance at his poem Waiting for the Barbarians. Alongside this I’m developing works that take a skewed glance at history painting through the lens of counter narratives (like Hegel’s “owl of Minerva” hitting a sheet glass window).

Co-opting appropriation and ambiguity of authorship, the piece False Flag is a remake of Jasper Johns’s White Flag and Sturtevant’s copy of the same.2 Both paintings/flags were hung vertically, high up on the wall. The flag stripes continued onto the wall in a mute grey, a nod to

Damien Duffy was awarded the ACNI Fellowship at the British School in Rome 2016. He set up and led Void Art School 2007– 2016, and is a former member of Void curating committee 2006– 2015.

Notes 1. The Fellowship at the British School in Rome is open for application through the Arts Council Of Northern Ireland: artscouncil-ni.org/funding 2. The contemporary term ‘false flag’ describes covert operations that are designed to deceive in such a way that the operations appear as though they are being carried out by entities, groups or nations other than those who actually planned and executed them 3. Anni piombo or The Years of Lead was a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy that lasted from the late 1960s into the early 1980s, marked by a wave of terrorism 4. Eco Umberto, The Open Work, 1962

18

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

RESIDENCY

Up From the Country DEIRDRE O’MAHONY DISCUSSES HER RECENT RESIDENCY AT IMMA AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF HER ONGOING WORK ‘A VILLAGE PLOT’.

Deirdre O’Mahony, A Village Plot, 2016; IMMA; photo by Eavan Aiken

I live and work in a rural part of County Clare. Beautiful as it is, I do sometimes hanker for the city, so the prospect of doing a residency in Dublin was very appealing. Last October Janice Hough was in touch to ask if we might have a meeting about a forthcoming project with Cumbrian arts agency Grizedale Arts, who were planning a major project at IMMA in August this year. As Janice runs the residency programme at IMMA and part of the project was to rethink the residency programme, I was very pleased to be invited into the initial stage of discussions at IMMA. I had visited Grizedale to do some research a couple of times in recent years and they brought a group from a project I initiated, the ‘X-PO’, to participate alongside them in Freeze Art Fair 2012. Grizedale ran a workshop to introduce their vision for a future living/model village project, while Karen Guthrie and Anders Lang presented their idea for growing a food glut garden through which to consider the role of ‘useful’ cultural production within future economies. I was asked to put forward initial ideas, then in January I was invited to spend a short research residency at IMMA to develop these further.

The invitation was appealing for a number of reasons. I wanted to engage further with Grizedale and also to touch base with curators and artists I rarely get to see. Isolation is a significant factor in my working life and much of what I do is largely invisible because of my distance from Dublin. It is central to my practice to make my work in context and in response to the particular social, economic and political issues affecting where I live. By following the threads of ideas that arise ‘in’ place – whether these are disregarded forms of tacit knowledge or the regulation of landscape and agriculture – the issues and inequalities affecting place, space and landscape which play out differently in rural places can begin to surface. Thinking through these differences in public is at the heart of what I do: making use of cultural space to highlight the reductive lens that is all too often applied to rural life in Ireland. For the past seven years my research has been focused on a project called ‘SPUD’ which began with conversations about growing food at ‘X-PO’ and from there developed into thinking about forms of knowledge that are considered redundant and obsolete, despite their contemporary relevance.

In Late January I began researching a proposal for the Grizedale project, now called ‘A Fair Land’, at IMMA. My starting point was Antoine-Agustin Parmentier (1737 – 1813) who saw the potato as a means of breaking the cycle of famines in France and as a key to coping with a rapidly expanding population during a period of

back and a weak mind to do something like that”. The remark demonstrated attitudes about farming and tacit knowledge that still resonate today, and I wondered if bringing some members to work in the context of a national institution like IMMA might change perceptions of their skill. Furthermore, the presence of potatoes within the institution opened an unexpected space within the museum site to audiences who might not feel that a contemporary art institution was for them.

The ridges were planned as formal, decorative flowerbeds for the front lawn entrance of IMMA, bringing agricultural knowledge into this cultural space. The design was taken from Margaret Stokes’s illustration for the title page of The Cromlech on Howth, an early example of Celtic ornamentation used during the Gaelic arts and crafts revival, which is in keeping with Grizedale’s reference to John Ruskin. Two varieties of potato have been planted that produce two Deirdre O’Mahony, A Village Plot, 2016; IMMA different types of flowers. The Bloomer, an Irish Heritage variety precarious food security. As chief pharmacist and apothecary he mainly grown in County Clare, is aptly named, as it has large, white served Louis XV, Louis XVI, the Revolutionary Régime and Napoleon at flowers with a delicate scent. These were donated by Tops Potato Les Invalides, the building that inspired the construction of the Royal Centre. The other variety grown is the blight resistant Sharpo Blue Hospital at Kilmainham. His most famous event was a potato dinner Danube, a purple flowering variety. The purple and white flowers, he hosted at the suggestion of Benjamin Franklin at Les Invalides. The with their green foliage, reference the Suffragettes, who played such a feast and other actions marked a kind of victory for the potato, “…a key role in radicalising Irish women in the run up to 1916.

I had not realised how large and extensive the community that progress of Enlightenment in its fight against the scourges of makes use of the gardens is. It mainly comprises dog walkers, many of superstition, prejudices, and alimentary disasters”.

Certain aspects of Parmentier’s life seemed right for this proposal. whom found it difficult to believe that there are now potatoes growing Then, as now, rapid technological advances in food production within the Royal Hospital. One of those who noticed the beds was spurred fear and suspicion of new varieties of food. After the French Frank McNally, who wrote a thoughtful and nuanced reflection on the revolution, the Tuileries and Luxembourg gardens were used to grow project in the Irish Times. The final stage will be a harvest event, the potatoes – an idea that became the starting point for my proposal, details of which are yet to be finalised. It will involve seaweed, Swiss titled A Village Plot. I was keen to draw upon the knowledge and villagers and members of the Irish Loy Association who have visited A expertise of members of the Irish Loy Association, having worked Village Plot and keep an eye on its progress and will be helping with the with them in 2015. The Loy is a foot plough, a simple but very effective harvest. The residency has given me an opportunity to fully test my tool for making potato ridges, sometimes called lazy-beds. The ideas and a public space in which to perform, allowing me to gauge association members are extraordinarily skilled at making perfect, aspects of rural life and its relationship with the metropolitan while straight potato ridges, something I thought could really effectively situated in the heart of Dublin. I am deeply grateful to Janice Hough, point to the value of converting grass covered lawns into potato beds/ Adam Sutherland, Grizedale Arts and IMMA for the opportunity. vegetable plots in urban cities. By beginning with a crop of potatoes on deirdre-omahony.ie a lawn, it is very easy to open and clear the ground of weeds for growing vegetables. I had previously interviewed the founder of the association who told me that when demonstrating how to use a Loy properly one person remarked that “you would have to have a strong

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Critique Supplement Edition 27: July/August 2016

Corban Walker ‘Post Office’ Hillsboro Fine Art, Dublin, 28 April – 28 May ‘POST Office’ is Corban Walker’s first solo exhibition in Ireland since 2014’s ‘Image Space Light’ at Visual, Carlow, which offers an oblique reference to the pivotal nature of Dublin’s General Post Office in this commemoration year.

1916 is not immediately called to mind in the work presented here. The collection of sculptures, drawings and an artist’s book are “observations” of Mies van der Rohe’s modernist single-story Federal Centre in Chicago, a building fundamentally at odds with Dublin’s neoclassicist General Post Office (GPO). Here the collection of 16 monochrome images (in editions of 4) detail the Federal Centre’s spare lines and negative spaces, with fields of subtle pastel colour breaking up the building’s expanses of glass and light.

Away from the walls, the sculptural works are displayed on specially made plinths and tables to ‘corbanscale’, the measurement devised by the artist to accommodate his height – 4ft or 1.2m. Walker has long used this scale in the presentation of his work, ensuring that displays function at his eye level as opposed to that of the ‘average’ height adult.

Multiples of four are also a feature.

This device forces the observer to rethink where they are coming from, quite literally. (Though it’s an alteration of scale that is likely to be more striking to the average adult male than female.)

Whether the artist is also making a comment here about the male dominated world of the built environment is up for debate. Suffice to say there is a

worth its salt will solicit – is mercifully fulfilled by the presence of an extra brick for just that purpose.

It has a satisfying heft and a smooth texture, like a piece of tailor’s chalk, and is hard to put down.

Walker’s responses to the Federal Centre treads familiar territory for the artist, whose work returns again and again to modernist architecture, and particularly Van der Rohe. This glass building is an anomaly next to the skyscrapers that surround it, two of which were also designed by Van der Rohe, framing it as an alternative response to the space it sits in. In the Plaza next to the Federal Centre, Alexander Calder’s 16m tall Flamingo is all graceful arcs of abstracted vermillion steel perched on slim legs, partially captured by Walker in one of the drawings and typically cropped at four feet from the ground.

It’s likely this iconic architect has always been in Walker’s consciousness, as Van der Rohe was mentor to the artist’s father Robin, a partner in influential Irish firm Scott Tallon Walker. This immersion in Miesian modernism gives Walker a vocabulary of construction, measuring and quantifying, while stripping away extraneous material.

Describing his work in the essay to accompany Walker’s work for the Ireland Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia in 2011, Brian O’Doherty observed: “... leaning and stacking are his verbs”.

His vernacular is certainly the language of constructivism and modernism, the lexicon of Richard Serra, Donald Judd and Carl André, where

Corban Walker, Untitled, 4cm square, 2015; 216 steel tube pieces, 24 x 26 x 24 cm

Corban Walker, Untitled, 16 bags of clay, 2015; Langeais clay; 33 x 38 x 41.5 cm

Corban Walker, Untitled, polyline

Corban Walker, Untitled, 16 bags of clay, 2015; Langeais clay; 33 x 38 x 41.5 cm

muscular masculinity to the materials he uses: steel, brick, sheet metal and rivets, and a sense that one is navigating through his world.

Two of the pieces represent something of a departure, with clay taking the place of the glass and metal he has previously favoured. Made during a pair of recent residencies in France at Atélier Calder and the Centre Culture d’Irandais, quatre vingt briques coupée et moieties (2016), is constructed of 160 fired half bricks made from clay sourced in Saché, the home of Calder’s studio. Arranged on the corbanscale table, in layers that bring to mind a partially constructed amphitheatre, there is inviting tactile warmth to the piece.

The second clay work feels positively freeform in comparison. Also made from Langeais clay, it is dried instead of fired. Untitled (16 bags of clay) (2015), is made up of 125 hand-moulded cubes of beautiful bone-coloured clay, piled into a precarious stack five by five deep. The urge to touch – which any object

investigations of space, line and volume in three dimensions punctuate the siting of the works. Gerrit Rietveld is recalled too, in a drawing (more like a collage) where a black and white photograph of horizontal window blinds is bisected by a triangle of blue.

As a body of work ‘Post Office’ feels like a sketchbook of ideas and experiments, but is no less gratifying for that. The smaller works in metal have the dinky appeal of maquettes, while the pieces in clay may represent a shift away from the rigor or Walker’s work to date. For such an artist whose output tends towards the measured and restrained, this seems like a quiet revolution.

Anne Mullee is a writer and curator based in Dublin.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet CRITIQUE SUPPLEMENT

July – August 2016

Declan Clarke ‘The Hopeless End of a Great Dream’ Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, 22 April – 18 June

Declan Clarke, ‘The Hopeless End of a Great Dream’, 2016; photo by Kasia Kaminska

WITH cobbled expanses running alongside brutalist, modern buildings, Trinity College wears its history overtly. Its built environment reflects the different eras in which it has existed. The anachronistic atmosphere which is created by this confluence is used to clever effect by Irish artist Declan Clarke in his sensitively worked exhibition ‘The Hopeless End of a Great Dream’.

As an audience we struggle to place the various time-periods suggested by this exhibition. The 65-minute film, which forms the principle part of the show, opens in the Trinity Dining Hall where, through a long real-time take, we observe student hoodie-wearers in amongst ceremonial robe-wearers. They all respond together as grace is said in Latin. This exhibition borrows from the anomalies created by certain academic conventions – deepening our sense of disorientation in relation to time and proposing history as an entity which slips and weaves its way through the contemporary moment in a dynamic way.

Temple Bar Gallery has been divided into two spaces for ‘The Hopeless End of a Great Dream’. The first space we enter is carpeted in red and contains 29 small black and white framed photographs, collectively titled Outrage and the City. We learn in the hand-out that these photographs were taken at Trinity College in 1981 by an Irish Independent news photographer. These images describe moments which seem to be taking place around a single antagonism. Individuals are isolated by the photographer, but mostly the photographs are of a large group of people gathered around the outside of Trinity. Rather than make a selection of images from this roll of film, Clarke has chosen to print what seems to be the entire series of pictures taken by the photographer that day. What results is the display of clusters of pictures which differ from each other only slightly. These partial representations of moments, along with the titles of both works, primes us to enter into this exhibition as an active audience of clue-finders and narrative-seekers: what is the Great Dream and what happens to invoke a Hopeless End? The emotional register of the titles Clarke uses stand in contrast to the calm and clinical atmosphere permeating the film work. The opening section is dominated by a dense lecture delivered to a sparsely populated lecture hall. The lecture focuses on the importance of secrecy as a tool in defining and preserving the nation state in modern European history. People and objects cited in this lecture – such as Roger Casement and his return

to Ireland in a submarine in 1916 – re-appear in fragmented and coded form through the rest of the film.

Secrecy is another key theme, principally embodied by a film-noir style agent whom we witness navigating his clandestine and mysterious world.

Folders of images are delivered to him through nods and winks and when he kills, he does so silently without disturbing his greased-back hair. He moves through familiar spaces, puncturing them with secrecy and intrigue, infusing them with uncertainty. What appears to be a normal, functioning and familiar world, supported by conformities such as the student/lecturer binary, is undercut and called into question by the network of secret activities we witness unfolding throughout the film.

The verbal density of the lecture at the start of the film falls off sharply into a largely non-verbal narrative, but the visual language conveyed is equally dense, carried by cinematic tropes and a weighty architectural backdrop. As an audience we remain alert, seeking clues and narrative in uneventful moments, such as a clock moving ticking or a long static shot of a building’s facade. The partial insight we are given into a world of secrecy has the effect of implicating everything in the frame.

There are a number of long sequences towards the end of the film where the agent drags a body through an uninhabited yet operational library.

As in much of the film, there is a discordance between the imaginary/temporally out-of-place and that of the ‘real’. The corpse and the agent in the scene seem unrealistically pristine, yet the body is cumbersome and awkward to handle. It’s dragged past signs directing readers to “Research, Psychology, History” and past stacks and stacks of books.

We are led to wonder if these sentient yet purportedly knowledgable objects are somehow complicit in such moments of unremarkable violence?

Perhaps the ineffectualness of these harbingers of knowledge is part of the failure of the Great Dream? As the film progresses, we feel more keenly the active presence of historic moments as agents within the present moment. Clarke opens up a space for these thoughts in subtle and complex ways. As the film ends we are unsure whether it has in fact been setting the scene for an as yet undefined beginning. After all, we know from our own history of the Rising that what can seem like a hopeless end can also be an unexpected beginning.

Sarah Lincoln is a visual artist based in Waterford.

‘1916: Ireland in Contemporary Art’ Crawford Art Gallery 12 May – 13 August ‘1916: Ireland in Contemporary Art’ manages to avoid the single heroic narrative that often undercuts stories of the Easter Rising. It offers multiple voices, diverse approaches and unheard perspectives on the objects and artefacts utilised and referred to by the contributing artists. The exhibition was commissioned by Larry Lambe and artists were asked to respond to the concepts, ideals and beliefs of 1916. The works could be linked with any of the events of 1916 that affected Ireland, not only the Easter Rising. The commissioning process began in 2009 to allow the artists time to digest and explore the complex themes at play. Hung next to each piece is the artist’s statement about their work, which allows for an added layer of context.

Armed conflict was a pronounced theme explored by many of the artists. The Shadow, an allegorical still life by Padraig Lynch, depicts James Plunkett’s novel Strumpet City, a lily and an old British globe. Lynch argues that the rising was not only a turning point in Irish History but also in the dismantling of the British Empire. Taking a classical form of historical painting he uses its well-known language of signs not to celebrate the empire but to salute the underdog. This sense of David and Goliath is echoed in Peadar Lamb’s stained glass lightbox, The Bullet and the Bicycle, which compares the disproportionate resources available to the Irish and British forces in an ironic tone. A lone cartoon-like bike is illuminated by a backlight, combining traditional craftsmanship with illustration.

Rita Duffy and Sonja Landweer further explore the close and complicated relationship between the Irish and the British army. Duffy’s Memorial Plaque acknowledges the numerous Irish men who died fighting in the British military during the First World War. She makes reference to John Redmond’s plea for Irish men to join the war effort in the hope that it would gain Ireland Home Rule. In her use of the plaque, a universally-recognised symbol of loss, Duffy draws on classical and military history.

Landweer’s Interpretations of Hackles is one of the most honest explorations of human nature and conflict. Hackles are hairs that rise when an animal is in distress or ready to fight. These were incorporated into military dress uniform, each legion with its own unique and intricate design. The hackles are exquisite, beautiful pieces, full of rich jewel colours, feathers and ornamentation. Their opulence is in contrast to the reality and practicality of war but

echoes a naive idea of heroic bravery and noble courage: a ‘terrible beauty’.

Peadar Lamb’s second light box, In Plain Sight, is a reproduction of an advertisement placed in the Irish Independent in 1915 selling volunteer equipment. As early as 1914, tailors had been advertising in newspapers offering to make the Irish Volunteer uniforms. The title of the piece calls attention to the absurd fact that these adverts were ignored. The replica of the paper advertisement takes on a new permanence in glass. Though comic in tone, the work highlights the intricacy and ambiguity of history. The insignificant is made significant.

Lorcan Lambe’s piece A Remarkable Coincidence depicts a snapshot of a father and son on their way to a GAA match, one with ‘19’ embroidered on his jersey, the other with ‘16’. It is an inconsequential moment, a banal occurrence transformed by subtle associations to the Rising, GAA, masculinity and nationalism: a snapshot of an event emblazoned on the Irish psyche.

Forgotten figures, both personal and political, along with notions of pacifism and the representation of gender, are the focus of both Alice Maher’s Remember Me and David Lilburn’s Further Away and Nearer Still. Maher uses a scrimshaw technique to engrave a portrait of Alice Milligan on an ostrich egg, a technique usually associated with pirates and prisoners who might etch lines with ink-filled byproducts or materials that are to hand. Maher calls attention to Milligan as an overlooked figure who was written out of history by a conservative Catholic state. The egg, Maher states, relates to Easter, but the surface also acts as an ambiguous texture, familiar but unfamiliar, echoing the wider thematic exploration of the shadows of time.

Lilburn maps the overlap between his own family and ideas of personal identity, politics and art history. He references his grandfather’s military service, the influence of his Quaker teacher, the pacifist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington and the German artist George Groz, as well as many more personal, political and philosophical tangents. Like the exhibition itself Lilburn’s work is a mish-mash of the personal and the civic, along with ideas of place, time and chance. The map has no key to decipher distance; it all depends on perspective. Lilburn’s history is openly chaotic and circumstantial; the map is an attempt to retrospectively fit the ideas together.

‘1916: Ireland in Contemporary Art’ rejects any singular idea of history. In a sense Lilburn’s map epitomises the exhibition, dashing any pretence that history unfolds rationally and sequentially. All the works on display reflect the long research and preparation time given to the artists, allowing for a complex examination of historical context. The exhibition is strikingly immediate, the themes universal. ‘1916’ presents complex strands of history pulled apart, re-examined and re-evaluated.

Gemma Carroll is an art writer based in Cork.

Rita Duffy, Connolly’s Shirt Re-Mortgaged, 2015

David Lilburn, Farther Away and Nearer Still, 2015; drypoint

July – August 2016

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet CRITIQUE SUPPLEMENT

Michael Canning ‘The Respectful Distance’ Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, 5 May – 16 June 2016 MEANING in language is greater than the sum of its parts. In other words, a language is not simply words – if that were the case, all you would need is a dictionary. But what makes meaning is the interaction between those words, the infinite number of permutations and combinations which are the basis of communication.

This riff on meaning was prompted by Michael Canning’s latest exhibition at the Oliver Sears Gallery in Dublin. At first glance, it is a series of paintings of plants, weeds or wild flowers, each finely detailed and ‘rendered directly from observation... [found] on daily walks near [Canning’s] home’.

It references botanical portraiture, though with a degree of stylisation. However, each plant is placed in a context: a vast expanse of sky, and a perspective which suggests that the plant is located at a height from which the viewer sees a long-distance panorama of fields. There are birds, small daubs of paint which could almost be considered Canning’s signature, so often do they appear in his work. These details imply a desire to go beyond mere taxonomy.

Canning’s mastery of his technique is undeniable. Close examination reveals fine brushstrokes and his use of colour is bold and confident. The plants are delicately rendered, but each piece is ‘framed’ top and bottom with darker colours, evoking the work of Dürer, and other seventeenth century artists. There is luminosity, but also a sense of gloom – these are not ‘pretty’ pieces.

But that is not a deterrent. That Canning has an audience is patent: his biography is impressive, as indeed are his prices. His work clearly appeals. The question then is whether that appeal is enhanced in any way by putting these pieces together in this place.

An artist or curator bringing a body of work together in a physical location sets up an expectation in the viewer: that there is a reason for doing so, that there is something in the chosen works which creates a sense of cohesion, along the lines of the sum being greater than parts (see above). This cohesion may be communicated in a number of ways, not mutually exclusive: the title of the exhibition and the titles of the pieces, the placing of the pieces within the space, the placing of the pieces in relation to each other.

As the catalogue comments, the phrase, ‘respectful distance’, suggests ‘a measurement of emotion corresponding to a human relationship with the natural world’. That this title sums up

Michael Canning, The Age of Things, 2012 – 2016; oil on wood panel; 100 x 70 cm

Canning’s work is not in question. But the titles of the individual pieces are more challenging.

Choice of title is always an interesting aspect of an artist’s work, as this sometimes reveals more than is intended. In the case of Canning’s work, it supports the notion that these plant paintings do not belong in the category of botanical portraiture.

But do titles such as This Hypnosis, Broadcast Transmission, and Antoine Busnois add anything to the viewer’s experience of either the work or the exhibition? Busnois was a fifteenth-century composer and poet, so this may be interpreted as a nod, albeit obscure, to the acknowledged influence of Northern Renaissance painting on Canning’s work, in particular, his idealised backgrounds. However, there is no obvious connection to the individual piece, nor is there any thread running through the titles as a whole. It can be argued that this is not their role. But they have been chosen for a reason, and that in itself is a communication. Titles can aid a viewer in reading a painting, they can express an emotion in the artist, or evoke an emotion in the viewer. In Canning’s works shown here, they seem to do none of the above. Reading between the lines of Canning’s piece in the catalogue (An open email to Edmund Burke) leads to the speculation that titles might not be of great importance to him, but for the viewer, the result is puzzlement at best.

The positioning of the pieces within the gallery is also interesting, only because it is hard to see what difference it would have made to have placed them otherwise. There is no chronology to Canning’s work, no sense of exploration or development of his media, mainly because he has mastered them so well. One piece does not lead into the other, one painting does not resonate with another, there is no relationship between them, other than their similarity.

And that’s the dilemma with this exhibition.

To return to the opening riff on language, these paintings are like words in a thesaurus. They are grouped together because they are almost synonymous, but that’s where their meaning ends.

Combining them, juxtaposing them, ordering them differently – no added layer of understanding ensues. The viewer has been given a dictionary, not a grammar. Communication is limited.

Katie Moore ‘Paper Bloom’ Ballina Civic Offices/Jackie Clarke Collection, May – June 2016

Katie Moore, ‘Paper Bloom’, 2016; image courtesy of the artist

‘PAPER Bloom’ by Katie Moore is a luminous roomsized edifice unequivocally inhabiting the centre of an exhibition space located behind the public waiting atrium and service booths of the Ballina County Council offices. Such places hang heavy with social need and local politics. The presence of Moore’s installation proposes an alternative reality into which the viewer might escape from the daily mechanisms of the civil service. The structure is of a semi opaque material illuminated from within and at a distance it possesses a transcendent otherworldliness and a peaceful serenity that reflects a solemn meditation on the 1916 Rising. Close proximity reveals the milky translucent walls to be surfaced with numerous pale three-dimensional fabric lilies.

The scale of the work is based on the measurements of Padraig Pearse’s cell in Kilmainham Gaol.

Moore has used those proportions to attempt to transform a space representing imprisonment, suffering and death into a customary symbol of peace.

Her stated aim is to create an “act of memory”. ‘Paper Bloom’ succeeds as an object that incarnates harmony and tranquility but fails to develop further possibilities for the exploration of memory. The abundance of centenary projects this year has resulted in many complex cultural responses, varied narratives and perspectives, but Moore’s installation withholds engagement with this context. In relaMary Catherine Nolan is a Dublin-based artist tion to other significant events and exhibitions, including the recent and excellent ‘Kathleen Lynn: with a background in linguistics.

Insider on the Outside’, which was shown in venues across Mayo, ‘Paper Bloom’ does not appear to offer alternative or ambiguous readings of the themes relevant to 1916. If visual art is a form of thinking through objects and images, this work leaves us with an emotional response but offers little analysis of its subject or dialogue with other similar projects.

The work has developed from the Mayo County Council Arts Office Library Services artist in residence project commemorating 1916 through a prodigious historical archive, the Jackie Clarke Collection in Ballina. Alongside her major installation, Moore worked with community groups to generate another smaller display of handmade paper lilies exhibited at the collection’s repository.

The outcome of this project, an origami-like decorative arrangement, is impaired by a similar lack of conceptual underpinning. There is a list of participating community groups on a wall adjacent to the display but nothing more about these engagements is elucidated, making them seem insubstantial. The Jackie Clarke archive itself, however, is a fitting conMichael Canning, Modern Desire, 2012 – 2016; oil on wood panel; 100 x text for ‘Paper Bloom’, comprising myriad paper 70 cm

Katie Moore, ‘Paper Bloom’, 2016; image courtesy of the artist

objects and artefacts accrued by the collector over his lifetime. This unique personal collection contains more than 100,000 items relating to 400 years of Irish history. It includes a vast array of materials: letters, legal documents, photographs, masses of printed ephemera, maps, manuscripts and books, many extremely rare. In responding to this collection, Moore’s central reference to a bloom or efflorescence is fitting tribute to Jackie Clarke and his endowment.

The stark aseptic whiteness of the paper installations help elevate the pieces beyond ornamentation. In her previous degree show work at GMIT, entitled ‘Hospital Gown Installation’ (2014), Moore explored her experience of medical treatment, using manipulated bleached hospital gauze as a material.

She addressed concepts of absence, isolation and bodily integrity, especially in relation to cystic fibrosis. This earlier work resonated with a passionate intensity of feeling underpinned by a nascent critique of medical procedures and the challenges of privacy and seclusion within hospitals. This work was also executed in sterile whiteness. Moore pushes this aesthetic language further in ‘Paper Bloom’, but the use of white colouration to represent ‘peace’ feels less nuanced than in her previous work. The work reduces the multiple narratives of 1916 to essentials. It is the imposition of a hopeful ideal onto a complex period history with an ever more complex aftermath.

Nonetheless there is a power in simplicity of form. Moore channels US artist Tara Donovan’s strongly stark sculptural installations created from vast multiples of everyday objects such as plastic cups. Both artists share a commitment to painstaking process as part of the content of the work.

Moore’s work thrums with the potential for a more potent mission. Like Donovan, her work speaks of the systems that shape our lives, digital and cellular networks that are reflected in the repeated forms.

‘Paper Bloom’ also addresses the symbolic usage of bio-forms, such as plants and flowers, to generate representations of politics and history. Here Moore’s subject matter becomes more sophisticated and it offers developmental possibilities for her work in the future. Moore approaches her heavy subject matter with nobility but, for me, the absence of more detailed analysis results in a somewhat slight work. It is in her usage of multiples that Moore exhibits a capacity for absorption that is communicated in obsessive and compelling ways. Áine Phillips is an artist and writer based in Clare.

Bronze Art, Fine art Foundry Please check out our new up to date website of all the work we have been up to in the last few years.

www.bronzeart.ie

Accept no compromise in the quality of your work, come work with the specialists.Best quality guaranteed everytime at competitive prices.

For your next project contact: David O’Brien Unit 3, Gaelic St, Dublin 3, Ireland.

Tel: 353-1-8552452 Fax: 353-1-8552453 Email: bronzeartireland@hotmail.com Join us on Facebook

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

23

PROJECT PROFILE

Discipline, Resistance, Resilience EL PUTNAM REPORTS ON THE PERFORMANCE ART EVENT ‘FUTURE HISTORIES’, WHICH TOOK PLACE AT KILMAINHAM GAOL ON 21 MAY 2016.

Ciara McKeon, Clear and Bright Blue Line; photograph by Joseph Carr

Francis Fay, The Singing Flame; photograph by Fiona Killeen/Blueprint Photography

WHAT is commemoration? An act of remembrance performed in the present tense. ‘Future Histories’, curated by Niamh Murphy and Áine Phillips, took place at Kilmainham Gaol on 21 May 2016. From 10am until 10pm, live and digital media artists transformed the former prison, the site where most of the 1916 Easter Rising rebellion leaders were imprisoned and then executed. Commemoration in this context is performative – constitutive – where history is told and reconsidered through embodied scenarios of memory, forgetting and contemplation of the current state of Ireland.

The participating artists – Michelle Browne, Fergus Byrne, Brian Connolly, Pauline Cummins, Francis Fay, Debbie Guinnane, Sandra Johnston, Dr. Laura McAtackney, Danny McCarthy, Ciara McKeon, Alastair McLennan, Níamh Murphy, Katherine Nolan, Sinéad O’Donnell, Méabh Redmond, Dominic Thorpe and Helena Walsh – engaged different artistic strategies, though all took advantage of the material qualities of time and space. Additionally, each of the artists tackled the act of remembrance from a different angle, producing a rich and diverse array of actions and encounters. According to Phillips, “It has been said that a ghost is unfinished business and I think the 1916 Rising promised a republic that was never fully realised; it initiated social, cultural and economic business that is still left incomplete”.1 Such was the impetus for the artists presenting in ‘Future Histories’.

Within this monumental structure, opening up areas not commonly accessible to the public, the artists created a palimpsest that imbued the architectural and historical framework with new meaning. As a whole, the performances can be loosely broken down into gestures of discipline, resistance and resilience, three key characteristics of revolutionary action, which raise questions about whether the Ireland of today has fulfilled the vision and promises of a century ago.

In live performance, duration provides repetition with change over time. As such, artists who decide to engage in an action for hours require discipline of the self, the body and the material. In his sonic installation and performance, (Re)TYPING the TYPE(cast), Danny McCarthy evoked the institutional regulatory structures of the educational system within the context of an East Wing prison cell. Drawing from Padraig Pearse’s work as an educationalist, McCarthy designed the cell to evoke a classroom environment. Small blackboards hung from the wall with bits of chalk lining the floor, providing traces of primary school instruction. Throughout various points in the day, McCarthy sat still at a desk under a black cloak topped with a mortar-

board in front of a typewriter that remained untouched, offering an image of restraint and discipline with his hidden, docile body.

In another part of the building, Sandra Johnston and Dominic Thorpe presented the work Difference Fostered. Set in the Governor’s Quarters above the museum, which is an area typically closed to visitors, Johnston and Thorpe passed the time performing a series of tasks – sanding wine glasses and creating nails from forks – that were frivolous but presented with mechanical dedication. Their gestures and presence were evocative of servants who were methodically misbehaving. The minute precision of their actions offered a dedicated discipline that was absurd and yet subversive to rational authority through its duration. Johnston and Thorpe’s intensity was hypnotic, as each drew from the energy of the other, fuelling the endurance that allowed them to carry out these demanding, futile acts of labour.

Discipline took a different form in the work of Fergus Byrne.

From midday to 9pm, he repeated the 40-minute performance Small Instruments that Make Revolutions, on the hour, every hour, in the Condemned Man’s Yard. Without stopping for the sporadic rainfall that occurred throughout the day, Byrne drew correlation between the mechanics of the body and of institutions with the machine of history, through corporeal motions and interactions with kinetic sculptures.

Twisting and turning his arm and hips in rhythm with oversized joints and gears, he told the story of three journalists shot at the Portobello Barracks in 1916 through a montage of historic texts. Like McCarthy, his work eludes to the disciplinary structures of institutional systems through his mechanic parallels that transform the body into a gear of history.

These disciplinary behaviours were mixed with acts of resistance.

Drawing her strength from subtlety, Debbie Guinnane slipped through a matrix of social expectations. Dressed in denim jeans and a white t-shirt, it was not clear at first glance that she was performing.

However, a closer look revealed that she was undertaking a series of meditative actions, manipulating a chunk of clay. Her gestures were minimal: the slow dripping of spittle from the lip, a concentrated examination of performances through a molded frame. She was both out of place and in every place, standing at a threshold between artist and audience. She roamed the entirety of the space that day, creeping in and out of performances while presenting her own non-disruptive interventions. There was an honesty to her presence as time passed in this institutional structure. In her work, Guinnane draws energy from the act of witnessing, using it as fuel for her own contemplative

responses. Her occupation of this liminal space became a connective force between the various performances throughout the site that day, while simultaneously resisting unity.

Deep within the belly of the prison, Laura McAtackney and Niamh Murphy sat in the darkened punishment cells of the East Wing. In a performance only witnessed by six women at a time, McAtackney and Murphy acknowledged the women marginalised during the creation of the Irish nation. They recited the Hail Mary in Irish – the only prominent Catholic prayer that provides direct reference to women. Standing in the darkened space, fingers touching the cool stone walls, I considered the histories and experiences of the prisoners that occupied this space. Even though I do not understand Irish, I recognised the rhythm of the familiar prayer with both a sense of solace and a twinge of disdain. Through the insistence of presence, despite being placed under erasure, this acknowledgement of marginalised women became an act of resistance through the ironic recitation of a prayer. That is, while the invocation of the Hail Mary defines a restricted role for women, which was emphasised in the formation of the Irish State through its constitution, McAtackney and Murphy’s reframing of the prayer in a cold, darkened basement cell to a female audience brings attention to the excluded and overlooked complexities of female subjectivity that persist in the shadows.

While gestures of resistance tend to be subtle, these compliment more obtuse acts of resilience. Throughout the 12 hours of the event, Helena Walsh maintained watch in the centre of the East Wing, the famous Victorian era Panopticon. Decorating the central stairwell like a spring trestle, Easter lilies and apples became her weapons of choice.

Walsh spends the day glaring at the audience, many of whom awkwardly attempt to deflect her stare. Her disruption of the gaze, occupying both the position of the watcher and the watched, in the centre of the Panopticon, offered a strong presence in the space, with her heels clicking up and down the stairs in a repetitious rhythm that dominated the room. Every once in a while her hands came together, tips and fingers touching to create a gaping hole in reference to the Sheelana-gig fertility sculptures that once adorned buildings in Ireland.

Drawing inspiration from the women involved in the 1916 rising, Walsh created a scene of resilience, of female subjectivity deferred through the creation of the Irish nation. Walsh’s resilience echoed through the theatrical gestures of Katherine Nolan. Every hour, she descended the spiral staircase of the East Wing, tossing her body around with exaggerated movements. This energy was never fully released. Instead she returned over and over again, haunting the space with persistence. In the Clear and Bright Blue Line, Ciara McKeon spent most of the day asleep in a cell, with a copy of the Irish Constitution and a positive pregnancy test resting next to her subconscious body.

She awoke several times during the day, performing actions that draw attention to the vulnerability of women’s bodies exposed through gendered inconsistencies of Irish legislation. Michelle Browne closed the day with a lecture that specifically addressed the contributions of women to the Easter Rising, hinged on the notion of dressing appropriately for battle. These performances raised prominent concerns about the ongoing treatment of women in Ireland as incomplete subjects.

The above descriptions are only glimpses into the multitude of actions that took place that day. As a whole, the artists involved in ‘Future Histories’ contemplated the narratives emerging from 1916, framing them in the contemporary context, while opening up spaces for consideration of what the future holds for Ireland. The ephemeral nature of these works put art in motion. Even though the actions have ceased, they linger in the memories of the audience – a mix of art spectators and tourists visiting the Gaol. As such, the works remain incomplete. The narrative of commemoration, like that of rebellion, must remain unfinished in order to allow the propensity for change to contribute to the growth of a multifaceted, rich society.

EL Putnam is an artist and writer living in Dublin. She is cofounder of in:Action – Irish Live Art Review (inaction.edu).= Note 1. Áine Phillips, ‘1916 – 2016: Revolution was the script for the performance of Republic’, in:Action — Irish Live Art Review, 11 May, 2016 (inaction.ie)

24

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

SEMINAR ings. In 25, Rural Studio has built 150 projects and educated more than 600 ‘citizen architects’.

Dr Aine Macken-Walsh, researcher with Teagasc, astounded the audience by her proposition that governmental policies of the past 25 years have largely failed to support Irish farming and fishing families.

Funding, she argued, has created a ‘project class’ that has benefitted a few, but been ignored by the majority.

Chinese researcher and PhD scholar at London’s Architectural Association, Jingru Cyan Cheng, suffers no illusions: rurality in China is administratively determined, socially constructed and spatially specified. Her design research project instrumentalises rural China’s specific administrative, social and spatial conditions to explore rurality as a spatial question. It proposes a spatial framework for China’s Attendees at ‘AlterRurality 3’

Attendees on one of the walks in Connemara

AlterRurality

rural territory in an attempt to inverse the power of the city.

THREE WALKS The point of the walks was to be outside, to breathe fresh air and to walk and talk. Aided by unusually low tides and bright sunshine, Rory

DOMINIC STEVENS (DUBLIN SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, DIT) AND SOPHIA MEERES (LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE, UCD) DISCUSS ‘FIELDWORK LETTERFRACK 2016: ALTERRURALITY 3’, WHICH THEY RAN, 6 – 9 JUNE, IN RURAL CONNEMARA.

Keatinge led wonderful walks along the shore, taking us to his secret

WHAT starts to happen when artists, architects, landscape architects,

d’Architecture, ESA Paris) keynote lecture offering an alternative

uted to his choice of profession in fisheries management.

farmers, practitioners and researchers from all around Europe meet to

description of rurality in which a provocative list of presumptions are

discuss rural life? This June, in Letterfrack, Connemara, an event was

inverted, or as Pieter put it, “viewed through a mirror”.

locations to collect cockles and mussels, before helping us clean and prepare them for dinner. Rory has foraged for food along the coast of Letterfrack since his childhood, a passion that undoubtedly contribIn her booklet The Water Glossary, artist Carol Anne Connolly gathered together Irish terms that describe water, essentially reproduc-

In addition to invited keynote speakers, 24 papers were chosen Dublin Institute of Technology and Galway Mayo Institute of for oral presentation, with 24 more made into posters and displayed in Technology) gathered together 65 researchers, practitioners, teachers Ellis Hall, which is owned by Connemara West. Short presentations

ing a descriptive landscape in words sourced from old texts as well as

and advisors, all engaged with rural life and interested in its future,

succeeded one another in response to specific themes. The sessions

in the Irish language while we admired the view, the sounds of water

from 30 different organisations and 10 different countries, for

and the succession of papers were chosen as counterparts to each

and her words.

exchange of ideas and experience.

other, in order to expand the field of view as far as possible. Some

Michael Gibbons, one of Ireland’s leading field archaeologists

talked of real places and things; others talked of the metaphysical and

and a storyteller, took us on a walk to the far and not so distant past of

of transformation. We all talked about time: past, present and future.

the hills, pointing out rocks and patterns in the landscape, traces of

held to find out. Three Irish universities (University College Dublin,

“We do not belong to those who have ideas only among books. It is our habit to think outdoors – walking, leaping, climbing, dancing,

from a diverse range of people including fishermen, farmers, weather forecasters, scholars and poets. Connolly read aloud from her lexicon

Outstanding presentations included that of Dr Ciara Healy

ancient settlements and tombs that indicate animal enclosures and

(Lecturer in Art, Department of Art, University of Reading) and Adam

field systems. He also identified more recent burial grounds and aban-

The primary purpose of this conference was to explore possible

Stead (visual artist) in a collaborative performance in which corre-

doned cottages dating from the Famine.

futures, opportunities and challenges for rural milieus in twenty-first-

spondence between teacher and student were read aloud. Titled

Located in an extraordinarily beautiful setting overlooking

century Europe. This meeting of minds had several aims, however, one

Already the world: A Post-humanist Dialogue, their letters were concerned

Killary Fjord, we walked across hills on which traditional blackhead

of them being to cause some kind of convergence between various

with ecological and environmental ways of knowing in socio-agricul-

horny sheep run as Tom Nee of Killary Sheep Farm described the highs

strands of the design community and the rural community itself. We

tural and metaphysical modes. With Healy’s help, Stead sought to

and lows of contemporary farming. His talented dogs demonstrated

thought it would be a good start for a group whose ultimate purpose

understand the socio-political and ecological impacts of industrialisa-

sheepherding moves while Nee cut turf by hand using the old two-

is to imagine viable, productive and lively rural opportunities.

tion and consumerism on agriculture and rural communities in sided spade, or sleán, which cuts through the peat as if it were butter.

Tom also talked about the relationship between farming and tourism.

Britain and Ireland.

preferably on lonely mountains or near the sea where even the trails become thoughtful.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)

By gathering together attendees with a wide range of experience, and spending each day debating a particular question or theme, we

In Bows, Buildings and Experimental Archaeology: A Journey from

hoped to encourage new dialogues across disciplines. By making the

Norway to Dublin Through Bowmaking, Stephen Fox, an experimental

THREE DINNERS

space and taking the time to immerse ourselves in place – walking,

archaeologist and PhD student at UCD, described how both questions

Immersed in rural matters we indulged ourselves in local food and the

talking, thinking, looking, tasting and seeing – we hoped to create an

and answers can arise through making. Fox is an expert in Viking

eating of communal meals cooked and served daily. Three dinners.

exchange of knowledge and ideas about rural landscapes, lifestyles,

archery and bow making. Having spent the summer of 2015 working

Three lunches. Three cream teas of scones and homemade strawberry

production, design and culture, looking at how best to sustain rural

in a reconstructed longhouse museum in Lofotr, Norway, he is cur-

jam. Connemara lamb, mashed potato and cabbage. Roast chicken.

places.

rently investigating Dublin’s Viking architecture, its raw materials and

Fish stew. Mussels, cockles gleaned by the beach walkers. Rhubarb

Intense exchanges took place in the formal setting of a lecture

construction methods through the active building of an authentic

crumble. Home-grown watercress. Nettle soup.

theatre (3 mornings: 24 plenary presentations, 3 evenings: 9 keynotes),

type 1 Viking house at UCD’s Centre for Experimental Archaeology

but unlike many academic conferences, the possibilities for informal

and Material Culture.

CONCLUSION

discussion and exchange also abounded. Lunch, teas and dinner were

In the following presentation, Digitally Fabricating Rural Wood

‘Fieldwork Letterfrack 2106: AlterRurality3’ built on the experience of

served in the village’s Ellis Hall, thanks to local chef Derick Healy and

Constructions, Professor Urs Hirschberg of TU Graz’s Institute of

the two earlier ‘ARENA’ conferences. Held in a rural locality, the event

his team. Participants spent their afternoons leisurely foraging on the

Architectural Media transcended 1000 years to promote sophisticated

remained intentionally small. It brought together a range of disci-

shore, tracing watercourses, visiting farms or simply walking and talk-

digital fabrication technologies, the building of bespoke timber struc-

plines, teachers, practitioners and researchers from Ireland and

ing. All were helped by the unexpected sunshine!

tures in rural areas and, conversely, the showcasing of special timber

beyond, with the aim of encouraging informal debate and exchange

Holding this conference in a rural setting was important.

designs in urban contexts. He demonstrated both the viability of high-

across disciplines. It widened participation to include the community

Organised as a collaboration between ourselves and Deirdre O’Mahony

tech firms operating from rural locations and the possible revival of

voice with the aim of (starting to) overcome the barriers that still sepa-

from GMIT’s Centre for Creative Arts and Media (CCAM), this was the

craft in the digital age. TU Graz’s IAM works with local industry part-

rate academia from practice. We believe that this conference is a step

third in a series of events held under the name ‘AlterRurality’. The first

ners to push the boundaries of timber fabrication, teaching future

in the right direction, and a move towards greater collaboration

was held in Fribourg, Switzerland and the second in London. These

architects and fabrication factories about the amazing possibilities of

between the many institutions, practitioners and academics that are

events were ARENA projects, an international network that exists to

the digital tools.

engaged in rural life and interested in its future.

promote research in architecture and allied disciplines across Europe.

Andrew Freear’s description of Auburn University’s famous

GMIT’s Letterfrack National Centre for Excellence in Furniture

design and build programme left us wondering why we can’t all do the

Dominic Stevens is is an architect and lecturer in the Dublin

Design proved the perfect setting for a conference on rurality, as the

same thing! Known for its ethos of recycling, reusing and remaking,

School of Architecture, DIT, whose work and practice is often

village has an extraordinary history of rural development, in which

Rural Studio provides hands-on educational experience while assist-

rurally located.

the school buildings play a significant role.

ing an underserved population in west Alabama’s Black Belt region.

The studio’s philosophy is that everyone, rich or poor, deserves the

Sophia Meeres teaches at UCD. Her research is connected to the

THIRTY-THREE TALKS

benefit of good design. Students work within the community to define

transformation of landscapes, and the recognition and conserva-

The conference kicked off with Pieter Versteegh’s (Ecole Spéciale

solutions, fundraise, design and, ultimately, build remarkable build-

tion of rural lands, practices and traditions.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

25

RESIDENCY

Comparative Isolation PATRICIA FARRELLY REFLECTS ON THE TIME SHE SPENT AT THE BURREN COLLEGE OF ART THROUGH THEIR EMERGING ARTIST RESIDENCY AWARD.

Patricia Farrelly, Mount Helgafel, Iceland

OCCASIONALLY, what is needed is a small interlude, a break from the ordered systems we find ourselves bound within – the frameworks of daily life that sometimes feel permanent and unchangeable. Often a small break from the conventional can be enough to alter our perceptions, allowing us to rethink the everyday, to reset the structures and reconsider them within a new frame of reference, creating subtle but important shifts in perception. The temporary nature of an artist’s residency seems to at once fulfil these needs, while also allowing for new dialogues and a wider context of work to develop.

In September 2015 I was part of the Emerging Irish Artist Residency Award (EIARA) at the Burren College of Art, in conjunction with 126 Artist-Run Gallery. Based in Scotland at the time as a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art, I craved a period of artistic research back in Ireland. I associated the Burren with contemplation and solitude, which might allow for reflection and quiet intensity. After four years at a large art institution and living in various cities, this felt right. It also allowed me to explore my practice within a new community and a rural art discourse. I saw it as a time-based experience, positioning me outside of my everyday situation and bringing me face to face with a familiar yet unknown place. I felt a need to innovate in reaction to this temporary place and its surroundings but accepted the possibility of failure, discovery, understanding and misunderstanding. I have always found newness within an environment to encourage a generative approach to art making. Engagements with the unknown can be strange and amorous, mirroring the creative process. For me, this process emerges through doing and not knowing what will come.

I found the EIARA programme very well structured and thorough in its aims as an artists’ residency. For that month I was given a large studio with access to technical facilities. I also had the opportunity to give a public artist’s talk and one-to-one tutorials with some undergraduate students. Following the residency there were two consecutive exhibitions at the Burren College of Art Gallery and at 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway. However, most significant was the dialogue created with the other Irish artists in residence: Miriam O’Connor, Hazel Egan and Rory Prout. It was wonderful to live and work alongside these artists, gaining an in depth understanding of their processes and individual practices. This lead to a more thorough discourse and fluid understanding of each other’s work, especially when exhibiting as a group. During my time in The Burren, the alumni residency programme, through which four past American

Patricia Farrelly, installation shot, Burren College of Art Gallery

students had been given the opportunity to return, was also taking place, leading to broader conversations with a wider audience. The Burren College of Art, though very isolated, always felt connected.

This sense of connectedness comes from its small, tight, creative community and its position as a focal point within Ballyvaughan.

My time in The Burren was focused on producing a body of research drawings. I was at the difficult beginning stage, ready to start something completely new. I spent as much time walking, reading and hiking as I did making, which was an absolute luxury, but in that moment was exactly what I needed.

I became very focused on Newtown Castle tower, situated within the grounds of the Burren College of Art. It’s a site of intimate roundness with sharp linear falls as you ascend its steps. The ceilings bow upwards, the curved walls ask for caress and wall slits provide specific viewpoints of the surroundings. The tower also contains ‘murder holes’, from which lines of boiling black tar or wax would have been poured in times of defence. I became fixated with those imagined harsh lines flowing through this site of roundness. This manifested as an exploration of expanded drawing through line and movement.

Those ideas of retracing, trajectory of line and imprint within the space presented many fascinating possibilities with regard to my own interest in drawing and materiality. From this point I began a series of research drawings, castings and material investigations.

I was always aware that an honest response to my time in the Burren would come through leaving – the distance allowing me to decipher and abstract from memory. This happened very naturally as the work developed further in another residency in Iceland. Between the Burren College of Art residency and the two exhibitions at the Burren College of Art Gallery and 126, I spent three months with the Icelandic Association of Visual Artists on their international residency programme in Reykjavík. It was a time spent traipsing the rural vastness of Iceland, with the intimate expanse of The Burren in the back of my mind. The two landscapes were vastly different yet held similarities in their glacio-karst formations. Hikes to the flat, bright limestone horizon of Cappenwalla in the Burren provided a comparison point for the rolling lava-black horizon of Mount Helgafell in Iceland. I developed both a physical and mental understanding of the two places through this comparison. From here I created a body of work, materially questioning my relationship to place and experience through the drawn line and long material processes of enquiry.

The final body of work I produced and exhibited, entitled ‘Poll an Murdair’, was an intuitive engagement and response to space through drawing. It demonstrated my overarching interest in the potential of the medium both spatially and experimentally. The work reflected and reconfigured the architectural space and landscape in which it sat.

Line took form as a physical entity, free from representation, understood through material enquiry and process. The installation presented a restrained tone, focusing attention on how things sat, settled and extended three-dimensionally into the space.

The title references the murder holes at Newtown Castle tower, reimagining a historical line of boiling tar which flowed through this site. Sculptural positives of a charcoal beeswax material sat within the installation, alluding to and reforming this imagined line. It was a performative attempt to make something that is transient and imagined more permanent: a central negotiation between something moving and something contained. I explored the interdisciplinary nature of drawing and its ability to exist in a three dimensional space through several hard lines of metal that perforated the gallery wall in dialogue with delicate vanilla pods. The vanilla pods were coated in a layer of silver gelatin emulsion and developed at a photographic studio in Reykjavík. Through this process, light energy was converted into an abstract line, an imageless photograph of my studio space. The pod lines are evidence of process and the act of capturing energy, time and movement within a space. Fish skins that had been tanned over a long period of time were etched and reworked in beeswax and charcoal in a further exploration of material processes and natural line. The resulting work questioned ideas of space in a surprising way, emphasising process, line and constant movement.

Patricia Farrelly is currently based in Scotland and originally from County Longford. The EIARA residency is run by the Burren College of Art in conjunction with 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway. Farrelly’s residency with the Icelandic Association of Visual Artists was supported by the Irish Arts Council’s Travel and Training Award and the 2015 International Travel Award for Visual Arts and Crafts from the Saltire Society and the British Council, Scotland. patriciafarrelly.com

26

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

HOW IS IT MADE?

Aoibheann Greenan, The Perfect Wagner Rite, 2016, Import Projects, Berlin; photo by Benjamin Renter; image courtesy of the artist

From Libretto to Operetta

IN APRIL 2016 AOIBHEANN GREENAN UNDERTOOK A RESIDENCY AT THE IMPORT PROJECTS IN BERLIN. HERE SHE TALKS TO CURATOR ALICE PLANEL ABOUT HER RESULTING WORK AND EXHIBITION ‘THE PERFECT WAGNER RITE’.

Aoibheann Greenan, The Perfect Wagner Rite, 2016, Import Projects, Berlin; photo by Benjamin Renter; image courtesy of the artist

Aoibheann Greenan, The Perfect Wagner Rite, 2016, Import Projects, Berlin; photo by Benjamin Renter; image courtesy of the artist

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

27

HOW IS IT MADE?

Aoibheann Greenan, The Perfect Wagner Rite, 2016, Import Projects, Berlin; photo by Benjamin Renter; image courtesy of the artist

Alice Planel: The Perfect Wagner Rite (PWR) is a complex and multilayered project, so perhaps the easiest way to begin is for you to talk us through its development, from the first phone call on a summer’s day to your performance in a Berlin gallery astride a golden shopping trolley.

Aoibheann Greenan: When yourself and Anja (Co-Director of Import Projects) first invited me to make a new body of work you were both keen for me to engage specifically with the context in which the work would be shown, i.e. Berlin. The process of cultural voyeurism has always guided my work so I wasn’t in the least bit discouraged by your proposition. My initial response was to locate a pretext for my particular position, an Irish artist commenting on German culture. Reading The Perfect Wagnerite, George Bernard Shaw’s 1883 essay on Wagner’s operatic tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelungs, I was amused by the selfassuredness of Shaw’s delivery as he attempts, from within “an inner ring of superior persons”, to demystify the Ring for the “ordinary citizen”.

In a self-reflexive parody of Shaw’s text I began to reinterpret the Ring as a contemporary Germanophile. I isolated scenes that explicitly conveyed moments of desire, greed, seduction or worship. This selective reading served as the basis for a libretto, written entirely in rhyming verse. From January onwards I began to meet regularly with performers and gradually the libretto evolved into a full-blown operetta accompanied by an experimental score. It was enacted by a fictional Wagnerian cult whose deviant practices drew upon the text as a source of legitimisation. As cult leader I narrated the piece in the role of personified Rhine Gold – giant gold lamé lips – while sitting astride a golden rock-encrusted shopping trolley. This was the object of desire around which the drama unfolded.

Various characters interjected my narration: Dwarf, Wotan, Dragon, Siegfried, Vogel, Brunnhilde, Rhinemaidens and Giants. Their overtly eroticised costumes and props conflate numerous Germanic tropes including Bavarian folk art, cabaret, punk and BDSM. Significant Ring-cycle motifs, such as Siegfried’s sword, Wotan’s spear and Brunnhilde’s valkyrie helmet, were painstakingly recreated in handpainted papier-mâché, then lacquered and embellished with rhinestones, beads, feathers, safety-pins, faux-fur and leather. On 29 March we performed a dry run for a small audience of invited guests in Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, followed by an invaluable feedback session. We adapted the piece especially for the final installment of the One Night Stand series at the KW Institute in Berlin (14 April) before finally showing two full back-to-back ‘cycles’ at Import Projects (23 April).

AP: Can you tell us more about the role of ritual in the PWR? AG: My work often co-opts ceremonial forms in order to foreground the ritualistic dimension of the tourist experience, in particular the

ways in which certain cultural forms are reframed to mediate meaning. The framework of this installation loosely adheres to that of Masonic lodges, with an ‘antechamber’ and an ‘inner chamber’. Two dominant features of the ritual ground are a giant socialist-realist-style Wagner monument and a replica of George Bernard Shaw’s rotating writing shed, repurposed as a peepshow! The structures face off in the two adjoining rooms and there is a distinct sense that each figure is vying for authority. My ambiguous use of the word ‘master’, both spoken and visual, calls into question the shifting locus of authorship in the act of interpretation.

The ritualistic overtones permeate the operetta itself in the form of a pseudo initiation ceremony, which creates a space for viewers to participate. However, the element of choice is merely a ruse; the performers ultimately dictate the outcome. In this way the ritual adopts the rhetoric of tourism and advertising, interpolating subjects into a passive form of participation in which actions are pre-prescribed and decision-making is precluded. The incorporation of various ritualistic aspects of sadomasochism further emphasises this idea.

During each ‘cycle’ at Import Projects, six chosen ‘initiates’ were stamped upon entry, simulating the entrance to a nightclub. They were each given a red cloak and a stage direction. Serving as gatewatchers, in a sense, they formed the ring within which the performance took place (though it often deviated from this space).

Throughout the performance the initiates were prompted to hold objects, change positions and cast votes that would determine the ending of the drama. Following the performances, the costumes were suspended from chains like quasi-totemic objects.

AP: In PWR the entire work and exhibition were devised around the performance. Did this project change your creative process?

AG: In previous shows such as ‘DMC: Dunmurry Mayday Conspiracy’ (Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, 2015), the performances came about in response to a physical body of work, but this show saw a complete reversal of that approach. The libretto became the bedrock upon which all the subsequent material was generated. The impetus here was to animate the speech, actions and images that were described in the text; the libretto supplied the blueprint. This meant that the production of certain pieces became necessary in a way that differed quite distinctly from previous shows, which had evolved according to more formal concerns. Working with the performers throughout the production period was hugely beneficial in this regard because their portrayals of certain characters informed my aesthetic decisions. I wouldn’t say that this approach has changed my process as much as it has broadened the scope of my practice.

AP: You’ve worked with some very talented people on this project: musicians, dancers, performers etc. Can you tell us more

about these collaborations?

AG: My intention was to playfully echo Wagner’s idea of the Gesamtkunstwerk or ‘universal/total artwork’ by synthesising visual art, music, poetry and theatre. I collaborated with composer Robert Mirolo to develop an experimental score around the libretto that would utilise other Wagnerian innovations such as leitmotifs and endless melody. The idea was to sync the lyrics with the score so that particular symbolic elements would be emphasised by their corresponding leitmotifs. The latter were stitched together with samples of Volksmusik, Krautrock, Neue Deutsche Harte and original music, including an irreverent techno-remix of Ride of the Valkyries. On the night of the performance Rob played live bass over the soundtrack alongside an incredibly talented viola player named Gudny Gudmundsdottir, who brought an improvisational edge to the piece.

I also worked with an accomplished voice actor named Sam Burton to record extracts from Shaw’s The Perfect Wagnerite, these were woven into the soundtrack to create the effect that Shaw himself seems to be offering his commentary in between scenes. As though animated by this phantom voice, the shed is spun whenever Shaw speaks.

As for the role-playing Wagnerites, a whole host of characters were brought to life by Breffni McGeough, Aoife Greenan, Louise Butler and Malachy McKeever. The three Rhinemaidens were represented in one costume and required an unconventional range of movements, so I teamed up with a contemporary dancer in Berlin named Aliina Lindroos. Another chance collaboration came about from working alongside our cameraman, Paul Rohlfs. Initially we approached him to document the performance but his engagement was such that he became an integral part of the work. Dressed head to toe in black with a torch strapped to his camera he stalked the performers like an obscure ninja-cum-pornographer. His presence injected a stark element of realism that both jarred with the constructed nature of the operetta and heightened the voyeuristic tone of the show.

AP: You became really interested in experimental theatre. Could this be a possible avenue for your work?

AG: Over the past few years I have been dipping a tentative toe into the realm of theatre, an area that resonates much more strongly with me than performance art. Given that this project was cross-referencing works by Wagner and Shaw I began to follow this line of inquiry in earnest. In preparation I even joined a playwriting course but soon discovered that the form I was seeking was at odds with the naturalistic scripts we were focusing on. I was more interested in creating an unabashedly carnivalesque spectacle, so avant-garde theatre was a natural fit!

The nonhierarchical approach to the aesthetic elements of the theatrical experience is something that particularly appeals to me.

The field has a longstanding history of practitioners experimenting with ritualistic patterning in order to challenge the primacy of the text. Rather than controlling or legitimising the performance, the text becomes one material among other materials: actors, objects, sounds etc. I welcome the interpretive freedom that this imparts to the viewer.

Experimental theatre also offers a wealth of innovative strategies for fostering audience participation and a great deal of thought is given to the social and ethical implications of these invitations.

AP: How do you hope to build on this project?

AG: The PWR will tour to a couple more venues (to be announced) later this year and in spring of next year. Developing the sound and lighting design will be paramount. I intend to expand upon the show’s multi-perspective form by incorporating a live feed projection of the cameraman’s footage as he tracks the performers through the space.

Beyond these technicalities, I hope to enhance the formal structures of the performance itself. I have invited a choreographer, a dramaturg and a mask actor to attend future rehearsals individually in order to identify specific areas that would benefit from improvement. I also plan to work with a host of musicians to elevate the current score.

Note Import Projects is a Berlin nonprofit curatorial initiative providing an experimental platform for contemporary cultural production and debate. Since 2012 it has endeavored to support emerging artists in the pursuit of ambitious artistic projects, the terms of which are dependent on each individual project. Culture Ireland and the Irish Embassy in Berlin supported this project. Aoibheann Greenan’s work was shown at Import Projects, the KW institute in Berlin as part of the Import Project curatorial platform ONS8.

28

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

RESIDENCY

Sinéad O’Donnell, Playing in the rice fields, 2016; Patani, Thailand; photo by Korakot Sangnoy

Sinéad O’Donnell, Beauty in Patani, pain within, 2016; Patani Contemporary Art Gallery, Patani, Thailand; photo by Korakot Sangnoy

Gender Politics & Performance SINÉAD O’DONNELL GIVES SOME INSIGHT INTO THE WORK SHE CREATED ON RESIDENCY IN VARIOUS LOCATIONS ACROSS THAILAND WITH ASIATOPIA.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

29

RESIDENCY

Sinéad O’Donnell and Chumpon Apisuk, Elephant Walk, 2016; Nan, Thailand

THAILAND draws tens of millions of tourists each year, many of them to its beautiful beaches and islands. I am interested, however, in the co-existence of cultures different to my own, the position of women in art, disability, society, politics and religion. I had previously met and worked with director of the Asiatopia Performance Art Festival (asiatopia.blogspot.com), Chumpon Apisuk, and discovered a common ambition to establish a residency programme that prioritised performance art and emphasised the artist’s needs as a human as well as the requirements of their practice.

In early 2016 I received the new Individual Disabled/Deaf Artist (IDA) Award and used it to fund my visit. The scheme is aimed at helping individual artists based in Northern Ireland who are disabled or deaf. It is managed by the Arts and Disability Forum with support from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. So from January to February 2016 I was the first performance artist in residence at the Asiatopia Foundation’s Mae Kumpaeng House, located in the small remote village of Baan Namkrog Mai, Nan Province. This is the area where Chumpon Apisuk grew up and has now opened two houses that can sleep up to 20 artists.

THE SIMPLICITY OF LIFE IN NAN Living in close quarters with another performance artist tends to eventually result in collaboration. Chumpon and I decided to use the title ‘Body and Politics’ in relation to our conversations, thinking and work.

My practice questions the politics of the female body. In a country where public exposure of breasts could result in deportation and fines for me, and the closure of the residency, these questions became more poignant. This restriction became the material for me to work with as I calmed my mind and immersed myself in the village.

Most mornings began with a walk to the 7am local market that provides locally farmed and cooked produce. It is also a meeting place for the villagers and missing it can potentially mean going without food. In the evenings the local village news is read out by the head of the village from a little shed-like structure and amplified by very simple speakers. Each day I found myself excited to learn what the topic of the day might be. The news included a cow going missing, only to be found the next evening eating with cows in a different area, and an announcement for senior citizens to meet with doctors. Sometimes there was a request for temple volunteers to clean up certain areas and prepare for special religious ceremonies, such as a Kratin, when a group of people make or collect gifts and bring them to the temple.

I was submerged in daily Buddhist life, where men and women, as in many religions, are treated differently. So when Chumpon and I decided that we would share the weight of a large heavy discarded log for a performance entitled Elephant Walk, it must have been an usual sight for locals to see. I am not sure what was more distracting, the Farang (a Thai word to describe white tourists) living in the village, or the fact that I was carrying a heavy piece of wood (it was suggested that a piece of bamboo would have been a lighter option). As we performed we discussed many topics about the village, Chumpon’s upbringing and which fruit and vegetables were being farmed locally.

We struggled with this huge weight that we had decided to share, yet

Mae Kumpaeng House, 2016; Baan Namkrog Mai, Nan Province; Thailand

in each step we took we learned how each other’s body worked, how to negotiate balance, and a little about the politics of our bodies.

We continued this work in the format of a two-day collaborative workshop delivered to students at the Chiang Rai Rajabhat University (another city in the North about four hours drive from Nan) on the invitation of Chakkrit Chimnok and Pattree Chimnok. This in turn led to a performance at the Northai Art Space.

BODY & POLITICS Thai people shorten their names, so when you meet them you could get a shortened name or nickname. Chantawipa is the first name of Noi Apisuk, Chumpon’s life partner. Chantawipa means ‘moonlight’ and Chumpon means ‘to gather people’, so for the next week I travelled across the north of Thailand with the moonlight and the gatherer to visit the Empower Foundation centres. Noi is the founder and director of Empower, which stands for Education Means Protection of Women Engaged in Recreation. Also known as Centre for Sex Workers’ Protection, it is a non-profit organisation in Thailand that supports sex workers by offering free classes in language, health, law and pre-college education, as well as individual counselling sessions. The organisation also lobbies the government to extend regular labour protection to sex workers and to decriminalise sex work.

We began in Mae Sai, a district that shares a border with Myanmar. I filmed and performed in the sex worker centre and at a nearby road border with Myanmar, filming the flow of people and traffic coming to and from the border. I quietly explored the sex worker centre’s rooms and felt a sense of abandonment: it was an intriguing experience, all of us women together, sex workers and artists.

My next stop was to a sex worker bar called Cando Bar in Chiang Mai. It’s a lively place run and managed by the sex workers themselves.

That is what Empower is all about. They educated me in human rights law and on how to defend myself. As I became familiar with the women I felt closer to this community and very happy that those who could speak English were open to talking to me about body politics and performance art. We hope to bring the festival of performance to Cando Bar in the future.

The dedication and love that the support workers have for the women was endearing and I felt safe and like part of the community when in their company. My journey with Empower ended in their headquarters, Concrete House, which is also a museum of the history of sex work from Siam to Thailand. International visitors come from all over the world to study with Empower and to participate in their educational workshops. I lived in an apartment in Concrete House and spent some time processing my thoughts, reading to camera, and exploring the archive and museum.

MOVING SOUTH Going deeper south, I worked with artist Vasan Sitthiket and the Patani Contemporary Art Gallery, directed by Jehabdulloh Jehsorhon.

There are around 2000 people in the village where it’s located, called Ban Don Rak in Thai and Kampong Dok Ghok in Malay. Patani is a predominantly Muslim region that borders with Malaysia. The con-

temporary art scene emerged here around 14 years ago and the gallery opened in 2015. Although there are only approximately 10 – 15 practicing professional artists in the area, the Prince of Songkla University is producing a thriving community of emerging visual artists. I was as new to the local Muslim community as performance art was to them.

My concern here was to connect with local women artists.

The gallery is built within the village on land shared with Jehabdulloh Jehsorhon’s family home. Accommodation is two kilometres away in a second space that functions as a coffee shop and a small gallery. The space reminded me of an artists’ colony as local artists can use it and visiting student groups come to see the exhibitions.

During this time I met Kusofiyah Nibuesa, Haseeyah Deng, Nuriya Waji and Nurulfirdaos Ding, all local visual artists who agreed to assist me with the performance Playing in the rice field. In this work we walked through a rice field carrying pieces of coloured fabric. The rice field was the canvas; the fabric was the paint. While we were in the rice field, the painting degree students made observational watercolour paintings of the scene. For 45 minutes, until the smoke from a nearby fire forced us out, we played with the fabric in the water, sailing the colours in the wind. We used body language gestures to communicate, each of us directing the performance patterns. They cackled with laughter, a connection was made and magic happened that no documentation could fully convey. Strangely, not one of the students’ paintings depicted the performance. I wondered why.

BACK TO BASE I returned to Nan to participate in the Nan Arts Festival as an invited guest by the Asiatopia performance art group and to complete the final weeks of my residency. The group worked individually and collaboratively; 18 of us on a main street in Nan. I was familiar with most of the artists’ performance methodologies and was curious about what would happen when we all occupied a common space. After performing we would meet back at the residency house to eat together and discuss our observations. A recurring topic was that of ‘audience’.

The streets were packed with festival-goers: an unusual space in which to perform. On the first day the audience were too concerned with taking photographs, so Chumpon Apisuk held up a sign that read “Photo Spot”. The audience acquiesced and were drawn towards him like bees to a hive. We all felt we could breathe. All of a sudden we had control over the space and the flowing, incidental audience.

This particular part of the performance was a real learning curve.

Being a native of Nan, Chumpon knew his audience intimately – their mentality, their life, their struggles, their humour. This is what makes this residency work. He shares as much knowledge as possible and works with the artist to achieve their ambitions. He knows that ideas change and, as much as I travel the world with my work, this is only the second residency I have had in a 20-year career. Residency time is such a creative soul-feeder. I just wish we had more resources to open the door a little bit more with Thailand.

Asiatopia International Performance Art Festival and Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, in cooperation with Silpakorn University, have jointly organised ‘Asiatopia: Performance Conference SE Asia 2016’ in October 2016. To apply for this residency or for more information email Chumpon Apisuk: concretehouse@empowerfoundation.org.

30

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

PROJECT PROFILE

‘A Fair Land’ food stamps

Image from ‘A Fair Land’

Trading Places for a Fair Land

Ambulant Food at ‘A Fair Land’; photo by Ruthless Imagery

trasting geographical and cultural perspectives provide the spark and bounce to bring this international collective of artists and creatives together at IMMA with Grizedale.

The village of ‘A Fair Land’ will comprise an extensive straw bale JANICE HOUGH OF IMMA INTRODUCES THEIR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT,‘A FAIR LAND’,WITH GRIZEDALE field in which a glut crop of marrows will be grown. We will endeavor to use the crop to its maximum capacity for edible and product-based ARTS, BASED IN THE LAKE DISTRICT. resources. Designed by Karen Guthrie and Public Works, and constructed under the expert guidance of Eoin Donnelly, this element of ON the first outing to Grizedale Arts in spring of last year, Helen various sheds, including a number of hermit huts, though luckily soli- the project will utilise straw for both its agricultural and architectural features. The architectural collective Nos Workshop will design a scafO’Donoghue (Head of Engagement and Learning at IMMA) and I tary confinement is not a compulsory elemental experience.

Following a walk/talk on the various challenges and triumphs of fold framework facilitating communal activities such as vending, found ourselves driving the entire circumference of the Lake District.

After four hours of driving, which should have taken two, we were farming and growing on this particular terrain, we were promised a workshops, a restaurant and talks-based activities. Schools of reinvenbarely holding it together in the car as darkness fell over the rural trip to the local village of Coniston. In the village we visited the tion will interweave with these active work spaces to facillitate situapastures of Cumbria. Our failure to locate this peripheral centre led us unmanned Honest Shop at the Coniston Institute, which is stocked tions where contemporary conditions around living, education and to discover that there were two Grizedale Arts here. The one we were with crafts and products made by locals. It offers a refreshing opportu- creativity in the everyday can be explored and workshopped. looking for was in Lawson Park and of course we had followed the nity for direct trade with the community in contrast to the predictable Functional products such as tables, chairs, spoons, bowls, wallpapers, prominent signage for the wrong one. After a wrong turn going up the options populating this tourist haven. We then stepped in to the self bricks, publications, relaxation areas, workwear and consumables are mountain and the squelchy softening of the terrain under the wheels sufficient library, which was designed by Liam Gillick, though the all currently in development through Grizedale Arts and IMMA’s resiof the car, we reluctantly made the phone call to Adam Sutherland books it contains didn’t appear to reflect his influence. A visit to the dency studios to populate, activate and create ‘A Fair Land’.

The list of contributors, developers, makers and thinkers includes (Director of Grizedale) to assist us back down a dirt track teetering on Ruskin Museum next door to the institute relayed the significant influthe edge of a mountain. After this death defying stunt we were warmly ence Ruskin has had on how Grizedale connects with the wider world Suzanne Lacy, Marcus Coates, Seoidín O’Sullivan, Rhona Byrne, welcomed and presented with some of Grizedale’s many culinary through craft, education, creativity and nature. Our immersion in Jonathan Meese, Niamh Riordan, Deirdre O’Mahony, Nós Workshop, everything Ruskin was interrupted when we came upon the new Sarah Staton, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams, Michelle Darmody, delights to help us recover from the ordeal.

Over the following days the splendour and intrigue of Grizedale extension dedicated to the Bluebird K7 and Donald Campbell, throw- Samuel Bishop, Ryan Gander, Brenda Kearney, Francesca Ulivi, Karen revealed itself in many ways. The converted farmhouse previously ing up opposing perspectives on how communities opt to prioritise Guthrie (Somewhere), Sweet Water Foundation, Public Works and many more. owned by Ruskin is peppered with household items of historical and histories – a mashup of hero glamour and social thinker.

Even within a city you can be on the periphery. As a flagship The two and a half day trip to Grizedale was the perfect primer to cultural significance. There is no conventional art on the walls; instead organisation in Dublin, IMMA has a commitment to this project, it presents itself through the hand-painted dining table, the fabric on envisage what is coming our way for the summer of 2016 at IMMA. ‘A the re-upholstered chairs, the hand-drawn wallpaper located through- Fair Land’ will be the culmination of more than a year of discussions, which brings us back to mediations on how mental and physical space out, the filing technique in the library, the crockery, the dressing development and research. The aim is to bring together a creative-led can work, how creativity can be explored and manifested, and how gowns (with Ruskin references hand sewn onto the back of each) and society in order to collectively construct various components that connections can be made with both deliberate and accidental audithe pot that pours the tea – the list goes on. The website explains that represent a village in IMMA’s courtyard, running from 11 to 28 August ences. Instigated as a research project for product development, Deidre “the Collection is ‘live’, being periodically augmented with new pur- 2016. Radicalism and reinvention are two prevalent themes running O’Mahoney’s play, A Village Plot, performed on the front lawn at chases and commissions, and diminished through inevitable losses through the programming for ‘A Fair Land’. Sarah Glennie and Adam IMMA, has provided great insight. It’s clearly a project that breaks Sutherland have a history of working together as curators, having down barriers, stops people in their tracks and taps into an everyday and breakages”.

The experience brought me to consider the various ways that realised the fantastically titled ‘Romantic Detachment’ over a decade vernacular that captures the unsuspecting passerby to experience and we’ve worked with artists at IMMA and how we could expand this ago. This was a rural/urban swap that brought the Lake District to PS1 enjoy art from an angle they may not have previously considered. If remit to channel more of these everyday applications of creativity. Of New York, so Adam and Sarah are well versed on the impact, abundant this observation is anything to go by, August is likely to be a unique course, part of Grizedale’s subversive appeal is that losses and break- generosity and resonance a project like this can generate for everyone experience for IMMA and its public. There will be constant daily activities to welcome visitors and groups to connect with the project. ages are an institutional faux pas. The five curatorial styles used to involved, acting as a creative catalyst and fusing friction.

Sweet Water Foundation from Chicago are worth looking out for; they When Grizedale were invited to take up a mammoth residency at decorate the house were conceived as a strategic set of rules to ensure that visitors can at least partially relate to an aesthetic within this IMMA, culminating in this significant presence and activation in the are the real life, day to day embodiment of renewal, reinvention and eclectic environment. As custodian of the Grizedale experience courtyard, there was an alignment of aims. It is the perfect way for the the commodity of creativity.

Closer to the event keep connected via IMMA’s website and social Sutherland could easily pass the day discussing the significance of museum and the residency to become part of an alternative system. each item with obvious passion, humour, intelligence and a pinch of For IMMA, it’s also a window onto other aspects of culture and creativ- media platforms for updates on the daily schedules for talks, workity which require greater visibility and support through institutions, shops, performances and food events, all coming together and culmiirreverence thrown in for good measure.

Stepping outside we came upon a shed where Laurie Provost’s as well as a chance to recalibrate what can potentially evolve from nating in ‘A Fair Land’. See you there.

Turner Prize work Wantee (2013) was commissioned with Grizedale IMMA’s unique context. In this ambitious project many of the eleand built with the Coniston Youth Club. Lawson Park is dotted with ments of running a residency will become a public gesture. Its con- Janice Hough, IMMA Residency Programmer

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

31

VAI NEWS

Advocacy Leads to Results DIRECTOR/CEO NOEL KELLY DISCUSSES VAI’S RECENT ADVOCACY WORK IN SEVERAL AREAS AND DETAILS HOW THE ORGANISATION WILL BE MOVING FORWARD IN RESPONSE TO RECENT CONCERNS ABOUT POLICY AND FUNDING FOR THE ARTS IN IRELAND. THE arts are back in the news. Every change in government and lead up to a new budget brings with it a renewed expression of the sector’s importance and need for support. It would appear that memories are short, as it seems necessary to repeat the same arguments each time and often to find new ways to express them, as the media become more and more hungry for what is new. In reality, our statements are usually reiterating the same thing.

At present there is an outpouring of support for a raft of new measures concerning meetings, petitions, calls for action and Dáil motions. These latest newsworthy items seek to summarise the big question: why must the arts constantly battle for existence?

We understand that other sectors of Irish society are under similar attack but, as VAI plays a strong leadership role in the cultural community, we work towards goals which are focused on the many areas that impact individual artists and the arts community as a whole. In my early days as director of VAI, it was a small community of supporters. Over the past few years it has been gratifying to see an increase in activism on behalf of the sector. With a rocky start to our relationship with the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA), we are now delighted to have opened new communications and actively supply our research on behalf of visual artists. The Social, Economic, and Fiscal Status of the Visual Artist in Ireland and the Payment Guidelines have been particularly helpful in this and have contributed much to support the arguments put forward by VAI, NCFA and other campaign initiatives.

The agenda set forward by NCFA presents clear messages about investment in our culture. This direction has been honed over the years, and we can see much more clarity of vision, which I take as evidence that some progress has been made. In our conversations we have agreed that there are primary issues relevant across the art forms.

Presenting on the Payment Guidelines at Theatre Forum and Theatre Northern Ireland’s recent ‘All-Ireland Performing Arts Conference’ in Galway, it was interesting to get insight into the parallels between these forms and the visual arts, and we hope it is the beginning of further collaboration work in the area of artists’ rights.

So, as we all gather to encourage, cajole and badger the powers that be on our way of thinking about the arts and artists, we also want to reflect on what we are looking to achieve over the next few years.

Fairness EQUITABLE PAYMENT FOR ARTISTS We have written much on the Payment Guidelines for artists in recent years. Equitable payments are a clearly stated objective in the current Arts Council strategy, and one which they require organisations funded by them to comply with. There has been a significant amount of change. There are organisations that are resistant, but there are others who are on a journey to achieve this. As some have suffered draconian cuts in recent years, their journeys may be longer. So, for a period, we will see a mix of shorter programmes, longer runs, etc. but remain focused on ensuring that this policy will be adopted by funders other than the Arts Council and the local authorities who have already an ethos of paying artists.

There is still much to be done, mainly in communicating the practical application of the guidelines, how to work towards their implementation, and indeed their importance. As stated at APAC16, this is not just something for somebody else to do. This is an action for every person to work towards to ensure that it is central to all work within the visual arts.

THE STATUS OF THE ARTIST IN IRELAND Ireland must put in place primary legislation that recognises that status of the artist in Irish society. The 1980 UNESCO Recommendation on the Rights of Artists has been a constant source of reference for our work.

Both the Recommendation and the Final Declaration have been signed by Ireland. We continue to remind the various governments of their obligations. At the moment the only place in which individual artists are

officially recognised is tax legislation. By remedying this, we will see a greater respect for artists in all areas of government. This simple and definitive act will be the seedbed for fair treatment.

RESALE RIGHT In Ireland we are still in a precarious position regarding the Resale Right. Auction houses comply, but other institutions involved with secondary sales make life very difficult unless artists are aware that their works have been sold. There is also an ongoing lobby to do away with this fundamental right.

It has never been more important for us to ensure that government puts forward primary legislation that clearly defines the role of a compulsory collecting society such as IVARO and the obligation for proper timely reporting and payments.

SOCIAL WELFARE & AN INDEPENDENT CULTURAL EXCHEQUER We have also looked in detail at raising further money for the support of a specific social welfare system for artists and other cultural workers, as well as generating an independent cultural exchequer for the arts.

Social welfare has long been problematic and prone to the vagaries of individual officers in dole offices around the country. This is exacerbated by the large majority of artists who are registered as selfemployed and therefore not eligible for all state benefits. The clear solution for us is based on logical reasoning. If you give money out then you must have money coming in to cover it. We propose that a fund is set up similar to the Artists’ Social Insurance Fund in Germany.

In keeping with their self-employed status, some artists already pay a percentage towards their social protection cover.

It is our suggestion that the balance of this payment, i.e. the “employers’ share” is made up of all who ‘exploit’ the arts. This can be in the form of a cultural levy, or perhaps an easier win... in the form or a Tourism Bed Night tax similar to that in existence in many countries around the world. In 2015 Hotels accounted for 17,375,000 bed nights. Guest Houses and B&Bs came to 6,729,000 bed nights (Central Statistics Office). Taking these two figures and proposing a standard €2 per night charge would provide €48,208,000. In France the bed tax is set at €2 per bed night; Italy €1 to €5 depending on the region; Germany is either 5% or €1 to €3 per bed night depending on the region.

1. Our second suggestion is a cultural donation from companies setting up in Ireland. As we are often told that the culture of a country is one of the key indicators used when seeking to place work or business geographically, we feel that it is a simple thing to take a tiny percentage (00.15% – 00.25%) as a cultural levy that supports this culture.

Both of these forms of ‘tithe’ are sustainable over the long term and have the potential, in combination with the exploitation tax, to significantly change the cultural sector and society’s perception of their role in supporting the arts.

In terms of the individual artist, this income allows for the creation of an equitable system for statutory health, long term or old age care and pensions, which are currently not automatically a right for artists who may not have sufficient payments in place due to the precarious nature of their work, as well as providing extra money to the state support of the arts.

Access ARTISTS’ WORKSPACES It is not new information that there is a deficit of suitable spaces across Ireland. This has been felt particularly after several spaces closed due to a wide variety of issues such as lease/licence agreements, governance, legacy planning and financial problems. It is an area that we

have been concerned about for quite some time and we have been looking at the circumstances required to provide suitable buildings as well as different business and governance models to sustain them.

We are advocating on behalf of workspaces, both old and new, for an increase in the funding allocated to them. We are looking at a variety of models which will all lead to a long term solution rather than knee jerk reactions. Our research has shown that artists believe there is a need for both fully- autonomous, self owned spaces as well as those that are subsidised by public bodies. To test some ideas we have been working closely with members of the Dublin City Arts Office to look at potential and scalable solutions. This includes a project which looks to deliver medium sized, self sustaining and fully autonomous spaces that can be spread across the country and which will not rely on annual funding applications. It has also allowed us to provide support to Dominic Stevens who is developing a live/work model based on the co-operative housing projects that he has previously worked on.

Our most recent research is of particular use, as over 400 visual artists and 42 studio programmes contributed to the survey. Through our international representative body partners we have had discussions on the situation in a wide range of countries and the various support structures required. However, they have all confirmed the lack of recent research, with two exceptions in the United Kingdom. This means that we have been delayed in publishing this research, but hope to remedy this prior to Get Together 2016, which takes place on Friday 26 August in IMMA. FUNDING & RESOURCES In the area of funding and resources, we have clearly stated that government and local government funds for the arts have not been fully exploited. There is evidence that shows monies earmarked for the arts are not being spent. This indicates that there is a clear need for a broad ranging survey across government and local authorities to look at what allocations they have made for programmes such as Per Cent for Art and project funding, and for a central agency to take control of ensuring that these monies are made available to culture.

As arts organisations form a symbiotic relationship with artists, we feel the need to raise a key issue relating to meaningful supports.

Synergies have been a key recommendation made by us since the forum in IMMA concerning the amalgamation of the three primary visual arts national institutions. This needs to be introduced across the sector, with the micro funding set up in order to allow organisations to come together to identify key areas where core funding can be shared.

An example of this is in the provision of: financial services and auditing, marketing, building and property maintenance, and legal services. The micro loans would be provided on the basis that the systems set up become self-sustaining through the various organisations providing a percentage towards their upkeep. The benefit is simple: a reduction in the overall costs of organisations, security in knowing that organisations are operating within good governance practices and increasing the promotion of culture in Ireland.

ARTISTS’ MOBILITY & PROMOTING IRELAND ABROAD When speaking about current structures and funding models, we have suggested a restructuring of the responsibilities of Culture Ireland. We have argued that it is more effective to return the responsibility for the support of the not-for-profit sector being promoted or applying for funding for going abroad to the Arts Council. Culture Ireland has clearly stated in the past that it gives preference to countries that are of current interest under government policy. The current system makes it difficult for artists to engage with countries that are not of specific interest.

We have suggested that, as Culture Ireland also supports the commercial sector, there may be a different role that they can play by working with state organisations who support businesses promoting themselves outside of Ireland.

32

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

VAI NEWS 1.

2.

Supporting all trade missions or initiatives to include a cultural aspect in their delivery. This has proven successful when reading about the benefits that were reaped by the awareness of Riverdance when opening the Chinese market.

Allowing the commercial gallery sector access to the standard system of support for Ireland’s trade abroad. This allows them to operate on a commercial bases with the investment placed in them honed to ensure that they have the key skills and supports to exploit opportunities abroad.

CULTURE, CITIZENSHIP & EDUCATION When we open our minds to a full understanding of what it means to support access to culture and all its component areas, we may reel and balk at the overwhelming nature of the project: the full integration of cultural awareness into the lives of the inhabitants of Ireland from cradle to grave. Like all good building projects there are the foundations: the teaching of cultural studies and their placement at all levels of education. We can see how in formal education cultural studies fall off as the points based system already lowers them to an optional, niceto-have, extra. We encourage educators to use culture as the glue that brings together creative thought, innovation and practical application. In doing so, we plant the seed for a better citizen who has awareness of the role of culture and the need for developing creative minds.

Innovation is not just a requirement for industry. Innovation is the key attribute required when looking at how to provide Ireland’s citizens with hope for their future. In the long term, this form of awareness broadens understanding, which in turn increases support for the arts through developed knowledge and empathy.

Policy CULTURE 2025 The All Party Committee consideration of the Culture 2025 submissions is particularly welcome. As part of an open call for submissions we were among a wide range of cultural organisations who responded.

In our very detailed submission we asked for a number of key items that we believe look strategically to the future through a number of initiatives that are both achievable and will be of benefit to the wider sector.

REVENUE We have also looked at the area of income averaging. The precarious nature of artists’ income remains a difficult issue. In terms of Revenue payments, and in keeping with systems already in place for farming and fishing industries, we ask that income averaging is introduced.

This will allow artists to take into consideration the lean years as well as the years where they may have a higher income.

ONGOING GOVERNMENT CONSULTATION We believe dialogue and engagement needs to be ongoing and should use the unique resources of all mandated arts representative bodies. At present, consultations take place on a restricted basis. Combining this with state appointments, we feel that government can learn from local authorities’ use of the Strategic Policy Committee (SPC) model.

These SPCs identify the key representative organisations and ask for their input into the appointment of representatives to the committees. This form of inclusion allows for an active, ongoing engagement with the sector and ensures that policies are focused at the core.

CAREER, GENDER & LONGEVITY The last edition of the VAN covered our most recent report. It is worth mentioning that this informs our annual programme, and along with the many topics covered in this article will inform the events that we have planned for Get Together 2016. We are in full planning mode and details will be announced very soon. Panellists from home and abroad will be asked what specific actions need to take place now for us to make things actively better.

So, to end, advocacy plays a key role in our work. We have seen change and have celebrated many wins along the way. But, the cultural sector and government tend to suffer from short term memory loss. There are times when it appears that the sector is yet again reinventing the wheel. New initiatives bring new blood and new thinking, but we feel that there must be a way for those invested in change to find out what decisions have been made in the past and what existing experience is available. Longevity is not always important, but failing to get a full picture can cause both misunderstanding and significant waste of energy. As always, VAI’s doors are fully open and we hope with this new energy and support that we will see even more responses to our regular calls for action.

Noel Kellly, Director/CEO, Visual Artists Ireland ‘The Social, Economic, and Fiscal Status of the Visual Artist in Ireland’ and the ‘Payment Guidelines’ can be found at visualartists.ie.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

33

NORTHERN IRELAND MANAGER

PUBLIC ART ROUNDUP

Think Globally, Act Locally

Public Art

NORTHERN IRELAND MANAGER ROB HILKEN INTRODUCES VARIOUS ARTISTS’ COLLECTIVES IN THE REGION AND DISCUSSES WAYS IN WHICH ARTISTS CAN PROMOTE THEIR WORK.

PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONS, SITE-SPECIFIC WORKS, SOCIALLY ENGAGED PRACTICE AND OTHER FORMS OF ART OUTSIDE THE GALLERY. POINT OF VIEW

Household Collective, image from ‘The Imagined City’

OVER the last two years VAI has brought many international visitors to Northern Ireland: curators and critics from cities including Berlin, New York, Tel Aviv, Istanbul, Stockholm, Mumbai, Oslo, Brussels and from all across the UK and Ireland. One of the recurring discussions has revolved around how Northern Irish artists can make more of an impact in the international discourse of contemporary visual art.

There are many ways to contribute: showing work internationally, participating in international residencies and being featured in international online and offline art media. Central to all of this is the need to build relationships and networks with arts professionals around the world.

During her visit to Belfast Open Studios last year, Chen Tamir, curator at CCA Tel Aviv, talked about the importance of contemporary art blogs to curators who are looking for new work to feature in gallery programmes and biennials. She suggested that submitting to Contemporary Art Daily, Hyperallergic, Art Forum and others should be an essential part of every exhibition process and having exactly the right kind of high quality images of your work and the exhibition is key to being featured.

Cuts to funding have meant that some of Northern Ireland’s international opportunities no longer exist (NI Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, MoMA PS1 residency, Golden Thread Gallery at Scope Art Fair) but others remain and are growing. MAC International will see artists and curators from around the world visit Belfast in October, with Katerina Gregos (Brussels) and Marta Dziewanska (Warsaw) joining Hugh Mulholland on the curatorial team. CCA Derry-Londonderry’s residency programme includes outbound residencies at the Treignac Projet in France. The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) still operate a bursary for the British School at Rome and ACNI and the British Council in Northern Ireland offer a joint fund for individual artists to develop the international side of their practice, including research, developing exhibitions and building relationships.

VAI recently brought over experienced New York-based curator Joseph Wolin, who gave curator talks and peer critiques in Dublin and Belfast. The third Belfast Open Studios will take place on 22 October and we hope to bring international curators and critics to the city once again, with the aim of building long-term relationships. We also continue to offer participation in the Artquest Artelier International Studio Exchange programme to our members.

The often-heard mantra ‘think global, act local’ could not be more apt when thinking about artists and the goal of establishing an international career. It is incredibly difficult for one artist, working alone, to garner attention in the national arena, let alone further afield. One way for artists to improve visibility is to work collectively.

Artist collectives across Northern Ireland have continued to provide peer support to their members alongside joint marketing and collaborative projects, both in exhibition spaces and the community.

The North Armagh Artists Collective, based in Lurgan, is celebrating its sixth anniversary this year. They have active projects working with special needs groups in partnership with Craigavon Arts in Motion and are currently preparing for a group exhibition at the Ards Arts Centre entitled ‘Ebb and Flow’. Collective member Dwyer McKerr states: “I would thoroughly endorse joining or creating an artists collective. It can be a life changing experience. For a newly graduated artist it can be the first chance to exhibit since their final show; for the tentative artist it is a place to find confidence and flourish. The strength of a collective is the breadth of experience and skills that can be called upon from your fellow members. Networking and career opportunities are also greatly increased… and there can be no underestimating the value of friendships made.”

Boom! Studios in Bangor, now in their second year, continue to go from strength to strength. In their first year they provided workspaces for 11 creatives, established a daytime programme of activities for people of all ages (running 85 workshops) and delivered five larger events. Boom! welcomes creatives from all disciplines to get involved.

Artists working in Derry-Londonderry have established a new grassroots group, #DERRYcreatives, to support and nurture artistic talent in the city. They have secured use of the top floor of the Ulster Bank for meetings, workshops and exhibitions. Seeing a need to support artists working in all disciplines, Kevin Murphy, Chief Officer of Derry-based Voluntary Arts Ireland, writes that “the ambition is to seek out and showcase the best of our talent to Northern Ireland and the world”.

Late Night Art in Belfast happens on the first Thursday of every month. The city’s galleries come together to jointly promote the vibrancy of Belfast’s visual arts scene. June’s event saw 22 exhibitions open for the evening, with 14 of them choosing that night to launch.

Galleries welcomed over 1300 visitors through their doors and used the hashtag #LNAB to make a splash on social media.

Belfast-based Household Collective is an example of how a group of independent curators working in Northern Ireland can successfully establish a national reputation and, increasingly, international recognition. In 2013 they were nominated for the prestigious Paul Hamlyn Breakthrough Award. Their 2016 public programme, ‘The Imagined City’, considers the role of art and artists in urban environments and began with a bus tour in April for which artists Paddy Bloomer, Charlotte Bosanquet, Colin Darke and Aideen Doran created four imaginary artworks to trace a route from west to east Belfast.

Collectives are born out of meeting like-minded people and there are many ways for you to get involved. Our Cafes provide a chance to meet other artists in your area and offer a platform for discussing your work. If you want to know what is happening in your area, or want to tell us about something that is already happening, please get in touch.

Note boomcollective80@gmail.com; All other artists’ collectives listed can be contacted via Facebook

Artist’s name: Michelle Browne Title of work: Point of View Commissioning body: The Health Service Executive (HSE) Date sited/carried out: December 2015 Budget: €15,000 Commission type: Per Cent for Art Project partners: HSE, Create, New Graphic and writers Stephen Murray and Anastasia Pappas Brief description: Point of View consists of a set of cards, with related images and text placed in various locations within a new short-term residential building of the Linn Dara Child and Adolescent Mental Health Facility in Cherry Orchard, Dublin.

The cards have instructions and poems that encourage the young people to explore the building. Michelle Browne worked with writers Stephen Murray and Anastasia Pappas, to develop a series of texts, and with New Graphic to develop the graphics. The writing and instructions encourage an exploration of the new building and the space that the young people will inhabit for a short period of time. The cards point the young people to different areas of the building to encourage unusual viewpoints and an active engagement with the space.

YARI AYDINLIK/THE HALF LIGHT

Artist’s name: Alannah Robins Title of work: Yari Aydinlik/The Half Light Commissioning body: Pasaj Independent Art Space, Istanbul Date sited/carried out: 5 – 21 May 2016

34

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

PUBLIC ART ROUNDUP

Public Art

community. Clodagh Emoe’s Gather Together was a process-led, participatory project that incorporated the exploration of the children’s various cultural backgrounds. The commission included workshops, storytelling and a project in which children gathered fabrics that held meaning for them and their families in order to create storytelling mats. Emoe also arranged for parts of the project to be filmed and screened to parents. The fabric mats join together to create the Great Mat that can be used as a backdrop and was also designed to be used for the film screening and other events in the school. Emoe also worked alongside dancer Daniela Backhaus, who was commissioned as part of the same initiative.

156 STEPS

Budget: None Brief description: Alannah Robins was invited by Pasaj Art Space coordinator Seçil Yaylali to make an art intervention in the organisation’s public space in Tarlabasi as part of a residency. The space is a tiny restaurant in this very poor area of central Istanbul, occupied by mostly Kurds, Syrians and Roma, where beans, rice and tea is served.

Over 10 days she spent time in the restaurant, learning Turkish, drinking tea and filming the interactions.

Robins was interested in the ancient practice of intramural burial in regions of Çatalhöyük in South East Turkey and Tell Brak, in the Khabur of North Syria. In these prehistoric societies, the deceased were buried in hearth and oven areas in the houses, an act that kept family members at the heart of the home and which is no longer possible for many people in the country, particularly migrants.

Robins was also influenced by the trial of journalist Can Dundar, which took place while she was in Turkey, and demonstrated the tense political climate and lack of free speech in the country. In response, Robins made a tiny film installation under a table in the cafe and carried out a workshop in shadow theatre with local children.

GATHER TOGETHER

Artist’s name: Clodagh Emoe Title of work: Gather Together Commissioning body: The Department of Education Date advertised: 2015 Date sited/carried out: 2015/2016 Budget: €30,000 Commission type: Per Cent for Art Project Partners: Curator Rina Whyte, St. Mary’s N.S., Saggart, County Dublin Brief description: St. Mary’s National School is a primary school with almost 600 students, 70% of which are of international origin.

There are also 24 children with special needs. The Public Art Working Group, chaired by Rina Whyte, sought a commission for the school that would engage all the children and staff as well as the local

Artist’s name: Gemma Hodge Title of work: ‘A Better Place’: Terra Incognita Date advertised: February 2016 Date sited: 2 June – 3 August 2016 Commissioning body: Waterford Healing Arts Trust Project Partners: Waterford Healing Arts Trust, University Hospital Waterford Brief description: The first in a planned series of exhibitions titled ‘A Better Place’ in University Hospital Waterford (UHW), Gemma Hodges’s exhibition features a new body of paintings: Terra Incognita.

Her work was selected for exhibition via a secret ballot by staff, patients and visitors to the hospital in February 2016 from the work of 37 artists whose identity was not revealed during the voting process.

Terra Incognita evokes a sense of place by capturing the changing qualities of light and using pared down references to the landscape. Depictions of early morning fog, the fading light at dusk, tidal marshes and fleeting shadows give Hodge’s work atmosphere while creating a timeless space for the viewer.

Artist’s name: Anne O’Byrne Title of work: 156 Steps Commissioning body: NUI Galway Arts Office, CAPILLARIUM Galway City Council Date sited: 6 March 2016 Location: NUI Galway New Engineering Building Budget: €2,500 Brief description: 156 Steps was a body of work by visual artist Anne O’Byrne, made as part of a three-month research residency in the new engineering building at NUI Galway. The site-specific work comprises digital images, sculpture, installation and video works.

O’Byrne investigated the similarities between artistic and engineering practices, working with first year civil engineering students. The work draws parallels between their methodology of working and her own artistic practice, which has to do with architecture and the reappropriation of space and place.

O’Byrne created large-scale digital prints on diabond (7 feet x 4 feet), focusing on the civil element of engineering, while a series of sculptural cranes were made as a response to the students’ spaghetti bridge project. Situated in the foyer of the engineering building, they seek to display idealogical similarities to both faculties, and to proArtist’s name: Kevin Killen voke a dialogue between artistic and engineering concepts.

Title of work: Capillarium Commissioning body: Queen’s University Belfast Commission type: Commission ‘A BETTER PLACE’: TERRA INCOGNITA Date sited/carried out: June 2016 Project partners: The Wellcome-Wolfson Building Centre for Experimental Medicine, Queen’s University Brief description: Artist Kevin Killen created a series of sculptural works for Queen’s University using his eye as the canvas: the small blood vessels acting as the ink and the camera as the drawing tool.

Reflection, mapping and repetitive forms all play a part in the photographic drawings. The images resulting from this process were then translated into a site-specific sculpture based on the original composition of the microvascular patterns in Killen’s eye.

The sculptural sphere is fabricated from laser cut mild steel. The laser cut pattern gives an organic, lace-like feel to the piece and the inter play of boundaries produce subtle additional lines which invite the viewer to peer into previously unseen patterns.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

35

OPPORTUNITIES

Opportunities COMMISSIONS ST. RAPHAEL’S PER CENT FOR ART St. Raphael’s, Loughrea would like to commission a professional artist or artists to provide them with a new, permanent artwork that would involve engagement with their students and staff and be completed by Sept 2017 to celebrate the school’s centenary. Total Budget: €35,000 (inclusive of VAT). Applicants are requested to read the full content of the online briefing document carefully. The selection process will take the form of a two-stage open competition. It is open to all interested professional artists at any stage of their career. Selection will be based on the information supplied, establishing the competence of the artists to carry out this commission. No designs or detailed proposals are required in stage 1. All submissions should be posted in hard copy.

Deadline (stage1) 12 noon, Monday 15 August Email rinawhyte@yahoo.com Telephone 087 238 9591 Address Per Cent for Art Commission, Rina Whyte, C/O The Principal, St. Raphael’s College, Loughrea, Co. Galway

SUBMISSIONS / OPEN CALLS OPENART OpenART, Scandinavia’s biggest public art biennial, takes place in Örebro, Sweden. Contemporary art from all over the world will be showcased for almost three months. OpenART 2017 will take place from 18 June to 10 Sept 2017.

Applications should be made on the OpenART website. Applicants must register and upload images directly at: opencall.openart.se. You can enter three existing artworks or projects at most per application. The submission fee is 300 SEK (approximately €32). Confirmed artists will receive an artist fee of €1000 (a confirmed group will share €1000), transport, travel and accommodation support. OpenART bears the cost for the transportation to and from the exhibition. Artists are expected to participate in installing their own artworks and are also invited to help fellow artists with production and instalment on a voluntarily basis. All artists are invited to a set programme on the opening weekend of OpenART 2017.

Deadline 2 August Email openart@orebro.se LINENHALL ARTS CENTRE The Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar,

this workshop you will learn a few basic knots and make your very own macrame plant hanger from start to finish. All the supplies you need are included. Please Mayo is inviting submissions from visual bring your own ceramic pot or bowl to artists of all disciplines for its forthcomset into your plant hanger. Snacks and ing exhibition programme. The refreshments will be provided.

Linenhall Arts Centre programmes a Email range of contemporary visual arts in a mariakarintapper@gmail.com series of exhibitions throughout the year, Web from emerging artists to those of internatheconstantknitter.ie tional reputation, and accepts submisAddress sions for exhibitions on an ongoing basis.

The Constant Knitter, 88 Francis Street, Submissions are considered by the Dublin 8 Linenhall’s Visual Arts Committee.

Submissions should include: name, GALWAY PRINT STUDIOS address, phone number, email address; a Galway Print Studios will host a series of current C.V.; an artist’s statement and one-day courses in printmaking techproposal; a maximum of 10 good quality niques. Stamp Making: 8 Jul. Drypoint: images of the artists work in, jpeg or pho29 Jul. Screen Printing: 19 Aug. 11am – tographic format. (Original works will 3pm. Fee: €55 per course. Run by Elena not be accepted.)

Santos, the workshops provide an introContact duction to printmaking for anyone who Marie Farrell, Director would like to try it for the first time or Email wishes to re-engage with it. For you to get linenhall@anu.ie the best out of the workshops, numbers Website are limited to six people. All skill levels thelinenhall.com and age groups catered for. No experiTelephone ence is required. Printmaking materials 094 902 3733 are all included. It is very important to Address bring source material such us photos, Linenhall Arts Centre, Linenhall Street, drawings, books, photocopies etc. and Castlebar, Mayo your own drawing supplies.

COURSES / WORKSHOPS / Complimentary tea and coffee served at break.

TRAINING Email ART TO HEART info@galwayprintstudio.ie Art to Heart is offering a programme of Telephone collective art making, personal explora091 773759 tion and debate. If you are a parent, youth Address leader, social or health worker, teacher, Galway Print Studio, Ballybane care worker or artist who wants to learn Enterprise Centre, Galway more about how to nurture, foster and develop your own creative potential for FASHION LIGHTING & PORTRAITS yourself and for others, this training proThis one-day practical workshop with gramme is for you. No artistic experience Sean Jackson at the Gallery of is necessary to attend the programme.

Photography Ireland will explore the This training course has been develimportant role of lighting in portraiture oped and will be led by Jole Bortoli the and provide an understanding of light director of Art to Heart. Jole has extensources. Sat 9 Jul. 11am – 5.30pm. sive experience in working with children Experienced photographer Sean Jackson and adults through the arts. Week long will explain the qualities and possibilitraining course: Mon 25 – Fri 29 Jul. ties with the language of light and the Rockforest, Tubber, The Burren, Clare. basic technical skills of studio lighting to Time: 10am – 4pm. Fee: €500. aid you in developing your own light Concessions: €350 (students, unemlanguage. Participants should bring a ployed, part-time workers). Booking fee: DSLR camera, a fully charged battery, €50. Fee covers training, art material, tea charger and memory card. and coffee. Lunch: €50 (optional).

Telephone Email 01­671 4654 jole@arttoheart.ie Address Telephone Gallery of Photography Ireland, Meeting 0851532220 House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 THE CONSTANT KNITTER Beginner Crochet Workshop. 30 Jul. 10am – 1pm. Fee: €35. This three-hour workshop will teach you the basic stitches and techniques of crochet. You will learn how to count stitches, work in rows, in the round, change colours and how to follow patterns and charts.

Finally you will create a granny square.

Make Your Own Macrame Plant Hanger. 30 Jul. 2pm – 6pm. Fee: €49. In

CCAD/CIT PORTFOLIO COURSE Participants will be tutored in composition, observational drawing, life drawing, painting and developing a sketchbook. 4 – 7 and 11 – 14 Jul (Mon – Thurs: two weeks). 10am – 3pm with 3pm – 4.30pm free studio time each day. Other activities, such as photography, collage, 3D and gallery visits are covered during the course. Tuition will be given in developing a well balanced portfolio. Participants

will be encouraged to make best use of this unique location, including Uillinn exhibition and residency programmes, the rural landscape and local architecture. The course is suitable for both mature and Leaving Certificate students, and those seeking art college entry.

Web facebook.com/uillinnwestcorkartscentre Telephone 028 22090 Address West Cork Arts Centre, Uillinn, Cork PHOTOGRAPHY MASTERCLASS The workshops of Piotr Zbierski are an intensive photographic journey to the interior of each student’s approach. 15 – 17 Jul. 10am – 6.30pm. Fee: €400. During the masterclass Zbierski will give presentations, lectures, consultations and reviews of your work, to inspire you and build a more critical relationship with your own work. There will be an open presentation of participants’ work on Tue 19 Jul at Sample-Studios as part of Cork Photo 2016. To apply please send a portfolio of 10 – 20 low resolution images together with a short text about your artistic approach.

Deadline 5 July 2016 Email workshoptiff@gmail.com Web piotrzbierski.wordpress.com corkphoto.com Address Sample-Studios, 10 – 19 Sullivan’s Quay, Cork

currently in professional practice and resident in Northern Ireland. This is a voluntary position and board commitment includes four quarterly meetings annually which are normally held at Craft NI offices in Waring Street, Belfast City Centre, as well as occasional representation at sector events.

Deadline Friday 15 July Email alan@craftni.org Web craftni.org Telephone 028 9032 3059

RESIDENCIES

HEART OF GLASS Heart of Glass is a collaborative arts commissioning agency based in St. Helens.

This residency opportunity, for EU-based artists, will develop through collaboration and engagement with young people (aged 11+) from each of the four neighbourhood regeneration areas of St. Helens.

Working with partners Helena Homes and their youth engagement project Make it Happen, Heart of Glass have chosen to jointly fund a live/work residency. They are currently seeking expressions of interest from artists that have a demonstrable track record in working collaboratively with young people, and an ethos rooted in socially engaged practice. It is anticipated the residency will commence in Sept 2016 for a minimum period of six months. Heart of Glass and LIFE-DRAWING MARATHONS CIT Make it Happen will provide accommo4 – 8 Jul and 11 – 15 Jul. These marathons dation, travel costs, artist fee and a proare an opportunity for a continuous peri- duction budget. The artist would be supod of study from a variety of models ported by the team at Heart of Glass and across five days. The Crawford College of Helena Homes.

Art and Design provides ideal life draw- Deadline ing facilities with easels, drawing boards 5 July; interviews: 19 July and newsprint provided. Participants Email should bring there own paper and draw- info@heartofglass.org.uk ing materials (water based/non-toxic Web only). These sessions are designed for heartofglass.org.uk those with previous life drawing experience. The sessions are untutored but will STUDIOS/SPACES be supervised and facilitated by CCAD tutors who will be available to give THE COMPLEX advice if requested. Fee: €180 (Individual The Complex, Dublin has two large studays can be booked for €36 per day). dios available to rent from 1 of Aug 2016, Email located just off Capel Street in the city ccad.enquires@cit.ie centre. The studios are well proporTelephone tioned, bright and warm, with a large 021 433 5220 communal area attached. The overall Address rental cost includes wifi, electricity and CIT Crawford College of Art and Design, heating. There is access to the studio Cork City spaces from 8am to 12pm, 365 days per

OPPORTUNITIES IRELAND CRAFT NI BOARD MEMBERS The Board of Craft NI is currently seeking to recruit two new members to join their board of directors. To ensure a balanced and representative board they are seeking applications from designer/makers

year. They are ideal for solo artists or studio shares.

Contact Annemarie Email gallery@thecomplex.ie Web thecomplex.ie

36

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

July – August 2016

VISUAL ARTISTS IRELAND operates a wide range of professional development training events throughout the year. The delivery of this programme is greatly supported by our relationship with local and international visual art professionals and partner organisations throughout the island of Ireland.

Visual Artists Ireland works in partnership with local authorities, visual arts venues and others, combining resources to support the professional development of visual artists at regional level.

Summer and Autumn 2016

VAI ARTISTS’ CAFÉS AND SHOW & TELL DATES

partnership with Tipperary County Council and Damer

TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY, MAPPING YOUR

FOR YOUR DIARY. VAI has scheduled the following

House Gallery. @ Damer House Gallery, Roscrea. Sept

CAREER WITH PATRICIA CLYNE-KELLY in partner-

ROI

dates for Café events during 2016 and invites inter-

date tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Places: 15 – 20. Fee: €20/10

ship with CraftNI @Visual Artists Ireland, Belfast

ested artists’ groups, venues or partners to get in

(VAI members).

Office. 28 – 29 Sept. Fee: £30/15 (VAI members).

Two days of practical, curatorial and commercial

touch if interested in hosting a Café. Email: moni-

Dublin City Further details on the VAI website.

DOCUMENTING YOUR WORK WITH TIM DURHAM @Visual Artists Ireland. Thurs 15 Sept (10.00 – 17.00). Places: 10. Fee: €60/30 (VAI members).

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING WITH TOM KENT @Visual Artists Ireland. Sat 17 Sept (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 10 – 20. Fee: €20/10 (VAI members).

ca@visualartists.ie. Sat 3 Sept, Sat 3 Dec.

Roscommon

(VAI members). Peer Critique: Thurs 29 Sept (10.30 – 16.30). Places: 6. Fee: €60/30 (VAI members).

VAI & RDS VISUAL ARTS AWARDS CAFÉ in partnership with the RDS, Visual Arts Awards. @RDS,

perspectives on selling and valuing your work for

partnership with Tipperary County Council. @

professional artists and designer makers working in

Clonmel tbc. Nov date tbc (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 15

traditional media and collectable fine crafts led by

VISUAL ARTISTS’ SHOW & TELL EVENT FOR – 20. Fee: €20/10 (VAI members).

ROSCOMMON ARTISTS in partnership with Tell us about your training needs!

Roscommon Visual Artists Forum. @King House, Boyle, Roscommon. Jul/Aug date tbc (11.00 – 12.30).

Places: 30+. Fee: €5/FREE (VAI members).

Laois

ARNO KRAMER ARTIST TALK AND PEER VISUAL ARTISTS’ CAFÉ & SHOW & TELL EVENT CRITIQUE @Visual Artists Ireland. Talk: Wed 28 FOR LAOIS ARTISTS in partnership with Dunamaise Sept (18.00 – 19.00). Places: 10 – 20. Fee: €5/FREE

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING in

Arts Centre. @Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise.

Sat 26 Nov (11.00 – 15.30). Places: 30+. Fee: €5/0 (VAI members).

Fingal

If you are interested in training please do get in touch with us directly or forward an expression of interest in a topic/s through the Professional Development Training web page. We often repeat workshops when there is a strong demand for a topic.

Artist & Tutors Panel Visual Artists Ireland has an ongoing open submission process for artists and arts professionals interested in being part of an available panel of tutors contributing to the VAI Professional Development Training Programme. For details go to our training registration page and click on Register for the PDT Artists’ Panel.

BOOKINGS/INFORMATION Monica Flynn Professional Development Officer T: 01 672 9488 E: monica@visualartists.ie

visualartists.ie/professional-development

Awawrd winners Rachel Doolin, Gabhann Dunne,

COSTING, PRICING & BUDGETING FOR YOUR VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for WORK WITH ANNETTE MOLONEY, SHOWING all VAI, Training and Professional Development events. Fees

Maria McKinney and curator Anna O’Sullivan. Wed

AND SELLING DIGITAL MEDIA & INSTALLATION

26 Oct (11.00 – 16.00). Places: 40+. Fee €10/5 (VAI

WORKS WITH NIAMH O’MALLEY

Ballsbridge, Dublin. With talks from previous Taylor

Patricia Clyne-Kelly. The learning process throughout will involve an audit of your current position, an evaluation of competencies to realise an objective understanding of your strengths, setting a PIP (personal/professional improvement plan) defining a career map and the planning schedule to achieve this.

BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS @Various City Centre Studios. Sat 22 Oct. Fee: FREE. Belfast Open Studios, hosted by VAI and sponsored by local artisan tea makers Suki Tea, is an invitation to the public to come and see how artists work and to take a glimpse into the creative processes. The event will be accompanied by a programme of artist talks and events across the city.

range from €5 – 40 for VAI members.

Newtownards

NI

VISUAL ARTISTS’ CAFE: SOCIAL MEDIA AND ON-

RAINSFORD @Visual Artists Ireland. Fri 7 Oct Fee: €20/10 (Fingal artists).

Belfast

will look at ways artists can use free internet tools

(10.30 – 16.30). Places: 10. Fee: €60/30 (VAI mem-

VISUAL ARTISTS’ CAFE: DEVELOPING CREATIVE

to support their overall professional development,

PROPOSALS @Visual Artists Ireland, Belfast Office.

and to promote specific exhibitions. We will explore

Sat 9 Jul (11.00 – 16.00). Fee: FREE. Preparing propos-

platforms that enable you to showcase your work

als can be a challenging and time consuming exer-

online, such as WordPress and Tumblr. We will also

Town Hall Cavan. @Town Hall, Cavan Town. Sat 1

cise for artists. It’s not always easy to communicate

look at how social media can help expand your audi-

Oct (10.00 – 16.30). Places: 10 – 12. Fee: €40/20 (VAI

an unrealised idea and it can take time and effort

ence and at other ways to connect. The day will also

HEALTH & SAFETY FOR VISUAL ARTISTS WITH members).

VINCENT KIELY @Visual Artists Ireland. 30 Sept ARTIST’S BOOK WORKSHOP in partnership with

to transform some blank A4 paper into a clear and

include tips on how to use internet-based tools to

creative proposal that will, hopefully, capture the

support your applications and proposals.

members).

WRITING ABOUT YOUR WORK WITH SUE

bers).

in partnership with Fingal Arts. @Malahide Visitors Centre, Malahide Castle. 22 Sept (half-day event).

Cavan

PRESENTATION SKILLS FOR VISUAL ARTISTS WRITING ABOUT YOUR WORK WITH JOANNE WITH ANDREA AINSWORTH in association with the LAWS in partnership with Cavan County Council & Abbey Theatre. @Visual Artists Ireland. Date tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Fee: €40/20 (VAI members).

(10.30 – 16.30). Fee: €40/20 (VAI members). Cavan County Council & Town Hall Cavan. @Town MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA FOR VISUAL Hall, Cavan Town. Date tbc (10.00 – 16.30). Places: ARTISTS WITH EMMA DWYER @Visual Artists Ireland. Thurs 6 Oct (10.30 – 16.30). Fee: €40/20 (VAI

12 – 14. Fee: €40/20 (VAI members).

imagination of a selection process or panel. The day

LINE PRESENCE @Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards.

Sat 23 Jul (11.00 – 16.00). Fee: FREE. This workshop

will include a presentation and conversation on best

Strabane

practice and some group discussions on examples of

VISUAL ARTISTS’ HELPDESK WITH ROB HILKEN

recent artist’s proposals.

@Alley Theatre, Strabane. Wed 3 Aug (12.00 –

FILM MASTERCLASS WITH DECLAN CLARKE @

16.00). Fee: FREE. Six one-to-one individual 30-min-

members).

Clare

DEVELOPING CREATIVE PROPOSALS WITH

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING

Belfast Exposed Photography Gallery. Sat 23 Jul

ute appointments to get specific support advice on

WITH TOM KENT in partnership with Clare County

(11.00 – 16.00). Fee: £15/10 (VAI members). Art-

a range of topics, including career development

Council. @tbc. Sat 10 Sept (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 15

ist/filmmaker Declan Clarke will provide this one

strategies, networking advice, online marketing, fi-

– 20. Fee: €20/10 (VAI members). Venue: tbc.

day masterclass for artists working in or interested nancial systems and basic tax advice.

ANNETTE MOLONEY @Visual Artists Ireland. Date tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Fee: €40/20 (VAI members).

DEVELOPING CREATIVE PROPOSALS WITH EILIS LAVELLE @Visual Artists Ireland. Date tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Fee: €40/20 (VAI members).

TOURING EXHIBITIONS @Visual Artists Ireland A series of presentations and case studies of successful touring visual art exhibitions. Places: 20+. Fee: €5/FREE (VAI members).

HEALTH & SAFETY FOR VISUAL ARTISTS WITH in moving image. Clarke is known for his meticuVINCENT KIELY in partnership with Clare County lously considered, rigorously conceptual and beauCouncil. @tbc. Sat 1 Oct (10.30 – 16.30). Places: 15 –

tifully shot films and for his hands-on approach to

20. Fee: €20/10 (VAI members).

filmmaking. This is an opportunity to discuss film

Tipperary DOCUMENTING & ARCHIVING YOUR WORK in

making processes, hear about Clarke’s own position as an artist, and filmmaker and gain valuable feedback on your own developing film projects.

BOOKINGS/INFORMATION Rob Hilken Northern Ireland Manager T: 028 9587 0361 E: rob@visualartists-ni.org visualartists.org.uk/booking

Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP)

RESIDENCY PROGRAMME 2016 CAPP: supporting the development of collaborative arts across Europe A transnational partnership funded by Creative Europe The second year of CAPP focuses on artist’s residencies. In line with CAPP’s ambition to support artists to work transnationally and to create an international dialogue around collaborative arts practice, the residencies seek to explore new models of participation and cooperation, encouraging artists’ exchange through practice and methodologies in different social and community contexts. The CAPP network partners are hosting artists working within the field of collaborative arts from the different partner countries of Hungary, Germany, Spain, Finland, Ireland and the UK. These residencies will vary in length to include anything from a series of week-long engagements to month-long research residencies to six month or longer residency opportunities which evolve as part of the broader programming work of the CAPP organisations.

Partners: Create (lead partner), Dublin; Agora Collective, Berlin; hablarenarte, Madrid; Heart of Glass, St. Helens UK; Kunsthalle Osnabrück, Osnabrück; Live Art Development Agency, London; Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, Budapest; M-Cult, Helsinki and Tate Liverpool.

For regular updates, residency opportunities and news of the CAPP programme please visit: create-ireland.ie, cappnetwork.com and facebook.com/CAPPnetwork.

The Marmite Prize for Painting V 9 July - 10 September 2016

www.highlanes.ie

Michael McLoughlin, ‘Cumann’, Droichead Arts Centre, 2016

Call Out for Artist Submissions Droichead Arts Centre is now accepting proposals for its 2017 exhibition programme Submission guidelines: • Detailed proposal • Documentation of work • Biographies and CVs • Timeline for delivery • Technical requirements • Any other relevant supporting material The exhibition can be a solo or a group exhibition, involving any medium, and new or existing works. A gallery floor plan is available on request. Submissions should be sent in one email (not exceeding 20mb) with the subject line ‘2017 Proposal’ to: rita.mcquillan@ droichead.com Deadline: Monday 29th August 2016 Droichead Arts Centre Stockwell St., Drogheda, Co. Louth.

T: 041 9833946 E: info@droichead.com W: www.droichead, @droichead_arts

join/renew at: www.visualartists.ie

New Projectors at VAI! Visual Artists Ireland has a new Infocus IN124STA short throw projector for rent.

The Infocus IN124STA combines short throw, high brightness and networking, making it perfect for situations where space is tight.

See visualartists.ie for details and prices.