Visual Artists' News Sheet - 2016 September October

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet ISSUE 5 September – October 2016 Published by Visual Artists Ireland Ealaíontóirí Radharcacha Éire

Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness, Mobile Monuments, 2016; photo by Brian Cregan

ENNISKILLEN VISUAL ARTS OPEN

1 6 SEPTEMBER - 15 OCTOBER

ROSCOMMON ARTS CENTRE

VENUES & ARTISTS The Higher Bridges Gallery

(TUE - FRI 10am - 4pm, SAT 1pm - 3pm) Ruth Gonsalves Moore, Gavin Porter, Simon Carman, Trina Hobson, Rachel Leary, Kevin Gillet, Des Cullen, Tansey Cowley, Phyl Guerin, Noah Rose

Fermanagh House Foyer

(MON - FRI 9am - 5pm, SAT 9am - 1pm) Carolin Koss

ENNISKILLEN VISUAL ARTS OPEN is an open Fermanagh Lakeland Forum submission exhibition (MON - SAT 10am - 4pm, SUN 2pm - 6pm) Andy Parsons, Floating World Books, that encourages Ellie Niblock, Mairead McCormack visual artists to enter work in any practice, Waterways Ireland Enniskillen representational styles or (MON - FRI 8.30am - 5.30pm) genre - siting work within Kiera O’Toole, Nicholas May, the widespread fabric of a Marilyn Lennon, Mary A. Fitzgerald, modern urban environment Wendy Ferguson – and in particular within The Clinton Centre Enniskillen, Town.

(TUE - FRI 10am - 4pm, SAT 11am - 3pm) Stephen Gunning, Emma Zukovik, Floating World Books

Martin Parr. Boyle. County Roscommon. St John’s Eve bonfire. 1983. © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

Exhibition continues until 11 October Martin Parr lecture and conversation with curator Linda Shevlin 5pm, 11 October Adm: €5 (places limited). Booking: (090) 662 5824

The Aisling Centre

(MON - FRI 9am - 5pm) Fionn Wilson, Brian Kielt, Mary Furlong, Pawel Kleszczewski & Kasia Zimnoch LOGO & DESIGN BY

www.flive.org.uk

Duncan Campbell. Bernadette (2008)Film transferred to video, B&W/colour, sound, 37mins.

Courtesy the artist and LUX, London

RADICAL ACTIONS Curated by Linda Shevlin

An International and National project on how attitudes to rebellion, revolution and agitation have formed Irish society and informed national identity.

Exhibition: RMIT Gallery, Melbourne Kennedy Browne | Duncan Campbell | Jesse Jones | Seamus Nolan 9 Sept - 22 Oct

Exhibition: Roscommon Arts Centre Duncan Campbell, Bernadette 10 Nov 2016 - 13 Jan, 2017

Seminar & Screenings: King House, Boyle Kennedy Browne | Jesse Jones | Seamus Nolan | Prof. Luke Gibbons 11am, 11 Nov Adm: €10 inc lunch. Booking: (090) 662 5824

Roscommon Arts Centre Circular Road Roscommon W: www.roscommonartscentre.ie T: (090) 662 5824

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Editorial

September – October 2016

Contents Cover. Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness, Mobile Monuments, 2016; photo by Brian Cregan

Welcome to the September – October 2016 issue of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

5. Column. Linda Shevlin. The Art of Inclusion.

6. Column. Katherine Atkinson. Incentives, Tenets & Time.

Artist and curator Linda Shevlin continues as guest editor in this issue, which takes ‘participation’ as its 7. Column. Annette Moloney. The (Presumed) Pressure of Participation. theme. In their columns, Shevlin, Annette Moloney and Katherine Atkinson discuss ideas around this 8. News. The latest developments in the visual arts sector. theme relating to their repective practices and roles in the Irish art world.

9. Regional Focus. The visual art resources and activity in Lisburn and Castlereagh are outlined Our regional focus for this issue is Lisburn and Castlereagh, with updates from R-Space as well as artists Patricia Lavery, Helen Sara McLarnon and Andrew Cooke.

The theme of participation is continued in Aideen Barry’s piece, in which she describes the making of Silent Moves, a collaboration with participants from Scannán Technologies and the Ridgepool Training Centre. Michael McLoughlin also discusses his approach to long-term collaborative projects and the role of the artist in this process. In her ‘Project Profile’ Clodagh Emoe details the devlopment of her audio project with participants living in Irish direct provision centres.

by R-Space, Patricia Lavery and Helen Sara McLarnon.

12. Project Profile. The Plurality of Existence. Clodagh Emoe introduces her work with refugees in

direct provision centres in Ireland.

14. Residency. Loss of Liberty. Rory Prout and David O’Kane discuss their experience working with

inmates at Arba Minch prison in Southern Ethiopia.

15. Career Development. Embracing Complexity. Fiona Whelan talks about her ongoing project

‘Natural History of Hope’.

16. Biennial. Semi-Colonials. Lily Power reports on closing seminar for Eva 2016: ‘Still (the)

Barbarians’.

This issue features several international projects: Rory Prout and David O’Kane in Arba Minch prison, 18. How is it Made? Methodology & Participation. Michael McLoughlin talks about his collaborative Ethiopia, Michelle Boyle on residency in Kerala and Anastasia Artemeva reporting from the Moscow project for Droichead Arts Centre.

Biennale for Young Art. 19. Critique. ‘Would You Die for Ireland?’, The LAB; ‘Two Birds/One Stone’, Farmleigh Gallery; ‘I ‘Seminar Reports’ come from Tara Kennedy, who attended Create’s ‘Extending Architecture’ series of public talks, and Lily Power, who discusses the broad ranging closing seminar for Eva 2016: ‘Still (the Barbarians’.

Have Nada So Far But I Remain Optimistic’, Tactic; ‘Creative Peninsula’, Ards Arts Centre;

Capillarium, Queen’s University, Belfast.

23. How is it Made? Forms in Action. Rhona Byne and Yvonne McGuinness discuss their public art

project ‘Mobile Monuments’.

Reviewed in the ‘Critique’ section are: John Byrne at The LAB, Dublin; ‘Two Birds/One Stone’ at Farmleigh 24. Project Profile. Silent Moves. Aideen Barry talks about her award-winning collaborative project.

Gallery, Dublin; David Fagan at Tactic, Cork; Kevin Killen at Queen’s University, Belfast; and ‘Creative 26. Seminar. Operationalising Concepts. Tara Kennedy reports on the ‘Extending Architecture’ series of Peninsula’ at Ards Arts Centre. public talks.

27. Residency. Fatherland. Michelle Boyle recalls her time on the Carpe Diem Monsoon residency in As ever, we have details of upcoming VAI Professional Development Programme, exhibition and public Kerala, India. art roundups, news from the sector and current opportunities.

28. Arts & Health. Alternate Realities & Hidden Stories. Avril Carr details the latest Helium Arts

artist in residence programme Cloudlands.

29. International. Deep Inside Moscow. Anastasia Artemeva discusses the work of Adam Gibney

and Steve Maher at the Moscow Biennale for Young Art.

30. Residency. Para-humans, Cyborgs & Empathy in the Digital Age. Joanna Hopkins and Siobhan

McGibbon talk about their experience of the Chimera Art and Science residency.

32. Northern Ireland Manager. Finding Spaces. Rob Hilken describes how smaller venues and artist-

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

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

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

Production: Guest Editor: Linda Shevlin. Production Editor: Lily Power. News / Opportunities: Siobhan Mooney, Shelly McDonnell. Invoicing: Bernadette Beecher. Contributors: Linda Shevlin, Katherine Atkinson, Annette Moloney, R-Space, Patricia Lavery, Andrew Cooke, Helen Sara McLarnon, Tara Kennedy, Lily Power, Rory Prout, Michelle Boyle, Clodagh Emoe, Aideen Barry, Avril Carr, Fiona Whelan, Michael McLoughlin, SiobhanGibbon, Joanna Hopkins, Rhona Byrne, Yvonne McGuinness, Alissa Kleist, Andy Parsons, Carissa Farrell, Sara Baume, Dorothy Hunter, Patricia Crossey, Anastasia Artemeva, Rob Hilken.

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: Mary Kelly (Chair), Naomi Sex, Michael Corrigan, David Mahon, Niamh McCann, Donall Curtin, Richard Forrest, Clíodhna Ni Anluain. Staff: CEO / Director: Noel Kelly. Office Manager: Bernadette Beecher. Publications: Lily Power. IVARO: Alex Davis. Communications Officer:/Listings Editor: Shelly McDonnell. Professional Development Officer: Monica Flynn. Book-keeping: Dina Mulchrone. Membership Services Officer/ Listings Editor: Siobhan Mooney. Northern Ireland Manager: Rob Hilken (rob@visualartists-ni.org).

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

COLUMN

Linda Shevlin The Art of Inclusion FOR the September /October issue of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet, I’m focusing on forms of participation and collaboration. This concern stems from a continued insistence in my own practice as a curator in a local authority on interrogating the work of artists working in social, participatory contexts. We are thinking of participation as progressive – as preferable to elitism, exclusion and bureaucracy, for instance – but we need to think of the value of participation as completely dependent upon the value of the project in which one participates. It tells us a lot about how art and artists are being routinely interrogated. And I think this is extremely flawed. In order to delve deeper into the conundrum of participatory practice, I sent the following text to each of the invited contributors as a provocation: “People in the art world seem to have subscribed wholesale to the idea that participation or collaboration is an athletic sport in which artists must compete for their form of participation to be deeper, stronger, faster, longer and purer. The ideal form of participation or collaboration then hangs over every project that even hints at participation. This is not true of the experience of the spectator, who remains outside the work.

The author has more power over their work than their participants. If we are troubled by the presence of power here, we might feel tempted to abolish the practices of authorship altogether – emboldened, perhaps, by a misapplication of concept of the ‘death of the author’ – where instead there needs to be more traffic between author and reader.”

Aideen Barry’s work Silent Moves has recently won the ‘Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks’ poll for the year 2015 following its nomination and public vote in the Irish Times, beating off extremely stiff competition in the process. This is a testament to the impact well executed and rigorously formulated works like this can have on the general public. In her article, Aideen recounts her personal struggles, prior to this project, with being positioned as an artist in volatile, precarious situations and how this has informed her approach to working in the participatory field.

I invited Fiona Whelan to write on her methodology for the project ‘Natural History of Hope’, a collaborative project that explores class and gender inequality across different generations of women. She highlights the reality of these art processes, which engage people as a core feature and are each complex and multifaceted. She alludes to Claire Bishop’s observation at ‘Creative Time Summit’ 2011 on the evolution of participation throughout history from the ‘crowd’ of the 1910s, to the ‘masses’ of the 1920s, the ‘people’ of the 1960s, the ‘excluded’ of the 1980s, the ‘communities’ of 1990s, to today’s ‘volunteers’.

Developing an art project from a voluntary act was the course of action for Clodagh Emoe when formulating ‘The Plurality of Existence…’ Setting up a weekly gardening project with Spirasi, a humanitarian, intercultural, non-governmental organisation who work with asylum seekers, refugees and other disadvantaged migrant groups operated as a strategy to introduce herself and her ideas to this community. This weekly activity nurtured a trust within the group and laid the groundwork for recounting memories and writing poems that developed into sound transmissions and gallery installations.

The legacy and ownership of participatory works is an ongoing concern not only for the artist, but also for the community/participants involved. Michael McLoughlin’s project ‘Cumann’ addresses this issue through the formation of a ‘power of veto’ where participants act as custodians and arbitrators of the work they were involved in the creation of. They ultimately make all decisions over the presentation and delivery of the work and are consulted on its future.

The levels of participation and its expansive interpretation vary across each of the projects highlighted in this issue. Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness were awarded a major public art commission from Fingal County Council Arts Office to create work as part of their centenary programme. An intensive process of delivering 20 workshops to 500 people led to the development of the content, the making of props, and the creation of the final performances of ‘Mobile Monuments’. Three trikes were fabricated to deliver and transport these platforms for performances, echoing the slow networking and passing of information in the lead up to the 1916 Rising.

Participation in art might best be understood as an ethical ‘solution’ to art’s crisis of legitimation. However, participation can only appear as a solution if we forget that art’s actants exist only within art’s various forms of institutions, including local authorities, the custodians of the Per Cent for Art Scheme. Institutional critique, too, must occur within the physical or discursive horizon of the institution. This leads to a paradoxical situation for the ethics of participation. While participation appears to be the antidote to institutionalisation it can also, one would hope, be an instrument of institutional power.

Linda Shevlin is an independent curator and artist based in Roscommon.

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Roundup ONCE REMOVED

Ian Cumberland, Black Hole

Ian Cumberland’s ‘Once Removed’ runs at Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, 6 Aug – 12 Sept. Cumberland’s paintings depict solitary figures or “fleshy faces,” the press release states, that “ruminate on the individual, their understanding of self, and the disparity between appearance and reality”. millenniumcourt.org

rienced dramatic nuclear accidents with far-reaching consequences. The spirit of Sellafield, the reactor closest to Ireland, located across the Irish Sea in the UK, brings an unexpected domestic presence to the installation.

“Sellafield was responsible for turning Image from ‘Island – Oilean’ the Irish Sea into one of the most radioSarah Walker Gallery, Castletown active bodies of water in the world with Bere, West Cork, held a group exhibi- planned,” the artist stated, “yet undistion titled ‘Island – Oilean’, 9 Jul – 7 closed radioactive emissions over Aug. Works by Angie Shanahan, Jac- many years. It is now being decommisqueline O’Driscoll and Eileen Single- sioned and most of the site is classified ton came out of a multi-faceted art as nuclear waste”. balzerprojects.com project inspired by journeys to selected islands along the Irish coast. “The narrative of the exhibition,” the press re- I DRAW, I DO lease stated, “begins with Naomh Ciaran 2, a former mail-boat that for many years sailed among the numerous islands of West Cork, from Baltimore to Cape Clear. These voyages across water act as an insight into the sociology and history of the islanders, the narrative of the boat acting as a powerful symbol for migration and the ebb and flow of island life”.

ISLAND –OILEAN

sarahwalkergallery.com

HYPNAGOGIA Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin held an exhibition of photography work by Alec Soth titled ‘Hypnagogia’. Soth has travelled around America, capturing, the press release stated, “quiet, strange, and offbeat corners of that vast country”. The works in ‘Hypnagogia’ are drawn from several of the artist’s best-known series, including Songbook, Broken Manual, and Sleeping by the Mississippi. Rather than being a simple collection of individual works, they are conceived as a form of narrative, with special emphasis on the relationship between the photographs.

SHEILA MCCLEAN

DRAWINGS

David Hockney, Self Portrait (detail), 1954

Eve Parnell

An exhibition of drawings by Eve Parnell was held in the Long Room at Stormont, Belfast and ran 6 – 24 Jun. Her most recent work was inspired by themes of the 1916 Rising and the Battle of the Somme. A line of verse, from poets including W.B. Yeats, Thomas Hardy and Rupert Brooke, accompanies each image, held in the beak of a raven.

Following this, the exhibition moved to Belfast Cathedral.

The MAC, Belfast, is hosting the first major Irish presentation of David Hockney’s work in ‘I Draw, I Do’, which runs 19 Aug – 16 Oct. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s early work, including the Paper Pool series, as well as more recent pieces. ‘I Draw, I Do’ forms part of a number of exhibitions that will celebrate the artist as he approaches his eightieth year. themaclive.com

BREATHING SPACE

A CAUSE FOR CONCERN, BUT NOT ALARM

Sheila McClean, work from Jewel Box Festival, Moville

Ink and charcoal image from’ Breathing Space’

Painter Sheila McClean’s retrospective exhibition was held as part of the Jewel Box Festival in Moville, Donegal, on Sat 16 Jul. McClean is a member of the Royal Ulster Academy and known for her evocative landscape paintings of the sea, mountains, hills and bogland of Inishowen. The artist stated: “My desire as a painter is to establish a relationship between intuitive imagery and a spontaneous method of painting.

I try to achieve this through a combination of economic statements, which are personal rather than purely descriptive, and by keeping myself aware of the life and integrity of the paint itself.”

Creative Spark, Dundalk presented an exhibition of work from the Creative Spark Residency Programme 2015 – 2016 (funded by Create Louth) titled ‘Breathing Space’. The artists exhibiting were Desiree DeRuiter (Canada), Una Curley (Monaghan), Seán Cotter (Louth), Jennifer Quigley (Louth) and Mary Claire Kehoe (Wexford).

A parallel exhibition of work by Creative Spark print studio members ran adjacent to the exhibition. The exhibition brought together new works completed during the residency programme through printmaking, mixed media and painting.

Brian Duggan, A Cause for Concern But Not Alarm, 2016

Brian Duggan presented a new solo installation at Balzer Projects, Basel Switzerland (2 Jun – 16 Jul). This new body of installation work was made from marble, quartz and slate. Duggan was inspired by the engineering plans and fully functioning aspirational graphics of the atomic reactors of Three Mile Island (USA), Chernobyl (USSR) and Fukushima (Japan). All three expe-

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

COLUMN

ROUNDUP

Katherine Atkinson

OFF CENTRE

Incentives, Tenets & Time CREATE, the national development agency for collaborative arts, supports artists across all artforms who work with communities in different social and community contexts, be they communities of place or communities of interest. Create seeks to foster current and future potential for collaboration between artists and communities by encouraging art projects that reflect the exciting ways in which collaborative arts represent a complex range of ideas and approaches.

A very significant aspect of the support Create offers is providing informed advice to artists in the field of collaborative arts. As the Professional Development Officer at Create, I work with and advise artists on potential projects and, in turn, am privileged to be informed by artists and representatives of communities of a plethora of concepts, approaches and projects that demonstrate the incredible diversity and depth within the collaborative arts field.

For every concept there is a reason, for every approach there is an assumption and for every project there is the expectation of an outcome. The first question I pose to those I meet with is: Why? Why this concept or idea? Why this approach? (are you making assumptions about the people engaged in this process)? Why this project? Is this within your artistic knowledge and practice? What are your expectations of an outcome/s and again, why? These prompts and interrogations are not just mere contrarianism. They seek to elicit fundamental information about the nature of the participation the artist is setting in train.

In The Spectrum of Participation, Chrissie Tiller writes: “In the end I think it has to do with being transparent about our intentions: being clear with ourselves and those we are working with why we, as artists, are engaged with a particular group of participants, a particular issue or in creating a particular piece of collaborative work. This means taking on the responsibility and the time to understand the social, political and economic contexts in which our work is situated: acknowledging the power structures, of which we, as artists, are part.”

The political and economic systems that we work and live within can determine the environment in which the arts is experienced. Complex systems, driven by a neoliberal agenda with bureaucratic power structures, reinforce expectations of achievement and commodified experience. These systems influence or frame the policies that publicly funded institutions adopt.

Cultural institutions are required to outline their achievements through quantitative measures, and place value upon the institutional experiences. This has an impact on collaborative and participatory arts practice for which measurements of projects often require increased participant numbers and valuation of the product rather than more subtle measures such as the quality of engagement and the processes used to develop artistic outcomes.

These power structures, policies and reporting requirements are well known and responses to critiques of them are also seen within the same institutions.

Making Great Art Work: The Arts Council Strategy 2016 – 2025 states: “Our commitment to renewal is not about a restoration of previous models, but about selective and well-planned resourcing of excellent practice, inclusive of fresh and dynamic approaches to public engagement.”

Within the bounds of an institution, artists and communities can benefit from an awareness of the priorities and policies of the institution’s programmes, in order to choose whether their arts project may or may not be an instrument of the implementation of those policies.

The rationale for collaborative and participative arts practice has the potential to enable cultural democracy, equality and cultural exchange through the making of artworks. That is why the distinct intention of the process of making and the outcome of artworks should be understood by all involved with the work.

Alongside the intention, there is usually a belief system that underpins the ethics of the work. Moral tenets inform practice, often without explicit recognition. What beliefs do we hold with us when we work with people? What beliefs do those people have and are they shared? Do these beliefs affect the work and do we need to be explicit about this? These questions are significant when there is an expectation of a transformative experience as part of the project.

Dave Beech says in his paper Bodies and Subjects: “It is only by assuming that art is good that we can go on thinking that participation in it is something that ought to be encouraged and extended.” He says further: “The social and cultural distinctions of art’s social relations that prompt the ethics of participation in the first place are reproduced within participatory practices themselves.”

Collaborative and participative practice is a field of practice that requires pragmatic actions of research, consultation, conversing, making, presenting and representing alongside clarity of intention and concept, consideration of incentives, an understanding of beliefs and, crucially, time.

It is that increasingly precious element – time – that allows for ideas, research, meetings and engagement. Time allows for the commingling of individual and collective imagination, for making, for performing and for reflection.

Katherine Atkinson, Professional Development, Create

Marie Hanlon, ‘Off Centre’

Marie Hanlon’s exhibition ‘Off Centre’ runs at Droichead Arts Centre, Drogheda, 9 Sept – 22 Oct. The underlying ideas relate, the artist stated, “to the convergence of reality and fiction and the way in which context acts as an influence on perception”. This exhibition marks a new departure for Marie Hanlon, who uses glass, wood, plastic and found objects. The works grew naturally from the moving image work Cornerspace (2014). ‘Off Centre’ was concerned with “suggestion, spatial illusion and form”. droichead.ie

THE INTERACTION PROJECT

‘The Interaction Project’ opening

‘The Interaction Project’ marked the culmination of the Dun LaoghaireRathdown Artists’ Network’s exhibition in May. Artists of diverse disciplines worked in pairs: a conservation architect with a writer/broadcaster; a sculptor with a poet; a performance artist with a set designer. Visual artist Shabnam Vasisht, who recycles waste products in her mixed media works, collaborated with prose poet and journalist Cathy Dillon to produce three works. The press release described how the artist and writer went further than collaborating between forms, exploring the interaction between their cultures – Irish and Indian. “Neither tried to influence the other and both have delighted in the discoveries they encountered along the way about each other’s art forms”.

A NEAR VISIBLE PAST

September – October 2016

idency at IMMA. Hayes’s new work, the press release noted, “reinvests in a modernist sculptural language, whilst exploring aspects of the casting process as a means by which to interrogate the boundaries between artist, artisan and art object”. The exhibition comprises a series of sculptural pieces alongside documentary works that draw out the “often incongruous relationships between finished art objects, and the industrial aspects of the processes that produce these revered objects”.

WITH EACH IT IS DIFFERENT AND THE SAME

atia), Jelili Atiku (Nigeria), Julieann O’Malley (UK), Vickey Curtis (Ireland), Poppy Jackson (UK) and others.

‘Politics of Freedom’ was the theme for the 2016 festival and artists responded to ideas around “race, queer and feminist politics as well as workshops and events to explore ideas of protest, otherness and being outside the box,” the press release stated. dublinliveartfestival.com

FOREIGN OBJECTS

Poster for ‘with each it is different and the same’

An exhibition of work by Ruby Wallis and Shane Berkery, titled ‘with each it is different and the same’, ran at 126, Galway, 13 – 24 Aug. For this exhibition Berkery and Wallis created a visual dialogue between painting and photography. The press release stated: “As Walter Benjamin suggested, the aura or originality of the artwork was lost with the reproducibility of the image. Film and photography constitute potent interventions into reality, directing us to specific stories and places, sometimes leaving others out. Shane and Ruby explore the tension between the two modes of image-making, between presence and distance, difference and similarity, seer and seen.”

126.ie

‘Foreign Objects’ at CCA

‘Foreign Objects’, an exhibition of works by Robert Anderson, Laura Eldret, and Florian Roithmayr, runs at CCA, Derry, 6 Aug – 1 Oct. The artists share a concern, the press release noted, “with the ways that physical processes and human interactions become estranged from – or embedded in – the objects that they produce”. cca-derry-londondery.org

STRATEGY AGAINST SIGNPOSTS

PULL OUT THE RUG FROM UNDER THE CARPET

Mick Holly, Phyllitis Scolopendrium (Hart’s Tongue Fern) Lynda Phelan, ‘Pull Out the Rug...’

As part of Kilkenny Arts Festival, Lynda Phelan curated a group exhibition titled ‘Pull Out the Rug from under the Carpet’ at Unit 3, Dore’s Factory, Kilkenny (5 – 14 Aug). The exhibition featured work by Austin Hearne, Chantel Rosario, Darren Caffrey, Cac O’Day, Mariah Black and Madeleine Fairbarn.

Phelan noted that the work “promises to draw out the Irish shadow and raise questions concerning mass denial and delusion specific to this little nation of Ireland”.

James L. Hayes, poster for ‘A Near Visible Past’

James L. Hayes presented a new body of work titled ‘A Near Visible Past’ at the Uno St. Claude Gallery, New Orleans (13 Aug – 4 Sept), following a recent res-

Jelili Atiku performing at Dublin Live Art Festival

DUBLIN LIVE ART FESTIVAL Dublin Live Art Festival ran at MART Gallery, 10 – 14 Aug, and featured a range of performances from Harold Offeh (Uganda/ UK), Lena Simic (Cro-

Mick Holly’s exhibition ‘Strategy Against Signposts’ ran at Uilinn: West Cork Arts Centre (15 Jul – 6 Aug) and comprised a studio show, a walking tour and a night time window display.

As part of a residency at the centre, Holly embarked on several walks in and around the town of Skibbereen in an effort to develop an outsider’s understanding of the local politics, identity and contemporary history of this buzzing community on the fringe of Europe. Holly’s walks were mapped and recorded meticulously on the walls of his studio, and a speculative archive of material was assembled, including drawings, writings, sound and video recordings, and photographs. The resulting exhibition is open in Studio 1 at Uillinn.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

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COLUMN

ROUNDUP

Annette Moloney

OZYMANDIAS

perception, O’Ne leaves evidence of her presence, the press release described, “sometimes subtly through distorting imagery, sometimes by disrupting and constructing alternative viewing conditions where the viewer may become the object”.

The (Almost) Presumed Pressure of Participation

WHEN it comes to public support for artists’ projects, is there an inherent pressure to prioritise public participation? In order to tease out the question posed in this issue of the VAN it might be useful to initially explore how we define public participation.

Within this particular area there are numerous descriptions for this type of arts practice, ranging from arts participation and public engagement through to marketing and audience development. Broadly, the phrase can focus on how and when publics have opportunities to explore and/or participate in art projects. The entry point that any one person or wider communities of interest can have into an art project can vary quite considerably. People may choose to or be invited to collaborate with an artist while a project is being researched and developed. Equally, they may experience the work and contemporary ideas behind it as the project unfolds in the public domain, whether that is in a publicly funded arts centre or gallery, an artist-led space or a non-arts space such as a shop window.

Depending on their own particular creative or personal intention and the particulars of the particular project, artists have opportunities to collaborate with individuals or larger communities. The foregrounding of the role of the artist in this way is also proposed in The New Rules of Public Art. This succinct and thoughtprovoking (downloadable) document was published in 2013 by Situations, the Bristol based arts organisation which aims to encourage “discussions around what public art is, what it can be and where it can take place”. One of the 12 rules urges the following: “Share ownership freely, but authorship wisely. Public art is of the people and made with the people, but not always by the people. Artists are skilled creative thinkers as well as makers, trust their judgment, follow their lead and invest in their process.”

The safeguarding and supporting of the artist’s intention is paramount, in my view, to the concept and possible success of public engagement, and hopefully the centralised role of the artist overrides any possible presumed pressure for public participation.

The language of arts participation stems from a number of sources and has become more evident over the last number of years. Critical writing around socially engaged practice, particularly by writers such as Claire Bishop and Grant Kester, has led to more debate around the value of arts participation and the time and supports required for meaningful engagement.

This language is also evident in a number of recently published policy documents on public funding and the development of the arts in Ireland. In September 2015 the Arts Council of Ireland published a 10-year strategy on how it plans to support and develop the arts and, as a follow on, in July 2016 the first three-year plan based on this strategy was produced. Both policies focus on two key priorities, that of ‘the artist’ and ‘public engagement’, with the explicit aim that, by focusing on both of these areas, greater opportunities for both the arts community and wider publics can be supported. The Arts Council’s three-year plan states: “We will increase opportunities for more people to engage in the arts, particularly communities for whom access to the arts is difficult.” Personally, having worked in the area of public art commissioning and socially engaged practice for a number of years, I found it reassuring that the public funding and development agenda of the arts now clearly aims to advance both of these areas, hopefully symbiotically as opposed to diametrically.

One example of wider engagement and interest in the arts and culture in Ireland is Culture Night, which this year will take place on Friday 16 September 2016. Each year I find it heartwarming to visit arts spaces and venues in Limerick that are bustling with families who are curious to just have a look and teenagers who are keen to take to the stage. Watching wider communities who are participating in the arts develop a sense of ownership is, to me, a marked improvement on the social views of culture that were evident 25 years ago.

So, is it fair to say that there is a presumed pressure of participation? I would like to think that individual artists may choose to develop their practices and research in collaboration with a community of interest in a socially engaged context, ideally with the support of a local authority arts office or a publicly-funded institution. If public engagement is not the primary focus of an idea or practice, then there are still ample opportunities for artists to apply for bursaries, residencies and mentorships, which may be of more interest and benefit to developing a particular idea. Much like life, balance is usually necessary.

Annette Moloney is a socially-engaged curator and collaborator based in Limerick.

touted as one of the most progressive in the world in terms of gender equality, and Ireland, which the UN has singled out as a violator of international human rights based on its treatment of women”. galwayartscentre.ie

femcwilliam.com

MATTHEW THOMPSON ÁINE NÍ CHÍOBHÁIN Ulrich Vogl, Two Friends; aluminium, paper, plant; 25 x 40 x 13

Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin presented ‘Ozymandias’, a group exhibition of new work by Ulrich Vogl, Joe Scullion and Tadhg McSweeney, from 5 to 27 Aug. The exhibition comprised a series of works that approach the idea of fictional architecture or ‘worlds within worlds’. Each of the artists have cultivated a practice that incorporates the act of rendering. “Constructed spaces, aspects of architecture and illusion,” the press release noted, “are explored in various mediums”. kevinkavanagh.ie

IN SUPPORT

Áine Ní Chíobháin, Ar Thráigh Chill Chuimín

An exhibition of paintings by Áine Ní Chíobháin ran from 1 – 31 Jul in Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr. The paintings, the artist noted, were “a visual diary of working on boats, hiking to remote places, fractured evening light, exploring ancient pagan sites, jelly-fish, gorse fires and much more”. Ní Chíobháin’s paintings have recently taken a leap into neon and electronic light, inspired by her urban upbringing.

SO NEAR AND SO FAR

Andreas von Knobloch, ‘In Support’

Andreas von Knobloch’s exhibition ‘In Support’ ran at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, 22 Jul – 3 Sept and featured a series of structures and installations exploring ideas of “conviviality and participation,” the press release stated.

In this exhibition von Knobloch presented new work looking specifically at support structures involved in the act of giving and receiving support, using materials often overlooked in our architectural environment mermaidartscentre.ie

CANTHUS

Martin Parr, Corpus Christi Procession

Martin Parr’s photographic exhibition ‘So Near and So Far’ continues at Roscommon Arts Centre (12 Aug – 11 Oct). The photographs were taken during Parr’s stay in Boyle, County Roscommon and form part of his third book, On a Fair Day. “Known for his projects that take an intimate and satirical look at aspects of modern life,” the press release stated, “‘So Near and So Far’ presents the effects of wealth and Americanisation on the West of Ireland”.

Crawford Art Gallery presents a series of interventions, installations and surprises by Annie O’Ne, 15 Jul – 15 Feb. O’Ne’s work draws attention to the overlooked and unannounced across the galleries. Featuring sculpture, video and photography as a platform to address the interplay between space and

The Gateway Arts Center in New York exhibited work by Matthew Thompson as part of the ‘United Nations of Art’ exhibition, 15 – 21 Aug.

DÚIL An exhibition of recent paintings by Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, titled ‘Dúil’, ran at Limerick City Gallery, 29 Jul – 4 Sept. “Colour, pattern, form and structure play an integral part,” the press release noted, “despite being obfuscated by further application of paint. They are sumptuous and unapologetically painterly objects”. Ní Mhaonaigh has referred to spatial experience through her use of words in the Irish language that describe the lived environment.

‘Dúil’ is the artist’s most recent exhibition to take an Irish language title. gallery.limerick.ie

STORYLINES

roscommonartscentre.ie

BAD (L)ATTITUDES: REASSESSING

Annie O’Ne, ‘Canthus’

Matthew Thompson, Cosmic Pride; 60 x 60cm

FINNISH FEMININITY ‘Bad (L)attitudes: Reassessing Finnish Femininity’ runs at Galway Arts Centre, 6 Aug – 6 Oct and features the work of Suvi Aarnio, Johanna Havimäki, Marja Helander, Kirsti Kotilainen and Heta Kuchka. The exhibition is curated

by Anna McGowan. ‘Bad (L)attitudes’ investigates the reclamation of the female body and traditional female modes of expression in the work of five contemporary female Finnish artists.

The work aims to demonstrate, the press release notes, “the striking and surprising commonalities between Finland, a country that is regularly

Detail from work by Gordon Farrell

Luan Gallery, Athlone held an exhibition of work by painter Gordon Farrell, stained glass artist Peadar Lamb and graphic artists the Project Twins (James and Michael Fitzgerald), 24 Jun – 13 Aug. Curator Aedin McGinn stated: “The ‘Storylines’ exhibition highlights the diverse ways in which these four artists engage narrative through the mediums of painting, stained glass and graphic art. Juxtaposing traditional methods with contemporary themes and vice versa, ‘Storylines’ examines the effectiveness of translating narrative through visual means.’

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News

Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, published the draft EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE Framework Policy for Culture 2025 in late Galway is to be the European Capital of July, Irelands first ever national cultural Culture in Ireland in 2020, after an 18 policy. month cross-county campaign.

The draft policy will now be subBefore announcing their decision at mitted to the Joint Oireachtas Committee the National Concert Hall at 12.30pm, on Arts for its input and consideration.

Friday, the EU judging panel commendPublication of Culture 2025 was identied all three bid cities, Galway, Limerick fied as a priority in the Programme for a and the Three Sisters (Waterford, Partnership Government.

Wexford and Kilkenny) for their extraorMinister Humphreys also dinary efforts. announced that she intends to hold an The formal designation of Galway Annual Cultural Consultation Day, simiby the relevant Irish authorities is lar to the workshop which was held in expected to take place in the coming the Royal Hospital Kilmainham last year months. Ireland and Croatia are the two as part of the Culture 2025 consultation EU member states entitled to host the process. event in 2020 – and Galway will be the Under seven key pillars, the third Irish city to hold the title, behind Framework Policy document sets out a Dublin in 1991 and Cork in 2005. series of priority measures for implemenThe title is worth an estimated €170 tation across government and public million to the winner in terms of fundbodies: “Examining the systems and ing, tourism and creation of new jobs. structures that support arts and culture; The selection criteria demands a cultural increasing citizen participation in the programme with a strong European arts; progressively increasing funding to dimension, that promotes the inclusion arts and culture as the economy of all stakeholders and attracts visitors improves, in line with the commitment from both the country and from Europe. in the Programme for a Partnership The programme must also have a lasting Government; consideration of how to impact and contribute to the long-term encourage non-governmental funding development of the city – and show that support; examining existing systems to the capacity is available to deliver the ensure that more people can follow a project. sustainable career path in the cultural The three bid cities had to go and heritage sectors; improving collabothrough 18 months of preparation, ration within the cultural sector and including a pre-selection panel and putbetween the cultural sector and wider ting together a 100-page document outcivil society; building on support for lining the events that would take place Irish culture on the world stage; considand how it would emphasise the imporeration of how cultural exchange can tance of European links. help build and maintain strong connections on the island of Ireland and between Britain and Ireland.”

DEPARTMENT CHANGES NAME The Culture 2025 draft framework Minister Heather Humphreys confirmed policy document can be viewed online. in July that the name of her newly reconahrrga.gov.ie figured department has been approved by government as the Department of ACNI CUTS Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland Gaeltacht Affairs.

(ACNI) has had its budget for 2016 – Ms Humphreys was forced to reject 2017 reduced by almost £500,000. The claims her new range of departmental ACNI’s funding from the executive has responsibilities represents a downgradbeen reduced from £10.95m in 2015/16 ing of the status of arts, culture and heritto £10.49m in 2016/17. age in the government’s priorities after Arts funding and policy in Northern the she had been given the role of Ireland is now the responsibility of Minister for Regional Development, Department for Communities (DfC), Rural Affairs, Arts and the Gaeltacht. which has taken over many of the funcMinister Humphreys stated in a tions of the former Department for press release: “This name reflects the Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL). wide range of responsibilities under my Department’s remit. Placing ‘Arts’ at the start of the title also reflects the fact that NEW MAC DIRECTOR the arts division accounts for the biggest Belfast arts venue, the MAC, has portion of my Department’s budget. In announced Simon Magill as Creative 2016, arts, culture and film will account Director. “Simon’s new role will be cenfor half of the budget under my reconfigtral to the MAC’s vision and aspirations ured Department. My Department’s webboth regionally and internationally,” the site and associated materials will be press release stated. “He will work with updated to reflect the new name in the local artists and creative sector, as well as coming days.” seeking out the best artists, performers and production companies from around the world. Whilst the MAC has been FRAMEWORK POLICY bringing world leading productions and The Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, exhibitions to Belfast already, Simon’s

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

remit will be to expand upon this and further the MAC’s reputation as the dynamic hub for cultural and artistic excellence.”

Welcoming the new appointment, Chief Executive of the MAC, Anne McReynolds stated: “We are delighted that Simon Magill will be taking up the post of Creative Director at the MAC. Already a major figure in the arts scene, Simon is an inspirational and widely respected figure who has been a committed champion of Northern Ireland’s creativity through his many roles with the Waterfront, Tinderbox, co-founder of Prime Cut Productions and The Lyric. His appointment offers an exciting new direction for the MAC and its audiences who have already enjoyed what we have staged since 2012.” themaclive.com

BASIC SPACE RESIDENCY AWARD Joanne Reid was announced as the recipient of the Basic Space Residency Programme, which runs 15 August – 30 September, concluding with a presentation of work. An MA graduate of Art and Research, IDAT, Reid’s’s practice incorporates industrial and consumer packaging, discarded steel production parts, concrete, plaster and neon tubing. She combines traditional materials and industrial elements, many found or discarded in the urban environment, playing on presence/absence within the architecture of the white cube space. basicspace.ie

NATIONAL GALLERY FUNDING The Minister for Arts, Heritage Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, Heather Humphreys TD, announced that she is approving a grant of €490,000 to the National Gallery of Ireland to contribute to essential commissioning and re-hanging works prior to the reopening of the Gallery’s historic Milltown and Dargan wings. The Minister’s announcement came as the major refurbishment and renovation works, costing more than €30 million, enter their final stage.

Minister Humphreys said: “The renovation of the historic Milltown and Dargan wings of the National Gallery has been the most significant capital project in our National Cultural Institutions over the past decade. It is the biggest and most ambitious refurbishment work to take place at the Gallery since it opened in 1864. Once completed, the works will transform the Gallery into a world class exhibition space.

“The expanded National Gallery will be a wonderful addition to our cultural infrastructure. As this project nears completion, a number of other significant investment projects in our cultural institutions are getting underway, including the €10 million upgrading works at the National Library and an €8 million investment at the National Archives.

“It is expected that the refurbishment work at the National Gallery will

be completed in September and that the refurbished wings will be re-opened to the public in the first quarter of 2017.

The renovation of the Gallery will bring it up to the very best international standards and will allow it to hold world class exhibitions of both Irish and international art.”

September – October 2016

azines their work has featured in. They are then paid a share of licensing fees we’ve collected for photocopies and scans of publications.

Claims can be made by completing an online application form at ivaro.ie/ return. Artists who applied successfully for Return in previous years can apply this year for all of the same publications once again and add any new publications to their claim. While royalty payments ACNI LOTTERY FUNDING 54 arts organisations across Northern can vary year to year, everyone who Ireland are set to benefit from £1.5 mil- makes a successful claim is guaranteed a lion of Arts Council of Northern Ireland minimum of €12.

Return royalties come from revenue and National Lottery funding, to bring a series of high quality arts projects to peo- generated a collective licensing scheme.

In Ireland photocopying licenses are ple across the region.

The funding will be used by groups issued to businesses and educational to support the development and creation institutions by the Irish Copyright of events, exhibitions, performances and Licensing Agency (ICLA). On behalf of workshops across all areas of the arts, visual artists in Ireland, IVARO negotiincluding community arts, literature, ates a share of this revenue and distribvisual arts, music and theatre. The full utes it through the Return service. Return is available to all visual creators, not list of awards is now available online. artscouncil-ni.org simply IVARO members. Payments are made to qualifying artists, photographers, illustrators, and other visual artMODERN IRELAND IN 100 WORKS The series ‘Modern Ireland in 100 ists, including heirs and beneficiaries.

Artworks’, a collaboration between The Irish Times and the Royal Irish Academy, is a transverse section of Ireland’s strug- VAI NEW OFFICE gles with modernity since 1916. The On 3 October 2016, Visual Artists Ireland works chosen are drawn from literature, will open the doors on our new office at theatre and the visual arts, not from Windmill View House, Oliver Bond music, film, television or radio. They are Street, Dublin 8. Our move has been simply a kind of chronology of the Irish caused by rising rental values in central imagination working through certain Dublin.

The new space is a larger office forms. They lay out not a clear pattern but a thread through a dark and winding space and will allow us to expand our labyrinth. The hope is that they capture, services as well as making a dedicated or at least illuminate, the spirit of the profession development, rehearsal, audition, interview and general use space times in which they were made.

As part of the selection for 2015 the available to our members and to the arts following works and artists were nomi- community. We will also be able to have nated by the Irish Times with the public a dedicated archive space which will voting for the top entry: Asking for It by allow us to prepare for our fortieth anniLouise O’Neill; Beatlebone by Kevin Barry; versary in 2020. We look forward to welThe Devil’s Pool by Cecily Brennan; The coming you all to the new space and will Game by Theatreclub; The Green Road by hold an open day in early November.

Anne Enright; Into the Woods by Gary Coyle; The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien; My Mind’s I by Janet Mullarney; GET TOGETHER 2016 Silent Moves by Aideen Barry and Vermeer Get Together 2016 took place on 26 Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 1662 – 65 August at IMMA, Dublin. The fifth iteraby Brian Fay tion of the event, Get Together 2016 was The winning entry was Aideen developed following feedback from preBarry’s Silent Moves. Commissioned by vious years to offer as much as possible the ADI and Arts Council of Ireland to attendees. The programme featured together with Cork, Mayo and Galway panel discussions with themes such as County Councils for the Ignite Awards ‘Equal Opportunities in the Visual Arts: 2014/2015.

Gender’, ‘Spaces to Work’, ‘Making the irelandignite.ie Market, Brexit: How will it Impact Us’ and the ‘Jason Oakley Art Writing RETURN: ARTISTS CLAIM YOUR SHARE Forum’.

There were artist talks from 10 artThe Irish Visual Artists Rights Organisation (IVARO) is pleased to ists as well as the ever popular speed announce the launch of Return 2016. curating, porfolio reviews and clinics.

Return is an annual service that distrib- The Visual Artists’ Cafe provided a space utes royalties to visual creators whose that encourages making new connecworks have been reproduced in books tions, with representatives from arts and magazines published in Ireland. organisations and galleries from all over Return will open for claims on 12 the country as well as help-desks to proSeptember and creators have until 15 vide advice directly to artists throughout October to make their claim. Claimants the day. provide examples of what books or mag-

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

Lisburn & Castlereagh: Resources & Activities

Marion Michell at R-Space Gallery

R-Space Gallery exterior

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Warm Welcomes R-SPACE Gallery is a contemporary arts space in Lisburn, County Antrim, which occupies the ground floor of the Georgian Linen Rooms, former rectory to Lisburn Cathedral. The building was the childhood home of co-director Anthea McWilliams, who now runs R-Space with her partner, Robert Martin. Between them, Martin and McWilliams have a wealth of professional arts

experience – McWilliams as a dance practitioner and Martin as a former officer with Arts Council England. The gallery celebrated five years presence in Lisburn at the end of July with a party in the courtyard enjoyed by an eclectic gathering of assembled friends.

Presenting and commissioning a programme of visual arts, craft and performance, R-Space is supported by funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), and focuses on the work of artists and makers who explore “materials, messages and meaning” in their work. This curatorial focus is in the hands of Robert Martin, who seeks out high quality applied and fine art and craft, as well as digital and installation works. The gallery is unique in the region in being neither artist-led nor municipal. McWilliams’s knowledge of Lisburn’s cultural heritage brings a depth of local knowledge to the space, while Martin’s connections have brought artists from across the water and beyond. The welcome is as warm as the gallery fireplace, and R-Space hopes to encourage visitors into thinking and talking about the arts, as well as providing an opportunity to purchase.

Since opening in 2011 it has showcased local, national and international artists including Anna Dumitriu’s ‘Normal Fauna’ in 2011; Japanese artist Toshinobu Takamitsu’s 2014 residency and ‘Double Flipside’, a collaboration between Dr Sarah McAleer and Eddie J. Doherty for Craft NI’s August Craft Month 2014. This year’s programme has included a solo show by Belfast silversmith Stuart Cairns, winner of the inaugural Rosy James Memorial Bursary (awarded by ACNI), ‘Visioning Weekender’, a regular digital art presentation, performance installation Readings in Passage by the

CAAKE Project, an exhibition of works inspired by tattoo culture; and ‘Film Makers’ – contemporary craft inspired by heritage film footage, in conjunction with NI Screen and the BFI. In contrast to the high-spec modern finish of the gallery, the rest of the Linen Rooms building is ripe with potential for redevelopment. The city of Lisburn sits at the heart of Ulster’s linen heritage, and this particular theme features strongly in the gallery’s programming, from ‘Linen Diaspora’ in 2012, a joint collaboration between Ireland and Canada, curated by Karen Fleming of Ulster University to ‘On Your Marks’, another international exchange that concluded in Sweden earlier this year. In 2015, David Littler’s ‘Is She Blew?’ comprised a sonic sampler of sounds collected from the linen industry, the title being a reference to the 5pm horn that would have signalled factory closing time. Nora Fok’s ‘Project Linlon’ saw flax fused with nylon to create new fibres. In ‘Linen Futures’, Jane McCann took this further, with 20 makers from NI and Wales collaborating to develop new linen products. Jane has a particular interest in new technologies and the composite materials now being made from flax. ‘Linen Futures’ has since toured to the Lisburn Linen Centre, Ulster Museum and Wirksworth Festival in Derbyshire, England.

This curatorial strand is part of a wider ambition to showcase linen past, present and future in a high profile biennale with R-Space as the lead partner. This cultural celebration of Lisburn’s linen history will give it contemporary relevance through a festival programme of visual arts and other related activities. In 2014, ACNI awarded funding for a feasibility study that formed the basis of plans for this flagship event. As of July 2016, the British Council and ACNI have jointly approved seed funding for the next stage of its development. This project exemplifies the directors’ ambition for the gallery to be a catalyst for contemporary arts activity in the area, and to encourage and engage audiences through a range of exhibitions and events, enhancing Lisburn’s cultural tourism by associating its linen heritage with contemporary visual arts and other practices.

Five years in, R-Space Gallery has established itself firmly within the NI arts scene, and in that time has shown the work of close to 300 artists and welcomed well over 4,000 visitors to exhibitions, screenings, performances, workshops and talks.

External funding provides the means to employ freelance administration support and Rob Hilken has been instrumental in taking the project forward. McWilliams and Martin also extend their thanks to Sharon Adams for her continuing input on marketing and welcome Mags White, who has recently joined the team.

The annual programme currently has six funded exhibitions, between which the space is available for hire to individuals or groups whose work fits with the ethos and standards of the gallery. These are a mixture of privately and publicly funded projects and bring great diversity to the schedule. R-Space welcome proposals for 2017 onwards from artists interested in showcasing their work. rspacelisburn.com, rspace@linenroomslisburn.com

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

A Creative Life

Patricia Lavery, Nest

September – October 2016

Inspiration & Proximity I have been painting and drawing since childhood but recently I decided to devote myself to being an artist full-time. Not long after moving to Lisburn I joined the Lisnagarvey Art Society and it was their support and encouragement that led me to start exhibiting my work on a regular basis. Through the society I was introduced to the Market Square Studios, right in the heart of Lisburn, where I have been based for over a year now.

It’s a great place to work from, used by a very varied group of artists and a fantastic in situ framing service, Simply Frames. The artists that utilise the space are exceptionally friendly, encouraging and supportive of each other.

The studio location is also ideal for its proximity to sources of inspiration, supplies and learning. The Lagan riverside and towpath, Wallace Park and the Castle Gardens are within walking colleague Tracey McVerry Crossan. We have been distance of the studio.

The Island Arts Centre based at Lagan Valley successful in securing many large scale public commissions. Having been awarded a substantial Island is a great venue for the arts in the Lisburn grant from the Creative Industries at ACNI, I set up and Castlereagh area with regular exhibitions, my glass studio in a converted stable at my home in craft activities and classes. There are also several excellent art galleries such as R-Space and Castle Ballinderry, just outside Lisburn City.

I have also continued my role as artist in resi- Gallery in the centre of Lisburn.

Superb transport links within the Lisburn dence with Arts Care (artscare.co.uk), a fantastic organisation working with vulnerable people in and Castlereagh areas bring the picturesque vilthe North of Ireland, often in healthcare settings. I lage of Hillsborough, the Lagan Valley Regional work with them three days per week and have the Park and the parks of Belfast, closer to the studio; freedom to devise both small and large scale pro- the surrounding area has also provided me with jects with service users of the Belfast Heath and some incredible scenes for painting.

Having a separate studio from my home has Social Care Trust. Juggling many jobs as an artist is all par for the course. Helping others through my helped me a great deal in easing the transition to work is an essential part of what I do but I have professional artist, keeping me focused through a learned that I need to sustain my style and ideas regular routine of going to the studio every day.

My studio is my space and I can surround through my own work too. As with my early teaching qualification, this regular contracted work has myself with inspirational source material through enabled me continue exploring the medium of mood boards, display boards and a specific gallery glass without financial pressures, which has been space in which I can display an array of past work, cuttings and sketches, helping me to focus and to priceless in my journey as an artist.

Lisburn and Castlereagh Council recently develop a more consistent body of work.

The studio isn’t just for painting. It is well laid supported me in undertaking an intensive masterclass with artist Karl Harron, helping me refresh out and has a number of work surfaces to cater for my skills and contemporary practice in the field. different artistic disciplines such as printing. I This was an amazing experience that has rekin- practice a number of printing techniques. While I dled my practice, which can get neglected when have concentrated lately on handmade prints and taking care of four young children.

Recently Compass North Glass partly merged with Ballinliss Forge to form Solas Creative Ltd. In the last 18 months we have been commissioned to design, fabricate and install three innovative public art sculptures, using stainless steel and glass.

These include Nest, situated at Castleblaney, River at the entrance to Drumahoe Village, just outside Derry, and Origin, which will be launched on Culture Night at the entrance to Cave Hill in the Belfast Mountains. Origin is a giant raindrop that marks the start of the River Farset, which gave Belfast its name. I strive to push the boundaries of what we know and accept public sculpture to be, using innovative methods of glass making and introducing it into the public realm as a long lasting and safe medium to use outside.

So, as a self employed artist, artist in residence for Arts Care, creative director of Compass North Glass, director of Solas Creative Ltd. and a mother, life is always busy. With the help of these organisations and projects, as well as both Lisburn and Castlereagh Council and ACNI, I am able to continue living a creative life here.

I feel very privileged to be a self-employed artist living and practicing in the Lisburn and Castlereagh area. My professional life is incredibly varied. I am both mentor and student, facilitator and participant, teacher, maker, creator and ideas person. Realising I could actually sell my ideas was an important part of my artistic journey and wearing these different hats enables me to achieve my ongoing goal; to think, make and realise various concepts. This, in essence, is what I find fulfilling.

Following a Fine Art (Honours) degree at the University of Ulster, Belfast, I undertook a secondary level PGCE (teaching qualification) in Art and Design at Goldsmith’s College, London. My plan was to have a good option to fall back on if I couldn’t survive as a freelance artist. Even now this gives me an inner confidence that allows me to work more freely, because in some way I know it’s always there if I ever need it.

I realised, however, that teaching was not for me and was fortunate enough to be offered a twoyear residency with the Waterford Healing Arts Trust in Waterford Regional Hospital. I created my first permanent sculpture there called The Walking Wounded: seven figures made using crutches. Each one represented a member of my family following the death of my father. Created almost 20 years ago, it amazes me that I still get contacted about this piece. It seems to have resonated with many people.

I returned to Belfast to complete a Master’s in Fine Art. This was when my practice really started to extend and grow. Dedicating so much time to establishing an understanding my ideas was immensely important. The MA provided me with the freedom to experiment and to wander.

In recent years Lisburn and Castlereagh Council have supported me in several ways. My first contact with them was when I received a bursary to stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. During this time I discovered that for me, the best way to explore light as an ethereal medium was through glass. It was a tangible, sculptural medium through which I could express myself. An apprenticeship in Sienna, Italy, with the help of a SIAP grant from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI), compounded this interest, and I became fascinated by fused glass and traditional stained glass methods.

On my return, Lisburn and Castlereagh Council kindly supported me in purchasing my first glassfusing kiln, which I continue to use regularly for experimenting with new types of reactive glass.

Armed with this new medium I began applying for public art commissions. I formed Compass Patricia Lavery North Glass along the way with my friend and

Helen Sara McLarnon, Corn

exhibited some of this work, I hope to re-explore the other techniques with this medium in the future.

During my time at art college I studied fabric surface pattern as part of my HND in Design. Since becoming a full-time artist I am keen to incorporate course material into my work and I’m currently developing two collections based around this theme. The first was inspired by an exhibition I attended a few years ago at the Ulster Museum conveying different styles of period mannequins and dresses; the different shapes and proportions intrigued me and I hope to develop this further through incorporating elements of pattern into my work.

The second is inspired by my strong interest in costume design, especially for stage and screen.

I plan to develop a series of pieces based around my favourite dresses. While people may not be familiar with all of the dresses I’ve selected, what inspires me about them is the sense of drama and energy they create.

Increasingly my work has been about selfdiscovery, which has led me to broaden my range of subject matter. In the past I tended to focus more on painting landscapes or flowers in watercolour.

Membership of the Lisnagarvey Art Society, who host studio nights and regular artist demonstrations, has encouraged me to explore other media further, such as acrylics, oils, pastels. I have really enjoyed drawing everyday objects and then developing them into more abstract forms of expression using either single or mixed media.

Though I’ve only been an artist in Lisburn for a few years, the journey so far has been both interesting and challenging but a great experience. I’m lucky to have great support from family and friends as well as other local artists and the Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council. Long may their arts grants scheme continue to assist and encourage individual artists and arts organisations to grow, and to produce the next generation of artists.

Helen Sara McLarnon artist@helensaramclarnon.com

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

Born Again Artist

Andrew Cooke, ceramic work for Craft NI

WHERE do I start? At the age of 40 I was forced, due to ill health, to walk away from my steady career as a car body repair man. Rather than giving up work completely I decided to try to make a living in a less physically demanding job and began airbrushing artwork onto motorcycles.

I enjoyed the process but didn’t get much inspiration from it. Most people just wanted something copied, usually an Iron Maiden album cover! It just didn’t feel right, so I started the journey into art education and signed up for a day class. This led to a SERC Foundation Diploma in Bangor and onto a university degree in Fine and Applied Ceramics, which I finished in 2012. When I started back into education I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and memory problems, and a lot of things fell into place.

Since graduating I have been working in various ways. I live in Dundonald but my studio is in the hills above Ards. It is an old stock car track: about 2.5 acres of mayhem. I have been busy clearing and tidying 30 years of neglect and fly tipping, but I have big plans. Next year I hope to start workshops there.

In terms of the local area, I have been involved with R-Space a few times. Martin and McWilliams are great and have supported me since leaving university through the workshops they offer. Working artists need more of this and less of the non-payment exhibitions.

Since graduating I feel I have been floating around trying to find my style. For me selling work is the hardest part. Most of the time making art feels like a very expensive hobby! I seem to be running around showing my work and not getting much back in return. It appears there are the artists who sell to support their practice and the ones who rely on funding or awards. I need to start selling, as I am put off by the amount of paperwork involved in

awards. I suppose a mix of both would be ideal.

It’s been a struggle to keep to a plan and at the end of this I need to make my business work in order to pay the bills. That’s not really happening at the moment. I feel like I am jumping from one project to the next, just holding on by the skin of my teeth. To me the hardest part is the admin and time management.

I was accepted onto Craft NI’s ‘Making It’ programme, which has proven tough as it is centred around business development. Myself and graphs just do not get along. But on the plus side it has made me re-evaluate my practice. I have tried to define myself as a designer, looking at making works that would also appeal to the craft buyer, but I am also struggling with this. Making for the market again feels like a step backwards. I also need to have my wife at every craft fair and event to help deal with money. Sometimes I feel I am begging for people to buy my work – and don’t get me started on them wanting discounts!

So I have decided to worry less about this and focus on what I enjoy and am good at. My passion has always been American hot rods and Kustoms motorbikes, so my work focuses on this. It’s a mix of sculpture, ceramic helmets, diddleybows, tiki mugs and ceramic number plate platters. I have no problem making the work I love. It’s the selling part I despise. At the moment I am trying to find a market for my work, which I believe is online rather than in the local area.

So, do I regret moving in the direction of this torturous and rollercoaster life? The answer is NO. You have to keep working, making, doing and thinking to the best of your ability. If not then what’s the point?

Andrew Cooke

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

PROJECT PROFILE

The Plurality of Existence ARTIST CLODAGH EMOE TALKS ABOUT HER ONGOING COLLABORATION WITH ASYLUM SEEKERS IN IRISH DIRECT PROVISION CENTRES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF HER PROJECT ‘THE PLURALITY OF EXISTENCE IN THE INFINITE EXPANSE OF SPACE AND TIME’.

Crocosmia at MYO, Cork

Sinisa and Marie Claire, Inside Culture, RTE

Audio installation, Galway

TO represent is the act of rendering something in tangible or visible form, be it a painting, a protest, an idea or a declaration. Representation is crucial to our identity and to our place in society in that it informs our being in the world and how we participate in the community.

Instead of developing a project about representation, I felt it more appropriate to work towards a collaborative project that would explore representation in a more comprehensive and meaningful way.

Having completed the final solitary stage of writing up my PhD in 2014, I was keen to work collaboratively with others, particularly those who are not represented. I felt that working with asylum seekers would ensure that the diverse range of cultural perspectives within our society could be represented. At the same time it provided an alternate reading of community centered on the relations that are formed across categories of nation, race and culture. Moreover, working with those who are not represented within, or by, the legislative, cultural and political frameworks of society might also initiate a space of representation. I hoped that revealing both differences and shared realities through the creative process might emphasise respect between cultures and implicitly raise awareness of the dire impact of direct provision.

I first learned about the system of direct provision through the documentary Seaview (2007), directed by Nicky Gogan and Paul Rowley. This system was originally introduced to Ireland as an “emergency measure” in 1999 and intended as a six-month bridging mechanism for asylum application cases.1 Under this system individuals are denied the right to work, forcing many people to exist for an extended period of time at a remove from society.

A paper by the European Anti Poverty Network titled The Integration of New Communities sums up the effects of prolonged residence in the direct provision system: “This system directly creates poverty and social exclusion as well as isolation and widespread depression and mental illness. The explicit exclusion of asylum seekers from integration policies stores up social problems for the future.

Many people who receive refugee status or leave to remain in Ireland have been de-skilled and have become socially isolated, wasting a potential resource of new skills, ideas and energies which could be available to the Irish economy and society.”2 The situation of the asylum seeker could be described as liminal, literally caught “betwixt and between”.3 As an artist whose practice is centred around the existential question of being and who approaches an artwork as an invitation for thought, I felt it was important to create a body of work that would raise awareness of this situation. Other factors – including meeting artist Anna Spearman and hearing of the Global Kitchen project she initiated with residents from Globe House direct provision centre in Sligo, my realisation that the situation has remained unchanged for over 15 years and that a large majority of the public are unaware of this system – informed my decision to approach

Spirasi, a humanitarian, intercultural, non-governmental organisation who work with asylum seekers, refugees and other disadvantaged migrant groups, with the proposal for a project.4 In August 2015 I set up a weekly gardening project in Spirasi.

Creating and maintaining a garden was not the aim of the project, but it operated as a strategy to gently introduce myself to the community.

This weekly activity was more than a means to an end as it established a shared space and initiated a sense of ownership amongst the participants. Through our collective endeavours we were invited to the formal gardens in Farmleigh and offered plants and bulbs. My presence at the centre paved the way to establishing the group Crocosmia, comprising Sinisa Koncic, Annet Mphahlele, Marie Claire Mundi Njong, Jean Marie Rukundo Phillemon, Peter Rukundo and Saida Umer.5 ‘The Plurality of Existence...’ developed from an audio piece titled The Things We See (2014), which I created for Aesthetics Jam at the Taipei Biennial. Made in collaboration with Taiwanese artist Chang Wen Hsan, The Things We See explores how we might ‘see’ on a perceptive and imaginative level. Using a process of recitation, everyday experiences that inform my experience of the world (apples on soft grass, teenagers at a petrol station, a beggar holding a disposable cup) and Chang Wen Hsan’s (a girl on a moped, an oncoming typhoon, a business man talking on his cell phone) implicitly reveal both different and shared realities.6 Through collaboration, the process of compilation used in The Things We See developed in ways that I had not anticipated. Rather than just creating lists as I had originally suggested, members of the group began writing poems. Although I did not proscribe a theme, each poem reveals the unique situation of the asylum seeker, for example Funeral Ceremony, Cameroon (2016) by Marie Claire Mundi Njong, ends with the sung line “Home again, home again, when shall I see my home?” In Vokovar, Hrvatska (2016) Sinisa Koncic writes: “I look over to the other side of the river/Different country, same people/What kind of life is there?/How does the lilac smell there?/The memories come on. I can’t stop the tears”.

‘The Plurality of Existence...’ was also more ambitious than The Things We See in scale and reach. The Things We See was installed in a gallery, whereas ‘The Plurality of Existence...’ was transmitted as a series of site-specific audio installations. These were located at Shandon Bridge, Cork, the River Barrow, Carlow, the Boardwalk, Dublin and Claddagh Bay, Galway. The work was sited on bridges and boardwalks to draw attention to the liminal state (both geographical and psychological) of the group. The native language of each participant, along with the English translation, was represented. Not only was it essential to present the work in the public realm, it was also important that the project was presented in a cultural institution. A series of text-based works that inform the work were exhibited in the galleries at Visual, Carlow. Working closely with curator Emma-Lucy

O’Brien, we installed each piece in ‘in-between’ spaces in the gallery: the stairwell, close to the elevator, the edge of a wall etc. This drew attention to the participants’ unique situation.

Other activities developed out of the project: a walking tour to the audio work on River Barrow from An Gairdín Beo during the Street Fest in Carlow, a launch of the project on the rooftops of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios and Galway Arts Centre, our contribution to ‘Create Debate, Navigating Difference’ (Cork), my contribution to the seminar ‘Conflict, Migration and Identity in Modern Ireland: Global and Transnational Perspectives’ (Trinity College Dublin and Carlow College), the publication of Jean Marie Rukundo Philemon’s poems, features on War Child and Gitale Refugee Camp in the Cork Evening Echo and the Galway Independent, and our interview on RTE’s Inside Culture. We are currently working towards publication. This will be launched at Visual Carlow and Dublin City Library in Winter 2016.7 Clodagh Emoe is an artist based in Dublin. Her work is underpinned by liminality, an in-between or “other” temporality or state. Through these works she explores how the nature of artistic thought is essentially affective and how it invites a specific way of thinking that is bound up with experience, perception and imagination. clodaghemoe.com Notes 1. “Living conditions in accommodation centres have remained more or less the same since direct provision was introduced. Residents are provided with meals, shared sleeping quarters, medical care and an annual clothing allowance. The ban on asylum seekers working remains in force and the weekly allowance of 19.10 has not changed since Ireland replaced the Punt with the Euro. These issues have been the focus of many, so far unsuccessful, campaigns for change by immigrant support groups.”

2. http://www.coistine.ie/archive/news-/83-directprovision 3. The French anthropologist Arnold van Gennep first used the term in The Rites of Passage (2004). Van Gennep is now recognised as a key thinker within ritual theory because of his identification of the liminal. Scottish anthropologist Victor Turner re-introduced and elaborated on liminality in The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969). This publication is based on Turner’s fieldwork while living with the Ndembu tribe of North Western Zambia. In the foreword to The Ritual Process, Roger D. Abrahams describes how Turner’s identification of “betwixt and between” states became a theoretical resource for other cultures. The term liminality has since expanded to other areas of discourse such as the social sciences to interpret situations of political/social flux i.e. borders, war zones, refugee camps.

See Jasper Balduk, On liminality, Conceptualizing ‘in-between-ness, Master Thesis of Human Geography (2008).

4. I met Anna who is an artist in residence at The Model while working on We Are and Are Not, a sitespecific video installation that engages with the notion of being. By blurring the distinction between the performer and the viewer, We Are and Are Not explores the relationship between the self and the other. Anna discussed how Global Kitchen offers a space for asylum seekers to re-engage with and share their cultural heritage through the act of cooking. Projects, like Global Kitchen instill subjective agency by providing participants with an opportunity to engage and contribute to the community.

5. Crocosmia is a group of individuals that were formed through a weekly gardening group in Spirasi, Dublin in August 2015. A crocosmia is a root bulb of the Montbretia, a wild flower that is commonly found growing in Ireland but is native to the grasslands of southern and eastern Africa. One of these bulbs was found in the grounds of Spirasi.

6. I use the term thing to articulate what Hedigger presents as a. the objects around us, b. our human attitudes and procedures or the totality of a and b in interdependence together.

7. ‘The Plurality of Existence...’ is supported by the Arts Council Visual Arts Project Award, Dublin City Council Neighbourhood and Community Award, Visual Centre of Contemporary Art, Carlow Arts Festival, NSF, Cork Mid Summer Festival, Cork City Council, Galway City Council, Galway Arts Centre and Corrib Navigation Trust. Special thanks to Emma-Lucy O’Brien, Anne Mulrooney, Mary Mc Carthy, Dobz O’Brien, Kath O’Gorman, Aidan Wallace, Meave Mulrenan, James Harold, Ruairi O’Cuiv, Cliodhna Shaffrey, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Liam from Myo Café, Cork, Terry Flanagan, AAL Ltd., Liffey River Cruise, Edel McGinley, (Director of the Irish Migrant Council) and Senator Alice-Mary Higgins.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

PROJECT PROFILE

Vokovar, Hrvatska

Jedna klupa. Sav moj svijet Uživam da gledam Dunav u Proljeće Tako je velik i brz. Nosi Sve Mirišu rascvali jorgovani. Miriše Dunav. Miriše Proljeće!

Iznad mene, nebo je tako plavo Gle!! Rijeka nosi bocu. Dali je u njoj neka tajna poruka? Koliko li dugo putuje?

Vidim čamac koji sijeće mirnu vodu. U njemu je moj komšija Vrača se iz ribolova. Osmeh na licu - sigurno je ulov bio dobar!

Pogled mi odluta na drugu stranu rijeke Druga država. Isti narod Kakav li je život tamo? Kako li tamo mirišu jorgovani?

Naviru uspomene. Ne mogu zaustaviti suze Zaneo sam se. Plavo nebo postalo je sivo.

Oko mene sve leti. Gorak okus prašine u ustima Košava sa Danava! Znam da će brzo doneti obilnu proljetnu kišu Žurim kuči

Vokovar, Croatia One bench. All my world I am enjoying watching the Danube in Spring time It is so HUGE and fast. It carries everything I am smelling lilac. I am smelling the Danube. I am smelling Spring!

Above me, the sky is so blue Look!! The river carries a bottle, maybe some secret message inside? How long has it travelled?

I see a small rowboat cutting through the river It’s my neighbour coming home from fishing Smile on his face – must be a good catch I look over to the other side of the river Different country, same people What kind of life is there? How does the lilac smell there?

The memories come on. I can’t stop the tears My mind is elsewhere. I didn’t notice the sky become grey Everything now flying around me. The bitter taste in my mouth Košava from the Danube! I know the wind will bring sudden rain I hurry home Sinisa Koncic, 2016

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

RESIDENCY RP: I noticed that too, especially when it came to military buildings.

The problem is that the purpose of each building is not always obvious, so a guide is important. There was a similar problem during a previous set of classes. We supplied the students with disposable cameras, with the idea that they could take them for the night and photograph their daily lives. We had discussed this with the commander but the overnight element of the project must have been lost in translation because the guards were quite startled to occasionally see prisoners taking photos that evening. Understandably they started confiscating the cameras, but we were able to clear things up, process the film and eventually return prints to the prisoners.

DOK: I remember you telling me about that. It was a very nice idea but I can see where the problem arose. The issue of surveillance is very interesting. I wonder about this deep distrust of documentation and what the roots of it are. There is an understandable paranoia left over from the Derg regime, but it makes me curious about what other reasons might lie behind it.

RP: We had better success using photos in your class. Can you describe the workshop you prepared for the prisoners before travelling and how it went for you in the delivery?

DOK: I wanted to bring the students together to work as a group Workshop participants at Arba Minch creating a 10-metre-long drawing so I decided to focus on collaborative drawing and brought 30 metres of paper and a lot of charcoal. I thought that group expression might be the most beneficial opportunity that we could offer the students, especially in a short time frame.

I suggested that we take requests for source material from RORY PROUT TALKS TO DAVID O’KANE ABOUT HIS EXPERIENCE OF THE ARBA MINCH PRISON ART the local area. The prisoners were eager to see photographs of motifs from their locality. I went on a kind of treasure hunt, phoPROJECT IN ETHIOPIA, WHICH PROUT ESTABLISHED IN 2015. tographing specific churches, mountains, plants, animals, crossThe Arba Minch Prison Art Project is an ongoing series of art classes Rory Prout: Women make up a very small proportion of the prisoners es, fruit, traditional houses and clothing, to name but a few of the delivered by Irish artists in a prison in southern Ethiopia. It was con- in Arba Minch, I think less than five per cent, yet their main living area requests put forward by the students. The most interesting and ceived by Father Paddy Moran, who ran the local Catholic Mission in seems more cramped than the men’s. Their access to facilities doesn’t telling request was for a photograph of a dog on a chain, which Arba Minch for seven years, and continues with his support and that seem as straightforward as they must be accompanied by a female my guide Eraras and I had a hard time finding. We got it in the of St. Mary’s College in Dublin. guard for instance, and can miss classes if one is not available. I think end though.

The project started as a drawing workshop in May last year. I was it’s probably one area that can be improved and it’s an aim of our own Some of the students had no experience of making art at all, on a residency in Addis Ababa when I met Father Paddy, who suggest- project to include as many women as possible. while others had the benefit of extensive workshops facilitated ed a visit to Arba Minch to see the humanitarian work there, and per- DOK: I agree. I imagine it would be argued that the female prison- by you and your team last year. Most of the communication was haps get involved in their prison education programme. I travelled ers need a guard for their own protection. The unavailability of done by demonstration of techniques. We spent making sure that south, really only prepared to go through some simple drawing exer- staff did mean that they missed out on our classes though. Did students had enough materials. I think that all of the students cises, and ended up spending 5 days working with a group of 30 pris- this happen on your previous trips too? enjoyed the experience and many showed a lot of talent. I oners. The response was incredible. We did canvas preparation, colour RP: There was generally good support from the prison in terms of brought some paintings, together with the panoramic drawings, mixing and painting, using locally available materials. The potential providing a guard in time, and I can understand the precaution, but back to Addis Ababa where they were displayed at the St. Patrick’s for establishing and supporting an artist group in the prison was obvi- it’s just one of many ways in which the women’s lives there differ Day ball. The local and emigrant audience were especially ous, and Father Paddy later contacted me to discuss the continuation from the men’s. I often describe the male living area as a village, with impressed by the huge drawings and I think there was a real of the project. Today we have a dedicated art room and five Irish artists all the variety of work, play, learning etc. that you might expect in sense of communication between very different worlds. have since taught there: John Galvin, Isabella Walsh, Noelle Collins, any community. This is not the case in the female dorms. What did David O’Kane and Mary Conroy. you see walking through the rest of the prison?

The next edition of the project will take place in November. Classes David O’Kane was this year’s painter in residence at the Irish DOK: We were shown how prisoners raised sheep and chick- and workshops will be delivered over full days and for a 10-day period Embassy in Addis Ababa and travelled with me to Arba Minch in ens. Nearby, wood was being chopped and coloured wool was – a duration and intensity that we’ve found is most productive for the March to teach on our project. I caught up with David recently to look threaded onto sticks in preparation for weaving. Various weaving students and logistically manageable. We will build on previously back, and was curious to hear his impression of the prison itself. processes were happening throughout the prison but there were established skills, namely observational drawing, painting, and, most two main shelters where the bulk of the production took place, recently, the fundamentals of working and firing clay. While painting David O’Kane: Arba Minch prison is not only astonishing for with hundreds of men weaving and talking noisily. has been most popular we recently introduced ceramics because of its Ethiopia but is far more progressive than many prisons in the soWe visited an infirmary, constructed in 2002 with assistance potential in terms of locally available skills and materials. called developed world. I think what struck me most was the from Father Paddy. Prior to this, if the prisoners were ill they had The November programme has two key objectives. Firstly, we complexity and range of activities that focus on education and to be taken to the hospital where they would be chained to the want to reduce the reliance on materials carried over from Ireland. We improvement of skills for the prisoners’ return to the outside bed. The infirmary means that they can be treated sooner, with will do this by working with students to investigate the potential of world. Afterwards I remarked to Father Paddy that the conditions more dignity and in greater comfort. local materials and develop the methodology and confidence to coninside the prison were better than those I had seen in many other There are also five churches accommodating many of the tinue testing new materials in their future practices. Secondly, we will parts of Ethiopia. He was quick to remind me that the loss of lib- major and minor religions represented in Ethiopia, as well as a establish a gallery/shop with a small studio where artists can show and erty was already enough of a punishment, especially in Ethiopia barber, a library, and an exercise and games area. We saw a group sell their work. This will be based on an existing system in which where family bonds are so important and strong. of men huddled over a boat shaped piece of wood, carved with prisoners sell textile work in the visitors’ area. It will also be located Our guide was Chalew, who was the representative of the pits in two parallel lines. They were excitedly transferring seeds near the women’s living area and provide a more accessible workspace prisoners. He showed us the educational buildings, with various from pit to pit. The object of the game is to capture all of your for them. brightly coloured diagrams painted onto the walls. The class- opponent’s seeds. Some prisoners played table tennis.

The ultimate aim of the project is to establish an independent, rooms were constructed from iron and local unrefined timber, We then proceeded to the kitchen. A five-foot wide pot rested sustainable artist group in the prison, supported through exhibitions designed to be portable because the prison will be moved several atop a bonfire, cooking dinner for 2,160 people. Next door was the and sales, and with continued technical support from artists in Ireland kilometres outside of Arba Minch in the future to accommodate bakery, where women were making injera flatbread in dozens of and local artists. growing numbers. clay ovens and bread was piled high either side of the long buildWe were then taken to the women’s quarters, which had ing. I was told afterwards that we shouldn’t have been filming in roryprout.com davidokane.com been upgraded five years earlier with ventilation and bunk- the bakery, although it was never made clear why. This was beds. Young children may stay with their mothers in the prison something that happened frequently throughout Ethiopia. You Note and there was a noisy, playful atmosphere. The neighbouring were never exactly sure what you were allowed to photograph so To date the project has been funded by St. Mary’s College, Rathmines and by Andrew Doyle, a past student of Blackrock College. kindergarten was surrounded by a fence decorated with pictures it was best to check with your guide. You could end up in jail of animals, children playing and letters of the alphabet. yourself for photographing the wrong building or person.

Loss of Liberty

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

15

CAREER DEVELOPMENT

‘Natural History of Hope’ performance, Project Arts Centre, May 2016.; all photos by Ray Hegarty.

Embracing Complexity FIONA WHELAN TALKS ABOUT THE ONGOING PROJECT ‘NATURAL HISTORY OF HOPE’ AND EXAMINES SOME OF ITS HISTORICAL ROOTS AND TENSIONS. IN a 2012 lecture, Tom Finkerpearl used Monty Python’s popular 1979 satirical film The Life of Brian to illustrate a point about a crisis in the art world. At an angry confrontation between the People’s Front of Judea, which the character of Brian had joined, and another activist group, the Campaign for a Free Galilee, Brian calls out to suggest that they should in fact be fighting their common enemy: the Romans.

Finkerpearl uses this comedy moment to highlight a tendency in the art world to become consumed in ideological arguments pitting one form of creative approach against another at the cost of a collective fight.

Drawing on Paul Starr’s article ‘The Phantom Community’, he describes historical social change movements that adopted an ‘exemplary’ position, such as Mahatma Ghandi or Martin Luther King, and those in the ‘adversarial’ category, such as Malcolm X. Finkerpearl sees these distinct positions in the history of social movements as key to understanding the modes of response to contemporary issues that we see today in the art world. He describes the adversarial approach as part of the genealogy for antagonistic practices like that of Santiago Sierra, while cooperative works such as Rick Lowe’s ‘Project Row Houses’ or Tania Brugeura’s ‘Immigrant Movement International’ find their roots in the exemplary.

For over 12 years I’ve worked as an artist in residence at Rialto Youth Project (RYP), creating long-term artistic enquiries building layers of individual and organisational relationships and coauthoring collaborative works. This work has clear roots on the side of the exemplary. But rather than create binaries of adversarial versus exemplary, antagonism versus cooperation, rupture versus healing, Finkerpearl argues that, like Brian, we should in fact be fighting the Romans, or whoever our common enemy is.

If we imagine the patriarchy, neo-liberalism or capitalism as common enemies that might unite many artists, then we could agree that a breakdown into micro discourses and debates over forms and approaches would be distracting from the broader fight against such mammoth forces. For example, for the last four years I’ve worked on a durational collaborative project, ‘Natural History of Hope’, exploring class and gender inequality across different generations of women.

Therefore, I am part of a contemporary community of artists in Ireland who are preoccupied with related themes and who all engage people as a core feature of their work. From the Artists Repeal the Eighth and Waking the Feminists activist campaigns to the transnational In the Shadow of the State project, the recent controversial Maser mural that temporarily adorned the outer wall of Project Arts Centre and the participatory project ‘77 Women’ at Richmond Barracks.

All of these address common issues around patriarchy and collectively present a challenge to a common enemy. However, in reality these art processes are each complex and multifaceted. Each one identifies and opposes different aspects of patriarchal systems. Furthermore they employ different forms, different modes of engagement and different timescales. The have different aims, different levels of endorsement from the art world, and different relationships with their con-

ing in Rialto to engage over time in story gathering as well as a series of local events, meals, workshops, the development of a temporary school and three major public performances in the theatre space at Project Arts Centre in May 2016. While a previous project exploring power with young people had quickly identified policing as a strong theme to pursue, ‘Natural History of Hope’ unveiled multiple overlapping realities of class and gender inequality. As a result the public performances involved a cast of 30 women representing this complexity, using lived experience and external analysis to speak back to multiple oppressive forces. Themes of class, death, the liability of men, gendered identity, lack of safe space, struggle for dignity and the ‘affective domain’ were interwoven into a landscape in which the protagonist, a mannequin called Hope, would attempt to survive and if possible to thrive. Complex social themes could not be simplified here as they crashed against each other in a young woman’s path. The cast presented themselves as powerful women, yearning for something better for Hope. Presenting this work in a contemporary art venue during the centenary year, and in light of the Waking the Feminists campaign, created other lenses for the work and highlighted key questions around the power and representation of working class experience.

In my practice I strive to bring together two forms of relational power, “one that articulates inequalities between those who exercise power and those who are subject to power and another whereby power is co-produced through collaboration”. In that vein, this project has nurtured a strong collaborative power base and so, as with previous projects, it remains open ended in anticipation of future chapters.

Although I’ve built up a distinct methodology, what is significant for me as an artist is that I’m not bound to any specific approach in moving forward. Future phases of ‘Natural History of Hope’ may adopt different approaches at different moments where necessary. What I do find myself eager to hold open is the complexity of life in the social world and similarly to keep alive the natural tensions that occur between various positions and complex approaches to making art with people. It’s in the richness of this complexity that new knowledge is produced.

stituencies as voluntary and involuntary participants, collaborators and spectators. Reducing them to one common fight poses the risk of sweeping over the complexity of their own power relations.

Instead, we can momentarily sidestep the history of social movements and simultaneously track back through the multiple genealogies of participation in the arts, such as Dadaism, Fluxus, the Feminist art movement or Relational Aesthetics. This way we can identify some specific features that place different approaches distinctly apart from each other and contribute to current debates related to their specific values and fault lines. For example a close examination of the community arts movement of the 1970s – 1990s offers a deeper understanding of current debates on the instrumentalisation and gentrification of participatory art practices.

As Claire Bishop outlined at the ‘Creative Time Summit’ in 2011, participation has changed throughout history from the ‘crowd’ of the 1910s, to the ‘masses’ of the 1920s, the ‘people’ of the 1960s, the ‘excluded’ of the 1980s, the ‘communities’ of 1990s, to today’s ‘volunteers’. In a recent essay that I co-wrote with sociologist Kevin Ryan examining my practice, Ryan highlights how the language of power was radically altered during the 1980s and 1990s, both in Ireland and the EC, and the effect of this on the community arts movement. What had started out as a deeply political set of practices motivated by issues of ‘inequality’ and fights for ‘equality’, over time and through state involvement, became reframed using the language of ‘disadvantage’ and social ‘exclusion’. The remedy thus prescribed was social ‘inclusion’. Neo-liberal workfare regimes emerged and participation became scripted. Fights for equality were replaced by state supported processes aimed at ‘activating’ and ‘empowering’ ‘disadvantaged’ individuals and communities, the movement becoming increasingly controlled.

During this time, while youth work was being steered by policies Fiona Whelan is a Dublin-based artist and joint Coordinator of with minimal focus on inequality, some organisations, including RYP, the MA Socially Engaged Art at NCAD. refused to endorse the depoliticised language in the state’s classifica- fionawhelan.com tion of Rialto as ‘disadvantaged’. Instead RYP adopted the defiant language of ‘oppression’ and ‘marginalisation’ while building a strong Notes capacity for arts-based work committed to the exploration and repre- 1. ‘Creative Time Summit’, New York, 12 October 2012 2. Paul Starr, ‘The Phantom Community’ in John Case and Rosemary Taylor, eds., Co-ops, Communes and sentation of social issues. My engagement with RYP from 2004 created Collectives: Social Experiments from the 1960s and 1970s, Pantheon, 1979 a dialogue between legacies of community arts and contemporary 3. artistsrepealthe8th.com, wakingthefeminists.org, intheshadowofthestate.org, https://www.facebook. com/MASERART, richmondbarracks.ie/women-1916 critical discourses occupying the field of collaborative and socially 4. In Semester 1 of the MA Socially Engaged Art at NCAD, I coordinate a module mapping the multiple genealogies of socially engaged art practice, delivered by a diverse group of practitioners who each engaged practice, especially as they related to power. track a specific historical thread Cautious of becoming instrumentalised but deeply respectful of 5. Claire Bishop, Participation and Spectacle: Where Are We Now?, ‘Creative Time Summit’, 18 May 2011 a history of community-based arts activity in Rialto, I worked to avoid 6. Fiona Whelan, Kevin Ryan, Beating the Bounds of Socially-Engaged Art? A Transdisciplinary Dialogue on a Collaborative Art Project with Youth in Dublin, Ireland, Field Journal, Issue 4, Spring 2016 (http:// what Grant Kester refers to as the “salvage” paradigm in which the field-journal.com) artist takes on the task of “improving” the implicitly flawed subject. 7. rialtoyouthproject.net 8. Grant Kester, ‘Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework for Littoral Art’, Variant (9, Winter, 1999/2000); Seeing the distinction between acting upon and acting with, I invest- J. Clifford, ‘The Others: Beyond the “Salvage” Paradigm’,Third Text, 1989 Ryan makes this distinction, see note 6 ed in deeply collaborative structures and in the spirit of Ranciere’s 9.Kevin J. Ranciere, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, Stanford University ‘ignorant schoolmaster’, equality became a starting point rather than a Press, California, 1987 10. Natural History of Hope was a live performance by Fiona Whelan, Rialto Youth Project and destination of the work.

Brokentalkers, Project Arts Centre 12 – 14 May 2016 The current ‘Natural History of Hope’ project has been focused on 11. Professor Kathleen Lynch from Equality Studies in UCD acted as an advisor to the project and worked with us to identify these core themes from the research material exploring and representing contemporary equality issues in women’s 12. Sarah Keating, ‘When feminism met real working-class lives in Rialto’, Irish Times, 28 June 2016 lives. It has brought together generations of women working and liv- 13. Kevin Ryan, see note 6

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

BIENNIAL

Yong Sun Gullach performing at Eva; photo by Deirdre Power

Koyo Kouoh and Larry Achiampong, Belltable, Limerick; photo by Deirdre Power

Professor Luke Gibbons, Belltable, Limerick; photo by Deirdre Power

Semi Colonials LILY POWER REPORTS FROM THE CLOSING SYMPOSIUM FOR EVA 2016: ‘STILL (THE) BARBARIANS’, WHICH TOOK PLACE IN LIMERICK ON 13 JULY 2016.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

17

BIENNIAL THE closing event for ‘Eva 2016: Still (the) Barbarians’ was the culmination of one the most well received Eva exhibitions in recent years.

Reflecting the scope and complexity of the biennial itself, the presentations and discussions were diverse and ambitious, representing a range of both Irish and international offerings on postcolonial discourse. Curator Koyo Kouoh began by introducing Alan Phelan’s “counterfactual” film Our Kind (2016), which imagines a future for Roger Casement had he not been executed in 1916.

POST-COLONY: CURATORIAL PERSPECTIVES FROM INDIA AND SOUTH AMERICA Chair Declan Long (MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD) reiterated Casement’s relevance to discussions on colonialism and postcolonialism in Ireland. His work in the Congo, Long stated, highlighted the abuses of colonialism and ties in to contemporary representations of exploitation, such as Jeremy Hutchinson’s work for Eva on indigo production.

Grant Watson (Curatorial Theory, Royal College of Art, London) has spent over 15 years researching and curating contemporary Indian art. Watson spoke mostly about the role of poet and artist Rabindranath Tagore’s art school Kala Bhavana, established in 1940, during the Indian decolonisation movement. In creating a syllabus for the school, Tagore and the artist Nandalal Bose wanted to bypass British influence, looking to the far reaches of Asia, as well as Europe, to create a cosmopolitan knowledge base for students. They travelled widely, including several times to Japan, bringing back books and ideas.

Watson noted Kala Bhavana’s connection to Bauhaus, which was established in the same year, and also emphasised the workshop and the social function of art. In both institutions the language of modernism was used to depict social upheaval, exploring ideas of colonialism.

Watson then spoke about his own curatorial practice, specifically his work with Sheela Gowda, whose large scale installations explore the problems inherent in the language of modernism as well as exploitation in modern India.

Independent curator and writer Catalina Lozano introduced her research and curatorial practice on forms of colonialism across Latin America. Her interest lies in historiography as a way to counter historical hegemonies. She introduced the theorist Anibal Quijano’s ‘coloniality of power’, which describes the continuation of colonial hierarchies and paradigms in postcolonial societies.

Lozano discussed several Latin American artists, beginning with Fernando Palma Rodriguez, whose works relate to his heritage in the indigenous central regions of Mexico. Palma Rodriguez explores the loss of minority languages and in turn of “particular and specific ways of understanding the world”.

Next, Lozano introduced Carolina Caycedo, whose work incorporates direct activism opposing the construction of multiple dams in Colombia, which has led to displacement of indigenous people and exploitation of natural resources. Continuing the theme of environmental concerns and of political protest, Lozano moved on to Eduardo Abaroa, whose work The Total Destruction of the National Museum of Anthropology (2013) imagines razing the Mexico City institution. The piece highlights inequality in how we regard artefacts, people and the natural world.

During the panel discussion, Kouoh reiterated the idea of colonial constructs, arguing that discriminatory racial hierarchies, in particular, are an “invention of Europe”. For Lozano, this is an example of “internalised colonialism”, perpetuated by our continuing Eurocentrism.

Kouoh brought up assimilation and perpetrators becoming ‘local’, bringing the discussion towards Ireland. Lozano cited the mass extermination of indigenous people in Argentina, which occurred after the country’s independence, as an example of how indigenous movements are often in opposition to the mainstream anti-colonial agenda.

The discussion moved to the role of contemporary political and economic systems in continuing colonial structures. The ideology of neoliberalism, which sees capitalism as inevitable, Lozano argued, continues to posit indigenous people as “behind” in the model of social development. This was also explored by Tagore, Watson stated, in his attempts to create a different modernism not intrinsically tied to European industrial capitalism. In this system indigenous people are often “trapped by the idea of authenticity”, which defines them as worthy of protection but can also force them to remain stuck in a particular time.

ARTISTS AND POST-COLONIAL LEGACY Following a performance of Media Minerals by David Blandy and Larry Achiampong, artist Yong Sun Gullach spoke about her performance work on transnational adoption. Born in Korea, Gullach was adopted to Denmark. She sees transnational adoption as a continuing visible trace of colonialism and began by posing a series of questions challenging our preconceived notions: “Why do so many women have to give up their children? Why is this practice largely funded by receiver countries? Where are the parents in this process?”

In a particularly powerful description she referred to the process of transnational adoption as one of “exploiting resources” in a colonised country that contravenes the UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child by denying the child knowledge of their indigenous identity and their original family. The common practice of forging birth documents to comply with international rules further entrenches this. In the process of transnational adoption, whiteness is “borne upon” the child. A key part of colonialism, she argued, is that the norms of indigenous people in colonised countries become disorientated and are forced into Western paradigms, echoing Lozano’s sentiment about internalised colonialism.

Gullach emphasised the political potential of performance.

Bodies possess the power to “define new linear norms” through processes of disorientation. She sees this as a challenge to postcolonial power that has not proved a popular position to assert within the art world.

Mary Evans spoke about her work and her life, which, like Galluch, are closely intertwined. Born in Nigeria, Evans moved to London in the late 1960s aged six and is interested in issues of migration, psychogeography and race. She began with an anecdote about her first experience of institutional racism after being relatively sheltered growing up in a community of immigrants.

Evans spoke about her use of decorative arts as a foil for the content of the work. Ordinary brown paper is a recurring motif, demonstrated in Held (2013), displayed at Limerick City Gallery, which depicts refugees waiting in an endless line. Evans often uses materials from her childhood growing up among immigrants from former colonies, representing their attempts to absorb and mimic British culture.

Lastly, Evans introduced a residency she undertook at the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens, looking at how the movement of tropical flora and fauna mirrored the movement of people from former colonies to Britain and the botanic garden as a manifestation of Victorian imperial Britain.

In the discussion, Kouoh noted the common theme of ‘othering’ across the artists’ works. She questioned Achiampong and Blandy about the element of their work that encourages those around them to relive past events. Achiampong described how his own family never discussed coming to Britain as paperless migrants. Evans spoke of the common experience of Irish and West Indian immigrants in London, while Achiampong and Blandy emphasised the ways in which both similarity and difference of experience had brought them together.

Achiampong talked of the shame felt by all migrants to a new country, his own childhood desire to be white and feeling different from his parents. This led back to Gullach’s thesis about the experience of transnational adoptees, whose history has been “whitewashed”. She became frustrated with official channels and activism, where she was often silenced for being “too emotional”. Mary Evans concurred, describing how art helps her to understand a history of which she has no direct memory but which affects her daily life.

Asked about their connection to Ireland, Achiampong, Blandy and Evans all referred to their direct experience growing up in Kilburn, London, among a large Irish community. Gullach made comparisons to the Faroe Islands, former colonies of Denmark that have internalised Danish language and culture to an “irreversible extent”. She noted the different trajectories of ‘white’ colonies, when oppressor and oppressed cannot be distinguished by race.

ARCHITECTURE AND MEMORY Dr John Logan (History, UL) spoke about the changing urban shape of Limerick City. He began by showing a map from 1633, when the city was divided in Englishtown and Irishtown, moving to the changes of the eighteenth century when Edward Sexton Perry owned most of the land that now makes up the city centre. This sudden move from the theoretical to the physical demonstrated the tangible legacy of colonial rule on the urban Irish landscape.

The consistency of the British colonial project was evidenced in

the familial connections between landowners and administrators in Ireland and India. Plassey House, for example, now part of the university campus, was named after a British victory in India in which thousands were slaughtered. It was known by this name for many years with little thought to its origin.

He described the “funnel of deprivation” that formed through the city after independence, as the rich moved to the outskirts, Englishtown and Irishtown dissolving only in name. This was the case across many Irish towns and demonstrates the reality of continuing inequality. Logan spoke about the concept of “fabricated histories”, exemplified by the reclaiming of the old Englishtown and its cobbled streets for tourism. ‘Education’ is used as a defense for prioritising these areas over those in which people actually live.

Dr Aislinn O’Donnell (Philosophy, UL) spoke about “navigating colonial remains” through philosophy. She returned to Lozano’s concept of internalised colonial structures, noting how the past “speaks through us” in our language, for example in the myriad ways people describe Northern Ireland: the six counties, the north of Ireland or Ulster. In this way our implicit allegiances are given away.

Referencing the philosopher Enrique Dussel, she queried Ireland’s position within the paradigms of colonial and postcolonial analysis.

“Who are the Irish? Where is Ireland? Is it located at the centre or the periphery?” Ireland is positioned as a “different kind” of colony, largely due to its white population. European philosophy sees itself as universal, which is an important part of Cavafy’s poem after which Eva 2016 was named. What might a ‘barbarian’ philosophy be like?

She spoke of the “underside” of modernity: the genocides that were not “anomalies of history” but a central part of the ‘modern’ world created through colonialism. This conquering ego still decides “who gets to speak”. O’Donnell returned to Northern Ireland, and our reluctance to speak about it due to a “volatile mixture” of political shame and willed ignorance. The situation reveals a collective responsibility that has not been met.

O’Donnell emphasised her frustration in trying to talk about colonialism, which is viewed as unfashionable or embarrassing. Primo Levi’s notion of the shame of being human describes our refusal to see the suffering in which we are complicit. As both participants in and subjects of colonial structures we are unwilling to admit our own othering impulses.

The panel discussion, chaired by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith, turned quickly towards the direct provision system in Ireland and the “uncomfortable otherness” on our doorstep, which has taken the place of the Magdalene Laundries. O’Donnell concurred, referring to Homi Bhaba’s writings. What we mean when we say we’re opposed to colonialism, she argued, is in fact very complicated in the Irish context. We are not living in a post colonial or a post racist society. Some lives are valued more than others.

Professor Luke Gibbons (Irish Literary and Cultural Studies, NUI Maynooth) introduced his closing remarks with a quote from Finnegan’s Wake about the English being full stoppers and the Irish semi colonials, and spoke about the “choreography of coincidences” that are created through art. Gibbons noted the connection between Tagore’s school and Pádraig Pearse’s school in their attempts to transcend colonial educational paradigms. He also mentioned Pearse’s play The Post Office, said to have inspired the Rising in its depiction of the GPO as the symbol of colonial rule. Continuing the word play, he stated a need to rescue the word ‘post’ from its temporal meaning.

Returning to the idea of invented tradition, he argued that seeing these histories as invented is a misconception. The past is not fixed. In the revolution the avant garde’s role is to imagine the future, which the present must then catch up with. The Rising, for example, had no popular mandate at the time and was seen by many as elitist. Its mandate has come from the future, which partly explains the state’s continuing discomfort. For Gibbons, memory is made and remade, not passed on. Commemoration is itself part of the 1916 Rising, which was not one event but is a continuous history that changes with memory.

Gibbons closed on the idea of colonial universalism, which counters reality, where everything is grounded in the specific. We view art through our own contextual eyes. He referenced Mary Evans’s point that the spaces between us are in fact what bring us together.

Differences are simply more interesting. Art and aesthetic appreciation are necessary for filling in the gaps between the ethical and the political.

Lily Power, Production Editor, Visual Artists Ireland

18

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

HOW IS IT MADE?

Michael McLoughlin, ‘An Audio Map of Drogheda’, installation view, Droichead Arts Centre, 2016; photo by Jenny Matthews

Methodology & Participation

Michael McLoughlin, drawing of conversation mapping (detail), digital archive print, 2016

tography. It’s a process of mapping the sonic space occupied by conversations to recreate them for an exhibition at some future date.

The connection between the people who are gathered together acts as the conversation starting point. Beforehand we talk through MICHAEL MCLOUGHLIN TALKS ABOUT THE PROCESS BEHIND THE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ‘CUMANN’, the process. It’s not for me to decide what their conversations are WHICH TOOK PLACE IN DROGHEDA, AND THE CURRENT EXHIBITION OF THIS WORK IN LIMERICK CITY about. The process is an acknowledgement of the relationship and dynamic within a group of people that already exists.

GALLERY OF ART. From a gallery perspective the aesthetic and ethical representation of this relationship uses an artistic language I’ve developed over MUCH of the work I have made over the last 20 years has focused on edging that art making is inherently a social act is central to how I the last 15 years. Continuously honing, refining and clarifying this what brings groups of people together, how connections drive them, work. For me it is essential to the realisation of an artwork and artistic language and how it is used to represent the relational is key to where the balance between personal relationships, friendships, ideas, acknowledges the interactions that take place around that realisation. the continuous development of my practice. The groups involved in ideals or common goals lies and the ways in which bonds are created. Historically, artwork and artists have always had this societal role and the exhibition in Droichead Arts Centre did so on the basis of a propoI’ll give an example. My father was in the Labour Party until the are themselves participants in society. Focusing once again on partici- sition, curiosity and an understanding that their involvement in the late 1980s. Many people of his generation in the area we lived in were pation is for the most part a positive step that offers the potential to realisation of this artwork will always be central to its future presentaalso party members. They met every week, talked, debated, made plans look at art making within its broader context. For the purpose of this tion. for local events and were very active in the local community. The article I’m using ‘participant’ to mean someone who has direct I don’t talk about this project in the past tense because the process branch was disbanded after some reorganisation of the party nation- involvement in the realisation of an art project other than the artist, doesn’t stop with the exhibition. Each group has and will continue to ally. My memory is of a social outlet for many of the people involved. institution, commissioner or fabricator. have a role in the future of the work as they have ‘power of veto’ over They were there for something other than simply discussing party I make audio-based work, drawing and sculptural objects that are any future installation of this artwork and there is a formal agreement politics: for connection, a place to share and to belong. essentially gallery and site focused, in processes that also involve to that effect with participants. They have full say over whether their I have worked with many communities of interest, all of whom numerous participants. The nature of this involvement changes con- recording is exhibited and what happens in 10 or 20 years time. In work together on some shared idea for themselves and their peers. tinuously, depending on the project, the relationship with the people addition, visiting the installation and standing within the conversaMany of these groups offer one another supports and social engage- involved and the timeframe. tion is the only way you can hear it. The recordings are not distributment, while together they contribute hugely towards the wellbeing of The work in Droichead aimed to acknowledge and celebrate the able in an edited, stereo or documentation format. their communities. Although they are not affiliated with a party or role that communities of interest play in defining Drogheda. There are Central to this work is the examination of the ethics and power organisation, their actions and their active citizenship is inherently 12 groups involved in the project, all of whom were recorded and dynamics of gallery-based participatory artworks, with particular political. They too meet, talk, debate, plan and do. They too are crucial represented as part of the installation. The groups got involved for focus on authorship, co-authorship and ownership. Ethics in particito the happiness, security and welfare of society. many different reasons and there wasn’t a defined selection process. patory art practices has tended to focus on the participant/artist relaSince 2013/14 I have been working on a project intitled ‘Cumann’. There was an evolving list of groups who we (myself and, on behalf of tionship and specifically on the point of their initial exchange. The The first manifestation of which was ‘Cumann: An Audio Map of Droichead, Marcella Bannon, Tony Conaghy and Orla Maloney) artist can often be perceived as the intermediary, the gatekeeper and Drogheda’ culminating in an exhibition in Droichead Arts Centre in thought might be interested in the project. We used mailouts, press the owner of the outcome of their shared experience. Often the outApril 2016. My intention was to create a body of work that simultane- releases and pieces on local radio to draw people out. Groups suggest- comes from these engagements are represented and repositioned ously recognised the societal role of communities of interest and the ed other groups and I met many people just by being in Drogheda for within the curatorial vision of the hosting institution. This is underways in which they define specific places. Their knowledge, their an extended period of time. I also met with groups who didn’t want to standable because, traditionally, the gallery sees itself as primarily interactions and their participation were central to making this art- be involved in the exhibition for various reasons and these conversa- working with objects rather than with people and their ideas. However, work. ‘Cumann’ involved developing a methodology which placed the tions were hugely important to the development of the work. it is problematic as it imposes a heirarchy which negates the particidiscussion around the power, ethics, relationships and participation at For the ‘Cumann’ exhibition in Droichead, the final groups pants’ role in art making. the centre of the creative process.

At its simplist, my aim is to create a conversation around power involved were: Ablevision, Drogheda Homeless Aid, Drogheda and In terms of art making, the term ‘participation’ tends to be used to District Pigeon Racing Club, Boomerang, St. Vincent de Paul, Bridge and ethics that is well overdue. describe an interaction that involves someone other than an artist, a Jam, Old Drogheda Society, Connect Family Recourse Centre, gallery or curator and an audience. I consider this reading very narrow. Drogheda Chamber of Commerce, Drogheda Youth Theatre and Michael McLoughlin is a visual artist working in a wide variety I know that I ‘participate’ in the making of my artwork. Curators, pro- Drogheda Local Voices. of media including drawing, video, sculpture and sound. mmcloughlin.org ducers, galleries, audiences, collaborators, partners, funders and pretty ‘Cumann’ involves mapping place through the interactions and much each and every actor who has an interest in the reality of mak- relationships between the communities of interest who in turn define ing and presenting the artwork participates too. The nature of this that place. It is an art making process that creates choreographed Note ‘Cumann’ was made possible with the support of an Arts Councill of Ireland Participation Project Award participation is constantly changing and is different for every artist, moments of exchange through agreed, staged, multi-channel record- 2015. ‘Cumann: An Audio Map of Limerick’ will open on 15 September in Limerick City Gallery of Art. every artwork, every show and every project. ings of unmediated conversations between small groups of individuRecognising this broader notion of participation and acknowl- als who share some commonality. I describe this process as audio car-

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

Critique Supplement Edition 27: September – October 2016

John Byrne, Peep

John Byrne, Easter 1968

John Byrne, Easter 1968

John Byrne ‘Would You Die for Ireland?’

The LAB, Dublin, 24 June – 10 August GPO. The work comprises a large colour photograph of a staged version of this event using models dressed in their Sunday best (immaculate period dress): a dreamlike cinematic family portrait printed in shimmering technicolour. A blue mackerel sky and bright sunshine bathe the shot, which was taken from a low angle looking upwards, allowing the GPO to soar dramatically behind the group as their father relates the events of the Rising. The mise en scene creates an arresting image that records an important memory. A text accompanies this work and others, in which Byrne’s narrative voice drifts between his childhood and grown-up self offering honesty and continued bewilderment at the uncontrollable events that unfolded after that day in 1968.

In two works Byrne reflects more directly on the legacy of 1916 and of partition by recounting the cultural schism of daily life under the first Stormont parliamentary system. With boyish humour, An Ghaeltacht 1972 and Peep deal with the predicament of being Catholic in a Protestant state, which he likens to the experience of closeted sexuality. Peep refers directly to the ban on the public display of the tricolour and the thrill of seeing it at GAA matches. He creates a private viewing kiosk where a video of the tricolour flying vigorously to a rousing orchestral arrangement of Amhrann na bFhiann can be observed. As absurd and hilarious that Peep is it’s difficult not to relish Byrne’s ridicule of daft legislation while enjoying a clandestine moment of patriotism.

An Ghaeltacht 1972, like Easter 1916, is a staged photograph of the young Byrne larking around in a sweeping Donegal landscape while freely brandishing a bouquet of shoplifted tricolours. The text that goes with this image is comically self-deprecating but implicit in the telling is Byrne’s genuine childhood need for cultural refuge in the curative environment of the Donegal countryside.

You get the sense that Byrne’s geographic and cultural dislocation continues to define his identity through the sense of absence and uncertainty that prompts him to investigate the experiences of others. Byrne made a vox pop video in 2003 (with a postscript from 2016) in which he takes to the streets of Belfast, Dublin and Cork asking members of the public “Would you die for Ireland?” Byrne’s utterly neutral tone and refusal to manipulate his subjects gives a wistful gravitas to the absurdity of the endeavour. While he has earnestly recorded and edited the responses into an accomplished artwork, one can’t help feeling it was doomed to fail from the outset. But more than any other work it succeeds by pointing to the potentially destructive impact of extremist identities in any context and, sadly, to a contemporary fatigue in ‘defining Ireland’.

Encouragingly though, many of the negative responses are rhetorical as he prompts subjects to wonder: If not Ireland, who would I die for? Byrne’s City Council’s Commemoration Fund, which asked impartial approach emphasises a need for open artists “to consider what contribution we might questions that give voice to uncertainty, desire, hope and introspection untangled from historical make to future readings of the Easter Rising”.

Byrne considers the perspective of his child- polemic.

The entire exhibition, ‘Would You Die for hood self, following in the tradition of Patrick Kavanagh and Michael Hartnett, whose poetry Ireland?’, provides a rich seam of material through glimpsed the ordinary things of childhood that which to consider any future reading of the Easter grow in significance later in life. In particular, Rising. It offers candid witness testimony to the legByrne’s works An Ghaeltacht 1972 and Easter 1968 acy of 1916 through Byrne’s ingenuous poetic texts, bring to mind poems like Hartnett’s Death of an Irish beautifully crafted visuals and modest sense of Woman or Kavanagh’s My Father Played the Melodian. humour.

Easter 1968 captures Byrne’s memory of a family trip from his home in Belfast to Dublin where they Carissa Farrell is a curator based in Dublin. examined the bullet holes in the columns of the THE official 1916 commemoration on Easter Sunday was a conservative if dignified solution that marked the de facto centenary of the foundation of our state. Designed to avoid controversy or soul searching, the event sidelined years of colossal social and economic upheaval in favour of a traditional military parade by the Irish Defence Forces.

And they did it very well. In contrast, but arguably hidden safely in the margins, John Byrne’s exhibition ‘Would You Die for Ireland?’ is part of the LAB Gallery’s series of exhibitions supported by Dublin

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet CRITIQUE SUPPLEMENT

September – October 2016

‘Two Birds/One Stone’ Farmleigh Gallery, Dublin 10 June – 7 August

‘Two Birds/One Stone’ installation view, Farmleigh Gallery

David Fagan ‘I Have Nada So Far But I Remain Optimistic’ Tactic, Cork, 23 June – 20 July SOMETIMES I find it interesting, on my first encounter with an exhibition, to pretend I am illiterate.

A brightly lit, concrete-floored rectangle. A white sentence on a red floating partition. Three separate clusters of green glass beer bottles. On one wall, a black and white photograph of four suited and bespectacled persons unknown; on the opposite, a colour photograph of two men in a pub, one to the rear, one to the fore. A pedestal upon which a ticket and ticket receipt are propped, another sentence in the crook of the wall, this time in red. A video, one moment showing a solitary trolley outside a squat, brick building against a blue sky, the ‘Two Birds/One Stone’ installation view, Farmleigh Gallery next showing the same scene on a TV screen inside – clothes for transformation, exquisitely rendered fish a living room – net curtain, radiator, fireplace – and skin gloves with webbed fingers, and Alice Maher’s a tune burbling up from inside the video, a soul song Medea’s Gloves (1998), silk gloves adorned with flow- from the 1970s. As the screen blacks out it throws its ing tassels of human hair, seem to allude to ideas of chorus to a speaker in the ceiling: “Have you seen her? Tell me have you seen her?” enchantment or magical transformation.

At this point, illiterate-me leaves the premises, Kathy Prendergast’s Grave Blanket (1997), a woollen blanket combined with marble chippings, almost standing on a smart phone which someone and Dorothy Cross’s Bedding (1993), which com- appears to have left charging beside the entrance as prises a cow udder, a pillow and blankets, are works she goes.

Tactic is the exhibition space encircled by that use the symbolic power and cultural associations of found materials to provoke a sense of Sample Studios, programmed by an in-house curaunease. They both use materials associated with tor and two curators-in-residence, joint recipients of comfort and put them with objects which are dis- the organisation’s 2015 Curatorial Graduate comforting in a way that invites the viewer to medi- Residency Award, one of whom, Aoife Power, is responsible for the Fagan show, as well as its accomtate on corporeality.

Interestingly it is a video work that most panying literature, for which I was considerably clearly asserts the show’s central theme. Adrian grateful.

After several minutes of reading, I understand Paci’s The Column (2013) features a block of marble being prepared at a quarry in China and then trans- that the show’s surface ambiguity arises from its ported to Europe. En route it is carved into a being a body of work-in-progress, which began Corinthian column. We watch in awe as a team of when Fagan returned to live in Tallaght – where he masons form the stone. The skill with which they is from – as an attempt to look afresh, to summon approach their work and their knowledge of the enthusiasm, for this place possibly most remarkable physical characteristics of the material is mesmeris- for everybody’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for it. ing. The work resonates with several others in the And lo, surely out of age-old habit, Fagan has steered exhibition, evoking images of other artists and their away from Tallaght, turning instead to the German relationships with materials, about ancient pro- town Kreis Segeberg, with which, in 1997, it was cesses such as stone carving, and more recent pro- twinned. The black and white photograph shows cesses such as welding or assemblage. The video the twinning ceremony; the caption names three made me notice the way that sculptures as diverse men and designates the only woman as ‘unnamed’. in style as those by David Quinn, Helen O’Leary and The nameless woman has something to do with the John Gibbons all bore notches, indentations and solitary trolley video, partially explaining the inclusion of the Chi-Lites 1971 hit single Have You Seen marks, also indicating the process of creation.

The show’s emphasis on deliberate, meticu- Her? The ticket is for the 2016 Karl May Festival lous and intensive process does not mean that it’s hosted by Kreis Segeberg, and Karl May is one of the devoid of humour. For instance Linda Quinlan’s best-selling German writers of all time, renowned subversive work, It Adds to the Confusion (2006), a for his adventure stories of the American West, as conflation of the sort of objects that would have been very at home in a post-war suburban living room, has none of the organic textures of other works in the show, but it shares the seriousness of purpose Mullarney alludes to in her curatorial choices and in her foreword to the catalogue. This catalogue by Jurga Rakauskaite is worthy of mention. It is a small but meticulously designed hardback book with an exposed spine and a blind embossed gold stone shape on the cover. Created in the manner of an artist’s book in an edition of 500, it reflects Mullarney’s curatorial premise of a profound engagement with materials and making.

‘TWO Birds/One Stone’ is an absorbing exploration of materiality. Janet Mullarney has chosen works by a wide range of artists from the last two decades which explore the complexity, tactility and associative power of materials. The exhibition features work by Cecily Brennan, Dorothy Cross, Maud Cotter, Aleana Egan, John Gibbons, Tony Hill, Mary Kelly, Alice Maher, Eileen McDonagh, Locky Morris, Paul Mosse, Helen O’Leary, Niamh O’Malley, Adrian Paci, Rachel Parry, Alan Phelan, Kathy Prendegast, Linda Quinlan, David Quinn, Eddie Rafferty, Charles Tyrrell, Michael Warren and Daphne Wright.

The layout is carefully orchestrated, Mullarney states in her introduction to the exhibition, to guide the viewer through this central premise “that the material chosen is imperative to the final reading of the work”. She continues: “The simplicity and directness of choice means there is no need of further explanation, one can understand through the eyes just how the artist has imparted everything that needs to be said through the use and choice of material”.

You first enter a compact room with two small contemplative works: a small, delicate piece in resin

by Paul Mosse and Charles Tyrrell’s found boulder with the word “Here” carved into to it. The next room is a parade of sculptural ideas and making strategies, presented in a way that utilises the long narrow shape of the gallery. The effect is akin to a cast court, where objects created at different times and in different places find common cause and come together to create something new while still retaining their individual resonance.

The wall of the main area of the gallery is painted gold. Metallic walls have been in vogue since Warhol’s factory, but rather than allude to the future it seems that the metallic colour here relates to the past, more Duccio than Billy Name. The gold speaks of preciousness, and of things being alchemically altered by the sculptor’s intervention. The idea that objects, albeit sometimes those made from very unpromising materials, can be imbued with life and poetry by the sculptor’s intervention seems fundamental to the exhibition.

‘Two Birds/One Stone’ is a paean to the physical act of making – to reduction, addition, manipulation and adaptation. The use of found elements, often situated alongside more conventional art materials, is a theme that runs through the show.

The interventions in the found range from the ostensibly straightforward, such as Michael Warren’s chopped and charred piece of oak, Trefoil Andy Parsons is an artist and curator based in (2013), to the complex and laborious, such as the Sligo. He is the co-founder of Floating World fragile interlocking structures created by Helen Artists’ Books.

O’Leary to support The Shelf Life of Facts (2015).

Manipulating the powerful associations of andyparsonsartist.com floatingworldbooks.com found materials is a theme that runs through many of the works in the show. Rachel Parry’s Water Gloves

David Fagan, ‘I Have Nada So Far But I Remain Optimistic’, Tactic, Cork, 2016

well as for never having travelled any further than New York.

“If things look completely the same, I search for differences,” John Baldessari said in conversation with Thomas McEvilley in 1999; “if completely different, I search for similarities”. Like that of Baldessari, Fagan’s work is droll. The colour photograph turns out to be a Becks ad; the man to the rear is the artist himself. He smirks out from the pub across the exhibition space, and the nameless woman smirks back, as they share some joke without a punchline.

And the battered Samsung on the floor by the entrance – screen shattered in a spidery pattern, rainbow sticker on the back – is an artwork. OMG maybe you saw me like ten minutes ago was first included in Fagan’s solo exhibition at Siamsa Tíre last year. The jerkily moving scene is a public square: trees, buildings, a scattered crowd. This is the view from a webcam somewhere in Berlin and the soundtrack is the artist phoning his friend, who is somewhere in the square, somewhere in Berlin, cognisant of the coming call. The most potentially interesting part of the conversation takes place at the very beginning, as he struggles to locate her in the webcam’s frame: “…where are you...I’m walking around the circle...I’m on the wrong side…am I holding my left arm out…?” The Chi-Lites sing out their chorus, indicating why this particular piece has been reused, but almost as soon as Fagan has seen her, the poetry dissipates. The artist stumbles to explain what he is trying to do by making the piece; stumbles to establish a connection with his faraway friend.

Had the wall held 20 shattered and stickered Samsungs, 20 friends on 20 webcams in 20 different cities, the artist floundering to identify each, this would have been a brilliant artwork. But instead it’s just a snapshot, like every other piece here.

As a body of work, ‘I Have Nada So Far But I Remain Optimistic’ is frustrating. As an exercise in curation, perhaps it does something more interesting: taking a spool of ideas and exposing it to the light before it is fully developed; perhaps propounding that there’s no reason why in-progress work can’t be presented for exhibition. The title, after all, confesses its flaws: Fagan has nada so far, but seemingly remains optimistic that the show will be evaluated in a similar spirit of optimism.

Sara Baume is a writer based in West Cork.

September – October 2016

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet CRITIQUE SUPPLEMENT

‘Creative Peninsula’ Ards Arts Centre 5 – 14 August ‘CREATIVE Peninsula’ doesn’t operate like a curated exhibition because it isn’t one. It bears mentioning yet seems obtuse to point out, given that exhibition making isn’t really what this collection of work is about. ‘Creative Peninsula’ is a yearly presentation

by Ards and North Down local authority, the premise of which is simply to showcase artists and makers within the area. As a result, the work within it is hugely diverse in focus, media and rigour. However, as is often seen in similar wide reaching events – studio collective exhibitions, for example, or finalyear student presentations – grouping practices solely on shared geography is not enough to make something more than the sum of its parts. Thus ‘Creative Peninsula’ is more a disjointed collection of solo voices than a cohesive exhibition.

The location-based survey can, however, be a useful way to take a place’s artistic temperature, and maybe observe how a particular area has affected those that work within it. With all participants working from the Ards and North Down area, the strong impact of the area’s natural, coastal landscape is obvious. Tertiary palettes, organic forms, beach scenes and local wildlife are prevalent in this spectrum of painting, sculpture, craft, poetry, jewellery and furniture pieces.

The show opens with a selection of work loosely based on the sea, represented in textile weaving, printmaking, relief sculpture and paint.

Andrew Haire’s painting Gígjökull, while clearly not referencing the local coastline, fits into this subset.

This work has a slightly less traditional approach to the theme, with thick layers of paint and yellow flecks giving the overcast shoreline a muggy, greasy feel. It has a similar atmosphere to Cecilia Stephens’s Intrepid Voyagers, a textile image of the landscape with a comparably murky quality, formed in the layers of the weaving. Rosy Ennis’s Phytoplankton monochrome screen print is also distinctive, recalling an illustration in an old biology textbook of a view of microscopic life.

In an exhibition heavily rooted in intricate craft and traditional art, the ceramic works of Patricia Miller’s Bogland Bowl, Victoria Bentham’s Locus Amoenis and Alan McCluney’s Trio of Vessels stand out though the strength of their organic, deeply-toned coloured combinations and delicate textural contrasts. Though the starting point is the vessel form, they are more sculptural than utilitarian.

In contrast, Sally Houston’s sculpture What We Hear takes a found-object approach to the medium, using shards of smashed crockery that pour into the ear of a simple whitewashed head shape. While the

Owen Crawford, Worm Got the Bird, 2016; wood

Kevin Killen, ‘Capillarium’ Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, Queen’s University, Belfast piece feels more like a physical sketch for a future, fully-resolved work, this approach to making – incorporating found and unexpected materials – allows for the work to relate to something otherwise absent in the somewhat forensic arts centre space. Owen Crawford’s Worm Got The Bird is another example of this: it is a simple, smoothly carved bird made with dark wood, set against a rust-stained cylinder of rough-hewn found concrete. Set apart from the interior and given something to grind against, this approach creates tension and separates the work from conventional ideas of craft and its domestic place.

In this mostly figurative collection, the works that demonstrate experimentation and abstracted materials grab attention. Nonetheless, there is plenty of impressive draughtsmanship on display. The frenetic energy in Watchful Hare, a bold charcoal drawing by Elaine Burke, has a feel of the animal’s nervous character, while on the opposite end of the spectrum, Lee Boyd’s Moonlight Becomes You is a detailed, skilfully rendered anthropomorphic pencil drawing. Dennis Healey’s Rising Model/Red on Blue, initially appearing a solely abstract work, slowly reveals human forms through six repeated red and blue digital prints. Craig Jefferson’s Camel and Mirror Still Life operates in a similar way; with the thickly applied oil paint, the artist uses the subject matter tangentially, focusing on composition and colour while the odd figurative element slowly reveals itself to the viewer.

‘Creative Peninsula’ is a mixed exhibition of professional artists and those perhaps only starting out in their creative practice. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, especially given the purpose of the show, yet as a whole the exhibition might benefit from a more specific selection process, an express theme to consider, or at the very least a larger exhibition space. There are 59 pieces in an area that would more comfortably house a third of this number. The result is a lack of breathing room for each work. It is also difficult to get a good sense of what’s there, with nothing to represent each artist but a list of names, titles and prices. Furthermore, featuring some artists working in film, installation, photography, performance or digital media within the area would have added to the exhibition.

Perhaps criticising the show for not being curated is too easy and dismisses the purpose of this type of exhibition. Still, in order to work with what’s on display and not against it, it’s clear that those curatorial values are still needed.

Dorothy Hunter is an artist and writer based in Belfast.

Lindsay Press,The Flock; ceramic

Kevin Killen, Capillarium, 2016

SELECTED from an open call for applications and commissioned by Queen’s University Belfast, Capillarium (2016) by Kevin Killen is a work located outside the recently-built Wellcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine, an interdisciplinary research centre building on the Health Sciences campus.

A self-portrait of sorts, Killen created the design for Capillarium by mapping small blood vessels in his eye into a new pattern, reminiscent of the intricate micro vascular networks found inside the body: “My process involves working with a degree of chance; reflection, mapping and repetitive forms all play a part in the photographic drawings, as I develop the singular pattern to a point where a new complete pattern emerges.” This pattern was laser cut into mild steel fashioned into a hollow sculptural sphere slightly exceeding the average head height of a student at Queen’s. It is solidly constructed and undoubtedly demonstrates an understanding of the qualities of the material used.

Aesthetically, Capillarium is instantly recognisable as relating to the body. Its branch-like organic motif and orbital shape resemble various internal structures; its surface is the colour of blood.

The title is derived from vasorum capillarium, Latin for ‘capillaries’ – the fine branching network of blood vessels that connect arteries and veins. The sculpture’s industrial finish appears wipe-clean and hygienic like a piece of medical equipment.

Capillarium makes visible the internal structures inside each of us with the impassive, clinical directness of a 3D scientific model found in a biology classroom.

Capillaries generate continuous production and exchange water, oxygen, carbon dioxide and many other substances between our blood and our tissues at a molecular level every second of our waking lives. Capillarium’s stark simplicity avoids the presence of these complex, invisible, uncontrollable and incomprehensible interior processes. Its rigid, empty structure provides a description of the aesthetics of the body that is antithetical to the dark, bewildering, fleshy, moist, bloody, entropic mess within.

The study of the inner workings of the human body began centuries ago with the dissection of cadavers by doctors, surgeons and students, and the anatomical drawings of Da Vinci. Today, despite advances in biomedical research, our knowledge of the body continues to be revised. New discoveries about its capabilities and potential are made and published on a daily basis and represent one of

science’s ‘final frontiers’. Take for instance a recent news report calling the human body “an untapped source of drugs” after it was found that our noses might hold a community of bacteria capable of producing the next generation of novel antibiotics.

Technologies and medicine like those developed in laboratories all over the world and at universities like Queen’s shape and question our relationships with our physical selves. The Welcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine accommodates some 330 members of staff specialising in research into finding cures for eye disease and diabetes, and focuses on the development of a global programme to aid understanding of the genetics of complex chronic diseases. Despite working directly with some of these researchers, Killen’s approach seems less curious and more engaged with formal concerns.

Perhaps this marks a missed opportunity by Queen’s University to commission a speculative object that can destabilise established depictions of the body, and adequately represent a field of research that is constantly at the edge of innovation. Perhaps it is also a missed opportunity by the artist to go beyond representation and further engage with the type of new research and radical findings that the Welcome-Wolfson Institute for Experimental Medicine was designed to facilitate.

Ultimately, it is hard to pass judgement on works such as Capillarium. Located outdoors on the grounds of a publicly funded educational institution, it does not benefit from the type of context a white cube space can provide, nor is it strictly speaking ‘public art’. Though visitors to Queen’s University and members of the public – if they are aware of its existence, as it is not immediately visible from the street – can view the work, Capillarium’s intended audience is primarily made up of students and researchers. For them, this sculpture may connect to the research they are conducting. For some, however, Capillarium might too closely resemble the type of durable outdoor sculpture/public art found across Ireland and the UK to warrant a closer look.

The commissioning of a new work of (public) art is a rare and important thing that should happen more often. Crucially, it is also an opportunity to create something that, in the words of Bristol-based public art organisation Situations, doesn’t embellish but interrupt.

Alissa Kleist is a Belfast-based curator.

BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS 2016 Belfast Open Studios returns with a series of events, workshops and open studios across the city

Thursday 6 October Studio Fair

1pm – 4pm The Black Box, Hill Street Whether you’re an artist, a student or recent graduate, an art collector or if you simply want to find out more about the visual arts in Belfast, this is a chance to meet studio groups, artists and arts organisations and pick up a copy of the new Belfast Art Map to point you in the right direction.

Late Night Art

6pm – 9pm Galleries across the city Late Night Art Belfast happens on the first Thursday of every month with over a dozen galleries opening their doors for an evening celebration of the vibrant visual arts scene in Belfast.

Thursday 13 October Visual Artists’ Cafe: Preparing for Studio Visits

1pm – 4pm This event is for artists who want support and advice on preparing for curator studio visits.

We will cover the whole process from inviting curators to your studio, preparing the space, perfecting your pitch and following up afterwards.

Saturday 22 October Public Open Day

11am – 5pm Studios across the city Belfast Open Studios is an invitation to the public to come and see how artists work, take a glimpse into the creative processes and meet over 150 artists working in the city. Sponsored by local artisan tea makers Suki Tea, Belfast Open Studios events offer a warm welcome to all with a cup of Belfast Brew on arrival before taking a relaxed and informative stroll around the various studios.

Events & Workshops

Events and workshops will take place throughout the day. See belfastopenstudios.com.

visualartists.ie/visualartists-ni.org 01 672 9488 rob@visualartists-ni.org belfastopenstudios.com

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

23

HOW IS IT MADE?

Movement one, St. Catherine’s School, 2016; photo by Brian Cregan

Forms in Action RHONA BYRNE AND YVONNE MCGUINNESS SPEAK ABOUT THEIR COLLABORATIVE PUBLIC ART COMMISSION ‘MOBILE MONUMENTS’.

COMMISSIONED by Fingal County Council Arts office for their 1916 Commemorative Public Art Commission, Mobile Monuments, was produced as part of the 1916 Centenary Programme over a six-month period. The project involved three trikes with mobile sculptures, which turned into performance platforms becoming ‘forms in action’.

The budget for the project was €35,000 and our proposal was selected through an open call submission with two rounds.

We have been friends for years but were living in different countries. Whenever we met we would eagerly hatch plans for future projects together. In 2015 we were finally living in the same place so decided to respond to the project call out to try and make our ideas a reality. The brief sought proposals that would “remember, reflect and re-imagine” the events leading up to the 1916 Rising in Fingal. Both of our practices involve making, doing, collaboration, performance, participatory processes and public projects that are often catalysts to generate other narratives for participants. Our response to the brief was to try to develop a project that would look to the past but focus on future potential. Our project aims were to explore ideas around trust and collaboration, fast and slow networking, the passing of things and information between people and place, the materialisation of memory and myth, and the creation of social memory. We sought to make work that looked at covert communication and movement of objects, letters, objects etc. which had slowly travelled across the vast area of Fingal and connected different communities.

As our proposal fleshed out we focused on inviting both participants and members of the public to consider two key elements of the 1916 Rising time period: the slow movement of information (in contrast to the instant communication we now have) and the gathering of people around public platforms, ideas and manifestos that had the potential to change the social and political environment – remembering that the activities of the rising and their subsequent outcomes arose simply from ordinary people thinking about extraordinary things.

We had the continued support of Fingal County Council Arts Office Public Art Co-ordinator and Curator Caroline Cowley, who worked closely with us on the project. The 1916 commemorative committee supported connections to community groups and schools.

Ideally, this kind of engagement requires an extended period of time to build and develop relationships, but this project happened in a six-

Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness; photo by Caroline Cowley

month period and was broken up by three seasonal holidays. However, given that there were endless reflective and commemorative projects around 1916, people were aware of the context. This gave us good groundwork and allowed us to question how 1916 was being commemorated throughout our project. Keeping the time constraints in mind, we worked with a select number of groups that represented the different areas of the Fingal jurisdiction. The localities we chose to work in were very much on the outskirts of Fingal. Multiculturalism and the ‘new Irish’ became of real interest to us, as most of the kids we were working with were not of Irish descent. The students’ understanding of the events of 1916 was very nebulous in the sense that they had just been taught the facts.

We set about working with Swords Senior Citizens, Rush ICA, Swords Educate Together, St. Mary’s National School, Garristown, St. Catherine’s National School, Rush and Castaheany Educate Together.

We delivered approximately 20 workshops with about 500 people.

These included discussion, writing, performing and making. We wanted the schools and senior groups to collaborate and to form the project through the workshop process, developing the content through making props, working out text, devising performances and ultimately performing in them. Within the workshops we made a concerted effort to connect to the spirit of the rising and the language around it. Words like ‘freedom’, ‘future’, ‘radical’, ‘agitate’, ‘responsibility’, ‘power’ and ‘energy’ became the backbone of our workshops. We questioned how we could empower and mobilise people to consider the idea of activating social changes locally that could potentially have a wider impact.

In tandem with these workshops we were designing and fabricating the trike sculptures or ‘moving monuments’. We bought three trikes and stripped them down while we formed a team to help the monuments take shape and become mobile: steel fabricator Matt Fitzsimons (Fingal steel), bike mechanic Gary Sheehan, engineer Peter Brummer and Caroline Cowley all helped us negotiate the complexities of getting these sculptures on the road. How would they behave in bad weather conditions or on different road surfaces? What would they sound like? What load could they carry? And, most importantly for us, how could we make these unidentifiable objects? We started looking at post boxes and electricity boxes around the city. There are so many forms with a function that exist in our built environment but that go unnoticed. Starting with small lumps of clay and scaling up through numerous variations of models and templates we constructed three shapes from aluminium. We wanted them to be light, quiet and to float through the landscape like secrets. The materials we worked with were transit blankets, event carpet, used for movement and gatherings, and satin often used in processions and ceremonies.

We had an endless to-do list that required strategic timetabling: fabricating the monuments, workshops with participants, devising performances, planning events and routes, and creating props. We noticed how well we were working together; somehow our skills matched and or complemented each other. We found ourselves switching roles mid task without even realising. It was a working

relationship that was really put under pressure, and naturally there was the odd tense and difficult moment, but we always laughed about it later. Working collaboratively furthers the scope of how far you push an idea and helps with the decision making-process. Having a short and definite timeframe meant that we had to focus, while having Caroline Cowley as a third collaborator kept the process moving. We ended up creating a much more ambitious project than our initial proposal had aimed for, so this stretched our resources and finances to the max. Nonetheless we both seemed to thrive under the pressure and overall had so much fun working on this.

The project culminated over a three-week period when the bikes toured to different destinations around Fingal. We planned three large events that we saw as movements, weaving past, present and future together. The monuments floated like ghosts around the towns and housing estates of Fingal.

We invited Paddy Cahill, who filmed the journeys from his own bespoke bicycle built for filming. The cyclist Vincent Cronin, as well as Michael McKenna, Harry, Charlie and Vincent from Balbriggan and Michael Carol from Skerries cycling initiatives moved the monuments with great stamina around the county. We had fixed assistive motors on the trikes to help with the many hills.

When the Mobile Monuments arrived to their destinations on three consecutive Fridays, they ceremoniously transformed into a platform for performance. Props made by the schools and senior groups were used for each movement. Soft blocks featuring language used around the 1916 Rising that we had developed during the workshops were sewn onto the blocks. These were assembled as monumental structures and placed in each location during the performances as a collective act by the participants, who chanted: “We weave our history. We weave our future”. The children carried the banners made by the senior citizens’ clubs and read their own visionary proclamations, which were both hopeful and moving. Each event concluded with a performance by rap band The Hash Tags from St. Catherine’s Primary School, who came on tour with us and performed at each event. They rapped about contemporary life and their vision for Ireland through a combination of spoken word, hip hop and Irish dancing. We both became performers in the movements in order to direct the timing of the events as we had little rehearsal time. Our costumes were intentionally surreal, as if we had come from an imagined future to invite the audience to re-imagine theirs. We hope that in people’s imaginations the Mobile Monuments are still travelling around the world arriving at various destinations, providing a platform for people to gather and give voice to an undiscovered future. Hopefully they are inspiring and mobilising people to change their social and political environment.

Rhona Byrne Yvonne McGuinness rhonabyrne.com yvonnemcguinness.com

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

PROJECT PROFILE

‘Love’ actors Karen McDonnell (Daisy Bright) and Bernard McDonnell (Hugo) from Silent Moves, 2015

Silent Moves ARTIST AIDEEN BARRY TALKS ABOUT THE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT ‘SILENT MOVES’,WHICH SHE UNDERTOOK WITH THE ARTISTS OF SCANNÁN TECHNOLOGIES, THE RIDGEPOOL TRAINING CENTRE, CHOREOGRAPHER EMMA O’KANE AND BALLINA ART CENTRE.

Intro IDent for the film Silent Moves, 2015

Dancer and choreographer Emma O’Kane works with the Silent Moves cast and crew at Ballina Art Centre (detail)

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

25

PROJECT PROFILE

Silent Moves cast and creators

TO introduce the project Silent Moves, I must first hold my hands up to say that ordinarily I would not class myself as a ‘socially-engaged practitioner’ in the conventional sense. Though my work is concerned with socio-political issues, my practice has not traditionally emanated from a position of artist as activist or as orchestrator of socio-cultural movement. Unbeknownst to most, I have worked with and collaborated on projects with several groups of artists who often live on the fringe, who are ‘othered by society’: some because they live with intellectual disabilities and some because they live with mental health issues. This element of my practice has been ongoing during the past 12 years.

Initially this happened by accident. As a struggling artist, desperate to keep my creative career afloat after my degree, I was commissioned to go into hospitals and community centres to make films or run moving image workshops. A lot of the time this was grand. I would run the workshop, create a short film over a maximum of three days and deliver the completed project for distribution.

However, after a time I became increasingly unhappy with this way of working. I was asked to make a little stop-motion film with a group of children in a psychiatric unit in Galway City, who were too overmedicated to contribute, and began to feel uneasy about the role of the artist as a kind of ‘fixer’ who was supposed to ‘brighten peoples’ lives’, especially in a single-day contact project. About six years ago, after an awful workshop with early school leavers in Tuam, where I ended up in a very scary situation, I felt that, ethically, I could not continue with this way of working. I decided that I could no longer take this approach to sustaining my practice.

There were positives to this time, primarily the long standing relationship I developed with two very interesting organisations and arts collectives: That’s Life in Galway and Scannán Technologies in Ballina, County Mayo. Again, my initial introduction to both these groups was through a one-day film workshop. I have collaborated with That’s Life on four different projects since, over a period of eight years and our ongoing collaboration will continue into the future.

With Scannán Technologies it was a little different. They are a group of artists who have set up a film centre in a former tourist office in Ballina with a philosophy of exchange. They learn about the processes of film, from editing to post-production techniques, and then pass it on in some way or form to the community, for example through a specific project or a workshop in moving image. Scannán’s artists are quite accomplished with video and film. Our relationship on an earlier film entitled Happiness (2009) led them to introduce me to another Western Care funded group of mostly non-verbal artists who work out of the Ridgepool Training Centre, also in the town. Both groups expressed an interest in a potential collaborative project with

Silent Moves orchestra

me as the ‘lead artist’ that would be funded through a new award called Ignite (irelandignite.ie).

What initially excited me about the project was that it built on my existing relationship with Scannán artists. In addition, the project would be given the guts of a year to germinate, ferment, distill and then disseminate. This kind of supported circumstance – whereby the artist can build a relationship with a specific community and undertake a concentrated period of focused work – is very rare. Having the support of Ballina Arts Centre, with the support of its director Sean Walsh, as our greenhouse/distillery, was key. Mayo County Council Arts Office also offered a huge amount of support and resources, with Damien O’Connor (Disability Arts Officer) offering a guiding hand throughout the process.

The Ignite project recognises the benefits of collaboration with artists of national and international profile, so we set out to capitalise on that. Through this partnership the artists of the Ignite commissions would potentially benefit from a skills exchange, a critical awareness of visual art, an understanding of philosophical concerns and discourses, and an introduction to new ways of working. It would also provide them with a national and international platform, something that these artists and arts organisations have never had before.

With this in mind it was essential to strike the balance of our relationship right from the beginning. I wasn’t interested in being the ‘lead artist’ in the conventional sense. I was more concerned with how I could support these artists to make really good work about a topic or concern that was very close to them, while simultaneously making a contemporary artwork that resonates with current conversations around equity. Over the course of a few weeks it was clear that the conversations in our workshops often turned to the then upcoming referendum on Marriage Equality, and the recent scandals of treatment by staff of service users at the HSE Áras Attracta residential care unit also based in Mayo around the same time.

Although the conversations began with these topics they often veered towards the ways in which inequality was a daily reality for all the artists of Scannán and the Ridgepool. It is currently an offence under Irish law for an adult with an intellectual disability to have sex outside of marriage, and such marriages are not encouraged. Indeed Ireland has a very bleak, often appalling, track record in supporting people with intellectual disabilities to live full, independent lives with all the benefits and rights of every other Irish citizen. My collaborators expressed how this and other daily human rights breaches would often depress them or make them feel apathetic towards life. Our aim was to channel these realities into a work that itself was ‘silent’ and voiceless, but spoke through actions. We discussed how humour could be used as a tool to activate some of the conversations around

such dark subject matter. After a series of curated screenings of silent movies, this film genre inspired the groups to create and disseminate their own work in a true silent movie homage that would be accompanied by a travelling orchestra.

The artists scripted the film and I co-directed alongside the artists and Scannán cinematographer Kevin Rooney. All the actors are from the collectives and live with an intellectual disability. Choreographer Emma O’Kane empowered and emboldened the artists (some of whom have extremely limited movement) to use their bodies in the most brazen and slapstick ways in order to accomplish significant physical performances over sometimes-epic durational scenes and shoots, as the film was created entirely using stop-motion. The benefit of having working relationships in existence before the project became clear through this process and was reinforced through an extremely fruitful collaborative atmosphere and outcome.

It must also be noted that I have gravitated towards collaborations with artists with intellectual disabilities because I am aware of how invisible they are, not only to society but also to the mainstream art world. It is interesting that this is the first time that a project like Silent Moves has been featured in the VAN, for example, possibly prompting a conversation about the strange in-between of the visual arts and disability arts in the wider sense.

Since its realisation as a work it has gone on to receive critical attention and acclaim in places we could only have dreamed. The lens has been particularly cast on how inequality still persists for these citizens and how Ireland is quite behind in its ability to serve all.

Further attention to the project goes a long way to highlight this inequality. Silent Moves has recently won the ‘Modern Ireland in 100 Artworks’ poll for the year 2015 following its nomination and public vote in the Irish Times and will feature in the Royal Irish Academy’s publication later in the year. We continue to tour the work with upcoming manifestations at Crawford Municipal Gallery later this year and at the UN in New York.

Aideen Barry is a visual artist, currently on residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art for 2016.

Note Silent Moves was written and directed by the artists, actors and members of Scannan Technologies and the Ridgepool Centre, in collaboration with Aideen Barry and choreographer Emma O’Kane. The cast were: Micheal Durkan, Bernard McDonnell, Karen McDonnell, Michelle Loftus, Una O’Malley, Martin Flynn, Mary Gilroy, Elisha Moran, Catriona Canning, Lisa Caroll, Niamh Gallagher, Louise Maloney, Marion Ormse, Lucy Emma Gardiner, Denise Breslin, Paul Caden, Kevin Maloney, Alan Whitaker, Emma O’Donnell, Sean Gordon, Louise Murray and Kevin Rooney.

With thanks to Ailish Munnelly, the staff and volunteers of the Ridgepool Centre, Silke Kauther and staff and volunteers of Scannan Technologies. This project was funded and supported by the 2014 Ignite Awards, Ballina Art Centre, Arts and Disability Ireland and Mayo County Council.

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

SEMINAR

‘Extending Architecture’ training in Dublin

Fonna Forman at ‘Extending Architecture’

Operationalising Concepts

Training sessions were for 30 participants and were advertised to architects, artists, arts officers, curators, venue programmers, directors, cultural organisations and community organisers with a special interest in having a dialogue around architecture and the built environment. Each training day began with a discursive session introduced by Blaithin Quinn and facilitated by the keynote speaker(s) along with Quinn and Atkinson. As well as expanding a thematic discussion inspired by the previous evenings lecture, the morning provided a chance for all participants to introduce themselves and their key areas of interest.

The next section focused on a series of case studies. For each session there was an international example (keynote speaker), a national example and an interdisciplinary/cross artform example.

These were presented as three parallel and rotating discussions so that participants had the opportunity to respond to each case. The case studies were: Dublin, Todo por la Praxis (international), Culturstruction, Breach, 2011 (national); Rhona Byrne, Home, 2003 – 2004 (crossartform); Galway, Kate Goodwin,‘Sensing Spaces’, 2014 (international); Blaithin Quinn and Red Bird Youth Collective, ‘Shaping Space’, 2013 (national); ANU Productions, Laundry, 2011 (cross-artform); Cork, Estudio Cruz + Forman, ‘The Medellín Diagram’, ongoing (international); Upstart Collective, ‘Granby Park’, 2013 (national); George Higgs, ‘The Lost and Found Sound Assembly’, 2013 (crossartform).

Focusing on good communication and tools of engagement, the final part of the day was described as “an exercise in collaborative decision making”. Building on the morning sessions, the aim was to work in groups to discuss and plan a hypothetical engaged architectural initiative. The exercise served to assimilate learning while also forming new networks among participants.

TARA KENNEDY REPORTS ON THE ‘EXTENDING ARCHITECTURE’ SERIES OF PUBLIC TALKS. A lecture by architect Teddy Cruz and political theorist Fonna Forman (Estudio Cruz + Forman) at the Granary Theatre in Cork (29 April 2016) marked the final leg of the ‘Extending Architecture’ series of public talks and training sessions. It also felt like a beginning: a beginning in a giddy, buoyant sense, but also in its assertion that there is a distance still to travel. Within the current climate, where the political voice for arts, culture and heritage has been reduced and we face an ongoing crisis in housing, Forman’s assertion that we have “an epistemological crisis [which is] cultural at the very base rather than ecologic or economic” rings true. It is pertinent that ‘Extending Architecture’ proposed “architecture as a platform for collective conversations about the kind of world we live in today”.

A key ambition for ‘Extending Architecture’ was that significant international practitioners would come to Ireland – Dublin, Cork and Galway – to share insights on ways to engage the public as well as showing their own projects and how they demonstrate new schools of thought in architecture. There was a particular desire on the part of Arts Council that ‘Extending Architecture’ would attract a varied audience, and gather not only architects but artists, curators, venue managers and festival programmers to debate the diverse ideas discussed as part of the series. With the national trainers, architect and educator Blaithin Quinn and Katherine Atkinson (Create), also contributing to the training, a rich mix of practical and philosophical approaches could be disseminated.

I will focus here on the session in Cork, attempting to echo the design of the training sessions, with provocation, description and extension. First describing that keynote lecture in Cork and touching on wider questions addressed by ‘Extending Architecture’. Following this is an account of the structure and content of the training days followed by an attempt to demonstrate how learning from these sessions might extend practice.

Cruz + Forman described the idea of a “cross border citizen”. They desfined citizenship as praxis rather than designation, as a creative act, with spatial practice as a central concern. They also referenced the eroded meaning of democracy, in particular in a US context, and a commitment to “recuperating” this meaning. Before transforming the city physically, they stated, we must transform social norms. The idea that public space educates emerged, as well as some key questions: For whom do we build? Where? When? Why? They challenged the traditional role of the architect and argued that “architects can be the builders of briefs, constituencies and financial models”. Forman described her experience connecting with non-profit organisations who had “amazing agendas” but didn’t possess the skills to “spatialise” these agendas. Eventually this produces opportunities for ‘what we know as architecture’.

Back to the word ‘collaborative’, a term that came up throughout ‘Extending Architecture’. Jon Garbizu from the Madrid based collective Todo por la Praxis, for example, described their work as being based in “experiences, relationships and collaborative practices”. While in Galway, Kate Goodwin, curator at the Royal Academy, described the close collaboration between curator and participating architects that produced the exhibition ‘Sensing Spaces’ in 2014. In Cork, Cruz and Forman spoke of “disrupting behavioural conventions that are unreflective”. Architecture is by its very nature a collaborative practice, but this is not often reflected upon.

DESCRIBE The location of the third ‘Extending Architecture’ training day at the National Sculpture Factory resonated with the intentions of the series.

The backdrop of half-made artworks enriched discussion of how space impacts on meaning, interactions and possibilities from the diverse, diligent group gathered on a Saturday morning. Expansive exchanges flourished in this active production space where self-initiation and an architectural intervention served as enabling elements.

PROVOKE This synergy was evident in each of the ‘Extending Architecture’ Cruz and Forman began by describing their practice, backlit by a slide emblazoned with the word “COLLABORATIVE”. They work to training days, which were location specific but with the same general “mediate between top-down and bottom-up” and bring together format adhered to in each city. Participants attended an evening “knowledges that don’t often meet” in order to develop new forms of keynote lecture before undertaking a daylong interactive session with cross-sector collaboration and urban intervention. “BUILDING the invited international practitioners. In Galway the keynote lecture BORDER WALLS IS WRONG” stated another slide. Describing the and interactive sessions took place at Nun’s Island Theatre, which extreme spatio-political condition at the US-Mexican Border which proved to be an interesting venue for a session led by Kate Goodwin fuels the work of Estudio Cruz + Forman, this statement also reflected exploring the creation of atmosphere and curating architecture. In the ways in which ‘Extending Architecture’ served to question the Dublin the event with Todo por la Praxis took place in the Sean myopic view of specialisations and open possibilities for architecture O’Casey Community Centre, East Wall, again a particularly appropriate setting for a discussion engaging architecture with its context. to extend through borrowing the procedures of other fields.

EXTEND (OPERATIONALISING CONCEPTS) Imagining a future project in order to absorb and expand the discussion of the day resonated with a call by Teddy Cruz to “operationalise concepts” that remain underexplored in architectural practice, for example non-linear hierarchy and sustainability.

Learning outcomes described for the training were: an understanding of what public engagement in architecture is and why it is important; an understanding of relevant skills and a deeper awareness of the social and ethical issues that might be raised in the context of this type of practice, and a deeper empathy with public values, views, concerns and aspirations. Cruz proposed “opening up your own practice as a site of intervention”.

Cruz + Forman described “the capacity for aspiring as a fundamental human right”. The work of architects and designers is to constantly propose and aspire to new futures and in this spirit we should strive to continue extending the potential of this practice as a fundamental and shared right.

Tara Kennedy is an architect and artist.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

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RESIDENCY

Michelle Boyle, self portrait on wooden door panel; OED Gallery, Fort Kochi, India

Fatherland

Michelle Boyle, India sketchbook, June 2016

developed a film script around these themes set against a European/ Indian background of inheritance and displacement. I felt we could have interesting conversations on this shared interest. I was also keen to go to India ‘empty handed’ and see what work I might make there.

MICHELLE BOYLE RECALLS HER TIME AT CARPE The mission statement of the International Monsoon Residency DIEM MONSOON RESIDENCY IN KERALA, INDIA, in Kerala reads: “We are committed to the cause of enhancing artistic experiences globally and have thus started this residency. We believe DURING SUMMER 2016. the best of our creative instincts can be nurtured when we elevate our experiences in a holistic way. As facilitators, we engage the artists in AM I OF IRELAND? The residency I undertook in India from 20 June to 4 July forms part of intensive workshops and thought-provoking conversations to pursue a longer process of exploration into my Indian paternal heritage. It was cross-cultural art and trans-media storytelling”. I felt that this fitted a personal journey to a vast and complex country where my natural perfectly with my aims and practice. father was born – a place I had no cultural awareness of growing up as an adopted Irish/Indian child in a monocultural society on Dublin’s THE RESIDENCY The Monsoon Residency lasts for two weeks and costs €700, which north side in the 1970s.

My academic background is in cultural anthropology and includes board and all meals. Additional travel (€700), visa (€70) archaeology, so I came to art with an understanding that we express vaccinations (€200) are covered by the artist. I applied for funding ourselves within the greater cultural visual language of the place we from the Arts Council for this residency and to develop a subsequent are in – in my case Ireland. However, I began to question this way of body of work but was unsuccessful in my application on the basis that viewing the world following a conversation with the Indian cultural there was not enough detail about the work I intended to produce. The writer Rustom Bharucha at an event in Dublin organised by Create a problem was that I could not truthfully know the outcome before I few years ago.1 He talked to me about visual inheritance at a genetic had started.

Although this was a major setback, it didn’t deter me, as I knew and cellular level. The conversation challenged my perception and made me wonder whether I unknowingly make work which resonates this step was vital for my work to progress. I combined self funding with an Indian visual language and ‘recognise’ Indian art without along with a loan from the local Credit Union. An additional challenge was to make arrangements for my four children, who were off school realising.

I was unfamiliar with Indian art at that stage so began a process on their summer holidays, and to take pressure off my husband so he of self-directed exploration starting with Asian galleries in the UK and could work and keep things going in my absence. It is difficult to make Paris, which I could afford to travel to easily, but ultimately I knew I the time for residencies and even for studio work as a mother of young needed to visit India, so I started looking at how I could make this children, but hearing our voices are important.

The artists selected alongside me were painter Theodore Boyer happen.

In 2014 I had been introduced to the Indian writer Lavanya (USA), photographer Joslyn Laurence (USA), multimedia artist Roxy Sankaran (The Hope Factory, 2013) by a mutual New York-based artist Russell (Switzerland) and writer Kaare Baekgaard (Denmark). We friend Pamela Sztybel with whom I had worked at the Cill Rialaig engaged positively in diverse dialogue about our respective working artist retreat in Kerry. An informal platform for creative exchange practices within our new shared environment. The hosts Shivajee and developed from this residency and I was commissioned to develop a Triparna Banerjee (writer/director/curator) posses a wealth of series of works around Sankaran’s writing and family. This gave me the knowledge on India and we learned a lot about the complexity and opportunity to travel to Bangalore, live with her family for a short depth of this vast country from them.

The residency is situated in two locations. I spent the first week period and in my own time explore the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art Bangalore (NGMA). Whilst there I met with in the backwaters of rural Kerala, finding that the absence of studio other artists, asked about residencies in India and looked at space turned out to be of benefit. I spent this time in the same spot in the local village observing and recording daily life through small opportunities through Res Artis.

The Monsoon Carpe Diem Residency in Kerala India stood out as watercolours. The second week was spent in Fort Kochi, which has a a thoughtful and well structured residency with a committed and vibrant arts scene and is in preparation mode for the Fort Kochi diverse creative team working both in India and internationally. Biennale this winter where Indian and invited international artists Nature versus nurture is a core concept in terms of identity and of will gather for the high profile biennale (kochimuzirisbiennale.org). understanding the global society in which we live, where migration, integration and segregation are part of everyday life. This concept is UNEXPECTED OUTCOMES fundamental to my adoptive mixed race background and the way I At the end of the residency we put on a pop-up exhibition of our work work as an artist. A significant factor behind my interest in this Carpe at Gallery OED. The gallery is a venue for the biennial and shows Diem residency in India was that the founder, award winning film contemporary Indian painting and sculpture. 20 or so of the small maker Shivajee Chandrabhushan (Frozen, 2007) also focuses on these observational watercolours from my sketchbook were exhibited themes. In his work he has explored ideas of visual inheritance and alongside two paintings which I worked intensely on in the three days

Michelle Boyle

before the opening. I used enamel paints on discarded doors: hardware shop materials sourced from the small shops along Bazaar Road where the gallery is based. The paintings are a recognition and expression of my Irish/Indian identity and embrace the wealth of both cultures.

Gallery OED has offered to represent my work into the future with a joint show planned for 2017 alongside Kerala-based artist Priti Vadakkath. This was an unexpected outcome of the residency and answered one of the questions that brought me to India in the first place: Would I relate to Indian art and would my art find an audience there?

I connected to the figurative art I saw and to the narrative nature of the work. I also related on a working level to the materials: the watercolours and inks which are used with skill and a language built on centuries of use. I am unsure about what the Indian audience saw and recognised in my work. Hopefully this will become clearer as I continue my work there.

As part of a separate initiative I will exhibit in Ireland next year alongside several Indian artists in an exhibition organised by the Ireland India Council and the Indian Embassy. I was impressed some years ago with an exhibition of work by Nalini Malani in IMMA. Her large scale watercolours suspended on plastic cylinders and works on milk cartons were impressive and stimulating. I believe we are slightly starved of exposure to international art in Ireland – from our art education curriculum to experiencing artworks from around the world first hand.

FOR THE FUTURE I will return to India in January for the Fort Kochi Biennale and also to visit the Ajanta Caves in Maharashtra, which are considered the Sistine Chapel of the East. These caves, though little known outside of India, contain miles of figurative wall paintings and sculptures.

Having studied prehistoric art in Ireland I am hoping to gain an understanding of these visual communications as a viewer and as a creator of similarities and differences.

I see my work embracing both Ireland and India. I hope to work and exhibit in both counties, maintaining an awareness of my dual identity and of the visual inheritances which come through in what I make. Though the issues are much bigger than me, I feel that my art has something to offer in terms of the wider questions about migration and displacement. I explore the things that people carry internally – both knowingly and unknowingly – and how this is expressed externally.

Michelle Boyle works from her studios in Virginia, Cavan and the Blackchurch Studio, Dublin. michelleboyle-artist.com carpediemresidency.com Notes 1. Rustom Barucha is an independent writer, director, dramaturg and cultural critic based in Kolkata, India. Combining intercultural theory and practice with social concerns, he is the author of several books on cultural exchange at an activist level. He has conducted workshops on land and memory, the politics of touch, and migration in India.

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

ARTS & HEALTH

Alternate Realities & Hidden Stories AVRIL CARR FROM HELIUM ARTS RECOUNTS THE MOST RECENT ITERATION OF THEIR CLOUDLANDS ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROJECT.

Rachel Tynan, Titans; photo by Deirdre O’Toole

CLOUDLANDS was a three year artist in residence project led by Helium Arts, which took place between 2012 and 2015 in Temple Street Children’s University Hospital, Galway University Hospital and Cork University Hospital. Three multidisciplinary artists – Rachel Tynan, Eszter Némethi and Emma Fisher – were engaged over the three years. Thanks to an Arts Council Touring and Dissemination of Work Award, the work developed in the third year of the project by Rachel Tynan and Eszter Némethi toured to Galway, Waterford, Cork and Dublin between March and June 2016. Over the third phase of the project, the artists developed two distinct pieces of work, both with themes of other worlds, alternate realities and hidden stories, which gave an insight into the creative lives of teenagers in hospital.

Rachel Tynan collaborated with teenagers in Temple Street Children’s University Hospital to develop an installation formed through a family of beautiful wooden figures titled The Titans.

Audience members were invited to move The Titans into different combinations to reveal sound recordings of the teenagers’ stories hidden inside. From the Star Lady who heals to the cheeky transforming Faun, The Titans uncovered another world which sheds light on the characters and their lives. The Titans was exhibited in Galway Arts Centre, Garter Lane, Waterford, The Atrium, Cork City Council and ArtBox, Dublin.

Eszter Némethi and teenagers in Cork University Hospital developed Radio/Silence, an interactive radio game which alters the hospital environment for the listener. This unique piece of theatre was broadcast through the radio station in Cork University Hospital at the end of the project. During the broadcast, listeners were invited to dial in using a mobile phone where they could take control of the action and affect the outcome. The touring version of the work was presented in two forms. Firstly, it toured to teenagers in hospital (Galway University Hospital, Waterford Regional Hospital, Cork University Hospital and National Children’s Hospital, Tallaght) and secondly it was accessed at the participating arts venues on the tour.

Both artists worked with teenagers between October 2014 and June 2015. For Némethi, the residency lasted 15 weeks and most of her engagement with teenagers was through one-off encounters. The artist herself acted as the link or common thread between the teenagers, weaving together their stories and ideas with her own to create the final piece. For Tynan, the residency lasted 30 weeks and her collaborators met with her on a number of occasions. Some of the teenagers in Temple Street worked with Tynan over the three years of the project. Both artists worked at the bedside, mostly on a one-to-one basis. Engagements lasted anything between an hour and a day depending on the level of participation. Both artists were supported in their work by the play departments within the hospitals who assisted with identifying teenagers who would benefit from engaging with the artists and also provided background information and assistance with introductions. This support was vital to the smooth running of the project and in the integration of the work into the hospital. In the case

Eszter Némethi, Radio Silence; photo by Jed Niezgoda

of Cork University Hospital, the work there was also supported by the Arts Coordinator, Edelle Nolan.

For Helium, the collaborative relationship between artist and teenager is paramount. It is a partnership of equals and, for that reason, the artists selected thrive on developing work in unusual contexts.

The hospital is a highly sanitised space, but it is also a workplace and a second home for many families. The artists needed to carve out a space for the work to develop and for the teenagers to feel comfortable to engage. Dr Emma Curtis, Medical Director of the New Children’s Hospital, took part in a panel discussion during the tour. She spoke of the artist as part of a multi-disciplinary team and of the importance of making people feel better while they’re getting better. The relationship with hospital staff was vital in establishing a space for the artists within the very busy environment of the hospitals.

Teenagers were invited to participate and it was essential that they had the choice to say no to the artist in a context where they often have little choice about their own time and what happens to them.

Knowing that the choice was theirs to make and that they could opt out at any time made for a balanced relationship where the teenagers understood that they were equal collaborators.

While the artist and teenager are at the heart of the project, parents, siblings and hospital staff all have an important impact on the project and engage in different ways and at different levels. Often the conversation around teenagers in hospital can be dominated by their condition and their medical requirements. Cloudlands supported teenagers to develop their ideas and gave them something to talk about with their friends, families and carers which had nothing to do with their medical condition or treatment.

Speaking about the project, Dr Aoibhinn Walsh, Paediatric Specialist Registrar, said: “Something which really opened my eyes during the Helium project was the sense of identity that it gave [participants] as well as control and the ability to explore themselves in what is a very unnatural and surreal scenario that no one expects to find themselves in. When you know these teenagers for such a long time, to actually see their work gives you a real insight into people who may not show that side of themselves to you. It’s really touching and a really important part of the overall care in hospital.”

The purpose of the tour was to make public a very rich process that has been happening for a number of years behind closed doors.

For the teenagers and the artists, the tour legitimises the work and what it is intended to communicate. The collaborators on this project are often separated from their peers and ‘normal’ teenage activities for long periods of time. The investment they made in this project as well as the impact it has on how they feel about themselves and their time in hospital often will not be seen. By sending the work out into the public sphere, it sends the message that what they have to say is important, legitimate and deserving of an audience. The artist plays an essential role in making work of this nature public. In this project, both artists worked with the teenagers to capture the essence of the

Eszter Némethi, Radio Silence; photo by Jed Niezgoda

process and to translate that into an artwork that will speak to an audience.

On a long-term residency like Cloudlands it’s essential that the artist is given time to maintain their voice and to reflect on the work and its development. For each day spent in hospital, the artist spent an additional day in the studio. Mentorship was also provided on the project by Mark Storor, Katy Fitzpatrick and Tom Swift, which helped the artists to question and the work in a way that brought together the various elements of the project.

As part of the Cloudlands Tour, Helium hosted two panel discussions, one in Cork and one in Dublin, chaired by Annette Moloney. As well as the artists, the panel in Cork included Ann Olney, (CUH Play Department) and Dr Carl Vaughan (Cardiologist, Mercy Hospital, Cork). The Dublin Panel included artists Aideen Barry and Marie Brett as well as Dr Emma Curtis (Medical Director, New Children’s Hospital and Paediatrician, Tallaght Hospital).

The reaction to the process has been captured by both teenagers and parents. One teenager from Temple Street Hospital said: “I’ve learned that in Cloudlands you don’t just have to be one person; you could be anything”. While a parent remarked that “the difference in attitude to life and attending hospital since participating in the Cloudlands project has been fantastic – such personal growth and optimism”. The benefits for staff members was also noted: “Often the hospital can lose focus on the needs of teenagers, it may be too child focused, or difficult to involve them. So a project aimed at teenagers helps staff to learn more about the young people too.”

Rachel Tynan graduated from the National College of Art and Design (BA Art and Design Education) in 2009. She recently completed her Masters in Design, examining the effects illness has on the human body through textile, sculpture and body art.

She exhibited Soar Saor as part of The Ark’s ‘Awakening Curiosity’ exhibition (2012) and in a solo exhibition, ‘Cut Throat’ at The Lab (2012).

Eszter Némethi is a theatre maker and holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies from UCC. Over the past year, Eszter has been exploring the use of game-mechanics and interactivity in her work. Eszter is Artistic Director of Makeshift Ensemble and Director of the company’s productions to date: ‘Exit Strategy’ (2013), ‘No One Can Hear You In There’ (2012) and ‘Osteoporosis’ (2011). She is also curator of the multi-disciplinary arts event ‘Quarter’.

Note Cloudlands was funded the Arts Council, BNP Paribas Foundation, through the Smart Start Programme, Dublin City Council, Cork City Council, HSE South. Further insight into the Cloudlands project can be seen in a short documentary shot in Temple Street by filmmaker Siobhan Perry. This film was the result of an artsandhealth.ie documentation bursary award funded by the Arts Council and the Cork Arts and Health Programme, HSE South. The film is being shown on all Aer Lingus Transatlantic flights until the end of August.

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

29

INTERNATIONAL

Steve Maher, Heavy Metal Detector 2.0; photo by Mikhail Artemev

Adam Gibney, Synthesiser 7: (un)Certain; photo by Mikhail Artemev

Deep Inside Moscow RUSSIAN-IRISH ARTIST AND RESEARCHER ANASTASIA ARTEMEVA DISCUSSES THE WORK OF ARTISTS ADAM GIBNEY AND STEVE MAHER CREATED FOR THE 5TH MOSCOW BIENNALE FOR YOUNG ART. THE history of Trekhgornay Manufaktura, or Trehgorka, Russian for ‘three hills’ in reference to the landscape formed by the steep slope of the Moscow river bank, began in the last year of the eighteenth century. By the late 1800s, it was one of the largest weaving and textile factories in Russia. In the 1990s this was where Muscovites came to buy their ‘coupons’: pieces of fabric with a cheerful red and black Khokhloma pattern printed in the shape of an apron and two sides of an oven mitt, ready to be cut out and stitched.

During the summer of 2016, Trekhgornay Manufaktura became home to the main exhibition in the 5th Moscow Biennale for Young Art, titled ‘Deep Inside’. Occupying the first two floors of the red brick building, the exhibition was commissioned by Ekaterina Kibovskaya and curated by Nadim Samman. Two Irish artists, Steve Maher and Adam Gibney, were selected through an open call to showcase work as part of the main project – a collection of artworks in different mediums. Samman is also the first curator in the short history of the biennale to have been selected through an open call process. Social instability, uncertainty about the future and the feeling of being lost are among the many sub-themes of the sweeping exhibition, which covers 43 venues throughout the Russian capital and beyond. As one drifts through room after room, the expanse of artworks within is overwhelming.

I asked Samman about the context of the biennale. “I thought it important that my call-out should propose a topic that would speak to a shared (international) cultural condition. The title of the exhibition, ‘Deep Inside’, was an invitation to artists to reflect upon the technological acceleration that is profoundly altering society, ecology and the parameters of identification. This exhibition allowed them to explore the increasingly blurry boundaries between biology and technology, between real and virtual space, to consider that horizons are being pushed back every day, not just outwards, but inwards too. In Ancient Greece the idea of the atom was born: the smallest thing – the axiomatic building block. In 1917 the atom was split. Today, physicists at CERN are measuring distances 1000 times smaller than a proton.

Biotechnologists have also found a way to store text files in the very structure of DNA. Though we are often told we live in superficial times, increasingly everything that might have looked like solid ground reveals hidden depths. Behind an image or text on a screen, there is code; behind code, hardware; behind hardware, economic and material flows, and so on… this is a general condition.” Responses to these notions are found in the works by 87 artists and artistic collectives making up the main fabric of the biennale.

another sensor-based artwork. His interactive sound installation is titled Synthesiser 7: (UN)certain. Keeping within the curatorial suggestion of moving towards self-reflection, Gibney’s work comprises speakers spread across the floor in a hall of mirrors. As one steps into the circle, the work is triggered and responds with a distortion of sound – a spoken quotation from Werner Heisenberg’s theoretical work: “We cannot expect to undercover any fundamental truths about the world merely from the abstract manipulation of words and concepts”.

“I was interested in highlighting how the rigorous quest for certainty seems to only expand the terrain of uncertainty,” Gibney said, in reference to the work and to the motivations behind his practice. “The solid formal structures that held truth now exist precariously within the newfound multitudes of reality.” Expanding upon this Samman added: “Werner Heisenberg’s ‘uncertainty principle’ implies that there is a fundamental limit to what we can know about the behaviour of quantum particles. Specifically, their absolute position and momentum at any given moment is impossible to determine. As higher order descriptions supervene upon the minute scale of the quantum field, the intellectual significance of this blind spot may be immense”.

When asked about his take on the city itself, Gibney stated: “I had conjured a dim image of Moscow before my arrival. This image was also strengthened by my personal views on the recent anti gay propaganda bill introduced in Russia. Interacting with the people of Moscow, wandering around its grandeur, evidence of a defiant underground LGBT community helped to quickly rearrange my preconceptions. The contemporary art scene at first seems to be very active but in relation to Russia’s population, it is probably smaller than it at first appears. Moscow’s larger institutions such as the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art provide exciting programmes which can only help to expand interest in the more grassroots and independent art spaces around Moscow”.

Samman has certainly achieved his goal, as the spirit of exchange and the potential for new insights is indisputable in this biennale.

Extensively attended by both a professional audience and the public, it has reached out to shift and change inevitable assumptions about the city. Adam Gibney’s upcoming projects include, among others, the exhibition ‘Activating Pangea’ with Brian Duggan in CB1 gallery, Los Angeles in November. Steve Maher travels to the USA to present paper in Parsons Design College, New York City and Boston University, as well as producing a solo project in the Luan Gallery in Athlone. As for Moscow Biennale for Young Art, we wait in anticipation for 2018.

Steve Maher is a visual and relational artist from Limerick, now based in Helsinki, Finland. In Moscow, Maher’s Heavy Metal Detector 2.0 is lit up against a medieval wall and, like other works in the venue, is easy to see, as most of the ground floor spaces are submerged in an industrial, windowless gloom. The work is a giant papier-mâché sword and is one of the more approachable works in the show. Sitting there like a toy left behind by the bored child of a gallery goer, attendees can pick up the sword and hover its dull edge over nearby metal pipes or a wire box. The interaction with it works best with a partner, where one can hold up the weighty sword while the other listens to music through the adjacent monophonic headphones. The music plays when the metal is detected: a track titled Snakes in the Marsh, composed and performed by Moscow-based metal core band Hellweed, who are deeply entrenched in the Muscovite metal underground.

I asked Maher about what it is that drew him to making this work in the context of ‘Deep Inside’. “To me the notion of ‘what lies beneath’ is a very expandable metaphor for some of the investigations we can have with cultural artefacts such as musical subgenres or subcultures,” he replied. “We can look to the idea of the underground as something that is poetically deep, much like how we can relate to other more tangible and material subjects. I really wanted to create a scenario within the biennale context where this could be explored in a handson and theatrical way.”

Maher’s work was a real experiment in a public engagement. The only cue for attendees was the word “interactive” dropped into the description of the piece printed on a foam board next to the sculpture.

However, the inherent playfulness of the work provoked interaction, and the sword flailed merrily throughout the room, with one dutiful invigilator having to caution an over-enthusiastic wannabe knight.

Samman discussed the appeal of Maher’s work with regard to the boundaries of what we once understood as subculture and its potential redefinition in the face of emergent technologies. “Today’s information technologies offer the impression that anything and everything is easily accessible. Subcultures are often raw materials for the surface activities of commercial enterprise. As with oil deposits or seams of gold, there are ample tools to identify and extract them. Is there really Anastasia Artemeva is a Russian-Irish artist and researcher an underground? Can we even imagine how to invent and maintain currently based in Helsinki. one? What strategies are available today? How do we keep things hidden or inaccessible? This is an important ecological question, not anastasia-artemeva.com nadimsamman.com stevemaher.net just one that pertains to the ethics of independent cultural activity.” adamgibney.com Dublin-based artist Adam Gibney responded to the site with

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The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

RESIDENCY

Para-humans, Cyborgs & Empathy in the Digital Age ARTISTS JOANNA HOPKINS AND SIOBHAN MCGIBBON REFLECT ON THEIR EXPERIENCE OF THE CHIMERA ART AND SCIENCE RESIDENCY AT CÚRAM, THE SCIENCE FOUNDATION IRELAND CENTRE FOR RESEARCH IN MEDICAL DEVICES BASED AT NUI GALWAY.

Joanna Hopkins, The Empathy Machine; image courtesy of Tom Flanagan

Siobhan McGibbon, Xenopthor’s Heart, 2015; image courtesy of Tom Flanagan

September – October 2016

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

31

RESIDENCY

Siobhan McGibbon, Xenoptor Mythos, animation still

Joanna Hopkins, The Empathy Machine; image courtesy of Tom Flanagan

Siobhan McGibbon, Xenoptor Mythos, animation still

THE six-month long Chimera Art and Science residency commenced

the work Connections. This interactive video installation focused on the

who taught me how to cultivate stem cells and implant the cells into

in May 2015 and concluded in November 2015 with an exhibition

interplay of human touch, which forced the pre-recorded neurons I

a sculptural form. Throughout this process I contemplated the unique

entitled ‘The Future is Here’ in the Galway City Museum. During this

had cultivated to connect with each other. I used an Arduino board, a

potential that the stem cell has to transform itself and came to view

time the artists had full access to the laboratories at NUI Galway Mac Mini and Resolume, which is a digital VJing system. I also used a where they had a creative space to conceive, collaborate and realise special lab-created material that is electrically conductive. Vallejo and

this as a metaphor for human potential.

As an artist that trained primarily as a sculptor, exploring and

studio offsite, a stipend of €2500 and a materials budget of €1000

Pugliese developed this prototype to mimic the ways in which manipulating the materials created in the laboratory was integral to electrodes interact in the brain. The piece required two people to join my research process. I collaborated with material scientists Ghazal

funded by the Science Foundation Ireland Discover Programme.

hands and touch the materials, causing the neurons to grow and

Tadyyon and Kyriakos Spanoudes to create a heart that is technically

connect.

biocompatible with the body. The heart was created using Tadyyon’s

projects with the scientists. The artists were also provided with a

The objective of this residency was to explore the medical devices that will be available to patients in the near future and to create artwork from the technologies and bio-materials in the laboratory.

JOANNA HOPKINS

The Chimera Art and Science Residency was a slow process.

polymer, which was created to conduct electrical currents in the body.

Initially, six months sounded like ample time to create work for a

The stripes were then spun onto the heart using an electro spinner.

show. However, in reality I was learning about and involved in

These were created with Spanoudes’s polymer fiber, which is used to

scientific, lab-based procedures of which I had no prior experience.

support tendon growth and renewal.

I was particularly drawn to the research of PhD students Aniket

For me the Chimera Art and Science Residency at Cúram began with a None of the processes were simple and there were multiple actions wallop and a bang as I was thrown into the mesmerising and required for the most basic procedures, as cells die quite quickly and

Kshirsagar and Rachel Ronan. Their inquiry was quite different from

confusing world of cells, stem cells, neurons, polymers, hydro gels, and

any medical exploration that I had previously undertaken or even

easily!

In addition to working with the scientists in the lab, I also

imagined. Kshirsagar and Ronan are exploring the regenerative

microscopic blobs looked nearer to pictures of far off galaxies than to collaborated with Alanna Kelly, a computer programmer based in any of the familiar things that make up our living, breathing selves. NUIG, on another interactive video installation, The Empathy Machine,

capacity of the Xenopus Laevis tadpole. These unique creatures can

During the first month of the residency we met with nearly 40

as part of the final exhibition. The residency culminated in a two

of their organs. This particular group in Cúram is exploring this

scientists and learned about their research and current projects. This

month long exhibition at Galway City Museum, from October to

mechanism in the context of spinal cord regeneration.

required adjusting to a new scientific language.

December 2015, and was accompanied by a series of artists’ talks. A

I began to question the implications that this research has for the

catalogue and publication with a commissioned essay by designer and

future of human anatomy. Contemplating the notion that scientists

intricate colourful microscopic images of the inner body. These

My residency proposal focused on the brain and the idea of

re-grow their limbs, tails, spinal cords and retinas, and can repair many

empathy in the digital age. One group’s research into Parkinson’s curator Dr Nora O’Murchu will be produced later in 2016. disease intrigued me. Utilising microscopic research, they are

are looking to the superior biological capacities of animals to amend,

developing tiny implantable batteries that will try to reduce the

and what we might become. Could para-humans, cyborgs and

SIOBHAN MCGIBBON swelling in the brain of those suffering from the disease, which in turn My practice is concerned with the future trajectory of medical helps reduce symptoms. The device works with the electrical signals interventions and the implications of this for the future of the human that already exist in the brain. This merging of brain function, species. The transition from nature, the ability to extend the human electricity and technology interested me. My current body of research life span may just be our single greatest achievement and challenge.

extend and alter the human species, I questioned how far will they go traditional humans co-exist? Are we the last generation to evolve naturally?

In previous residencies I was able to examine the results that specific medical interventions had on humans. This was not the case

Cures to age related diseases and radical life extension are within our with the residency in Cúram. The devices are tested on cells in the how it affects our behaviour. I shadowed researcher Catalina Vallejo, grasp and with this the borders of the possible and the ethical are early trials and on animals in the advanced trails. This allowed me to who allowed me to observe her as she undertook the delicate process being repeatedly redrawn. The temptation and the ability to redesign imagine the implications on the human without pre-conceived of abstracting primary neuron cells from rat embryos. I used primary the human is all too great. But at what cost? It was with these concerns notions. I combined classic horror with real and imagined science to explores the impact of the digital age and technology on society and

neuron cells extracted by Vallejo to grow in the Petri dishes I had

in mind that I approached the residency at Cúram. How are medical

create a fictional narrative of these scientific developments in the style

technologies re-designing life? How do we want to re-design the of fragments from future medical journals, interviews with pioneers of certain medical technique and relics from a future when we are Most experiments take multiple trials, and this work required human? two attempts, with a change in direction in the middle of the process.

My research did not begin with a closed series of aims; rather it something other than human. prepared with drawings etched into the plastic.

With the assistance of both Vallejo and Eugenia Pugliese I started to

developed from an interest in exploring the creative potential of

feel like a mini scientist as they patiently instructed me on how to

biotechnologies and interdisciplinary practice. The direction of the

prepare multiple dishes for cell culture. I then collaborated with Peter

research was influenced by my interactions with the scientists and the

Owens in the Centre for Microscopy and Imaging. We undertook live

materials in the laboratory. This exchange of information proved

cell imaging using a very specific microscope in the Anatomy

integral to the outcome of my work.

Department. The aim was to gather a sequence of timelapse images of

I was immediately drawn to the projects that used stem cells in the neurons making connections in order to create a short video. A their applications. I wanted to learn more about these extraordinary special microscope with a temperature-controlled chamber attached cells in the context of biology, biotechnology and notions of ‘becoming’ was needed to keep the cells alive. The research for this helped create

that I have previously explored. I worked closely with Dr Siti Ismal,

joannahopkins.com siobhanmcgibbon.com Note Cúram is the Science Foundation Ireland Centre for Research in Medical Devices based at NUI Galway.

In 2015 Andrea Fitzpatrick created the artist residencies through the Chimera Art and Science project at Cúram. Chimera Art and Science was funded through the Science Foundation Ireland Discover Programme which aims to support and develop the STEM education and public engagement sector in Ireland. Joanna Hopkins and Siobhan McGibbon were the first artists in residence in 2015. The Art and Science Programme is now part of the Cúram’s Public Engagement Programme and Joanna McGlynn is the current artist in residence for 2016. For more information, please contact andrea. fitzpatrick@nuigalway.ie.

32

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

NORTHERN IRELAND

Finding Spaces NORTHERN IRELAND MANAGER ROB HILKEN SUGGESTS HOW SMALLER SPACES AND ARTIST-RUN VENUES IN NORTHERN IRELAND MIGHT PROVIDE EXHIBITION OPPORTUNITIES FOR A BROAD VARIETY OF ARTISTS IN THE REGION THROUGH MEMBERS’ SHOWS AND OPEN CALLS. ONE of the most frequent questions I’m asked by artists is ‘Where can I find a gallery to exhibit my work?’ It’s a simple question, but one that can be incredibly hard to answer. Not everyone makes the kind of contemporary work that the large, publicly funded galleries build their reputations on showing, and others may aspire to show in those venues but need experience in smaller venues before that becomes a realistic possibility.

So I thought it would be useful to talk here about some interesting spaces around Northern Ireland that artists might be overlooking.

These are often local authority run spaces or artist-led galleries, so while they may not all offer the artist a fee for exhibiting, at the very least they do not charge artists for the opportunity.

Belfast has a thriving artist-led gallery and studio network. Many contemporary artists get their first gallery exhibition by taking part in the annual Catalyst Arts Members’ Show. This year’s exhibition, ‘Raw’, saw around 80 artists showing works-in-progress in a relaxed, studiolike environment. Many artists, myself included, test out new work each year through the Catalyst Members’ Show and it is a highlight of their calendar.

Platform Arts is also an artist-led gallery and studio group with close ties to Catalyst Arts. Uniquely in Belfast, Platform select their entire year’s programme from an open call and have a small budget to help artists realise their visions. Successful submissions have included group show proposals, solo exhibitions or collaborations from collectives and are selected by the volunteer board.

The third space on the same block as Catalyst and Platform is a small independent studio collective called Pollen Studios. Each month they put on an exhibition for ‘Late Night Art’. These often feature their own studio members, but have also included work by a range of artists who have proposed ideas for the space. They don’t have a formal application process, so it’s best to call in and start a conversation in person.

The last Belfast gallery I want to talk about is a new space inside the Tivoli Barber’s on North Street. Two University of Ulster Fine Art students, who wanted to create a space for emerging artists and recent

Arnold Koroshegyi, Electroscopes, Platform Arts; photo by Simon Mills

university graduates to show their work, are currently programming the Goose Lane Gallery. Zara Lyness and Jenny Davies curate together

One such venue that does pay artists a fee is the main gallery at

as Artistslegup and have two-week exhibitions that open on the first the Marketplace Theatre in Armagh. A large, bright square room with very tall ceilings, this is a great space to show very large sculpture or Thursday of each month.

Moving on to Derry, an unusual new gallery space has recently wall-based work. They select their exhibition programme from an annual open call for submissions, which is opening soon, and they

opened in the city. The Garden of Reflection is an inner city outdoor

space, and is a key part of the Inner City Trust’s ongoing strategy to

have a varied programme of group and solo exhibitions from

renew, regenerate and revitalise the city centre. Located in the city’s

established and emerging artists.

Cathedral Quarter, with entrances on London Street and Bishop Street,

The majority of the regional Borough Councils have gallery

the garden also features commissioned public artworks, a storytelling spaces and include (but are not limited to): Flax Gallery at Mossley booth, an amphitheatre for events and an art gallery. The gallery is Mill in Newtownabbey; the Conservatory and Oriel Galleries at available for artists at all stages of their careers to put on exhibitions

Clotworthy House in Antrim; the Carroll Gallery at the Sean

that are thematically linked to the site’s natural surroundings.

Hollywood Arts Centre in Newry; Higher Bridges Gallery at the

Although frequently overlooked by many artists, there are some

Clinton Centre in Enniskillen; Island Arts Centre in Lisburn;

excellent exhibition spaces that are managed by local borough

Flowerfield Arts Centre in Portstewart; the Braid Arts Centre in

councils around Northern Ireland. While some do charge a submission

Ballymena; the North Down Museum in Bangor; Ards Art Centre in

fee for their annual open exhibitions, the rest of the programming

Newtownards; and the Alley Theatre Art Gallery in Strabane. All of

throughout the year does not rely upon venue hire charges for artists

these galleries have a programme of visual art throughout the year.

and the gallery will often take a commission as low as 20%. They are also well-visited, often located in buildings with theatres and cafes.

Rob Hilken, Northern Ireland Manager

Please contact rob@visualartists-ni.org if you want to find out more about any of these or any other spaces or if you need contact details for them. Visit visualartists.org.uk for more information on events and activities in the region.

Jane Butler, Untitled, ‘RAW: Catalyst Members’ Show 2016’; photo by Jordan Hutchings

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

33

PUBLIC ART ROUNDUP

Public Art

by internationally renowned artist Christina Kubisch, designed as a commemoration of the First World War. During a site visit to Memorial Gardens in April 2014, Kubisch saw the Ireland’s Memorial Records 1914 – 1918, designed by Irish artist Harry Clarke, which list

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

all the Irish men that died fighting during WW1. This aspect of the visit inspired Kubsich to create the sound artwork using these names.

ATLANTIC OAK

Date sited/carried out: October 2016 Budget: €1500 Project partners: Mercy Hospital Brief description: Artist Dervla Wyley produced a series of eight paintings for the lobby of the Mercy Hospital, Melbourne. Wyley also works as a therapist and teacher, and views the works as a form of art therapy. A piece of text is displayed beside each work with a message.

Following the initial installation, further works will be displayed at Mercy Hospital’s other locations, with a final exhibition in the crypt space beneath the hospital.

In November 2015 and April 2016 people were invited to volunteer to read the names from the records that would then be transformed into a sound installation, subtly and melodically altered in eight different ways. This echoes the mathematical symmetries related to the war and the records, e.g, there are four years in the war, eight volumes of records, two columns of eight names per page and eight print designs by Harry Clarke used in the Memorial Records. The recording plays over the bank of the river through four speakers and

SCÁILEANN NA MBÁD Artist’s name: Edward Delaney

also incorporates contemporary sounds of the River Liffey that were recorded with the use of a hydrophone (underwater microphone).

Title of work: Scáileann na mBád Date sited: 2 September 2016 Commission type: Bequest

FAIRY RING Artist’s name: Michael Disley Title of work: Fairy Ring Commission type: Arts Council Northern Ireland commission (Building Peace Through the Arts: Re-imaging Communities) Date sited: July 2015 Project partners: Cairns Residents Groups, Cushendall Brief description: Fairy Ring, a public artwork by Michael Disley, was unveiled at Cushendall, County Antrim. The work comprises a 10-metre ring of granite mushrooms inspired by Tiveragh Hill and the folklore of the surrounding area. Community members were engaged in the initiative, from the project’s inception to the completion and launch of the artwork, through meetings and facilitated workshops.

Artist’s name: Eilis O’Connell Title of work: Atlantic Oak Commissioning body: Office of Public Works (OPW) Commission type: Per Cent for Art Scheme Date sited/carried out: June 2015 Project partners: OPW and Cork County Council Brief description: The Office of Public Works and Cork County Council recently commissioned Cork-based artist Eilis O’Connell to install her cast bronze and steel sculpture Atlantic Oak in Tipp O’Neill

Brief description: A new public artwork titled Scáileann na mBád by

Park in Mallow under the Per Cent for Art Scheme for flood defense

Edward Delaney RHA (1930 – 2009) was donated by the artist’s fam-

works. Atlantic Oak is a bronze cast of a slab of oak found by the artist

ily and sited at Trá an Dóilín ‘the Coral Strand’, An Cheathrú Rua,

in an old boat builder’s yard on a small island off the coast of County

County Galway. President Michael D. Higgins officially launched the

Mayo.The piece of wood had been left in the water for 33 years, caus-

work, a large steel sculptural group, and the last major piece com-

ing patterns of erosion on the sculpture. “A large part of my sculptur-

pleted by Delaney. The erection of Scáileann na mBád marked the art-

al practice,” O’Connell stated, “is collecting materials and exploring

ist’s many decades of work at his sculpture park and workshop in

new ways of making things. Observing the forces of nature at work

the area.

on matter intrigue me and I collect natural things that have been

The project was supported by the Building Peace through the Arts – Re-Imaging Communities programme, which is funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the European Union’s Programme

eroded or attritioned”. This work will serve in the years to come as a reminder of the succesful defences built to protect the town from

VOICES OF MEMORY

frequent flooding.

Artists’ name: Christina Kubisch Title of work: Voices of Memory Commission type: Commission

PERFECT

Commissioning body: Goethe-Institut Irland, Dublin City Council

Artist’s name: Dervla Wyley

Project partners: OPW, trustees of the Irish National War Memorial

Title of work: Perfect

Gardens

Commissioning body: Mercy Hospital (Mercy Eldery Care, Abbots-

Date sited: 30 June 2016

ford, Melbourne, Australia)

Brief description: Voices of Memory is a contemporary sound artwork

for Peace and Reconciliation (PEACE III) managed by the Special EU Programmes Body and the International Fund for Ireland. The programme supports arts projects that promote a shared future and build positive relations within and between communities.

34

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

OPPORTUNITIES

Opportunities FUNDING/AWARDS/ BURSARIES ROSCOMMON

VISUAL

ARTISTS

FORUM The Roscommon Visual Artists Forum, supported by Roscommon County Council Arts Office, announces the Roscommon Visual Artists Forum Award 2017. Applications are invited from artists, groups or collectives with a connection to County Roscommon to realise a project/exhibition in the Roscommon Arts Centre gallery in Spring/Summer 2017. The selected artist will be supported with a production budget of €2000 plus the organisational and curatorial support of the Roscommon Arts Centre.

Applicants must also demonstrate that the project can be realised within the specified budget and timeframe.

The proposals will be assessed by an independent panel including the current curator in residence Linda Shevlin, who will work with the selected artist to assist with realising their exhibition.

Apply by sending a project description (up to 500 words), a curriculum vitae (no more than two A4 pages), an estimated budget, and up to 10 images and/or links to audio/visual works. Please submit all materials via WeTransfer . The total application submission should not exceed 10MB. Please also state your connection to County Roscommon – birth, resident etc. The total budget of €2000 includes artists fee and production.

Deadline 30 September Web roscommonartscentre.ie Email linda@lindashevlin.com ACNI AND OLDER PEOPLE The Arts and Older People Programme aims to strengthen the voice of older people and promote positive mental health and emotional wellbeing through the arts. To ensure a strong advocacy message there will be an opportunity to showcase the projects funded through the programme during Arts and Age Month in April 2017. Applicants should endeavour to build this into their project programme and budget.

The programme is aimed at constituted community and voluntary groups who are working at a local level to support older people and can demonstrate strong partnership working with relevant age sector organisations. This programme is also open to non-governmental organisations, local authorities and arts organisations. Arts Council NI are looking for partnership or consortia based proposals. Partnerships can be led by either age sector providers, arts organisations or local authorities, however the

Media Arts Festival, are calling for entires

Dublin 1. Reporting to the General vided. Participants can use a community

which display new forms of expression

Manager, the Venue Assistant, one of two

reflecting our present time. Entries are

positions, provides reception, studio information on all supporting material

consortium must be made up of appro-

accepted in four divisions: art, entertain-

booking, operational and administrative

required

priate representatives and demonstrate a

ment, animation and manga, and works

duties for Dance Ireland. This is a key-

Applications must be sent in hardcopy

commitment to working together.

Deadline

can originate in genres such as interac-

holding position and the nature of the

tive art, media installations, video works,

role requires a flexible person who is

(x5 copies).

Deadline

4pm, 29 September Web

computer graphics, games, multimedia

willing to work a variety of alternating

productions, application software, ani-

shifts. Please submit a CV and a cover

artscouncil-ni.org/funding

mated feature films, etc. Entries are note (in one document) outlining your sought from professional, amateur, inde-

suitability for the post by email. Start

ARTS COUNCIL WORKSPACE SCHEME

pendent and commercial creators across

date is Monday 26 September, or as soon

This scheme is funded by The Arts

the globe.

Deadline

as possible thereafter. See website for job

Council and administered by Visual

Artists Ireland. Applications for this 9 September scheme opened on 18 August 2016. Only Web applications made through the online festival.j-mediaarts.jp/en system will be considered. Visual Artists

description.

Deadline 12pm, 9 September Web

Ireland, on behalf of the Arts Council,

CRITICAL BASTARDS 13

danceireland.ie Email

invites applications for grants of up to a

Critical Bastards Magazine are seeking

eve.lalor@danceireland.ie

maximum of €40,000 towards the run-

studio. For full residency details and see

the

website

below.

15 October Web kulturkontakt.or.at Email charlotte.sucher@bka.gv Address Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, Abteilung II/6, Concordiaplatz 2, 1010 Wien

OPPORTUNITIES IRELAND LUX CRITICAL FORUM BELFAST The LUX Belfast Critical Forum is a

audio texts and reviews in response to

ning costs of visual artists’ workspaces.

the word ‘work’. They invite writers to

In keeping with the Council’s policy

question changes in the cultural and

document Visual Artists’ Workspaces in

functional values of the processes and

Ireland – A New Approach, this scheme

objectives of art production. This coin-

ATHOMESTUDIOS

tice, to talk about work and ideas in a

has the aim of assisting artists workspac-

cides with the public project ‘A Fair Land’

AtHomeStudios is currently looking for

mutually supportive environment. The

es throughout the country to provide the

by Grizedale Arts at IMMA, which

new members. AtHomeStudios is a col-

Belfast Critical Forum is hosted by the

best possible environment for working

addresses creativity in making, produc-

lective of visual artists practicing from a

MAC and runs from October to May,

visual artists and, where feasible, to ena-

ing and living in pre and post-industrial

studio that is based in their home. The

meeting on the first Tuesday of each

ble a level of subsidy for resident visual

conditions. Submissions can be a review

group meet regularly in one of their stu-

month. Registration for 2016/17 is now

artists. Guidelines and an online applica-

of ‘A Fair Land’, an interview or a theory-

dios or in a public space with two or

tion form can be found on the VAI web-

based article with an image that relates

three artists bringing work to present at

open.

Web

site.

Deadline

to the content. Duration should be six

each meeting. The meetings provide an

minutes maximum.

Deadline

opportunity for artists working in isola-

artistsmovingimageni.tumblr.com Email

tion to engage in peer critique, gain feed-

artistsmovingimageni@gmail.com

9 September Email

back, socialise, share ideas and discuss

criticalbastardsmagazine@gmail.com

sional artist who works from home, and

5:30pm, Thursday 13 October Web visualartists.ie

SUBMISSIONS / OPEN CALLS

STUDIOS/SPACES

monthly discussion group for artists, curators and writers whose work is situated in and around moving image prac-

common concerns. If you are a profes-

COURSES / WORKSHOPS / TRAINING

would like to join AtHomeStudios, please PERFORMANCE ART DAY Bbeyond will host two events to mark

express your interest via email.

Web

DARKROOM Darkroom launch a series of photography courses for the autumn. The Art of

The cultural association PLUG announc-

Performance Art Day 2016: a project athomestudios.wordpress.com titled ‘Same Difference: Equinox to Email

es ‘Posterheroes 6 – Rights in love’, the

Equinox’ and a symposium with the athomestudiosdublin@gmail.com

(seven Thursday evenings and four

sixth edition of the social communica-

working title ‘Being (in) Public: Human

Saturdays for a full day). Introduction to

tion contest. This year Posterheroes has

Ecology and Contemporary Imaginaries’.

chosen to deal with the right to be a

The Performance Art Day event will fea-

couple, without any restrictions of gen-

ture a range of public performances

POSTERHEROES

RESIDENCIES

Photography: 15 September for months

Black and White Darkroom: Tuesday 6, 13, 20 and 27 September. Intermediate Black and White Darkroom: Wednesday

der, sexual orientation, nationality or across various cities on 22 September for religion. As well as in the previous edi- one hour. These should be recorded and

KULTUR KONTACT VIENNA

7, 14, 21 and 28 September. Advanced

The Federal Chancellery of Austria, in

Black and White Darkroom: Saturday 3,

tions, the international jury will select

submitted to be edited into a single film

cooperation with Kultur Kontact, offers

Sunday 4 and Thursday 8 September.

the 40 best posters, which will be includ-

by Bbeyond. Committed locations to

more than 50 scholarships for residen-

Introduction to Film Photography (using

ed in the initiative’s catalogue and will

date include cities in New Zealand,

cies in Vienna each year. They are funded

35mm and 120 film cameras): Saturday

be part of next exhibitions and events.

8, Sunday 9 October. Introduction to

Favini, Posterheroes looks for students,

Australia, Indonesia, China, Thailand, by the Federal Chancellery within the Romania, Finland, Solvakia, Poland, framework of the artists in residence Svalbard in the Artic Circle and Germany programme and organised and imple-

graphic lovers and professional designers

as well as Ireland. The Symposium will

mented by KulturKontakt Austria, which

Creative Course: Wednesday 7, 14, 21

to prove their abilities drawing a 50 x 70

take place in 2017 in conjunction with

also provides support and advice to the

and 28 September. Lightroom Crash

cm poster that will be judged by an inter-

the Ulster University. Interested artists

scholarship winners. The residencies

Course:

This year, in partnership with

national team of experts composed by

Digital Photography: Monday 5, 12, 19 and 26 September. Adobe Photoshop

Tuesday

22

September.

some of the most relevant professionals

should contact Bbeyond for further have the objective of awakening interest within Austria in the cultural and inteldetails.

Introduction to Digital Video: Sunday 25

in graphic design and communication.

Web

lectual life of other countries, and stimu-

and Van Dyke Brown: Saturday 10 and

The Posterheroes contest is open to indi-

bbeyondperformanceartweb.wordpress.

lating discussion and exchange. The pro-

Sunday 11 September. Introduction to

viduals or groups with the submission of

com

gramme is intended to give international

Wet Plate Collodion: Sunday 18

up to three entries each.

Deadline 1 October Web posterheroes.org

September. Introduction to Cyanotype

September.

Austrian environment, engage in an Web exchange of experiences and find new darkroom.ie Email sources of inspiration. artists an opportunity to work in the

JOBS

The Japan Media Arts Festival Executive

The residency is for three months info@darkroom.ie for visual artists, art photographers, Address and dynamic Venue Assistant for designers, composers, video and media The Darkroom DanceHouse. This is a full-time post artists and one month for curators and 32 Brunswick Street North, Dublin 7

Committee, who organise the 20th Japan

based at DanceHouse, Foley Street, art educators. Accommodation is pro-

VENUE ASSISTANT: DANCE IRELAND

Dance Ireland is seeking an experienced JAPAN MEDIA ARTS FESTIVAL

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

September – October 2016

35

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 Artist 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.

Spring and Onward 2016

ROI

FOR LAOIS ARTISTS in partnership with Dunamaise Arts Centre @Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise. Sat 26 Nov (11.00 – 15.30). Places: 30+. Cost: €5/0 (VAI members).

Dublin City

Fingal

DOCUMENTING YOUR WORK WITH TIM

COSTING & PRICING & BUDGETING FOR YOUR

DURHAM @Visual Artists Ireland. Thurs 14 Sept

WORK WITH ANNETTE MOLONEY/SHOWING

(10.00 – 17.00). Places: 10. Cost: €60/30 (VAI

AND SELLING DIGITAL MEDIA & INSTALLATION

members).

WORKS WITH NIAMH O’MALLEY in partnership

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING

with Fingal Arts. @Malahide Visitors Centre,

WITH TOM KENT @Visual Artists Ireland. Sat 17

Malahide Castle. 22 Sept (half-day event). Cost:

Sept (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 10 – 20. Cost: €20/10 (VAI members).

€20/10 (Fingal artists).

ARNO KRAMER ARTIST TALK AND PEER

Cavan

CRITIQUE @Visual Artists Ireland. Talk: Wed 28

WRITING ABOUT YOUR WORK WITH JOANNE

Sept (18.00 – 19.00). Places: 10 - 20. Cost: €5/FREE

LAWS in partnership with Cavan County Council &

(VAI members). Peer Critique: Thurs 29 Sept (10.30

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

– 16.30). Places: 6. Cost: €60/30 (VAI members).

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

VAI & RDS VISUAL ARTS AWARDS CAFÉ in

members).

partnership with the RDS, Visual Arts Awards @RDS,

ARTISTS’ BOOK WORKSHOP in partnership with

Ballsbridge, Dublin. With talks from a previous Cavan County Council & Town Hall Cavan. @Town Taylor Award winners Rachel Doolin, Gabhann Hall, Cavan Town. Date tbc (10.00 – 16.30). Places:

Fees VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI, Training and Professional Development events. Fees range from €5 – €40 for VAI members.

Tell us about your training needs!

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 Visual Artists Ireland T: 01 672 9488 E: monica@visualartists.ie

visualartists.ie/professional-development VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI, Training and Professional Development events. Fees range from €5 – 40 for VAI members.

Oct (10.00 – 14.30). Places: 40+. Cost: €10/5 (VAI

Clare

members).

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING

WRITING ABOUT YOUR WORK WITH SUE WITH TOM KENT in partnership with Clare County RAINSFORD @Visual Artists Ireland. Fri 7 Oct Council. Venue tbc. Sat 10 Sept (10.30 – 15.30). Places: (10.30 – 16.30). Places: 10. Cost: €60/30 (VAI

15 – 20. Cost: €20/10 (VAI members).

members).

HEALTH & SAFETY FOR VISUAL ARTISTS WITH

PRESENTATION SKILLS FOR VISUAL ARTISTS VINCENT KIELY in partnership with Clare County WITH ANDREA AINSWORTH in association with the Council. Venue: tbc. Sat 1 Oct (10.30 – 16.30). Places: Abbey Theatre. @Visual Artists Ireland. Date tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Cost: €40/20 (VAI members).

15 – 20. Cost: €20/10. (VAI members).

HEALTH & SAFETY FOR VISUAL ARTISTS WITH

Tipperary

VINCENT KIELY @Visual Artists Ireland. 30 Sept

DOCUMENTING & ARCHIVING YOUR WORK in

(10.30 – 16.30). Cost: €40/20 (VAI members).

partnership with Tipperary County Council & Damer

MARKETING & SOCIAL MEDIA FOR VISUAL House Gallery. @Damer House Gallery, Roscrea. Sat ARTISTS WITH EMMA DWYER @Visual Artists 24 Sept (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 20+. Cost: €20/10 Ireland. Thurs 6 Oct (10.30 – 16.30). Cost: €40/20

(VAI members).

(VAI members).

CHILD PROTECTION AWARENESS TRAINING in

SELF ASSESSMENT & FILING YOUR TAXES WITH

partnership with Tipperary County Council. @Clonmel

REVENUE ONLINE WITH GABY SMYTH @Visual

tbc. Nov date tbc (10.30 – 15.30). Places: 15 – 20.

Artists Ireland. Wed 12 Oct (10.30 – 15.30). Cost: €60/30 (VAI members).

Cost: €20/10 (VAI members).

NI

Black Box. Thurs 6 Oct (13.00 – 16.00). Cost: FREE. Whether you’re an artist, a student or recent graduate, an art collector, or if you simply want to find out more about the visual arts in Belfast, this is a chance to meet studio groups, artists and arts organisations and pick up a copy of the new Belfast Art Map to point you in the right direction.

BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS: PREPARING FOR STUDIO VISITS @Venue tbc. Thurs 13 Oct (13.00 – 16.00). Cost: FREE. This event is for artists who want support and advice on preparing for curator studio visits. We will cover the whole process.

BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS @Various City Centre Studios. Sat 22 Oct. Cost: FREE. Belfast Open Studios, hosted by Visual Artists Ireland, is an invitation to the public to come and see how artists work and to take a glimpse into the creative process. Sponsored Studios events offer a warm welcome to all with a cup of Belfast Brew on arrival before they take a relaxed and informative stroll around the various studios. The event will be accompanied by a

Belfast

programme of artist talks and events across the city.

TOWARDS SUSTAINABILITY, MAPPING YOUR

Bangor

CAREER WITH PATRICIA CLYNE-KELLY IN PARTNERSHIP WITH CRAFT NI @Belfast Exposed.

28 and 28 Sept (9.30 – 17.00). Cost: £30/15 (VAI/DAS members). This event is open to designer-makers and fine artists. It comprises two days of practical, curatorial and commercial perspectives on selling and valuing your work for professional artists and designer makers working in traditional media and collectable fine crafts. 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 personal Professional Improvement Plan (PIP) defining a career map and the planning schedule to achieve this.

AMINI AUTUMN SCREENING @Beanbag Cinema.

Thurs 20 Oct, (19.00 – 21:00). Cost: £3/£2 (VAI/DAS members). AMINI presents the first of a series of three autumn screenings at the Beanbag Cinema.

Margaret Tait Award-winning artist Duncan DEVELOPING CREATIVE PROPOSALS WITH VAI ARTISTS’ CAFES AND ‘SHOW & TELL’ Marquiss will show and talk about Evolutionary Jerks ANNETTE MOLONEY @Visual Artists Ireland. Date DATES FOR YOUR DIARY & Gradualist Creeps, his 30-minute film that VAI has scheduled the above dates for Café events tbc (10.30 – 16.30). Cost: €40/20 (VAI members). examines revolutionary theories of evolution. In DEVELOPING CREATIVE PROPOSALS WITH EILIS during 2016 and invites interested artists groups, conjunction with the screening, Duncan will LAVELLE @Visual Artists Ireland. Fri 18 Nov (10.30 venues or partners to get in touch if interested in present a selection of films that have informed his hosting a Café. Email: monica@visualartists.ie – 16.30). Cost: €40/20 (VAI members). new work. The programme includes a diverse range Sat 3 Sept of material, from artists’ films to interviews with Sat 3 Dec natural scientists and musicologists, reflecting on VISUAL ARTISTS CAFÉ & SHOW & TELL EVENT analogies and differences between biological

Laois

BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS: STUDIO FAIR @The

by local artisan tea makers Suki Tea, Belfast Open

Dunne, Maria McKinney and curator Anna 12 – 14. Cost: €40/20 (VAI members).

O’Sullivan (2016 selection panel member). Wed 26

evolution and cultural processes.

VISUAL ARTISTS’ CAFÉ: SMALL BUSINESS SKILLS @North Down Museum. Sat 15 Oct (13.00 – 16.00).

Cost: £10/£5 (VAI/DAS members). This practical workshop will look at some of the practical business challenges that visual artists face. This workshop will cover basic small business skills: managing receipts and invoicing, basic tax and accountancy, and skills that will help in preparing a business plan such as cash flow forecasting and planning.

VISUAL ARTISTS’ CAFÉ: PROJECT MANAGEMENT & PLANNING @North Down Museum. Sat 12 Nov (13.00 – 16.00). Cost: £10/£5 (VAI/DAS members).

Visual artists often find themselves juggling many projects consecutively, including their art practice itself, marketing and promoting their work, writing grants and proposals, facilitating workshops, and working on multiple exhibitions or commissions.

This presents real challenges. This workshop aims to provide practical support and techniques to help improve your basic project management skills.

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

The DOCK presents:

‘Now Came Still Evening On’ John Coyle & Gary Coyle

10 September – 12 November 2016

THE DOCK Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim 0719650828, www.thedock.ie

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

Lullaby

Lacken Series, Cowslips, 2016, oil on canvas (diptych), 180 x 350cm (detail) courtesy of Hillsboro Fine Art

Patrick Graham in association with Hillsboro Fine Art 20th August – 28th October 2016 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

Luan Gallery, Grace Road, Athlone, Co. Westmeath Tues – Sat 11 – 5pm Sun 12 – 5pm +353 (0)90 6442154 info@luangallery.ie www.luangallery.ie

LUAN GALLERY

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SAVE 25% OFF SUBSCRIPTION RATES TO THE IRISH ARTS REVIEW! ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION FOR VAI MEMBERS NOW €30!

Book a subscription today

Online: www.irishartsreview.com Phone: +353 1 676 6711

Email: subscriptions@irishartsreview.com

www.irishartsreview.com

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Vanessa Donoso Lopez, different types of clay sourced in Belalcázar, Córdoba, Spain, at La Fragua artists residency 2016

The LAB Gallery is pleased to present:

VANESSA DONOSO LÓPEZ To Swallow a Ball

JANE LOCKE Tales from a Green Post Box 10 September – 5 November 2016 Preview: 9 September 2016, 6pm – 8pm For public programmes including performance schedule and Culture Night events see: thelab.ie The LAB A: Foley Street, Dublin 1 T: 01 222 5455, E: artsoffice@dublincity.ie W: www.thelab.ie T: @LabDCC F: facebook.com/TheLABGalleryDublin V: www.vimeo.com/dccartsoffice Open Monday – Friday 10am – 6pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am – 5pm

Maria McKinney, Shaping the Cow of the Future, 2015, Digital photograph, Image courtesy of the artist.

RHA Autumn Exhibitions Showing from 9 September – 23 October Admission free Paul Gregg, Inductive Probability Maria McKinney, Sire Brian Hegarty, I’ll Be Your Mirror

Four Performances, 15 – 18 September, 7.30pm Aoibheann Greenan, The Perfect Wagner Rite Tickets available at www.fringefest.com

GallaGher Gallery / 15 ely Place, Dublin 2 +353 1 661 2558 / info@rhagallery.ie www.rhagallery.ie

Showing from 7 October – 6 November Kevin Miller, something hero something