Issue 1: January – February 2019
The Visual Artists' News Sheet Inside This Issue TULCA FESTIVAL OF VISUAL ARTS 2018 INTERVIEW WITH DOIREANN O’MALLEY VAI NEW SPACES 2018 LOOKING BACK AT EIGHT GALLERY
Contents On The Cover Jessica Foley, Holes, 2018, installation view, NCAD Gallery; photograph by Anne Kelly, courtesy of NCAD Gallery. First Pages 6. 8.
Roundup. Exhibitions and events from the past two months. News. The latest developments in the arts sector. Columns
10. 11.
Conference. Reframing the ‘90s. Maeve Mulrennan. Conference. Lives of the Artists. Diana Bamimeke. Northern Ireland. Northern Excursions. Manuela Pacella. Skills. Creative Empowerment. Miriam Logan.
Regional Focus: County Mayo 12.
The Achill Artists Group. Ronan Halpin, Sculptor. Island Retreat. Edward King, Heinrich Böll Residency. Rural Transmissions. Breda Burns, Visual Artist. Solitude and Solidarity. Norah Brennan, Visual Artist. Body Language. Saoirse Wall, Visual Artist. Local, International. John McHugh, Custom House Gallery. Community & Collaboration. Orla Henihan, Linenhall Arts Centre.
13. 14. 15.
Festival 16.
Syntonic State. Áine Phillips reviews TULCA Festival of Visual Arts.
How is it Made? 18. 19.
Perspective and Vision. Veronica O’Neill reflects on Clea Van de Grin’s touring show, ‘Jump’. Where Does The Law Stand With Leprechauns? Michele Horrigan discusses the folklore underpinning her recent exhibition at The LAB.
Career Development 20. 22.
Dream Analysis. Pádraic E. Moore interviews Doireann O’Malley. Towards A Consideration of All Bodies. Róisín Power Hackett reflects on her recent performance event at The LAB Gallery.
Editorial WELCOME to the January – February 2019 issue of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.
This issue features a range of conferences, exhibitions, residencies and events that took place towards the end of 2018, while also profiling several ongoing artistic projects and collaborations. In columns for this issue, Miriam Logan outlines some philosophical perspectives on activating creativity and Róisín Kennedy reviews the recently published collection of Brian O’Doherty’s letters, edited by Brenda Moore-McCann. Maeve Mulrennan discusses the recent ‘Reframing the ‘90s’ conference in UCC and Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, while Diana Bamimeke reports on ‘Winter Seminar: The Lives of Artists’ at TBG+S and the RHA. In this issue’s regional column, Manuela Pacella discusses recent exhibition highlights in Northern Ireland. Career Development articles come from Pádraic E. Moore, who interviews Irish artist Doireann O’Malley about her recent solo exhibition at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, and Róisín Power Hackett, who reflects on her recent performance event at The LAB Gallery, which included mentorship with Amanda Coogan. Evgeniya Martirosyan reports on her recent residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Praksis, Oslo, while Christopher Steenson interviews Danny McCarthy and Mick O’Shea about their recent collaboration, which emerged out of their participation in the Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island, Florida.
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CEO/Director: Noel Kelly Office Manager: Bernadette Beecher Northern Ireland Manager: Rob Hilken Communications Officer: Shelly McDonnell Membership Officer: Siobhan Mooney Publications: Joanne Laws, Christopher Steenson Professional Development Officer: Monica Flynn Opportunities Listings: Shelly McDonnell Exhibition Listings: Christopher Steenson Bookkeeping: Dina Mulchrone
Feeling Things Out. Evgeniya Martirosyan reports on her recent residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Praksis, Oslo. Good Listeners. Christopher Steenson interviews Danny McCarthy and Mick O’Shea about the Robert Rauschenberg Residency.
Temporal Platform. Aidan Kelly Murphy interviews Eoin O’Dowd about Dublin’s former Eight Gallery.
New Spaces. Kevin Burns reviews VAI’s New Spaces project in Derry. Belfast Open Studios. Christopher Steenson reports on the various happenings at this year’s Belfast Open Studios.
Book Review 31.
Man of Letters. Róisín Kennedy reviews the recently published collection of Brian O’Doherty’s letters. Last Pages
32. 34. 35.
Public Art Roundup. Art outside of the gallery. Opportunities. Grants, awards, open calls and commissions. VAI Professional Development. Upcoming workshops, seminars and peer reviews.
As ever, we have details of the upcoming VAI Professional Development Programme, exhibition and public art roundups, news from the sector and current opportunities.
Visual Artists Ireland:
Board of Directors: Mary Kelly (Chair), Michael Fitzpatrick, Richard Forrest, Paul Moore, Mary-Ruth Walsh, Dónall Curtin, Michael Corrigan, Cliodhna Ní Anluain
VAI Event 28. 30.
Reviewed in the Critique section are: ‘Infrastructures of Now’ at NCAD Gallery; Maud Cotter at Limerick City Gallery of Art; ‘Manmade’ at Millennium Court Arts Centre; Tomas Penc at Triskel Christchurch; and Chris Doris at The Model.
Features Editor: Joanne Laws Production Editor/Design: Christopher Steenson News/Opportunities: Shelly McDonnell, Siobhan Mooney
Organisation 26.
The Regional Profile for this issue comes from County Mayo, with organisational insights from Orla Henihan (Linenhall Arts Centre), John McHugh (Custom House Gallery), Ronan Halpin (Achill Artists Group) and Edward King (Heinrich Böll Residency). In addition, artists Norah Brennan, Breda Burns and Saoirse Wall discuss the realities of maintaining an arts practice in the region.
The Visual Artists' News Sheet:
Residency 23.
In the How is it Made? section, Veronica O’Neill reflects on Clea Van de Grin’s touring show, ‘Jump’, and Michele Horrigan describes the folklore underpinning her recent exhibition, ‘Where Does The Law Stand With Leprechauns?’ at The LAB Gallery, Dublin. Áine Phillips reviews TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2018, curated by Linda Shevlin, and Aidan Kelly Murphy interviews Eoin O’Dowd about Dublin’s former Eight Gallery. Coverage of recent VAI Events includes Chris Steenson’s report on the various happenings at this year’s Belfast Open Studios, and Kevin Burns’s review of the final iteration of the New Spaces project.
Republic of Ireland Office
Northern Ireland Office
Visual Artists Ireland Windmill View House 4 Oliver Bond Street Merchants Quay, Dublin 8 T: +353 (0)1 672 9488 E: info@visualartists.ie W: visualaritsts.ie
Visual Artists Ireland 109 Royal Avenue Belfast BT1 1FF T: +44 (0)28 958 70361 E: info@visualartists-ni.org W: visualartists-ni.org
Principle Funders
Project Funders
Corporate Sponsors
Project Partners
Critique Supplement i. Cover Image: Tomas Penc, ENDUSER, Triskel Christchurch. ii. ‘Manmade’ at Millennium Court Arts Centre. iii. ‘Infrastructures of Now’ at NCAD Gallery. iii. Tomas Penc at Triskel Christchurch. iv. Chris Doris at The Model. iv. Maud Cotter at Limerick City Gallery of Art.
International Memberships
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Roundup
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS FROM THE PAST TWO MONTHS
Dublin
Belfast
DRAÍOCHT
‘Mulhuddart Satellite’ is an exhibition by Michael McLoughlin, artist-in-residence at Draíocht since 2017. During the project, McLoughlin took on the role of ‘diviner’, spending time in the Mulhuddart region, engaging with local residents and finding ways to build potential points of connection. The exhibition comprises an installation of local ‘mappings’, a series of drawings, public radio broadcasts and spatial recordings of conversations between community groups to celebrate the vibrant environment of Mulhuddart. The exhibition continues until 23 Feb.
THE LAB
On show at The LAB Gallery are two concurrent solo exhibitions – Atoosa Pour Hosseini’s ‘Kinetics in Blue’ and Paul Hallahan’s ‘the number called value’. Pour Hosseini presents a new series of photographic, sculptural and cinematic works, relaying ideas of displacement via her protagonist, a hybrid woman/bird of prey. Hallahan’s work seeks to transcend language, exploring how interactions with art affect self-perception and primordial parts of the brain, in the context of increasingly manmade systems. Both exhibitions run until 12 Jan.
draiocht.ie
OLIVER SEARS GALLERY
The Oliver Sears Gallery presented ‘Rootless’ by Nick Miller from 25 October to 29 November 2018, the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery. This series of paintings expresses Miller’s ongoing fascination with the still life genre. According to the press release, “By cutting flowers, weeds and branches, and placing them in vessels in his studio, Miller sets up a daily encounter with impermanence”. Alluding to existential human struggles with the transience of life, Miller attempts to “ground his own sense of rootlessness through the act of painting”.
From 16 November to 19 December 2018, the RHA presented the second edition in the third series of ‘Futures’– a sequence of exhibitions showcasing the work of early-career artists, with a “growing critical and curatorial consensus”. ‘Futures, Series 3, Episode 2’ comprised: Joanne Reid’s mixed-media sculptures; Laura Fitzgerald’s humorous drawings and video work; Cecilia Danell’s landscape paintings; sculptures and a video work by Bassam Al-Sabah; Jennifer Mehigan’s visual digital montages; and an immersive sculptural installation by Marcel Vidal.
On 29 Nov, second year students, studying the BA Hons in Fine Art at Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art, staged a one-day, popup exhibition at Artcetera Studio, Belfast. The exhibition served as an opportunity for these in-training artists to get a taste for organising and presenting their work in a gallery setting. The artists featured in the exhibition were: Angus McBride, Caitlin Gallagher, Matthew Wilson, Fiona Nicholson, Collette Conway, Nathan Turner, Euan Géber and Sophie Williamson.
dublincityartsoffice.ie/the-lab
OONAGH YOUNG GALLERY
From 22 Nov to 15 Dec 2018, Oonagh Young Gallery presented ‘To something that went before (C.S.deK)’ – an exhibition of new drawings by Dublin-based artist, Brian Fay, whose wider practice interrogates the “materiality of pre-existing artworks and objects” over time. Fay’s new body of work references original works by novelist Mary Shelley and painters, Cimabue and Willem de Kooning, to consider how they have been “interpreted through acts of restoration, adaptation and erasure”, thus illuminating the “competing dynamics between creation and recreation”.
RUA RED
‘Proverbs’ is a long-term multimedia project by Irish photographer, Robert Ellis, combining audio with still and moving images. According to the press release, this body of work engages with the people and “contemporary landscape of Uganda, while exploring its layers of memory”. Rather than portraying “age-old wisdoms based on ethnic experience”, the exhibition seeks to create a platform for these fluid overarching narratives to be reimagined, underpinned by the layers of memory and history that linger in this unfamiliar landscape. ‘Proverbs’ continues until 10 Jan.
rhagallery.ie
Robert Eliss, photograph from ‘Proverbs’, 2017; image courtesy of the artist and Rua Red Gallery
ruared.ie
CATALYST ARTS
2018 marked the 25th anniversary of Catalyst Arts, since its inception as an artist-led gallery in 1993. To mark the occasion, Catalyst organised the exhibition ‘25 Years of Catalyst Arts’, which ran at the gallery from 15 Nov to 15 Dec 2018. Contained in the exhibition was a curated selection of materials from the Catalyst archive, alongside contributions from several of the gallery’s previous co-directors. A publication, as well as a series of symposiums on artist-led practice and a tour of previous Catalyst locations were also planned to coincide with the event.
facebook.com/artceterastudio
THE MAC
MAC International returned to Belfast on 9 Nov 2018 for its third iteration. The exhibition aims to provide an overview of some of the most “urgent voices” in contemporary art today. The exhibiting artists are: Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan; Ali Cherri; Larissa Fassler; Nikolaus Gansterer; Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi & Simone Trabucchi); Ronan McCrea; Aisling O’Beirn; Vesna Pavlović; Renata Poljak; Larissa Sansour; and Özge Topçu. Gansterer was awarded the MAC Interntional Prize for his work, Wor(l)ding: a mesh work of sense of flux.
oonaghyoung.com
oliversearsgallery.com
RHA
ARTCETERA
catalystarts.org.uk
NAUGHTON GALLERY
The Naughton Gallery at Queen’s University Belfast are currently showing ‘It Was a Night’, a solo exhibition of drawings by the London-based, French artist Marie Jacotey. According to the press release, Jacotey’s drawings “depict the familiar truths of relationships and intimate emotions, combining image, text, and cinematic perspectives to offer an insight into the lives and experiences of their protagonists”. The exhibition continues at the Naughton Gallery until 3 Feb. naughtongallery.org
themaclive.com
PLATFORM ARTS
Platform Arts hosted its annual members show from 6 to 29 Dec 2018, showcasing the diverse practices of the gallery’s in-house studio artists, incorporating painting, sculpture, installation and video. The artists who took part in this year’s iteration of the exhibition were: Alex Brunt; Jane Butler; Hannah Casey-Brogan; Rachael Campbell-Palmer; Gerard Carson; Aoife Earley; Hayley Gault; Andrew Glenn; Chris McCambridge; Damian Magee; and Iolanda Rocha.
platformartsbelfast.com
Nick Miller, Whitethorn Turning, 2017; courtesy of the artist and Oliver Sears Gallery
ULSTER MUSEUM
The Royal Ulster Academy of Arts (RUA) presented its 137th Annual Exhibition at the Ulster Museum from 19 Oct 2018 to 6 Jan 2019. Featuring artworks by several of the RUA’s members, as well as hundreds of submissions from emerging and established artists across the UK and Ireland, the Academy also administered a number of prizes for the best artworks. Amongst the several winners were Trina Hobson, Stephen Johnston, Jeffery Morgan, Daniel Neils, Amy Whittle, Emma Spence, Heidi Wickham, Bernadette Doolan and Carolyn Mullholland. royalulsteracademy.org
Atoosa Pour Hosseni, photograph from ‘Kinetics in Blue’, 2018; courtesy of the artist the LAB Gallery
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Rachel Fallon ‘Home Front’, installation view; image courtesy Mermaid Arts Centre
Roundup
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James Clar, Triple Oscillation (3), 2016, LED lights, filters, 3D printed material; courtesy of James Clar
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, ‘Inscriptions (One Here Now)’, installation view, Sirius Arts Centre; photograph by Jed Niezgoda
CCA DERRY-LONDONDERRY
CIT CRAWFORD COLLEGE OF ART & DESIGN
CUSTOM HOUSE GALLERY AND STUDIOS
crawford.cit.ie
customhousestudios.ie
Regional & International
BALZER PROJECTS, SWITZERLAND
Balzer Projects recently presented an exhibition by Irish artist Brian Duggan, titled ‘Get to the Point’ (3 Nov – 29 Dec 2018), the second solo show by Duggan with the gallery in Basel. According to the press release, the exhibition “expands upon the artist’s ongoing research and larger body of work regarding nuclear power” examining not only “the risks involved” but also the “economic interests and the public debate”, including a mass protest movement in the 1970s, against plans to build Ireland’s first nuclear power station. balzerprojects.com
F.E. MCWILLIAM GALLERY & STUDIO
‘Crossing Lines’ is a group exhibition developed in partnership between F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council and Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda. The exhibition, which runs concurrently in both galleries until 26 January, explores ways in which artists have “expressed ideas of dissent, dissonance and difference” through their work. ‘Crossing Lines’ includes work by Northern Irish, British and Irish artists including Duncan Campbell, Susan Philipz, Rita Duffy, Victor Sloan and Joy Gerrard.
‘Smiling, Sweating and Resisting’ was a group exhibition at CCA Derry-Londonderry (27 Oct to 21 Dec 2018), presenting works that circulate around ideas of “the carnival and its promiscuous, politically-charged performances”. Drawing on Derry’s vibrant Halloween celebrations, the exhibition – which featured works by Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca, Mitch Conlon, Sonia Boyce and Susan Connolly – used the carnivalesque to interrogate dissonant cultural narratives, from colonial sugar plantations in the Caribbean to the dancehalls of Belfast in the early 2000s. cca-derry-londonderry.org
GALLERIA WEBER & WEBER, ITALY
Weber & Weber in Turin, Italy, presented the solo exhibition, ‘This Entropic Order’, by Irish artist Gillian Lawler (30 Oct to 8 Dec 2018). Curated by Valeria Ceregini, the exhibition was the second iteration of a three-part series, ‘Painting through its poetical emotions’, showcasing Irish artists. Lawler presented new paintings that continue her interest in surreal, dreamlike landscapes, infused with abstract geometry and anti-perspective, in which physical suspension often reflects forms of spiritual, abstract and metaphysical suspension.
visitarmagh.com
LUAN GALLERY
‘Now & Then, Here & Now’ is a solo exhibition by Mullingar-based artist, Eoin Butler, currently showing at Luan Gallery, Athlone. Among the paintings included in this survey are portraits and figurative works, as well as plein air studies, made in response to the artist’s native landscape. Imbued with a “stillness and reverence of place”, these works depict still and solitary places that are familiar to Irish people, including the woodlands of Lough Ennell, the hinterland and the bog. The exhibition continues at Luan Gallery until 8 February. athlone.ie
Students of Crawford College’s MA Art & Process presented their graduate exhibition, ‘Memories of a Nervous System’, at 46 Grand Parade, Cork City, from 29 Nov to 14 Dec 2018. According to the press release, the exhibition title posits artists as “defenders of subjectivity against an ever more dominant system of knowledge received as data”. The exhibition featured work by: Francesca Castellano, Johanna Connor, Raphael Llewllyn, Sinéad Lucey, Anne Martin Walsh, Lar O’Toole, Ciara Rodgers, Mirte Slob, Breda Stacey and Clare Scott.
GOREY SCHOOL OF ART
Periphery Space – a dedicated exhibition space at Gorey School of Art, Wexford – recently presented ‘Peripheries OPEN 2018’ (30 Nov to 21 Dec 2018). The group show featured work by 28 emerging artists – including Austin Hearne, Susan Buttner, David Lunney and Lee Welch – selected by a panel comprising: Paul Carter, James Merrigan, Deirdre Robinson and Emma Roche. In addition, the exhibition was accompanied by a screening programme of experimental films by five emerging Irish filmmakers, exploring drama, documentary and animation.
galleriaweber.it
MERMAID ARTS CENTRE
‘Home Front’ is a solo exhibition by Wicklow-based artist, Rachel Fallon, exploring the history and politics of women’s role in modern society. Presenting artworks across a range of media, Fallon considers themes of “protection and defence”, focusing on “territorial wars in the domestic realm”, including the domain of motherhood. According to the press release, the artist’s “sculptural subversions of military mottos and associated objects poke a finger at ideals of motherhood”. ‘Home Front’ continues at Mermaid Arts Centre until 19 January. mermaidartscentre.ie
‘Island Life’ was a group exhibition at Custom House Gallery in Westport, featuring work by artists from Dublin’s Kevin Kavanagh Gallery (25 Oct to 25 Nov 2018). Curated by Ingrid Lyons and Kevin Kavanagh, ‘Island Life’ was a celebration of current Irish painting practice, showcasing both emerging and more established artists, including Nevan Lahart, Kathy Tynan, Dermot Seymour, Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh and Robert Armstrong, among others. The exhibition explored painting’s “capacity to encompass both personal and universal concerns”.
THE GLUCKSMAN
Currently showing at The Glucksman, Cork, is ‘PRISM: The art and science of light’, an exhibition exploring the use of light across artistic practice, as both material and subject. From the colourful spectrums featuring in contemporary and historic abstract paintings, to the incorporation of cosmology, mirrors, digital technology and light-emitting diodes (LED’s), this exhibition seeks to interrogate light as a luminescent and communicative force that connects us to the universe, as well as each other. ‘PRISM’ continues at The Glucksman until 10 March 2019.
periphery.space
NMI – COUNTRY LIFE
OnSight is an annual art project at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life, run in partnership with Mayo County Council, Mayo Arts Squad and independent artists. Each year, an invited artist creates a site-specific project, encouraging visitors to explore the museum’s themes. Showing until May 2019 is ‘OnSight 2018: The Blaze’ by Breda Mayock which explores a Suffragette thematic and includes a golden tent, decorated inside with handmade patches, donated by the public in response to key phrases like: ‘I would rather be a Rebel than a Slave’. museum.ie/country-life
glucksman.org
SIRIUS ARTS CENTRE
Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s solo exhibition, ‘Inscriptions (One Here Now)’, is on show at Sirius Arts Centre until 9 Feb 2019. Commissioned as part of the Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland Project, ‘One Here Now’, Ní Bhriain’s new film installation depicts a functioning limestone quarry, creating a ‘multi-layered contemplation of place, time and inscription’. Central to the film is a layered and melodic soundtrack by American composer, Susan Stenger, which integrates the sonic patterns of Morse code and traditional Irish keening, to form a ‘sonic geology’. siriusartscentre.ie
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News
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
THE LATEST FROM THE ARTS SECTOR
General News
NEW IMMA DIRECTOR
Annie Fletcher has recently been announced as the new Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Fletcher, who previously held the position of Chief Curator at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, will take up her position at IMMA on 1 March. With a wealth of leadership experience in the arts, Annie Fletcher started her career at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in 1994. From 2001–2002 she was Acting Head of Exhibitions at IMMA, where she produced several projects, including the performance art event ‘Marking the Territory’, which was curated by Marina Abramović. She has also previously worked with the former IMMA Director, Sarah Glennie, over the past few years, on solo exhibitions by Turner Prize winner Duncan Campbell and Sheela Gowda. Speaking of her appointment, Fletcher stated that she was thrilled to be returning to Ireland to take up the position. She said that she was also looking forward to “building on IMMA’s growing legacy” and creating several new “international collaborations and dialogues”, as well as drawing on the established connections she has made across her career to date.
MARKIEVICZ BURSARIES ANNOUNCED
In late November 2018, Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, T.D. announced details of a new bursary scheme for women artists – the ‘Markievicz bursaries’ – to mark the 100th anniversary of the enactment of legislation to allow women to stand in general elections. This new scheme honours the suffragette and revolutionary, Countess Constance de Markievicz, who, along with other Sinn Féin TDs, established Dáil Éireann, and was the first woman in the world to hold a cabinet position. The new bursaries, which are worth €20,000 each, will be awarded to up to five female artists/ writers per year. The awards are open to those applying as individual artists or in collaboration with others. The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht will partner with the Arts Council on the governance arrangements and the administration of the scheme. An opencall will run from mid-January to mid-February, with bursaries being awarded in May 2019.
CORRECTION
VAN’s Nov/Dec 2018 Critique section featured John Graham’s review of ‘my comfort and my joy: Songs from the Irish Other’ by Seamus Harahan and Thomas McCarthy, which ran at the Douglas Hyde Gallery from 19 September to 17 November 2018. Please note that a sentence was mistakenly omitted from the published review and we wish to apologise for this error. The complete text is archived on the VAN website (visualartistsireland.com)
NEW RHA PRESIDENT
In October 2018, it was announced that Abigail O’Brien would take up the position as the new President of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) in Dublin. Becoming the 24th President of the Academy, she takes over from Mick O’Dea, who served under the role from 2014 to 2018. Initially joining the RHA membership in 2006, O’Brien has made history by being the first female President for the Academy. Obrien stated that she was “honoured to have been elected as the new President of the RHA”. She will serve as President for the next 5 years, leading up to the RHA’s 200th anniversary in 2023. It was also announced that artist Eithne Jordan would become the RHA’s Keeper, while Robin Buick would take on the role of Treasurer.
NEXT GENERATION ARTIST AWARDS
In mid-December, the Arts Council announced that 18 artists have been awarded Next Generation bursaries for 2018–19. The annual award acknowledges and supports early career artists working across different disciplines, including visual arts, music, dance, film, theatre and literature, offering each awardee a bursary of €20,000. This year, eight visual artists received a Next Generation Award, namely: moving image artist Myrid Carten, a graduate of Goldsmiths, who works at the intersection of experimental video, documentary and cinema; visual artist Kerry Guinan, whose work involves public intervention, performance and social experiment; Anja Mahler & Dean Kavanagh, whose collaborative practice combines experimental filmmaking and time-based art; Dublin-based visual artist Eleanor McCaughey, who works across painting, sculpture and installation; visual artist and educator Seoidín O’Sullivan whose socially-engaged practice emphasises collaborative research linked to various ecological and social contexts; Dublin-based Iranian artist and filmmaker, Atoosa Pour Hosseini, who works in experimental film, video and performance; American painter and recent NCAD MFA graduate, Sven Sandberg; and visual artist Eimear Murphy, who uses construction materials to develop artworks and public sculptures.
ACNI ACES AWARDS
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) announced the names of 17 people who will receive Artist Career Enhancement Scheme (ACES) awards for the period 2018–2019 in November. Of the 17, two were given to those working in the visual arts. One went to Mirjami Schuppert, a Belfast-based curator, originally from Finland. The second has been awarded to visual artist Martin Boyle. ACES are awarded to individual artists, working in Northern Ireland, to help enhance their future careers by partnering them with professional organisations and leading artists, at home or abroad. In addition, each individual recipient receives bursary of upto £5,000. ACES forms part of ACNI’s wider Support for the Individual Artist Programme (SIAP). The ACNI made a total 192 SIAP awards for 2018–2019, totaling £533,000.
NEW ARTS COUNCIL APPOINTMENT
The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan, T.D. has recently announced the appointment of Dónall Curtin to the Arts Council of Ireland, for a period of 5 years, from 5 December 2018. The appointment follows a public call for applications on stateboards.ie and a subsequent assessment process. Commenting on the appointment, Minister Madigan said: “I am delighted to appoint a candidate of such high calibre and congratulate Dónall on his appointment. He is an experienced board director and business leader with extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. Dónall is an avid supporter of the arts, having consulted with and advocated on behalf of several organisations in Ireland, UK, France and USA to promote the role of the arts. I wish him the very best during his term and thank him for taking on this very important role.” Dónall Curtin is a highly experienced non-executive director, accountant and chartered director. He has been a member of the board of directors of Visual Artists Ireland since 2011.
RHA GRADUATE STUDIO AWARD
The RHA School has announced Anishta Chooramun (IADT) as the recipient of the RHA Graduate Studio Award 2018. This award is funded by the generosity of RHA Friends and offers the recipient a one-year fully-funded studio in the RHA and a cash prize of €2,500 (courtesy of the RDS Visual Arts Awards). A selection panel consisting of Colin Martin (RHA School Principal), Patrick T. Murphy (RHA Director) and Ruth Carroll (RHA Curator) selected Chooramun after viewing all of the work exhibited in the RDS Visual Arts Award 2018. Born in Mauritius, Chooramun currently lives, works and studies in Dublin. A recent graduate from IADT Dún Laoghaire with a BA (Hons) in Art, Chooramun is currently completing a MA in Art Research and collaboration (ARC). Chooramun’s work is informed by the diverse components that create our society. Exposing the fragmentation of thought and feelings, Chooramun’s sculptures create an abstract jigsaw puzzle, comprising a series of sculptures made from various materials. FINGAL ARTS STUDIO AWARD 2018
Dublin-based visual artist Naomi Sex has been announced as the recipient of the 2018 Fingal Arts Studio Award. The award consists of a fully-funded studio space for one year at the RHA, offering recipients time to develop their practice within the institutional framework of the RHA School. The selection panel for this year’s award consisted of Colin Martin, RHA School Principal; Val Connor, Lecturer and Curator; and Sarah O’Neill, Deputy Arts Officer, Fingal Arts. Sex is currently working towards a major new event/exhibition, which will be hosted by Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane in conjunction with Culture Night 2020.
DOCKLANDS COMMISSION
Eva Rothschild has been announced as winner of the Central Bank’s tendering process for a new public art commission, to be installed at the bank’s Docklands Campus. A panel of independent experts selected Rothschild’s new public sculpture, titled A Double Rainbow. Rothschild, who will represent Ireland at the Venice Biennale later this year, has received international acclaim for her art practice. She has extensive experience creating public art sculptures, with previous works being installed at at TATE Britain, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Central Park, New York City. Rothschild stated that the work will “mark a new and ambitious development in my practice, enabling the creation of an outdoor sculpture, on a truly monumental scale”.
RUA RED 2020 COMMISSIONS
In December 2018, Rua Red announced an extensive series of new commissions featuring six female Irish artists, which it will be showcasing in 2020, inspired by the Mary Magdalene. The six artists selected to create new work under the programme are visual artists Amanda Coogan, Rachel Fallon, Jesse Jones and Alice Maher, writer and director Grace Dyas and dancer/ choreographer Oona Doherty. Maolíssa Boyle, Director of Rua Red, is the programme curator. Rua Red’s new commissions programme will explore how Mary Magdalene’s character has been constructed through her many manifestations and how has she has influenced female history and current views and treatment of women. Speaking of the project Maolísa Boyle, said that she was “fascinated by the figure of Mary Magdalene as a child”, noting that that “Marina Warner’s seminal book Alone Of All Her Sex, the Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary had a singular impact on my own art practice” in the 1990’s and remains a reference point that I carry with me into the curation of this programme”. The commissioning and research phase for the project will take place in 2019, which is kindly supported by Creative Ireland. The first meeting of the group took place on 5 December 2018 at Rua Red.
TURNER PRIZE 2018
Charlotte Prodger was recently announced as winner of the 2018 Turner Prize, for her film work, Bridgit, which was filmed using an iPhone. Prodger was nominated for the prize alongside artists Naeem Mohaiemen, Luke Willis Thompson and the research collective Forensic Architecture. As winner of the 2018 award, Prodger received a cash prize of £25,000. The other shortlisted artists each received £5,000 each. The Director of the Tate Britain, Alex Farquharson, who chaired the judging panel, stated that Prodger’s work represented “most profound use of a device as prosaic as the iPhone camera that we’ve seen in art to date”. This year, Prodger will be representing Scotland at the 58th Venice Biennale.
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Columns
Conference
Conference
Reframing the ‘90s
Lives of the Artists
MAEVE MULRENNAN REPORTS ON A RECENT CONFERENCE AT UCC AND CRAWFORD ART GALLERY, CORK.
DIANA BAMIMEKE REPORTS ON THE ‘WINTER SEMINAR’, HOSTED BY THE RHA AND TEMPLE BAR GALLERY + STUDIOS.
‘REFRAMING THE 90S: Historicising late 20th-century Irish Practice’, took place on Friday 2 and Saturday 3 November 2018, in University College Cork (UCC) and Crawford Art Gallery in Cork. Curated by Pluck Projects – a curatorial collaboration between Dr Rachel Warriner and Sarah Kelleher – the conference ran in conjunction with ‘Vox Materia’, a solo exhibition by Alice Maher in Crawford Art Gallery, also curated by Pluck Projects (pluckprojects.wordpress.com). In their conference notes, the curators set out to show “the varied topography of the artworld during the 1990s”, including work that may not have been given equal academic attention – namely, the work of women, collectives, artists from the LGBTQ+ community, and artists working in new or ephemeral media. Sarah Kelleher began by examining experiences of ‘otherness’ within dominant discourse. Friday morning’s programme was entitled ‘Gender and Sexuality in the 90s’, with papers from Dr Jane Humphries, Ellen Burke, Padraig Spillane and Dr Kate Antosik. Burke’s paper discussed the female body as a contested site. Avoiding the more obvious references on this topic, Burke spoke instead about memory and remembrance as performative actions. Her references ranged from social media and Marian shrines, to Alanna O’Kelly’s performance, Omos (1995). Burke also briefly referenced Jean Luc Nancy’s 1992 book, Corpus, in the context of the displaced body, asserting that the “body is certitude, shattered and blown to bits.” While in conversation with Dr Áine Phillips, Danny McCarthy provided an artist’s perspective on the intersections between practice and curation, moving fluidly between his own work and the programming he has developed, collaboratively with other artists, to establish Cork as a performance and sound art stronghold in Ireland. The next section, ‘Exhibitions/institutions/ collectives’, included papers from Matt Packer (Director of EVA International), Sarah Kelleher, Dr Rachel Warriner, and a thoughtful, personal and engaging presentation on the lifespan of the artist collective, Blue Funk, by Valerie Connor. Most presenters mentioned the ways in which 1990s art practice questioned and tested identity, both in terms of the nature of artworks, as well as in an institutional sense. The seminal exhibition ‘In A State’ at Kilmainham Gaol – curated by Jobst Graeve (the then-curator at Project Arts Centre) as part of the 1991 Dublin European Capital of Culture programme – was referenced in several papers. ‘In A State’ queried the collective shame, defensiveness and trauma in modern Ireland, with the participating artists deconstructing the processes of colonisation and nation-making, while challenging homogenous accounts of history, in favour of wider representation, particularly from women and the LGBTQ+ community. The Friday session closed with artist Alice Maher in conversation with Fiona Kearney (Director of Glucksman Gallery), followed by a
screening, hosted by UCC’s Department of Film and Screen Media, of two films by Vivienne Dick: Two Pigeons (1990) and A Skinny Little Man Attacked Daddy (1994). The latter film further underlined the appeal of exploring ‘the self ’ for Irish artists during the 1990s. The film’s non-linear narrative features the artist’s family and homeplace, with her nieces standing in for her sisters and vice versa, as she moves through time, learning how to be free of her home and family by embracing them. The screening was followed by a discussion with the department’s current artist-in-residence, Irish feminist filmmaker Pat Murphy, which was another reminder of the wealth of talent in Irish art. For the Saturday morning sessions, the conference moved to Crawford Art Gallery’s lecture theatre, which gave attendees the opportunity to experience Alice Maher’s ‘Vox Materia’ exhibition, referenced during the previous day’s papers. Dr Fionna Barber delivered the keynote address, ‘Irish Art and the Gender of Time’. Her paper took a broad view, moving from Manet’s portrait of artist Eva Gonzalez and the performative self-identity of Constance Markievicz, through to Miriam Shapiro’s ‘femmage methodology’ and the feminist performance, In Mourning and In Rage (1977), by Suzanne Lacy and Leslie Labowitz, which Barber describes as a “protest designed for media”. She also discussed the dialogue between the work of Alice Maher and Amanda Coogan across a decade. Alanna O’Kelly’s video installation, No Colouring Can Deepen the Darkness of Truth, was referenced in relation to the atemporality of trauma and place, and as an innovative method of engaging with the traumatic history of the Great Famine. Barber also spoke about ‘feminist intervention’ and the concept of ‘the maternal’ as disrupting the discursive formation of ‘nation’. The final session of the conference was a panel discussion with Alice Maher, Danny McCarthy, Vivienne Dick, Fionna Barber and Valerie Connor. Along with discussions held the previous day, this closing event worked to counterbalance the more intense academic lectures and presentations, ensuring that the conference stayed focused on artists and their work. It was also interesting to hear academic papers discussing pivotal artists, such as Alice Maher, who then spoke about her own experiences and intentions regarding her practice during this decade and in her career to date. Having many artists present also insured thought provoking and interesting questions coming from the audience. Rather than being an artworld version of Reeling in the Years, this conference did indeed reframe Irish art of the nineties – revaluating it from a place of memory and anecdote, into attentive art historical and academic frameworks, that made visible a range of intersectional, feminist and inclusive perspectives. Maeve Mulrennan is a curator, project manager and writer based in Galway City.
ON 16 NOVEMBER 2018, ‘Winter Seminar:
Lives of the Artists’ was launched at the National Gallery of Ireland. The two-day seminar was a joint effort by the Royal Hibernian Academy and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. Taking place over the three sites – with a range of activities including performances, panel discussions, walking tours and workshops – the seminar sought to understand the impetus of today’s artists to create, their relationship with the industry they find themselves reliant on, and the evolution of the art world. The title was taken from Giorgio Vasari’s seminal art historical text, The Lives of the Artists, which contains musings on the Renaissance artists that Vasari dubbed worthy of renown. The first night of the seminar opened with a keynote by Dr Sarah Thornton, a US-based writer, cultural sociologist and author of two books on the art world. Katy Fitzpatrick, Learning and Public Engagement Curator at TBG+S, provided the opening remarks, which comprised brief histories of the two host organisations and an introduction to Thornton. Thornton’s keynote, titled ‘The ‘true’ artist in a ‘false’ world – exploring the myths and realities of the art game’, explored the dichotomy of “authenticity versus artifice”, noting that the art world is often thought of as one marked by inauthenticity and populated by social hierarchies. Giving reasons for this line of thinking, she pointed out that art market prices undergo frequent manipulation and artworks are often nothing more than valuable financial assets to wealthy investors. Thornton outlined the many polarities that exist within the wider art world, conceding that the industry cannot exist within a single definitive framework; there exists a cluster of different subcultures with conflicting ideas about artists and art practice. Thornton quoted Ai Weiwei as saying: “The artist is the enemy of general sensibilities.” Later that evening, there was an opening reception and performance by artist Lisa Freeman at the RHA. Accompanied by two fellow artists, the searing performance of The Talk That Talks made use of the academy’s wide, accommodating stairwells and expansive floors. Uniformed in bright colours, the performers strode around the spectators, making sharp, declamatory statements about the politics of gender and power, and their construction within society. The performance ended as they silently, yet defiantly, ascended the stairs, leaving the audience to consider the questions posed. The second day began with a panel discussion called ‘What do artists do all day?’ chaired by RHA Director Patrick T. Murphy. The panellists included Philip Cottrell, Lecturer in History of Art at UCD, Dr. Ciarán Murphy, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCD, and artists Caoimhe Kilfeather, Eithne Jordan and Ronan McCrea. They discussed the quotidian aspects of art practice and how motherhood, working in academia, and travelling can all affect output. Kilfeather touched upon navigating the duality
of being an artist and a mother, while Jordan spoke about occupying the ‘in-between’ of her homes in Ireland and France. Both expressed that adaptability is central to the artist’s toolkit, if one wants to achieve a modicum of balance in life. Cottrell, a published writer of texts pertaining to sixteenth-century Venetian painting, commented on the distinctions between the modern art world and that of the Renaissance. These time periods are not at all dissimilar; in fact, those who commission art or crafts today bear the same expectations, regarding deadlines and finances, that a patron in the 1500s may have had. The next panel, ‘Credibility, Femininity and Legacy’, was chaired by Dr Lisa Godson, Visiting Research Fellow at Trinity College Dublin and head of NCAD’s Design History and Material Culture MA programme. Artists Eimear Walshe, Dragana Jurišić and Vivienne Dick examined how gender operates within their lives and the lives of other practitioners. Walshe spoke at length on the death of schoolgirl Ann Lovett, how the case continues to resonate in current Irish culture, and the ways in which this resonance informs their work. Topics of reputation, future representation and respectability as an artist were addressed by both Jurišić and Dick, with both agreeing that these should not impinge upon the artistic process. Following the panel discussions, there was a range of activities for guests to choose from, including: studio visits with Bassam Al-Sabah, Colin Martin, Alison Pilkington and many other artists; a viewing of Isadora Epstein’s performance piece The Studio Visit; and a movement workshop led by artists Viva Dean and Eimear Walshe. Those who attended Epstein’s performance at the RHA were treated to a biting, satirical exploration of life as a self-aggrandising male artist, bestowed with supposed genius. In TBG+S, Walshe and Dean articulated the religious contexts of Jacques Yverni’s The Annunciation (c.1435), through physical exercises and experiments with light and shadow. Guests performed each role depicted in the painting – including the Virgin Mary, the Christ child and the Archangel Gabriel – by engaging in a series of collaborative movements, culminating in a performance of the complete Annunciation scene, with Walshe reciting biblical scripture. ‘Lives of the Artists’ concluded with an informal closing reception in the Atrium space at TBG+S, where attendees and speakers reflected on the two days’ proceedings, which had been activated by valuable discussions and practical activities. This novel collaboration between the RHA and TBG+S succeeded in providing pragmatic insights into why artists produce and how their world has evolved since the Renaissance period. Diana Bamimeke is a writer and student of Classics, Art History and Archaeology at UCD.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January –February 2019
Columns
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Northern Ireland
Skills
Northern Excursions
Creative Empowerment
MANUELA PACELLA REFLECTS ON RECENT EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS IN NORTHERN IRELAND.
MIRIAM LOGAN OUTLINES SOME PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON ACTIVATING CREATIVITY.
IN RECENT YEARS, I have read about VAI’s
‘Speed Curating’ events, mainly in the context of the organisation’s annual Get Together, so I was delighted when VAI’s Northern Ireland Manager, Rob Hilken, invited me to participate in the event at Belfast Exposed on 17 November 2018. Speed Curating is part of VAI’s Professional Development Programme and was conceived as a platform for artists to present their works to one or more curators, during fast-paced 15-minute sessions. Despite my initial worries about the short time-frames and the high concentration required – especially because English isn’t my mother tongue – I found it a useful and generous format. Giving any kind of advice, listening, as well as sharing common ideas, allowed participants to experience mutually enjoyable first meetings. On 8 November, a gala ceremony and after party – curated by TONN Recordings, the music label of the visual artist Mary McIntyre with the French Madmoizel as a special guest – launched the third edition of MAC International, a biennial international arts prize and the largest in Ireland. As in previous editions, finalists were selected through an open-call process, which this time received more than 800 entries. The 2018 jury comprised Hugh Mulholland (Senior Curator at The MAC), Anne Barlow (Director at Tate St Ives) and Başak Şenova (Curator of the CrossSections project in Vienna, Helsinki and Stockholm). The winner was announced just before the launch, as Austrian artist, Nikolaus Gansterer, for his artwork, Wor(l)ding: a mesh work of sense of flux. The piece is installed in The MAC’s Upper Gallery and comprises a wall drawing, a hanging object and three single-channel video works – examples of his ‘Translecture’ performances. MAC International 2018 showcases a diverse range of disciplines, from installation and sculpture to photography, film and audiovisual installation. The 11 shortlisted artists (two of whom are artist duos) are from Austria, Canada, Croatia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Palestine, Romania, Turkey and USA, reaffirming the importance of the prize internationally, as well as asserting Belfast’s prominence on the contemporary art circuit. MAC International 2018 is displayed across all three galleries at The MAC until 31 March 2019. The launch of MAC International coincided with the twelfth edition of Belfast’s Outburst Queer Arts Festival. Among the collaborations between the festival and art spaces, the Golden Thread Gallery showed three stunning early videos by American filmmaker, Barbara Hammer, a pioneer of queer feminist cinema. The main gallery space presented the short video, Dyketactics! (1974) – considered the very first film made by a lesbian on lesbian sexuality – and two films from the late 80s: No No Nooky TV (1987) and Bedtime Stories I, II, III (1988). Both videos aimed to generate new perspectives on women’s bodies, beyond a very specific straight (and
male) audience. The first is an experimental and humorous video, made with an Amiga computer and a 16mm Bolex, in which everything is sexualised, even the monitor, the pixels and the electronic voice-over. Conversely, Bedtime stories explores this thematic on an intellectual level in three separate short chapters: The Wet Dream, The Erotic Intellect, and Clip, Grab and Paint. Queerness, together with a playful cynical attitude – reminiscent of performances by Vienna-based collective, Gelitin – is central to the work of Young Boy Dancing Group (YBDG), a collective of dancers formed in 2014 to critically interrogate modes of dance production, digital culture and institutionalisation. YBDG were selected by PS2 for a solo show in their new venue in Royal Avenue in Belfast. A selection of videos – made by the collective to be presented online, mainly on YouTube – were displayed on different types of monitors in a corner of the gallery, while their recent production, Fortress Europe, filmed on a beach, was projected in the centre of the space. Despite being recently invited by art institutions to participate in major events like the Athens Biennial, YBDG are most wellknown for their partly improvised and partly choreographed performances. These are recorded and launched online, to be seen by everybody, free from norms and restrictions, echoing the freedom and fluidity of the cast, who often dress in ‘savage’ costumes and engage in freeform movements. Dancing also permeated a recent exhibition at CCA Derry~Londonderry, titled ‘Smiling, Sweating and Resisting’ (27 October – 21 December 2018). The show developed thematically around the “promiscuous, politically-charged performances of carnival”. Sonia Boyce’s enigmatic two-channel video, Crop Over (2007), explores a harvest festival in Barbados, linked to the origins of sugar cane plantations in the Caribbean. Mitch Conlon’s Sometimes you never know what’s in someone’s heart is a collective performance made during the opening of the exhibition, which expands the artist’s research on the ‘nascent bashment’, hip hop and dancehall scenes in Belfast in the early 2000s. Faz que Vai (Set to go) is a 2016 film by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca, which analyses Brazil’s Frevo dance traditions. Wall paintings in acrylic, entitled Everything + Nothing-cca, by Susan Connolly, were inspired by the DIY Halloween aesthetic and were specifically conceived for the exhibition. CCA also took part in Outburst Festival with their ongoing reading group, booksvscigarettes, choosing the essay ‘On Liking Women’ by Andrea Long Chu, published in the 30th issue of American culture and politics magazine, n+1. The event took place on 17 November at the Black Box in Belfast, marking the end of the Outburst Festival, and concluding my stay in Northern Ireland, which, as always, was full of vibrant events to attend, and new artists to discover. Manuela Pacella is a freelance curator and writer based in Rome.
THE TERM ‘CREATIVITY’ is used so readily in everyday speech that it is in danger of having little meaning at all. Yet the subject of creativity is both well-researched and mapped. Creativity, simply put, is our innately given and naturally arising capacity to make and shape things in new or surprising ways. The philosophy that underpins creative empowerment holds that life is not static, but is an organic and dynamic system in which we are all players. Life is a moving picture and change is the only certainty. To empower our creativity, we need a methodology that will ground our ideas. To engage creatively means working with the known and the unknown. It asks us to grapple with many differing strands of thought, colour and form. Creativity has both predictable and unpredictable qualities. The non-predictable element is what gives creativity its novel and surprising dimension, while the predictable aspect respects the accumulated knowledge already in existence. Creativity has been described by one writer as a “tantalising paradox”. As visual artists, we are challenged to find ways of workings with a variety of givens, as well as applying imagination. We must show up, as Matisse suggested, “in innocence”, as well as attuning to the knowledge base of our particular field. We must stay with our process, non-attached to outcomes, while attempting to give form to our concepts. In spite of this challenge, there are some things worth remembering as we activate our creativity. Ideas or concepts are often the first signs of the creative surge. It may begin with a fleeting insight or vague intuition; it may arise as a problem to solve. Alex Osbourne, who spoke about ‘applied imagination’, coined the term ‘brainstorming’. To help optimise creative outcomes, he suggested we ask: “how can ideas or problems be adapted, modified, set in other contexts, reversed, combined, rearranged?” Such flexibility avoids the pitfalls of rigid mindsets and creates new options. Carl Rogers, a pioneer in person-centred psychology, suggested that there are inner and outer attitudes that encourage creativity. Developing empathetic acceptance and non-judgement as the creative process unfolds is central, however this should not exclude ongoing critical evaluation. Beyond this, we need the ability to stay grounded in reality and to self-evaluate emerging forms as they take shape. Fantasies, Rogers says, “may be extremely novel, yet they cannot usefully be defined as creative unless they manifest in some way”. The latter is where skillsets come into play, because while being creative is not necessarily all about mastery, we need a grasp of technique to bring forward ideas and to go beyond them. Exploration and experimentation are carried out with less time-wasting, when we understand and have some grasp of the know-how involved. Structuring our creative projects means breaking down tasks to a manageable size, helping us feel less anxious. S.M.A.R.T has become
a well-loved acronym employed by managers, which denotes “small, manageable, achievable, regular and timely”. With these steps we can have partial successes and stay positive when the inevitable obstacles arise. A lot of my practice has focused on comparing eastern and western ways of approaching obstacles. In the west, we are encouraged to confront and get stuck in. However, in the east, attitudes tend to favour moving around the obstacles, working with the natural way of change and transformation. Both are valid, yet wisdom seems to lie in knowing when to go forward and when to step back. Eureka moments occur when, after a struggle and even giving up all effort, the challenge seems to resolve itself. This leads to the folk expression that the “darkest hour is just before the dawn”. Psychologist Iain McGilchrist tells us that the individual often erroneously considers that the answer has appeared from nowhere. He explains “in fact it is the synthesising of the to and fro that takes place in the inter-hemispheric cooperation of right and left-brain function”. It seems spontaneous insight arises when, after a sustained effort, we leave the work for a time. As visual artists, we engage as catalysts and change agents. We act as conduits and channels for ideas that become part of material and non-material culture. We do this by weaving differing strands into forms that can then be absorbed. John Dewey saw art as being part of a triadic system that involves the artist, the creative viewer (audience) and the work of art itself. He was also concerned to heal the dichotomy that he believed arises when art becomes separated from life. He saw art as being an experience rooted in everyday life. Attuning to our creativity means accepting that we are players in an ecology where transformations occur in the mingling of opposite yet complementary differences. As Robert Rauschenberg suggested “the only thing we have in common is our differences”. Creativity is innately linked to our ability as living beings to give and receive, to express and absorb symbols as energy. Moreover, because each creative interaction in turn creates a new context, fresh and surprising outcomes are possible. This sense of unfolding is at the core of creative evolution for artists and the culture we live in. Keeping the creative spirit alive is vital in today’s world, because everyone’s wellbeing thrives on it.
Miriam Logan is a visual artist, who teaches creative empowerment. She is the author of The Art of Easing Conflict: Learn what it takes to be creative. miriamlogan.com
Regional Focus County Mayo
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Island Retreat Edward King Local Historian
Achill Artists Group Ronan Haplin Sculptor
IN THE VILLAGE of Dooagh on Achill Island, only fifty metres above the Atlantic shoreline, stands the old knitting factory. It is the original building where, in 1910, Eva O’Flaherty set up her St Colman’s Knitting Industries and also co-founded Scoil Acla with Emily Weddall, Darrell Figgis, Colm O’Loughlainn and Anita McMahon.1 Today, the old structure forms part of the home of John McHugh and Maggie Morrison and has also become their shared sculpture and painting studio. It is this unique, historic building in this remote location that has become the focus for a small group of artists on the island, known as the Achill Artists Group, who come to meet and show their work. On his return from America in 1992, John McHugh saw the need among a group of like-minded people to have a venue for an exhibition. A group of six artists came together and exhibited for the first time in 1994. These included Axel Miret, a Belgian artist, living on Achill at the time; Camille Souter, who recently returned to the island; as well as Aidan Bradley; Malcom Clarke and Patricia Cleland Clarke; and Maggie Morrison. The exhibition was held during the month of June – a time on the island that marks the start of the summer season. The writer and filmmaker, Bob Quinn, opened the first show in 1994 and amongst those who have opened the subsequent shows include: the poet, Paul Durcan; art critic, Aidan Dunne; curator, Catherine Marshall; artist, Mick O’Dea; and the Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy, Patrick T. Murphy. All of these exhibitions have been kindly supported by Mayo County Council. In 1998, I moved to the island with my wife and family to live and work. I set up studio and we opened the Ronan Halpin Gallery the fol-
lowing summer. The gallery opens during the summer months and shows my smaller sculpture pieces and Amanda Mac Mahon’s paintings. In 1999 I was invited to join the Achill Artists group, to exhibit as part of the show ‘Cumulus’ that year. The group has expanded over the subsequent years, to include the painters Amanda MacMahon and Willem Van Goor, as well as the printmakers Francis Van Maele and, Korean artist, Antic Ham. Printmaker, Margo McNulty, and painters, Mary Lavelle Burke and Imelda Kilbane, have also joined recently. The core group now numbers around ten artists, which is only a small reflection of the many painters, sculptors and photographers living and working on the island. The Achill Artist Group has come together regularly over the past number of years, usually with a two or three year gap. It has become a tradition for the group to invite artists from outside of the group to exhibit on each occasion. Amongst those invited have been the painter Joe Wilson, sculptor Kathlyn O’Brien, as well as Tim Morris and Gino Morris. In the summer of 2009, the exhibition, titled ‘Aurelia’ (obscure Latin names have always favoured by the group), was first shown in Dooagh and was subsequently invited to travel to Germany to show in the Kunsthaus Rhenania in Cologne. The exhibition was opened by the Irish Ambassador to Germany at the time. All of the exhibitions created by the group have been well-received over the past twenty-three years, with many of the shows being reviewed in the national press. Each exhibition has built upon the strong heritage tradition of artists living and working on – and being inspired by – the island, contributing rich artistic and cultural life of the community, even as we move into contemporary times. Summer of 2020 will see the group come together again for the eleventh time. Now where’s my Latin dictionary? Notes 1 Scoil Acla is an organisation that promotes traditional Irish music, arts and culture on Achill Island.
Achill Artists Group exhibition, ‘Aurelia’, 2014, installation view; image courtesy of Ronan Haplin
Henrich Böll Cottage, Achill Island; photograph courtesy of Thomas Brezing
HEINRICH BÖLL, one of the foremost of Germany’s post-World War II writers, was born in 1917 into a liberal Catholic family in Cologne. Appalled by the rise of Nazism, he was nonetheless drafted into the German Army in 1939. Four times wounded, he witnessed the futile devastation of war. In 1945, Böll and his wife, Annemarie Čech, returned to the rubble city of Cologne, where he began his writing career, joining Guppe 47, an association of writers dedicated to promoting democracy in literature and journalism. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1972. Böll first visited Ireland and Achill Island in 1954 on the advice of friends – German filmmaker, George Fleishman, and his Irish wife Moira. The island was reputed as a retreat for writers and painters. In 1958, the Bölls bought a simple cottage in Dugort, which became their Irish home. In Ireland, Heinrich Böll is best known for his Irisches Tagebuch (Irish Journal). First published in 1957, it became the travel bible for Germans at the time, seeking out the idyll of an unspoilt rural Ireland. Following the passing of Böll in 1992, the poet John F. Deane and Clodagh King (a friend of Heinrich and Annemarie) discussed with the Böll family the possibility of using the cottage as a retreat for artists. Their response was generously positive. Böll’s son, René, remarked in an interview, “We think it is very important to have a place where artists can work without any restrictions or conditions. The cottage can become even more of an international attraction and a living memory for my father.” A local committee was formed, to establish and run the residency. Mayo County Council were enthusiastic in supporting the project, granting an initial annual stipend of £4,000 to cover running costs and a bursary for each artist’s residency. This grant has continued each year since, with regular increments. The Achill Heinrich Böll Association took ownership of the cottage in 2001, following support for capital funding from then Arts Minister, Síle de Valera, and former Minister for the Gaeltacht, Donnacha O’Gallachoir. In February 2005, the newly restored Heinrich Böll Cottage
was opened by Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O’Donoghue TD. The Heinrich Böll Residency is run on a small budget by the voluntary committee, with revenue funding coming from Mayo County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. In October each year, artists and writers are selected from a large number of applicants for the following year. Residencies are split 60/40 between writers and visual artists – half from Ireland and half from abroad. The usual duration of a residency is two weeks. Artists are awarded an unconditional bursary during their stay. However, many choose to engage through readings, exhibitions and workshops with the local schools and community. On arrival, the incoming resident is greeted by the caretaker, who gives the rundown on where to find essentials and advises on practical matters. The cottage has two bedrooms, Böll’s writing room, a study, a studio and a living room, with a turf fire burning in the same fire grate used by the Böll family. There is no television or internet; outside communication is by landline or personal mobile phone. A sturdy bicycle is available for those without a car. Over the years, resident artists have found the peacefulness of the house highly conducive to work and perhaps the inspirational spirit of the great author is also at work. As poet Paul Durcan put it: “The whole project of the Heinrich Böll Cottage is constantly validated by a sense of the presence of the original Writer Resident himself, as a master author who understood the necessity of privacy and the rightness of solitude.” Applications for the Heinrich Boll residency are open until 31 September each year. For information on the residency and how to apply visit their website.
heinrichboellcotage.com
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Regional Focus
Rural Transmissions
Solitude and Solidarity
Breda Burns Audiovisual Artist
Norah Brennan Visual Artist
LIVING AT THE edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I
have documented, from my back door, that great expanse of water, in all its changing topography, weather and moods. My work is born out of this landscape, yet it is equally about its people and our place in the universe. As an artist, I respond to the cyclical interaction between environment and the individual. I work in a variety of media, on interdisciplinary projects that have a continuous narrative, with layers and levels that reveal themselves in different ways. My socially-engaged practice combines sound, video and performance, alongside large-scale visuals on paper and vinyl. Artist Gráinne O’Reilly and I, research, present and produce The Arts Show on Westport Radio. Over the last five years, we have interviewed over 400 national and international artists from many genres and at various stages of their careers. As artists interviewing other artists, we have an understanding of the rich arts community resident in, or passing through, the region. The experience of presenting The Arts Show has informed my own practice, leading to a series of audiovisual projects such as ‘Where are we…’, consisting of on-location interviews with people who traverse between the arts and other lives. The resulting documentary was broadcast on The Arts Show, as well as being relayed through five large ‘old school’ horn speakers, which visually transmit the notion of sound. The horns were placed in three isolated locations such as the bogs behind the Crough Patrick and a hidden beach in Mayo and filmed as the broadcast went out live. The results formed an audiovisual installation, which was exhibited at CCAM Galway and Claremorris Gallery in 2015. ‘Archiving Activism’ was a commission by Bealtaine Festival 2017, in partnership with Sligo Arts Office, Mayo Arts Office and curator Linda Shevlin, in response to the theme of ‘The Collective’. For this project, I collated an archive of the vanguards of the arts community from the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, creating a series of radio interviews and a collection of ephemera relating to the artist-led movement in the Sligo/Mayo/ Leitrim region. The project also led to the publication of the Archiving Activism Manifesto (with a commissioned text by the author Brian Ley-
den), culminating with solo exhibitions in The Model, Sligo, and Árus Inis Gluaire, Belmullet. ‘Archiving Activism’ led to other projects, such as the sound piece I am here with… for Claremorris Open 2017, curated by Tom Morton, and the sound piece Wo sin weir… which was presented as part of Farbe Bekennen symposium and exhibition, organised by Ralph Gelbert in Germany (September 2017). Previous solo exhibitions include ‘Here Goes…’ at The Green Fuse Gallery, Westport, 2018 and ‘Between Tides and Peripheries’ at The Claremorris Gallery in 2016. When I was first heading to college, an extensive search by my parents to find at least one other artist with whom to discuss the idea, turned up just one other artist! How things have changed. This diversity was evident with the group exhibition, ‘Ipseity’, which included the artists Alice Maher, Emma Bourke, Janet Mullarney, Katherine Boucher Beug, Stevey Scullion and myself. This took place alongside an open-call for the exhibition ‘Identity’, both of which were curated by Vincent O’Donoghue and exhibited in a disused supermarket, which welcomed thousands of visitors over six days of the Westport Music & Arts Festival (24 to 29 October 2018). Alongside these events were other exhibitions, including ‘I AM’ in McGings, curated by Caroline Masterson, Gráinne O’Reilly and myself. I am also a member of the Wright Artists collective, along with nine other artists. To get the feel for the arts in Mayo, one can take the occasional ‘artbus’ – a guided bus tour around the county’s publicly funded art centres, organised for specific projects. The tour includes Linenhall Arts Centre (Castlebar), Custom House Studios and Gallery (Westport), Árus Inis Gluaire (Belmullet), Ballinglen Arts Foundation (Ballycastle) and Ballina Arts Centre. Add to this a very active and approachable Mayo Arts Office, and things bode well for the arts in the area. At present, I am working towards exhibitions in The Hamilton Gallery, Sligo in Steptember 2019 and Luan Gallery, Athlone (Summer 2019). In February, I am also taking up a 3 week residency at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. bredaburns.com
Breda Burns, looking through (detail), 2018, photographic print, vinyl on reflective surface; courtesy of the artist
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Norah Brennan, Where Else It Be (detail), silkscreen; courtesy of the artist
I AM A VISUAL artist and printmaker, living in
the town of Claremorris in south Mayo. This is the same Claremorris that, for forty years, hosted the Claremorris Open Exhibition. Unfortunately, there was no Claremorris Open Exhibition in 2018. This is a loss to the town and to the many visitors, including the bus-loads of school children and teenagers, who got to see the show each year. It is also a great loss for artists all over Ireland, who got to show their work as part of the exhibition and stood a chance of winning one of the Open’s cash prizes. Perhaps the Open had run its course, but if the funding for the exhibition had not diminished over the last number of years, it might have continued into the future. If it does not return, then Claremorris needs something to replace it that will continue to engage, amuse and be as valued as the Open was for so many years. I am lucky to have my own studio where I live, but I’m aware that others are not so lucky. There are no communal studios in the town, no arts centre and no spaces where artists can come together to meet and work. This is the reality for artists living in rural Ireland. So, what does one do, to combat the solitary business of making art? In this instance, I decided to put out a call locally, for fellow visual artists who would like to meet each other, from all disciplines, whether professional, self-taught or hobbyist. This is how Claremorris Visual Arts Community (CVAC) was formed in 2015. Since then, we have exhibited together a number of times. Amongst our other activities, we host regular workshops, which are facilitated by different members in turn. But most importantly, the group acts as a platform for members to meet socially, share information, give each other advice, and generally support each other in their individual artistic endeavours. I have also been a member of Galway Print Studio, since graduating from GMIT in 2011 with a BA hons. in Fine Art Printmaking. The equipment in Galway Print Studio is vital for my work as a printmaker and it is the only place north of Limerick where this equipment is available for use on an open-access basis. If the studio were to close down, I would have to travel
much further afield. This is why the threatened closure of the studio would be disastrous for me and for present and future printmakers wanting to access these facilities. At the time of writing, we at the studio are endeavouring to secure both members and funding to keep the premises open. Last year was a busy year for me, with two separate solo shows. In January, I unveiled ‘Moving Along’ at Ballina Arts Centre (11 January to 24 February 2018). This show was the culmination of a year’s work and it comprised abstract silkscreen images. These images were conceived while on residency in Wales in 2017, where I had the space and time to begin a new body of work. This collection is about giving expression to my thoughts and fears, my worries and hopes for where I am now and how the future will alter things. Life changes and life changes us. ‘Moving Along’ is my attempt to make sense of the passage of time and the changes that time brings. My work is process-led and I often start with just a glimmer of a half-formed idea. I allow these small beginnings to lead me where they will, relying on intuition to get me to the finished piece of work. My second solo show, ‘Synthesis’, ran from 16 April to 11 May 2018 at Alley Arts Theatre and Conference Centre in Strabane, County Tyrone. For this exhibition, I filled the large gallery space with a selection of collages, developed over the last few years, along with new work that I made especially for the show. Since my student days, I have used collage as a means of resolving issues of composition and colour in my work, and I have developed a love for this method of making art.
norahbrennan.ie
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Regional Focus
Body Language
Local, International
Saoirse Wall Visual Artist
John McHugh Manager, Custom House Studios & Gallery
I MOVED TO Mayo from Dublin when I was twelve and lived there until I left for university in London and then Dublin. After finishing my BA in Fine Art Media at NCAD in 2014, I have moved back and forth between both places. Westport has been a place that I can retreat to for recuperation after busy periods in Dublin. Aside from being a place for rest, Mayo has also provided me with many opportunities to make art. In school, I had a really generous and engaging art teacher called Pat Gillivan. I am deeply grateful for her encouragement, which gave me an opportunity to practice a more nuanced interest in art as a young person. Mayo Arts Office have also awarded me multiple grants towards buying materials and in 2017 granted me a bursary to spend two weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig. While on residency there, I swam in the lake most days. Using a small concrete jetty, as well as pebbles and debris found in the water, I made Welcome to the lake (2018), a role-play video in which I am a receptionist for people visiting the lake. I note down their details and recommend things they can do while visiting. This was informed by my enduring interest in ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response). ASMR videos attempt to trigger a tingling feeling and relaxation in viewers. They often take the form of role-play videos of situations involving quiet one-to-one contact. Recently, I showed my work as part of ‘Between Structure and Agency’ (25 October 2018) at Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle – a screening programme of video works by Irish artists, organised by LUX and curated by Alice Butler. This event included my film Sticky Encounter (2016) and a new untitled live performance. Sticky Encounter is a performance-to-video, in which the protagonist attempts to describe a pain that they are experiencing. After becoming increasingly frustrated that their testimony of pain is not being believed, they swallow the viewer. My performance at Tyneside Cinema functioned as a sort of sequel to Sticky Encounter. Positing the cinema screen as the inside of the protagonist’s body, I delivered a speech, from the position of a character who is a personification of the protagonist’s pain, to those who had pre-
viously been swallowed in Sticky Encounter. The event marked the launch of a tour of the ‘Between Structure and Agency’ video programme, which was shown at several venues across the UK over the course of 2018. In the past, I have shown my work internationally, including at Hotel Maria Kapel (Netherlands), Fokidos (Greece), HDLU (Croatia) and Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland (Peru), among others. My video-based portrait, Gesture 2 (2014), was shortlisted for the Hennessy Portrait Prize in 2014 and is now held in the collection of the National Gallery of Ireland. I’ve recently moved to Glasgow and am currently taking part in School of the Damned, a year-long, UK-based alternative postgraduate art course directed by its students. We meet at weekends in a different place each month, depending on where students are based. I am a slow thinker and it takes me a long time to process feelings. I find articulating things in words quite difficult and communication for me is frequently non-verbal. This shows in my work – I don’t use words very much, and when I do, it is in a way that highlights the limits of verbal language and my personal frustration with it. My practice involves tuning in to subtle feelings prompted by certain gestures, sounds and materials. Mostly this leads to work that takes the form of performance for video or audio. Westport sits in Clew Bay, which is said to have as many islands as there are days of the year. On a clear day, from the top of the mountain you can see them all. If you sit at the Boheh Stone on 24 August and look to Croagh Patrick, the sun appears to roll down the side of the mountain as it sets. On the opposite side of the mountain there is a cluster of standing stones that point to a niche in the shoulder of the mountain. On the Winter Solstice, the sun sets into this nook when viewed from these stones. These special things that sit in amongst the everyday, prompt such strong physical and emotional responses in me that I feel motivated to try to make something that contains even a little of that indescribable energy. saoirsewall.com
Saorise Wall, Welcome to the Lake, 2018; HD video still; image courtesy of the artist
Michael Wann, visiting Dooagh (detail), 2017; image courtesy of the artist Custom House Studios & Gallery
CUSTOM HOUSE STUDIOS is an artist-led stu-
dio and gallery space in Westport Quay, which houses seven studios, a print workshop and two gallery spaces. It is funded on a not-for-profit basis by the social inclusion agency Pobal, Mayo County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. The studios were initially established in 2002 by the Westport Artists Group, in conjunction with Mayo County Council. Westport is a coastal town with a strong twentieth-century tradition of locally-owned manufacturing industry. Over the years, these manufacturing trades have waned and have been replaced by a vibrant tourist industry. Custom House Studios hosts a full programme of exhibitions, print workshops and studio occupancies, including a residency aimed at artists from overseas. We host around 16 exhibitions annually across our two gallery spaces, each lasting for four weeks. Our exhibitions attract a diverse range of audiences, from local non-arts specialists, to distinct national and international audiences visiting the region. Our exhibition programme is recognised by the public, art writers and artists as being of a consistently high quality and standard, in terms of both artistic content and presentation. We try to keep our programme as dynamic and varied as possible, to maximise engagement and ensure repeat visits from the public. Artists taking part in our exhibitions and studio occupancies are selected through a fair and independent artist peer selection panel, which changes every year. The applications we receive are reflective of the concerns of contemporary artists from an international base. Selection does not have a predetermined outcome – ensuring a diversity of exhibitions and studio usage. The artists who exhibit in our galleries benefit from a commission rate of 25%, while our artist fees and artist expenses are funded through Mayo County Council and Arts Council of Ireland. Information on our application process for studios and exhibition opportunities can be found on our website. Our studios are occupied on an annual basis, with renewable leases for periods of up to three years, offering secure spaces with 24-hour access at reduced rents, including all utilities. One of
our studios offers shorter-term stays, attracting artists from the UK, Germany, France, Holland, USA and Austria, as well as Ireland. We host an annual month-long funded artist exchange with Krems in Austria, including a bursary, studio and living space. Our studios prove desirable for recent graduates living in the west after college, as well as established artists working on specific projects or relocating from cities, in order to sustain their working careers. The printmaking studio is accessible to artists on a day-by-day basis, offering use of all facilities, materials and equipment at cost price. We also host workshops in printmaking with master printers. The print room is also available for guest artists and artists-in-residence to produce a substantial edition of prints on a flexible and efficient basis. Custom House Studios remains embedded in the local community of Westport and rural west County Mayo. We work with state, community and local public agencies on an ongoing basis, including Mayo County Council, the Arts Council, Galway Mayo Institute of Technology, Westport College of Further Education and Westport Arts Festival. We have also successfully worked with artists from Carrowbeg Industries – a Western Care centre providing services for those with disabilities – with support funding from Westport Lions Club and Mayo Arts Office. We host an annual Upstart project where participants engage in the annual end-of-year group exhibition. In 2018, the group worked with sound artist, Christopher Coe (also known as Digital Primate), to produce four five-minute sound art pieces. These sound pieces reflected on the interests and concerns of the participants and were launched to great acclaim on 9 December 2018. We have completed a busy programme in 2018 which included exhibitions by Maureen O’Connor, Ralph Gelbert and Joanna Hopkins. We look forward to 2019, with shows by Conor O’Grady, Ann Quinn, Mary Kelly, Nuala Clarke and Katherine O’Sullivan, among many others. customhousestudios.ie
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Community & Collaboration Orla Henihan Acting Artistic Director, Linenhall Arts Centre
THE LINENHALL ARTS Centre, Castlebar, started life in 1976 as the Education Centre located in the old Methodist Church on The Mall in the town. It was funded by the Department of Education and set up as a pilot project to take temporary exhibitions from the important collections in the National Museum, the National Gallery and the National Library. Quite quickly the centre also began to develop its own programme of exhibitions, theatre, music and cinema, focusing on the contemporary arts and bringing quality performances into the area. In 1986 the centre moved to its present home in the Linen Hall – which was built in 1790 by Lord Lucan, Castlebar’s principal landlord. When the pilot project was reviewed, a commitment was made to continue providing an arts service and in 1990 the Arts Council came onboard to fund the newly formed Linenhall Arts Centre. The Linenhall shows a range of contemporary art, with an exhibition programme running throughout the year in the main gallery space. The work ranges from that of younger emerging artists, to those of international reputation. The visual arts programme is curated by our Visual Arts Selection Committee, who meet once or twice annually to consider submissions. All selected artists are offered technical and installation support. Gallery talks and workshops are also frequently programmed as part of these events. Currently showing in the gallery is Cléa van der Grijn’s touring exhibition, ‘Jump’ (23 November 2018 to 5 January 2019). ‘Jump’ is a newly commissioned body of work exploring the rational, social and emotional circumstances constructed around time and memory. The exhibition consists of a series of new paintings by van der Grijn, as well as an ambitious film work she wrote and directed, with collaborations from Joseph P. Hunt, Michael Cummins and Ciaran Carty. ‘Jump’ is an example of an exhibition that came about through partnership with other venues, namely Mermaid Arts Centre (Wicklow), Courthouse Gallery & Studios (Clare), Solomon Gallery (Dublin) and The Hamilton Gallery (Sligo). We have a number of exhibitions programmed for the coming year. From 11 January to 16
February, we will be showing Markus Davies’s ‘Beyond and Between’. Davies’s paintings are an abstracted, interpretive response to the built environments, through which he travels. They are a personal evaluation of his daily surroundings, addressing the simple experience of the transitory moment. Louise Peat’s ‘In-Between Worlds’ (22 February to 30 March 2019) examines how the development of an online social world is affecting identity and social behaviour. She focuses on communication and alludes to the way people today keep in touch by interacting through a screen – via social media and internet networks – trying to perpetuate social bonds, relations and intimacy. From 5 April to 11 May, we will also show Nathalie Daoust’s exhibition ‘Korean Dreams’ – a complex photographic series that probes the unsettling vacuity of North Korea. Piercing its veil with her lens, these images reveal a country that seems to exist outside of time, as a carefully choreographed mirage. The Linenhall also shows visual art emanating from local community practice in the foyer space. Examples of these exhibitions include: ‘Paper, Light, Shadow’, an exhibition of paper cuts created by a group of Syrian teenagers, who worked with the artist Maeve Clancy; ‘Hearth: Art for Older People at Home’ which showed work resulting from a Mayo-based art programme targeting rural isolation; and ‘The Big Picture’ – a project created by fifth and sixth class students from Newport National School, in collaboration with artist P.J. Lynch, which was based on a local story from the Folklore Commission’s ‘Schools Collection’ from the 1930s. The Linenhall is also a founding member of the Mayo Collaborative, a partnership of the five publicly funded visual art spaces in County Mayo. The members work together to produce large-scale visual art events across the five venues. Events to date include ‘Niamh O’Malley’ (2013) and ‘Kathleen Lynn: Insider on the Outside’ (2016), with another project planned for 2019. Artists interested in exhibiting at the Linenhall Arts Centre can find more information on our website. thelinenhall.com
Nathalie Daoust, Health Care, 2016, 35mm analogue photography; courtesy of the artist and Linenhall Arts Centre
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Festival
Mark Leckey, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, 1999, video installation, Electric; photograph ©Jonathan Sammon, courtesy TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Synontic State ÁINE PHILLIPS REFLECTS ON TULCA FESTIVAL OF VISUAL ARTS 2018, CURATED BY LINDA SHEVLIN.
A PERSON IN complete accord with their environment is described as being in a ‘syn-
tonic state’. Curated by Linda Shevlin, this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in Galway examined this concept. The artists, thinkers and writers assembled by Shevlin offered different perspectives on this theme, generating various possibilities for viewers to attain syntonic experiences through art. A vibrant example of human and environmental accord was created on the opening night by Aoibheann Greenan with The Life of Riley. Taking the form of a street procession, led by a lone piper, the work involved a number of Galway buskers, who entertained the crowds, alongside the artist and her cast of performers, animating the nighttime city streets and leading the audience from the festival gallery to the club. Greenan’s performance incorporated wildly embellished, hybrid costumes and props that mingled elements of Irish and Mexican visual motifs. Darkly funny, bizarre and congruent with Galway’s street performance culture, the event also presented a contemporary take on histories of the Great Famine period, a subject in Ireland deserving of new modes of analysis and interpretation. Video documentation of the performance was later presented to great effect on the top floor of the Fishery Watchtower Museum, a unique Victorian building that houses a collection of fishery memorabilia and vintage photographs. TULCA was originally initiated 16 years ago, by Galway artists and curators, to counter the distinct lack of visual art spaces and resources in the city. This deficiency unfortunately persists, with space now at a premium, in the run up to Galway 2020; however, TULCA continues to enliven empty venues with contemporary art each year. Columban Hall, a former Congregational church, was theatrically lit to produce a unifying sense of anticipation and discovery. Helen Hughes commanded the space with her series of collapsed inflatable forms, deluged with paint, like extravagant mollusks or the discarded parts of an alien apparatus. Both Laura Ní Fhlaibhín and Rosie O’Reilly’s installations were complex narrative works involving multiple elements, correlating with each other to give the impression of an uncommon museum. Another repurposed space, the festival gallery at Fairgreen House, displayed ‘Empathy Lab 2018’, a series of paintings by Colin Martin exploring ambiguous sci-fi subjects betraying modernist futuristic fantasies. Martin’s realism utilises a calm and banal painterly execution, to chilling effect. Robot children and cyberphobic computer
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
banks assert the future is now and it is sufferable. Conor McGarrigle’s #RiseandGrind gave the opposite impression. His ordered algorithmic systems of thought, manifested across interconnected screens, seemed beyond human apprehension and tolerance. Denis McNulty’s video installation, David (Timefeel), featured the music and animated stills of a fresh-faced Bruce Springsteen, trapped in an endless recursive edit. An exquisite contradiction to these restrained works was Stella Rahola Matutes’s Babel, teetering upright pillars of shimmering borosilicate glass. Invigilators hovered nearby to defend the delicate baroque shafts from the vibration of viewer’s footfall. This building has a vast underground concrete edifice, which was occupied by Jesse Jones’s Zarathustra, cinematic documentation of the Artane Band performing in an abandoned Ballymun swimming pool, wistfully redolent of failed housing projects in Dublin’s recent past. The bleak chamber was haunted by the notorious past atrocities and abuses perpetrated on the children of the original Boys Band, part of the Artane industrial school. As explored in much of the works included in Shevlin’s edition of TULCA, the ‘syntonic’ also evokes sensations of longing for previously experienced states of harmony or oneness with our surroundings. Nostalgia and a yearning for an idealised past or future, was succinctly expressed in Cities of Gold and Mirrors (2009), the work of Cyprien Gaillard installed in 126, Galway’s artist-run gallery. This 16mm film has the aura of seductive lost worlds. A mirrored tower block dissolving in a controlled explosion, and the sun-drenched rutting contests of young men, provided haunting metaphors for evanescent desire. In syntonic accord at the Electric nightclub, Mark Leckey’s 1999 cult film, Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, used found footage to show the evolution of Britain’s nightlife, from Northern Soul and disco to rave culture. Joanne Laws also developed this theme with her text for the festival’s catalogue, which presented an ethnography of rave culture, rooted in her lived experience. She writes memorably that “when returning to a place where I’ve previously spent a lot of time, I half expect to see ghosts of myself in the street, going about everyday business”.1 These phantoms of place and identity were further elaborated in Bassam Al-Sabah’s newly commissioned CGI film work and sculptural installation, Wandering wandering with the sun on my back (2018), at NUIG Gallery. The film features a shimmering young man, trapped in a series of bizarre architectures located in dystopian, desert-like landscapes. Reminiscent of computer game aesthetics, the film implicates the viewer in the protagonist’s struggle to endure traumatic displacements, amidst transcendent, hallucinogenic transformations. Galway Arts Centre’s ground floor collocated the vibrant neo-fauvist-style paintings and shrine-like banners of Eleanor McCaughey, in her multipart work, The blooddimmed tide is loosed. In close proximity, Gavin Murphy’s wall installation and narrative video explored the material and cultural histories of the now-defunct Eblana Theatre at Dublin’s Busáras. The work captured fading aspirations of the modern Irish state to locate public memory in our past fantasies of social organisation. Upstairs in the centre, Paul Murnaghan tethered a blackened inflatable island to a heavy weight, under a relentlessly blowing fan, a sad and funny tableau in contrast to Marcel Vidal’s pitch-black colonnades, which incorporated petrified deer hooves and hardware materials, implying a sadistic but satirical violence. Ciarán Óg Arnold showed the intriguingly titled photographic series, I went to the worst of bars hoping to get killed, channeling Wolfgang Tillmans’s sentiment that “only when you are aware of how tragic life can be, can you also enjoy the depth of a party through the night”.2 Other works at the centre were Ciara O’Kelly’s dual-screen video installation, which uses the promotional languages of corporate advertising, with slick humour and elegance. Susanne Wawra’s photo-transfer paintings, based on personal archives from her childhood in East Germany, were suggestive of the dim and aching memory of lost social realities. TULCA events this year included a ‘Nostalgic Listening Club’ with Mark Garry, where participants honoured and shared beloved music collections, housed across old and defunct formats, such as cassette tapes, vinyl, gramophone discs and CDs. The Domestic Godless returned to the city soon after a GIAF residency, resuming their crusade to bring flavoursome tastes to celebrate and expand the culturally and historically entangled relationship between society and food. Collaborating with Deirdre O’Mahony in Mind Meitheal, along with EU research centre, CERERE, they presented new imaginings for a ‘heritage cereal renaissance’. Giving material form to this project, Sadhbh Gaston’s emphatic embroidered fabric banners were installed in Sheridan’s on the market. In addition, British writer and journalist Owen Hatherley spoke to Declan Long about his new book, Ministry of Nostalgia, described as a “stimulating polemic” against “austerity nostalgia”. This was followed by a screening of the radical documentary HyperNormalisation by British filmmaker, Adam Curtis, which was introduced by Conn Holohan. In all, TULCA 2018 provided a rich mix of speculative viewpoints on syntony – a state that seems difficult to attain in modern life, as evidenced by the disconnect we currently manifest, in relation to our ecological and political environments. Clearly, a syntonic state is something to aspire to.
Festival
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Top: Jesse Jones, Zarathustra, HD film, installation view, Fairgreen House; photograph ©Jonathan Sammon, courtesy TULCA Festival of Visual Arts Middle: ‘Nostalgic Listening Club’ with Mark Garry, 10 November, The Mechanics Institute, photograph ©Jonathan Sammon, courtesy TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Áine Phillips is an artist based in County Galway. Notes 1 Joanne Laws, ‘Feed Your Head: The Speculative Futures of Rave’, TULCA 2018 catalogue essay. 2 Wolfgang Tillmans quoted in Ha Duong, ‘Photographers Who Captured the Ecstasy and Abandon of Rave Culture’, 7 September 2018, artsy.net.
Bottom: Eleanor McCaughey, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, 2018, installation view, Galway Arts Centre; photograph ©Jonathan Sammon, courtesy TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
How is it Made?
Perspective and Vision VERONICA O’NEILL REFLECTS ON CLÉA VAN DER GRIJN’S TOURING EXHIBITION, ‘JUMP’.
Top: Cléa van der Grijn, JUMP, 2018, oil on board, 152 × 152 cm
Cléa van der Grijn, JUMP (2018), film still; all images courtesy the artist
Bottom: Cléa van der Grijn, JUMP, 2018, neon, 36 × 18 inches
NO DEFINITION OF art can be based solely upon an exam-
ination of artworks, just as no definition of reality can be found where we would naturally look to define a thing, at its instance of manifestation in the world. Arthur C. Danto makes this observation in relation to Andy Warhol’s Brillo boxes, noting that: “since any definition of art must compass the Brillo boxes, it is plain that no such definition can be based upon an examination of artworks” (Danto 1981: vii). The paradoxical challenge of deflecting the gaze of the viewer from the artwork, through confrontation with the artwork itself, is central to the task of the artist. An immersive exhibition, ‘JUMP’ by Sligo-based artist Cléa van der Grijn, explores this challenge. Taking the form of an installation, ‘JUMP’ includes a neon piece, based on the artist’s own handwriting, a series of new paintings and an ambitious film work, developed in collaboration with Joseph P. Hunt, Michael Cummins and Ciaran Carty. This new body of work was commissioned by Mermaid Arts Centre, where it was exhibited from 1 October to 3 November 2018, with subsequent shows funded through the Arts Council’s Touring and Dissemination of Work scheme. The exhibition is currently showing in Linenhall Arts Centre, Mayo, until 5 January and will tour to three other venues later this year: Courthouse Gallery and Studios, Clare (18 January – 23 February); Solomon Gallery, Dublin (8 – 30 March); and Hamilton Gallery, Sligo (12 April – 11 May). Across each venue, a giant custom-built viewing pod, in the shape of a traditional Japanese bento box, is installed in the same space as the paintings. This pod holds the experience of the film, while in turn both being contained by the paintings and holding them in its orbit. Lacquered poplar plywood creates a smooth exterior surface and the simple shape is both formal and fluid, stylish and practical. A countdown clock invites the viewer to enter the cavernous space and the experience is shared with a small group of people. The blackout and curved space create a total focus on the moving
image and sound at the interior, while in turn, elements of the soundtrack bleed out into the gallery space, resonating with other elements of the exhibition. The way the different elements of the installation relate is as important, if not more so, than any individual element. The pod contains the experience of the film, which is central to the work, at the centre of the work; and although separated and in a space of its own, it is held by the paintings that surround it on the walls. This creates a strong sense of moving from known to unknown; of going inside, away from materiality, away from what we can know in an overlying sense and into that pool of what is more, both to reality and to ourselves, including what is unconscious. The paintings depict parts of the body that can typically be seen through the eyes, such as the hands and feet, as well as parts of the body that cannot, including the eyes themselves. From this perspective, we remain ‘up in the air’, unable to form a complete picture of any(thing) in particular. The pod, in contrast, provides an immersive experience, and the viewer feels close to, held by, and ultimately in the grip of the film; they cannot look away. While the overall relation of the different elements of the installation remains the same regardless of the setting – the neon beckons, the paintings engage, and the film takes by surprise and compels – the experience of the film is purposely presented in such a way that it offers exactly the same experience to the viewer wherever they may be viewing it. If we cast back to van der Grijn’s Self Portrait, previously exhibited in 2016 in the Model, Sligo, we have a sense of what is to come. Part of an ongoing photographic project documenting the artist’s life through medical trauma, the photograph depicts the artist, unconscious during an operation on her eye, eyelids pinned back, unflinching and unable to blink, due to mechanical restraints. The fact that the physical eye is out of action in that moment only serves to highlight a deeper vision, the kind of vision that, once realised, is no longer
a matter of choice; we cannot tear our eyes away, even if we close them, become blind or unconscious. As van der Grijn has pointed out, the eyes are the first part of the body to decline upon death. This is clearly an important concept in the film, which uses van der Grijn’s own eyes as props, serving on many levels to bring about a shift in perspective. More than merely deflecting our gaze by pointing, van der Grijn invites us to look at what she sees, through her very eyes. Like moving into a darkened room, it takes a while for vision to adjust. The female protagonist in the film reaches out for the new eyes, but these are not just intuitive eyes for the blind, dying or dead to see through – they are literally the artist’s eyes, and by extension, they are our own. The importance of this can be understood, not just in relation to the recurring themes of van der Grijn’s work, but the way these themes relate and what is left unexpressed or undefined – the space in-between. While themes of time, space, perspective, memory and perception – elements we use to construct our experience in the world – are central, the question of where this construction occurs, somewhere ‘in-between’, along with a way of looking, vision, predominate. The viewer is drawn to look, within a space that is neither here nor there, inside nor outside, conscious nor unconscious, underlying nor overlying. This space in-between, together with this way of seeing, is the space of art, of trauma, of life in its terrifying and glorious immediacy. Juxtaposing artforms and playing with themes of perception, time, space and memory, ‘JUMP’ leads the viewer into a space where they come face to face with life, in a way that is perhaps only possible through the lens of death. From the moment of entering the exhibition, the viewer is drawn to look; once attention is gained, they cannot look away. Veronica O’Neill is a researcher and translator based in Galway.
The Visual Artists' News Sheet
Critique Edition 41: January – February 2019
Tomas Penc, ENDUSER, 2018, audio/visual installation, holographic projectors, sound, duration 3:50 minutes, dimensions variable; photograph by venividiphoto.net
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
‘MANMADE’ Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown 2 November 2018 – 23 January 2019
Kathryn Nelson, Julie McGowan & Sandra Turley, Ghost Net, 2016, cotton and text; image courtesy of Millennium Court Arts Centre
THE CURRENT EXHIBITION, ‘MANMADE’,
Kate Ritchie, Beachkeeping No.3, 2018, found mixed plastics, bone, wood and cabinet; image courtesy of Millennium Court Arts Centre
at Millennium Court Arts Centre, features the work of several artists examining marine debris, coral life and metaphors of irrevocable danger carried by the sea, based on increasing levels of human pollution that threaten the oceanic ecosystem. The centre has developed an accompanying public programme, comprising a range of outreach activities, aimed at promoting environmental consciousness. This agenda acts to both serve and subvert the curatorial theme: collectively the artworks explore this subject and its associated materials, yet the conceptual integrity of the exhibition is undermined, in its framing as some sort of awareness campaign. One element that weaves throughout the works on show, is the repeated use of text in various forms, each uniquely interpreting the multiple elements embedded within the curatorial inquiry. In Ghost Net (2016) – a collaborative work, by Kathryn Nelson, Julie McGowan and Sandra Turley – a large white cotton fishing net is rendered almost invisible. The net’s presence is betrayed by the webs of overlapping shadows it casts onto the surrounding walls, intertwining with the soft yellow lettering of the accompanying wall text. These short verses highlight both the sinister function of the apparatus and its delicate qualities, alluding to human intervention in the environment, including the ancient tradition of fishing, which is being quietly scrutinised. These short and momentary poetics reflect this antagonism; emerging broken and lost, the words are reassembled, ultimately changing their agency. This shift in agency corresponds on a fundamental level with the reclaimed materials that
feature widely in the exhibition – once considered pollution, now categorised, arranged and reconstituted as artworks, and given autonomy in the gallery context. Recent Ulster University graduate, Kate Ritchie, presented a series of sculptural installations titled Beachkeeping No.1, No.2 and No.3. The artist’s regular beach combings were presented as a cabinet of curiosities – taking the form of a traditional kitchen dresser – as well as stacked Perspex boxes on the gallery floor. Categorised by colour, shape or form, the variety of collectibles included animal bone, multicoloured rope floats, petrified sea sponges, workman’s rubber gloves and manufactured objects of all shapes and sizes, reflecting Ritchie’s durational commitment to this work. Some objects have been eroded beyond repair, to resemble the abstract sculptural forms of Tony Cragg. Unfortunately, Uniform of Debris (2018), a video and sound installation by Kathryn and Roy Nelson, was experiencing technical difficulties during my visit, and therefore cannot be discussed in this review. Shambles on a bodyboard (2018) is another text-based work, developed by Mitch Conlon in collaboration with Belfast based tradesman Bobby Seggie. The slogan, “She/He/They Deserve to Hear the Wetlands Play”, refers to a time when Conlon’s socially-engaged practice came into contact with activism and protest. The projection distils a potential mantra of social change, carving out a slightly more localised political position amongst the rubble. Seggie employs the traditional methods of handmade signwriting, with the large white typeface amplified by the saturated colour image of rippling water, creating a pared back and mystifying aesthetic. Apparently, the work is incomplete, however this presentation in the arts centre functions as an initial design plan – a work in motion ebbing at the shoreline – that resonates with the accumulative threads of neighbouring artworks. The projection work sits in stark opposition to another piece of text – a large black vinyl statistic on the adjacent wall, proclaiming that the amount of plastic dumped every minute into the ocean equates to that of a truck-load. The inclusion of this statement is problematic. Situated beside a series of interpretive artworks, it has a flattening effect, framing them as some sort of ‘awareness campaign’, with a ‘child friendly’, educational doctrine. The publication reinforces this line of inquiry, claiming that the exhibition “explores the devastating long-term effects plastic is having on our precious oceans”, thus positing linear and prescriptive interpretations for the work on show, while masking other potential narratives that remain unrealised. This shiny black declaration provoked my scepticism, because it is not an artwork by one of the artists involved. It strikes me that conflicts between curatorial intention and public relations have become increasingly common within public institutions, which runs the risk of diluting the nuanced intentions behind certain artworks, in order for them to appear more topical or ‘accessible’. This can also result in artistic validity being outweighed by thematic generalisations, as a bridge to tentatively connect artistic practice with the mainstream public.
Tara McGinn is an artist and writer currently based in Belfast and an MFA candidate at the University of Ulster.
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
‘Infrastructures of Now’ NCAD Gallery, Dublin 21 September – 30 November 2018 THE GLASS MODERNIST façade of the NCAD Gallery may be considered a portal into the machine itself. To function, this machine depends on an engaged, creative, intellectual exchange between students, researchers, lecturers and artists, who are in turn inherently dependent on the infrastructures and resources the machine affords them. ‘Infrastructures of Now’, curated by Anne Kelly, interrogates this interdependency, critically addressing questions of autonomy, institutional expectations and the technical methodologies and languages engaged by the contemporary practitioners it frames. The works featured in this exhibition have at some point – either notionally or physically – passed through the engine rooms of this machine: the campus libraries. Unearthed from the collection at the National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL), is documentation chronicling the processes of textile designer Leslie Eastwood. Presented in a vitrine are intricate frame point designs, burnt orange upholstery swatches (destined for DART and Dublin Bus seating in the early eighties) and designs for musician Paul McCartney’s office. Among the documentation are black and white photographs of Jacquard looms and of Eastwood himself, who passed away in 1999. This is Kelly’s instigative threshold, where we witness the symbiosis of two distinct languages: that of the artist’s hand and analogue technology, a mutualism that ultimately translates idea into form. Andrew Folan’s sculptural work further manifests this symbiosis of language. A floor-based glass box displays white laser-sintered polyamide flowers, which are 3D derivatives of his digital animation The Prometheus (2010). This series is otherworldly, stark and unnaturally flawless. In contrarious proximity, Shane Keeling’s punky ceramic slip vases – punctured with screws and the smirking statement “flowers are gay” – scoff at the utilitarian notions traditionally associated with his medium. Alan Butler and Elaine Hoey’s video work, Prospero AI, imagines a futuristic artist residency programme, where participants can work under the tutelage of a super artificial intelligence system. The work brims with the utopian promise of a Facebook recruitment commercial. It cringes with aspirational notions of how our surplus time should be spent, playing on our technological dependency and innate need to belong to something bigger than us – even if that is, in this case, a dystopian institution that determines our
thinking and ensures our compliance. Channelling a similar dependency, Jessica Foley’s audio sculpture, Holes (2018), consists of a mound of porous stones, eroded by the coastal environment they’ve been extracted from. The stones are piled around a computer-generated voiceover (reciting poetry relating to the topography and geology of Portrane, County Dublin) like a group of devotees assembling around a magnetic prophet they have inadvertently created. Mark O’Kelly’s painting, Leaders and Followers (2010), depicts an ominous cinematic woodland scene, with the central protagonist surrounded by onlookers and adorned with flowers. At first glance, this scene could be mistaken for an art college party, but O’Kelly’s composition pertains to sinister hierarchical systems and our blind collective propensity toward docility. Tom O’Dea’s A Séance for Pierre Méchain (2018) is a transparent technical cornucopia of hardware and software, sculpturally amplifying its energy source with exposed wires, antithetical to the efforts of the French mathematician and astronomer to conceal his miscalculations. Circuit boards contain text referring to the revision of International System of Units in 2019, conveying humorous scepticism towards universally accepted knowledge bases and their malleability. In Adrian Duncan’s mixed-media sculptures, Love Notes From a German Building Site (2018), three small-scale figurative works whisper in sharp satisfying angles on the floor, appearing to comment on his larger suspended geometric work that engages with the architecture of the institution that supports it. Articulating a multifarious vocabulary, all of these works lilt with institutional accents. If the NCAD Gallery is a portal into the machine itself, ‘Infrastructures of Now’ succeeds in illuminating the languages that fuel it. Kelly’s bilingual curatorial approach pitches immanent concerns (regarding institutional and hierarchical adherence) against the evolution of technical languages engaged with by contemporary practitioners. However, perhaps the true threat to creative autonomy is the movement toward a symbiosis of these technological and institutional avatars, supported by the self-referential ideologies of the machine itself. Brendan Fox is a writer, curator and visual artist based in Dublin and Rome.
Tom O’Dea, A Séance for Pierre Méchain, 2018; photograph by Anne Kelly, courtesy of NCAD Gallery
Tomas Penc ‘ENDUSER’ Triskel Christchruch, Cork 11 October – 22 December 2018
Thomas Penc, Strawberries Advertisement, 2018, computer-generated animation, loop, duration 1:30 minutes, and The Last Judgement, 2018, computer-generated animation and sound, loop, duration 2:04 minutes; photograph by venividiphoto.net
IN LARGE BLACK type, the word “ENDUSER”
confronts visitors, while underneath, an inscrutable text begins: “you owe me, big smooth eggs of divine fertility laid out of the window into the endless landscape.” The phrase “you owe me” is repeated throughout this text: “you owe me… snow… strawberries…colour…”. Some, but not all, of the things ‘owed’ also appear in the presented artworks. Penc presented two distinct and consecutive phases of this exhibition, each running for approximately a month at Triskel Christchurch – an eighteenth-century neoclassical Georgian church, which functions as Triskel Art Centre’s main auditorium. The titular artwork, ENDUSER, featured in both iterations, comprising four holographic projections, sited at balcony-height, near the corner pillars of the nave, which were activated by viewers’ movements as they passed through the space. When not activated, this work exists as a mechanical structure, a single blade propeller on a steel pole. When triggered, the blade whirs into motion. As the speed increases, the spectral apparition of a ghostly head appears, revolving 360 degrees on its axis, before cutting to an upright rotating hand. In the context of the overall show, I would relate the hand and the head to making and thinking; to creation, production and measurement. A two-minute film loop, titled The last Judgement, is projected onto the first of two screens in the aisle, hung from the ceiling. The film features three figures – naked, hairless and devoid of genitals, reminiscent of action men dolls – inhabiting a bleak computer-generated world. They trudge atop a revolving disc; one figure wears knee-length black boots and pulls a rope attached to the wheel’s axel. His labour in this dystopian gymnasium is being converted to energy. Of course, virtual, remote and unseen slave labour exists in our world, supplying the commodities that keep capital moving – from coltan mining in the Congo to textile factories in Bangladesh. The scene reveals a bleached rudimentary landscape, populated with geometric shapes and small figures that seem to be plucked from the hellscape of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. A short looped computer-generated film, Strawberry Advertisement, depicts a landscape of strawberries; sumptuous and seductive in their fleshy unreality and perhaps plucked by one of Bosch’s unfortunate eu-
nuch slaves. During the exhibition’s run, a story emerged of needles being found in strawberries in Australia, which shut down the country’s multi-million-dollar strawberry industry for several weeks. Speculation abounded of disgruntled pickers engaging in sabotage – a needle in the fruit replacing the spanner in the works. The second instalment of the show included two film works and a sound piece. Digital Waste Disposal Site, a computer-generated animation, features a static snowy landscape over which footage of seven long flags has been superimposed. The flags move, but are not tethered to anything, bringing an uncanny aspect to the scene. It is a picturesque vista with pine trees and snow-covered cabins, the light suggesting dawn or dusk. The unfurled flags could suggest the simple measure of wind direction, hinting at windmills – an early method of harnessing nature’s energy – or they may refer to political projects, the unfurling of the red flag a symbol of the masses rising up against their masters. In a similar vein, Marked for Deletion comprises a still image of a beautiful seascape, with horizontal and vertical lines superimposed on the composition’s lower portion. A gridded cube moves through the arrangement, recalling the modernist desire to purify the artmaking process from the emotional subjectivity of the ‘tortured artist’ of popular cliché. Both films show the natural landscape – an archetypal subject in Romanticism – being contested by another force. Hanging from the ceiling between the projection screens is Closing Credits, a steel-frame cube which triggers a cacophonous alarm when approached. This extended note adds to the low-level electronic hum already filling the space. It is a heavy looking industrial piece; the nuts and bolts are exposed, highlighting its materiality. This work oscillates between being a sculpture and a piece of equipment, housing the technology. The themes that emerge in ‘ENDUSER’ are consumption and production. The finished products are displayed in all their beauty and seductiveness, while the labour spent during production of these artworks is hidden away.
Catherine Harty is a member of the Cork Artists Collective and a director of The Guesthouse Project.
Critique
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Chris Doris ‘The Empty Field’ The Model, Sligo 17 November 2018 – 27 January 2019 THIS EXTENSIVE EXHIBITION by Chris Doris is installed across five gallery spaces at the Model, exploring a number of thematic strands, influenced by components of the artist’s life, namely: meditation, psychotherapy, psychology and neurobiology. Doris brings these professional interests into play and reinterprets them in the gallery context, showcasing a unique range of observational modes, as well as a lucid, coherent range of artworks. What might initially appear as hard-edged abstraction within the galleries, is softened through the introduction of the outside world. Natural light is present in three of the five spaces; it appears to have been deliberately choreographed to create dynamic interplays with Doris’s paintings. There is clearly an influence of Colour Field painting of the 1940s and 50s – from American artists, such as Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, to British artists including Robyn Denny. Doris undoubtedly has a distinctive and personal style, but there is a sense of acknowledging abstract art precedents. Gallery D features an interesting combination of paintings referencing nature. A convex painting, akin to a large human eye, confronts the viewer, featuring heavy impasto and a black circle on an off-white background. The canvas is deep and its edges feature interlocking multicoloured stripes. Entitled The Empty Field (2) (2017), it interrogates the formal construct of painting, the language of production, or perhaps even something beheld by the eye – an empty field beyond. Opposite are two sister-works, identically constructed in opposing colours. The End of a Beginning (2017) consists of a deep black arc pointing upward, with a three-quarter white circle contained, and a blue edge to the canvas; while The Beginning of a Beginning (2017) features a white arc, a black three-quarter circle and a bright yellow edge. Between these works, above the arched windows, is a smaller work, Wave (2017), evoking the sea or perhaps a sound wave. Opposite, three long vertical strip paintings on steel, A Dying Light (2017), are three-quarters black, with white at the lower ends, suggesting the close of day. The artist employs conceptually provocative titles, encouraging the viewer to consider personal, experiential or universal narrative threads. The paintings prompt the mind to enter into a
dialogue with the eye. Many of the exhibited works are titled Open Painting, with no further differentiations given – a simple titling device that signals Doris’s generosity to the viewer. As part of this open invitation, these paintings require interpretation and engagement; they lie dormant until confronted by the attendant interchange of the viewer. According to the artist, the focus is the metaphorical ‘empty field’ with “emptiness” being “held as a field of potentiality”. Doris’s expansive ‘open paintings’ sit in stark contrast to his text-based paintings in Gallery B. Where the other four galleries feature highly restrained, elemental and purist paintings, the black walls of this small windowless space are heavily concentrated with a salon-style hang of 43 paintings. Various slogans and messages compete for the viewer’s attention, such as: ‘This is an attempt at an image of God’; ‘Be composed, then decomposed’; ‘A painting makes visible implicit unknown values’ and so on. There are also four totemic sculptures installed on the floor. Is this installation an artistic response to the pure paintings exhibited elsewhere? Does it represent the artist’s musings on art and its purpose? Is it a range of thoughts gathered through self-introspection? Regardless of the artist’s rationale, a dichotomy is set up between this chaotic hub and the other streamlined spaces, providing a unique mindscape for contemplating the exhibition’s multiple identities. The exhibition is not the exclusive product of the artist’s investigations on his theme – it was accompanied by two unique participatory events. At the exhibition launch, Doris facilitated a “public inquiry”, entitled ‘Songs of Being Seen’, consisting of spontaneous group vocalisation, lasting three hours. The second aspect is an extension of Doris’s ‘relational inquiries’ series, entitled ‘Taking History’, where the artist offered one-to-one confidential sittings over two days. During these sessions, individuals became part of a “series of private, joint inquiries with the artist, into the sitter’s dominant self-forms and their origins”, thus adding an analytical dimension to the practice of conventional portraiture.
Marianne O’Kane Boal is a writer on art and architecture and a member of AICA.
Chris Doris, ‘The Empty Field’, installation view, The Model, Sligo; photograph by Heike Thiele, courtesy of The Model
Maud Cotter ‘a consequence of – without stilling’ Limerick City Gallery of Art 30 September 2018 – 6 January 2019
Maud Cotter, without stilling, installation view, Limerick City Gallery of Art; photograph by Roland Paschhoff, courtesy the artist and domobaal
THE FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE generated by Maud Cotter’s solo exhibition, ‘a consequence of – without stilling’, at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA) is appropriately described in the exhibition text as “a mercurial landscape of the mind… a place where matter and consciousness mix”. Cotter, who was one of the founders of the National Sculpture Factory, Cork, displays an uncanny understanding of, and meticulous control over, the materials she uses, as dramatically evident in two large-scale sculptures: without stilling (2017–18), a skilfully imagined construction, produced entirely of finely cut Finnish birch ply in the South Gallery; and matter of fact (2016), a vast tube-like structure which commands immediate attention in the Foyer Gallery, at the heart of LCGA. The scale and intricate detailing of this sculpture, which is fabricated in looping mild steel wire, gives the initial impression of some sort of mechanical structure, reminiscent of an engine or turbine, appearing to drive the exhibition’s momentum. Walking through the exhibition, one of the first things that struck me was the prevalence of pencil marks on the walls and sculptures, appearing at first as ‘remnants’ from the unseen processes of construction and installation. Contrary to what we were taught in art college – that a work is only finished when it’s perfect, without blemish or mark – Cotter uses these pencil lines to make visible the ‘manufacturing’ of artworks and her unfolding thought processes, as part of the planned construction. Initially, it was challenging for me not to perceive these pencil lines as flaws; however, they soon became a recurring thread that helped to anchor individual artworks and give a sense of continuity across the gallery spaces. These marks culminate in the corner of the Link Gallery, where a custom-made table – with construction pencil marks intact – displays small sculptural maquettes, along with an extract from Sarah Kelleher’s text, A Solution is in the Room, developed in collaboration with Coracle Press. ‘A consequence of – without stilling’ appears as the fantastical world of an artists’ studio, where everything has meaning, and each artwork contributes to the genesis of the next one, in the art-making process. The exhibition includes numerous material amalgamations, con-
structed in seemingly found materials, such as lengths of wire, cable and cotton netting, reminiscent of discarded fishing nets. Cotter displays a thorough understanding of how incongruent materials might relate to each other, while masterfully shaping them into the most aesthetically alluring organic forms. In the Ante Gallery, we are enticed by an elegant, free-standing, triangular construction, draped with latex, titled & bone (2017–18). Like many of Cotter’s assemblages, it incorporates industrial materials, including hazard tape, rubber hose and high-tension cable, while three phallic-like constructions, titled a dappled world/ one, two & three (2017), dangle on the adjacent wall. In the South Gallery, Without stilling feels like entering the artist’s personal imaginary aquarium. Hundreds of Finnish birch ply formations – shaped like child-like drawings of fish – have been knitted together repetitively, to create an asymmetrical natural form, reminiscent of a large school of fish, swimming in unison in mid-air, creating a palpable sense of movement. Coupled with the cotton netting used in other works – such as Falling into many pieces | Three (2016) and the moon is falling (2018) – an undeniable nautical tone begins to emerge, underpinned by notions of conservation and pollution. It strikes me that many of the materials used by Cotter could be readily found on many of Ireland’s beaches, washing up as domestic waste, or as the discarded biproducts of industry or manufacturing. Cotter’s playful landscapes at LCGA attentively combine found and pre-existing materials to implant experiences of internal consciousness. The works reflect a desire to propagate form and concept, with the aim of instilling order amidst the chaotic. Cotter’s current exhibition at LCGA will be followed by two subsequent iterations: ‘a consequence of – a breather of air’ at The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, in spring 2019; and ‘a consequence of – entanglement’ at Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane in 2020.
Simon Fennessy Corcoran is a curator and current board member of 126 Artist-run Gallery, Galway.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
How is it Made?
Where Does The Law Stand With Leprechauns? MICHELE HORRIGAN DISCUSSES THE FOLKLORE UNDERPINNING HER RECENT EXHIBITION AT THE LAB GALLERY, DUBLIN.
Michelle Horrigan, ‘Where Does The Law Stand With Leprechauns?’, installation view, The LAB Gallery, Dublin; images courtesy the artist
ONCE UPON A TIME, two young children were running around in a field. Dressed up with red hats and red cardigans, they whirled and danced in the sunshine with all the freedom of the last days of summer. As they played hide-and-seek through hedgerows in their striking costumes, they were mistaken for fairy folk! A bewildered passer-by soon spread the story of what he saw, arriving to the local village to proclaim the appearance of “Queer little fellows, like leprechauns”. “I saw them dancing behind at the crossroads”, he blurted out. He told the woman in the grocers, who told the man in the butchers, who told the drinkers in the pub, who brought the rumour home to their wives and families. Each telling and retelling brought further embellishment. Headlines ablaze with the rumour carried it far and wide. Descriptions of more sightings amassed. According to the London Times of 6 September 1938, the fairies were “two feet high with hard, hairy, earless human-like faces, and with very short fingers”. Soon, thousands of people turned up, in the hopes of seeing the wee folk, looking closely at cabbage plants and lifting their leaves up to see if they could find a fairy underneath. There were rumours of local farmers searching the fields armed with rifles to scare leprechauns out and restore calm. “Beware of false gods. Shame on you all!” bellowed the priest from the pulpit the following Sunday. Yet, the town of Ballingarry, Limerick, continued to fan the flames, enticing outsiders to part with their shillings in local establishments. One of those children was my aunt, now a little old lady of 89 years, who has lived in London all of her adult life. I grew up listening to the story of ‘The Fairy Hoax’ that, in my family, took on legendary proportions. I often pondered the story, trying to analyse the reasons as to why a fairy apparition was believed so easily on face value. Were people that naive? Or was the whole village implicit in the story to accomplish a mini-economic boom? Upon further research, I discovered that Knockfierna Hill, the place of the sighting, has a rich history of such occurrences stretching back to Donn Fírinne, a Celtic god of the underworld. More recently, art students in the 1990s were accused by the Limerick Leader newspaper
of conducting occult rituals on the site. “We were only doing some performance art”, the students chimed. As I was formulating the premise for an exhibition about all of this, I was living in Vancouver and involved in Emily Carr University’s programme of talks for their fall 2016 semester. I had invited John Carson, the great Irish conceptual artist now living in Pittsburgh, to speak about his extensive practice dating back to the 1970s which deals with many of the ideas of cliché and national identity that seemed foremost in my mind. I shipped over some walking sticks, hand-carved by Askeaton native Seanie Barron, and held a series of talks discussing my work as both an artist and curator, with special emphasis on site-specific and context-led art. It seemed timely, then, when Cate Rimmer, Director of the Charles H. Scott Gallery, told me about a trip she made to the town of Forks in Washington State with her teenage daughter. The ‘Twilight’ series of books had been set there, filling it with vampires and love stories, and so attracting many fans to make a pilgrimage to the remote logging town. Its writer, Stephenie Meyer, discovered Forks when she made a Google search to find the rainiest place in North America. With grey skies and little sunshine, it would be ideal ground for vampires to be out and about, with good camouflage for their tempestuous adventures of love and a new coming of age. Curious to see what such a place would look like, I made the trip there. It rained, a lot, but in some ways, it wasn’t so hard to see how a bunch of mythical creatures could live undetected, in such close proximity to a human population. Back in Ireland in 2017, on residency in Dublin City Council’s St Patrick’s Lodge, I started to formulate a script for a video work and began to think about an expansive installation for The LAB Gallery. Considering the primary subject – typically kitschified beyond any reasonable level of critical cultural commentary in Ireland – I decided to work with a diverse group of collaborators to experiment and probe unexplained and mysterious thoughts, rather than form any definitive viewpoint. As described in the press release, the exhibition aimed to “reclaim a common ground between our
own humanity and that of fairies and leprechauns, suggesting the presence of a hidden, yet mutually dependent relationship, stretching across time, continents and prevailing attitudes.” Piece by piece, an exhibition came together. Artist Steve Maher found an orange jumpsuit in a charity shop in Helsinki and arrived at the hillside at Knockfierna to perform a hip-hop melody about the little people. His presence rose a few eyebrows around the town, all documented by the more-than-capable Michael Holly as cameraman. A strange landscape greeted us there, as furze bushes caught fire in the unexpected summer heatwave that left blackened gorse smouldering in the background. More components included a narrative video, voiced by Manchán Magan with footage from Forks and around Knockfierna, that found comparisons between both locations while seeking epiphanies of place. Seanie Barron’s wooden sculptures rested comfortably against the walls of The LAB, embodying eclectic and fantastical animal heads, Medusa, and a special tribute to Star Wars. Ceramicist Joanie Carrig created clay figures with a Close Encounters of the Third Kind vibe. Long-time collector of folklore, Liz Ryan, contributed a photograph made on the hillside of Knockfierna on the feast day of Samhain. Various ephemera from my meanderings included jazz records, B-movies, and merchandise from Carroll’s tourist shops, all ethnographically intertwined to highlight the ways in which fairy folklore permeates wider culture. A key element of the exhibition was the use of lenticular printing, a form of three-dimensional photography. Tree branches were depicted, and as viewers moved position in front of the image, the trick of the material made it look like the branch was moving in the wind… As it sways, there might be an anomaly hidden behind it, lurking in an obscure and out-of-the-way place. Such a thing can be forgotten with the passage of time, until a shadow stirs again and sparks a recognition.
Michele Horrigan is an artist and curator.
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Career Development
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Doireann O’Malley, Prototypes, HD film still; © Doireann O’Malley, image courtesy the artist
Dream Analysis PÁDRAIC E. MOORE INTERVIEWS IRISH ARTIST DOIREANN O’MALLEY ABOUT HER RECENT SOLO EXHIBITION AT DUBLIN CITY GALLERY THE HUGH LANE.
Pádraic E. Moore: Before we discuss your recent work, perhaps you can offer some insights into your background? Doireann O’Malley: I was born in Limerick and lived there until the age of nine, returning in 1999 to study Sculpture and Combined Media at Limerick School of Art & Design. Gerard Byrne, who has been a formative influence on my practice, was teaching there at the time. After this, I completed an MA at the Belfast School of Art, studying under Willie Doherty. At the time, I was working mainly in photography and focusing upon a range of subjects – such as female representation, androgyny and mythology – that have, in fact, become prominent again within my work in recent years and were the focus of my exhibition, ‘Prototypes’, at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (22 June – 14 October 2018). Before art college, I attended a Catholic convent school in Clonakilty, County Cork, and I think that this experience had a lasting impact upon my work. At that time, in the mid-to-late 90s, institutions of that antiquated nature were coming to an end, having remained largely unchanged for decades. The physical environments, theatrical interiors and the expansive fields, which I ran in daily, have haunted my dreams ever since, sealing a growing desire to make films. PEM: I read in the exhibition press release that your work is often directly shaped by material gleaned from dream analysis? DO’M: Around five years ago, I began visiting a Jungian psychoanalyst and attending dream analysis workshops. This encouraged me to see dreams as a useful resource for my work, so I started recording them. Initially, I was writing about my dreams and then began to develop a script of experimental texts. For some time now, the ultimate goal has been to succeed in capturing a dream on film and this is reflected in the style that the ‘Prototypes’ series is shot in. I made a conscious decision to create the effect of moving through the scenes in a dreamlike manner, with dreams being recalled through analysis and narration. One of the protagonists, Pol Merchan, participated in an extensive workshop where our dreams were analysed with a Jungian psychoanalyst. The rest of the cast participated in a shorter workshop. These dreams were then transcribed and incorporated into the script. This dreamlike approach also enabled me to underscore aspects of the trans body, as an interesting site for deconstructing theories, including alchemy, transhumanism and a queering of psychoanalysis.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Career Development
Top and bottom: Doireann O’Malley, Prototypes, HD film stills; © Doireann O’Malley, images courtesy the artist
PEM: Judging by the outcome, I’m guessing that the production process involved a large team? DO’M: The project required considerable funding and logistical organisation. Several project grants were invaluable to the development and production of ‘Prototypes’, including: a small production grant at The XPOSED Queer Film Festival in Berlin; a research grant from the Berlin Senat; a 2016 media art grant from the Foundation of Lower Saxony at the Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art; a Stiftung Kunstfonds project grant; and an Arts Council of Ireland Next Generation Award. Having realised that I wanted to make cinematic productions, I worked with Albrecht von Grünhagen and Matan Radin, who used Arri cameras on several dolly and gimbal setups, in order to film scenes from several different perspectives, as I had written the script for multiple screens. This allowed me to create the impression that the viewer is drifting along in a disembodied manner, essentially creating a dreamlike atmosphere. I wanted the viewer to feel as though they were part of the narrative, as opposed to being a voyeur. In several scenes, the gaze of the camera is almost machine-like, in its scanning of the protagonists. The soundtracks were composed by Armin Lorenz Gerold, with whom I developed an improvisational way of working. The second film was shot only a few months before the exhibition in The Hugh Lane and involved a larger cast and crew. PEM: Did you use scripts in ‘Prototypes’? DO’M: The films are essentially collages of material shot over a two-year period. The communities that I have met in Berlin have had an impact upon me, and all of the protagonists have some prior experience with performance. The fact that they were largely playing themselves was conducive to improvisation; it helped to shape the film-making process in unexpected ways and many of these elements were included in the script. In the case of Prototypes I, I also used material gleaned from the psychoanalytical dream responses, interviews, the protagonists’ own writings and experiences, as well as from
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Top and bottom: Doireann O’Malley, ‘Prototypes’, installation view, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; photographs © Ros Kavanagh
theorists such as Karen Barad. In the first film, the protagonists learned the scripts, whereas in the second part, Jamie McDonald (who plays the Director of the Institute) and I designed three different games for the characters to use while improvising. The second film was non-scripted, but certain parameters helped to structure the direction of conversations. PEM: Does Science Fiction inform your work? DO’M: I suppose on some level I’ve always wanted to recreate Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)! Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) was hugely inspirational. I’m particularly inspired by her depiction of time travel and also the way that she creates worlds in which there is a possibility for sexual variance that is not so polarised. The writer Octavia E. Butler was also a huge influence. The film features voiceovers comprising extracts of writings by Karen Barad, who looks at theoretical physics from a queer perspective. The Director of the Institute’s dialogue also appropriates elements of Lao Tzu’s epic Tao Te Ching. Ultimately, the films were a patchwork of references to feminist theory, art history and science fiction. I am also interested in spirituality as methodology for focus and transformation. PEM: Can we discuss the representation of non-binary individuals in your work? DO’M: Gender is probably one of the most contentious and oppressive structures within society. Transgender politics have made a massive dent on these structures, ultimately proving the need to recognise and celebrate difference to the binary system, or to potentially dismantle it altogether. My intention in making ‘Prototypes’ was to create a tableau that functions in relation to the history of representation that also deals with the depiction of queer bodies. There is a push towards being definitive, in terms of binary choice that reproduces stereotypical notions of the ideal. As you will know from ‘Prototypes’, I have worked with several trans and intersex people and this is certainly something that they have encountered in
their own lives. I am interested in exploring these ideas and how they reflect upon society in general. PEM: Can you discuss the Marrakech residency that was awarded as part of the Berlin Art Prize? DO’M: The residency will be in Queens Collective in Marrakech, which is founded upon cultural activism, feminism, community engagement and artistic exploration. It is focused on gender equality, female empowerment and vulnerable communities. I am really excited to meet the artists there and potentially work with them on a film. PEM: Are there any specific ways that you hope to develop your work in the immediate future? DO’M: I’m eager to find more immersive ways of showing my films that will incorporate several screens, multiple perspectives and bigger installations. I am really interested in the idea of creating environments in which moving image pieces can be experienced. Next year, I will participate in a mentoring initiative called The Berlin Program for Artists. I want to continue working with museums and galleries, but I would also like to make bigger productions. I am developing two ideas for films, one set in Ireland in a convent and the other in Vienna, with a couple of the protagonists that I worked with in ‘Prototypes’.
Doireann O’Malley is an Irish visual artist and filmmaker who lives and works in Berlin. doireannomalley.com
Pádraic E. Moore is a writer, curator and art historian currently based in Brussels and Dublin. padraicmoore.com
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Career Development
Towards A Consideration of All Bodies RÓISÍN POWER HACKETT REFLECTS ON HER RECENT PERFORMANCE EVENT AT THE LAB, WHICH INCLUDED MENTORSHIP WITH AMANDA COOGAN.
Mairéad Folan, Meet Luke, theatrical performance as part of ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’, 7 November 2018, The LAB Gallery, Dublin; both photographs by Amber Baruch
I AM A VISUAL ARTIST, writer and curator. As far back as I
can remember my practice has contained these three strands. During my BA in History of Art and Fine Art at NCAD I focused on entangling visual art and literature. I went down a myriad of routes. One route was to start a creative writing zine known as The Kite in 2009. In 2010, my colleague Ruth Kerr and I set up a poetry choir (her idea) and we started poetry/performance nights. Since then, the two of us have curated poetry and performance art events, most recently, ‘Ad Infinitum’, at MART Gallery in September 2018. After my BA, I decided to do the MA Art in the Contemporary World (ACW) at NCAD. The various seminars I attended during ACW unveiled a crossing point between art and writing, making the writing visual and palpable without illustrating it. From then on, I wrote, I made and I performed. I often focus on reappropriating classical texts written by men from a feminist perspective. I am excited by languages and words, their different sounds, colours and textures and all that they conjure up in the mind. Texts by writers such as Thomas Hardy, Hermann Melville and John Milton, allure me; the language in them glows incandescently. However, as a woman, I can see the prejudices that riddle the voices or worlds of these texts; they are sexist, racist and colonialist. I use the cut-up method, which entails physically cutting out words and phrases from books and pasting them down on paper again in a new order, to re-appropriate texts. Then I create costumes and props to perform these texts. I like to think that these performances and installations lie between disciplines. Curating came to me because I enjoy organising and managing events, but also because I want to build a community of people around me and explore the possibilities of interdisciplinarity. Curating, for me, always centres around developing a pool of people to work with and learn from. During the summer of 2017, being annoyed by circumstances I found myself in, I began to investigate another aspect of my identity, as a person with mild cerebral palsy and epilepsy. Having a disability is only a small part of who I am and is only something I dwell on when I am discriminated against, however this discrimination happens continually. Of course, not everyone discriminates actively, but society, and particularly capitalism, works insidiously to discriminate, marginalising those perceived as deviating from the norm. I know anything I do to counteract this discrimination only tips the iceberg,
but if everyone tips it, there’s a chance of change. I want to give artists a platform, to build a community. This is how the performance event ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’ was born. Non-disabled people do not always know how to react around disabled people, or how to ask questions in a non-discriminative way. This performance event aimed to be an interface between disabled and non-disabled people, providing a platform for asking questions such as: What changes need to be made in society to support disabled people? How can we change existing welfare systems to accommodate disabled people? What does it feel like to be marginalised? I started organising the event by contacting a few people whom I wanted to be involved. I had seen the exhibition, ‘A Different Republic’ at the Lab (November 2016 – February 2017), that had highlighted disability and I knew that the gallery aims to support artists with disabilities. It therefore seemed vital to get Sheena Barrett’s support, for the event to get off the ground. I soon found artists who were interested in working with me, including: Hugh O’Donnell, a live-art performer based in Belfast who has exhibited nationally and internationally; Mairéad Folan, a theatre director and writer based in Galway, who is the founder of No Ropes Theatre; and Dublin-based poet, Phil Kenny, who has performed at Electric Picnic and KnockanStockan Festival. Each of these artists make work related to their disabilities through performance. Over the course of a year, I applied for funding from various bodies and was awarded a grant from Dublin City Council’s Social Inclusion Unit. Community and Social Inclusion funding are some of the routes available for events relating to disability. This grant, along with match funding from The LAB, gave me the green light to develop ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’. The biggest boost came when I received the Arts Council’s Visual Arts Bursary Award to do a curatorial mentorship with the artist Amanda Coogan. Amanda is an internationally recognised Irish performance artist, who is also a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults). She has worked with deaf people and is a disability advocate. Having admired her work from afar, I became even more interested after I attended her artist’s talk, as part of ‘A Different Republic’. Since contacting Amanda about ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’, she has been very supportive of the event’s concept and objectives. At this point in my career, I
Hugh O’Donnel, Aixelsyd Doesn’t Harm Your Health II, live-art performance as part of ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’, 7 November 2018, The LAB Gallery, Dublin
felt I needed guidance to improve my curatorial practice. I have previously held art administration and research positions in galleries, including Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and Pallas Projects, and have also learnt a lot working on one-off projects with other art spaces. However, I felt that the mentorship would help improve my general management skills. Having previously curated numerous high-profile performances, Amanda has been a great teacher in this regard. She stressed the importance of making lists, creating and sticking to deadlines, allocating timeframes for everything and giving artists information well in advance, so that on the day of the performances, everyone would know what was happening. Curating performance has a different dynamic from curating exhibitions – it involves having a schedule with start and end times and creating a flow so that the audience will stay for all of the performances. On the morning of 7 November, Amanda’s advice regarding strict timetabling benefited the smooth running of the event and her general encouragement and advice has aided my practice hugely. The even distribution of performance disciplines – involving poetry, theatre and live art – worked extraordinarily well for this event. Phil Kenny was first up with his riddles of vibrating rhythms, giving his reflections on the world from an autistic perspective, including “why autists consider inebriation or ‘stonerdom’ a considerably good option”. Mairéad Folan’s comic monologue Meet Luke, introduced the audience to Luke, her (sky) walker, sharing the questions she gets asked, as she walks down the street. Hugh O’Donnell’s performance, Aixelsyd Doesn’t Harm Your Health II, involved the reconstruction of a chair in a very slow and considered manner, as he gradually sounded out the letters that spell ‘dyslexia’. During the break and before and after the performances, audience members spoke to the artists. Because communication between disabled and non-disabled people was the main goal of the event, I am delighted this happened. Finally, I hope ‘Towards A Consideration of All Bodies’ has helped to highlight the inequalities faced by disabled people every day, but there’s a lot more work to do. Art can be a fresh way of breathing life into a cause. Art can imagine future realities. Róisín Power Hackett is an artist, writer and curator. roisinphackett.wordpress.com
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Residency
Feeling Things Out EVGENIYA MARTIROSYAN REPORTS ON HER RECENT RESIDENCIES IN THE TYRONE GUTHRIE CENTRE AND PRAKSIS, OSLO.
Evgeniya Martirosyan, Release, 2018, mattress frame, rope, wallpaper paste, wood, 300 × 100 × 100cm approx., installation view and details, Felleverkstedet, Oslo, Norway, September 2018; photographs by Sayed Sattar Hasan
RECEIVING THE 2018 VAI Residency Award at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre was a precious opportunity for me to spend a week in this renowned artist’s retreat. I planned to explore the natural surroundings of the centre, observing the water, earth and changing atmospheric conditions. This research would continue my interest in working with ephemeral materials and notions of chaos and transformation. I was particularly interested in observing various growth patterns and finding signs of order within entropic natural processes. In August 2018, I was invited to partake in the ‘Monumental/Temporal’ programme with PRAKSIS Oslo, Norway (praksisoslo.org). As I travelled from central Oslo to rural Ireland in September, this contrasting experience, in many ways, shaped my stay at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. It became important for me to spend some time processing the unexpected outcomes of my residency with PRAKSIS. Tyrone Guthrie Centre was established in 1981 as a residential workspace and a creative retreat for artists of all disciplines. Situated in the tranquil setting of Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, the centre faces its own lake and is surrounded by farmland laced with drumlins. Until 1971, the estate was the family home of the theatre director, Sir William Tyrone Guthrie. Upon his death, Guthrie left the property to the Irish State, as a dedicated retreat for artists. The main accommodation for residents is in the Big House. It is also possible to stay in one of the five self-catering farmyard cottages. The facilities include seven art studios, a music room, darkroom, rehearsal space, print workshop, dance studio and a library. The programme at the centre doesn’t set any expectations regarding the outcomes of residencies. The centre provides a tranquil environment for research and creation, but just thinking or recuperating is considered equally as important. However, there is one ritual that needs to be observed on a daily basis – dinner at 7pm in the Big House. This tradition follows Tyrone Guthrie’s wish that all artists should come together in the evenings to share a meal. Artists residing in the self-catering cottages are welcome to join the meal once a week. The after-dinner party can unfold in unpredictable ways. On one occasion, we were treated to a Debussy concert by a resident musician. A spontaneous field walk in absolute darkness was the outcome of another evening’s gathering. The residency programme can be accessed in different ways. Art-
ists of all disciplines are welcome to apply directly through the Tyrone Guthrie Centre website. Admission criteria varies for different artforms. Applications are reviewed by the selection committee every four months. Local authority bursaries or special bursaries from partner organisations are other ways of accessing the programme. On my arrival at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in late September, I needed to reflect on my recent experiences, while on residency in Norway. The ‘Monumental/Temporal’ residency was developed by PRAKSIS in collaboration with the German sculptor Gereon Krebber and Felleverkstedet (felleverkstedet.no), an organiszation providing access to the production facilities in Oslo. This programme, advertised through an open-call, brought 11 emerging and established international artists together for an intensive period of hands-on, three-dimensional construction. The artists were provided with a workspace and a range of materials, but were responsible for covering the costs of travel and accommodation. My participation in this programme was made possible through the Arts Council of Ireland Travel and Training Award. Over a four-week period, the artists were asked to create new work and set up a showcase in response to the ‘Monumental/Temporal’ theme. The task pushed me out of my comfort zone, as I had never made anything on such a large scale or over such a short period of time. My work up until this point had been relatively modest in scale and took many months to develop, due to its complicated technical nature. There were many other unknowns during this residency, such as the space, tools and materials. We were given free access to the old Felleverkstedet facilities – a slightly dilapidated warehouse in central Oslo. This massive industrial space presented some technical challenges, but it was ideal for creating ambitious large-scale work. Looking for inspiration, we were brought to a local dump and had to improvise with what was available to us. Not really knowing what I would make, I picked up some used mattresses as my starting point. My initial vague idea was to use the mattress frames to support an organic form growing through it. Some other artists were building large-scale columns on the floor of the workshop, and so I decided to create something that would grow in the opposite direction – from the top down. Looking for inspirations in nature, I thought about stalactites and chose rope as my main material to create these forms. The
making of the work required repetitive gestures, knotting and weaving the rope through the frame. I experimented with solidifying the rope by dipping it into various solutions, such as concrete and filler paste. Although this didn’t work the way I expected, the mattress frame reacted to the wetness of the rope and created interesting rust patterns on its surface. As the sharpness of the metal kept cutting my fingers, the making process quickly became quite intense. The finished piece was a surprise and left me in a perplexed state of mind, by the time I arrived at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. At the centre, I was allocated one of the self-catering cottages and a big bright studio. The relative isolation of the cottage suited my need to spend some time thinking. Over the course of the week, I did lots of walking around the estate. I would sometimes veer off path and venture into the woods near the lake, and I even got lost on one occasion. The recent storm brought many trees down, uplifting and turning huge layers of the earth. I took lots of photographs of the fallen and broken trees, as I was captivated by the energy and power of the storm. The trees’ exposed roots reminded me of my recent work with rope and I became interested in the tangled organic masses around me. I could see how it might be possible to capture this entanglement and chaotic natural energy with the use of simple material. I have decided, at this point in time, to simplify my artistic process, so that I don’t always need to rely on complex engineering to activate my pieces. I feel the need to regain the tactile connection with my work and I plan to spend some time experimenting with very simple or reclaimed materials, in order to do this. I am interested in continuing to use repetitive gestures as the basis for building large-scale forms. I hope to bring all these thoughts and ideas together in new work for my upcoming solo exhibition in Triskel Art Centre, Cork, in 2019.
Evgeniya Martirosyan is a Cork-based artist with a background in philosophy and design, who works primarily in sculpture and installation. evgeniya-martirosyanartist.com
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Residency
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Danny McCarthy, Picture to be Listened to Wearing a Blindfold, 2016 – 2017; courtesy of the artist
Christopher Steenson: How did you both come to be invited to participate in the Robert Rauschenberg Residency on Captiva Island in Florida? Danny McCarthy: An American artist, who was sitting on the selection panel for the Rauschenberg Residency, recommended us. You cannot apply to go on the residency, as it’s by invitation only. I knew we were to be invited on an American residency, but when this arrived in my inbox it was like winning the Lotto – the terms were so generous. In fact, they were so good that Mick thought it was spam and binned it until I rang him!
Good Listeners CHRISTOPHER STEENSON INTERVIEWS DANNY MCCARTHY AND MICK O’SHEA ABOUT THEIR SERIES OF NEW RELEASES, WHICH EMERGED OUT OF THEIR PARTICIPATION IN THE ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG RESIDENCY.
Mick O’Shea: Yes indeed, I thought it was like being invited to share in the inheritance of an African princess. CS: Working together as The Quiet Club, you have recorded a new album, ‘No Meat No Bone’. Several tracks on the album (Jungle Road, Waldo Cottage, Laika Lane) refer to locations on Captiva Island. How important was the residency – its location and the people you met – in influencing this new release? DMc: The studios came about when Rauschenberg moved to Captiva Island in the ‘60s. A developer in the area was starting to buy up properties on the island. So, Rauschenberg went to many of his neighbours and said, “I will give you one million dollars for your house and you can live there as long as you want, or until you die”. That way, he ended up owning a huge block of properties in the middle of the island and stopped it from being overrun by developers. When he passed away, his son [Christopher Rauschenberg] set up the Rauschenberg Foundation, which now administrates the residencies. The album title comes from something we saw in the kitchen the first night we arrived. So, before we did anything, we had the title. MO’S: The studio was an empty double garage on Jungle Road, where we could pull the double doors wide open and find ourselves fully immersed in the wildness. We arranged to meet there at 2pm every day to work together. The names of the tracks come from places on the residency. We would have done field recordings in some of these places. The whole atmosphere of the studios was that of intense creativity. DMc: Outside of that time, we worked on our own practices. As the days progressed, other artists came to listen to what we were doing, and we encouraged them to join in. These included American hip-hop artist Jasari X, poet Jane Hirshfield, dancer Victoria Marks, painter Bob Tanner and British filmmaker Margaret Williams. So, we have a whole lot of separate recordings made from these sessions.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Residency
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CS: What differentiates this release conceptually, from the other works created under The Quiet Club moniker? DMc: The work came about by being in that space at a given time. One of our precepts as The Quiet Club is that we don’t talk about what we will do, and we do not talk about it after we have done it. CS: What conversations were had during the recording sessions? MO’S: All good conversations are made up of balanced times of speaking, listening, reacting, agreeing and disagreeing. We try to bring this to our playing. Before we play, we are in normal conversation mode – not discussing what we are going to play, which instruments, or for how long, but checking in with each other. When we are playing, we continue the conversation non-verbally. CS: Danny – What led you to make The Rauschenberg Scores during the residency? DMc: When being shown around the vast studios, Matt Hall – Rauschenberg’s Chief Technician and Assistant – pointed out several large tables that he had made specifically for Rauschenberg. The tables were scored with Stanley knives, and stained by paints and inks. Some sections of the tables were very beautiful. I took photographs of the parts that inspired me and developed them into large-format prints on some thirty-year-old handmade paper that Rauschenberg had left behind. The title, The Rauschenberg Scores, both refers to the marks on the table made by Rauschenberg and the graphical score that I developed these marks into. CS: A score is also used by composers to order sound, serving as a set of directions for performers, with ambiguities in the score leading to degrees of interpretation. How do The Rauschenberg Scores fit with the conceptual premise of a composer? DMc: The scores are open to interpretation, as both visual objects and scores to be used by musicians or sound artists. I have made other works like this for The Quiet Music Ensemble, including: The Dead (flat) C Scrolls; Listen, Listen Again, Listen Better; and The Great Listenin(g). Interestingly, when I first made these prints, I pinned them onto the studio wall in a horizontal formation. But when I came back the following morning, one of the pins had been removed from each of the prints, so that they now hung at an angle and really looked much better. Matt Hall said that this was Rauschenberg’s doing and I am inclined to believe him. I choose to perform the scores on a grand piano in the main studio building. This was a piano that had been played by John Cage, Morton Feldman and John Tudor, amongst many others, so it carried a lot of history. Whilst doing the recordings alone in the studio late at night, sounds appeared as if from nowhere and were incorporated into the recordings. I really believe that Rauschenberg played an active part in creating the work. The place was infused with his spirit. CS: In an era dominated by online streaming platforms, how important is it that these releases are experienced as both physical and sonic objects? DMc: Our releases come in limited editions and are very specifically designed and packaged, mostly by Mick, with accompanying notes, insert cards, texts and so on, intended to enhance the experience of listening. MO’S: The visual and tactile nature of a LP/CD cover reminds me of when I used to buy LP’s based on the cover alone, wondering if the sound would live up to the artwork. The physical package of ‘No Meat No Bone’ has the look of a 7” sleeve, which is bigger than conventional CD covers; this gives me more space to be creative. The images on four inserts show our time in Captiva. On the back cover is an image of the Fish House, an iconic building on the property. The red geometric pattern, which covers the front and part of the back, relates to the drawings I was doing while on residency. CS: After your time at the Rauschenberg Foundation, you made your way to the Black Iris Gallery in Richmond, Virginia, where you recorded an improvised performance in collaboration with Stephen Vitiello. What is your relationship to Vitiello? DMc: Stephen had invited us to lecture and exhibit our work in the University Of Virginia, so we wound up doing a gig in the Black Iris Gallery as well. I have known Stephen for a very long time now. I first met him in 2006 when I curated the ‘Bend It Like Beckett’ CD for Art Trail. I spelt his name wrong on the album credits and we have been friends ever since, as has Mick. MO’S: In 2010, Stephen was one of our guests when we were on residency in the Crawford Gallery, Cork, as Strange Attractor Ireland (with Anthony Kelly, Irene Murphy and David Stalling). We have played numerous times since then. It’s always a pleasure. CS: What is your approach to collaboration and improvisation with other artists like Vitiello? DMc: The main approach we have to collaboration and improvisation with others is the ability to listen. Listening is the core of our practice. CS: Are there any new projects on the horizon for both of you? MO’S: We do not talk about it. Mick O’Shea works with sound, food, drawing, and anything else he can get his hands on. Danny McCarthy is a pioneer of performance art and sound art in Ireland. Christopher Steenson is a sound artist based in Dublin. ‘No Meat No Bone’, ‘The Rauschenberg Scores’ and ‘Black Iris’ are released by Farpoint Recordings. farpointrecordings.com
Top: Danny McCarthy, one of The Rauschenberg Scores, photographic print on antique paper; courtesy of the artist Middle: The Quiet Club recording with Jasari X while on residency at The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, Captva Island, Florida; image courtesy of the artists Bottom: The Quiet Club, ‘No Meat No Bone’, 2018, inlay view
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Organisation
Cliodhna Timoney, ‘Tatty Green Lampshade’, installation view, Eight Gallery, January 2018; photograph by Robert Carroll, courtesy of the artist
AN EXOSKELETON OF SCAFFOLDING and white plastic surrounds number 8 Dawson
Temporal Platform AIDAN KELLY MURPHY INTERVIEWS EOIN O’DOWD ABOUT DUBLIN’S FORMER EIGHT GALLERY.
Street in Dublin, as it has done for many months now. Before the façade was completely obscured, a series of printed A4 pages signaled that Sol Art Gallery had moved to D’Olier Street. Any glimpse of this signage – and the upstairs room that once functioned as the setting for the Eight Gallery – are now gone. For over half a decade, that room provided a space for emerging artists to exhibit their work through an engaging and refreshing programme, becoming a vibrant part of the Irish art community. As Ireland continues to emerge from the recession and vacant space once again becomes a premium across the city, the independent artistic spaces that once developed and thrived following the financial crash of 2008 have begun to disappear, either relocating to new homes or closing altogether. In this context, value seems to be increasingly attributed to these spaces via the buildings they occupy, rather than the intangible benefits they themselves provide to various communities. Notably Block T, Moxie Studios and Monster Truck have all been affected, and this trend also extends outside the capital, articulated prominently by the current uncertainty facing Ormston House in Limerick. For the majority of its incarnation, Eoin O’Dowd ran Eight Gallery. Following its closure in early 2018, I sat down with Eoin to discuss Eight’s origins, programme and future plans. Aidan Kelly Murphy: How did Eight Gallery start and how did you become involved? Eoin O’Dowd: The gallery initially began in 2012 with Jenny Taylor, who began using this upstairs room in Sol Art Gallery to show work by recent graduates. I knew Jenny through my time in Monster Truck, and when she moved on from the project, I took up the reins. I did it because I wanted to stay busy and involved. Sol quickly picked up on the large numbers attending Eight events and recognised the demand for new creative spaces. And while the space was only available intermittently during this time, due to Sol’s tentative programme, in the coming years they went to great lengths to accommodate Eight. AKM: In terms of the gallery programme, was the goal to show as much work as possible by recent graduates? EO’D: Yes, and this ethos became more solidified over time as I became more brazen in my role. A lot of recent graduates don’t necessarily have the confidence to make the necessary applications, so the hope was to make it a place that was approachable and inclusive. I wanted to show work that had palpable momentum, not just an aesthetic that I enjoyed. Mainly I hoped to prevent, or at least halt, the stagnation that can happen in any scene; if supports are not available for graduate artists after they leave institutions,
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Organisation
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momentum can be lost. Eight Gallery looked to avert this by providing a platform for engaging with a commercial gallery space. AKM: Did you find your role fluctuating between curating the work and being gallery facilitator for artists, in order to help shows achieve their potential? EO’D: My responsibilities could change dramatically from exhibition to exhibition, depending on how comfortable each artist was in putting on their own show. It was about being the glue that could enter the cracks of the trifecta of the work, the space and the artist; I supported wherever possible and necessary. Some shows were selected with a curator already in place, like the group show in 2013, ‘The Earth Rings in Your Ears’, curated by Tracy Hanna, for which I was happy to be the facilitator. Over the years I accumulated experience, in terms of familiarity with how the space worked, how footfall in the gallery changed, the viewing and spatial relations and so on. This knowledge helped me to offer pragmatic, as well as curatorial, guidance. More often, I would engage in a discourse with the artist as the work developed in the space and this was the most rewarding aspect of the role for me. AKM: With respect to the physical architecture, how did the space influence the exhibitions? EO’D: Functionally, Eight was a white cube gallery, albeit one with many unique caveats. I tried to avoid selecting work on the premise of it highlighting the space, as the room was always subordinate to the works. There-in, I believe the gallery became a space with many platforms and functions, be it a temple of meditative reflection, a place of celebration, or even protest. In terms of the architecture and history of the space, Doireann Ní Ghrioghair utilised it like no one else could, in her 2016 show ‘Deflated Capital’, taking casts of the building’s Georgian features to highlight its elegance, both permanent and temporal. In his first solo exhibition, ‘The dust carried me into the watchful summer’ in 2017, Bassam Al-Sabah embraced some of the structural qualities of the gallery, utilising the grand yet familial fireplace to create a space of vibrant introspection that stayed with the viewer, long after they’d left the gallery. AKM: Looking back at the artists who showed at Eight, many are now established early to mid-career artists. Do you see this as justification for the programme? EO’D: Absolutely. I don’t doubt these artists would be where they are today regardless, but I hope that working with Eight had a positive contribution to their trajectory and encouraged their practice. Eleanor McCaughey, David Lunney and many others share and demonstrate common traits; there will never be a lack of skilled artists out there, but bravery and tenacity are rare, and Eight offered me the opportunity to experience this first-hand. AKM: Now that Sol has moved to their new space on D’Olier Street, what does the future hold for Eight? EO’D: Eight’s time has passed. Eight only hosted two shows in Sol’s new D’Olier Street venue, including Cliodhna Timoney’s highly successful solo exhibition, ‘Tatty Green Lampshade’. In one way, Eight was a specific upper-floor Georgian room at 8 Dawson Street, but in another way, it was simply a space to encourage the practice of making and doing. Galleries are wonderful, but art exists outside of them too. Though I was the only one running the show, Eight had many people coming and going, freely and generously lending their expertise – particularly Helen MacMahon, Davey Moor, Claire McCluskey and not least, Sol Art Gallery themselves, who, among others, clearly saw the greater good. Any space or scene that nourishes inclusivity and a supportive community could manifest Eight’s intended legacy. Aidan Kelly Murphy is a writer and photographer based in Dublin. Eoin O’Dowd is an artist and independent curator currently based in Dublin.
Top left: Bassam Al-Sabbah, ‘The dust carried me into the watchful summer’, installation view, Eight Gallery, September 2017; courtesy of the artist Top right: Doireann Ní Ghrioghair, ‘Deflated Capital’, installation view, Eight Gallery, 2016; courtesy of the artist Bottom right: Liliane Puthod ‘Symbol Symbol Symbol’, installation view, Eight Gallery, October 2017; photograph by Lee Welch, courtesy of the artist
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VAI Event
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Shipsides and Beggs Projects, Zombie Line, Wheel and Wire, video still, image courtesy of the artists
Productive Friction KEVIN BURNS REVIEWS THE FOURTH AND FINAL INSTALMENT OF VAI’S NEW SPACES EXHIBITION PROGRAMME IN DERRY.
IT’S ABOUT FOUR in the afternoon: I’ve just bothered someone in an office to buzz me up to the first floor; I ascend a grand Georgian staircase, lined with Rothko posters; I wait while they switch everything on; and now I’m watching a stage eat itself. There are four metal scaffolds with stage lighting, mirrored in quadrants, cyclically contracting then expanding, like industrial foliate. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice that a progress bar has appeared at the top of the screen, with a timer counting 3, 4, 5 – then it’s gone. I’m at the Fashion & Textile Design Centre, one of four eponymous ‘new spaces’ in Derry, where sixteen projects have been situated from July to December, in four instalments of four projects each. New Spaces is a joint venture between Visual Artists Ireland and Derry City and Strabane District Council, supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Challenge Fund that, as decreed in an early press release: “Allows people to experience exciting and challenging contemporary art in new ways”. Certainly, off-site art projects can offer experiences distinct from those in the more utopian setting of an art gallery, with characteristics often borne out of the frictions inherent to such projects. Indeed, part of New Spaces’s remit is to encourage emerging curators to engage with – and learn from – the challenges that can result from curating art projects in unconventional settings. The exhibitions for each instalment were curated by Rebecca Strain, Edy Fung, Alice Butler and Mirjami Schuppert, who were selected during an open-call in early 2018, based on the strength of their site-responsive proposals. The fourth and final round of exhibitions ran from 17 November – 15 December 2018. In Ebrington Square on Saturday 1 December, Shipsides & Beggs Projects – an artistic collaboration between Dan Shipsides and Neal Beggs – presented ‘Zombie Line, Wheel and Wire’, a film screening and accompanying artists’ talk, curated by Alice Butler. Shipsides and Beggs reflect on the post-war geographies and defunct military infrastructures of the Dolomites in Northern Italy, focusing on the iron cables originally used as messaging and scouting routes for Italian soldiers during the First World War. The film leans on the disoriented visual logic of psychedelia to figuratively spin these cables into bicycle wheels, enacting a visual genealogy of the bicycle – from darling of the Italian Futurists and a favoured political symbol of Mussolini, to military vehicle (including – incredibly – the ‘UVF Bicycle Corp’), and hyper-masculine symbol, resplendent in im-
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
VAI Event
Emma Hirsch, The Womanly Art of Welding, image courtesy of Rebecca Strain
modest Lycra. Imagery recurs cyclically throughout, joyously asserting the possibilities of film as a nonlinear medium, where duration does not necessarily prescribe that narrative should run in parallel. Yarli Allison’s ‘[Backspace]’ is a four-part series of installations reflecting on growth, degrowth and evolution, filtered through biographical episodes. Part four, Infant, was due to take place at Gwyn’s Café & Pavillion in Derry’s Brooke Park, concluding the series with gestures of rebirth. But it was cancelled. From what I gathered while waiting for my coffee, the work was intended to involve an object suspended from the ceiling, which set off a dispute over whether it would “fit”. The artist opted to deliver a performance piece in the park grounds on the opening night instead. Evidently, artistic interests clashed with the spatial logistics of a working café, laying clear some of the practical limitations of off-site art projects: these aren’t utopian spaces where we are encouraged to loiter and just think for a little while; they are often functional spaces with their own set of demands. I would probably have ordered that coffee anyway – Gwyn’s is a beautiful café in an idyllic setting – but as I did so, I was aware of an implicit exchange: “I can’t just ask to see the art, and then walk out!” At the Sion Stables heritage centre in Sion Mills is a more harmonious relationship between project and location. Presented within a large glass case, Hiroko Matshushita’s Dualism of Storytelling is a delicate cut-paper installation, resembling a frieze, embossed on both sides of an unfurled, folded scroll. It is a take on Snow White, told between two narrative threads on either side of the paper, one in English and the other Japanese. The story is illustrated with silhouette portraiture, reminiscent of traditional Regency imagery, where one might see scenes of fox-hunting, or courtship in elegant hats. In an adjacent space stands Emma Hirsk’s sculpture, The Womanly Art of Welding, two elongated metal frames standing upright with a protuberant abstract form emerging from their centres. Both projects were curated by Rebecca Strain and installed among a permanent collection of artifacts from
Hiroko Matshushita, Dualism of Storytelling; image courtesy of Rebecca Strain
Sion Mills’ history as the company town for the Herdman Flax-Mill, established in 1835. Among the collection is a photograph of men at work in the mill, shovelling through an indoor desert of flax seed: the posture of the figures resonates with Matshushita’s illustrations, which in this context evoke an idealised remembrance of uneven relations between lords and tenants, employers and workers. As a model mill town, Sion Mills itself can be seen as symbolic of the duality pertinent to Matshushita’s work. Proud as the town is of the Herdman family legacy, Matshushita cautions against mistaking noblesse oblige for equity. Hirsk’s sculpture likewise speaks to its stablemates, aspiring to “situate the feminine in the natural environment”. The welded frames have a right-angled structure and verticality that is purposeful, suggesting labour and industry. They seemed at home in a museum of horse grooming tools and seed-weighing equipment, while also channelling the obscured histories of female industrial labour, not noticeably represented by the numerous archival images of magnificently moustached gentlemen. The aforementioned video at the Fashion & Textile Design Centre, is an element of Dave Loder’s audio installation, A Wh( )ly ring(ing), which builds on Loder’s conceptually ambitious practice of capturing and reproducing ambient auditory and kinetic forces. Curated by Mirjami Schuppert and occupying a large room, A Wh( )ly ring(ing) purports to engage with the imperceptible ringing of Derry’s City Walls. It comprises an array of small copper coins wired together, plugged into an audio mixer and outputted to a speaker. This contraption is installed amid an arrangement of geometric fabric patterns, a television displaying the stage, and another switched off and facing out of the window. The premise and aesthetic of the work implies that the copper coins somehow receive phenomena from the environment and make them audible. Only it doesn’t – I can’t hear anything. What I can hear are environmental noises: the electrical humming of the television; the gentle creaking of the windows, as though the white paint was crawling off the frames; the ominous rum-
blings of a large building’s infinitesimal swaying; the faint, fluctuating sound of air conditioning. If this speaker is actually producing any sound, it is lost amid the noise of the road and the people chatting beneath. But the audio system appears to be producing something, because we can read the display on the audio mixer, which indicates audio tracks are playing in sequence, much as the television plays video on a loop. The other television, inactively gazing out of the window, is even more ambivalent: is it supposed to be playing something, or did the gallery attendants forget to switch it on? A Wh( )ly ring(ing) creates an unreliable narrative that generates friction between trust and knowledge, bringing to mind the distressing disputation around climate science – a subject that is at once ambient and remote, but terrifyingly vast in scale. Whether or not one ‘believes’ in the science, depends largely on our trust in those who practice it. Quite apart from how it might operate under studio or gallery conditions, in this context A Wh( )ly ring(ing) symbolises the impossibility of total, empirical knowledge. We have to rely on trust – institutional and personal – to construct the truth. The concept of ‘bringing art’ to places where normal people conduct their everyday lives is nothing new, so I don’t honestly consider it an important outcome of New Spaces, as such. However, there is something revelatory about the dysfunction that can occur in off-site projects, where the formal utopian concepts of art practice generate productive friction with the priorities of non-art spaces. But the viewer must be autonomous for this to happen. Civic art programming aspires to contrive a viewing experience – it is a spectacle, however low-key – by bargaining our agency as viewers for an experience of revelation. We need to retain awareness of our agency, and decide how strenuously to exercise it; whether to buy the coffee, or not to buy the coffee...
Kevin Burns is an artist and writer based in Derry.
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Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
VAI Event
Belfast Open Studios 2018 CHRISTOPHER STEENSON REPORTS ON THE VARIOUS HAPPENINGS AT THIS YEAR’S BELFAST OPEN STUDIOS, ORGANISED BY VISUAL ARTISTS IRELAND.
Slavka Sverakova and Colin Darke (L – R) deep in discussion at Darke’s studio space in Flax Studios, Belfast. Pictured are some of Darke’s one-minute drawings; photograph by Christopher Steenson
NOW IN ITS fifth year, Belfast Open Studios is an ingrained
annual ritual for studio groups operating within the city. The event – which sees artists open their studios to the general public – takes place every year, as part of the Belfast International Festival. For Belfast Open Studios 2018, Open House Belfast – the architecture and engineering festival organised by PLACE – came on board as an additional partner. With a renewed focus on the built environment, the partnership between Open House and Belfast Open Studios seemed particularly timely, given recent events within the city. On 28 August, one of Belfast’s most enduring landmarks, the Bank Buildings, was engulfed in flames. Formerly home to Primark, the structure now stands precariously in the city centre as an incinerated husk. The repercussions of this fire have been widespread. At the time of writing, the central crossroads the building stands on is completely cordoned off, making it difficult to cross from one part of the city centre to another. A recent report stated that footfall in this area is down 60%, compared to last year. The fire has also affected the city’s art community. Exhibition openings have been quieter and studio groups have also been hit: QSS’s new satellite studio group, Norwich Union House, have not been able to access their studios because of safety concerns, meaning they could not participate in this year’s Open Studios. Nevertheless, on 13 October, both Open House Belfast and Belfast Open Studios brought some footfall back into the city, with several architecturally significant buildings and various artists’ studios opening to the public. I vistied several of the studios on the day with VAI’s Northern Ireland Manager, Rob Hilken. A trip to the Belfast Print Workshop gave us a glimpse at the various facilities available to their members, and we were even given the chance to hand-screen our own prints. At Pollen Studios, Lombard Studios and Cathedral Studios, we got an update on the recent activities of various artists. Just a few floors below Cathedral Studios, we also got a chance to see the new
home of Digital Arts Studios, after their relocation from Hill Street. One pleasant observation from these visits was the diverse range of visitors attending Open Studios this year, which included a number of architecture students, who were presumably brought into the ‘foreign environment’ of the artist’s studio because of Open House Belfast’s involvement. In Flax Studios, amidst a sprawling workshop of contraptions, including a drum kit and various sculptures, we found Dan Shipsides, who was working on a garden fence, while his children rummaged around and played video games. Next door, we discovered Colin Darke working in singular concentration. We entered sheepishly, so as not to disturb, and he generously showed us his latest series of works, in which he makes one-minute line drawings on paper. He then repeats these lines over several iterations, to create patterns and shapes. He stated that these drawings, like many of his works, act as a way of commenting on the value of labour under the capitalist system. At QSS Bedford Street, a series of artist talks took place to coincide with the event, featuring QSS members including Jane Rainey and Catherine Davidson. We made it just in time for Grace McMurray’s talk. We crammed into her studio along with four or five other visitors, as she explained the origins of her fine art practice, which uses craft techniques like fabric weaving, to create complex geometric patterns. We finished our studio tour by stopping off at Vault Artist Studios, located in the old Belfast Metropolitan College building on Tower Street in the east of the city. Despite being the newest of Belfast’s studio groups, and the furthest off the beaten track, Vault had over 400 visitors that day. This is most likely due to the sheer number of members – a mammoth 99 artists and creatives currently work in the building at present, with each having generously-sized studios. We arrived just as things were wrapping up and decided to stay around for the afterparty. The Belfast Open Studio programme continued a month
later on Friday 16 and Saturday 17 November, with talks from international curators and a ‘Speed Curating’ event respectively. Two of the speakers, Ania Ciabach and Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka, were invited from Poland in a bid by VAI to increase Belfast’s links with other European cities that have shared artistic values and affordable travel options for artists. Ciabach opened the talks on the day. She currently works as an independent curator in Warsaw, Poland, after previously working as a curator for the commercial gallery, Monopol, from 2014 to 2018. She focuses on emerging artists and mid-career artists with an interest in archives. Outside of her work with Monopol, she has curated events as part of Warsaw Gallery Weekend and is a guest curator with the Austrian Cultural Forum. Next up, Dean Brierley discussed his gallery space, Caustic Coastal, which is housed in a sprawling industrial warehouse in Salford in Greater Manchester. With the proclamation that he takes “more inspiration from fashion than art”, Brierley referred to the gallery as an “independent art label”. His presentation focused on his general sensibilities towards curating shows. Artists are invited to make new work for the space and are given a healthy budget to do so. Brierley seems to have a pragmatic understanding of how to market his gallery to the public. Addressing the idea that the “artist-led [gallery] is a myth”, he showed a promotional video of a recent exhibition at Caustic Coastal, that portrayed the gallery as an integrated and vibrant part of the Salford area. As the video played, he admitted that only a small handful of people would ever visit the show. He feels that engaging in this kind of ‘mythmaking’ (branding and marketing) is imperative to communicating the gallery’s importance. Two residency providers also contributed to the talks. Ika Sienkiewicz-Nowacka is Head of Artistic Residencies at U-jazdowski Castle, Centre for Contemporary Art, Poland. The centre focuses on providing residencies that are highly involved. The invited artists receive extensive consultation with the curators based at the centre and are expected to work closely with the local community. The centre also hosts an open-call for curatorial residencies through their ‘Re-Directing: East’ programme. The final presentation came from Norah Hickey (Director of Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris). Operating now for 16 years as a flagship cultural centre, CCI offers several residencies each year to Irish and Northern Irish artists working across a range of disciplines. Only two dedicated artist studios are available at CCI, but Hickey spoke of hopes to expand these facilities by providing 15 studios in the future (ten for Irish artists and five for international artists). Open Studios finished with a ‘Speed Curating’ event on Saturday 17 November at Belfast Exposed. A total of 11 curators took part in the event, including the four international curators invited to give talks. For those familiar with the Speed Curating sessions that take place at VAI’s annual Get Together, these sessions were far more relaxed by comparison. The 20-minute sessions with each curator afforded artists a comfortable amount of time to give an overview of their practice and receive feedback. Speaking of the sessions, both Catherine Hemelryk and Ania Ciabach said that they found the events useful on a number of levels. As the new director for CCA Derry~Londonderry, Hemelryck stated that the event allowed her to a get a sense of the artists operating in Ireland, whilst also getting to meet some of her peers working in different organisations across the country. Meanwhile, Ciabach said the she found the sessions to be a novel and interesting format that she would like to bring to Poland, potentially “present[ing] Irish artists to a Polish public”.
Christopher Steenson is Production Editor for the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Book Review
Man of Letters RÓISÍN KENNEDY REVIEWS THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED COLLECTION OF BRIAN O’DOHERTY’S LETTERS, EDITED BY BRENDA MOORE-MCCANN.
DEAR… SELECTED LETTERS from Brian O’Doherty 1970s to 2018 – a collection of the artist’s letters to art historians, critics and curators – is a valuable contribution to the many events and publications marking the artist’s ninetieth birthday last year. The elegant functionalism of O’Doherty’s letters implies the artist’s careful management of his persona and handling of his correspondents. But when one reads between the lines, revealing insights into his work and his personality can be detected. An early letter is written by the young and supremely confident O’Doherty, then a 29-year-old medical student, to Jack B. Yeats, the 86-year-old painter and writer, just a few days before the latter’s death in March 1957. Encouraging Yeats to keep painting, O’Doherty writes: “I am looking forward so much to the first picture you shall paint again, for it will reveal to you again the universe that you carry in your heart”. Self-educated in visual art, O’Doherty had already attracted the attention of critic Herbert Read, then the most influential figure in the British art world. Read thanks him for sending a copy of the Dublin Magazine, in which O’Doherty reviewed his 1955 book, Icon and Idea, and showed “a rare understanding of my point of view”. The Irishman’s abilities as a critic and writer were remarkable, even at this early stage of his career, particularly in an Irish context, where serious writing on art was scarce, to say the least. Soon after moving to the United States, O’Doherty befriended another much older and more established artist, Marcel Duchamp. A long letter to Alexander Alberro recounts their relationship. They met in New York in the late 1950s when Duchamp had ‘few champions’. O’Doherty recalls that: “We didn’t talk about art. We talked about latenight radio and Long John Nebel, about people, about ideas occasionally, rarely about art.” The now familiar story of the dinner to which Duchamp was invited (and which lead to his electrocardiograph being taken) is a repeat, almost word for word, of O’Doherty’s description of the event in his 1969 essay ‘Taking Duchamp’s Portrait’. After the meal Duchamp lay down while O’Doherty took the electrocardiograph of his heartbeat. Duchamp jokingly suggested that the resulting portrait be signed ‘Brian O’Doherty M.D.’ – a reference to his initials and to O’Doherty’s qualification as a medical doctor. But as O’Doherty’s letter records, “That would have been a charming and a very subtle act of possession on his part. I wasn’t going to let him participate in the creation. His heart had done its work”. O’Doherty then had the difficulty of reproducing the heartbeat. Combing local hardware stores, he found a spirit-level with three windows onto which, with some help, he built a container. This held the motor that imparted the lines of Duchamp’s heartbeat. O’Doherty writes: “I will not forget my excitement when the heart began to beat, inscribing perfectly the course traced by Duchamp’s heart. I had him, alive and in my hand”. The letters often read like critical essays. The two practices, writing and making art, are closely interconnected. In a letter to Lucy Lippard, O’Doherty reveals that it was through writing an essay on De Kooning that he worked through his fascination with body parts. But more broadly, one gets the sense that being a demanding and perceptive critic is not necessarily conducive to the creation of art. Lippard was, along with O’Doherty, part of the New York-based group of artists and critics that heralded in conceptualism and challenged the certainties of modernism. A letter to Lippard evokes those heady days when “the future was out there like an open fiveline highway”. But despite the freedom that this might suggest, O’Doherty felt the need to retrospectively rationalise his art work and carefully justify its production. Some of the letters have been quoted in earlier publications. One to Lippard – referring to the Five Senses of Bishop Coyne drawings – appeared in a 1986 catalogue essay and was in turn quoted by Alberro in his 2006 catalogue essay, ‘After the Senses’ (co-written with Nora M. Alter) for Beyond the White Cube.
In this circular flow of information, the basic interpretation of the artwork and its rationale goes back directly to O’Doherty. One of the most original contributions of the book, for me at least, is the insights that it gives into art politics in Ireland in the 1970s and 1980s. At times O’Doherty appears to see himself as a kind of missionary for bringing progressive art to our shores. He takes a close interest in the Rosc exhibitions and advocates the raising of “a first-rate collection of NY art” for the Hugh Lane Gallery that never materialised. The refusal of the ‘Rosc 77’ committee to include Name Change (1972) – the record of the Patrick Ireland performance – in the exhibition and in the catalogue crops up in passing. In addition, an unpleasant encounter with an Irish Times journalist in Columbus Ohio bears out O’Doherty’s belief that the Irish “carry their darkness of understanding with them abroad”. The book confirms the close relationship between O’Doherty and Dorothy Walker. O’Doherty keenly encouraged Walker’s art writing and tried to facilitate her reviewing of his work in American journals. His request to Artforum to engage Walker to review ‘Rosc 77’ was refused, as Walker was on the exhibition committee. O’Doherty’s continuing interest in the art scene in Ireland was both generous and largely positive. He attempted to use his considerable influence to expand its horizons exponentially in these years. Several of the later letters are written to Brenda Moore-McCann, the editor of this collection, who undertook a PhD on the artist, which later became the basis of a monograph. These reveal a close working through of O’Doherty’s practice in response to Moore-McCann’s questions, as her engagement with his work and its wider contexts began to deepen. One query prompts a fascinating account of O’Doherty’s first ‘Rope Drawing’, made in a “ramshackle alternative space” in Greene Street, New York, in the early 1970s: “I can still feel the urgent stress of trying to mentally secrete a substance that would stretch across that space, column to wall, floor to ceiling. Then, sliding into my mind with ridiculous ease, the thought of string, rope – flexible, mundane, inelastic, each rope’s mildly hairy coils twisting daintily around themselves…”. This burning need to communicate the physicality of space to the viewer, recalls Yeats’s late work, which dealt in a different way with the same concern. Reading these letters makes the process and purpose of Brian O’Doherty/Patrick Ireland’s work more understandable. While his close philosophical justifications and explanations can weigh down what might otherwise be perceived as merely playful or clever, his gift as an art writer shines through. In a letter to Walker, he cogently explains the purpose of the ‘Rope Drawings’ in memorable terms, as drawing “temporary propositions that give brief visions of order” to space, which “is a kind of jungle, a complete chaos with no rhyme or reason at all”. It can only have been a relief to receive such articulate responses to queries on what were often temporary and complex works of art. O’Doherty’s correspondents were fortunate that the artist was also a perceptive critic and writer, skilled in explaining both the physical and the intellectual content of an artwork, including his own. Top: Dear…. Selected Letters from Brian O’Doherty 1970s to 2018 cover Bottom: Letter from Brian O’Doherty to Dorothy Walker, 17 November 1973 (p. 28)
Dr Róisín Kennedy lectures in the School of Art History and Cultural Policy at UCD.
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Public Art Roundup
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
ART OUTSIDE OF THE GALLERY
Vision
Eist Le Fuaim na hAbhann
Artist: Ashling Smith Title of work: Vision Site: Electric Picnic 2018, Stradbally Commissioning body: Electric Picnic 2018 Diverse Individual Visual Artist (DIVA) Date advertised: 1 June 2018 Date carried out: 31 August – 2 September Budget: A bursary of €5,000 was offered, to be shared amongst four selected artists Project Partners: Institute of Technology Blanchardstown
Artist: Therese Murphy Title of work: Eist Le Fuaim na hAbhann agus Gheobhaidh to Breac Site: Finnegan’s Sensory Garden, Abbey Village Commissioning body: Abbey Community Heritage Group Date advertised: January 2018 Date sited: June 2018 Budget: €1,600 Commission type: Site-specific art mural Project Partners: Inland fisheries Ireland, Galway Roscommon Water and Communities, Galway County Council’s Agenda 21 and Abbey Tidy Towns
Description: Vision is an audio-visual work created by digital media artist Ashling Smith, that intends to celebrate artists and creativity through visuals and sound-based media. The project is achieved through projection mapping and a five-piece structure. It is based on the voices of anonymous creatives from different backgrounds, sharing their stories on what creativity means to them. Vision was originally created for Smith’s degree show, winning her Draíocht’s inaugural Creative Digital Media Award, which subsequently led to a solo exhibition in Draíocht as a part of PLATFORM 2019. As part of Electric Picnic, Vision was displayed in front of 55,000 people who walked along the art trail at the festival. They could sit down and relax on the beanbags provided and immerse themselves in the audio-visual installation.
Description: Eist le fuaim na hAbhann is a public art project created by contemporary artist Therese Murphy. Based in the rural community of Abbey, County Galway, the mural explores the crucial issue of water quality at local and national levels, by mapping the local river from source to the Shannon. The piece portrays the ideal situation of the abundant life that exists along a pristine waterway. This positivity contrasts with the reality in Irish rivers, as many prolific and ancient aquatic species continue to fall into serious decline. In creating the mural, focus was given to the native brown trout, whose numbers have vastly declined in recent years, questioning why this has happened. The artist uses the public forum of mural painting to encourage best practices in agriculture, horticulture and in our daily lives. Sited near a river, the location makes palpable the ancient proverb from which the work is derived – ‘Eist le fuaim na habhann’, which roughly translates as ‘in order to catch fish, it is important to listen to the river’.
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
Health Inside
Artist: Dr Sinead McCann Title of work: Health Inside Sites of work: 10 locations near Mountjoy Prison in Dublin 7. A map of the locations can be found at: histprisonhealth.com/arts-projects/health-inside Dates sited: 10 to 22 November 2018 Budget: €18,000 Commission type: Artist-initiated project with funding from the Arts Council of Ireland, Welcome Trust UK and University College Dublin. Project Partners: Associate Professor Catherine Cox and Dr Oisín Wall at School of History, University College Dublin. Description: Health Inside was a public art intervention about the Irish prison system and prisoners’ health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It took form as a series of posters that subversively occupy the private advertising space of two large billboards and eight bus shelters on the North Circular Road, and the surrounding area near Mountjoy Prison in Dublin 7. Instead of seducing the public with shiny products, experiences or services to buy, Health Inside occupies these private advertising spaces as a mean of enticing the viewer to reflect on prison conditions, the mental health of men and women in prison and the social problems that imprisonment can cause. The project was created by visual artist, Dr Sinead McCann, in collaboration with the historians Assoc Prof Catherine Cox and Dr Oisín Wall at University College Dublin as a public engagement output for the research project ‘Prisoners, Medical Care and Entitlement to Health in England and Ireland, 1850 – 2000’, led by Assoc Prof Catherine Cox and Prof Hilary Marland (University of Warwick, UK).
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Opportunities
Visual Artists' News Sheet | January – February 2019
GRANTS, AWARDS, OPEN CALLS, COMMISSIONS
Open Calls
EXHIBITIONS AT THE ATRIUM, OFFALY
Offaly County Council Arts Office are inviting applications from Offaly-based community groups, arts organisations, schools and artists who are interested in availing of The Atrium in Áras an Chontae, Tullamore, to exhibit artwork within the period mid-March to November 2019. Applications are encouraged from community groups, schools, voluntary art groups and professional visual artists in Offaly to make a submission, either as a solo exhibit or as part of a group. Those wishing to make an application need to take account of the scale and contemporary nature of the Aras building, and ensure a high standard of presentation appropriate to this designed space. During the months of March to November, 2019, Offaly County Council will make available its exhibition facilities to exhibitors, free of charge, for between four to six weeks at a time. Please note that the organising group or individual will be responsible for all costs associated with mounting the exhibition.
Funding/Awards
BODY & SOUL DESIGN BURSARY 2019
Body & Soul Bursary Grants are designed to fulfill the artistic and decorative requirements for the festival in 2019 and beyond, while providing artists an opportunity to develop a proposed project and present new work to a large audience in an outdoor environment. Bursaries are geared towards professional artists, technicians, production managers and creatives working in a relevant sector, with experience in delivering similar projects on budget and on time. Body & Soul encourages submissions that develop a high-quality, imaginative artistic practice; and can reach and engage with diverse audiences. If you have questions regarding any bursary, please contact us. Further details, such as stage plans, are available on request. While Body & Soul promote full artistic expression without boundaries, they ask for proposals to adhere to the specified guidelines, regarding cost and safety. Body & Soul will make final decisions based upon artists’ level of expertise, vision and ability to work within deadlines and small budgets.
EURO2020 COMMISSIONS
Dublin City Council, in partnership with the FAI invite proposals for artistic projects which will take place during the UEFA European Football Championships in June 2020, of which four matches will take place in the AVIVA Stadium Dublin. The invitation is for art projects in any artform (visual arts, film, dance, theatre, literature, spoken word, street art, etc), which can be permanent, temporary or timebased and can respond to the hosting of these matches in Dublin. The budget for proposals is €50,000. This is for all costs relating to the commission, including the cost of fees, development, creation, installation, dissemination and completion/removal (as relevant). There is a twostage process for applications. Stage 1 will consist of an application on the proposed project, including project plan and supporting documentation. In Stage 2, a maximum of five proposals will be short-listed and paid a fee of €500 to further develop their proposal further. More information can be found online.
Deadline Friday 25 January, 15:00
GOING SOLO GRADUATE AWARD
Meath County Council Arts Office is delighted to announce the relaunch of its Going Solo Graduate Award. The Going Solo Graduate Award, originally launched in 2001, is designed to assist emerging Meath artists in the earliest stages of their artistic careers. Welcoming submissions from recent art graduates who are either originally from, or currently residing in County Meath, The Going Solo Graduate Award offers one artist the chance of winning a professional solo exhibition and €1,000 combined materials stipend and purchase prize. The exhibition will be hosted in the Toradh 2 Gallery in Kells’ newly refurbished Courthouse and presents the winning artist with a platform from which to launch themselves and present their work. The award is open to artists who graduated from Art College in 2017/2018 and those due to graduate in 2019. For further information and to obtain an application form, please contact Aedín McGinn, Assistant Arts Officer (details below). Deadline Friday 1 March, 17:00
Web offaly.ie/arts
Deadline Friday 25 January, 23:59
Email arts@offalycoco.ie
Web backstage.bodyandsoul.ie
Deadline Friday 18 January, 12noon
Email Aedín McGinn, artsoffice@meathcoco.ie
Tel 057 9357400
Email decor@bodyandsoul.ie
Email artlegacy2020@dublincity.ie
Tel 046 9097414
BELFAST PHOTO FESTIVAL 2019
SUNNY ART PRIZE 2019
DRAÍOCHT STUDIO RESIDENCY
ARTLINKS BURSARIES 2019
Belfast Photo Festival (6 to 30 June 2019) is offering artists and photographers the opportunity to exhibit their work in the main festival gallery, alongside some of the biggest names in the field of photography. They will also have their work taken on tour to be exhibited at the 2020 Photo Schwiez (Zurich, Switzerland), with a number also having the opportunity to be featured in the arts magazines Abridged and GUP. The winners will be eligible for a number of awards, including a cash prize of €1,127 (est. £1,000). The theme has been left open to remove any restrictions; submissions must be photographic or lens-based. Individuals and collectives are welcome to apply; individuals should select and enter between 1 and 15 photographs from a particular series or body of work and/or submit their photobook for exhibition, by providing a link to a single PDF (stored on, for example, Google Drive or Dropbox). Submissions cost €22 / €29 for every 15 images submitted. Between 20 and 40 photographers artists will be selected. All finalists who submitted photographs will have their work produced by the festival for exhibition outdoors. For more information, visit the website.
The Sunny Art Prize is a yearly art competition in the UK, organised by the Sunny Art Centre, London, with a selection of thirty artists who will take part in international activities, including exhibitions and a residency. A total cash fund of £6,000 is awarded to the prizewinners. 27 other shortlisted artists will also exhibit their works at the Sunny Art Centre. Out of these 27, seven artists will exhibit their works at partner galleries in China, along with the three winners. The Sunny Art Prize encourages artists to engage with real contemporary issues. Winners of previous editions did so with powerful statements that could be read from their work. Please note: The entry fee for this competition is £25 for one artwork, £32 for two artworks, £40 for three artworks and £45 for four artworks (pricing excluding VAT). For more information visit their website.
Web meathcoco.ie
Draíocht continues its Incubate Studio Residency Programme for emerging/early-career visual artists, who wish to have time and space to research, test new ideas, and develop new work. The open call is for artists whose practice – in any medium – is focused on children/young people or the theme of childhood. The six-week residency at Draíocht’s Artist Studio will be offered to a single artist or a small collective between 4 March and 19 April 2019. The context for this residency is Draíocht’s commitment to the visual arts/visual culture through its gallery, studio and young people’s programme. If you wish to be considered please send the following information to the email below: a current CV (2 pages maximum); expression of interest to include an artist statement; a clear indication of the focus of the studio residency; website and/or other links to your work and/ or up to ten images of relevant work in jpeg format. Please send all in a single PDF. The recipient will be announced on 30 January.
Wexford County Council in partnership with the ArtLinks partners in Carlow, Kilkenny and Waterford City and County Council are currently accepting applications for the ArtLinks Bursary Awards 2019. ArtLinks provides professional development opportunities and supports for established and emerging artists who are resident in the four partner local authority areas in the South East region. Artists must be a member of ArtLinks to avail of these supports. Membership is free and is open to both Professional and Emerging Artists who are resident within the four partner Local Authorities. If you are not already a member, log onto artlinks.ie to register. Application forms and guidelines are available to download from the website. Bursaries are available in the following areas: Emerging Artist Award (for those commencing a career in the arts sector); Professional Development Award (for professional artists); and Collaborative Award (for collaborative projects between ArtLinks members). Application forms from Wexford based artists must be sent to: Arts Department, Wexford County Council, Carricklawn, Co. Wexford. Faxed, emailed or late applications will not be accepted.
Deadline Friday 25 January, 17:00 Deadline Friday 8 March
Deadline Sunday 30 June
Web draiocht.ie
Deadline Monday 21 January at 16:00
Web belfastphotofestival.com
Web sunnyartcentre.co.uk/artprize
Email draiochtincubate@gmail.com
Web artlinks.ie
professional development Winter/Spring 2019
Northern Ireland
Republic of Ireland Dublin City
Wexford
Belfast
Ards & North Down
PEER CRITIQUE
HOW TO PRESENT YOU AND YOUR WORK – DIGITAL MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS
VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC
VISUAL ARTISTS CAFÉ: SHOW AND TELL
with Ciara Phillips Date/Time: 25 January. 10:30 – 17:00. Location: RHA Gallery. Places/Cost: 8. €75 / €50 (VAI members).
Tipperary GUIDANCE ON CHILD PROTECTION LEGISLATION
with Louise Monaghan Date/Time: 29 January. 10:00 – 15:00. Location: South Tipperary Arts Centre, Clonmel. Places/Cost: TBC. €100 / €50 (VAI members) / €20 (Tipperary artists). GUIDANCE ON CHILD PROTECTION LEGISLATION
with Louise Monaghan Date/Time: 30 January. 10:00 – 15:00. Location: Nenagh Arts Centre. Places/Cost: TBC. €100 / €50 (VAI members) / €20 (Tipperary artists).
with Emma Dwyer Date/Time: 4 February. 10:00 – 17:00. Location: Gorey School of Arts. Places/Cost: 15. €100 / €50 (VAI members) / €20 (Wexford artists). HOW TO APPLY FOR FUNDING
with Neva Elliott Date/Time: 4 March. 14:00 – 17:00. Location: Wexford County Council. Places/Cost: 15. €100 / €50 (VAI members) / €20 (Wexford artists). MANAGING YOUR ACCOUNTS
with Gaby Smyth Date/Time: 1 April. 10:30 – 13:30. Location: Wexford County Council. Places/Cost: 15. €100 / €50 (VAI members) / €20 (Wexford artists). FINANCIAL ADVICE CLINIC FOR WEXFORD BASED ARTISTS – ONE ON ONE
Date/Time: 16 Jan. 13:00 – 17:00. Location: Visual Artists Ireland [NI]. Places/Cost: 6. £5/FREE (VAI members).
Fermanagh & Omagh LAKELANDS – VISUAL ARTISTS CAFÉ
Date/Time: Spring TBC. Location: Waterways Ireland HQ, Enniskillen. Places/Cost: 20+. FREE.
Causeway Coast & Glens VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC
Date/Time: 13 Feb. 12:00 – 17:00. Location: Flowerfield Arts Centre (TBC). Places/Cost: 6. £5/FREE (VAI members).
Date/Time: 24 Jan. 19:00 – 21:00. Location: Boom! Studios, Bangor. Places/Cost: 6. FREE. VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC
Date/Time: Feb (TBC). 11:00 – 16:00. Location: Ards Arts Centre, Newtonards. Places/Cost: 6. £5/£2.50 (VAI members). ARTIST CONTRACTS/PROJECT CLINIC
Date/Time: 19 March. 18:00 – 21:00. Location: Ards Arts Centre, Newtonards. Places/Cost: 6. £10/£5 (VAI members). BEING CREATIVE
Tools in how to maintain creativity and overcome blocks Date/Time: 19 March. 10:00 – 16:00. Location: Boom! Studios, Bangor. Places/Cost: 15. £20.
with Gaby Smyth Date/Time: 1 April. 13:45 – 14:00 / 14:00 – 14:15 / 14:15 – 14:30. Location: Wexford County Council. Places/Cost: 3. FREE for Wexford artists.
VISUAL ARITSTS CAFÉ WEXFORD
Date/Time: 29 April. (Time TBC). Location: Gorey School of Arts. Places/Cost: 20+. FREE.
ROI Bookings and Information To register a place or to find information on any of our upcoming Professional Development events in the Republic of Ireland, visit: visualartists.ie/professional-development-_
Development Partners
NI Bookings and Information To register a place or to find information on any of our upcoming Professional Development events in Northern Ireland, visit: visualartists.org.uk/booking
Fees VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI, training and professional development events.
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.
VAI Show & Tell Events VAI will schedule Show & Tell events during 2018 and invites interested artists, groups, venues or partners to get in touch if interested in hosting a Show & Tell. E: monica@visualartists.ie
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.