Visual Artists' News Sheet – 2020 May June

The Visual Artists’ News Sheet

VAN Issue 3: May – June 2020

Inside This Issue ENGAGE ART STUDIOS DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2020 NATIONAL SCULPTURE FACTORY INTERVIEW: LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN

A Visual Artists Ireland Publication

Contents On The Cover Helena Walsh, live enactment of Áine Phillips’ Buttered up in the Couch, Friday 6 March 2020, MART Gallery; photograph by Ewa Pypno, courtesy of the artists and MART Gallery.

First Pages 4.

News. The latest developments in the arts sector.

Columns

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Internationalism. Communities of Care. Matt Packer considers time, solitude and the implications of virtual exhibitions during the global pandemic.

Mental Health. The Body Keeps the Score. Ceara Conway discusses the impacts of COVID-19 on the wellbeing of artists.

Opinion. Hope Through the Fog. Declan McGonagle discusses the process of turning ‘selfish’ into ‘selfless’ in response to COVID-19.

Skills. The Poetry of Painting. Cornelius Browne reflects on the relationship between nature poetry and plein air painting.

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Regional Focus: County Louth 8.

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Creative Spark. Sarah Daly, Executive Director.

AAEX (Art as Exchange). Bernhard Gaul, Member & Co-Founder.

An Tain Arts Centre. Elaine Cronin, General Manager.

Droichead Arts Centre. Collette Farrell, Director.

Fragile Fluctuations. Els Borghart, Visual Artist.

Pixel Sorting and Diffracting Gestures. EL Putnam, Visual Artist.

Tracing the Border. Nigel Swann, Visual Artist.

Highlanes Gallery. Aoife Ruane, Director.

Profiles 12.

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Buttered Up. Katherine Nolan talks about Áine Philips’s performancebased exhibition at MART Gallery, Dublin.

From the Court to the Gallery. Meadhbh McNutt talks to Evelynn Glynn about the exhibition, ‘Home Truths’, at Engage Art Studios.

Corporeal Vocalities. Pádraig Spillane reviews ‘Many voices, all of them loved’ at John Hansard Gallery, Southampton.

Rituals of Care. Joyce Cronin interviews Laura Ní Fhlaibhín about her recent exhibition in London.

Following the Story. Roisin Foley discusses the development of William Bock’s recent exhibition, ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’.

Radio Free Kilnaboy. Anne Mullee speaks to artist Tom Flanagan about his project ‘Folk Radio’ in County Clare.

Collective Self-Consciousness. Anne Tallentire and Chris FiteWassilak describe the development and deviations of hmn.

Contemporary Imprints. Jonathan Brennan reports on the MultiMatrix Print Symposium at The MAC, Belfast.

Material and Immaterial. Valerie Byrne and Dobz O’Brien outline the evolution of the National Sculpture Factory.

Introduction AT THE TIME of writing, all cultural institu-

tions, galleries and studio groups remain closed, as part of the unprecedented nationwide restrictions announced on 12 March, aimed at containing the spread of COVID-19 in Ireland. As this issue went to print, the coronavirus pandemic surpassed 2 million cases globally. Thankfully, the figures in Ireland have remained comparatively low.

However, the detrimental impacts on the Irish cultural sector are likely to resonate for some time.

Our bi-monthly editorial schedule has allowed us to update some of our previously commissioned content, to better reflect the rapidly shifting scenario. Many of this issue’s contributors frame their observations through the lens of recent restrictions.

For example, Katherine Nolan reminisces about the thrill of encountering live art, as part of Aine Phillip’s recent exhibition, ‘Buttered Up’, at MART Gallery. Ensconced in a sink as “absurd hostess”, Philips greeted audiences by extending a buttery hand, with Nolan commenting on the “intimacy of the handshake, now under scrutiny since the introduction of social distancing measures”.

In a similar vein, reflecting on the comparative freedom of global travel that we enjoyed only a few weeks ago, Lívia Páldi describes the week she spent at the Dhaka Art Summit 2020 in mid February, as feeling like both a “mirage” and a “rare privilege”, in light of

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The Rural. Reviewed by Michelle Horrigan.

Public Art 27.

Flexible Capacities. Sophie Gough outlines the making of her first public artwork, Brí, commissioned for the Hive building.

Among columns for this issue, Matt Packer presents a rejoinder to his ‘Internationalism’ series, outlining the impacts of COVID-19 on the artworld. Declan McGonagle describes the socio-economic impacts of the ‘selfish state’, while Ceara Conway discusses how the current scenario is affecting artists’ mental health.

The May/June issue also features a range of exhibition and project profiles: Anne Mullee speaks to artist Tom Flanagan about his ‘Folk Radio’ project in County Clare; Joyce Cronin interviews Laura Ní Fhlaibhín about her recent exhibition in London; Anne Tallentire and Chris Fite-Wassilak describe the development of hmn – a quarterly sound-based test centre event, running in London since 2015; while Valerie Byrne outlines the evolution of the National Sculpture Factory.

Features Editor: Joanne Laws Production Editor/Design: Christopher Steenson News/Opportunities: Shelly McDonnell, Siobhan Mooney

Visual Artists Ireland:

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 Board of Directors: Michael Corrigan (Acting Chair), Michael Fitzpatrick, Richard Forrest, Paul Moore, Mary-Ruth Walsh, Cliodhna Ní Anluain

Seismic Movements. Lívia Páldi reports on the Dhaka Art Summit 2020 in Bangladesh.

Book Reviews

Naturally, the closure of all cultural venues has impinged on some of our gallery coverage. Rather than reviewing ‘Home Truths’ at Engage Art Studios, we are now featuring an interview (conducted remotely by Meadhbh McNutt) with the curator, Evelyn Glynn, whose research with victims of domestic abuse provided the impetus for the show.

This interview certainly feels all the more poignant, when we consider those living in lockdown with domestic violence, as the potentially hidden victims of this pandemic.

The Visual Artists' News Sheet:

International 24.

subsequent global restrictions and the “rush towards digital space.”

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

Last Pages 28.

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Public Art Roundup. Art outside of the gallery.

Opportunities. Grants, awards, open calls and commissions.

VAI Lifelong Learning. Upcoming VAI workshops.

Principle Funders

Project Funders

Corporate Sponsors

Project Partners

Critique Supplement i. ii. iii. iv.

Cover Image: Bassam Al-Sabbah, Eventually Void, 2019.

Vivienne Dick & Ciara Nic Chormaic at DIFF 2020.

‘An Unreliable Presence’ at Golden Thread Gallery.

Mairead O’hEocha at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

International Memberships

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News

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

THE LATEST FROM THE ARTS SECTOR

Golden Fleece Award 2020 On 25 March, the trustees of the Golden Fleece Award announced Cork-based multimedia artist Ailbhe Ní Bhriain as the winner of the 2020 Golden Fleece Award.

Ní Bhriain received the main award, worth €15,000. Two Golden Fleece Special Awards were also presented to jeweler and silversmith Annemarie Reinhold and painter Kathy Tynan, receiving sums of €10,000 and €5,000 respectively. Visual artist Laura Fitzgerald and jeweler/engraver Pierce Healy were also shortlisted for the award. Over 215 artists applied for the award this year – a record number since its inauguration.

The awards were due to be presented to the winning artists during a ceremony event on the evening of 25 March at the RHA in Dublin. However, the ceremony was cancelled due to public health measures put in place to mitigate the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. The announcement was made online instead.

COVID-19 Income Support in ROI The Irish Government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been to introduce measures to support workers and businesses affected by the COVID-19 that apply to all sectors of the economy, including those who work in the culture sector. The measures introduced to date include the COVID-19 Income Support Scheme, which incorporates: the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment; the Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme; an Enhanced Illness Benefit payment; measures to assist with housing costs; and measures to support businesses. COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) is available if a worker has lost their job or been temporarily laid-off as a result of the COVID-19 crisis and had been in employment or self-employment immediately before 13 March 2020, they may be eligible for PUP, which is payable at a rate of €350 per week by the Department Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

If you have been diagnosed with COVID-19, you should apply for Illness Benefit. You can apply for benefit right away, after being diagnosed. The Illness Benefit rate is €350 per week.

It will be paid for a maximum of two weeks where a person is self-isolating and a maximum of 10 weeks if diagnosed with COVID-19. The Illness Benefit also applies to those who are self-employed.

Where a self-employed artist on Jobseeker’s Allowance, has experienced a collapse in income on or after 13 March 2020 and is in a position to take up alternative full-time employment (if it was available to them), they can avail of PUP. The JA claim will be suspended while the pandemic payment is being paid. If you ceased trading before the 13 March 2020 you can ask for a review of the means from self-employment on their claim.

The Department of Culture Heritage & Gaeltacht have set up an Arts Unit. Anyone in the arts who has questions about the Government supports available to them, can email their question to artsunit@chg.gov.ie and include a telephone number. The Arts Unit will try to respond to you by email or phone as soon as possible. Individuals should contact the DEASP Income Support Helpline for COVID-19 (01 248 1398 or 1890 800 024) directly with queries regarding eligibility for PUP. Citizens Information can also help in assessing which payment support may be suitable, when taking

This was the nineteenth iteration of the annual Golden Fleece Awards. With a total prize fund of €30,000, it is the most generous award of its kind for artists in Ireland.

The award was established at the request of the late Lillias Mitchell – an Irish artist and educator who opened the Weaving department at the National College of Art & Design in 1951. Each year the awards are administered by a Board of Trustees, including members of Lillias Mitchell’s family. The decisions are supported by an advisory panel who guide the development of the award. This year’s panel consisted of Patrick T. Murphy (Panel Chair and Director of the RHA, Dublin), Angela O’Kelly (jeweler and Head of Design for Body and Environment, NCAD), Ann Mulrooney (creative industries leader), Catherine Marshall (art historian, educator and curator) and Dr Declan Long (art critic and Co-Director of the MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD).

into consideration other factors such as children, dependent adults, carers allowance, etc. They have a ‘Request a call back’ service through citizensinformation.ie and a general helpline (076 107 4000).

COVID-19 Income Support in the UK/NI The UK Government have introduced The Coronavirus Self-employment Income Support Scheme, which will give those who are self-employed a taxable grant worth 80% of their profits, up to a cap of £2,500 per month. Payments will start from the beginning of June.

To qualify for the self-employed support scheme, you must have traded in the last financial year (2018–19), be still trading now and planning on continuing to do so this year.

At least 50% of your income must come from self-employment. It is open to those with a trading profit of less than £50,000 in 2018–2019, or an average trading profit of less than £50,000 from 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19. There will also be a six-month delay for Self-Assessment tax payments. Those who have only registered as self-employed this year cannot receive help under the scheme.

HM Revenue Commissions (HMRC) will use information in their records to contact people directly, inviting them to apply for the scheme. It is important that the contact details associated with your HMRC online account are up to date.

The Government has also deferred VAT payments to the next quarter. The deadline for annual accounts has been extended by three months.

In Northern Ireland, a £10,000 Business Support Grant scheme has been made available to all small businesses who receive Small Business Rates Relief (i.e. with a rateable value of up to £15,000). Payments will be made directly into eligible businesses bank accounts through the rates system. A £25,000 support grant is also available for businesses in the hospitality, tourism and retail sectors. For more information on these schemes, visit economy-ni.gov.uk.

If you are self-employed but are also in receipt of Universal Credit (UC), the Minimum Income Floor for has been relaxed for the duration of the pandemic. If you have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or are self-isolating, you will be able to claim advance payments without attending a Jobcentre Plus. For those who are receiving benefits through UC standard allowances and working tax credits have both been increased by £20 for one year (which commenced on 6 April).

Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Untitled (the sublime and the good), 2019, pigment print on handcoated cotton, 65 × 39.5 cm; courtesy of the artist and domobaal Gallery

Housing Allowance has also been increased to the 30th percentile of market rents.

Those diagnosed with COVID-19 (or self-isolating) and in regular employment can claim Statutory Sick Pay at £94.25 per week (paid by your employer for up to 28 weeks). SSP is now paid from day 1, rather than day 4, of your absence from work. For more information on all pandemic income supports, visit gov.uk.

COVID-19 Impact on the Arts (ROI) In what has been a tumultuous time for the arts internationally, the Arts Council of Ireland have responded to crisis, by setting out a number of precautions and initiatives to help artists and arts organisations. Initial findings from a survey of 265 Arts Council of Ireland-funded organisations found that over 12,000 events have been cancelled because of the pandemic, with an audience loss of over 2.4 million people.

On 3 April, Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht (DCHG), Josepha Madigan announced a range of measures aimed at supporting artists’ creative output during the crisis. A collaboration between Culture Ireland and Facebook Ireland, called ‘Ireland Performs’, enables artists to livestream performance-based works on Facebook Live and other social media platforms.

On the same day, the Department also announced a new €1 million funding scheme for artists through the Arts Council of Ireland. The COVID-19 Crisis Response Award is giving artists €3,000 for the creation of new artistic work that will be disseminated to public during the pandemic. The deadline for the award closed on 16 April and awardees are expected be announced in May. The award received the most applications in the Arts Council’s history.

Responding to these measures, the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA) said they were “extremely disappointed by the DCHG’s response to the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the Irish arts community”. On 8 April, the NCFA held a public meeting via Zoom. Close to 400 artists and arts workers, from across the sector, came together to discuss the effects of the pandemic. The meeting resulted in a number of calls to government. These include the establishment of a stabilisation fund to help cultural organisations survive the crisis; the commitment of an additional €20 million to the Arts Council of Ireland, allowing for increases in Project Awards and Bursaries; and for the Pandemic Unemployment Payment to be extended until

the end of the year, as well as following the lead of other European countries in developing a model for Universal Basic Income for all citizens. Looking to the long-term, the NCFA have also asked for assurance that at least the same level of financial investment will be given to Arts Council and Culture Ireland in 2021.

Visual Artists Ireland are currently in regular contact with both the Arts Council and DCHG, advising on both current and medium-to-longterm impacts of the crisis. One of the key issues VAI is looking at is help for artists who are falling through the cracks of current supports. VAI has also been made part of consultation group, tasked with considering how the the crisis will effect the cultural sector in the future. This group will be meeting regularly, relaying concerns to the Department as developments unfold.

COVID-19 Impact on the Arts (NI) Results from a survey published by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) found that average loss of earnings for individual artists (between the months of March and May) was £3,765, while organisations lost around £36,714, depending on their size and reliance on box office sales. Stormont’s Department for Communities (DfC) have announced £1.5 million fund for the arts sector (an increase of £500,000 from an initial statement made on 27 March).

Further news was delayed until 27 April when, the ACNI announced the Artists Emergency Programme (AEP), which makes up part of this arts sector fund. The programme offers grants of up to £5,000 for freelance artists, creative practitioners and performers from a total fund worth £500,000. It is currently expected that artists apply for AEP grants can expect a decision within two weeks of submitting their proposal.

Other measures as part of the DfC’s £1.5 million fund are due to be rolled out in the coming weeks, which will be aimed at supporting arts organisations, libraries and museums. The DfC also announced on the 27 March that they have also donated £10,000 to the GoFundMe campaign ‘Bread and Butter’. The Bread and Butter fund gives grants of £200 to artists to ensure they are able to cover basic living costs.

The DfC’s contribution will therefore support 50 artists. The donation was met with scrutiny from some working in the arts sector, as the fund gives out its grants on a first-come first-serve basis, without transparency as to who receives the grant.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Columns

Internationalism

Mental Health

Communities of Care

The Body Keeps the Score

MATT PACKER CONSIDERS TIME, SOLITUDE AND THE IMPLICATIONS OF VIRTUAL EXHIBITIONS DURING COVID-19.

CEARA CONWAY DISCUSSES THE IMPACTS OF COVID-19 ON THE WELLBEING OF ARTISTS.

I’M STARTING TO write this text by imagin-

ing it published in the May/June issue of VAN, somewhere in the front pages, surrounded by the usual content of news, promoted opportunities and artistic commentary. My guess is that by the time this issue is published, much of its contents (this text included) will already be out-of-step with the world that it was intended for. Out-of-step because the news traffic of the COVID-19 pandemic runs faster than editorial timelines. Out-of-step because so much of what is typically proposed by art and its discourses relies upon a version of public life that has been temporarily and indefinitely put on hold. Outof-step because the mood of readership at a time like this has never been more fragile.

As the global pandemic confines us to our homes, laptops and smartphones, some of what has characterised the past few weeks of lockdown has been the elastic approximation of its immediate and future consequences. Minute-by-minute news updates from around the world refer to forecasts in terms of weeks, months and years ahead, while through the same screen portal, I try to make plans with artists.

Most have been lucky enough to avoid the virus so far, though are currently unable to access their studios, unable to source materials or to work on any site-specific or physically-collaborative project, unable to travel, unable to focus on their work due to childcare and other (typically invisible) labours of care, and – in some cases – unable to think without motivational paralysis or concerns of livelihood.

In the past few weeks, as the days get lived out repeatedly within the same walls during the lockdown, time and space have become slippery and disjunctive. I’m reminded of J.G. Ballard’s short story, The Enormous Space, written in 1989, that tells the story of a middle aged banking executive who decides to shut himself inside his suburban home; the banal familiarity of his domestic space gradually becoming an entropic expanse as he embarks on a lonely and revolutionary psychic journey over a period of weeks.

In a very different text, written to support a project by Sam Lavigne and Tega Brain that charts expressions of well wishes and sympathy to those in ill-health, Johanna Hedva has described how “time slows down so extremely as to become still and unbearably heavy. For the sick, or someone caring for the sick, time freezes, hardening around the body, locking everything into this new centre of gravity. All that can be done is wait.” (getwellsoon.labr.io) It is worth considering that what many of us might be feeling in our disjunctive solitude and precarity is a taste of the conditions that many other people have been negotiating their entire lives.

While these two examples point to the uniquely interior and inactive conditions that many are experiencing as a result of COVID-19, it has been paralleled by an intensity of activity by arts organisations seeking to deliver cultural content while their doors remain shut. Invariably, this has meant online content; at worst, a thinning out of organisations’ websites and the declarative reissuing of archived podcasts and

installation images of recent exhibitions; at best, there have been attempts at provoking the kinds of encounters that only the internet makes possible, such as the virtual gallery programme, ‘Art Is Still Here: A Hypothetical Show for a Closed Museum’, at M Woods Museum in Beijing.

Another well-intentioned example is the Biennale of Sydney’s recently announced partnership with Google to provide image mapping of the biennale’s artistic presentations after it was forced to close its physical doors to the walk-in public only two weeks into its run. The accompanying press release describes “a virtual Biennale [that] will bring the exhibition and programs to life through live content, virtual walkthroughs, podcasts, interactive Q&As, curated tours and artist takeovers”. It goes on to suggest this offering within a community framework of care, describing that “it is more important than ever that we find ways to connect, to help each other, listen, collaborate and heal.” (biennaleofsydney.art) As sincere as many of these online programmes may be, my suspicion is that they are more gestural than they are effective; more concerned with the communication of institutional and curatorial integrities than with the artistic encounter itself. Orit Gat, writing in Art Agenda about the online responses to COVID-19 by many arts organisations internationally, was also quick to point out that the internet is a place of deep injustice and political implication, not only in terms of who (and who doesn’t) have access to it, calling on us to “remember that the internet is a system for surveillance, an ecological resource drain, a material concern even if it does keep us entertained and in touch.” (art-agenda.com) Whether or not we’re currently engaging in the opportunities of a virtual walkthrough of an exhibition in Sydney or Beijing, the traffic of images of exhibitions, physically remote and free of people, is hardly a new frontier. It’s long since been a characteristic of art’s international and contemporaneous fantasy to offer itself as something that is photographically unfettered, ahistorical and socially withheld; its revolutionary energy all potently still ahead of us. Now, in full theoretical reversal, those same images might as well serve as reminders of the exhibition as a site of social contagion and public ill-health; a space of standstill and hazard for the most vulnerable.

As Johanna Hedva has stated: “Now might be a good time to rethink what a revolution can look like… Perhaps it looks something more like the world standing still, because all the bodies in it are exhausted – because care has to be prioritized before it’s too late.” In the current crisis, while we look to reset our hopes for art and its proposal for social change, perhaps it’s worth looking inwardly as much as outwardly; towards withdrawal as much as to positive action; towards a less synchronised and able-bodied version of what it means to be contemporary.

Matt Packer is the Director of EVA International.

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Vital Signs to look for include anxiety Over reacting And lack of joie de vivre Breathing in, Breathing out Awareness of the body brings healing about 1 VITAL SIGNS IS a song I composed about look-

ing out for signs of stress in your body; it’s a song written from personal experience. Generally speaking, most artists make work on things they know about, or something they want to learn more about, as a way to connect with people – as a way to raise awareness. This has been my year for learning about minding my mental health and my body, a subject which has never been more important, as artists begin to come to terms with the repercussions of COVID-19.

Last year I was burnt out from overwork and stress, a common occurrence for many artists, due to the pressures of juggling multiple jobs and commissions. At my worst, I was sad and irritable, had no energy (yet was unable to sleep); I had gastrointestinal issues and then to top it off, I got shingles. As the author, Bessel van der Kelk, writes: “The Body Keeps the Score”.

Many independent Irish artists and art workers experience high levels of stress and pressure trying to make ends meet – it’s a precarious way to earn a living. The gig economy ensures the many artists have no job security, sick leave or pension. The fact that it’s rare to be paid on time for a project or commission means that we often say yes to everything, as a tactic for ensuring regular cash flow. Every project brings with it a healthy amount of stress and anxiety but commit to one too many and your adrenal and stress hormones and mental health can become compromised. What results is an overworked, tired and stressed human being.

As Dr Gabor Maté has pointed out in his book, When the Body Says No, there is a strong link between prolonged stress, pressure and anxiety and effects on the immune system.2 Such pressures can lead to ongoing health issues such as gastrointestinal, heart and respiratory diseases and quite often mental health issues and depression.

COVID-19 is currently acting as an additional stressor for artists – both financially and emotionally. This has been demonstrated in recent testimonies from artists across social media and in a recent Irish Times article, where many writers professed that despite having lots of extra time, with all of the traumatic effects of the pandemic, they just can’t write.3 Like many fellow artists, all of my upcoming commissions have been cancelled. This March I was due to undertake a project in the USA and a performance in Berlin. My contracted arts coordination work with the Clare Arts Office has ended until further notice. I am grateful to those arts organisations that I am due to work with later in the year, such as Ormston House and 126 Artist-Run Gallery, who have offered advance payments as a support.

My own response to COVID-19 is like a wave. I am up and down on a daily basis, but

coping much better since I have stopped expecting myself to be as productive as ‘normal’ in this abnormal situation. I am spending my days reading, writing and walking, being reminded of what it is like for creativity to arise without the push of productivity and deadlines. As artists we have access to art processes that have much to offer us at this time: processes that can give us an outlet to express and connect with our own feelings and experiences – be they confusion, anger, grief or joy.

In finding ways to tackle my own financial and health issues, the following have been some of my self-care strategies (of which I am still learning): My first step was to honestly reassess and take into account all of my financial and wellbeing needs, which includes my wish to have savings and a nest egg. When I undertook this process I learned several things: that I wasn’t charging enough to make my required annual income; that some projects will never have the budget to meet my daily fees; and that I need to be careful how many projects I commit to annually. I learned, when looking through the lens of health and wellbeing, that realistically, I only have the mental, physical, creative capacity to undertake a certain number of projects per year. I made the decision to undertake part-time arts managerial work, which took the pressure off earning all of my income from art making.

COVID-19 has caused me to yet again assess the lack of security that contract work offers me.

Sometimes success or development is not about working harder. It is learning how we can be more strategic with our time and energy. It is difficult to make changes and to create new boundaries. However, support is available. I have previously consulted therapists, financial advisors and business mentors, and I will continue to do so. More broadly, it is time for a seismic shift in regard to how artists are paid and how we make a living. I believe that part of this cultural shift will require more honesty on the part of artists, in terms of our need, and right, for employment supports and appropriate remuneration for our work. The future can be brighter and we create change for ourselves and each other.

Ceara Conway is an artist/singer and composer based in the west of Ireland. cearaconway.com

Notes 1 Vital Signs is available on my ‘Viriditas’ album, commissioned by Galway ECOC and Saolta Arts on saoltaarts.com 2 Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection, (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2011).

3 Doyle Martin, ‘Irish writers on Covid-19: We’re all having a shockin’ dose of the Wombles’, The Irish Times, Saturday 28 March 2020.

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Columns

Opinion

Hope Through The Fog DECLAN MCGONAGLE DISCUSSES THE PROCESS OF TURNING ‘SELFISH’ INTO ‘SELFLESS’ IN RESPONSE TO COVID-19.

THE CORONAVIRUS HAS pushed the pause

button on life as we have known it. The response involves, of course, the immediate remedial actions, now being undertaken. But, since the virus has revealed the inadequacy of social provision for the protection of all citizens, a strategic response should also involve thinking long about what has been revealed.

Up to now, we have been living and working in a selfish socioeconomic system, based on a resetting of economic, political, social and cultural expectations. These expectations had originally coalesced around what was known as the ‘postwar consensus’, which underpinned economic, social and cultural reconstruction in Europe after World War II. The current selfish socioeconomic model has been incrementally replacing this consensus since the 1980s. The model persisted – even after the crash of 2008 – despite the lessons which were acknowledged but never applied in the subsequent recession, from which only parts of Irish society have emerged.

This selfish ideology, translated into the ‘small state agenda’, has already proved itself unable to solve the ongoing crises in fundamental quality of life issues in health and housing in Ireland, even before the coronavirus crisis. The small state agenda – essentially a 19th-century model of raw unregulated capitalism and of hierarchical social relations – was reinvented during the 1980s through Thatcherism in the UK and Reaganonomics in the USA. It has driven socioeconomic policies, based on debt funded growth, which led directly to the 2008 crash and the facilitation of the extraction of profit from services rather than manufacturing and, in particular, from the privatisation of public services for private gain. These policies have left social safety nets threadbare and the effects are visible today.

A strategic response, this time, cannot simply mean the protection and recovery of the previous status quo, though this seems to be what is emerging in macro policy initiatives. If provision in key quality of life systems was inadequate before, why should such structural inadequacy be reinstated when there is an opportunity and a need for a fundamental rethink about what the deal is between citizen and state and what participatory democracy actually means for the future? This echoes the rethinking which took place about policies for the economic, social and cultural ‘emancipation of the many’ in the post war period, following the shock and disruption of World War. These strategies included the concept of state funding for the arts at arm’s length from government – the original Arts Council model, with which we are so familiar, first established in the UK in the 1940s and in Ireland in the 1960s. Since the 1980s, societal expectations have been modified around the small state agenda and the remodelling of society as the servant of the economy. This has had accelerating implications for public services, in general, and for education, in particular, including art education.

The small state agenda cannot deal with the needs of citizens – the many – because it is not designed to do so, having been enacted to meet the needs of the few. The coronavirus pandemic,

and other recent natural disasters, have revealed the inadequacy of the small state but, I would argue, this revelation also points to the limitations of the ‘solo genius’ model of artist and art production and its narrow forms of distribution, which has only ever delivered a ‘decorative marginality’ for most artists in Ireland and elsewhere. The dominant model of the art process is still shaped around commodity, celebrity and consumerism and the celebration of individual self-expression as the received model of value in art. This model of value, of art and of artist, has been unfit for purpose for some time and an education process which reflects this model can only enable artists to function in the world on the bottom rung of an economic ladder.

In as much as the socioeconomic model needs to be reimagined and redesigned, a ‘turn’ is also required in the total art process of art education, art practice/production and distribution, experience and participation, starting with the questions: What for? Who for? And then, what is the situation? And situation is where answers to these questions can be proposed, through situated practice in a gallery, a museum, the street, a college, media or social space. Situated practice does not preclude traditional media. We know what answers were given to these questions, from the 16th to the 20th centuries, but what are our answers to those questions in the third decade of the 21st century?

It is difficult for the art process, if understood only as production of ‘product’, to turn quickly but we could start with a different discourse around expectations and processes in order to nourish other ways of thinking and doing, which are not predicated only on the ‘solo agency’ of the artist but also on the ‘shared agency’ of reciprocal practice. It is telling, in this crisis, how quickly institutions and artists, across a range of disciplines, have turned to virtual engagement.

Out of necessity, of course, but this could lead to a situation beyond debates about the form of art, to questions about the purpose of art. In my view, art’s purpose is, and always has been, centred on the creation of empathy – the act of seeing self in other. That is what art is for, whatever form it takes, in whatever situation, to embody and not just represent that core negotiation of meaning. This counters the new colonialism, in thought and action, which, as with old colonialism, involves the removal of agency from ‘other’ – whether other is defined in political, economic, social, gender or ethnic terms. The new colonialism of the small state has, for several decades now, been trying to replace empathy with ‘antipathy’ and ‘competitive individualism’, as the basis of social relations. We can blame, among others, Ayn Rand, who wrote in the mid-20th century on philosophy and socioeconomic issues, or Giorgio Vasari, who wrote in the 16th century on Renaissance artists, for spinning individualist narratives and for seeding models of thought and understanding upstream, which have led to outcomes downstream, in the form of unregulated profit-taking capitalism, including the new robber barons of hi-tech, and the reified idea of the artist as a solo genius and an ‘exception’ to

society – a trick played on artists to keep them satisfied with penury. It was individualism which also informed Margaret Thatcher’s 1987 claim that there was “no such thing as society”.1 If societal models are to be recentred on empathy then the process has to start in cultural space. Neither party politics nor economics, as they currently operate, are willing or able to make that happen. There is a real role, therefore, for art and culture to create and distribute other models of sociocultural relations, in practice and in situ. It has taken the shock of the virus for politics, and for some public broadcasters and institutional providers to rediscover a ‘public value’ remit. Questions of public value have been live in the art process for some time and new critical responses have been developed but without the issue quite getting to the centre of power or policy so far. Tai Shani, a joint 2019 Turner Prize winner, was quoted in The Observer saying that “a crisis of this magnitude affects most of us similarly...artists are quite good at problem solving and it is important to rechannel my energy into being a contributing citizen”.2 Empathy is what art does when considered over the longer term and I mean longer than, as the art critic, Jonathan Jones, put it, “the sliver of time from Da Vinci, to Rembrandt, to Picasso, to Koons”. But this ‘sliver of time’ is clebrated as foundational in received art history and has been elevated by a particular ‘story of art’ narrative, which actually represents the march of ‘self ’ over several centuries in the West and the ‘ascent of man’ ideology. This march from the European Renaissance, to the Reformation, to the Enlightenment, to Industrial Capitalism and, now, to Extraction and Surveillance Capitalism, is a momentum which has brought us to the modernist separation of the figure of the artist from the ground of society – and the figure of the human from the ground of nature and the consequential damage to the planet.

This is an ideological momentum, in politics, economics, in culture and is reflected in the current ‘culture wars’. It has nurtured sustained attempts to dismantle concepts of commonality and the collective and underpins inherited cultural institutional models which are still based on providing for what art is, rather than for what art does. Hence the inevitable cul de sac of resourcing into which nearly all models of institutional practice were heading anyway. As public funding evaporates, in the small state, institutions have to follow the money – a condition which has now been dramatised, but not explained, by the present crisis. To be clear, however, this argument is not simply for more resourcing of the status quo, of the existing patterns of provision or unconsidered models of practice but for a complete reconsideration of what for? and who for? and where the centre of value will lie in the total art process within societal arrangements in the future?

This moment, therefore, offers an ethical opportunity as well as an aesthetic challenge to the art sector. The opportunity is to turn away from spurious questions about the form of art and towards questions about the purpose of art.

The challenge, should the art sector choose to

accept it, is to build on the critical work to date, by some practitioners, in order to develop other aesthetic languages to answer those questions – not to replace but to expand inherited aesthetic languages and thereby expand the inherited field. It may be that many institutions and many artists, if calling on public resources, will begin to understand what they do in terms of a ‘public service’, and be more able to negotiate a different relational process within social space as a result.

One of the immmediate effects of engaging with others, virtually, will be to see beyond and widen the singular ‘hand of the artist’ narrative, to consider what art can do and how it can funcion immaterially as well materially in a reciprocal rather than a rhetorical art process – in which missionary work plays no part.

It is already clear that the solution to the coronavrus lies in selfless communal actions and reciprocation, heroically and selflessly embodied by those who work in health services. I would argue that a similar solution to the other virus – the virus of the small state agenda which has infected societal provision and expectations – lies in a cultural turn towards reciprocal social relations, which can be articulated in a total art process that is not limited to rhetorical modes of production and consumption. The stakes could not be higher for individuals and communities right now in this immediate crisis but questions about what principles will inform the future are also necessary and important, to see hope through the fog.

It remains to be seen if we will not only acknowledge but also apply the learning from what we are going though now, which has deeper and wider implications for society. And we should remember that there is no ‘innocent’ position, outside of the societal field from which curators, artists and educators can observe and comment on the field. The Swiss artist, Thomas Hirschorn, once said that the task is “not to make political art but to make art politically”.3 This means making art without innocence and, I would argue, involves thinking politically in cultural space and thinking culturally in political space. This period is not only about measures to counter the virus and its effects. It is also about naming, validating and consolidating communal, reciprocal actions supported by rebooted and invested social systems into the future. This includes a repurposed total art process, capable of countering the reductive, selfish ideology which has already created a precariat class, which includes many artists, and has brought us all to this point of catharsis.

Declan McGonagle is a curator/writer whose forthcoming book on empathy will be published by Cork University Press.

Notes 1 Douglas Keay, Interview with Margaret Thatcher, Woman’s Own, 23 September 1987. margaretthatcher.org 2 Laura Cumming, ‘Self-help is key for an art world in lockdown’, The Observer, 29 March 2020. theguardian.com 3 Thomas Hirschorn, ‘Doing art politically: What does this mean?’, Dislocation, 5 September 2010. dislocation.cl

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Skills

The Poetry of Painting CORNELIUS BROWNE REFLECTS ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN NATURE POETRY AND PLEIN AIR PAINTING. RECENTLY, I WAS shortlisted for the Aurivo

Poetry Prize. As most of my poems come to me when I am out painting, often as I shelter from downpours or trudge across fields under burdensome easel and paints, this happy occurrence led me to reflect upon the relationship between poetry and painting.

In this sphere, regal above all others sits the visionary William Blake, enthroned among clouds. Nearby he has disciples, notably Samuel Palmer and his fellow Blake-worshippers, the Ancients. They are neighbourly with such personages as Christina Rossetti, sister of the poetry-drenched Pre-Raphaelite painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Whilst I am not averse to gazing skywards, I cannot help, however, being more usually earthbound, concerned with human feet treading humble ground.

Nature poets, I have long thought, are the plein air artists of literature. The year 1797 was a transformative one for poetry of this kind, a quiet revolution ignited by the friendship of Samuel Taylor Coleridge with the Wordsworth siblings, when all three were living amid Somerset’s Quantock Hills. Coleridge found himself going out almost daily into the landscape, “with my pencil and memorandum-book in hand, I was making studies, as the artists call them, and often moulding my thoughts into verse, with the objects and imagery immediately before my senses.” The poet, thereby, wrote of streams as the waters flowed beside his feet, stitched birdsong into his poem as this music threaded the air he breathed.

Walking and writing became inseparable, a thought that accompanies me on days when I spend almost as much time moving through the landscape as actually painting. Coleridge enlightened the young William Hazlitt that he liked to compose while walking over uneven ground or breaking through straggling branches, whereas William Wordsworth preferred to write walking up and down a straight gravel path. Thought and care were also given to the surfaces upon which poetry would be written. Dorothy Wordsworth marked the beginning of 1798 by making for her brother a new notebook, tearing large sheets of laid paper to size and sewing them together. It

pleases me to think that something of the same feeling exists in the hand-sawn wooden boards that fit into my pockets.

Another poet I think of often, as I walk in search of paintings, is Edward Thomas. Appearing to see and hear everything with preternatural acuity, roads and lanes wind through the work of this ecstatic walker at a rate that outpaces any other writer. For all their perfection, there is a sense of writing on the hoof – this perhaps explaining how Thomas managed to write all of his 140 poems in the space of less than two and a half years, before his tragic death on the battlefield. It was a waterway that Alice Oswald followed to create her landmark poem, Dart.

For three years she recorded conversations with people who live and work along the eponymous Devon river, weaving these voices into what she calls a ‘map poem’. I think of Oswald whenever someone approaches me as I paint, sometimes to generously provide fascinating histories of buildings and fields within the ambit of my painting.

My last solo exhibition, ‘An Invite to Eternity’, borrowed its title from a poem written by John Clare at Northampton Lunatic Asylum.

Famously, Clare claimed that he “found the poems in the fields and only wrote them down.”

Before madness struck, he certainly worked outdoors, Clare’s first publisher revealing that the poems were composed in fields and on roadsides, the poet’s hat serving him for a desk. The surfaces upon which he worked bespeak poverty – paper always being scarce, some of his poetic manuscripts consist of stitched-together letter sheets or handbills. Clare was committed to the immediate present tense, and it now occurs to me that I may be uninterested in techniques such as glazing because what matters is painting the living present. Painting in fields, haven’t I wanted to place a brush in the hand of the “peasant poet”?

You have just read a piece of plein air writing.

Painting outdoors this year has entailed much sheltering, and these sentences began life on rain-splodged scraps of paper.

Cornelius Browne is a Donegal-based artist.

Cornelius Browne, Light Spring Rain, 2015, oil on board; courtesy of the artist

Regional Focus County Louth Creative Spark Sarah Daly Executive Director

CREATIVE SPARK IS a dedicated enterprise centre and training hub for the arts and creative industries in the North East of Ireland. Based in Dundalk, the organisation supports creativity, innovation, education and job creation through forward-thinking to expand the innovative capacity of the region. It operates as a non-profit organisation and social enterprise with a particular focus on the development of creative ideas in the enterprise sector. Opened in 2012, Creative Spark has 20 small enterprise units, a suite of meeting and training rooms, hot-desk/co-working facilities and creative production workshops available for individuals, SMEs, business organisations, community groups and educators.

To date, Creative Spark has supported the creation of 127 jobs, plus 65 visual artist members through its Print Studio. Since 2012, more than 4,500 people have participated in our training programmes in entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity, working closely with Local Enterprise Office Louth, LMETB, Louth Leader Partnership, Dundalk Institue of Technology and the Dundalk-based artist-led collective, Art as Exchange (AAEX).

Providing access to resources and facilities has been key to the success of Creative Spark to date. Our Print Studio opened in early 2014, offering screen-printing, etching and digital printing facilities. We also has a kiln room with equipment for the production of ceramics, glass and enameling.

In 2014 Creative Spark launched an artist-in-residence programme with support from Create Louth, Louth County Council Arts Service. 31 Irish and international artists have since participated in the programme. Creative Spark also curates an annual exhibition of work made during artists’ residencies, which takes place at An Táin Arts Centre in Dundalk. This exhibition generally takes place in October each year and features a side exhibition of printmaking from the members of the Print Studio. Past Irish-based artists-in-residence include Seán Cotter, Anthony Haughey, Petra Berntsson, Thomas Brezing and Marie Claire Kehoe. Our current artist-in-residence is Riley Waite, an Irish artist based in southern California, who focuses on narrative-based figurative painting.

Creative Spark aims to become a regionally recognised centre for the delivery of creative participation and the provision of art facilities embedded in the community. We have initiated many creative community programmes, bringing people of all ages and walks of life from all around Dundalk and the wider Louth area together to unlock their creative potential.

Creative Spark has recently secured funding to build an extension to house a new FabLab, as well as expanding co-working spaces for artists and makers. Alongside the FabLab, the extension will include a dedicated design and learning studio, a video conferencing training room, a community café, reception and exhibition areas. The FabLab model complements Creative Spark, as a place for members to work, test

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

AAEX (Art as Exchange) Bernhard Gaul Member & Co-Founder

products and concepts, and as a place to learn, via a range of technical and skills training programmes. This project is currently at planning stage and the Creative Spark team hopes to begin construction in mid-2020, with a view to opening the facility in 2021.

The FabLab aims to support new creative industries, particularly for creatives in need of digital tools for their practices, such as those working in the visual arts, product design, film/TV, and so on. The FabLab’s equipment will include laser cutters, 3D Printers, CNC machines, electronics, 3D software, a materials library and other digital design and fabrication tools with an integrated programme of training.

The future of Creative Spark, in collaboration with other cultural and enterprise actors, is to encourage people with an interest in design and creative business to consider relocating to the region, in turn increasing demand for additional workspaces and growing an entrepreneurial culture through the use of its facilities. creativespark.ie

Caroline Duffy, Boundless, AAEX Installations, November 2019; photograph by David Martin, courtesy of AAEX

AAEX (ART AS EXCHANGE) was founded in

Riley Waite, Ian Was Here, oil on canvas; courtesy of the artist

Robert John Paterson, poster from ‘A Road Less Travelled’ series; courtesy of the artist

September 2016 following an open-call facilitated by Creative Spark, inviting artists in North Louth and the surrounding areas to set up a platform for exchange and communication, and to develop engaged public art. It was initiated in response to a perceived lack of any such initiative in the area and was taken up immediately by many creative practitioners. From the outset, AAEX has never had less than 14 active members and has grown to 37 at the time of writing.

From the start, overcoming the professional isolation often encountered by visual artists was one of our core objectives, which very quickly turned into the wider ambitions of collaborating on a regular basis and embarking on community art projects. This has been followed in recent years by public art initiatives, which try to expand upon what is already available in the region by exploring alternative spaces and encouraging large-scale art interactions, which aim to integrate the wider areas of visual arts experience focused on communication and exchange.

As a core principle, AAEX is open to artists and creative practitioners of all career stages, skill sets, interests and backgrounds. Members are encouraged to make suggestions, develop initiatives and host workshops to share their skills and experiences. We aim to pursue a collaborative approach to opportunities. For example, in preparation for a recent exhibition, all members who were happy to commit to the process, were given the opportunity to develop individual or small group installations over two months, with ongoing group feedback and the support of a curator; strengthening the overall project through peer critique and group learning.

Gatherings and Public Art Initiatives AAEX members meet for regular gatherings roughly every two weeks, which are often handson skills exchange workshops at the Creative Spark Print Studio. These sessions are often led by a member, introducing a technique or artform, interspersed with social gatherings, discussions or gallery visits, supporting exhibitions by AAEX members and other artists in the region.

For our first public project, AAEX members created over 300 hand-printed postcards,

which (pre-addressed and franked) were handed out at the Drogheda Arts Festival 2017 and several locations in Dundalk, with the request to alter them and send them back to us. Over 200 postcards were returned to us and then presented at Creative Spark for National Drawing Day. Recently, AAEX also teamed up with local curator, Anne Mager, to develop an ambitious exhibition of art installations by 20 AAEX members in a vacant shop on Clanbrassil Street and in other public locations in Dundalk. The event, running from 15–29 November 2019, included a panel discussion ‘Where is the Art in Dundalk?’, hosted by the local art initiative, ‘the corridor’.

Community Projects and Programme AAEX aims to promote community participation in aesthetic projects and to present art as a tangible process through the work of our artists.

For the last four years, AAEX has collaborated with Creative Spark and Inspire Wellbeing on their annual First Fortnight mental health awareness event. In 2019, we embarked on a workshop programme with the Toberona Youth Club, supported by Creative Ireland/Louth County Council and Create Louth. For 2020, AAEX have received Creative Ireland funding for an 8-week mother and baby project, in collaboration with the Craobh Rua Community Centre.

We are also excited to be collaborating with ‘the corridor’ again on ‘Party Wall’ – a workshop programme followed by a public performance facilitated by Italian artist, Corinne Mazzoli. For the summer, AAEX is preparing a three-day event, during which artists will create works from recycled materials, with a variety of workshops and opportunities for the public to get involved.

AAEX is kindly supported and facilitated

by Creative Spark in an ongoing collaboration aimed at furthering creative exchange in the region. AAEX have also received support from Dundalk BIDS, Dundalk Credit Union, Local Enterprise Office Louth, Ronan Halpin and irishstamps.ie. For more information, or to get involved, please visit our website or contact us at aaex.artspark@gmail.com. aaex.artspark.ie

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Regional Focus

An Táin Arts Centre

Droichead Arts Centre

Elaine Cronin General Manager

Collette Farrell Director

INSPIRED BY THE lore of the cultural giants of

Louth, An Táin Arts Centre was established in 2014 as an independent, community-focussed cultural hub for the people of North Louth.

Dundalk has a thriving arts presence and at An Táin Arts Centre we hope to amplify local programming and provide opportunities for artists in the North East.

An Táin Arts Centre is based in the Town Hall building in Dundalk, and receives grant funding from Louth County Council and the Arts Council of Ireland. We are grounded in community and collaborative practices in performance and visual arts contexts, and this ethos is reflected in our programming, encompassing theatre, film, music and visual arts from local, national and international practitioners. An Táin Arts Centre gives particular focus to local artists and performers, with additional support given to artists at the start of their career through our emerging artist and residency programmes.

An Táin Arts Centre’s Basement Gallery is programmed throughout the year with solo, group and community exhibitions. A series of talks, workshops and presentations runs concurrent to our exhibition programme. This has included visual art classes for children and adults, art history lectures, artist talks, artist workshops, gallery tours for school and further education groups, outdoor urban art interventions, and family craft workshops.

Since our launch and inaugural exhibition, Ciaran O’Sullivan’s ‘Double Back’ (2014), exhibited work has included Brian Hegarty’s ‘I’ll be your Mirror, The Album Sleeve Project’ (2015), Orla Barry’s ‘Otherworldly’ (2015), Paul Woods’ ‘Oradour, Elegy for a Town’ (2016), Els Boghart and Declan Kelly’s ‘On the Way / Onderweg’ (2016), Aileen Hamilton’s ‘Chain of Pulses’ (2017), Lisa Fingleton’s ‘Holding True Ground’ (2018), Leanne Mullen’s ‘Drawing Breath’ (2018), Michelle Rogers’ ‘Secret Places’ (2019), and Louth Craftmark’s ‘Glowing Works That Make the Heart Sing’ (2020). To date, there has been five exhibitions in our Emerging Artist series, Aoife Ward’s ‘Becoming’ (2014), Eimear Murphy and Eileen O’Sullivan’s ‘In Search of Place’ (2015), Neil Waters and Inga Kazokait’s ‘Hidden Dundalk’ (2017), Mark Bourke (2018),

and El Harrington’s ‘A Far Place’ (2019). Proposals to exhibit work in the Basement Gallery are accepted on a rolling basis.

Our Summer residency programme is open to recent graduates and artists at the start of their career, looking to establish a collaborative practice in a community setting. The aim of the residency is to assist artists to research and develop new work and give them the time and space to develop their practice in a community setting. The recipients of the emerging artist residency have included Una Curley (2016), Roseann Berrill (2017), Sean McGuill (2018) and Rozzi Kennedy (2019). The deadline for each year’s residency is in the springtime.

Ceramic artist and facilitator Etaoin O’Reilly is An Táin Arts Centre’s artist-in-residence for 2020. Etaoin is a graduate of NCAD (2014), and of the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland’s Ceramics Skills and Design Course (2016). She is also a former artist-in-residence at NCAD (2016) and LSAD (2018). Etaoin hopes to explore the fading industry and skills of bone china factory workers, with an exhibition of new works planned for the month of September.

Many of our former artists in residence continue to work with us, including painter Rozzi Kennedy (our 2019 artist-in-residence), who has developed a collaborative outreach project with participants from the Birches Alzheimer Day Care Centre. Her project, ‘Memory Matters’, will focus on exploring the diverse lived experience of people with dementia, culminating in a presentation of new work that will tour to local venues.

Rozzi is a member of the Ring of Gullion Handcrafts and Artists Collective, and works from her studio in South Armagh. She is a graduate of LSAD (2008), and is also a former artist-in-residence at The Cill Rialaig Project (2012).

An Táin Arts Centre hopes to be a place for the community to celebrate in creativity and enjoy the best of local and national art. These have been a difficult few months globally, and it continues to be an uncertain time for the arts in Ireland; but, even if the doors to our building are closed, our inboxes and phone lines are always open to conversation and collaboration. antain.ie

Rozzi Kennedy, Mind the Gap, 2019, acrylic on canvas, 76.2 × 101.5 cm; courtesy of the artist and An Táin Arts Centre

DROICHEAD ARTS CENTRE celebrates thirty years in 2020. It originally opened in Scholes Lane, in late 1989/early 1990 and subsequently moved to its current site, The Municipal Centre, Stockwell Street in 1994. With the assistance of European funding and fundraising, the arts centre purchased a Georgian Building, Barlow House, in 1999. Now a vibrant multidisciplinary centre in the heart of Drogheda town, Droichead Arts Centre provides an extensive curated arts programme, including theatre, music, film, visual arts, opera, dance, comedy, literature, family/children, outreach and festivals. Droichead supports the work and development of professional artists in the North East region and also collaborates with other festivals, partners and networks. The centre is housed over two buildings: Stockwell Street, which hosts a modern 169 seater theatre, a bright contemporary visual arts gallery and a café/bar; and Barlow House, a Georgian style townhouse, which hosts artists’ spaces and print studios.

One of Droichead’s core strategic aims is to support the development of professional artists by providing opportunities for partnership, showcasing work through productions and co-productions, solo and group exhibitions and new commissions. On top of this, we offer a limited number of open calls, as well as our ‘Artist in Association’ and ‘Company in Residence’ programmes, and our ‘First Solo Award’, which supports artists at a key point in their careers by offering them their first solo exhibition. We are committed to providing spaces for local artists, and our recent ‘Borrowed Ground’ project in 2019, was designed to draw attention to the lack of available workspaces for visual artists locally. We created eight purpose-built studios in our gallery, in which 11 artists worked for a period of eleven weeks. From this, we have also now instated a permanent ‘Borrowed Wall’ on the landing of our Stockwell Street venue, where one artist will be chosen to exhibit a single piece each month. Since 2019, we have dedicated one of our Barlow House rooms as a permanent space for artists to develop and create work, free of charge. Our print studio, The Yard, is also available to use for a nominal charge.

The beginning of 2020 featured ‘EMIT’ by Vivienne Byrne in our gallery. This new body of work sought to navigate the rhythms and tempos of time unfolding, with a series of mixed-media installations, video footage, projections and traditional drawing techniques.

Future exhibitions include ‘Shifting Walls’, a group exhibition curated by Sinéad Smith, with five artists from the North-East region – Kate Beagan, Jo Cummins, Roisin Duffy, Jackie Hudson Lalor and Niamh O’Connor – reflecting different perspectives on mental health, addiction, menopause, adult children, empty nest syndrome, and aging parents. ‘Objects and Oscillations’ is a multi-medium exhibition by Brian Hegarty. Appropriation, minimalism and repetition are explored through installation, video, audio and collage. Elements such as vinyl records and cassettes are used in the exhibition as both subject matter and material. The exhibition also feature aspects from thirtythree-45, a crossover project in Hegarty’s practice, where he promotes underground music, runs a DIY music label, publishes photo zines and streams an internet radio station. The Louth Craftmark exhibition, ‘Vestige’, features selected contemporary craft, design and visual artworks. ‘Taisce

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Vivienne Byrne, Reflections on Future Past, 2019; photograph by Jenny Matthews, courtesy of the artist and Droichead Arts Centre

Lu’, curated by Claire Halpin and supported by Louth County Council Arts Office, includes work from the council’s collection. John Moloney’s ‘In a Landscape’, curated by artist/curator Dorothy Smith, will hopefully begin next year’s programme. The exhibtion will take place inside and outside of the gallery space, accompanied by a booklet of postcards.

We also continue to work with the Borrowed Ground artist collective, to support them in their search for more permanent studio space in Drogheda. We have commissioned Dorothy Smith to develop a publication on the project, featuring drawings and photographs, exploring the experience and needs of the artists participating in the experimental residency. The findings will be situated in the wider context of studio availability, asserting what a supported and visible artists’ presence can contribute to the cultural economy of a town/region and the role that public and private bodies can play in this provision.

Outreach and engagement is an important part of our visual arts programme, and artists facilitate free workshops in our gallery and print studios for 2nd level students. Tours based on the Leaving Certificate gallery question, accompanied by a resource pack are also available for all exhibitions. With every exhibition, we now have a opening and closing event. Too many exhibitions close and disappear. At Droichead we want to celebrate each exhibition and each artist. Future plans include artists cafes for artists working in all disciplines, where artists can meet with each other and the arts centre, to explore further training and development needs.

In all of this, COVID-19 hangs over us; everything I have outlined in this article will happen, but we don’t know when. The challenge now is how do we continue to support artists and arts workers? How do we encourage our audiences to come back and engage with us? I know one thing – the arts sector is resilient, but it also will need proper support from Government to move forward again. droichead.com

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Regional Focus

Fragile Fluctuations

Pixel Sorting and Diffracting Gestures

Els Borghart Visual Artist

EL Putnam Visual Artist

THERE HAVE BEEN many turning points in my artistic development, but November 2008 was key. Almost 12 years ago, I started a new life in a wild, windy and, of course, wet country named Ireland. I moved here from Belgium. How this came about is essential to understanding the thought processes behind my artistic practice.

Just before I moved to Drogheda, I was trekking around Mexico with my now husband who is – of course – Irish. It was during that journey that I realised that the rat race HR job I was stuck in had no room for art and was no longer the life I wanted. I completed an MA in Fine Art and an MA in Cultural Policy & Art Management before I started working in HR, and Ireland is known to be widely supportive of the arts. Perfect timing, I thought… And then the recession happened. Somewhere between resigning from my job and my arrival in Ireland, the land of plenty turned into the land of panic.

These events had a huge impact on my world view and my artistic development. I realised that both travelling and moving away during a worldwide crisis had shaken up all my beliefs about the world we live in – everything I knew and relied on – no longer applied. Roots and ties were also cut, which in turn allowed me to become a citizen of the world, first and foremost.

This mindset provides a psychological distance from where you live, a way to see things more detached and from multiple perspectives, almost as an outsider looking in. I also realised that nothing is fixed; our world is in flux, both literally and figuratively.

Ever since then, my work has been concerned with this fragile fluctuating nature of reality and memory. Through Charles Baudelaire’s ideas of the detached observer, I explore the significance of wandering and how this influences our perception of the world. This results in drawings, paintings and prints; creating a series of pictorial encounters that are puzzling and reveal a hint of intrigue. They are based on reflections and musings about the world around us, with a current focus on a series called ‘Choir of the Mind’. My work offers curious glimpses and perspectives, overlooked moments, figments of memories, open questions without answers. Sometimes the works are dark and gloomy, but more often luminous and hopeful. Just like life, there is always a subtle edge that is slightly unsettling.

In recent years, I have exhibited nationally – at Courthouse Gallery & Studios, Ennistymon; Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne; and An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk – and internationally at Zebrastraat Galerie and Galerie De Wandelgangen in Belgium. In 2019, my painting, He is not here (2017), was selected for the Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland.

Seeing my work exhibited in the same museum where many of my artistic heroes reside had a profound impact on me and my practice. It has been a joy to see such keen interest in my art from Ambassador of Belgium to Ireland, Mr De Bauw, who visited both the exhibition and my studio in recent months. This has led to the acquisition of this painting by the Belgian State Art Collection. I am truly honoured that this artwork has found a new and permanent home at the Belgian Embassy in Dublin.

As much as I am passionate about my individual practice, I also have a desire to work with other creatives. Declan Kelly and I now work as an artistic and curatorial duo under the name

ELS + DECLAN (elsanddeclan.com). Over the past 10 years, this has led to co-curating a range of exhibitions, programming for festivals, developing creative concepts and commissioned projects, while also making art installations within the realm of theatre in Belfast, London and Drogheda. Intense periods working with other artists alternate with stretches of studio time, where I focus on my individual practice, is an ideal format for me.

2020 has brought the completion of a theatre project with Quintessence Theatre Company, for which Declan Kelly and I designed a light installation and the costumes. I am currently working on a Creative Ireland project, while looking forward to a month-long artist residency with Arteventura in Spain during the summer, where I will further develop a new body of drawings and paintings that will be shown in upcoming exhibitions. Exciting times, as always in the life of an artist! elsborghart.com

EL Putnam, Quickening (video still), 2018; courtesy of the artist

AS AN ARTIST, I explore diffractions and

Els Borghart, Choir of the Mind VII, 2018, oil on board, 20 × 30 cm; courtesy of the artist

Els Borghart, He is not here, 2017, oil on board, 80 × 60 cm; courtesy of the artist

entanglements, creating events and situations where difference and interconnectedness are brought to the fore. I generally use performed actions and technologies, including video, sound and other digital tools. As a US citizen living in Ireland since 2013, art is a means for me to connect to my adopted home. I have been living in Rassan, Hackballscross in County Louth since 2017, located metres from the Northern Irish border. Most of the work I have created since moving here engages with landscapes as more than representations of an environment, inviting insights into a dynamic and complex geographic milieu. I create a situated entry point that emerges from my knowledge and experience of a place, as an invitation to pause and think differently about what is being presented.

For instance, shortly after moving to Rassan, I was looking out the window of my home studio, when I realised that I was facing the border and began to wonder how this demarcation was situated in the environment. For the most part, there are minor indications of difference – a change in the road surface texture or street signs indicating that speed limits are in kilometres or miles. I regularly receive text messages while sitting at home, welcoming me to the UK as my mobile service switches between nations. I am also aware of another, non-cartographic border; my family and I are ‘blow ins’ as we only recently arrived to this area. As a non-local and non-native, I am removed to a degree from the history of the area. I turned to the camera as a means of creating a connection with the place around me.

Using over 200 of photographs shot around the border between Counties Louth and Armagh, I created Quickening (2018). For this artwork, images are cycled like a slide show; however, when a motion sensor is triggered, the cycling stops and the image begins to ‘glitch’ in realtime using a ‘pixel sorting’ algorithm, with input based on the person’s distance from a motion sensor. Instead of trying to represent the region, I play with the liminality of the unrepresentable – unstitching images through the slippage of recognisable forms, until they become static.

The title Quickening refers to the sensation of quickening in pregnancy, or when a pregnant

person senses foetal movements in early pregnancy. These sensations can only be experienced in the physical state of pregnancy: they are internal, haptic and phenomenological, making the pregnant person the communicator of experience. I use this physical experience as a metaphor for the border in Ireland, which has gained renewed attention with Brexit. The title also references the fact that I was pregnant while creating this work, which also happened to be during the campaign to repeal the Eighth Amendment (in which I was unable to vote, as I am not an Irish citizen). Moreover, in addition to being an embodied, photographic response to this particular landscape in Ireland, I also reconceptualise pregnancy as metaphor in creative practice, with an emphasis on in-situ experience, as opposed to anticipated outcomes.

Digital photography and video have certain affordances, granting these media a flexibility I play with through editing and post-production.

Dissolution (2019) is a performance-to-video series I have been creating at Castle Roche, close to our home. Incorporating documentation of performed actions, along with macroscopic footage shot from the site, the gestures of Dissolution allude to the gentle caress across a computer’s interface, as the body melds to the remains of the castle, which is slowly being reclaimed by its landscape. I craft a meditation that layers video as bodies; built structures and human actions dissolve and emerge through techniques of image manipulation.

Throughout my practice, I employ the aesthetic and material possibilities of digital technologies. I expand projected and moving images beyond the monitor and the screen through engagement with performed actions, whether my own or those of others. These entanglements of the body with the technological sit at the heart of my creative explorations, made manifest through works that reveal how we mediate and are mediated by the technologies we use, expressing how we are part of broader milieux that are geographic, machinic and embodied. elputnam.com inaction.ie

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Regional Focus

Tracing the Border

Highlanes Gallery

Nigel Swann Visual Artist

Aoife Ruane Director

I’M A PHOTOGRAPHER and live on the Cooley Peninsula. Although based in County Louth since 1999, much of the last two decades I have been oscillating between bases in Ireland, Central Europe and the Vaucluse in South-Eastern France. As a freelance producer in the photographic advertising industry, my main work destinations were Ireland and Budapest; however, a family situation added France in 2011. These three locations, defined by work and family, have consequently seen individual projects develop in each region. Before outlining my main inquiries, I want to share the simple advice given to me by photographer, Annie Leibovitz, while working on an American Vogue production for her: “stop taking photographs and spend the next six months revisiting and editing your archive”.

I can’t stress enough how useful this was, in honing my practice. The first project to benefit was entitled ‘The Yellow Star Houses of Budapest’. I’d been creating ‘architectural portraits’ of Budapest’s extraordinary buildings for over a decade, intrigued by the visible traces of its history on their facades. Many of these buildings were built during the patriotic, optimistic construction boom of the 1880s and 1890s, others are early Art Deco masterpieces, while later buildings were the pioneering works of interwar Bauhaus disciples.

Local research led me to Dr Gwen Jones of the Central European University (CEU) and archivist at Budapest’s Open Society Archives (OSA). She immediately brought to my attention that the buildings featuring in the majority of my photographs had only recently been identified, through the release of Hungarian government papers, as designated ‘holding sites’ for the city’s Jewish population during World War II. This forced mass relocation was in preparation for deportation to the death camps and unique to Budapest. Dr Jones says: “How can we read and understand the afterlife of atrocity in the contemporary urban environment? Nigel’s photographs provide one answer to these questions. They allow us to picture the human lives and deaths that these yellow-star house doors conceal.”

The next project, ‘Borderlands’, has been ongoing for many years but gained new impetus with the prospect of Brexit. Since the Good

Friday Agreement in 1998, travelling along and across this border, there has been no physical expressions, no watchtowers, fences or walls; the border was unseeable, a virtual and psychological construct. However, in the run-up to and after Brexit, it has become discernible again and has started to evoke renewed questions about identity. An overgrown Iron Age linear earthwork acts as a conceptual starting point for this inquiry.

This intriguing location, known locally as ‘The Black Pig’s Dyke’, is a 2000-year-old boundary that runs parallel to the present-day Irish / UK border. Post-Brexit, it now shadows another border – that between the European Union and the UK. The ‘Dissenting’ tradition within Irish culture also comes under a new and careful examination. This is my cultural tradition, a culture that was once Ireland’s enlightened Republican vanguard. A disused Presbyterian Church, known as Cahans Meeting House in the border county of Monaghan, anchors the project. Built in 1840 on the site of an earlier 17th-century Meeting House, it was from here that the Reverand Thomas Clark led 300 of his congregation on the ‘Cahans Exodus’ to pre-revolutionary America in 1764, in the search of religious and civil freedom. Freud’s theory on ‘the narcissism of small differences’ resonates throughout ‘Borderlands’, throwing light on the binary cultures of ‘forgetting’ and ‘remembrance’, so prevalent in Irish life.

Finally, to South-Eastern France and ‘The Nono Zone’, a body of work with a proud Irish relevance. During the German occupation of France (1940–1944), the region under the control of the collaborationist Vichy regime was known as ‘la zone non occupée’ – nicknamed ‘the nono zone’ by the French Resistance. Wanted by the Nazis after his Resistance unit was betrayed, Irish writer Samuel Beckett fled Paris in 1942 for the Vaucluse mountains of Southern France.

He remained there, an active member of the Resistance until the end of the war. Very little is known about Beckett’s time in hiding and there are no visual records, yet the experience is acknowledged as crucial in mapping the coordinates of his future aesthetics. Born of deficit, this work was created in those refuge landscapes. nigelswann.com

Nigel Swann, Cahans Meeting House, 2017, photograph; courtesy of the artist

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HIGHLANES GALLERY WAS dreamed up just

after the end of World War II in 1946, by artist Bea Orpen and her husband, businessman, Terry Trench. Bea, who was the niece of Irish artist William Orpen, moved to Drogheda with Terry and their young family and set up home, close to where Highlanes Gallery is situated today, which at that time was the popular Franciscan Church. Bea taught art at many levels of education and was keen to inspire and encourage children and adults to experience the joy that visual art offers.

In 1946, an exhibition initiated by the Department of Education came to Drogheda, and was well received by the local community, not least because there were a number of artists from the region featured in the exhibition, such as Nano Reid and Simon Coleman. Bea took this interest as a marker and, with Terry, approached the Town Clerk of the Drogheda Corporation to set up a Museum and Gallery Committee in June 1946.

Over the next two decades and through Bea’s strong friendships with many contemporary artists – especially her women friends, and Bea and Terry’s appeal to organisations like the National Gallery of Ireland, who provided much support and advice – the Dorgheda Municipal Art Collection received donations of artworks from organisations like the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland (FNCI) and bequests from people like the Celtic Studies Scholar, Richard Irvine Best, as well as work directly from artists.

This, together with work that had been originally commissioned by Drogheda Corporation – like two majestic panoramic views of Drogheda in the 18th century by Italian artist Gabrielle Ricciardelli – amplified the local, national and international strands of the collection. Thematically, Drogheda and its townscape and topography features strongly, as does the work of 18th and 19th-century artists from the area. Due to Bea’s connections, there is also a strong presence of Irish women artists, from Sarah Purser and Mary Swanzy to Evie Hone.

Today, in Highlanes Gallery’s 14th year, the collection continues to grow, with new acquisitions, including the late Janet Mullarney’s hugely ambitious installation works from My Mind’s i. This work was developed with us, through the support of the Arts Council of Ireland, for a national tour in 2015 and was recently featured in a retrospective of Mullarney’s work at IMMA last year. Another recent acquisition is the breakout video/installation work by Droghedean emerging artist, Gary Reilly, titled Dunaire, for which he was selected for the RDS Visual Art Prize in 2019. This mesmeric work saw Reilly collaborating with composer Michael Holohan and a members of a local brass band, exploring the history of Drogheda Port.

We have also acquired Mary A. Kelly’s painting, Snow Falling, from her solo exhibition ‘Chair’, which was also initiated by Highlanes, and toured nationally in partnership with Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and Custom House Studios & Gallery. The exhibition marked a significant departure for Kelly, as she transitioned from two decades working with installation and photography, to working with paint and canvas. With support from Culture Ireland, ‘Chair’ opened at Galerie Voss, Düsseldorf, on 13 March, but with appropriately limited audiences, due to the spread of the coronavirus in Europe. Another important exhibition we have

‘Two Painters’ (1 February – 11 April), installation view, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda; photograph by Eugene Langan, courtesy of the artist and Highlanes

recently developed is ‘Elliptical Affinities: Irish Women Artists and the Politics of the Body 1984 to the present’. This exhibition, which was developed with art historian Dr Fionna Barber, recently toured to Limerick City Gallery of Art. At the time of writing, we have had to close doors on a wonderful exhibition, ‘Two Painters: Kathy Tynan and Andrew Vickery’, which brought together two very different artists, sharing subtle connections through their interests in memory, emotion and recollection. We have also begun to reprogramme some forthcoming exhibitions, one for the annual Drogheda Arts Festival (May Bank Holiday weekend), in partnership with the Science Gallery and Science Foundation of Ireland. ‘Plastic’ will now open in early 2021, and we look forward to engaging a new crossover audience for this timely and fascinating exhibition, which explores our complex relationship with this powerful material. The second exhibition, ‘Justice: Never Enough’ by Abigail O’Brien, was going to be shown offsite in the former Methodist Church, but will likely be postponed, due to the logistics of the show.

The exhibition continues O’Brien’s series on The Cardinal Virtues – ‘Fortitude’, ‘Temperance’ and ‘Prudence’, with ‘Justice’ focusing on the Aston Martin car, exploring power and chauvinism and the sex symbol persona of James Bond, carefully juxtaposed with the era of #MeToo. Nevertheless, we hope to present a national tour of Margaret Corcoran’s work, in a solo exhibition titled ‘A Further Enquiry: Independence and Love’ on 4 July. Later in the summer, we plan to present another two-person exhibition, as yet without a title, featuring new and recent work by Raphael Hynes and Carey Clarke.

In the meantime, like many colleague institutions, we are busy learning what it means to try and deliver our programme remotely, to offer our public programme of workshops and talks online. We are indebted to artist/facilitator Claire Halpin and Julie Duhy, and Community Historian Brendan Matthews for braving this new world. It won’t be perfect, but we believe the arts are important during times of crisis. highlanes.ie

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

Both images: Helena Walsh, live enactment of Áine Phillips’ Buttered up in the Couch, Friday 6 March 2020, MART Gallery; photograph by Ewa Pypno, courtesy of the artists and MART Gallery

CENTERED AROUND THE short film, Buttered Up, this exhibition by Áine

Buttered Up KATHERINE NOLAN REFLECTS ON ÁINE PHILLIPS’S PERFORMANCE-BASED EXHIBITION AT MART GALLERY, DUBLIN.

Phillips explores embodied domestic femininities through performance.

The form of the work varies across sculpture, painting and moving image, as well as live performances on the opening night by Phillips, Rachel Fallon, Helena Walsh and Ella Bertilsson.

What does it mean to be buttered up? On opening night audience members were offered a viscerally charged, dynamic experience of the concept at the heart of the exhibition. Entering through the red doors of MART Gallery, visitors inescapably encounter a woman in a red pillbox hat, ensconced in a sink. Phillips, as the absurd hostess of the exhibition, rubs a mound of butter blocks and extends a warm but slippery hand.

Before the formal introduction of social distancing measures, the intimacy of the handshake, now under scrutiny, further electrified this request for the viewer to break the fourth wall. Enlivening and lubricating not just hands but the social context, she orchestrates a room alive with exchanges and encounters. She is “trapped in a domestic underworld”, she explains, and is trying to get out using this butter as “lubrication”. The audience is welcomed and offered “ways in”, as she alludes to the other artists performing in the space. Enabling access through this explanatory mode of the address is directly and strategically oppositional to the reticence so dominant in contemporary artforms.

The next encounter is Rachel Fallon’s Things Break Down/Altered Ego, in which she shapes a ball of steel wool. Under her hand it is moulded into the shape of an old woman’s hair. A mundane domestic object becomes memento mori and conjures archetypes of mother and grandmother. In a cream and gold apron, Fallon begins to work the material into a long plait.

The acrid smell of apple cider vinegar rises, which over time will rust and degrade the strength of the steel. Evoking both the bristle of domestic toil and the warm feeling of watching a mother’s hands at work, this poetic honouring of women’s invisible labour is at once deeply individual and collective, affective and symbolic.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

Áine Phillips, Buttered Up in the Sink, Friday 6 March 2020, MART Gallery; photograph by Ewa Pypno, courtesy of the artist and MART Gallery

A large sculpture of knotted red clothing snakes its way across the floor, stretching almost the length of the space. Red Weight is a train of used clothing that was carried by Phillips through the streets of Krakow in a 2013 performance.

It speaks of heavy burden and of collectively. Laying on the floor, it is physically impossible to avoid, and acts as the spine of the space and the encounter, constantly returning the viewer to embodied experience.

Passing over this obstacle viewers come upon ‘Performaphilia’, a set of watercolours that revisit other tropes and figures from the artist’s live practice of recent years. In the form of painting, the performance imagery is iconic yet tender and reveals recurrent themes. Bag Lady, Goddess and Boat Girl in Malahide Estuary, from the ‘Mot Juste’ series address domestic and sexual violence. Through the mobilisation and twisting of iconic femininities they make visible symbolic and physical violence inscribed on women’s bodies, as well as the artworks themselves performing symbolic acts of care. These sit alongside watercolours of the Buttered Up performances, such that themes of escape and protection emerge strongly.

Crying Eye (Repeal Eye Banner) and Liberty in a Lina Stein hat represent activist aspects of Phillips’s practice, with collective action, solidarity and making public framed as enduring strands in her politics and approach.

At the end of the row of paintings is Ella Bertilsson’s Squirrel, a giant cardboard box sculpture. Secluded in the DIY ‘fort’ Bertilsson, over the course of the evening, playfully spews out an idiosyncratic mix of items such as compact discs, lighters, chopped and whole carrots, nylon wigs, a novel and a word-search book. The scattered symbols begin to coalesce into moments and fragments of familial encoun-

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Rachel Fallon, Things Break Down/Altered Ego, live performance, Friday 6 March 2020, MART Gallery; photograph by Ewa Pypno, courtesy of the artist and MART Gallery

ters in domestic space. This assemblage of ‘non-objects’ offers glimpses into a personal past and evoke how the mundane becomes formative with the passing of time.

At the back of the space, a two-seater orange corduroy couch is being slathered in butter by a lady-like figure in a red dress and kitten heel boots. This is performance artist Helena Walsh’s live enactment of Phillips’ Buttered up in the Couch.

She inhabits the role through her physicality, bringing to bear her own practice of interrogating embodied femininities.

Back straight, heels together she leans forward. As she covers the folds and gaps of the cushions in butter, they become discomfortingly vulvic. The fat appears hard from the cold, and as it is pasted on the groves of the material it contrasts the warm buttery handshake received upon entrance. This taps into visceral experience and the discomfort and abject pleasure of mess making. The act not only transgresses the permissible, but also upends the regime of order that women are tasked with imposing on domestic spaces. Donning a swim hat and goggles Walsh aims herself towards the couch hands poised. As she wedges herself into the ‘centerfold’, the ladylike postures of her legs are at odds with the subversive impropriety of the act. Whilst signifying being swallowed up by the domestic space, the performance also enacts a form of revenge, disrupting the quiet domination of homeliness.

Indeed, this is a central axis that the exhibition hinges upon, and this live performance interplays with the screening of Buttered Up in the backspace of the gallery, Phillips’s original performance to camera, made in collaboration with filmmaker Vivienne Dick. A woman enters the domestic underbelly of the sink and couch, as if consumed by her own desires and fantasies of the self in the home. We get a sense

of an identity subsumed, that is subverted through reappropriation, sexualisation and the absurd.

Phillips’s commitment to enacting feminist methodologies is evident in her collaborative approach, which disrupts the persistent monolith of the solo exhibition. As well as radical acts of collaboration, the exhibition elegantly negotiates the problematics of transliterating live practice into static exhibition. Moving through a number of media, she mobilises the language of each to speak about embodied practice from different positions. Like many exhibitions, it is now in its own quarantine due to coronavirus. Indeed, in this context, the artist’s vision of the domestic comes sharply into view, as the spaces of home are reframed globally as providing both sanctuary and entrapment.

Collectively the works of Phillips and her collaborators evoke deeply rooted feminist thinking, critique and practice, from the early writings of Beauvoir to Chadwick’s Living Kitchen. The exhibition reminds us that despite critique, women’s oppression through the domestic continually finds new forms. This set of works strikes at the heart of embodied memories and affective schemas of the domestic. The show draws attention to the pleasures and pains of being ‘buttered up’, seductively coerced and performed by the mythic materiality of the labour-filled domestic spaces that we inhabit in the everyday.

Katherine Nolan is an artist, lecturer and curator based in Dublin. katherine-nolan.blogspot.com mart.ie

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

From the Court to the Gallery MEADHBH MCNUTT TALKS TO EVELYNN GLYNN ABOUT THE EXHIBITION, ‘HOME TRUTHS’, AT ENGAGE ART STUDIOS, GALWAY. THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC is here and I’m feeling a severance from art. The anxious brain thinks in terms of survival and escape. And mine is welcoming dystopian news, alleviated by internet humour, in place of my usual creative pursuits. That tug of anxiety in the pit of the stomach is an all too human experience. Sometimes, it’s a virus that delivers an invisible threat. Sometimes, it’s a person. We might even share a home, a child – a history – with that person. In either case, when we collectively fail to act, it’s the most vulnerable who pay the price.

When Leo Varadkar announced recent isolation measures, projects like Domestic Violence Response, Galway, immediately anticipated a surge in calls. Artist Evelyn Glynn has worked in the domestic violence sector for many years.

“We’ve been inundated with calls since the measures were put in place,” she says. “Applications for protection and interim barring orders are being heard in the courts but all family law has been suspended. Access arrangements are nightmarish for many women, and for women still in these relationships, the situation is also incredibly challenging.”

In an article in Sixth Tone, Founder of Hubei anti-violence nonprofit aid, Wan Fei said that reports of domestic violence nearly doubled after Chinese cities went into lockdown.1 Isolation, stress and financial strain are contributing factors, along with effects on gender equality (evident in SARS, Ebola and Zika outbreaks)2. Childcare demands move from paid sectors (schools, crèches) to the unpaid household realm – often falling on the flexible parent with a lower income.3 ‘Home Truths’ – a collaboration between Evelyn Glynn, Engage Art Studios and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture – comes at a pivotal time.4 The exhibition, which was cut short by COVID-19 measures, takes its name from an audio work created by Glynn, featuring testimonies from 15 women who used the Irish legal system to deal with domestic violence. Glynn has worked with testimony before in ‘Breaking the Rules of Silence’, a collation of oral histories related to The Good Shepherd Convent and Magdalene Laundry.

In this project, she has invited artists Blaise Drummond, Alison Lowry, Áine Philips and Ruby Wallis to create individual works in response to the 15 testimonies. The result is a harmonious arrangement of works at war with their own suggestive ideals.

A pale blue river of static silicone by Blaise Drummond floods the space. Joni Mitchell’s lyric, “I wish I had a river / I could skate away on” is traced in watercolour on the adjacent wall. The line is separated into two halves, leaving a morbid space in the middle. Elsewhere, luminous wedding dresses by Alison Lowry bear subtly inscribed warnings (their hangers of shattered glass are less subtle), and a looped video by Ruby Wallis shows ruffled and smashed domestic objects. These images feel as though they should be dated. Yet they persist with the promise of a heteronormative happy ending. If anything, the precarity of the gig economy and housing crisis has given domestic life a renewed allure. In Áine Philips’s performance work, the artist literally papers over the cracks of a table and chair with various bandages. Audio plays in the background. An anonymous voice: “He was definitely capable of killing me. I do have a nice life now... there is life after it... it takes a long time.”

“There was something about listening to the audio while in the space that I found moving,” says Glynn. “I was absolutely taken with the cohesiveness of the space.” The stories are as powerful as they are harrowing, revealing the myriad of legal hurdles faced by survivors pre and post-separation. Despite all of the momentum of the Me Too movement, these ‘run of the mill’ cases barely break into mainstream discussion.

“When we made the application for this project, the focus was specifically on women’s experience of the legal system in dealing with domestic violence. It’s an area that very few people know about unless they’ve been through the system.”

Though new laws around coercive control show signs of

L–R: Blaise Drummond, River, 2020; Alison Lowry, Lucky to be Alive, 2020; photograph by Ruby Wallis, courtesy of the artists and Engage Art Studios

progress, Glynn believes there is a long way to go in improving the response to domestic violence. Many testimonies speak of the lack of information given on safety measures.

“The testimonies reveal a litany of shocking and inconsistent responses form the Gardaí – women blaming and failing to take statements, enforce orders, present evidence in court, respond to calls...”

Another area in which Glynn sees very few signs of progress is child access. “When access is considered in these situations, there is no linked-up thinking. There is a sense that the relationship is over, and therefore domestic violence isn’t taken into account or given priority.” One testimony speaks of a father gaining access to his daughter against the child’s wishes. The child had told a therapist that she was being abused, but her claim was dismissed by the court, along with the advice of mental health professionals. “Access issues get dragged out for years and the court system facilitates this,” explains Glynn. “There is a perception that it’s in a child’s best interest to have access with both parents, regardless of domestic abuse and little understanding or recognition of post-separation abuse.”

‘Home Truths’ is a brave step forward in bringing light to uncomfortable truths. Critiquing the law is no simple matter.

Testimonies are anonymised to protect both the women partaking in the project and the project itself. “A lot of that is in camera, so you’re in breach of court if you discuss what goes on in family law.”

Later in our conversation, Glynn recalls an exhibition from IMMA and the Family Resource Centre St Michael’s Estate, Inchicore, in the late ‘90s called ‘Once is Too Much’ (28 November 1997 – 15 February 1998).5 In one collaborative work, entitled Her Sanctuary, a velvet-lined drawer displays fragments of the portrayed owner’s private life. In this tiny space (both physical and psychological), her thoughts and identity can breathe and grow outside of policed boundaries. The sacred, liberated moment is magnified to the public within the semi-autonomy of the gallery. “[The gallery] can be a safe forum to allow for discussion that doesn’t take place in the same way in other sectors,” explains Glynn. “So much of what women go through in the home and in court is behind closed doors. Very few people

hear about those experiences. So, the women who took part wanted their stories out there. And they were for the most part excited and intrigued by the idea of combining these stories with art.”

With galleries closed, we must keep these lines of communication open, and safeguard the autonomy of survivors.

“The journey for women escaping domestic abuse is hard. But women do make that journey and come out the other side. I would say to anyone who needs help: reach out, get support and if you need to, call the Gardaí.”

For confidential support, call Women’s Aid National Helpline (1800 341 900) or Men’s Aid Ireland (01 554 3811).

A list of helpful services along with COVID-19 updates are available at cosc.ie and safeireland.ie. If in danger, call emergency services at 999/112.

Meadhbh McNutt is an artist and writer based in Galway.

To experience ‘Home engageartstudios.com.

Truths’

online,

visit

Notes 1 Zhang Wanqing, ‘Domestic Violence Cases Surge During COVID-19 Epidemic’, Sixth Tone.

2 Helen Lewis, ‘The Coronavirus is a Disaster for Feminism’, The Atlantic.

3 Julia Smith, a health-policy researcher at Simon Fraser University, noted that although all income took a hit during the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, “men’s income returned to what they had made pre-outbreak faster than women’s income.” Alisha Haridasani Gupta, ‘Why Women May Face a Greater Risk of Catching Coronavirus’, New York Times.

4 ‘Home Truths’ focuses on the experiences of women, a group disproportionately affected by domestic violence. Two thirds of victims of intimate partner/family homicide worldwide are women (UN Global Study on Homicide, 2013). The issue however spans all genders. In the region of 88,000 men and 213,000 women in Ireland have been severely abused by a partner (Watson and Parsons 2005 for the National Crime Council).

5 ‘Once is Too Much’ included 11 works produced in collaborative workshops involving The Family Resource Centre group (Anita Koppenhofer, Pauline Tunstead, Breda Owens, Phyllis Bolton, Cathy Quinn, Marion Keogh, Rita Fagan, Sharon Dunne, Finola Smith, Nollaig Boyd, Jean McSorley, Mai Norton, Bridie Canavan, Ann Goodwin, Adrienne Boyle, Kate Murphy and Ann McGann); artists Joe Lee, Rhona Henderson, Rochelle Rubenstein Kaplan and Ailbhe Murphy and curator Helen O’Donoghue.

The Visual Artists' News Sheet

Critique Edition 50: May – June 2020

Bassam Al-Sabah, Eventually Void, 2019, CGI video on CRT monitors, 3 mins 25 sec, installation view, ‘Dissolving Histories: An Unreliable Presence’; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy the artist and Golden Thread Gallery

Critique

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Vivienne Dick New York Our Time / Ciara Nic Chormaic Skin+Soul Dublin International Film Festival 2020 2 & 3 March 2020 TWO IRISH-MADE documentaries premiered at Dublin International Film Festival 2020, with screenings at the Irish Film Institute (IFI) in early March. Ciara Nic Chormaic’s Skin+Soul (2020) explores the career of Dublin-based photographer, Perry Ogden, while Vivienne Dick’s New York Our Time (2020) is a deeply nuanced return visit to her No Wave social circle in New York City. Both films were funded through the Arts Council’s Reel Art scheme 2018, an award that supports “highly creative, imaginative and experimental documentaries on an artistic theme for cinema exhibition”.

New York Our Time reflects on a slice of time in the late-70s/early-80s in NYC’s Lower East Side. The film begins with director, Vivienne Dick, warmly recounting her first home on East 9th Street. Her rent-stabilised apartment afforded her time – time that she would spend filming Super 8 footage of her community of neighbours and friends, musicians, artists, independent businesses, and the local drug dealer, all basking in the energy and shared experiences they created.

The storytelling trajectory continues and gathers momentum, and the baton is passed to those still residing in NYC. Their experiences of – and artistic contributions to – the No Wave movement are felt by the audience, yet Dick’s decision to wait until the closing credits to publish their full names posits them chiefly as her friends, in the context of this film. These people are established as essential to Dick’s relationship with the city. Through her conversations with them and via original footage, we learn about post-punk band, Bush Tetras, starting out in 1979; music venues and clubs such as CBGBs and The Mudd Club; the range of records listened to that were purchased on the street, including African, guitar and minimalist music, reggae and disco; the clothing and dancing styles each person preferred; how the apartment buildings were treated as blank canvases by the residents – spaces to share time, music, opinions, make art, have fun; ways of earning money and living off part-time jobs; and being nourished by the opportunity provided by the city to spend time communally outside on the streets, by the pier or in parks during the hot summer months.

New York Our Time skilfully contrasts time once spent responding to the city, with its residents now feeling immobilised by it, trying to navigate living in this now dramatically altered place. As the film progresses, we are increasingly familiarised with the next generation of New Yorkers, in some cases the children of Dick’s friends, who live in a neoliberal, franchised city; local bodegas are replaced by 7-Eleven convenience stores, and private and public space is now controlled to prioritise commodity values. Due to rental pressures, they live either with their parents, in shared suburban accommodation, or are moving to Detroit or Pittsburgh or Berlin.

Reaffirming the 40-year gap exposed throughout the film, the original footage and music joyously reach back in time, yet the film evades immersing the viewer in the 70s and 80s.

Dick breaks up the documentary with contemporary shots of New York, viewed through a sepia-tinted lens. These ‘not-quite-now’ rhythmic moments looking up between Manhattan’s buildings point to physical and psychological escapism. This contrasts with social media, another form of escapism touched on in the film. The strong sense of shared community from Dick’s own experience as a young adult

Ciara Nic Chormaic, Skin+Soul, 2020; still courtesy of the artist and Dublin International Film Festival 2020

Vivienne Dick, New York Our Time, 2020; still courtesy of the artist and Dublin International Film Festival 2020

is now somewhat replaced (either willingly or reluctantly) by global digital systems.

New York Our Time spotlights an extremely formative period that influenced Dick’s experimental approach to filmmaking, her editing aesthetics and her ensuing career. An intergenerational film, where every voice is presented as equal, the documentary successfully poses questions around human expression and societal obligations, holding powerful resonance for any city dweller.

Skin+Soul, directed by Ciara Nic Chormaic, spans the oeuvre of Dublin-based fashion photographer, Perry Ogden, beginning with Lipstick, his 1979 co-edited magazine, produced while at Eton College, Windsor. Ogden’s resourcefulness in contacting, photographing and interviewing celebrities set his own personal standard for how he would pursue his career. Influenced ear-

ly on by London culture and the DIY nature of punk, the film quickly establishes Ogden’s drive and accomplishments, from publishing work in Vogue, to shooting campaigns for Ralph Lauren and photographing Francis Bacon’s studio.

Skin+Soul highlights Ogden’s career as internationally focused from the offset, having started out in New York to pursue commercial photography. However, we learn that he embraced working from Ireland because of the renewed artistic vision he experienced here, through self-initiated projects. Ogden refocused his attention on photographing different classes and communities of people: the Anglo-Irish in their Manor houses; young joyriders in action in the 80s; and neighbours cutting turf in the Connemara bogs, in addition to international communities, such as the Navajo Reservation in Arizona.

Continually attracted to existing textures

and style, especially through one’s own clothing, Skin+Soul repeatedly asserts Ogden’s ability to reimagine photography and to gain the trust of his chosen models. Particularly notable are his relationships with members of the Traveller Community. Ogden’s body of work, ‘Pony Kids’, documented settled and Traveller children coming together at Dublin’s Smithfield markets in the late-90s. Ogden would strip back the scene to photograph children and horses in front of a white background, unifying the subjects into one photographic object. ‘Paddy & Liam’ is Ogden’s ongoing project, working with two brothers, Paddy and Liam Doran, since they were children. Footage of an outdoor shoot hints at the curiosity the brothers and the photographer hold toward each other, giving extra presence to the subsequent photographs.

Photographs taken by Ogden regularly appear in the documentary, surrounded by black screen and overlaid with music and unscripted narration by Ogden. Additional sequences include large-scale photographic images projected in a warehouse; fly-on-the-wall footage at outdoor shoots; and Ogden speaking to the camera in his studio – a place alluded to as a ‘shadow character’. Whilst the controlled presentation of these visuals mirrors Ogden’s way of working, the circular and very measured editorial approach loosens the narrative and subdues the film. Skin+Soul is a vivid, visual journey through the singular artistic pursuits of Ogden’s creative work. Bolstered by footage of printed photographs being retrieved from the studio archive, this recurring action in the film highlights the preservational aspect to his work, in terms of the people and communities he documents.

Emer Lynch is a curator based in Dublin.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Critique

‘Dissolving Histories: An Unreliable Presence’ Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast 15 February – 25 April 2020 ‘AN UNRELIABLE PRESENCE’, co-curated by

Mary Cremin and Peter Richards, is the third of Golden Thread Gallery’s annual ‘Dissolving Histories’ exhibitions, which aim “to actively investigate the notion of history itself.” There is no thematic or visual congruity and it should be considered as four discrete shows, were it not for the smartness of its hang. The work leads us through the horseshoe of three spaces in such a way that the diversity of practice lends itself to a coherent narrative.

Entering the first gallery is like walking onto a silent and empty theatre stage of blue and red light, awaiting the arrival of the prog rock band.

The action, though, is to our immediate right – the projection of Bassam Al Sabah’s CGI film, Dissolving beyond the worm moon.

A wire-frame child is thrashing in agony as he loses control of his physical integrity, his torso, head and limbs all expanding and contracting like Play-Doh, as it’s squeezed between fingers. Next, the film’s three central characters arrive sequentially at a forest, where they shatter into tiny fragments. The ostensibly invulnerable digital humanoids (two of whom wear the garb of the superhero/villain) die their digital deaths and find themselves battling each other in the pink void of their afterlives under the moon and a flat-disc yellow sun.

Sharing this space is Stuart Calvin’s formalist/quasi-spiritual sculpture Up Close and Distant. Rather than conforming to the overall intent of the show – of investigating the notion of history – this piece appears to wish to live outside of history altogether. The comparison with ancient menhirs is all too clear. Five tall, thin inverted cones, resembling carved stone, are placed in a circle – a sculpture in the round, but one that we can scrutinise from within. They are painted black and lit with a strong blue light, casting grey/pink shadows with perhaps an equal presence.

It’s lovely, but its apparent attempt to appropriate the sense of awe generated by the stone circles it emulates is inevitably futile. The latter possess this quality precisely because their histories and social functions are matters of wonder and speculation. Attempting to elicit this same emotional response by echoing their physical form proves fruitless.

The space which houses Liliane Puthod’s work connects the two large spaces with two

large openings. Onto these she has attached PVC strip curtains (titled Curtain!), as found in factories and hospitals to allow fork-lift trucks and trolleys to pass through safely. Passing through, we move from blue to red-orange, the result of Sign*age – a curving line of red neon on the wall. I found this agreeably indecipherable – it might be a snake rearing up or a Pitman shorthand form (if “fit-right pot melter” is a thing) or, considering its companion piece, a banana shedding its skin.

Cool Death (greetings) is a light box/refrigerator/coffin, made from steel, but seemingly held together with just wax. Its front is plastic, brightly lit from inside, a large image of a half banana, its black tip pointing down, mostly filling this frontage. This flaccid member brings to mind Beckett’s Krapp, whose impotence signalled his imminent death.

Michael Hanna’s video piece, Indoor Sunlight, is a montage of found material, mostly from the seventies and eighties, exploring new technologies as the basis for anticipating the future. This was a time of lazy utopianism that generated wildly inaccurate conceptions of urban planning, technological developments and leisure activities. The hopeful tone of all the elements of the montage was tempered by the voice of HAL 9000, the mutinous sentient computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The 1980 film record of Andy Warhol using a Commodore Amiga 1000 to produce, before an audience, a digital portrait of Deborah Harry, somehow manages to make the two of them appear seriously uncool. Following this is Hanna’s much cooler non-figurative pixel animation.

A promotional video animation of what I’m pretty sure was described as a “regimentally classless” future Belfast was given the musical backing of Hot Butter’s jarring 1972 synthesiser recording, Popcorn – an attempt to stress its modernity.

The value of history as dialectical process should be the enhanced comprehension of the present and the development of strategies for the future. The ‘Dissolving Histories’ project attempts to facilitate this ambition and ‘An Unreliable Presence’, on the whole, makes a notable contribution.

Stuart Calvin, Up Close and Distant, 2020, Styrofoam, plaster, resin, steel; Liliane Puthod, Curtain!, 2020 and Sign*age, 2019, installation view, ‘Dissolving Histories: An Unreliable Presence’; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy the artist and Golden Thread Gallery

Colin Darke is an artist based in Belfast. colindarke.co.uk

Michael Hanna, Indoor Sunlight, 2019, video installation, ‘Dissolving Histories: An Unreliable Presence’; photograph

by Simon Mills, courtesy the artist and Golden Thread Gallery

Liliane Puthod, Curtain!, 2020, PVC curtain, and Sign*age, 2019, neon, installation view, ‘Dissolving Histories: An Unreliable Presence’; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy the artist and Golden Thread Gallery

Critique

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Mairead O’hEocha ‘Tale Ends and Eternal Wakes’ Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin 28 February – 25 April 2020 THE WORLD IS on pause and we must now

stay at home; we are all in a state of suspension.

There is a strangeness to the world that we inhabit today, as we sit and wait. With only brief excursions outdoors allowed, the experience of nature can only be snatched in fleeting moments.

As I write this review, Mairead O’hEocha’s exhibition, ‘Tale Ends and Eternal Wakes’ at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, is closed to the world. It is in its own state of suspension, not unlike the world outside the gallery and the subjects of her paintings, which feature dioramas from Dublin’s Natural History Museum, known as the ‘dead zoo’. Like the museum’s curator, O’hEocha echoes the role of ‘The Keeper’. She has carefully displayed her paintings and drawings in a way not unlike the tableau vivant, where actors pose silently, theatrically lit and in costume. This staging of the work is in keeping with the themes of display, artifice and the representation of nature that she has explored in previous exhibitions, most notably ‘Blackbirds in the Garden of Prisms’ at mother’s tankstation, Dublin, in 2016.

This new show is something of a departure for O’hEocha in terms of medium. Here, she presents drawings for the first time, as well as showing some large-scale paintings (something that she hasn’t done much in the past). The drawings are displayed physically and perhaps symbolically, in opposition to the paintings. In terms of her approach to the medium, the paintings are executed in her usual studied and thoughtfully composed manner, whereas the drawings have the appearance of spontaneity and fluidity in the movement of the ink and brush. The arrangement of the drawings invite the viewer’s eye to move from one to another, from the monkey, to the bat, to the lion, and perhaps to pause on the herons and how the arch of their long graceful necks is fluidly sketched out in one movement of the brush.

The display of the paintings can be viewed in marked contrast to the drawings. In the paintings, the brush marks disappear into subject matter and the subject matter is enfolded into the material of paint. O’hEocha’s handling of paint, in particular her systematic colour palette, is assured and confident and makes a definite nod to artifice. The colours work from high-key acidic yellows and turquoises – colours not readily found in the natural world and definitely not the colour scheme of the animals and birds characterised. For me, it is her colour choices that distinguish these works utterly as ‘paintings’.

They reveal how, in painting, the subject matter takes a secondary place to the execution of the painting itself.

Whilst the overall exhibition is charged with a positive vitality in the use of colour and expressive brushwork, the drawings are also imbued with a sense of melancholia, when considering the subject of animals on display, frozen in time.

The press release makes reference to John Berger’s classic essay, ‘Why Look at Animals’ as a touchstone for O’ hEocha.2 Berger On Drawing is also worth considering here, in particular his essay, ‘Drawn to That Moment’, in which Berger reflects on the process of drawing his recently deceased father. This has pertinence for O’hEocha’s drawings of dead animals. In the essay, Berger writes: “As I drew his mouth, his brows, his eyelids, as their specific forms emerged with lines from the whiteness of the paper,

Mairead O’hEocha, ‘Tale Ends and Eternal Wakes’, installation view, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 2020; photograph Denis Mortell, courtesy of the artist and mother’s tankstation Dublin | London

I felt the history and the experience which had made them as they were. His life was now as finite as the rectangle of paper on which I was drawing, but within it, in a way infinitely more mysterious than any drawing, his character, his destiny has emerged. I was making a record of his face and his face was already a record of his life.

Each drawing then was nothing but the site of a departure.”2 Perhaps I am also prompted by life as it is now, at this moment of writing, when I consider a point that is made in O’hEocha’s press release, regarding public display and artifice, which states: “It would be a shame at this point to ignore that the art gallery, its visitors and its windows facing the busy city street reflect a parallel menagerie.” 3 Indeed, for now the lights are off, the gallery is silent, the streets outside equally so. The public space of the gallery and its exhibition must wait in suspension, like the animals in the dioramas of the dead zoo, to be animated once again by the presence of a visiting public.

Alison Pilkington is an artist based in Dublin. alisonpilkington.com

Notes 1 John Berger, ‘Why Look at Animals?’, About Looking, Penguin, 1980.

2 John Berger, Berger on Drawing, Occasional Press, 2005, p.68.

3 Press release, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, February 2020.

Mairead O’hEocha, Antelope, Natural History Museum (detail), Dublin, 2020, oil on canvas, 150 × 100 cm; courtesy of the artist and mother’s tankstation Dublin | London

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

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Corporeal Vocalities PÁDRAIG SPILLANE REVIEWS ‘MANY VOICES, ALL OF THEM LOVED’ AT THE JOHN HANSARD GALLERY, SOUTHAMPTON. THE GROUP EXHIBITION, ‘Many voices, all of them loved’

at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton (1 February – 14 March 2020), examines the relational facilities and powers of voice. Curated by Dr Sarah Hayden, the show explores how artists utilise various types of vocalisations as devices for sound occurrences and representation. It considers how the voice operates and is received in examining political expediencies. The six featured artists explore the power of voicing: its transmission and reception, as well as the ramifications of such transactional moments, coupled with ethical responsibilities. How do we listen to voices and what happens in that listening?

Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa’s video and stereo sound work, Promised Lands (2015–18), shows us a landscape near Lake Victoria in Uganda. A setting sun illuminates distant hills, seen through tree branches and back-lit foliage. In this unnamed space, the camera frame holds one fixed position.

The receding light gently alters the sky from pink to near gloom. The work combines this durational showing of location with seven spoken word sections including read aloud texts, spoken conversations and intermittent subtitling.

Wolukau-Wanambwa’s work attends to colonial migratory legacies that have marked Uganda and East Africa. A revealing moment is the artist reading from Austro-Hungarian economist Theodor Hertzka’s 1890 colonialist treatise, Freeland: A Social Anticipation. Wolukau-Wanambwa vocalises the elicitations of European ideas of East Africa as a utopic empty land, ready to be settled and occupied. The spoken word is interrupted by contradictory textual statements like “NOT YOUR ENCHANTMENT” and “NO BEING MOVED”.

The work also features a conversation between the artist and her uncle, with certain indistinct parts described onscreen as ‘indecipherable’. What is recorded and what is given voice to is a conscious addressing of representation – of who and what is heard and what is not. As evening gives way to night, the scene subtly and continually refocuses, suggestive of Uganda’s complex colonial histories.

Laure Provost’s HD video, DIT LEARN (2017), also combines text, closed-captioning, image and voice. This work seems to acknowledge the viewer’s presence, first through a textual admonishment for lateness, and then via a masked figure, presented as a live video conference call, who whispers gratitude for your return after you had apparently been pushed out of the room. It is the artist who speaks in hushed and mischievous tones from a behind the mask, welcoming you back and inviting you to sit. The voice is instructional, directing us to understand an ensuing torrent of written, vocal and visual information.1 This playful and sometimes vigorous guidance prompts us as we attempt to learn a new language structure. A salamander moving its head to the right signals ‘yes’, while a clip of a wooden stake being hit with a hammer denotes ‘no’. It has a surreal, Alice in Wonderland feel – both a game and a test. Like a self-learning language app, you want to press pause to catch your breath, but this cannot be done. It is a giddy rush of not knowing, with an emerging recognition of connections between image and voice. Through its mix of flows and registers, the encounter alters our relations to the world and ourselves, as we realise there is potential for new connections and realties to form.

Willem de Rooij’s 12-channel audio installation, Ilulissat (2014), takes its title from the third most populated town in Greenland, where the sound recording was made. The space holds three wooden benches, situated in front of twelve speakers at different heights. Every thirty minutes, the lights dim, and the piece begins. In the dark, the speakers cannot be seen; only what emanates from them can be perceived.

The sound of far-off dogs, gradually coming near and calling to each other, charges the air. These are not wild dogs but captive packs, adapted for human transport on glacial landscapes. As they draw nearer, the sound of the dogs’ interactions – excited howls, snarls, barks, whimpering and power

plays – becomes denser and more amplified. These dogs are not free; they are captive, their pack instincts overthrown for domestication. With this in mind, the installation becomes a place of empathy.

Within her catalogue essay, Hayden includes a segment about dissimilar sensing and communicating entities, proposing an openness about what a voice can be. She states that it would be worrying “to render void any equation of vocality with humanity” exclusively. Within the exhibition, focus is placed on voices originating from corporeal and elemental sources. There is a hesitation towards synthetic voices emanating from programing or circuitry, suggesting an underlying uneasiness about future vocalities in prototype form.

Perhaps such a notional voice, devoid of embodiment, does not sufficiently mirror the corporeal push of “wet tongues and constantly contracting and expanding tracheas”.2 There is no voice in Kader Attia’s video work, Oil and Sugar #2 (2007), making it an outlier in this exhibition, and all the more vibrant for it. What is shown, nearly filling the screen, is a white cube structure made from small sugar cubes, set upon a silver tray. An anonymous hand pours black oil over the sugary construction. The bleached crystalline quickly absorbs the slippery dark liquid and, after a short time, the construction falls in on itself, like a building being demolished. What were lines and incremental form now lie slumped in slow moving ruins. In the background is a subdued red brick wall, mirroring the sugar construction. We hear the faint interactions between oil and sugar, as it slips and drips off the polished tray. Muted traffic sounds mingle with the exchanges of sugar and oil, signaling the material world outside, where such affluences are extracted and produced. The symbolic powers of these colonial products are inverted, rupturing the status quo. The work offers a glimmer of how things can change, and how nothing lasts forever.

Captioned: Twentieth Century (2018) is an altered film by Liza Sylvestre, a full version of the 1934 screwball comedy, Twentieth Century, with supplementary white font captions appearing alongside the moving image. These captions are not typical subtitles, relaying what is said; nor are they describing onscreen action. They provide an alternative reading, based on the artist’s interpretations and point of view.

Sylvestre identifies as D/deaf, after her hearing deteriorated in childhood. She relies on closed-captioning in relation to film, TV and other moving image works. Like many others, she has to figure out the conversations and actions happening onscreen, where no textual description is given. Through Sylvestre’s alternative captioning, we get to see the film in a different way, noticing things that may have previously been overlooked. For example, she notices a swastika on an object in the background and also comments on exaggerated gestures and their possible meanings. This alternative reading of the film, filled with humour and unexpected moments, asserts the position of someone who is D/deaf. To this end, the artwork uses captioning as a form of subjective and interpretative resistance.

Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Conflicted Phonemes (2012) comes in formal blue vinyl with shelved paper stacks. This informatic, text-based work addresses forensic speech science – the application of linguistics, phonetics and acoustics to legal investigations – and how this process acts against Somali asylum seekers applying to enter the Netherlands.

The active testing of asylum seekers looks for discrepancies in how their accents are formed, taking into consideration geography and other factors. If a voice does not match linguistic expectations, then the application for asylum is rejected. This test is given in full knowledge that there has been considerable movement of population over Somalia’s history, due to civil war. Conflicted Phonemes gathers information on the applicants’ claimed geographic origins. It is a counter-official installation whose quality and graphic styling gives the failed asylum seekers a moment to challenge the system – a system

Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Conflicted Phonemes, 2012, nine A4-sized vinyl prints, and nine stacks of printed A4 paper; photograph by Steve Shrimpton, courtesy the artist and John Hansard Gallery

Liza Sylvestre, Captioned: Twentieth Century, 2018, altered film; photograph by Steve Shrimpton, courtesy the artist and John Hansard Gallery

in which the voice is used against itself, thereby demeaning human subjectivity and identity.

‘Many voices, all of them loved’ proposes a reconsideration of the ethics surrounding the voice. In this regard, the strength of the exhibition is its responsibility to different voices, with listening framed as an ethical commitment. Just as Emmanuel Lévinas claimed that face-to-face encounter is the ‘first ethics’ in human sociality – as the human face “orders and ordains us”, based on “asymmetry towards the other” – then arguably a listening encounter holds similar phenomenological force.3 When we hear a voice, we decide whether or not to be receptive. What is the consequence of that? What are the first demands of a voice? What are our relationships to others and their vocality? As simply stated within its title, the exhibition suggests that we should value and listen attentively to the diverse agencies that share our world – it is a propositional reimagining of the acts of voicing and listening.

Pádraig Spillane is a Cork-based visual artist who works with photography, collage and assemblage. He is a lecturer at CIT Crawford College of Art & Design.

Notes 1 This torrent drive shows various voices and images as having implorings of their own. See for example: W. J. T. Mitchell, What do Pictures Want?

The Life and Loves of Images (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

2 Dr Sarah Hayden, exhibition catalogue essay.

3 Emmanuel Lévinas, Ethics and Infinity (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985) p 95.

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Spirited rail, 2020, stainless steel, charred horse reins, wheels, 200 cm2 frame; all photographs by Damian Griffiths, © Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, courtesy of Palfrey Gallery, London

LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN sifts stories, materials and traces associated with site, memory, myth, narratives of care and the casting of spells, creating complex but pithy material scenarios. These may incorporate condensed sculptural images, mineral deposits, instructional texts and formal gatherings of elements that serve also as ritual artefacts. Her recent body of work examines the nurturing relationship between her cousin Róisín, a teenager with autism, and Róisín’s horse, Rockie.

Rituals of Care JOYCE CRONIN INTERVIEWS LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN ABOUT HER RECENT EXHIBITION IN LONDON.

Joyce Cronin: I was first introduced to your work at your recent solo exhibition, ‘Roisín, Silver, Rockie’ at Palfrey Gallery in London (22 January – 22 February). Can you tell me about that particular work and how it came about?

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín: It came about through an invitation from one of my tutors on the MFA at Goldsmiths, John Chilver, who co-directs the space.

I became aware of the association with horses in that street. Palfrey are a breed of horse, bred in the middle ages to be particularly dainty for women! There was a possibility that there had been stables in number 8, which is the gallery.

JC: Had you already started working with your cousin, Róisín? Was that project already underway?

LNF: No, it wasn’t, but the focus or preoccupation with working around horses had been on my mind through my MFA. Charred horse reins were an element of my MFA show, and I could see a visual language becoming evident. When I char them, they gnarl and curl and twist; the shapes can be quite calligraphic, symbols appear. I was interested in connecting these codes with ways of communicating – cross-species, interspecies or allegiances. I was witnessing and experiencing the support and the kinship between my cousin and horses in her equine therapy and saw her comfort and ease around horses.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

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JC: I am interested in the context of working at Palfrey and how you responded to that – both the space itself and the street’s history and its relevance to the work. I think the interesting thing is how you responded to the space internally but also externally.

LNF: The gallery does feel quite stable-like – it’s a tall, unusually shaped and very compact space. I was imagining that a horse could potentially walk in and somehow lick the walls and gain nourishment with the horse lick all over it. Horse licks are salt blocks consisting of a range of vital minerals, and the horse can lick it when they please; usually in the stable or field. There’s a nod to the exterior space, in that a horse’s tail pokes through the letterbox, swishing around the street, owning the space. It’s a typical white cube space, but I’m playing with a different reading, as a space of nourishment. It commemorates the horses that were once there.

The charred reins are placed there in remembrance and I imagine them as ghosts as well, reappearing on the walls.

JC: Can you talk about your different approaches in the studio and in the gallery and how those processes overlap? What sort of changes take place, when you’re thinking about how people will encounter the work?

LNF: I was working on the drawings in my studio and was excited and nervous as to how that would translate in the gallery. I hadn’t worked in that way before – immersive drawing. I played with the symbols and shapes and developed a language of codes that were based on my cousin’s drawings. I reproduced, enlarged and realigned them to different shapes.

The large steel frame was constructed specifically for that space. I wanted to play with the architecture and the dimensions because I wanted to mirror the attention to detail in the space. For example, the steel round bar is the same material used in the door handles, and the frame is two metres squared, echoing the dimensions of the window. There are other points of connection in the work, playing with ideas of reappearances, ghosts or portals in various manifestations, and the potential communication that can exist.

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, detail from Spirited rail, 2020, stainless steel, charred horse reins, wheels, 200 cm2 frame

JC: I think there’s something about the scale of that structure as well.

Everything else is quite small and focused, making you aware of your own physicality, in the way that encountering a horse can.

LNF: I was imagining the steel bar going across the frame might be where the horse would lean over the stable door. I was also thinking of movements through things, like a portal. It’s a bodily object, very physical – I enjoy that play between the miniature and a more giant scale.

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Roisín silver flips, 2020, lenticular print from phone footage taken during Róisín’s horse therapy sessions with Silver the horse, stainless steel curved plate

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, detail from Spirited rail, 2020, plaited horse hair from spring trims at Ebony Horse Club, Brixton and Coolgreaney Equestrian, Wexford; ‘Rockie’s baby red horse licks’; stainless steel curved round bar; striated glass; jesmonite and graphite eggs; Ní Fhlaibhín’s grandmother’s dessert bowl; stainless steel and charred horse reins and plastic. This work extends through the letterbox onto the street

JC: There is an element of alchemy and ritual present in your work – where does this come from?

LNF: I’m interested in the apparatus and aftermath, as well as the whole function of a ritual as partly celebratory, but also protective and caring. During the MFA and being away from Ireland, I’ve become interested in rituals from my childhood, thinking about my grandparents in particular, and the West of Ireland rituals around interacting with land. This talismanic potential of materials – an alchemic reaction or fusing of various objects to bring a ritual of sorts into being – seems prevalent in my work. I enjoy exploring that in a gallery space, with some of my beliefs or memories becoming part of the language of exhibition-making. Ideas around care feature too, rituals of care and support.

What’s passed down feels important. I use these little jesmonite eggs a lot; my grandad was convinced of eggs’ double function, benevolent and malevolent – they can protect the land but are also curse. I placed some eggs in the Palfrey letterbox as a barrier, as a seal to protect the space. Alongside the horsehair, there’s this kind of affinity, a braiding together of ways of being. My grandad grew up in a blacksmith’s in Aughrim, County Galway – the site of the bloodiest battle in Ireland. There is a belief in the weight and history of the land; this was very much shared by my grandfather. He passed on beliefs in fairies, ghosts and spirits, which I view as an animist way of being in the world, while also offering us ways of living more ecologically and harmoniously.

own way. This leads on to storytelling in your work, which is also quite an Irish trait, in terms of an oral tradition. Yet sculpturally, the work manifests in the relationship between objects and their materiality. How do these formal aspects interrelate?

LNF: As the exhibition continued, you could see crystal growths appearing on the walls, which hadn’t happened in my studio. I guess that was to do with the temperature, and a range of things that synergise to cause transformation and magic! The horse braid was presented in my Nana’s steel bowl, with the saltlick in it, turning crystalline very slowly. I’m displaying gratitude towards horses for supporting my cousin; I’m feeding them and telling that story.

JC: You are creating your own language and your own relationship to the places in which you are showing your work.

In a sense, you’re carrying on inherited traditions in your

Laura Ní Fhlaibhín is an artist from Wexford, who works there and in London.

JC: In another space, perhaps something else could have happened, depending on the heat, time of year or different kind of light?

LNF: Yeah, it’s an unknown and open-ended process – you don’t know exactly what will happen. I’m already thinking of the possibilities for outdoor drawings and wondering what the effects of the elements would be on the minerals, especially on the copper, and the process of oxidisation.

Joyce Cronin was born in Dublin and lives and works in London where she is Co-Director of The Bower. thebower.org.uk

lauranifhlaibhin.com

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Exhibition Profile

Following the Story RÓISÍN FOLEY DISCUSSES THE DEVELOPMENT OF WILLIAM BOCK’S RECENT EXHIBITION, ‘LAND WALKS, LAND TALKS, LAND MARKS’.

William Bock with Suitcase Camera, 2016; photograph by Tomasz Madajczak, courtesy of the artist

GROWING UP IN West Cork as the son of German and Swedish parents, William Bock spent his childhood conscious of identity. He will always describe himself as a ‘blow in’ even though, after moving to London when he was 11, he spent a large part of his life in West Cork, at his family cottage near Union Hall. In the past couple of years, he has been spending more time there as his work demands, along with creating an artist’s residency space at the cottage. This early awareness of ‘otherness’, coupled with his everchanging connection to his rural place of birth, has informed the development of his work, ultimately culminating in his first solo exhibition, ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’, at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, which opened on 24 February.

In 2016, William began his first residency at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre in Skibbereen, the town closest to his childhood home. The residency was most fittingly named ‘Blow In’, exploring identity, memory and belonging through interactions with members of the Polish community in and around Skibbereen. William photographed a number of sitters in specific locations and used extended exposures, taken from a pinhole camera in a suitcase, as a means to create conversations around these themes. The result was a collection of blurred portraits, which eloquently demonstrated their connection to the conversations that occurred. Following on from these portraits, William organised The Ilen Feast, which saw the sharing of dishes between 40 different people from 12 different countries on the site of a former Famine soup kitchen.

William had explored ideas of identity memory and belonging in previous work, through the use of portraiture.

In The Last Bock in 2012, believing he was the last in his family line, William travelled to Germany, Sweden, Mexico and Israel to connect with and document the stories of distant relatives. He painted their portraits whilst they had conversations and he listened to their stories. The work led him to discover a cousin in Israel with “the biggest family portrait I

have ever seen”. The Last Bock culminated in a series of performances which were held at venues in London and Bristol using the portraits as props. The Last Bock revealed the more intimate details of a person who was exploring their identity through family history.

An earlier work which began William’s practice of working in the natural environment and engaging more heavily in collaboration was Hole Story, initiated at William’s invitation for other artists to explore a rectory garden in Hackney. William and his partner had become guardians of the rectory and its garden for a period in 2014. After researching the site, he discovered that the garden had never been built on; it was virgin soil. What started as a collaborative exercise of simply digging a hole, manifested into a much bigger artistic enquiry.

Hole Story began as an eight cubic metre hole in the garden but became an artist residency space, a pinhole camera and many other things, later travelling to the Swiss Alps as part of the Art Safiental Biennale of Land and Environmental Art. While on residency again at Uillinn in 2017, William, like most other rural dwellers, incorporated walking into his daily routine. He began to look more closely at the plants which occupy roadsides and ditches. Whilst reading formative texts from Donna Haraway, who speaks about interspecies kinship, and Anna Tsing, who speaks about viewing the world from a non-human centric position, he began to think more about the histories and lives of plants in Ireland that are described as non-native or invasive in some cases. Examples of such plants are the fuchsia, which is celebrated in West Cork, but hitched a ride from South America and Japanese knotweed, categorised as invasive and high risk on the national biodiversity website. Uncovering these plant histories started a new set of enquiries in William’s work.

From 2017, William began to situate his practice more firmly in West Cork. Having been offered a solo exhibition at Uillinn, he sought to develop new work that would expand his previous focus on relaying particular stories through curi-

osity, engagement and collaboration. Former subjects had not only been the stories of people but also the stories of places and even the earth itself. In 2018, William took another short residency at Uillinn for two weeks, specifically to concentrate on formulating the exhibition. During this time, he began to draw comparisons between these non-native plants and the global diaspora.

Land Walks formed the basis of this exhibition. It began as an idea to speak about human migration through the subjects of identity, memory and belonging. Walking in specific locations while talking about these plants was used as the starting point for discussion with participants, merging people, plants and place. The exhibition, ‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’, evolved from Land Walks as a means to create a bigger portrait of the West Cork landscape that reflected on the human and non-human histories occupying certain locales and the relationships that exist (or that could be developed) between them.

‘Land Walks, Land Talks, Land Marks’ exists (at this present time) in three parts: a physical exhibition at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre; a newly launched online database of conversations which come from collaborative walks; and a series of public talks, events and screenings. The exhibition is currently under lock and key, whilst we wait out the global pandemic. The talks, events and screenings have been adapted for online participation, where possible, while the walks and talks are available to experience online.

Róisín Foley is former director of Doswell Gallery, Rosscarbery, West Cork. She is a freelance curator and writer.

William Bock is a visual artist living between West Cork and London, whose work explores human relationships to place. williambock.com

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Project Profile

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Radio Free Kilnaboy ANNE MULLEE SPEAKS TO ARTIST TOM FLANAGAN ABOUT HIS PROJECT ‘FOLK RADIO’ IN COUNTY CLARE. ‘FOLK RADIO’ TOOK place at X-PO, Kilnaboy, County Clare in February, as an analogue radio station broadcasting for two weeks on 87.9FM. Led by artist Tom Flanagan, the work was commissioned through Clare County Council’s Gaining Ground Public Art Programme 2017–2020. Project curator, Anne Mullee, talks to Flanagan about the process of making ‘artist-led’ radio.

Anne Mullee: In your collaborative practice (with Megs Morley) you’ve previously examined the idea of embedded or embodied landscape. In comparison to your past projects, what was the approach for ‘Folk Radio’?

Tom Flanagan: I wasn’t thinking about this project in the same way as I approach my other collaborative work, which often involves sustained periods of intensive research, development and production around a set of ideas or concepts and can have very little community engagement. I think socially-engaged work requires a very different approach; it has to have a certain fluidity and can’t be predetermined in the same way. It’s interesting that you mention our previous work and the embodied relationship with landscape and drawn associations. ‘Folk Radio’ made me consider my last socially-engaged commission with Megs Morley, called Aughty (2011), which had a similar duration and took an observational approach.

We used film as a process of research and engagement, exploring the Sliabh Aughty region in East Galway and East Clare over eighteen months. That work was influenced both by the relationships formed through the duration of the project and our growing understanding of the place. There’s a lot of similarity to this process that I engaged with for ‘Folk Radio’. Community-based public art projects are always a challenge, and you have to be open for a project to develop and evolve along with the relationships between the people and place over time. I was very lucky in the sense that there is very strong creative group already engaged with X-PO. As an artist, I think it’s one of the great privileges to be welcomed into these communities and be given access to their world. So, I think that while I had developed a concept for the project, it was its organic expansion and input from participants that really dictated the outcomes.

AM: You describe the project as ‘artist-led radio’. How do you see that sited in relation to sound art, radio art or even ‘art on the radio’?

TF: In terms of the radio station being ‘artist-led’, I considered my role here to broaden the concept of what radio is, or what it can be, and how it can be utilised in a different way.

That approach is reflective of the X-PO project itself, as a space that poses questions around traditional ideas of community and place. Terms such as experimental radio or radio art didn’t quite feel right because I didn’t want to be prescriptive as to what was going to happen. It had to be responsive and come from that community. I wanted participants to have an open mind to the possibilities and methods they could take. I created a framework and thinking around radio and its relationship to the landscape, and within that, it was up to each individual what form or approach they wanted to explore. But the core driver was the facilitation of the X-PO community to develop and explore the creative potential of broadcast radio as a means of expanding the unique cultural space that the X-PO occupies in the landscape of the Burren.

AM: The works are really diverse, perhaps reflecting the population of the area, which comprises people of many different nationalities, with a range of interests, specialties and experiences of life.

TF: One of the amazing things about radio is that it’s a uniquely democratic medium – it is omnipresent and open to all. I think what really excited me about the potential of this project was the idea that ‘Folk Radio’ could occupy an alternative listening space for cultural engagement. We had a

Folk Radio Open Day: Claiming the Sonic Spectrum - panel discussion with Katie Moylan, Deirdre O’Mahony, Tom Flanagan, Tony Kirby, Sven Anderson and Natalia Beylis; photograph © Mike Hannon

out the year I documented and broadcast every event, field trip, talk, music session and workshop I possibly could, as well as initiating focused projects exploring the various groups that use the space, such as the mapping and singing groups.

Working with artist and X-PO founder, Deirdre O’Mahony, we also explored the four archive projects housed there, taking them out of the building and into people’s homes through radio. I would like to think that following on from ‘Folk Radio’, albeit an artist-led and unconventional radio project, that if a community radio station happens at the X-PO, it’s going to take some influence from the experiment that preceded it. We’ve opened the door of possibilities and there’s no better community to explore that potential.

X-PO volunteers Eve Campbell and William Hederman at the Folk Radio Studio, November 2018; photograph © Tom Flanagan

multitude of responses and approaches – ranging from some very experimental material, produced by artists like Tanya Harris and students from Burren College of Art, to a more traditional programming format, including live music, interviews, conversations, documentaries and so on. In some cases, we ended up with durational audio works, like the work by William Hederman, who spent over six months gathering field recordings of the sounds of the GAA pitch next to his backyard, creating a mesmerising soundscape piece. In the end there were over 85 participants in the project, whether they were directly producing programmes or engaged in other aspects.

AM: And your approach to ‘Folk Radio’ was reflective of that?

TF: Absolutely. One important aspect of the project for me was making visible the activities of the X-PO. So, through-

AM: How do you feel the project has informed your own practice?

TF: It’s really opened up a new vessel for my creative practice.

It’s a medium I’m going continue to work with. Though I’ve taught radio production for many years, I’d never brought it into my art practice. But experiencing the possibility of the medium to empower communities through this project has stimulated a lot of thinking and conversation about the feasibility of creating further alternative forms of community expression in Ireland. So, it is absolutely a medium that has become a central aspect to my practice, and one I look forward to developing and expanding in the near future.

Anne Mullee is a curator, writer and researcher based in Dublin. annemullee.com

Tom Flanagan is an artist and educator based in County Galway. The complete ‘Folk Radio’ programme is available online. folkradio.ie

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Project Profile

Collective Self-Consciousness ANNE TALLENTIRE AND CHRIS FITE-WASSILAK DESCRIBE THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEVIATIONS OF HMN – A QUARTERLY SOUND-BASED TEST CENTRE EVENT, RUNNING IN VARIOUS VENUES THROUGHOUT LONDON SINCE 2015.

The Village Club, Barrow Housing Estate, London – the location of hmn19; photograph by Anne Tallentire; courtesy of hmn

EVENTS ARE, by nature, limited in scope: cemented into a

time and place, only a certain amount of people can make it or fit in. As a way of delivering ideas and reaching people it can seem proscribed, delineated. But it also enables a particular kind of atmosphere and connection, sharing those very limitations with a group of other people for a moment. Exhibitions tend to carry with them an optimism of exposure, that any number of unlimited people might encounter the show, despite the circumstances and choices that led to the works that end up appearing in front of an audience. Which is to say, both events and exhibitions are subject to the same whimsical forces, but still appreciated in very different ways.

Hmn arose out of a mutual desire to try and foreground the energies that go into making new work: the temporary gestures, the uncertain movements, the unsettled tests. These are aspects usually lost in the desire to present a finished, professional, confident artwork – but things we both felt were essential parts of the work that we treasured. Working backwards from this urge, we attempted to create a set of boundaries that might enable this to be explored. An event, with its specificity and need for focus, as well as its very disposable or temporary nature, seemed the necessary choice. Having worked, respectively, as an artist and a curator and critic, we both had a sense of what we didn’t want – the format of a ‘performance night’ set in a gallery or studio meant certain habits and pre-expectations for both artists and audiences that we wanted to avoid. So we decided: a set time period, which both the participants and the audience would be aware of; in changing locations, no galleries or studios, so that everyone involved (us included) would remain unsettled; and no documentation, so that participants could feel free to try or fail without that kind of consequence, but also that people who attended wouldn’t divest themselves into taking pictures, video or online posts during those few minutes. Seven minutes seemed like a good mid-point: long enough to get lost, short enough to stay concentrated. We ended up describing it as

‘sound-based’ so that people coming along would understand it was time and attention-based. We don’t ask participants to tell us what they’re doing, only if they want to chat about ideas – we are part of the audience, too. Our guiding principle has always been to promote, pursue and work with doubt.

The first hmn was in February 2015, in a library spare room, and we are later this year having the 20th edition of the event. The most recent was held in a housing estate community hall; one person made an interactive synth sound-work based on people calling and texting their phone; another took the seven minutes to fill pistachio shells with beeswax, to give a sense of the range of modes one evening might bring.

Neither of us planned to keep it going for so long, but the thing has seemed to create its own energy and momentum that carries itself. We have run from a loose invitation system, asking people we encounter or sometimes hardly know, or people who seem that they might benefit from this sort of aside or test space in their work at this time. In such a career-oriented space as London, it felt necessary to partially formalise the real energies that drive artistic exchange, to try and encourage an ecology of informal but serious attention.

Several things have become clear over the past five years; one being that hmn is an austerity project. It is low-fund, based on a system of exchange, where we provide a platform and conversation in exchange for someone to share their time and ideas. In a climate where opportunities are given mostly to those who already have the means, it has been rewarding to create another sense of circulation.

The other notion that has emerged as being the true centre of the project is simply the issue of attention. Quietness goes many directions, in being something someone can ask for, but also something that people, together, create. We are ostensibly ‘sound based’, and every event inevitably has a sonic element; but the main material of hmn has been the thick sense of attention that is shared between attendees and participants alike. The contributions on each evening frequently

require us to place ourselves in view of what we imagine is about to happen. The spaces we use are generally everyday public venues – community halls, libraries, outdoor walkways or public greens – more often than not, located in unfamiliar off-track parts of the city, almost generic spots that are rented, moved-through, used by lots of different people. The spaces quietly emphasise impermanence in place and time, removed from the more knowing expectations and habits associated with art-making. In such spaces that do not readily offer the certainties and conventions of an art venue, this can create a collective moment of self-consciousness and uncertainty that prepares us differently for the act of attention. It is this sense of attention, fragile and tenuous, that turns a group into something cohesive, that creates the links between a wider group of people, that in turn has created a wider sense of what we might call a community or a web.

Just like all events and series, hmn is just a short thing in time, one that we hope kickstarts new energies and work, and engenders and continues long-running conversations. The model is not precious or proprietary, and in times like these is a method to proliferate and mutate, to encourage the creation of alternative gatherings and alternative institutions and ecologies. Like Dublin’s Foaming at the Mouth series, which we took inspiration from, or Tai Shani and Anne Duffau’s Dark Water events also in London, Pre-ramble in Glasgow, and the No Matter poetry and performance events in Manchester, long may such public conversational and casual spaces for trying out ideas continue to spread: hesitation for all!

Anne Tallentire is an Irish artist based in London. annetallentire.info

Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer and critic based in London. cfitewassilak.wordpress.com

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Symposium Profile

Contemporary Imprints JONATHAN BRENNAN REPORTS ON THE MULTI-MATRIX PRINT SYMPOSIUM WHICH TOOK PLACE AT THE MAC, BELFAST. IN A PAST – which now feels very distant, but was in fact

only weeks ago – when the term ‘social distancing’ had only just been coined and the concept of having to self-isolate was inconceivable, a symposium took place in Belfast, focusing on what seems the very opposite of self-isolation: multidisciplinary artistic practice. Co-ordinated by the Belfast Print Workshop (BPW), in partnership with Seacourt Print Workshop and Ulster University with funding from Belfast City Council, the event, which took place at The MAC on 13 March, featured speakers and panellists that exemplify contemporary multidisciplinary printmaking.

Introduced by Meadhbh McIlgorm (artist and BPW Manager) and Suzanne Lyle (Arts Council of Northern Ireland) and chaired by me, this day-long symposium seemed timely, if not overdue – the last printmaking event of this scale in Northern Ireland was organised by Seacourt a decade ago. That symposium was concerned with the value and preservation of traditional techniques in an increasingly digital culture, whereas this one (entitled ‘Multi-Matrix’) sought to respond to contemporary concerns – namely the trend towards multidisciplinarity among printmakers, through both necessity and desire.

Artist-researcher Tracy Hill (Artlab, University of Central Lancashire) described how the physical location of her department within the university sees her mixing with designers, rather than fine art students, while the university has a multidisciplinary ethos in general. Her process is always informed by research and while printmaking is a significant element of her practice, she doesn’t call herself a printmaker, but rather allows each project to dictate the process used.

One of her ongoing projects involves the use of Faro scanners (devices used primarily by the construction industry) which, in the words of the manufacturers, “touch and sense place” in 360 degrees. Hill manipulates the vast amounts of data gleaned from these scans to create wall drawings and large intaglio prints of up to three metres in size.

Artist Ann Donnelly (Northern Ireland Screen) and Seacourt Print Workshop Director, Emma Drury, spoke about

the application of print processes in the wider field of health and wellbeing. They described their current project, which uses footage from the Digital Film Archive, in conjunction with printmaking, in workshops with dementia sufferers.

Noting down statements triggered by archival film clips was useful for those with cognitive problems who tended to forget ideas between sessions. These textual snippets were reproduced in letterpress rescued from a local newspaper office and used as a way to ‘anchor’ participants and as springboards to create artworks.

The work of Małgorzata Warlikowska (Academy of Fine Arts, Wrocław, Poland) relates to the human condition in the modern world, including personal experiences and women’s rights. Employing a dizzying array of processes – ranging from screen-printing, ceramics and embroidery, to welding, linocut and enamelling – her practice involves bodies of work that can span several years and multiple iterations, playing with archetypes from art history or popular culture. Marilyn Monroe is a recurring motif, as are media clippings and slogans, while one particular series seemingly updates the male torso, referencing antecedents like the Belvedere torso and Brancusi’s Torso of a Young Man. The printmaking practice of Andrew Folan (Head of Print, NCAD) explores the way print can extend in time, showing an evolution. One example is his Palimpsest Project in which students are invited to re-work old plates: “every time you work the plate, you print it before working it again [thereby] opening up the possibility of time-based printmaking”. In the early 2000s, Folan found an uncanny analogue in rapid-prototyping (an early application of 3D printing, in which material is deposited in successive layers to build three-dimensional forms) to the stacking of intaglio prints, in creating the quasi-architectural forms he was engaged with at the time. Folan’s more recent work sees him working in virtual space with the 3D-modelling and animation software, Blender. In his recent ‘Prometheus’ series, an animated virtual budding flower, which can pass through itself much like a Klein bottle, is paused at certain key frames and printed. In

this way, a digital animation finds a physical manifestation, returning to this notion of print extending through time.

Of all of the guest speakers, Sumi Perera’s range of disciplines seemed the widest apart, at least on a superficial level.

In a former life, she worked as a doctor in Sri Lanka before returning to the UK to undertake postgraduate studies in virology, as well as an MA in Book Arts – at a time when the trend was towards minimalism and conceptualism. She generates multiple series by combining hybrid printmaking techniques including a range of intaglio techniques, lithography, screen-printing, laser cutting, engraving and sandblasting. She is “not precious about disciplines” and raised a question about whether the term multidisciplinary itself has lost its usefulness, suggesting that perhaps the term ‘post-disciplinary’ is now more appropriate.

A panel discussion, titled ‘Print Across Disciplines’, with artists and lecturers Majella Clancy, Pauline Clancy and textile designer Ruth Crothers looked specifically at the theme of multidisciplinary printmaking in Northern Ireland today, with reflections on where things might go in the future. As well as thematic echoes between all of the speakers, certain recurring themes emerged throughout the day, focusing on the general perception of a return to traditional practices and the hand-created mark alongside the adoption of digital techniques. There was also a consensus that to be multidisciplinary, one needs to have a discipline to bring to the table to begin with, and a question as to whether all of this really is new, or if it has roots in movements like the Bauhaus. The day closed with a showcase of works from BPW and Seacourt members, alongside pieces from Belfast School of Art students and symposium guests, offering a chance for discussions to continue, in accordance with the latest social-distancing norms.

Jonathan Brennan is a multidisciplinary artist based in Belfast. jonathanbrennanart.com

Multi-Matrix Print Symposium, chair: Jonathan Brennan, and panellists (L-R): Ann Donnelly, Emma Drury, Tracy Hill and Małgorzata Warlikowska, 13 March, The MAC, Belfast; photograph by Neal Campbell, courtesy Belfast Print Workshop

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Organisation Profile

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Doireann O’Malley, Prototypes I, installation view, National Sculpture Factory, 2019; photograph by Jedrzej Niezgoda, © NSF 2019

THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE Factory (NSF), now in its 31st year, was

Material and the Immaterial VALERIE BYRNE AND DOBZ O’BRIEN OUTLINE THE NATIONAL SCULPTURE FACTORY AS A SITE FOR KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, ART-MAKING AND THINKING.

established in 1989 by four graduates of CIT Crawford College of Art & Design – Maud Cotter, Vivienne Roche, Eilis O’Connell and Danny McCarthy – and found it’s home in a nineteenth-century former Tram Depot warehouse in the heart of Cork Docklands. The NSF has since developed an international reputation for programming and producing site-specific artworks and working in collaboration with other organisations, individuals and festivals on a wide variety of interdisciplinary events and projects.

The purpose of the NSF, which is exemplified in our artistic policy and remit, is to support and nurture the production of art and the role of art in society. Board and staff work together to form a leading institution for identifying, nurturing and activating talent; for ambitious and fearless commissioning; promoting discourse on contemporary visual culture through our public engagement activities; and engaging diverse audiences.

NSF focuses on cultural enterprise, art production, public engagement and discourse. We provide space, time, training and practical support for artists to explore new ways of working, expertise and processes to organisations wishing to commission public art. NSF also offers a platform and programme of events for the public which helps generate debate, awareness and perceptions of contemporary sculptural practice. We welcome and value experimentation and exploration of sculpture within the expanded field.

To deliver the NSF’s vision of identifying, nurturing and activating talent, we have established that supporting artists very early on in their professional development is critical. NSF has a proven track record of supporting graduates to meet their ambitions of further study, commissions, residencies, projects and exhibitions. We assist emerging artists to make the transition to professional artists; create new connections and networks and avail of professional development opportunities; build confidence as well as the physical freedom and space to take supported risks to realise their creative goals. We currently award four graduate residencies to three art colleges annually and we are looking at ways to extend our support to graduates nationally.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

NSF has always understood itself as a national art organisation with an international outlook, all the while conscious of the constituency of artists it is geographically connected to – the local. And while it has been a number of years since its largest and most influential project, ‘Cork Caucus’ in 2005, it remains exemplary of the original vision and ambition of the NSF as an internationally significant organisation. ‘Cork Caucus’ was resonant of our core principles to critically and culturally contribute to the discourses around art-making and society; to be relevant, flexible, open and responsive to the needs and functions of artists; to be generative as an organisation in a continuous process of becoming and of reinstituting.

‘Cork Caucus’ created an opportunity to re-establish these founding principles. It was a gathering of interdisciplinarity – artists, thinkers, writers, philosophers, architects and curators, amongst many more, who wished to investigate the cultural, political and artistic issues of the time. It was a means to express and articulate the specifics of our local situation in relation to some of its global analogues. The outcomes were always unforeseeable, but this was not designed as an impediment to our deliberations or activities but rather a way of unloosening ourselves from definitive consequences. To get busy learning, deliberating, thinking and making, discussing, debating and imagining, unencumbered by any restraints of traditional outcomes. Retrospectively, this lent itself to re-establishing that fertile space for the NSF which still can be felt today.

Organisation Profile In 2020 two new programmatic strands, titled ‘Assemblies’ and ‘Telemetries’, offer a different set of platforms for knowledge production on art, art-making and thinking, while adding to the social construction of the world of art in which we work. These programmes have varieties of access and participation where once again the outcomes are open-ended, but not without due consideration or responsibility.

‘Assemblies’ is devised as a series of productive, exploratory, participatory and public intercessions, designed to review and reflect upon the needs of the local cultural community. It is concerned with the ‘conditions’ of art-making and about reconnecting with our core constituents; re-activating the ground through critical and cooperative participation.

‘Telemetries’ will be the National Sculpture Factory’s turn to move beyond the ‘material’ nature of the activities that happen on the factory floor and to examine its own ‘location’, and especially that term ‘National’ in the organisation’s title. By inviting international practitioners to take up what could be described as the ‘immaterial pillars’ of the institution – ‘expanded sculpture’, ‘public’, ‘artist’ as well as ‘national / international’ and ‘material / immaterial’ – and to position them within the experience of global contemporary art, the NSF will seek new perspectives on its role and character as a national art institution. Hopefully leading to the clarification of the nature of its ongoing activity, and to transformative strategies for the future. These programmes are planned to be

Peter Power, The Boundarties Between Us Endure, installation view; photograph Jedrzej Niezgoda, © NSF 2019

Peter Power, The Boundarties Between Us Endure; sculptures by Sophie Gough, installation view, National Sculpture Factory; photograph by Jedrzej Niezgoda © NSF 2019

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ongoing over the next few years and specific details will be published shortly.

Later this year we continue to work with artists whose practice challenges our understanding of the sculptural object, who deal in a more or less immaterial, expanded concept of sculpture. We will premiere Irish artist, Patrick Hough’s new filmic work in collaboration with one of our long-running partners, the Cork Film Festival, and we are also planning to host the premiere of Doireann O’Malley’s new VR (virtual reality) artwork, Prototypes III, the final of her ‘Prototypes’ trilogy series. We worked with Doireann in 2019 to present her award-winning and sublime three-screen video installation, Prototypes I on the Factory floor, and we are delighted to be directly involved in the co-commissioning of the next iteration, which will travel to New York and Berlin later this year.

Valerie Byrne is Director and Dobz O’Brien is Programmes Manager of the National Sculpture Factory.

Addendum: All programming was correct at time of writing. The NSF will be monitoring the situation during the COVID-19 crisis and will be altering its programme to adapt to the prevailing social conditions.

Aideen Barry, Whatgoesaroundcomesaround, 2007; photograph Paul White, © NSF 2007

Doireann O’Malley, Prototypes I, installation view, National Sculpture Factory, 2019; photograph by Jedrzej Niezgoda, © NSF 2019

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International

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Héctor Zamora, Movimientos Emisores de Existencia (Existence-emitting Movements), 2019-2020; performative action with women and terracotta vessels; courtesy of the artist and Labor; all photographs by Randhir Singh

Seismic Movements LÍVIA PÁLDI REPORTS ON THE DHAKA ART SUMMIT 2020 WHICH TOOK PLACE IN BANGLADESH IN FEBRUARY.

IN LIGHT OF the growing pandemic crisis, social distancing and the rush towards digital space, the week I spent at the Dhaka Art Summit (DAS) now feels like both a mirage and a rare privilege. The large-scale art event was organised in one of the world’s fastest growing megacities with a population of over 20 million, of which slum-dwellers make up 40% – largely those escaping climate-induced disasters in rural and coastal areas.

DAS was founded by the Samdani Art Foundation (SAF), a private arts trust established in 2011 by collectors Nadia and Rajeeb Samdani to support the work of contemporary Bangladeshi artists and architects.1 SAF serves as the principal funding body for DAS and is led by Artistic Director and Curator, Diana Campbell Betancourt, who has also been the Chief Curator of the Summit since 2013.2 Since its inception in 2012, DAS has expanded and branded as a transnational art event, an internationally well-connected regional catalyst that boosts artistic and curatorial production and exchange in the wider regions of South East Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Middle East. DAS has a powerful network of advisors including institutional partners (Asia Art Archive and Para Site, Hong Kong), museums (Tate, Pompidou, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw), private galleries (White Cube), and biennales (Kochi, Liverpool, Sharjah). Interrogating the space that art history occupies in societal and political reflection, central to DAS is the aim to build an ecosystem supported by various strands, including the MAHASSA (Connecting Modern Art Histories in and across Africa, South and South-East Asia). This collaborative research project – involving intensive seminars, distance learning sessions and public lectures with international faculty and emerging scholars – fosters research and critical platforms on modernist histories and intersectional approaches.3 Connected to this, the collective research project, ‘Seismography of Struggles: Towards a Global History of Critical and Cultural Journals’, headed by French art historian, writer and cultural critic, Dr Zahia Rahmani, was presented as an hourlong multi-channel video and sound installation within the Independence Movement section.

Betancourt refers to DAS more as “a holistic project” than a biennale; as a “cumulative exercise of sharing and building knowledge and commu-

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

International

Kamruzzaman Shadhin, The Fibrous Souls, 2018-2020, jute, cotton thread, brass, clay. Realised in collaboration with Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts, commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020; courtesy of the artist and Samdani Art Foundation

nity together”. With reinvention programmed into the very core of its operation, DAS has shifted from an art fair format (partly modeled after the India Art Fair) to a non-commercial, research-based platform. Now running for a week, it attracts an exponentially growing number of local visitors from all walks of life (the last edition had an estimated half million floating through, with an incalculable number of selfies made on site).4 There is a mix of returnee artists, new emerging positions (also supported through the Samdani Art Prize5), new commissions and pieces from various collections, including those of the founders.

This year’s edition, ‘Seismic Movements’ (7–15 February 2020), used the analogy of tectonics to cross-examine the impacts of neoliberal capitalism, climate change and momentous events in social and political histories in the wider region.

This involved revisiting colonial and modernist histories and independence struggles, with a set of intertwined values around secularism, language, culture and nationalism to inquire into queer and feminist futures – all within a design that aimed to reduce the event’s ecological footprint.6 Hosted as usual by the state-sponsored national cultural venue, the Shilpakala Academy (which also served as the site of the first Asian Art Biennale in 1981) more than ten curated exhibitions were spread across four floors. Organised within seven ‘movements’, they were accompanied by workshops, seminars, a forum for artist-led initiatives and programme of screenings and talks, entitled ‘Rituals for Temporary Deprogramming’, curated by The Otolith Group.7 The group also screened their experimental documentary, O Horizon (2018), which revisits the environmental pedagogy of polymath and educator, Rabindranath Tagore, and his Visva-Bharati campus at Santiniketan (West Bengal).

Walking distance from Shilpakala is the Faculty of Fine Art, Dhaka University, whose buildings were designed by the ground-breaking modernist architect, urban planner and educator, Muzrahul Islam. The group show dedicated to his complex legacy also reflected on (through contemporary positions) his sensitive dealing with the fragile social, political and climactic conditions of Bangladesh. Islam’s practice stretched over the post-partition times (1947) followed by the independence movement of the exploited East (from West Pakistan) and the hard-fought independence of 1971, preceded by a traumatising war. Rana Begum’s spiraling installation, a growing set of ink fingerprints by DAS participants in the corridors of the Academy, led variously to Aditya Novali’s rotatable paintings, the delicate symmetry of Ayesha Sultan’s marked clay-coated paper works, and the premiere of Fog Dog by Daniel Steegmann Mangrané, filmed at the Arts Faculty premises.

‘Social Movements and Feminist Futures’ brought together a great selection of intergenerational works reflecting on colonial history, violence and displacement. Opening with Barti Khehr’s monumentalised hybrid sculpture in the garden, this section included the large-scale fragile casein tem-

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Clarissa Tossin, A Queda do Céu (The Falling Sky), 2019, laminated archival inkjet prints and wood, commissioned and produced by Samdani Art Foundation for DAS 2020; courtesy of the artist, Commonwealth and Council, and Samdani Art Foundation

pera mural, Beyond Loss, by Delhi-born Nilima Sheikh – a witness to her engagement in the women’s rights struggle and her involvement with Kashmir. The section includes a mesmerising cabinet install of collaged sculpture and photo works

by Huma Bhabha and a collaborative memorial quilt made by activist and documentary photographer Taslima Akhter and the Bangladesh Garment Workers Solidarity (2017). Portraits were sewn by families commemorating the victims of the collapse of Rana Plaza, the nine-story garment factory complex near Dhaka that took 1,134 lives (mostly women) in 2013 and was described by the unions as “mass industrial homicide”. The textile sector accounts for more than 80% of the country’s manufacturing income.

Central to DAS was the three-day ‘Condition Report 4: Stepping out of Line – Art Collectives and Translocal Parallelism’, curated by Dakar-based RAW Material Company.8 Prepared during a week-long workshop to explore shared principles that nurture local organisations, CR4 was also where many of the contradictions and fissures became apparent, including how radical critique and investigation can be positioned within a commercially backed scenario.9 It kicked off with a live session by experimental music group, Akáliko10, and video address by critical theorist, Elizabeth A. Povinelli.11 The hub, housed in an open structure on the ground floor, was strongly connected with the exhibition and meeting platform, ‘The Collective Body’, presenting over forty collaborative art initiatives from across the globe, representing a wide array of activities, rural and urban contexts and engagements in collective making with different publics. Most are involved in arts and crafts pedagogy, heritage protection, climate activism and raising awareness of gender inequality, domestic violence and violence against one of the world’s largest refugee populations, Rohingya Muslims from neighbouring Myanmar.

Undoubtedly, this was the most dynamic and inspiringly uneven part of the Summit. It included: Saigon-based Art Labor’s ‘Hammock café’; extensive documentation of the first road-trip collaboration between Invisible Borders / The Trans African Photography Project, Drik Network, Pathshala and Chobi Mela12; an engaging VR presentation of the last residency project by Uronto13, an artist community that works with lost memories of historical sites and conscience; sewing-storytelling events by the Maori Mata Aho Collective14; Stitching Collective by Jakarta-based Gudskul; and a performance-presentation by Laboratoire Agit’art with Otobong Nkanga (who also readapted her ongoing Landversations project for DAS).

It always seems unfair to pick out only a few works, but Phan Thao Nguyen’s Mute Grain (2019), a three-channel work based on a famine in Vietnam induced by the Japanese occupation during the Second World War, was a highlight of the summit, as were Shezad Dawood’s fabric hangings, Kamruzzaman Shadhin’s monumental sculptural work, The Fibrous Souls (2018-2020) – realised in collaboration with Gidree Bawlee Foundation of Arts – Clarissa Tossin’s work, A

Queda do Céu (The Falling Sky) (2019), addressing ecological precarity, and Munem Wasif ’s expanding series of works on borders and constant flow of Rohingya migration.

The curatorial address – to find “commonalities” and to “emerge from this sediment to heal, imagine, design, and build new forms of togetherness”, while also asking “What will coalesce and fossilise our presence on this planet for lifetimes to come?” – reads very differently, since the eruption of the global pandemic. This will profoundly alter modes of production and distribution, including perhaps, jeopardising the future continuation of DAS as well as the soon-to-beopened museum/residency/sculpture park complex, Srihatta, in the north-eastern city of Sylhet.

Lívia Páldi is the Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

Notes 1 See samdani.com.bd/dhaka-art-summit 2 Until 2018, Diana ran Bellas Artes Projects, a non-profit international residency and exhibition programme with sites in Makati City, Manila, and Bataan in the Philippines. In 2018 she served as the curator of Frieze Projects in London.

3 Partners include Asia Art Archive (Hong Kong) and Institute Comparative Modernities at Cornell University (USA). Following their first set of meetings last year in Hong Kong, they convened during the last edition of DAS. Supported by the Connecting Art Histories grant from the Getty Foundation.

4 DAS is free to visit and an extensive Art Mediation Programme in English and Bangladeshi started in 2018 with volunteers trained through a series of workshops supported by the Swiss Arts Council and Hochschule Luzern.

5 The winner of this year’s award is Dhaka-based Soma Surovi Jannat. The exhibition was curated by Philippe Pirotte, Rector of the Städelschule and director of Portikus, in partnership with Goethe Institut (Bangladesh) and Delfina Foundation (UK) that hosts the winner for a residency.

6 Catalogue downloadable: seismicmovements.com 7 Geological, colonial, social, independence, collective, spatial and modern.

8 Envisioned by Koyo Kouo (founding director of RAW Material Company), Marie Helene Pereira and Dulce Abrahams Alttass (public programmer at RAW) the gathering brought together different collectives from Africa, South East Asia, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand to address forms and ways of producing and cooperating within non-hierarchical structures. Condition Report started in 2012 with a gathering discussing institution building in the African continent.

9 artsoftheworkingclass.org 10 akaliko.xyz/the-akaliko-story 11 Elizabeth A. Povinelli is Franz Boas Professor of Anthropology and Gender Studies at Columbia University. Her books include Geontologies: A Requiem to Late Liberalism (2016); Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism (2011), and The Cunning of Recognition: Indigenous Alterities and the Making of Australian Multiculturalism (2002). She is also a founding member of the Karrabing Film Collective.

12 invisible-borders.com 13 Uronto was founded in Dhaka in 2012. The Uronto Residential Art Exchange programme involves pop-up residencies, site-specific workshops at mostly endangered rural sites of local heritage buildings. urontoart.org 14 mataahocollective.com; gudskul.art

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Book Review

Documents of Contemporary Art: The Rural Myvillages (Editors) MIT Press & Whitechapel Gallery, 240 pp

THE RURAL IS the latest offering from the Whitechapel Gallery’s ongoing publishing series, ‘Documents of Contemporary Art’.

Assembled by guest editors and co-published by the eminent London public gallery and MIT Press, over forty themes found in contemporary visual culture have been explored since the series’ inception in 2006, with inquiries ranging from Boredom (2017) and Sexuality (2014), to Utopias (2009) and The Artist’s Joke (2007).

Inevitably, with wide-ranging approaches and particular genealogies possible with any of these titles, ‘Documents of Contemporary Art’ offers mere brushstrokes in complex and multifarious fields of interest. Accordingly, The Rural does not pretend to be a penultimate volume of its topic – instead it declares on the back cover that it offers “an urgent and diverse cross-section”. The Rural is guest edited by Myvillages, an international artist trio comprising of Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra and Antje Schiffers, whose collaborative practice advocates for “a new understanding of the rural as a place of and for cultural production”. Their selection of forty-five excerpted texts seek to discuss notions of the rural in a myriad of viewpoints, where ideas of art are seen outside of a metropolitan existence.

Divided into sections, akin to the style of a users’ manual, thematic groupings are featured, such as ‘Orientating the rural’, ‘Rural relations of production’ and the provocative ‘Art in all the wrong places’. Excerpts and reprinted texts dating from the 1950s onward appear from geologists, artists, sociologists, philosophers and curators. Marxist Henri Lefebvre’s essay, ‘Perspectives on Rural Sociology’, examines how rural populaces are structured in terms of economy, culture and the forming of agrarian life over time, citing examples in France and the United States. New York art critic, Hal Foster, speaks of artistic and political transformation being located “elsewhere, in the field of the other” in his essay, ‘The Artist as Ethnographer’, a key text that consolidated and spurred on much contextually-led art practices of the 1990s and 2000s.

These significant critiques sit beside a newly commissioned text, ‘The Peasant Paints’, by artist Sigrid Holmwood, contrasting the rural peasant as subject matter for historical painting against the actuality of a ground-up Swedish rural vernacular painting movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In addition, Kathrin Böhm interviews artist Grace Ndiritu, whose nomadic lifestyle and itinerant practice has, over twenty years, seen her adapt to everyday life in

alternative and sometimes spiritual communities on the rural fringe. Added to this cache are land artist Robert Smithson’s well-known musings on mining, quarries, ecology and art, while in ‘Global Villagers’, the anarchist writer, Colin Ward, examines the beginnings of globalisation of the rural.

An interview with Belgian artist Renzo Martens – whose 2008 video, Enjoy Poverty, bluntly dealt with the intricacies and frustrations of being endemically poor in Africa – is a valuable and earnest account of an artist intervening and working with a specific place, The Congo, over a substantial time period. He founded the Institute of Human Activities in 2012, from which former workers on the site of the first Unilever plantation now sculpt self-portraits in river clay, that are then 3D-scanned, cast in chocolate in Amsterdam, and sold in the western art market – hence providing tools for financial gain and a form of social mobility to a poverty-stricken locale.

Other contributions include an excerpt from Locating the Producers: Durational Approaches to Public Art, co-edited by Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty, one of the seminal books for independent curatorial practice, still relevant almost a decade after its publication. O’Neill conducts a case study into the history and legacy of Grizedale Arts, predominately a residency programme for visual artists based in the Lake District in the UK. Operating from an embedded place of deep cultural roots (for example, referencing nineteenth-century critic, John Ruskin, and his ideas around art, nature, labour and society) and maneuvering within the everyday life of the region, Grizedale Arts have been flexible and committed in their approach to the support

of artist’s research and production of new artworks outside of traditional gallery spaces and urban centres. O’Neill writes that Grizedale have expanded beyond their immediate environment in Cumbria, to undertake projects in small villages in Japan and China.

Except for an interview with artist Anne-Marie Dillon in County Down, there is no other mention of cultural initiatives or artworks embedded in rural Ireland, despite the growth of many small-scale independent projects over the years. I don’t think such exclusion is necessarily reflective of an inferior scene, but rather points to a lack of accessibility for international research to find out what occurs here – the need for boosts in artist-centric research funding and more dynamic public programming incorporating voices from afar can be mentioned here, of course. By way of reparation, an upcoming volume in the series, entitled Health, will feature writing by Columbian curator Catalina Lozano, developed during her stays in the Irish countryside since 2016.

Beyond these localisms, The Rural is otherwise generous and giving in its geographical scope, spreading its tentacles as far as Thailand, Russia and India in a quest for a multifaceted critical culture of art.

Michele Horrigan is an artist currently on residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She is founder and curator of Askeaton Contemporary Arts since 2006.

The Rural can be purchased from MIT Press. mitpress.mit.edu

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Public Art

Flexible Capabilities SOPHIE GOUGH OUTLINES THE MAKING OF HER FIRST PUBLIC ARTWORK, BRÍ, COMMISSIONED FOR THE HIVE BUILDING IN SANDYFORD BUSINESS PARK.

Sophie Gough, detail of Brí (maquette); courtesy of the artist

Sophie Gough, Brí (maquette); courtesy of the artist

Sophie Gough, drawing; courtesy of the artist

2017 WAS A busy year for me. I had just graduated from Limerick School of Art & Design. I completed awarded residencies with the National Sculpture Factory, Sample Studios, Uillean: West Cork Arts Centre and Tombolo: ‘Lay of the Land’ project, which culminated in my first solo exhibition in Cork. I then took the opportunity to move to New York on the J-1 Graduate Visa, following an invitation to assist Brooklyn-based artist, Michael Joo, whom I had met the previous year, while interning with EVA International. For close to two years, I worked with Michael, juggling other part-time jobs. I moved house many times in Bushwick, and installed a work of Michael’s at Miami Basel. I was living the New York dream; however, it all ended abruptly when new visa restrictions resulted in my inability to remain in the country, despite having all the required paperwork and sponsorship. It was devastating to be forced to leave behind a life I had worked so hard to build for myself in New York, which included my role assisting Michael, a private studio space in Red Hook and a beautiful apartment I had just signed the lease to. I was now back in Ireland and had to completely re-evaluate my practice.

The U+I Group and their partners, Mahoney Architects, sought to privately commission a piece of outdoor sculpture for their new regeneration project of Ballymoss House, creating The Hive building in Sandyford Business Park. Together, they partnered with Visual Artists Ireland (VAI), who liaise with artists in delivering such privately commissioned projects – a notoriously challenging undertaking for everyone involved. The U+I Group is a property developer and investor with bases in London, Manchester and Dublin, who specialise in the reconstruction of buildings, driving socioeconomic value into existing communities. Mahoney Architect is an award-winning Dublin-based architectural design practice who led the redesign of the building. Together with representatives from VAI and a professional artist, the panel agreed upon four sculptors, deemed suitable for this commission.

The four shortlisted candidates were given just over five weeks to develop a proposed artwork. The commission was chosen based on a single round proposal, an approach which had pros and cons. A lot of work and detailed specifications were necessary at this early stage, for which we received a small fee. Despite being the most inexperienced of the four shortlisted candidates, I felt like it was worth my best shot.

The difficulty of this project, however, was suddenly and painfully evident on breaking the news to my mentors and

friends in the National Sculpture Factory (NSF) in Cork, who told me that financing the making of a well-informed and detailed proposal was highly likely to put me out of pocket. Not having the skill base to weld a beautiful model or create sleek digital renderings meant I would have to outsource.

So looking for help from all the formidable cogs in the factory’s magic machine, I received invaluable advice on delivering such commissions from Dobz O’Brien; Pat O’Mahony helped me create a sleek maquette and I worked with Tomas Penc to draught up some digital drawings. It was immensely reassuring to have such a strong local support network of highly-skilled and experienced individuals that simply want to help you succeed.

The aim of the commission was “to enhance the building facade and compliment the unique design elements of the architecture”. Along with two site visits and contextual research into the wider Sandyford area, I took into consideration the commissioners’ “motivation to carry out projects that were led by a curiosity to innovate”. I wanted to really test this claim and while keeping to their brief, I realised that my response would have to be to the building itself and its makers. Teasing out the stimuli of the Hive, I concluded that I wanted to create an object that contests the sometimes static and permanent nature, not only of this building, but of architecture as a whole. I have always been drawn to sculpture as a medium for its simple challenge of presenting a new situation in which you must exist with objects in a shared space.

I felt an appropriate way to explore this was to create something of contrast, something soft, something fluid. The Hive’s exterior boasts a dramatic structural framework with linear descriptive forms, so I looked for materials that exhibited an unconventionally malleable surface.

While in New York, I discovered SO-IL, a Brooklyn-based architecture firm who created the incredible Kukje Gallery in Seoul – a soft and ambiguous build, enveloped in a silver metal veil. The building employs a mesh material which disrupts the surrounding space, creating a kind of experiential situation that has since fascinated me. Quickly realising the hefty weight of such metallic fabric – as well as the cost and impact of its fabrication and shipping – I had to research feasible alternatives with a similar physical appearance yet lighter, while also lasting the test of time. After some time, I finally found just the thing – Kaynemaile polycarbonate mesh.

Kaynemaile was developed as a chainmail alternative by the creature weapons and arms designer for The Lord of the Rings

films and has been widely applied as an architectural mesh in Australia, New Zealand and North America. Weighing in at three kilograms per square metre, this virgin composite plastic material is entirely recyclable and reclaimable. Its capacity to be easily altered in years to come (in terms of colour, scale, shape or texture) screamed endless sculptural potential to me. With its curiously flexible capabilities and its luminous copper colour, I felt it would successfully execute my desired mercurial form for my proposed sculpture, titled Brí.

After hearing that I had been chosen for the commission, I had to get to work straight away. With the tight deadline of two and a half months for its agreed completion, I was under instant pressure to get the production in motion. At the time of writing, Joe Neesan at the NSF is currently completing the final details of the steel work. He has been incredible throughout the whole process, proposing design solutions, mirror polished finishings and incredible welds to the highest spec. The final hurdle we now face is the temporary closure of the NSF due to COVID-19.

Receiving a commission of this scale so early in my career has been a huge honour, but it has also expanded my practice with an awareness of the new skills that I must learn and familiarise myself with for future work. Coupled with the ability to finance my own private studio space in Dublin city centre, this has been crucial in furthering my practice.

Despite its bureaucratic obstacles, making public artworks is one of the few financial certainties that I have encountered to date, within my career a professional artist. Presently I work as Assistant Lecturer at Limerick School of Art & Design and I am living proof to the first years that even though it can seem like things are not working out, through hard graft, other opportunities can present themselves. I feel hopeful now, in this extended time of slowing down that we find ourselves in.

Just like many other public artworks that I enjoy, I’m hoping that the vitality of Brí will allow for a momentary detachment from reality that is nevertheless perpetual and dynamic.

Sophie Gough is an artist based in Dublin who has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her most recent projects include ‘The Boundaries Between Us Endure’ (2019) in collaboration with Peter Power for the Cork Midsummer Festival (Midwinter event) and ‘Impossible Spaces’ (2019), a solo exhibition of drawings in Soma, Cork. sophiegough.com

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Public Art Roundup

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Art Outside the Gallery Structural Symmetries Artist: Chris Wilson Site: St James’ Hospital Concourse, Dublin Commissioning body: St James’ Hospital, Dublin (funded by private donation) Commission type: Private Budget: €35,000 – €70,000 Date advertised: November 2017 Date sited: November 2019 Project partners: Staff and consultants of St. James’ Hospital, the Woods family STRUCTURAL SYMMETRIES IS a permanent

piece of public sculpture, situated on the concourse of St James’ Hospital, Dublin. Created by Chris Wilson and curated by Rina Whyte, the artwork commemorates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of the BRCA2 gene. The BRCA2 gene is an important genetic marker in determining an increased risk of cancer – particularly breast or ovarian cancer in women. The artwork also commemorates the Irish geneticist Professor Peter Daly; the Woods family from Dublin; and the UK research team, who helped discover the gene in 1994.

According to curator Rina Whyte, the brief called for an artwork that needed to resonate with the “general public, the consultants, scientists, geneticists, cancer patients, staff and visitors to the hospital. It needed to have many layers of interest and understanding, whilst also celebrating a huge achievement in genetics.”

The artist, Chris Wilson, worked closely with the genetics team and a member of the Woods family in the development of the artwork, creating a sculpture that colourfully references the structure of the BRCA2 genome across multiple scales of representation.

Chris Wilson, Structural Symmetries, 2019; photograph by Anthony Edwards (Medical Illustration), courtesy of the aritst and Rina Whyte

Uisce Salach (Dirty Water) Artists: Softday Site: Liberty Hall, Dublin Commission body: Arts Council of Ireland Date advertised: September 2018 Date sited: January 2019–April 2020 Budget: €42,000 Commission type: Arts Participation Project Award Project Partners: Dublin Port Perspectives, Create, Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society, Fighting Words, City Kayaking, Science Gallery Dublin

UISCE SALACH (DIRTY Water) is a collaborative

sound art project about contested water quality issues in Ireland. The project set out to increase awareness of the environmental, economic and social value of water. The project was facilitated

by Dublin Port’s Port Perspectives Engagement and Education Programme, to access networks of community organisations around the port as well as port workers. The project was also supported by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, in order to reach community and interest groups, such as fishermen along the River Liffey. Uisce Salach (Dirty Water) was suported by an Arts Council Arts Participation Project Award 2019.

The key aim of the project was to enable citizens living and working along the River Liffey to participate in scientific research with creative outcomes. Softday issued individual water test kits to participating citizen scientists to gather small water samples (which were from their own kitchen tap, local River Liffey tributaries and Dublin Port) on World Water Day (Friday 22 March 2019).

Softday also conducted a series of Acouscenic Listening Workshops and Creative Soundwalks with members of the public. The soundwalks were used as a method of getting participants to engage with their sonic environment, recording thier experiences through notetaking exercises.

These soundwalks took place in the Temple Bar/

Docklands area and participants collaboratively created sound maps/graphic scores of the walks, which were used in performance of Uisce Salach (Dirty Water). Softday spent the summer months ( June to September 2019) conducting interviews, public water sampling, public soundwalks and field recordings on the River Liffey.

Water samples were sent to CLS Laboritories in Galway for analysis. These analyses look for the presence of various chemicals in the water, to check for contamination. The data from these analyses was utilised to produce a unique, algorithmic sound art composition, as part of a multimedia installation in Liberty Hall, Dublin, on 27 November 2019.

The final work was performed live by the Irish Chamber Orchestra (led by violinist Kenneth Rice), in combination with the Softday Citizen Scientist Ensemble, a form of public laptop orchestra. A choral composition, titled If I fall in the Liffey, was performed by the Uisce Salach Choir. Special guests included Declan Byrne and John Walsh from the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society and sound artist La Cosa Preziosa (Susanna Caprara). The live performance of Uisce Salach (Dirty Water) was filmed on the night and a public screening of this film (as well as the launch of a limited edition audio CD) will be announced in the summer of 2020 at venues in Ireland. More details on the project can be viewed at: softday.ie/water

Softday, water sampling on the Liffey, Uisce Salach (Dirty Water); courtesy of the artists

Softday, Soundmapping exercise as part of Uisce Salach (Dirty Water); courtesy of the artists

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

Public Art Roundup

The Scribble Artist: Rhona Byrne Site: School of Education, National University of Ireland Maynooth Commissioning body: National University of Ireland Maynooth Date advertised: November 2015 Date sited: July 2019 Budget: €60,000 – €100,000 Commission type: Per Cent for Art

THE SCRIBBLE IS a large-scale, site-specific sculpture that explores the complexities of learning processes. It brings into form a thought in action or thinking in motion. Made for the School of Education building – which houses four departments of education – this work expresses the energy and motion of neural networks and pathways, discovery, making connections, getting into knots and having breakthroughs. The sculpture emerges from the rear garden courtyard, bounces into a wall and enters into the large atrium space where it bends, loops, knots, clusters and traverses energetically throughout the School of Education building. The sculpture is made from stainless steel and hand painted by the artist. A large circular, upholstered seat invites groups to gather underneath.

The commission was a limited competition invitation from The University Art Committee, led by Dr Alison FitzGerald. Curator and critical writer Catherine Marshall put Byrne’s

name forward for the project. Finbarr Horrigan was the project manager. There was core team who helped research, design, problem solve, test, make, engineer and install the commission. This team included: Orla Hardiman (Director of Neurology, Trinity College Dublin) who helped with researching the concept; Mark McKenna (MCK Designs) who was key for the design, development, 3D visualisation and fabrication drawings for the project; Brunner Consulting Engineers, who assisted with design development, stress testing and engineering; Fingal Stainless Steel, who helped with design development, steel bending and fabrication; Paul Hederman Engineering Ltd, who assisted with design development, fabrication, assembly and installation; Kelbuild, who installed the work; David Carr who project managed the project; and Scott Tallon Walker Architects, who worked on design support and were architects of the School of Education Building.

Rhoda Byrne, The Scribble, 2019; courtesy of the artist

Dalymount – Mapping a Unique Architectural Space Artists: Dorothy Smith (artist) and Jackie Bourke (urban researcher) Site: Dalymount Park, Phibsborough, Dublin 7 Dates carried out: September 2018 – October 2019 Budget: €13,366 Commission type: Arts Council of Ireland Engaging with Architecture Scheme Project partners: Dalymount Football Club, Open House Dublin

DALYMOUNT – MAPPING A Unique Architectural Space was a collaboration between artist Dorothy Smith and urban researcher Jackie Bourke. It was funded through the Arts Council Engaging with Architecture Scheme with an award of €13,366. The initial application to the Arts Council was made in June 2018 and the project took place between September 2018 and October 2019.

The focus of the project was Dalymount Park in Phibsborough, Dublin 7. This football stadium has been the home of the Bohemian Football Club since 1901. The artists were drawn to this space by its haphazard mix of architectural structures, its anachronistic presence in a busy urban setting and its hidden desolate beauty.

Among the earliest structures on the site are terracing and turnstiles, which are still in use.

They were originally designed in the 1930s by football stadium architect, Archibald Leitch.

The stadium has always been in a state of flux.

Adaptations, extensions, decay, demolition and wear and tear have created a complex and fascinating urban space.

Using photography, interviews and drawing, the artists set out to map the architectural heritage and everyday experience of the stadium.

They explored how the process of drawing can engage the drawer with a unique urban environment. The results of an open invitation to a drawing day on site are collected in the publication, Drawing Dalymount – The Colouring Book. This book was for sale to the public in a

number of local retail outlets. Copies were also purchased by the local national school and Dublin City Libraries. Copies are available to the public in the British Library, the Trinity College Dublin Map Library and the Irish Architectural Archive.

In their interviews with people who have an association with Dalymount, the artists were impressed by the strong sense of attachment and belonging to this space, which evokes memories of childhood, friendships, family and intensely exciting football events. Dalymount – Bigger Than The Game is a projection of photography and text drawn from these interviews. This was projected in a public place on a site adjacent to the stadium for a week and is available on Vimeo: vimeo.com/342793832.

The project concluded with a walking tour of the space, conducted in association with Open House Dublin in October 2019. Participants explored the mix of architectural structures and detail, layered with a rich socio-cultural history and emotional attachment.

Under Dublin City development plans, Dalymount will be demolished and a new municipal stadium built in its place. Through the project, the artists sought to capture a moment in time, as this landmark space sits poised on the threshold of transformation. Under the new stadium design proposal, a museum is planned. The artists have gifted the results of their research to the Bohemian Football Club, to keep as part of their permanent collection.

Dalymount Pitch; photograph courtesy of the artists

Drawing Dalymount – The Colouring Book; photograph courtesy of the artists

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Opportunities

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2020

GRANTS, AWARDS, OPEN CALLS, COMMISSIONS

Open Calls

Funding/Awards

Science Gallery Bengaluru The Science Gallery Bengaluru, India, are currently seeking interactive participatory works for ‘Contgaion’, an exhibition that explores the phenomenon of the transmission of emotions, behaviours, and diseases. They are interested in working with individuals or groups – preferably from across career and disciplinary backgrounds – who are critically exploring diverse contagions in the contemporary contexts and who are engaged with emerging research around these areas. Your application can be an artistic or a scientific inquiry, or both.

Given the global context at present the Science Gallery are especially looking for work that utilises digital platforms for engagement. They also encourage proposals for public art projects in Bengaluru that are aimed at (as Maria Balshaw, Director of the Tate art museums and galleries, has recently said) “amplifying our human capacity to respond to adversity creatively”.

Applications should be made via the Science Gallery Open Call website (see below). Project budgets are up to INR 300000 (€ 3,646~) (including all costs artist fees, materials, equipment, shipping, travel etc.). Public programme proposals are typically funded up to INR 100000 (€ 1,215~). Responses to applications are exppected in June 2020. For more information, visit the Science Gallery website.

ACNI Artists Emergency Programme The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) have announced their Artists Emergency Programme – a new funding strand designed to support individual artists, creative practitioners and performers who are currently in difficulties due to work restrictions imposed by COVID-19 protocols. The programme offers grants of up to £5,000, from a total fund of £500,000.

The ACNI are inviting applications for new or newly-imagined projects as interventions of high artistic quality that will lead to some form of future public engagement/access on a small or large scale, through ‘live’, ‘as live’ or recorded digital performance, publication, broadcast, reading, recording, and/or other audience channels.

Applications are open to freelance individual artists and creative practitioners and performers of all disciplines, genres, skills and practice.

Applications are made by emailing ACNI (see email below). Full details of the application process can be accessed via the ACNI website.

Deadline Friday 30 May

Residencies

Future Generation Art Prize 2021 The Future Generation Art Prize is a global contemporary art prize. Now in its 6th edition, it is inviting all artists aged 35 and younger to apply online. A highly-respected selection committee (appointed by an international jury) reviews every application and nominates 20 artists for the shortlist. These artists will be commissioned to create new works for exhibitions at the PinchukArtCentre in Kyiv and the Venice Biennale. Dublin gallery, Pallas Projects/Studios, are a partner platform for this edition of the prize.

The main prizewinner receives US $100,000 split between a $60,000 cash prize and a $40,000 investment the artist’s practice. A further $20,000 is awarded as a special prize(s) between up to five artists, at the discretion of the jury, for supporting projects that develop their artistic practice.

The application asks for a portrait photo of the applicant, a CV and bio, photos and/or videos of your artworks (with text descriptions). The award ceremony is due to take place in March 2021.

Previous winners have included Lynette Yiadom Boakye in 2012, who went on to be shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 2013. To find out more information and to apply for the award, visit the Future Generation Art Prize website via the link listed below.

Schaufer Residency at TU Dresden The Schaufer Residency is a new artist-in-residence programme starting in 2021 at the Schaufer Lab, TU Dresden, Germany. At the lab, researchers and artists engage in an exploration of interactions among technology, art, science and entrepreneurship. The lab’s current guiding theme is ‘Artificial Intelligence and Social Transformation’. The lab is looking for committed, internationally active artists to take part in the residency, collaborating with a community of researchers and students and using the university’s resources for artistic and creative projects over a 6-month period.

The residency includes a stipend of €3,000 per month; a workspace/ studio; production support of up to €10,000; a solo exhibition at the residency’s conclusion, with an accompanying catalogue by an art publishing house; assistance finding accommodation; and the opportunity for artwork made during the residency to be purchased for inclusion in TU Dresden’s art collection. TU Dresden are interested in projects that focus on the interface between artistic intelligence and its implications for society and the culture of objects. For more information on the application process, visit the TU Dresden website.

Web artscouncil-ni.org/funding

Deadline Wednesday 20 May

Email kustodie@tu-dresden.de

Web opencall.sciencegallery.com/contagion

Tel +44 (0)28 9262 3555

Web futuregenerationartprize.org

Web tu-dresden.de

Walker Plinth Commissions Void Gallery, Derry, have extended the deadline for The Walker Plinth Commissions, which is taking place as part of the Void Offsite programme. The Walker Commission is a collaboration between Void Gallery, The Siege Museum and Friends of Derry Walls and its ambition is to create a series of sculptural interventions by artists from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Taking the Walker Plinth on the Derry Walls as a starting point, two artists will be invited to develop a project with the community that surrounds the plinth, animating the area and encouraging residents and visitors to view the site from different perspectives. Void will work with both the artists and the local communities to create sculptural commissions that reimagine and represent contemporary Derry.

There is a total budget of £10,000 for each commission, including all installation and fabrication costs and an artist fee of £2000. Artists are asked to submit an expression of interest to Void (as an 800-word written document or as a five-minute video) as well as examples of their work. For more information on how to apply, visit Void’s website.

Next Generation Award 2020 The Arts Council of Ireland’s Next Generation Award aims to support a group of promising artists across all disciplines at an early but pivotal stage in their career. Recipients will receive €20,000 and will also take part in a collective week-long residential programme in early 2021. Joint applications and interdisciplinary applications are welcomed. The selection panel will comprise a non-voting Council Chair, two Council members, and a number of external panelists.

This award is designed to support emerging artists to buy time to develop their work and practice; and to support unique development needs to advance their own practice (such as engaging with a mentor, research, non-formal study and/or non-vocational training, collaborative partnerships, etc). The award prioritises those who: demonstrate ambition for their work; show potential to develop and strengthen their creative practice; show how they will benefit artistically from support; and those who demonstrate in a compelling way how the award and financial investment will have a transformative effect, in bringing them to the next stage of their artistic development.

Zurich Portrait Prize 2020 The aim of the Zurich Portrait Prize is to showcase and encourage interest in contemporary portraiture and to raise the profile of the National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland. The competition is open to artists living on the island of Ireland, and Irish artists living abroad. The winner will receive a cash prize of €15,000 and a commission worth €5,000 to create a work for inclusion in the National Portrait Collection. There will be two awards of €1,500 for highly-commended works.

A shortlist of portraits will be chosen by the 2020 judging panel and exhibited at the National Gallery of Ireland. Judges for the Zurich Portrait Prize are artist Rita Duffy; Dr Philip Cottrell, assistant professor at the School of Art History and Cultural Policy, UCD; Aoife Ruane, Director of Highlanes Gallery.

The portrait must have been started after 1 July 2017 and completed by 1 July 2020.Works in any media (including photography, video, sound, print, textiles, ceramics, sculpture etc.) are acceptable. All submissions must be made via email. For a copy of the entry form and for more details on application process, visit the National Gallery of Ireland website.

Creative Spark Printmaking Residency Creative Spark, Dundalk, Co. Louth, are seeking applications from Irish and international artists to take part in their 2020 residency programme in their print studios. The residency programme awards up to three residencies to visual artists each year. Residencies will be of 4 to 6-week duration (commencing 1 September 2020 to 31 December 31 2020). Each residency will be supported with 24/7 access to printmaking facilities and basic technical support, as well as being given a small materials budget. Applicants should be capable of demonstrating knowledge of a minimum of one printing process.

The recipient artist will be required to give demonstrations and provide talks on their practice during their residency and donate two printed pieces to Creative Spark. The residency should include a community participation element and may conclude with an exhibition of the recipients work locally. It is envisaged that one residency will be considered for artists originally from or living in Louth; one residency will be considered to artists from elsewhere in Ireland; and one residency will be considered for an international artist. Visit the Creative Spark website to apply.

Deadline Friday 15 May 2020 (extended deadline)

Deadline Thursday 14 May, 5:30pm

Deadline Wednesday 1 July

Deadline Sunday 31 May, 4pm

Email engage@derryvoid.com (for queries)

Email awards@artscouncil.ie

Email zurichportraitprize@ngi.ie

Email printstudio@creativespark.ie

Web derryvoid.com

Web artscouncil.ie/available-funding

Web nationalgallery.ie

Web creativespark.ie/printmaking-residency

Deadline Ongoing (rolling deadline) Email artgrants@artscouncil-ni.org

Deadline Sunday 10 May

Lifelong Learning Online Events

AS THE WORLD adapts to the realities of the global pandemic, Visual Artists Ireland are identifying alternative ways to support artists. Our Lifelong Learning programme has now moved online, using Zoom (zoom.us), with a full schedule of regular events planned for the coming months.

Visual Artists Cafés take place every Tuesday, with artists, curators and representatives of arts organisations providing updates, insights and spaces for conversation. Details of speakers for each café will be published in advance on the VAI website.

On Wednesdays, we run VAI Helpdesks & Clinics. These one-to-one sessions offer professional support and advice from Visual Artists Ireland staff and from specialists who have contributed to our Webinar series.

Every Thursday we are holding Webinars, involving specialist lectures across a range of disciplines from leading industry professionals. A selection of recordings from the Webinar series will be available in the Members Area of the VAI website.

To book a place for any event – and to get updates on new events – please visit visualartists.ie

Visual Artists Cafés Tuesday 5 May: Focus on Galway Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 9 June Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 12 May Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 16 June Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 19 May Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 23 June Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 26 May: Show & Tell Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 30 June: Show & Tell Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 2 June Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Tuesday 7 July Time: 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 50 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €5 (Non-VAI members)

Lifelong Learning Partners

Webinars Landscape of Opportunties (ROI Focus) with Maeve Mulrennan Date/Time: 30 April. 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €10 (Non-members)

Landscape of Opportunties (UK Focus) with Catherine Hemelryk Date/Time: 14 May. 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €10 (Non-members)

Finances & Tax for Artists (UK Focus) with Louise Gorman Date/Time: 7 May. 11:00 – 13:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / £10 (Non-members)

Social Media: Going Viral with Haley Morris-Califero Date/Time: 24 May. 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €10 (Non-members)

Curator Talk with Sarah Perks Date/Time: 7 May. 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €10 (Non-members)

How to Apply for Funding with Neva Elliott Date/Time: 28 May. 15:00 – 16:00 Places: 70 Cost: FREE (VAI members) / €10 (Non-members)

Helpdesks / Clinics Wednesday 6 May Clinic with Maeve Mulrennan Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 6 Cost: €15 (VAI members) / €30 (Non-members)

Wednesday 3 June Helpdesk with Shelly McDonnell (ROI) & Rob Hilken (NI) Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 12 Cost: FREE

Wednesday 13 May Clinic with Sarah Perks (Manchester) Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 6 Cost: €15 (VAI members) / €30 (Non-members)

Wednesday 10 June Clinic with Catherine Hemelryk Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 6 Cost: €15 (VAI members) / €30 (Non-members)

Wednesday 20 May Clinic with Joanne Laws Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 6 Cost: €15 (VAI members) / €30 (Non-members)

Wednesday 17 June with Joanne Laws Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 6 Cost: €15 (VAI members) / €30 (Non-members)

Wednesday 27 May Helpdesk with Shelly McDonnell (ROI) & Rob Hilken (NI) Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 12 Cost: FREE

Wednesday 24 June Helpdesk with Shelly McDonnell (ROI) & Rob Hilken (NI) Time: 14:00 – 17:00 Places: 12 Cost: FREE