Flexible Capacities. Sophie Gough outlines the making of her fi rst

from Visual Artists' News Sheet – 2020 May June

Matrix Print Symposium at The MAC, Belfast

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.

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 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.