Visual Artists' News Sheet - 2018 November December

Issue 6: November – December 2018

The Visual Artists' News Sheet

A Year of Anniversaries 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT 40 YEARS OF DOUGLAS HYDE GALLERY 40 YEARS OF PER CENT FOR ART 30 YEARS OF KERLIN GALLERY 25 YEARS OF CAYALYST ARTS 25 YEARS OF UNIVERSITY OF ATYPICAL 10 YEARS OF OONAGH YOUNG GALLERY

Contents On The Cover Martin Kippenberger and Wendy Judge after the opening of ‘Day in Dub’, an exhibition by Martin Kippenberger & Albert Oehlen, Kerlin Gallery, August 1991; photograph by Orla O’Brien.

First Pages 6.

8.

Roundup. Exhibitions and events from the past two months.

News. The latest developments in the arts sector.

Columns

10.

11.

North West. Material Encounters. Joanne Laws.

South West. New Hub for Wexford Artists. Daniel Cullen.

Northern Ireland. 25 Years of Catalyst Arts. Siobhán Kelly.

Skills. That’s the Spirit! Bernadette Kiely.

Regional Focus: County Clare 12.

13.

14.

15.

Taking Flight in the Burren. Kaye Maahs, Visual Artist.

The Rural as Hub. Conor McGrady, Burren College of Art. Moving Portraits. Amanda Dunsmore, Visual Artist.

Art Access. Sinead Cahill, glór.

Curating the North West. Anne Mullee, The Courthouse Gallery.

Consciousness Resides in Geometry. Tanya Harris, Visual Artist.

Critical Thinking in Art & Education. Michaële Cutaya, Writer.

Project Profile 16.

The Long Note. Sara Greavu interviews Helen Cammock about her new film commission for Void Gallery, Derry.

International 18.

Endless (Re)Interpretation. Jonathan Carroll discusses Dora García’s retrospective at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.

Organisation 19.

20.

22.

24.

University of Atypical. Jane Morrow discusses 25 years of the University of Atypical.

By Design. Pádraic E. Moore interviews Oonagh Young about the tenyear evolution of her gallery.

A Cherished Place. Declan Long presents a 30-year overview of the Kerlin Gallery.

A Celebration. Invited speakers reflect on the 40-year history of the Douglas Hyde Gallery.

Editorial WELCOME to the November – December 2018 issue of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

The final issue of 2018 is loosely themed around several prominent anniversaries being celebrated this year, offering a retrospective glance at the evolution of various Irish arts organisations.

Given the upcoming 40th anniversary of Visual Artists Ireland in 2020, we are currently working on the SSI/VAN archive (which extends back to 1980), with a view to mobilising some of this archival material during VAI’s anniversary year.

This issue inclues an edited version of an important panel discussion, organised as part of a year-long programme to mark the fortieth anniversary of the Douglas Hyde Gallery. In other organisation profiles, Declan Long reflects on 30 years of the Kerlin Gallery, while Pádraic E. Moore interviews Oonagh Young about the tenth year of her Dublin gallery. In the Belfast context, Siobhán Kelly outlines upcoming events to mark 25 years of Catalyst Arts, while Jane Morrow discusses the 25th anniversary of the University of Atypical.

This year also marks the fiftieth anniversary of Derry’s Civil Rights Movement, so we asked Sara Greavu to interview artist Helen Cammock about her new film, The Long Note, commissioned by Void, Derry, which explores the involvement of women in the 1968 movement.

Annette Maloney, Sinead O’Reilly and Sally O’Leary reflect on another key anniversary for the Irish visual arts – 40 years since the launch of the Per Cent for Art scheme.

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

An Artists’ City. Kathy Tynan reports from Paris about her residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts.

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

Critical Dialogue. Gráinne Coughlan reports on the CAPP ‘Practice and Power’ closing event.

Public Art 29.

30.

ONE WISH (For Irish Public Art). Administrators reflect on 40 years of Per Cent for Art. In Our Time. Nathan O’Donnell discusses ‘In Context 4’.

Last Pages 32.

34.

35.

Public Art Roundup. Art outside of the gallery.

Opportunities. Grants, awards, exhibitions calls and commissions.

VAI Professional Development. Upcoming workshops, seminars and peer reviews.

Reviewed in the Critique section are: ‘Lavish and Judicious’ at CCA Derry-Londonderry; Theresa Nanigian at Highlanes Gallery; Phil Collins at The MAC; ‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ at Ormston House; and ‘My comfort and my joy’ at the Douglas Hyde Gallery. As ever, we have details of the upcoming VAI Professional Development Programme, exhibition and public art roundups, news from the sector and current opportunities.

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

Conference 28.

The Regional Profile for this issue comes from County Clare, with organisational insights from Conor McGrady (Dean of Academic Affairs at Burren College of Art), Sinead Cahill (Gallery Manager at Glór, Ennis) and Anne Mullee (Curator of Courthouse Gallery & Studios, Ennistymon). Michaële Cutaya reports from ‘Out of Place’, a recent exhibition and seminar at Courthouse, while artists Amanda Dunsmore, Tanya Harris and Kaye Maahs discuss the realities of maintaining an arts practice in the region.

The Visual Artists' News Sheet:

Residency 27.

We also have reports on several long-running projects: Nathan O’Donnell discusses various strands of the ongoing public art project, ‘In Context 4’, while Gráinne Coughlan reports on ‘Practice and Power’, the closing event of a four-year European project led by Create. International perspectives are offered by Kathy Tynan, who reports from her residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and Jonathan Carroll, who discusses the Dora García retrospective at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid.

Republic of Ireland Office

Northern Ireland Office

Visual Artists Ireland Windmill View House 4 Oliver Bond Street Merchants Quay, Dublin 8 T: +353 (0)1 672 9488 E: info@visualartists.ie W: visualaritsts.ie

Visual Artists Ireland 109 Royal Avenue Belfast BT1 1FF T: +44 (0)28 958 70361 E: info@visualartists-ni.org W: visualartists-ni.org

Principle Funders

Project Funders

Corporate Sponsors

Project Partners

Critique Supplement i. ii. iii. iii. iv. iv.

Cover Image: 'Museum of Mythological Water Beats' Ormston House.

‘Lavish and Judicious’ at CCA Derry~Londonderry.

‘This is the Day’ at The MAC. ‘my comfort and my joy’ at Douglas Hyde Gallery.

‘Just a bit extraordinary’ at Highlanes Gallery.

‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ at Ormston House.

International Memberships

6

Roundup

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS FROM THE PAST TWO MONTHS

Dublin

Belfast

BERLIN OPTICIANS

Berlin Opticians is a new ‘nomadic’ gallery space set up by writer and independent curator Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll. The initial line-up of artists as­sociated with the gallery includes David Beattie, Neil Carroll, Paul Hallahan, Emma Hayes, Barbara Knezevic, Alicia Reyes McNamara, Sarah O’Brien, Liliane Puthod, Sven Sandberg and Lee Welch. The gallery’s first exhibition took place from 17 to 20 Oct at 63 Merrion Square. Berlin Opticians are currently developing future events and exhibitions that will take place in Dublin and abroad.

DLR LEXICON

‘Sea Change, IADT 21 years’ was a retrospective exhibition celebrating the diverse body of work created by graduates of Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology over the past 21 years. The exhibition, which ran from 14 Sept to 4 Nov, included work by artists Alan-James Burns, Damien Flood, Mark Garry, Jesse Jones, Vera Klute, Gavin Murphy, Isabel Nolan and Sonia Shiel, amongst many others. A selection of books by IADT graduates James Merrigan, Sue Rainsford and Ciaran Walsh, were also on display.

The exhibition was curated by Oonagh Young.

Eoin Mac Lochlainn’s solo exhibition, 'Deireadh Fómhair', runs at Olivier Cornett Gallery until 25 Nov. For this show, Lochlainn reflects on the effects of climate change and the significance of trees. As part of this exploration, the artist has created an installation that aims to recreate a “forest experience” within the gallery space, using 64 individually painted lengths of rice paper.

Also included in the exhibition are a series of water colour paintings that meditate on various effects of the forest environment, such as solitude, seasonal change and nature-induced tranquility.

RHA

From 7 Sept to 21 Oct, the RHA presented a new exhibition of work by Northern Irish artist, Ursula Burke. Titled ‘The Precariat’, this show was Burke’s first Irish museum presentation, bringing together three distinct areas of the artist’s practice: embroidery, porcelain and drawing.

The work centred around the experience of insecurity in the modern age and its conditioned universality within an “impoverished and increasingly unsettled civil society”. As is common within Burke’s wider practice, ‘The Precariat’ incorporates “visual tropes” of the Classical tradition.

oliviercornetgallery.com

RUA RED

‘Field Recording’ is a new exhibition of works

by Dublin-based artist Sven Anderson and Thailand-based artist Mit Jai Inn, at Rua Red, Tallaght. In the exhibition, each artist navigates methods of representing an extensive and dynamic environment. Jai Inn’s uses large-scale hanging canvases and an extensive colour palette, while Anderson utilises a network of video monitors to probe beyond what may be perceivable in a single instant. The exhibition was curated by artist and educator, Jennie Guy, and continues until the 1 Dec. ruared.ie

‘The First Spark, The Last Spark’ is an exhibition of new work by Patrick Conyngham, which runs in Belfast’s ArtisAnn Gallery until 1 Dec. Working somewhere between the abstract and the figurative, Conyngham’s paintings consist of mixed media works on canvas and panels, using oils, acrylics, pastels, charcoals and wax. After spending his formative years at the “family seat” in Slane Castle, Co. Meath, Conynham is currently based in Co. Monaghan. His work is held in a number of public and private collections throughout Europe and USA.

dlrcoco.ie

berlinopticiansdublin.com

OLIVIER CORNETT GALLERY

ARTISANN GALLERY

Sol Art Gallery presented the exhibition, ‘On the Surface of it’, by Irish artist Anthony Wigglesworth, from 2 to 14 Oct. Currently based in Dún Laoghaire, Wigglesworth has exhibited internationally in New York, London, Reykjavík, Paris, Edinburgh, Manchester, Chicago and Miami. This exhibition displayed a selection of new abstract oil paintings that take inspiration from living and working by the sea. Speaking of his work, Wiggleworth states that he “can’t help but see a similarity between [the sea’s] rolling weather systems and the techniques I use in my painting”. solart.ie

Mit Jai Inn, Untitled, 2018, installation view, Rua Red Gallery, Dublin; photograph by Dave Reilly; image courtesy of Jennie Guy and Rua Red

Dana Lixenberg’s exhibition, ‘Imperial Courts 1993–2015’, ran at Belfast Exposed from 7 Sept to 20 Oct. Lixenberg is the winner of the 20th Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize.

This was her first exhibition in Ireland. ‘Imperial Courts’ documents the Imperial Courts housing project in Watts, Los Angeles, over a 22-year period. Beginning with a series of large-format, black-and-white photographs in 1993, Lixenberg returned in 2008 to revisit the series, tracing the changes in the community, culminating in a photobook, released in 2015.

artisann.org

COTTON COURT GALLERY

From 19 Oct to 3 November, Cotton Court Gallery hosted an exhibition by Gallery 545 – a new online gallery specialising in contemporary art from Northern Ireland. The exhibition featured a number of original works by artists Lisa Ballard, Alacoque Davey, Craig Donald, Dan Ferguson, Wendy Ferguson, Trina Hobson, Ashley Holmes, Grace McMurray, Kevin Miller, Jane Rainey Anushiya Sundaralingam and David Turner. The exhibition was curated by the Belfast-based art consultant and Gallery 545 creator, Francesca Biondi.

belfastexposed.org

GOLDEN THREAD

Golden Thread Gallery hosted Winnipeg-based artist, Irene Bindi’s, first solo exhibition in Northern Ireland from 6 Sept to 25 Oct. ‘Approaching notte sopra, vipere sotto’ took inspiration from Oskar Fishinger’s book Walking from Berlin to Munich (1927), consisting of a series of field recordings and collages, which chart Bindi’s own 27 km journey from one village to another in the Apennine Valley, Italy. By presenting documentation of the trip in repetitive and non-chronological order, Bindi transforms this journey from an ordered line into a tangled knot.

bpw.org.uk

rhagallery.ie

SOL ART GALLERY

BELFAST EXPOSED

PLATFORM ARTS

Platform Arts presented the exhibition ‘Un+ - Mute’ by Berlin-based artist Leonard Traynor, from 6 to 29 Sept. The exhibition is a continuation of Traynor’s recent bodies of work, which aims to understand the process of creating music through the “gaze of an algorithm”.

The exhibition consisted of a number of works, which employ drawing, handwritten commands, computer code and musical equipment (such as keyboards and drum cymbals) to create different sound compositions. The works questions the impact of technology on artistic practice. platformartsbelfast.com

Patrick Conyngham, The Feeling the Mountain Gave; image courtesy of ArtisAnn Gallery, Belfast

goldenthreadgallery.co.uk

PS2

‘Dispersed Presence – The Material Culture of Long Kesh/Maze’ was an exhibition by Martin Krenn and Aisling O’Beirn, which ran at Paragon Studios/Project Space (PS2), from 14 Sept to 6 Oct. Described as a “collaborative social sculpture”, the exhibition explored the future of the former Long Kesh/Maze prison site, which currently exists in a state of limbo. Working with people who had first-hand experience of the prison, the artists photographed prison artefacts or co-created small sculptural works which reflected personal experiences of the site. pssquared.org

Ursula Burke, Bruised Bust, 2017, porcelain, 19 x 34 cm; image courtesy of the artist

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Kevin Atherton, Boat Room, 1997, 2.04 min video excerpt from a virtual reality fly-through of Four Rooms and a Toilet, a fictional exhibition; photograph by Brian Mac Domhnaill

Roundup

7

Peter Bradley and Laura Angell, 'Plane/Potty', installation view, 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway; image courtesy of 126 Artist-Run Gallery

Giath Taha, Another Day in Aleppo, 2013, digital photographic print; image courtesy of Kamera 8 Gallery, Wexford

MART AT ART MARKET BUDAPEST

CLIFDEN ARTS FESTIVAL

Regional & International

126 ARTIST-RUN GALLERY

From 14 Sept to 14 Oct, 126 Artist-run Gallery presented ‘Plane/Potty’, an exhibition of work by Galway-based artists Peter Bradley and Laura Angell. The exhibition formed part of the gallery’s ongoing project, ‘Unset In Stone’, which was “conceived in light of recent activities surrounding the destruction of National Monuments overseas”. ‘Plane/Potty’ considered the art object as a “monument of sorts”, symbolically representing “societal concerns” of a given moment in time.

126gallery.com

LISMORE CASTLE ARTS

‘ORIGINS’ is an annual exhibition held in Lismore Castle’s St Carthage Hall each autumn, showcasing the work of emerging artists. The 2018 exhibition features the work of three recent graduates – Jesse James Hallaway (LSAD), Gary Reilly (NCAD) and Anna O’Riordan (CCAD) – who were selected from undergraduate shows nationwide in June, by invited curator Alissa Kleist.

The featured artworks demonstrate a shared interest in exploring “multi-layered histories, relationships and compositions that exist" within our world. ‘ORIGINS’ continues until 14 October. lismorecastlearts.ie

PHOTOIRELAND, EU PLATFORMS

PhotoIreland have recently taken part in two EU photography platforms, exhibiting the work of several Irish artists . ‘Organ Vida’ is a photography festival, run by Parallel, which took place in Zagreb, Croatia (9 – 14 September) and featured Irish artists Mark McGuinness and Rosin White. ‘Unseen Amsterdam’ (21 – 23 September) featured Irish artists Barry W. Hughes, Roisin White, Ciaran Og Arnold, Miriam O'Connor, and Jamin Keogh. PhotoIreland's participation in 'Unseen Amsterdam' was made possible through the EU photography platform, Futures. photoireland.org

MART Gallery, Dublin, presented the work of four Irish artists – Niamh Hannaford, Shane Berkery, Steven Maybury and James L. Hayes – at Art Market Budapest 2018 (11 – 14 Oct), an international art fair established in 2011. The works displayed innovative approaches to traditional media, including painting, drawing and sculpture. According to the press release, the exhibition, curated by Deirdre Morrissey, aimed to: “widen access to the artists’ individual practices, drive sales and promote MART Gallery as a dynamic platform for visual art in Ireland”. mart.ie

NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM, NETHERLANDS

Irish artist Deirdre O'Mahony, is currently showing at the Natuurmuseum/Natural History Museum in Leeuwarden, Netherlands. The Persistent Return is a film project that “represents the culmination of almost a decade of research”, relating to O’Mahony’s long-running project, ‘SPUD’. The film is accompanied by Trial & Error, a “documentary archival installation recounting the rise and fall of the seed potato industry in County Donegal”. The exhibition – which forms part of the Leeuwarden-Friesland EU Capital of Culture 2018 Programme – continues until 6 January 2019. natuurmuseumfryslan.nl

RUSSBOROUGH HOUSE & PARKLANDS

An unorthodox contemporary art event took place on 9 September in the grounds of County Wicklow’s Russborough House – a stately home in Blessington, County Wicklow, which is run by the Alfred Beit Foundation, housing the Beit collection of art and antiques. The inaugural ‘Art Car Boot Sale’ showcased a range of work by many of Ireland’s leading contemporary artists, with an emphasis on small-scale, original artworks and collectables, sold at affordable prices.

A proportion of the sales went towards the upkeep of Russborough House. russborough.ie

The exhibition ‘Léargas: Connemara Observed’ (12 – 23 Sept) celebrated a decade-long collaboration between Ballynahinch Castle Hotel and Occasional Press. The exhibition featured six artists who have previously contributed to OP publications – Dorothy Cross, David Lilburn, Mick O’Dea, Jim Savage, Donald Teskey and Joe Wilson – featuring work made at Ballynahinch and other works inspired by Connemara. The exhibition took place in Clifden’s Station House concourse, as part of Clifden Community Arts Week, the longest running community arts festival in Ireland, now in its 41st year. clifdenartsfestival.ie

NERVE CENTRE

Led by Derry’s Tower Museum, the exhibition, ‘Speeches, Strikes & Struggles: Curating Conflict’, at Nerve Visual Gallery, Ebrington, presents rarely before seen collections charting the identity and culture of Northern Ireland during the Troubles. Combining wall graphics, audiovisual displays and mixed-media installations, the exhibition presents original archival material from the Bridget Bond, Gerry Lynch and Peter Moloney collections relating to Northern Ireland’s cultural events, labour movements and Civil Rights campaigns. The exhibition continues until 23 December. nervecentre.org

SIRIUS ARTS CENTRE

A recent survey exhibition, ‘Atherton After Ireland: A Kevin Atherton Retrospective with Sarah Hayden’ (8 Sept – 28 Oct), spanned over 45 years of Atherton’s influential career. As a pioneering media artist who is perhaps “best known for interviewing himself ” and making “a habit and an art-form of self-critique”, Atherton and his work were interrogated by art critic and academic Sarah Hayden during the course of the exhibition, illuminating the artist’s vast contributions to the art historical canons of moving image and performance. siriusartscentre.ie

FAB LAB LIMERICK

An exhibition, ‘Plantlore’, by emerging artist Kaya Brennan took place at Fab Lab Limerick on Rutland Street (11 – 19 October). As recipient of a six-month printmaking bursary with Limerick Printmakers, Brennan presented a new body of mixed-media and experimental prints investigating Irish folklore in relation to certain indigenous plants. Intuitively combining this folkloric knowledge with relevant plant specimens and site-specific photography, Brennan seeks to bridge mysticism and fact, fostering respect for the natural world and its importance in our everyday lives.

limerickprintmakers.com

NGBK, BERLIN

Irish artists Sarah Browne and Emma Haugh are currently taking part in a group exhibition, ‘TOUCH’, in Berlin’s neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK) – an art society founded in 1969 with a grass-roots structure. According to the press release, the exhibition centres on “the meaning of touch in different contexts: as sensory perception, expression of empathy, physical assault, healing technique, or as a gesture in computer technology”, featuring artistic propositions that “use touch to expose current contradictions in society.” The exhibition continues until 18 November. ngbk.de

WEXFORD COCO & KAMERA 8 GALLERY

Two concurrent solo exhibitions in Wexford consider the human cost of the Syrian Civil War. Brian Maguire’s, 'War Changes Its Address: The Aleppo Paintings', is currently showing at Wexford County Council (29 Oct – 3 Dec), while Giath Taha’s solo exhibition, 'A Day in Aleppo', is presented at Kamera 8 Gallery (27 Oct – 5 Dec). Where Maguire’s visceral paintings document the decimated city, devoid of people, Syrian photographer, Taha, portrays the “loss, desperation, fear, and even childhood innocence”, of Syrian daily life, in the wake of “unimaginable violence and destruction”. wexfordcoco.ie

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News

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

THE LATEST FROM THE ARTS SECTOR

General News

NEW DIRECTOR AT CCA, DERRY

2019 BUDGET

EVA INTERNATIONAL 2020

GAINING GROUND COMMISSION

CULTURE IRELAND FUNDING

NEW IMMA BOARD MEMBERS

TYRONE GUTHRIE CENTRE INVESTMENT

PS2 ANNOUNCES FREELANDS ARTISTS

IRISH ARTIST WINS BERLIN ART PRIZE

ZURICH PORTRAIT PRIZE WINNER

In July, the Centre for Contemporary Art Derry~Londonderry announced Catherine Hemelryk as their new director. Hemelryk officially took up her role with CCA on the 1 August.

Before her appointment at CCA, Hemelryk was Artistic Director for NN Contemporary Art in Northhampton, England, where she had also previously worked as a curator. During her time at NN Contemporary Art, Hemelryk was involved in organising a number of local, national and international projects, as well supporting experimental work by a number of established and emerging artists. She has also had a number of successes as a curator for CAC Vilinus, Magacin, Belgrade, and Galerie Antje Wachs, Berlin.

Speaking of her new role, Hemelryk stated that she has “long admired” CAA and was looking forward to expanding the organisation’s role as a “resource for artists, researchers, collectors, curators and sharing emerging artistic practice with audiences of all descriptions in NI and internationally.” The first exhibition organised under Hemelryk’s directorship was the group exhibition ‘Lavish and Judicious’, which ran from 11 August to 6 October.

At the beginning of September, the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD, announced the approval of €766,000 Culture Ireland funding for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide. Around €682,000 will enable 115 Irish arts organisations to present in 38 different countries in 2018 and 2019. The remaining funds have been allocated to support the Culture Ireland GB18 programme, which supports artists to present and tour their work around the UK. Amongst the artists funded is Eva Rothschild, the artist selected to present Ireland at the Venice Biennale 2019, who exhibited at ACCA International in Melbourne, Australia, from 28 September to 25 November. Artists Emma Haugh and Sarah Browne were selected to present work at the ‘TOUCH’ exhibition at nGbK in Berlin (29 September – 18 November). Amanda Coogan has been selected to show ‘Project Atrium’ at MOCA Jacksonville, USA. The food-based collective, Domestic Godless, will also present their “temporary excuse for a taverna”, ‘Café Abyss’, at the Athens Biennale 2019 until 9 December.

Several Irish art galleries have been supported through the programme to present work at international art fairs. The Dublin/London-based gallery mother’s tankstation presented work by Irish artists at Frieze London (4 – 7 October).

MART were also selected to present the work of four Irish artists at Art Market Budapest, Hungary (11 – 14 October).

Reactions to the 2019 Budget from those working in the arts sector has largely been positive. It was announced on 9 October that there would a significant increase in funding towards the arts in the Republic of Ireland. A total budget of €339 million has been given to the Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. This is a 12% increase on the allocation of funding given in 2018. Meanwhile, the Arts Council of Ireland have also received a 10% increase in funding, totalling €75 million.

Speaking about the new Budget after the announcement, the Minister for Culture Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD, stated that: “This increased funding is tangible evidence of the importance attached to our cultural and creative heritage under Project Ireland 2040 and clearly demonstrates this Government’s commitment to increase spending in the arts and culture sector on a trajectory that will see funding doubled by 2025”. The response from the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA), was also generally positive. NCFA Chair, Angela Dorgan, stated that the increase in Arts Council funding is “welcomed by the NCFA and demonstrates significant progress towards the restoration of the Arts Council’s pre-recession allocation, which has been dramatically cut since 2008”.

Following a public call for applications, the Irish Museum of Modern Art has announced that John Cunningham and Margaret Lyons have been appointed to its Board of Members. Both Cunningham and Lyons join the board for a five-year term, ending in July 2023.

John Cunningham’s background is in marketing, management and business development at organisations such as the Irish Permanent Building Society, Friends First, Zurich Bank and Alexander Mann Solutions, among others. He is the founder/CEO of People Dynamic Solutions and is also currently a shareholder and director of CheckRisk. Through his involvement with CheckRisk, he helped set up the IMMA 1000 fund, which has raised over €250,000 for Irish artists over the past three years.

Margot Lyons has extensive expertise in Risk Management, particularly in the Financial Services Sector holding senior roles with NatWest Markets, Chief Risk Officer with Ulster Bank Ireland DAC and Managing Director for Risk Management at GE Financial Markets. Margot chaired the Audit Committee of Irish charity Trócaire from 2011 to 2017 and is a graduate of Dublin City University and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.

Chair of IMMA, David Harvey, stated: “We are delighted to welcome two such experienced individuals to the IMMA Board and I look forward to working with them in carrying out the objectives we have outlined in our Five Year Strategic plan.”

Ireland’s biennial for contemporary art, EVA International, has announced that its 39th edition will take place from 4 September to 15 November 2020. The programme for this iteration of the biennial will be based around the ‘Golden Vein’ – a 19th century phrase used to describe the “bounitful pastures” of the Limerick and Tipperary regions of Ireland. In paticular, the phrase references a historical perspective that this area of Ireland is a resource to be commercialised and exploited through industrialised agriculture and global trade. The Golden Vein will be used as a starting point for interogating Ireland’s place within a “newly-aligned Europe”.

A ‘Guest Programme’ for the 39th EVA will be put together by the Istanbul-based curator Merve Elveren, who recently received ICI's 2018 Independent Vision Curatorial Award.

New to this edition of the biennial is the ‘Platform Commissions’ initiative, with which EVA will commission the production of new works by artists currently based in Ireland. Applications for Platform Commissions is now open, with a deadline of 10 December 2018 at 10am. The successful applicants will be selected by a panel consisting of Merve Elveren, artist Anne Tallentire, and EVA Director Matt Packer.

The Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has announced a major investment of over €300,000 to develop a number of new facilities at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan. Among the developments will be an upgraded dance studio, a new rehearsal space, and upgraded kitchen facilities. It is also hoped that the new developments will allow the centre to better provide facilities for groups with disabilities and impaired vision.

Along with this announcement, the Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Josepha Madigan TD, also reported that her department is assessing proposals to open a second residential facility for artists at the old courthouse in Newbliss village. It was stated that this second facility would operate as a sister facility to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre.

Berlin-based Irish artist, Doireann O’Malley, was one of three artists awarded the Berlin Art Prize 2018 at the end of September. O’Malley won the award for her film series ‘Prototypes’, which was on view at the Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane when the award ceremony took place on 28 September. O’Malley and the other two winners – Monika Grabuschnigg and Alanna Lynch – were given trophies, created by artist Zuzanna Czebatul, at the midnight ceremony. Each artist also received an honourary one-month residency in Marrakesh, as well as a cash prize. This is the fifth year of the Berlin Art Prize, which is only open to artists currently living in Berlin.

In August it was announced that composer, Ian Wilson, will be the first artist commissioned as part of Clare County Council Art Office’s public art programme, Gaining Ground. The project, titled ‘The Gangani Legacy’, is a sound and music research project, which will explore the complex legacy of immigration and assimilation in the region. Working collaboratively with people in the Clare area, Wilson will engage with individuals and community groups throughout the project, taking in both indigenous and outsider perspectives.

The resulting piece will include the creation of 40-minute sound work that will include contributions (spoken and musical) from people of all backgrounds and walks of life from West Clare. A score, performed by the Dublin-based pianist, Izumi Kimura, and the Clare-based guitarist, Joe O’Callaghan, will also be incorporated into the work. The aim is for the musical score to meld together indigenous and foreign influences, including the use of songs by musicians living in the West Clare locality. The project will culminate with two public performances and a high-quality CD recording of the work.

Belfast-based gallery PS2 have annouced the first cohort of Northern Ireland-based artists to participate in the Freelands Art Programme over the next two years. These artists are: Janie Doherty, Michael Hanna, Julie Lovett, Jan McCullough and Emily McFarland.

The artists, whose practices encompass photography, painting, dance, film, sculpture, installation and performance, were selected after a competitive open-call process that commenced in August. The selected artists will develop a new body of work over a two-year period at the gallery, where they will be supported by the newly-appointed project curator, Alissa Kleist, as well as engaging in development workshops and peer critique. The programme will be funded by the Freelands Foundation.

On 22 October, Dublin-based artist Mandy O’Neill was announced as winner of the Zurich Portrait Prize 2018, for her photographic portrait Diane, Larkin Community College (2018).

O’Neill’s winning portrait was made while she was artist-in-residence at Larkin Community College, Dublin. As the winner, O’Neill will receive €15,000 cash prize, as well as a commission worth €5,000 for inclusion in the National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland. Portraits by artists Kim Haughton and Blaise Smith were also highly commended by the judges. Both artists will receive a prize of €1,500. The judging panel for this year’s prize consisted of Tanya Kiang, Geraldine O’Neill and Sue Rainsford.

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Columns

North West

South West

Material Encounters

New Hub for Wexford Artists

Joanne Laws

Daniel Cullen

JOANNE LAWS REPORTS ON RECENT EXHIBITIONS AND EVENTS TAKING PLACE IN THE NORTH-WEST.

THE ART EXPLORER DISCUSSES THE OPENING OF A NEW CREATIVE CENTRE IN WEXFORD TOWN.

GALLERIES IN THE North-west kicked off their autumn programmes in early September with some compelling exhibitions and a host of engaging public events, film screenings and talks. With construction of a new gallery space currently underway at Roscommon Arts Centre, curator Linda Shevlin has developed a series of offsite projects and exhibitions across the county. ‘Gateways’ by interdisciplinary artist Fiona McDonald ran from 1 to 27 September in King House, Boyle.

The local history and folklore of Boyle is permeated with stories of extraterrestial activity, particularly during the mid-90s, when the UFO society of Ireland was established by Boyle resident, the late Betty Meyler, with the nearby Kingsland Observatory housing Ireland’s largest operational telescope. Following site visits to the region, McDonald – who recently undertook a residency in UCD’s School of Physics – created artworks to consider “the impact of live networks on real and fictional communication systems”. McDonald’s innovative sculptural apparatus combine custom-designed hardware and inbuilt sensor technology to track astronomical events like Gamma Ray Bursts, that cause black holes to form. Projections and LED displays alluded to a Sci-Fi influence, while automated movements were highly seductive. The sculptures were beautifully-crafted in a range of repurposed materials, including telescopic mirror.

McDonald also developed an ingenious mobile app, which was launched during an ‘augmented reality’ event for Culture Night on the shores of Lough Key, allowing the assembled crowd to view a ‘UFO portal’ on the lake, allegedly discovered by Meyler near Church Island.

Also pursuing otherworldly themes, composer and artist Jennifer Walshe presented an ambitious solo exhibition, ‘Aisteach’ (meaning ‘strange’), at The Model, Sligo, based on her archive of fictional histories, ‘Aisteach: The Avant-Garde Archive of Ireland’, launched in 2015 (aisteach.org). Over the course of a threeday opening event, the gallery was activated with a performance installation, titled ‘The Worlding’ (31 August – 2 September). A series of embodied encounters and improvisations drew on Irish folklore, superstition and cultural practices: vocal group, Tonnta, delivered a Sean-nós-inspired musical arrangement; circus artist, Natasha Bourke, dangled from the rafters, lowering herself into an ancient stone circle, fashioned on the gallery floor; and a séance was conducted, with performers whispering into microphones. This ritualistic gathering called to mind the involvement of W.B. Yeats in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn which inspired Yeats to consider establishing an Order of Celtic Mysteries on Castle Island in Lough Key. In The Dock, ‘The L Shape’ curated by Alice Butler, presents two immersive moving image works. Jenny Brady’s film, Going to the Mountain (2015) features studies of pre-verbal babies as they explore the complexities of gesture,

rhythm and movement. Considering the provision in cinemas of subtitled screenings for deaf audiences, or audio description for the visually impaired, Brady began to explore the complex relationships between sound and image, text and narrative. She developed a text-based video work, Spikes, which is connected to the film, and shown in tandem on a monitor mounted behind the projection screen. Also employing subtitles, Sarah Browne’s The Invisible Limb takes the form of a ‘Film Letter’ – a literary format that conveys a narrative sequence, requiring audiences to simultaneously observe, listen and read. The film offers insights into the processes of two female artists born in 1930 – Irish stone-carver Cynthia Moran and deceased German artist, Charlotte Posenenske – with the representation of women’s labour being a connecting theme. Footage of Moran at the Giant’s Causeway is interspliced with archival footage of Posenenske’s minimalist work, sold by the artist at material cost, as a political commentary on the “transience of art as a commodity”.

The exhibition’s supporting programme comprised two special public events, as part of part of Visual Artists Ireland’s new International Speakers Series. At Browne’s invitation, ventriloquist Nina Conti presented a screening of her award-winning documentary film, Her Master’s Voice (2012), on 22 September. Following the death of her mentor and lover, Ken Campbell, (who bequeathed his ventriloquist dolls to Conti) she embarked on a journey to Vent Haven – a museum in Kentucky described as a ‘graveyard’ for the puppets of dead ventriloquists. After the screening, she spoke with Irish actress Tara Flynn, about the innovative ways that she continues to push the boundaries of this contemporary artform.

On 13 October, British filmmaker, John Smith, showed three films, including his 16mm film, Associations (1975), which examines the relationship between text and images, based on the principles of word association games. Images stand in for common words, creating semiotic puns that satisfy the viewers’ impulse to “create meaning in the gaps”. Language is simultaneously deconstructed and regenerated, requiring audiences to actively engage, rather than passively consume. Slow Glass (1991) tracks the “constancy of change in the everyday landscape”.

Underscored by the ontological perspective that “everything is in a state of flux”, the material history of glass is explored by the film’s narrator, a local glazier, who informs us that if a glass breaks, it oxidises and softens the sharp edge, subliminally changing over time. Slow Glass is permeated with nostalgia, as the narrator laments the demise of manual labour and craft industries under Thatcherite policies of the 1980s, admitting that he feels “more connected to memory and the past”, than to the present.

Joanne Laws is Features Editor of the Visual Artists’ News Sheet.

I RECENTLY WENT to the opening of Wexford County Council’s new Creative Hub, to see what a ‘centre for creativity’ might look like.

How would it feel? How could something like ‘creativity’ be contained and packaged? A term like ‘hub’ suggests such great promise. Would it be like a toolbox, full of oily rags and shavings, with smells and evidence of the craft of making?

Perhaps a treasure-trove of shiny gems, all laid out? Would it contain the comfort and reassurance of pastoral landscapes? Would it entertain like a circus or challenge like graffiti? I brought all of these questions with me, my cynicism packed safely into my pocket like a loaded gun.

Situated in what was previously the Cornmarket Shopping Mall, in the heart of Wexford town, the Hub’s location could not be better. It consists of a single climbing arcade of shop units, joining the main shopping street below with Mallin Street above. Referred to as the ‘cultural spine’, this street links the library, Opera House, Wexford Art Centre and the historic Selskar Abbey. The location is therefore both practical and symbolic, reflecting aspirations to integrate cultural and commercial life within the town.

The space was originally opened temporarily to artists, in response to a need for exhibition space during the 2017 Wexford Opera Festival and Arts Week. This was a great success and prompted the council to lease the space from local businessman Eamonn Buttle for a three-year period, as part of their Arts Plan. The Hub is administered by the Wexford Art Centre and comprises a mixture of working studios, exhibition space and retail outlets. Rents range between €100 and €350 per month for individual and shared units, with 12-month leases currently being offered. Artists were selected through an open competition, with a broad spectrum of art practices represented, including visual arts, drama and music. Also included is the local FDYS Music Programme.1 Entrance to the centre is through a set of wide glass doors, where a steep stairwell leads to the main hallway. Tiled surfaces and hollow sounds echo our ascent from the busy street, our expectations rising as we climb. A crowd is gathering, displaying that blend of rebelliousness and respectability found only in the arts.

After the traditional round of speeches (thanking him, thanking her, thanking you and him again…) a gold-chained voice calls out, in the spirit of Wexford hurling, for STEAM – a poetic cry highlighting the importance of the arts in education. Scribblers hunch to get it all down.

Stragglers lean against walls like Sunday mass and the show begins.

The hall fills with a wild, witch-like call, as Deirdre Wadding – the ‘Red-Blooded Green Woman’ wearing a black cape and wielding a bodhrán – prompts the crowd into action. Passive silence is not permitted, as we nervously mouth incantations between sideward glances of wonder and disbelief. Ordinary reserve is shattered, now that the artists are loose. Later on,

music takes a more traditional form, as 14-yearold musician Lauren Doyle, with the voice of an angel, plucked simplicity from her guitar to soothe the anxious crowd.

There then followed our forays into individual artist’s studios, some clean, precise and professional, others raw and full of hope. One very large space, called ‘The Makers House’, is packed with works by several artists, presented in the style of Kilkenny Design Centre. Next door, huddled groups convene in a low-lit space, where conversation itself is honoured through dramatic engagement. Strewn about this shared space are microphones and a large video screen, amidst the bewitching drapery of an ancient forest tent. On a blanket is the paraphernalia of a druid and storyteller. Here it seems, creativity is a currency that is freely exchanged.

As the atmosphere warms up and intimacy thickens, conversations are had between mingling artists who share hopes and dreams for the space. The aspiration to integrate art and commerce is widely discussed, including its implications for future arts practice and the potential for public engagement. We are reminded that this centre is the culmination of a long campaign by artists and others over many years. As with any shared creative space, there remains much to be explored.

Then unannounced, a poet steps forward, hesitantly pulling back a heavy black veil to reveal a large monochrome portrait by artist Peter Kelly of the deceased paedophile priest, Sean Fortune (nicknamed ‘The Monster’). With trembling voice, he delivers a deeply moving reading, a sharing of shocking truths and deep wounds. All present are hushed and respectfully attentive. This dark unveiling brought no celebration, just an honest sharing of our common, savaged past, still present.

The evening gently moves on again with poetry and song. Much later, as I walked home through Wexford’s streets, I vowed to pay tribute to the Hub, and the honesty and bravery encountered in this centre of creativity. Above all, the opening event was a moving and inspiring tribute to the courageous inhabitants of Wexford town and their energetic embrace of the arts.

The Art Explorer is a pseudonym for the artist and writer Daniel Cullen, who is currently studying Art Writing at the Gorey School of Art. Note 1 FDYS is the Ferns Diocesan Youth Service, located on Francis Street in Wexford.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | May – June 2018

Columns

Northern Ireland

Skills

25 Years of Catalyst Arts

That’s the Spirit!

Siobhán Kelly

Bernadette Kiely

AN UPCOMING EXHIBITION AND SYMPOSIUM WILL MARK THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF CATALYST ARTS, BELFAST.

PAINTER BERNADETTE KIELY EXPLORES LESS TOXIC ALTERNATIVES TO SOLVENTS.

Catalyst Arts was formed in 1993 in response to what was seen as a ‘cultural vacuum’. The founding group of MFA graduates from Belfast School of Art named themselves joint co-directors, established a non-hierarchical structure and agreed that a director would stay for two years, before passing the gauntlet to someone else. In accordance with its constitution, Catalyst Arts is run by unpaid volunteers and seeks to adopt a poly-vocal strategy towards the promotion of contemporary art practices, by showcasing artists and projects from the widest possible range of disciplines.

Catalyst Arts has always been a gallery, but has also been a 24-hour cinema, a recording studio, a publishing house, a skip, a radio station, a jumble sale, a wrestling ring, a sauna, a distillery, an agnostic chapel, a banquet hall, a darts team, a leisure centre, a nightclub, a shop, a library and, most recently, a furniture manufacturer. Beyond its gallery walls, Catalyst Arts has staged exhibitions on billboards, on gable ends, under floorboards, in a clothes shop, in the back of a van, car and bus, on the airwaves, under the River Lagan, in an airport baggage scanner, up a mountain, down the Falls, up the Shankill, over in Lisbon (not Lisburn), in a helicopter, in an archive, in a museum and in a haunted house.

Catalyst Arts has accidentally shut down Stormont, been robbed, beaten and sued and has had to move four times. Despite all this, the gallery has survived through the madness and continues to provide a window into the contemporary and experimental Northern Irish art scene.

A quarter of a century and almost 100 co-directors later, the current committee are presenting a programme of events to celebrate Catalyst Art’s 25th anniversary. Our ‘25 Years of Catalyst Arts’ gallery exhibition will run from 15 November to 15 December, featuring an extended programme of artist talks, a walking tour of previous Catalyst locations and a symposium examining artist-led practices in Belfast and further afield. We will host an explorative and self-reflective exhibition, where a wealth of material

from the Catalyst archive will be on display to the public. We have invited participation from past directors, whose contributions will be woven together with this archival material to create new connections and dialogues. The exhibition is a way to make visible Catalyst’s durational impact on the field of contemporary art practice, especially in the UK and Ireland, but also offers a chance to question the present moment and look forward to the next 25 years.

While our gallery programme celebrates Catalyst’s particular contribution to the history of self-organised activity, we see the symposium as an opportunity to hear about other structures, formats, initiatives and projects that might inspire new independent projects in the city.

Through presentations by invited speakers (to be announced), we will explore the most innovative and challenging artist-led activities happening today. Amidst an ongoing reassessment of government policies towards publicly funding the arts, it is crucial that we give Northern Ireland’s growing artistic community the tools to generate the kind of opportunities they need, in the way that a handful of MFA Graduates were able to achieve, back in 1993.

The symposium will take place over two sessions in Belfast: one at The MAC on 24 November and another at The Black Box on 1 December. Each session will feature presentations by two keynote speakers, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A. These presentations will be followed by panel discussions, chaired by current and past Catalyst directors, offering an opportunity for deeper engagement. Symposium tickets are free, and booking is available through Eventbrite. The ‘25 Years of Catalyst Arts’ exhibition and symposium are kindly supported by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.

Siobhán Kelly is an artist and a current codirector of Catalyst Arts. catalystarts.org.uk

'Art Rebels', installation view, Catalyst Arts Second Member Show (5 – 23 February 1996); image courtesy of Catalyst

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Studio documentation; by Bernadette Kiely

I RECENTLY POSTED the following question on Facebook: “Are there any good alternatives to white spirit or turpentine-based solvents?” I received many and varied replies, offering expert knowledge, insights and suggestions, some of which I have already taken up and put to use.

As an artist whose practice includes largescale paintings, I am dedicated to oil paint for its wonderful qualities of zero resistance. Though aware of the cumulative and damaging effects of breathing in solvents – taking various precautions, such as not drinking liquids while painting and occasionally wearing masks – I have, at times, felt nauseous and somewhat overcome by white spirit fumes. My painting practice sometimes includes the pouring of a white spirit mix, so I make a habit of leaving the studio after pouring, allowing the paint to dry. However, it doesn’t dry quickly, so I regularly find myself standing beside wet canvases, while working on another, immersed in rising fumes so strong that they permeate my house through closed doors. It was during one of these sessions that I felt nauseous enough to pose my question to other painters.

Technical knowledge, experience and wisdom came from near and far. Scottish artist Ewan McClure warned that breathing solvent vapours doesn’t just cause temporary symptoms, it kills brains cells and is a proven cause of dementia. Similarly, acrylics should also be used in a well-ventilated area, because they too release vapours. McClure advised against mixing rapeseed oil with oil paint, as it doesn’t dry properly and liquin is toxic too. Like pre-seventeenth century artists, British painter Phil King experiments with linseed oil and also suggested spike lavender– although it can still cause headaches.

Vegetable oil was highly recommended for cleaning brushes and it seems to do the job well.

Irish artist Conor Walton suggests making sure your studio is well-ventilated, wearing a mask, using a different brush for each colour and not letting brushes sit in solvent. London-based Northern Irish painter Elizabeth Magill uses Shellsol – a low-odour mineral solvent that can

be sourced from specialist suppliers in the UK, such as Atlantis Art Materials. Painter Fiona Rae also uses Shellsol (as she demonstrates in an excellent video, sent to me by Northern Irish artist, Susan MacWilliam).

Sansadour by Windsor and Newton and Sennellier odourless turpentines were recommended by other artists. Waterford-based artists Rayleen and Blawnin Clancy use the odourless turpentine, Terpentinol-Ersatz. I ordered this from Cork Art Supplies and, so far, it seems to work perfectly as a dilutant. However, as I’m not sure about the quality yet, I won’t be using it in large quantities. Gamsol by Gamblin was also suggested. Other products included The Masters Brush Cleaner and Preserver (recommended by Wicklow painter Helen G. Blake) and Chelsea Classical Studio Lavender Brush Cleaner (suggested by New York-based artist Catherine Owens). The odourless solvent, Zest It, stood out as being recommended the most. Though expensive (costing €26 per litre), I think this dilutant will be the best option for me. However, as warned

by Ewan McClure, you might find that Zest It is not as safe or innocuous as we’re led to believe, especially if you’re a migraine sufferer.

Painters always need to strike a balance between worrying about the effects of solvents and what paintings will look like fifty or five hundred years from now. The use of solvents can cause headaches, nausea, dizziness and dementia, not to mention ‘Chronic Painters Syndrome’, as mentioned by Dublin artist, Garrett Cormican. This is a real condition that causes swelling of the brain, amongst other things. It is crucial that painters adhere to safe and healthy practices. There is also a significant ecological concern, relating to how we dispose of solvents and what impact they may already have had on our very beleaguered planet.

Bernadette Kiely is an artist based in Thomastown, County Kilkenny. She is a member of Aosdána.

Regional Focus County Clare

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

The Rural as Hub Conor McGrady Dean of Academic Affairs, Burren College of Art

Taking Flight in the Burren Kaye Maahs Visual Artist

THE LANDSCAPE OF the Burren has been my nesting ground for nigh on fifteen years. It is a land as rich and diverse as the people who inhabit it, and it was from here that my first forays as a painter took flight. In many ways, the journey has been a natural progression, urged on by my husband, family, friends and neighbours, whose support was critical in those early days. A FETAC course in Art at Ennistymon Community College inspired me to pursue further study in art college. I must admit, as I look back now, that a certain innocence prevailed at that time, regarding the challenges that lay ahead – challenges that became even more prevalent as the economic downturn took hold.

My degree course was run part-time through the ACCESS Programme at CCAM GMIT Galway. With no financial aid available to help part-time students during the recession, remaining in college through those bleak years was a constant uphill battle for us all. Despite these circumstances, our painting lecturers guided us through the practical side and much of what I learned still benefits my practice to this day.

The course also offered Art History and Critical Theory, taught by Marion McEvoy and Gavin Murphy, enabling me not only to appreciate the past, but to value the new.

In around 2014 as I entered my final years in college, a series of talks – held at glór in Ennis and organised by the Artists’ Resource Room, in conjunction with Clare County Council Arts Office – would help aid in my transition from student to artist in providing a vital platform to meet with other artists and give insights into the arts within Clare and beyond. I would describe those gatherings as ‘fosterings’, where artists

Kaye Maahs, Burren Study 1; image courtesy of the artist

came together to encourage, promote and support one another. Bolstered by these get-togethers, I began to apply for residencies, exhibitions and open-calls, never really expecting much, but always hopeful of feedback. Out of this came some sweet moments: a painting selected for the RHA Annual; a mention in the Irish Times from art critic Aidan Dunne; and a residency at Cill Rialaig in County Kerry.

Last year was a noteworthy one for me with two solo shows, the first with the Courthouse Gallery & Studio’s in Clare and the second with the Claremorris Gallery in Mayo. Alongside these I was delighted to have works selected for such exhibitions as COE 2017, Kerry Visual Artist Showcase and Cairde Visual to mention a few. To find myself the recipient of the Tyrone Guthrie Artist Bursary Award from Clare County Council Arts Office was humbling, as well as being awarded a two week residency at the Heinrich Böll Cottage on Achill Island in County Mayo. Into this mix, came the joys and tribulations of buying and moving house that left me without a studio for several months.

Nevertheless, the year ended on a notable high with an invitation from the Royal Hibernian Academy to exhibit in their Annual Exhibition in 2018. As a painter it doesn’t get much better than that.

Of course, it hasn’t all been plain sailing, attested to by the rejection letters filling the folders in my studio. Discipline, commitment and above all perseverance are needed in abundance to sustain any art practice. As an artist my subject matter varies however in recent years my inspiration has come from the natural world that surrounds me. I spend infinite amounts of time observing and contemplating before beginning a work. Like my paintings, I am not one for fuss and I do have a tendency to shy away from the spotlight preferring my paintings to do the talking.

I look forward to my upcoming residencies with anticipation and welcome what they may bring. I hope that I can continue to push myself as a painter and step outside my comfort zone as I move forward. kayemaahs.com

Esther Elia working in her studio; photograph by Ruby Wallis, courtesy of Burren College of Art

BURREN COLLEGE OF ART (BCA) is an in-

dependent, non-profit art school located in the karst limestone region of the Burren in County Clare. It was founded in 1994 to provide an alternative model of education to the one traditionally offered by larger institutions in urban areas. Initially focusing on undergraduate study, BCA began offering postgraduate degrees accredited by NUI Galway in 2003. Beginning with an MFA/MA in Studio Art, a PhD programme was introduced in 2008, followed by an MFA in Art & Ecology in 2013. The BCA gallery and studio complex opened in 2003, providing workspaces for up to 50 students, as well as BCA Artists-in-Residence.

Underscored by its scale and location, BCA has prioritised an alternative, student-centred approach to education since its founding. In the college’s remote context, students can focus on finding their artistic voice and developing a contemporary arts practice that engages the personal and the social. In expanding its remit, the college has recently developed knowledge transfer programmes that map creative methodologies across other academic disciplines, as well as post-primary education.

BCA’s undergraduate programme provides an immersive education to students from US art schools who enrol for one or two semesters. As a result of this dynamic, the college has developed partnerships with over 40 colleges and universities in the US and Canada. At postgraduate level, BCA partners with the Royal College of Art in London and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, offering exchange and academic mentoring opportunities for students. BCA is a co-founder and active participant in BRESAL – an arts research forum founded by BCA, the Huston School of Film and Digital Media (NUI Galway) and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (University of Limerick) – which provides a platform for practice-based PhD researchers to share knowledge and build discourse with students, artists and local audiences through the development of symposia, exhibitions and performances.

Given its rural context, the college also fosters a number of community-based partnerships to

enhance the relationship between the academic programme and the wider region. Representatives from the Burren Beo Trust (a local conservation, heritage and landscape charity) teach on the Art & Ecology programme, with students participating in their annual ‘Learning Landscapes’ symposium. Likewise, staff from Burren Geopark (responsible for the stewardship of the Burren as a protected landscape) also contribute across the BCA curriculum. Further engagement with the layered complexity of place is facilitated through several courses such as ‘Walking as Art Practice’, ‘Performing Self and Landscape’ and ‘Global Ecologies Studio’ – an intensive monthlong summer school merging ecosystem science with studio practice.

As a rural art school, BCA fosters a strong sense of community among students, as well as ongoing engagement with the community of Ballyvaughan and the broader area. The gallery, one of the largest art spaces in the region, offers an extension of the academic programme, functioning as a ‘laboratory space’ for local and international artists to test and present ideas.

For example, BCA’s ‘Burren Annual’ exhibition, which is supported by Clare County Council, brings Irish and international artists working with diverse modes of practice to the Burren to engage local and visiting audiences. The ‘Burren Annual’ aims to foreground the Burren as a site for discourse and artistic engagement with contemporary social issues, while prioritising the rural as a hub for building local and international creative networks.

Many of these annual exhibitions have been accompanied by symposia. For example, the 2015 exhibition, ‘Beyond Sustainable’ with artist Deirdre O’Mahony, was accompanied by the symposium ‘Art, Food Security and Climate Change’. As a platform for critical discourse and engagement with place, the Burren Annual and other exhibitions prioritise BCA as a site of dialogue. As such, the importance of building and maintaining networks that merge the local, national and international remains central to the role and function of BCA as a rural art school. burrencollege.ie

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Regional Focus

Moving Portraits

Art Access

Amanda Dunsmore

Sinead Cahill

Visual Artist

Gallery & Marketing Manager, glór

BORN IN ENGLAND, I’ve now lived on the is-

land of Ireland for over thirty years. A BA in Sculpture at the University of Ulster brought me to Northern Ireland in 1987. In 2000, an MA in Interactive Media at the University of Limerick moved me to the Republic of Ireland. I’ve lived in County Clare since 2005.

If I was to sum up my practice as an artist who is based in County Clare, then I’d say this is mostly made up of travel, logistics, research, making and more travel. “Travel” sounds exotic, but it normally involves a car trip to Dublin. Two hours driving, meetings and then two hours back. I work at the Limerick School of Art & Design, so if I’ve got a show coming up or a research deadline, I’ll get up at 5am. These commutes are time-consuming but give me an opportunity to think. In 2004, while driving to Cork from Limerick, I was so deep in thought over an install problem, that I missed my turnoff and didn’t notice until I had arrived in Kerry. I did, however, solve the problem. If I’m in luck, I can sometimes go by train – then I can work while I travel, with the added bonus of arriving in the right place!

My recent, exhibition ‘Keeper’, at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is an example of these necessary geographic traversals. ‘Keeper’ is an archive comprising artworks and gathered material relating to the lived experience of Northern Ireland. Artworks are continually being developed and each is unique to the time, legacy and context of the region. The archive holds the video portraits of individuals involved in the Good Friday Agreement, as well as video portraits of Northern Ireland’s Nobel Peace Prize Laureates. These portraits are silent, twenty-minutes in duration and continuously looped.

The subjects are still, seated, their gaze focused and looking out towards the audience.

Meeting the subjects to be filmed is always a memorable experience. I do extensive research to prepare myself for these meetings, one of the most memorable being the first time I met with Mairead Corrigan Maguire. John Hume and David Trimble were not the first recipients from Northern Ireland to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Mairead Corrigan Maguire and

Betty Williams jointly received the 1976 award for their work as leaders of the Community of Peace People, a movement they cofounded with journalist Ciaran McKeown. This initiative was motivated by a particularly horrific incident on 10 August 1976, when three of Mairead’s sister’s children were killed by an IRA getaway car whose driver, Danny Lennon, had been shot dead by pursuing soldiers. Mairead, Betty and Ciaran met on the day of the childrens’ funeral and again in the following days when Ciaran – who had prior experience in community organisation and the Civil Rights Movement – wrote ‘The Declaration of The Peace People’. This declaration laid out a four-month plan consisting of weekly rallies at locations around Northern Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland.

The Peace People’s effective campaign for nonviolence saw the number of fatalities in Northern Ireland fall by 70% during this period.

The campaign also acted as a powerful catalyst for cross-community dialogue throughout the following decades. From 1977 onward, much of the movement’s work happened beyond the media radar, in areas such as prisoner welfare, assisting people to leave paramilitary organisations and holding confidential meetings that encouraged moves toward ceasefire.

There is a generational memory and understanding which is fading from the collective history in Northern Ireland, Ireland and Britain.

In the body of artworks that comprises ‘Keeper’, I try to preserve these memories and reiterate people’s actions through the medium of portraiture. When presenting ‘Keeper’ at The Hugh Lane, I felt it was timely to feature representations of all of Northern Ireland’s Nobel Laureates together – John Hume, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, David Trimble and Betty Williams. I believed that an acknowledgement of the three founding members of the Peace People needed to be a core element.

amandadunsmore.com

Amanda Dunsmore, Keeper, 2017, installation view, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane; photograph by Ros Kavanagh

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'Common Languages', installation view, glór; image courtesy of glór; photograph by Eamon Ward

GLÓR IS A multi-disciplinary arts centre located

in the heart of Ennis, County Clare. Built at a cost of €8.5m, glór was the largest investment in the arts in the county and hosts local, national and international music, theatre, dance, comedy and visual arts events throughout the year. Supporting artists in the creation of work is integral to glór’s programming ethos and this has resulted in several artists’ development initiatives, including a biennial open-call exhibition, curated by an independent panel of curators, which presents a diverse mix of artworks and media from artists living locally and across Ireland.

Glór has firmly established itself as an integral part of both the local and national cultural landscape and houses a wonderful gallery space that presents high-quality exhibitions in a county with a thriving visual arts community. Glór’s policy is to present work in context and to explore thematic and artistic links across our diverse programmes. In 2019, glór hopes to appoint a curator-in-residence to diversify the visual arts programme and to attract new audiences to the gallery. Glór typically presents five to seven exhibitions annually, showcasing artists and makers who work across a wide range of disciplines, with a focus on artists whose work reflects the unique landscape and culture of County Clare.

In 2018 the gallery showcased the work of local artists, emerging artists and established artists of international repute, as well as artists who are working in community contexts. Exhibitions this year have included: a partnership with The Gallery of Photography to premiere a solo exhibition by Clare photographer, Kenneth O’Halloran; a large-scale print exhibition by leading printmaker Gráinne Cuffe; the annual ‘Embrace Exhibition’ in association with Clare Arts Office; ‘Common Languages’ with ceramicist Jackie Maurer, willow artist Hanna Van Aelst and textile artist Lesley Stothers; and a portraiture and still life exhibition by Clarebased figurative painter, Adam Pomeroy. In December, RHA President, Mick O’Dea, will curate a major group exhibition in a return of the hugely successful ‘glór Selects’ series, which sees a renowned Irish artist curate an exhibition showcasing artists whose work has influenced or

inspired their own practice. This landmark exhibition will feature an extraordinary line-up, including Una Sealy, James Hanley, Blaise Smith, Colin Martin, Donald Teskey, Abigail O’Brien, Eithne Jordan, Carey Clarke, Geraldine O’Neill, Eilis O’Connell and of course paintings from Mick himself.

Glór is continually aiming to find ways for audiences to engage with artists. Therefore, guided tours, artists’ talks and workshops are a critical element of the visual arts programme. Each exhibition is accompanied by an artist-led tour, followed by a talk, demonstration or workshop.

In a recent initiative, each exhibition is now also accompanied by a dementia-friendly guided tour.

Glór works closely with Clare Arts Office and one of the key developments of this partnership is the ‘First Friday Series’ in association with The Artists’ Resource Room – an artist-led community group which aims to create a space for artistic dialogue in County Clare. The ‘First Fridays Series’ is a series of talks and interactions with some of Ireland’s leading practitioners from the visual and performing arts, including artists and curators. This season the series has been curated by artist Deirdre O’Mahony and features Dublin-based artist Laura Fitzgerald, Clare-based curator Anne Mullee and Matt Packer, director of EVA International.

Glór collaborates with other arts centres and cultural organisations to develop audiences and to maximise engagement with the work of our exhibiting artists. We also strive to tour exhibitions, where possible. In 2017, glór presented ‘CRUX’, a group exhibition featuring the work of five metal artists. ‘CRUX’ was viewed in glór by upwards of 1,500 visitors, before touring to three different venues, where it was well-received by audiences and programmers alike.

In an exciting cultural development next year, Clare County Council will begin work on a new County Library & Gallery to adjoin glór, creating a cultural complex that will offer a myriad of opportunities for future collaboration and creative partnerships, with the aim of further enriching the region’s vibrant visual arts scene. glor.ie

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Regional Focus

Curating the North West

Consciousness Resides in Geometry

Anne Mullee

Tanya Harris

Curator, The Courthouse Gallery & Studios

Visual Artist

I JOINED THE Courthouse Gallery & Studios in Ennistymon as part-time curator in October 2016, following five years working both independently and at The LAB Gallery in Dublin.

The Courthouse is housed in a Georgian building, rescued from demolition by the local historical society and used as artist studios from the mid-1990s until 2006, when it was refurbished into a multi-purpose space, including a gallery, project space, artist studios and recording studio. It’s open all year round (in a location where many places close for the winter), and is the only publically-funded gallery in the county.

As The Courthouse is a tiny outfit, my role is all encompassing. I curate, programme, hang exhibitions with artists, handle PR and marketing, apply for funding and forge relationships with partner organisations, including Clare Arts Office, local schools and Burren College of Art. Being situated in the far west has its usual challenges. Our remote location means that we need to work hard to find our audience and avoid becoming isolated from the domestic and international art scenes. Amidst these issues and constant funding challenges, remains the priority to support artists and ensure that our exhibition programme meets the ethos of “access to all”, while striving to remain urgent and questioning.

Thankfully, local support is strong and there is real community engagement. Art teachers from the local area – who are all artists themselves – are hugely engaged with gallery and students from all three secondary schools are regular visitors.

This relationship led to securing a grant through the Arts Council’s Young Ensembles Scheme, to facilitate a Young Curator’s project late last year, with second level students from Ennistymon Vocational School and Scoil Mhuire.

Support from Clare Arts Office and Culture Ireland has also allowed the gallery’s core programme to expand sideways with a series of professional development workshops, seminars and artist talks. This year seminars held in tandem with exhibitions have included ‘Selfies and Others: Psychoanalysis, Digital Empathy, and Irresponsibility’, with speakers Michaële Cutaya, James Merrigan and Joanna Hopkins, which

tied in with the group show ‘Teeth Stronger Than Diamonds’, as well as ‘Think Again: Critical Thinking in Art and Education’, with Aislinn O’Donnell and John Beattie, programmed as part of CeA/R/T’s ‘Out of Place’ exhibition.

Fostering channels of exchange and being responsive to ideas and potential initiatives are underpinning curatorial principles. Where possible, the gallery acts a space for such exchange, like the week-long hosting of artists, archaeologists and researchers from Sweden’s Öland Think-Tank last February. During the trip – devised and curated by artist-curator Maria Kerin – the group explored the archaeology, farmland and folklore of the Burren using the gallery as a studio for reflection and practice. A ‘gifting’ food-sharing evening took place with local artists, who were later invited to undertake a reciprocal visit to Öland in autumn this year.

Because I maintain an independent curatorial and writing practice, I work with artists outside of the gallery’s remit, and find that one often complements the other. I’m anxious to avoid stagnation, and keen to facilitate new approaches to using the gallery as a site for art. Showing work that is highly conceptual or performative is part of that overall ambition, not simply to be provocative, but to keep poking at those perennial questions around who makes art and why.

I’m very excited that next year will see our first ever International Residency, while the forthcoming exhibition programme includes many artists who are first-time exhibitors at the gallery. Our smaller project space will welcome emerging artists Sadhbh Gaston, Sarah Roche and Giulia Canevari, while in the main space Laura Fitzgerald, Stephen Dunne, Cléa Van Der Grin and Ian Wieczorek will all show new work.

The role is a constant challenge, yet frequently rewarding. Seeing the space change and being able to hear feedback from those who visit, means I get to feel part of the process at all times.

thecourthousegallery.com

Marianne Slevin, Vesica Piscis (rubble from bog road journeys), 2018; rubble, ink; courtesy of the Courthouse Gallery and Studios

Tanya Harris, homemade cymatic device experiment; image courtesy of the artist

ORIGINALLY FROM TIPPERARY, I returned to Ireland following my studies in London, where I completed a BA in Textile Design at Chelsea School of Art and Design and an MA in Textile Futures at Central Saint Martins.

During my MA, I came across the Shipibo tribe from the Peruvian Amazon rainforest, which has had a great impact on my creative practice. This tribe translate their traditional songs into colourful geometric tapestries, which led me to cymatics – the study of geometric patterns created by sound vibrations. My MA project, ‘The Architecture of Sound’, involved recording the resonant frequencies of various churches in London, designed by the architect Nicholas Hawksmor, and then translating these frequencies into complex geometric shapes using a cymatic device. By placing water inside a loudspeaker and vibrating the water with the sound of churches, the water created different geometric forms, which I then carved into stones that the churches where made from. In doing this, the architecture of the churches became frozen music; and the music of the churches became liquid architecture.

After graduating, I decided to go to the root of my inspiration and visit the Shipibo tribe in Peru. Living with the tribe, I discovered that the colourful tapestries they create are inspired by songs they compose while living on a plantbased diet. After thousands of years, the Shipibo people still practice this tradition of plant dietas, relying on the thousands of plants growing in the Amazon jungle. A traditional ceremony involves cleansing your body and then fasting for a period of time, whilst regularly ingesting a concoction of one’s chosen plant, with the aim of understanding its healing properties.

Living in the jungle for a month inspired my return to rural Ireland, after seven years in London. I remember calling up the Courthouse Gallery & Studios in Ennistymon and asking if they had a free studio. Within a couple of hours, I decided to move to Clare. Here, the wild landscapes, warm community and creative individuals continue to inspire me. This was an adjustment to the pace of my creative process.

From traveling into central London in less than

half an hour, I now wait weeks for materials to arrive in the post, which forces me to work on a few things at the same time.

My current solo exhibition, titled ‘Consciousness Resides in Geometry’, will continue in the Courthouse Gallery until 24 November. An Arts Council Bursary I received last year supported the work, which draws inspiration from my time in Peru. An ambisonic installation recalls a dream I had during a ceremony with Shipibo shaman, Sulmira. Last year, I presented the exhibition ‘Sounding Pattern’ at the Call & Response Gallery in Deptford, London (October 2017), which allowed me to show some of my preparatory research, to test installation ideas, and to tease out which aspects of the work I would present in my subsequent larger solo show.

For the last year, I have also been practicing my own plant-based diet, based on native plants growing in Clare, with the assistance of local herbalist, Carole Guyette. Carole also introduced me to a device called the Music of the Plants, which enables plants to ‘sing’ by mapping their electromagnetic frequencies to the audible frequency spectrum. For this new body of work, which involves aspects of unseen performance, projection, drawings and drawn-threadwork embroideries, I’ve been experimenting with Elder, Bramble, Blackthorn, and Dog Rose growing around my house. With the use of much extension cable, I recorded these four plants and also recorded the ‘song’ of a nearby tree, projecting the live cymatic pattern of this audio onto the wall of my house.

I am inspired by how the Shipibo are in harmony with the natural world around them.

Everything is emitting and absorbing electromagnetic vibrations and consciousness communicates through these vibrations. These vibrations weave energetic living geometries – ever-moving patterns within patterns – which flow through everything in nature and all our perceptions of reality.

tanyaharris.co.uk

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Critical Thinking in Art & Education Michaële Cutaya Writer and editor (CIRCA Art Magazine)

‘Out of Place’ at The Courthouse Gallery & Studios is an exhibition, seminar and education programme devised by the four artists involved in the County Clare research collective, CeA/R/T: Lorraine Callanan, Bairbre Geraghty, Edel Hogan and Mary Moran. They met through the Professional Development MA programme in Limerick School of Art and Design, hence the strong pedagogical context for the exhibition.

The artists wished to explore what might constitute a sense of place at an individual level and the work presented can be read as different ways to explore this idea. Geraghty presents the Legacy series – three full-length life-size portraits of the female generations of the artist’s family, herself occupying the middle position.

Drawn on rolls of Fabriano paper, the delicacy of the pencilled lines contrast with the confident pose of the women. Each figure stands alone in its expanse of paper but connects with the other two through the sequential format, much as we might from one generation to the next. Hogan’s sculptures are assembled from worn-out hand tools and found materials, such as feathers or horsehair, all coming from the farms and the land around which she lives. Materials, including rusted metal and smooth ceramics, combine to form strange new objects whose function might yet be found.

Moran’s installation, titled Lament, occupies the back room of the gallery. The floor is partly covered with salt, through which drawings emerge. A short video loops in a wooden cabinet, evoking a shrine, and showing the actions that took place: salt was gently swept with a goose feather to reveal the traces underneath.

The feather is still there, on the side. We may not know what the elements mean, but we are in no doubt of the ritualistic symbolism from which the piece emerges. Like Moran, Callanan’s photographic works explore the intangible realm of spirits and symbols and the fleetingness of time.

Square photographs arranged in a grid, present elusive fragments of the natural world. A series of three photographs, Attenuated Reflection, shows a distinct gothic aesthetic: a young woman dressed in white, a crow in flight, inscribe themselves over a dark green background, itself

teeming with half hidden markings.

As their collective name asserts, the artists are also teachers and researchers and a lot of attention went into developing an educational context for the exhibition. A guide and a leaflet were produced, aimed at Leaving Certificate students studying art to help them engage with contemporary art in general, and with these specific artworks in particular, through a series of questions.

There are plans for the artists to produce more of these guides for upcoming exhibitions at the Courthouse Gallery.

This educational space was further expanded upon with a seminar held on the closing day of the exhibition, ‘Think Again: Critical Thinking in Art & Education’, with Professor Aislinn O’Donnell (Maynooth University School of Education) and artist educator, John Beattie. The seminar aimed to question the place for art and critical thinking in the classroom, within today’s educational system. O’Donnell presented the work she does with educator and curator, Katy Fitzpatrick, in primary schools, as part of ‘The Enquiring Classroom’, an Erasmus project. She raised fascinating questions about how to conceive education as a process, rather than providing ready-made answers. She also spoke about educational spaces as magical spaces, where certain discussions can take place that would not happen elsewhere. Beattie presented a few of the projects he has developed with secondary school students, as part of Jennie Guy’s ‘Art School’, including ‘Thinking Visual’ and ‘Magnetic Fields’.

He insisted on the importance of an open-ended process and playful experimentation when engaging with the students. Geraghty concluded the seminar by reaffirming the importance of having these conversations outside of urban centres. In this context the Courthouse Gallery is to be commended for its ambitious programme of events and discussions that expand the space of the exhibitions.

circaartmagazine.net

'Out of Place', installation view, at the Courthouse Gallery & Studios; photograph by Miriam Riand

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Project Profile

Helen Cammock, The Long Note, 2018, single channel, 103 mins, video still; all images courtesy of the artist and Void Gallery

The Long Note SARA GREAVU INTERVIEWS HELEN CAMMOCK ABOUT HER NEW FILM COMMISSION FOR VOID GALLERY, DERRY.

THIS YEAR MARKS the 50th anniversary of a key civil rights march in Derry that took place on 5 October 1968, calling for the right to vote and an end to gerrymandering and discrimination in housing. This march, and its suppression by the state, is often cited as the galvanising moment of the civil rights movement, and as the starting point of the political conflict that dominated the next 30 years. In the days and weeks before the 50th anniversary, a range of events were organised by a wide spectrum of political groups and by a number of local cultural institutions. These included talks, screenings, exhibitions, rallies and two separate commemorative marches. On the anniversary itself, Helen Cammock’s exhibition, ‘The Long Note’, opened in Void Gallery, featuring a newly commissioned video work, The Long Note, centring on the role of women in the civil rights movement. This is shown alongside Cammock’s video and text-based print series, Shouting in Whispers (2017) and a reading area comprising a range of research material.

Combining interviews, archival footage, text, video, song and voiceover, The Long Note strikes a reflective tone, moving beyond a straight re-insertion of women into the historical narrative, touching lightly on issues of gendered historiography, the mechanisms of erasure, and the fallibility of collective memory. A mix of archive and new interviews (with known and less-known figures from the period) conveys both vigorous personal mythmaking and nuanced discussions of the different, often collaborative, ways that women organised - and the invisible reproductive labour of resistance and revolution. In the months leading up to the 1968 commemorations, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey – a significant representative of the civil rights era who is threaded through the layered narrative of The Long Note – commented that

“… those claiming bragging rights from 1968 might reflect with greater humility on the price paid against the degree of progress made since that first march and examine their actual contribution to the reality of 2018”.1 When we look back to this lost moment of revolutionary potential, projects like The Long Note can point to some of the mistakes, oversights and invisibilities that led to the failures of the present – but perhaps they can also signpost us to their redress. I interviewed Helen on 5 October to discuss some of these ideas.

Sara Greavu: What did you bring with you into this project from previous work, in terms of methods or approach?

Helen Cammock: I guess the beginning was the conversation that I had with Mary Cremin [Director of Void Gallery].

Generally, I work on research or ideas that come from my experience or things that I’ve been affected by. So, in a way, this is not a film I would ever have made, unless somebody had approached me, because I would feel that, potentially, it wasn’t my place to do it. I couldn’t make it in the same way that I’d made other films, because I wasn’t talking about my own experience and I wasn’t talking generationally about experiences of people with whom I share a heritage. I had to take myself out of it much more than I have done in any other film I’ve ever made.

SG: Many of the women you interview are drawing on equivalencies and solidarities with the Black British experience. Was this something you were expecting to find so strongly represented?

HC: Absolutely, yes. My dad was born in Cuba, coming from a Jamaican family. He came to the UK in the Second World War and he understood what oppression meant. He was eight

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

when he left Cuba but the experience of coming to Britain was completely traumatic for him, so as a family, we understood those things. When we watched ‘The Troubles’ on the news in the 70s and 80s, we made the connections between the Black civil rights movement, including what was happening in South Africa, for instance. So, although I was thinking, “Oh it’s not my context,” I knew that here was a connectedness that I already felt from these early experiences. And then it was about research and meeting people; once you have dialogue, you’re into something then.

SG: I’m interested in the way you use the archive in both works, in different ways. Can you talk a bit about that?

HC: Prior to Shouting in Whispers, I think I’d only used archival footage once before. I made this film as a kind of imagined conversation with James Baldwin using an archive clip and I just felt like it made complete sense, because everything I do with scripting is all about a collage and montage of stories.

So, there’s this idea that histories are never singular, they’re always multiple; but there’s always a hierarchy of how they knit together and that’s the thing that I want to interrupt, disrupt and reshape. It made sense, then, to start doing that visually, as well as in terms of the way that language works.

The relationships between language, image and text are really important in everything I do.

When I made Shouting in Whispers, that was the moment I realised that, actually, I could make new stories with archival footage. So sometimes, for instance, the audio on the archival footage belongs to another piece of footage, so the stories are just moving and weaving together with each other. This works with the various registers and treatments given to different contributions. I used footage from hegemonic news sources

Project Profile

and then I was also using the archive we managed to get from [local filmmaker] Vinny Cunningham, which has footage from people’s 16mm and 8mm cameras. Some of it is really blurry and it’s been cut together in a kind of amateur way. I think it’s really important that we get these two views: some with reporters standing there and other footage that’s kind of shonky and clumsily cut together – for me that’s beautiful.

SG: Do you feel there’s a particular ethics of working with film made by people in the community? Do you feel a responsibility to honour that material in a different way?

HC: The ethics are always tricky and if I thought about it too much, I would come a bit unstuck. When you can talk to people face to face, there’s dialogue and it’s so much easier, because you can ask people what they’re comfortable with.

You can get a sense of what might make them vulnerable or not, and then you can make decisions. There have been many occasions when I’ve really wanted to use an image or some video footage and I know I can’t. But when you make use of an archive like this, sometimes the material isn’t tagged to a name and there’s no way to contact its maker. So, I had just had to take that footage and work with it in the same way that I would with a published text. Again, if I think about that too much, it can be really problematic. I have to just check myself all the time – “What am I saying with this footage? How and why am I saying it? Who is going to be watching this and how will they read it?” It’s not a historical document or a political document, but of course, it is founded in history and in politics. I bring my own politics with me, so I knew very clearly where I was sitting, whilst making this film.

SG: I’m also interested in your use of music. I know you have used the lament as a format in previous projects and music is threaded through this work as well.

HC: The work is very layered and there are a number of different registers of text and the voice. For me, music is another way of expressing what I want to say, but I know that people receive things in different ways. For instance, I used a short extract from a Langston Hughes poem. I know that if I read that with my very English accent, it would be received in a completely different way than if I sing it. The weight of conveying language and emotion is completely different when you shift registers like that. I’m interested in the role of music in sadness but also in resistance, in work songs and political songs. I guess in many ways, laments are also political songs.

In Ireland it seems the same as in the Caribbean, and in the black communities in the States: song is a used for survival, as much as it is a tool for politics, as a way of making cross-cultural, cross-racial, cross-gender connections. Music is really important in the way that I think of the world – it’s there as part of storytelling.

Helen Cammock was the winner of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women (2018–19) and will have a solo exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery (2019). Sara Greavu works with artists and others to make exhibitions, projects and texts. She is based in Derry. ‘The Long Note’ continues at Void Gallery, Derry until 15 December.

Notes 1 ‘PLATFORM: Bernadette McAliskey’, The Irish News, 9 February 2018. http://www.irishnews.com/news/2018/02/09/news/platform-bernadette-mcaliskey-1252271

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

International

Endless (Re)Interpretation JONATHAN CARROLL DISCUSSES THE RECENT DORA GARCÍA RETROSPECTIVE AT THE MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFÍA.

Dora García, Twelve Attempts to Forge a Letter from Joyce to Ibsen in 1901, No.12, 2015; image courtesy of the artist and ProjecteSD

SOMETIMES IT TAKES a familiar reference (sign or signifier) to bring you into an opaque and deliberately intellectual contemporary art exhibition. After wandering rather aimlessly through Dora García’s retrospective exhibition, ‘Second Time Around’, at the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid (18 April – 3 September), I spotted a familiar edition of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Used by García in the artwork Ulysses (1999), the book had a corner sliced off and was wall-mounted in a transparent box.

Around the corner, was an installation called Exhausted Books (2013), a recreation of the meeting room in the James Joyce Foundation in Zurich. The foundation has been meeting and reading Finnegans Wake every Thursday for the past 33 years. A meeting table and chairs is laid out with well-annotated copies of Finnegans Wake and accompanied by a blackboard featuring the different signs used by Joyce to represent the various characters or principles in the book.

Gallery visitors were welcome to take a seat and peruse the books. There was also a film by García, The Joycean Society (2013), recording one of these Thursday meetings in a snowbound Zurich. García’s visit coincided with the foundation’s third reading of Finnegans Wake, with each reading taking 11 years to complete. García describes the book as hilarious, joyful and, most importantly, infinite. Joyce himself had predicted his book would keep scholars busy for hundreds of years. With connotations of infinity, the Ouroboros – often attributed to Finnegans Wake and its endless reading and (re) interpretation – was a perfect symbol for this exhibition as a whole. Such endless circularity and continuous interpretation is an essential aspect of García’s work as an artist.

The Joycean and Dublin references did not stop there; they went on and on, woven into the fabric of this exhibition.

It all felt so foreign and exotic, when encountered during the sweltering heat of Madrid in August. Artwork titles included: Anna Livia Plurabella (2013) from García’s ‘Read with Golden Fingers’ series; Twelve Attempts to Forge a Letter from Joyce to Ibsen in 1901, No.12 (2015), which cites the teenage Joyce’s address at 8 Royal Terrace, Fairview; a reference to Joyce’s only play, Exiles; and finally, The Sinthome Score (2013), a durational performance based on Jacques Lacan’s Seminar XXIII, dedicated to Joyce. In an interview about this exhibition, García thanks Joyce for enabling her to better digest Lacan.

Curated by Manuel Borja-Villel and Teresa Velázquez,

Dora García, Lo Inadecuado, 2011, 2018; image courtesy of Jonathan Carroll

this retrospective drew on 21 years of work by García, who was born in the Spanish city of Valladolid in 1965. Using diverse media including drawing, video, installation, theatre and performance, García explores boundaries between the real and its representation, while exploring how relations between the artist, the work and its multifarious publics are produced. She describes her practice as ‘situation art’, with her work functioning as a question that, at all costs, avoids an answer; questions invariably lead to more questions. Following a Brechtian precept that all art is the result of recycling and the transformation of existing materials – which includes the remains of failed work, or work that was never made – the exhibition is purposely derivative and challenging. Derivative, in that all of García’s works stem from an exploration of existing work (in theatre, literature, happenings, psychoanalysis, performance and politics) by either geographically or critically marginalised writers and thinkers; and challenging, not only in her selection of highbrow intellectuals, but in her desire to inculcate the visitor into the narrative.

The aforementioned exploration of the relations between the artist, the work and the public were acted upon in several subtle and tangible ways, most successfully in Instant Narrative (2006–2008). In the corridor of the exhibition, you passed an anonymous person working on a computer. Several steps later, you noticed a large screen with a text that was describing you and your actions. The visitor (in this case me) became part of the exhibition. The text was also disseminated online as a live feed. Much like Berlin-based artist, Tino Sehgal, García repeatedly uses the same performers, with 15 full-time performers working on a programme of ten different performances throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Much of this exhibition took me by surprise. The title, ‘Second Time Around’, while referring to a specific work in the exhibition, was also very good advice for getting the most out of the experience.1 I returned to the galleries after a break, and the spaces I had previously passed through were activated by performances – Two Planets Have Been Colliding for Thousands of Years (2017) was one example. García also uses a clever echo technique, whereby certain spaces will contain a residue of another work in a previous space. Going at my speed, you will hear this echo several hours later and again feel implicated, as if you have some knowledge that other visitors, who may have started in this space, have not yet attained.

The non-chronological exhibition was spread over three spaces in the vast Reina Sofía Museum. A sound installation was housed in the dark depths of the museum, in an area called the Sala de Bovedas, while the twin rooms, the Sala de Protocolo, featured a theatrical reading, two video works and some small vitrines containing texts and books (a recurring feature of the exhibition). Some of these books were from García’s series, ‘Read with Golden Fingers’, where the traces and residues of one’s reading are left indelibly on the pages and cover of the book. The act of reading is therefore preserved as a testament to the performative (re)interpretation that the reader is enacting. It is a simple and effective signal of what García wants to transmit in her work.

Also effective were her ‘Golden Sentences’, such as A Hole in the Real (from the series ‘Golden Sentences’, 2002–2014), a phrase she got from Lacan that was proudly spelled out in vinyl in a room covered in Jacques Lacan Wallpaper (2013), incorporating a three-circle Venn diagram signifying ‘the real’, ‘the imaginary’ and ‘the symbolic’. ‘Lo Inadecuado’ (The Inadequate) was spelled out in large letters on the exterior patio of the third-floor galleries and also featured on the back of the exhibition catalogue. It referred initially to the various projects García produced for the Spanish Pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale, but typically with García, the work was reimagined for this exhibition. However, I cannot but feel inadequate myself, in trying to decipher this exhibition for you, as you mark this paper in your own hands.2 Jonathan Carroll is an independent curator based in Dublin.

Notes 1 The exhibition’s introductory text was a chatty letter, addressing “Dear reader”, in which the artist explains that the central piece of the exhibition is a feature film, Segunda Vez (Second Time Around), centred on the Argentinian thinker Oscar Masotta (1930–1979), a figure who allows García to reflect on the intersections and exchanges between art, politics and psychoanalysis.

2 It was only when writing about this exhibition, a month after seeing the show, that I realised the scale and location of ‘Lo Inadecuado’ is possibly for the benefit of helicopters – situated on an exterior patio, the work would be best viewed from a passing helicopter. García’s film, The Helicopter (2016), involved the repetition of an Oscar Masotta happening in 1967 – complicated but rather wonderful!

The Visual Artists' News Sheet

Critique Edition 40: November – December 2018

‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’, Ormston House, installation view (L-R): Height, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams; Tail (detail), Emma Fisher; Cargo, Chris Boland; and Fourth Wall and Crossover, Damien Flood; photograph by Jed Niezgoda

Critique

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

‘Lavish and Judicious’ CCA Derry~Londonderry 11 August – 12 October 2018

Jaana Kokko, What There Is To See, 2017, single channel, 24 mins; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy of CCA

Left to right: Caroline Achaintre, Rudder, 2018, tufted wool; Jennifer Trouton, Longue Durée, 2014, oil on linen; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy of CCA

‘LAVISH AND JUDICIOUS’ is a multivalent and complex exhibition, presented across the three gallery spaces at CCA and featuring work by four female artists: Aideen Doran, Jaana Kokko, Jennifer Trouton and Caroline Achaintre. There are essentially six artworks in the exhibition, including a single-channel film installation and sound installation. According to the exhibition statement, these works speak to “the overlaps between the historical, the ethnological, landscape and colonialism” and how these forces can be “mapped to contemporary systems of production”.

The exhibition’s starting point is Sion Mills, a model village and linen mill in County Tyrone, established by the Herdman family in 1835 to provide employment and housing for factory workers and their families. The title originates from Mr and Mrs Samuel Hall’s 1845 travelogue, in which they praise the Herdmans for their dedication to their workforce and the way they “distribut[e] motives to improvement, lavishly and judiciously”. As part of the new ‘CCA Editions’ series, and to coincide with the exhibition, artist Colin Darke has produced a screenprint on linen entitled Beauty is in the Streets, which takes the concept of the model village at Sion Mills and extends this thematic reference to the Hausmannisation of Paris during the Second French Empire (1852–1870). ‘Lavish and Judicious’ coincides with the Linen Biennale Northern Ireland 2018, resonating perfectly with the themes of past, present and future labour landscapes.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a newly-commissioned sound work by Aideen Doran, entitled Woman Sitting at the Machine, Thinking (2018). Encircled with a black curtain and a blue light visible within, the installation immediately

entices the viewer, upon entering the gallery. The artwork is based on Karen Brodine’s poem of the same name, ingeniously referencing the past and the present, through the distillation, overlap and chorus of female voices: “Her face shining back from the silver case, her fingers sharp tacks calling up the digits… When she typeset for Safeway, dipping her hands in processor chemicals, her hands burned and peeled, and her chest ached from the fumes… so our labour gathers… then they spit the body out the door at 65”. The installation is distinctive, inherently sensory and inviting. The lighting is conducive to rest and reflection, and visitors can listen to the voices by lying down on an elevated stage, which is covered in a soft blue fabric.

Jaana Kokko’s nuanced and absorbing single-channel film, What There Is to See (2017), looks at landscape through a range of historical and ideological lenses – including romanticism, nationalism and colonialism – inviting us to consider their impact on our relationship with nature and the world around us. The actors are from the Theatre of Visually Impaired in Helsinki. With the script composed as a series of tableaux arrangements, the actors reposition themselves and take turns to speak: “… we were supposed to perform that text by Brunhoff, the social utopia of Babar the Elephant… That book does have a mild nuance of Western cultural imperialism… A mild one? It’s colonialist through and through… they have a barter economy… I quite like the Marxist concept here…”.

Two exquisite realist paintings by Jennifer Trouton feature in Gallery 3 – Ariadne’s Thread (2013) and Longue Durée (2014). In the latter, Trouton juxtaposes red-and-white-patterned drapery against green and gold wallpaper, mirroring the compositional style of Dutch interior painting. The artist has subverted the iconography featured in the wallpaper. This particular toile illustrates foxhunting, to which Trouton has added images of Irish women and children working on the land. Having researched this painting, I am aware that the fabric in the foreground is a hand-stitched colonial blanket, brought back to Ireland from America in the early 1900s by Trouton’s great grandmother. In the painting, this functional blanket acts as a counterpoint to the luxurious wallpaper, tying in with the oxymoronic sentiment of the exhibition’s title.

In my view, it would have been beneficial if such contextual information (about Trouton’s paintings and other artworks) could have been provided, however I’m aware that CCA adheres to a pared-down curatorial approach. Equally, Caroline Achaintre’s work Rudder (2018) is somewhat of an anomaly, as a textile work in isolation. The gallery text highlights the artist’s novel approach to creating handmade textiles, which includes deliberate mistakes and a rough finish. It would have been interesting to see another example of Achaintre’s practice, to augment her presence. However, overall, I found the exhibition compelling and the theme novel; it offered a space for reflection on another era, through a series of contemporary lenses.

Marianne O’Kane Boal is a writer on art and architecture and a member of AICA.

Critique

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Phil Collins ‘This Is The Day’ The MAC, Belfast 10 August – 21 October 2018

SO OFTEN, WHEN artists reach a certain lev-

el of recognition, when the money rolls in and they are showered with very large budgets to play with, their integrity melts into air. They find themselves driven by the market, their hardfought methods and concepts diluted by the establishment that supports them. Happily, Phil Collins is a rare exception to this rule and this show at the MAC provides evidence of his continued growth over the years.

The centrepiece of ‘This is the Day’ is the hour-long film, Ceremony (2017), commemorating the Russian Revolution. It tells the story of Collins’ relocation of a decommissioned public statue of Friedrich Engels from a Ukrainian village to Manchester, the revolutionary’s home for twenty years. The film includes passages from Engels’s classic 1845 book, The Condition of the Working Class in England, read by the actor Maxine Peake. Another familiar actor, Carla Henry, makes an impassioned commentary on contemporary class struggles.

The film has numerous narratives interwoven throughout. Engels’s legacy is explored by Ukranian school children, while the “communist” past is recalled by people old enough to remember. We follow the statue’s journey through Europe and its arrival in Manchester. The film is interspliced with found footage of Lenin during the Revolution and of his statue being felled during the collapse of the Stalinist bloc from 1989 onwards.

A number of stories are enacted: a young woman discusses with her friend her desire to be a dancer; factory workers talk about the realities of their lives (in their roles as the grave-diggers of capitalism); a Jobseeker’s Allowance claimant is advised on uncovering the system’s mysteries; volunteers display the iniquities of food banks; a homeless single mother receives help from an advisor; and, most movingly, a frustrated school student is encouraged by her lovely father to continue with her studies.

These are soap opera scenes, located in the real world of oppression and struggle, unified at the end of the film as the statue of Engels passes by on the back of a lorry. Its arrival is celebrated in the ceremony of the film’s title. The festival

Seamus Harahan & Thomas McCarthy ‘my comfort and my joy: Songs from the Irish Other’ Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin 19 September – 17 November 2018

atmosphere is a beautiful and moving instance of working-class solidarity, with crowds engaging in serious political discussions and speeches, while enjoying the silliness of, for example, instructions on successful shoplifting while wearing false Engels beards.

The meaning of style (2011) is a short film of less than five minutes, in which Collins worked with anti-fascist skinheads in Malaysia. Adopting the style of British skinheads of the sixties and seventies – Ben Shermans, braces, DMs and of course shaved heads (while the one young woman who appears has a feather-cut). They act out their roles accordingly, swaggering, smoking and fighting, which, despite the kicking, is more playful than violent (think of the lower-rank T-Birds in Grease). There is a sense of cool companionship and the underlying gentility is enhanced when a box of butterflies is released.

The insects rest undisturbed on bodies, heads and faces as the young men sit oblivious, reading copies of 1970s publications, including Radio Times and Melody Maker – engaging with the past era from which their style originates.

Delete Beach (2016) is a collaboration with the Japanese anime studios, STUDIO4°C. Set in an ostensibly utopian future in which carbon-based energy has been outlawed, a resistance group (calling themselves Burners, but referred to as Lemmings) rebels against a still-oppressive capitalist system. Their rebellion, under the slogan “Terror is apathy/Apathy terror/Blood for Oil/ Poetry is Resistance”, centres around a new bond with oil – smoking it, injecting it and finally committing suicide in order to become it, after a million years has passed. The film is shown in an installation that echoes its content, but adds little. The audience sits on oil barrels on a makeshift beach, the imagery reflected in a pool below the screen.

This is one of those rare moments when an exhibition stimulates critical thought and emotional engagement, well beyond the gallery encounter. Ceremony genuinely made me cry a little and inspired me to reread my Engels.

Colin Darke is an artist, curator and writer based in Belfast.

Phil Collins, Ceremony, 2017, HD video; colour, sound, 60 min; installation view; MAC; photograph Simon Mills; courtesy Shady Lane Productions

'my comfort and my joy: Songs from the Irish Other', Seamus Harahan and Thomas McCarthy, 2018, installation view, Douglas Hyde Gallery; photograph by Kate O’Brien

SHOT ON A Hi8 video camera in Seamus Harahan’s familiar, bare-bones style, the film at the heart of this exhibition is presented as an episodic, fragmented documentary, displayed across an array of antique monitors and makeshift screens.

With a miscellany of other objects scattered around the gallery space – an old paperback of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, an enamelled teapot, a Sleaford Mods record – the ramshackle installation feels a little like a car-boot sale. Fancier notes are provided by a copy of a famous tapestry, which functions as a kind of backdrop and a single Eames aluminium chair. Less fancy chairs stand loitering alone, or in groups, as though waiting for the action to begin. Without a conventional timeline, the film unfolds spatially. As images and sounds come fitfully to life, the visitor is prompted to move around the gallery, catching glimpses of a culture, “too spectral and hidden”, to be examined from only one point of view.

When I visited the gallery, Irish Traveller and singer, Thomas McCarthy, told me how, after a night of singing and story-telling, Travellers would sometimes wake up to find that the locals had hidden their horses, effectively trapping them so that the entertainment could continue. A co-author and principal subject of this newly commissioned work, McCarthy seems alive to the ironies of a culture that is both valued and disrespected within Irish society. In their different ways, the traditional singer and the filmmaker are already engaged with the documentation of disappearing worlds. Working together, they have fashioned – from their mutual ‘comfort and joy’ – an exhibition that resists the elegiac, in favour of something far more contrary and awkward.

The exhibition’s subtitle suggests the contrary nature of an indigenous culture finding itself ‘other’. The film documents a form of folk music, but the implied universality of that term is also contradicted by how many Traveller songs remain relatively private – singing about events you’re not directly connected to is considered inauthentic, or worse. McCarthy learned many of his songs from his mother, who also encouraged him to develop his distinctive “warble” (or vibrato, for the more classically-minded). The extended notes and pitch variations produced by this technique also influenced the pipers in their

family. None of this is directly referred to in the film-footage (which, in another anachronistic move, is actually VHS tape). Instead, we see a series of performances by McCarthy and others, in locations that include: the Willie Clancy Summer School in County Clare; the interior of a windy tent; and an unidentified Dublin squat.

Despite the fragmented nature of the overall work, each performance is shown in its entirety.

The camera drifts and zooms, but there is little or no editing; the primacy of the captured moment is what counts.

In some of Harahan’s earlier films (not included in this exhibition) – Holylands (2003), for example, or in the ongoing series ‘Cold Open’ – fugitive moments from everyday scenes are overlain with appropriated musical soundtracks.

At first, the choice of music can seem incongruous, but the combinations are always brilliantly effective. Harahan tends to shoot unobtrusively, his subjects often unaware they’re being filmed.

As a viewer you are drawn into an uneasy alliance with the camera’s clandestine presence. In this new work, the subject is onboard from the start, the music and filming evolving together.

The unconventional structure and gallery set-up may be a response to this, with these tensions becoming more formally integrated and more actively experienced by the viewer.

McCarthy also told me how the arrival of battery-powered generators allowed Travellers to watch television at home for the first time.

As younger family members sat silently watching the screen, he remembers his father being appalled by this new “conversation killer”. There may be an irony in an oral culture now being extended through the technology that helped cause it to diminish, but Harahan’s choice of largely outmoded recording and display equipment lends the exhibition its own sense of vulnerability. McCarthy’s father – himself a well-known seanachí – might have chuckled to himself, when a nearby screen came spluttering back to life and my chat with his son came to an end. The conversation killer had started up again.

John Graham is an artist who lives in Dublin.

He teaches Fine Art at Sligo Institute of Technology.

Critique

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Theresa Nanigian ‘Just a bit extraordinary’ Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda 22 September – 3 November 2018

IN THE HIGHLANES Gallery, Theresa Nanigian presents a crowd-pleasing show, peppered with many different faces and voices, each expressing individual experience and cumulatively communicating a universal humanity that is a comfort to bask in.

‘Just a bit extraordinary’ is comprised of distinct parts that were previously presented individually in Limerick City Gallery and The LAB, Dublin. Three ‘chapters’ have now coalesced at the Highlanes, encompassing the artist’s exploration of “the expression of identity across the lifespan.” This ‘lifespan’ is predominantly represented through three photographic series: ‘not sorry’ documenting teenager’s unoccupied bedrooms (youth); ‘master of my universe’ featuring vendors on the Venice Beach boardwalk in California (middle age); and ‘trying to behave’, photographs of dancers at a bimonthly tea dance event in Covent Garden (old age). Along with the large-scale photographic portraiture, the exhibition features preexisting objects, text works, an audio piece and a small projected video.

The artist’s methodology was informed by the ‘Twenty Statements Test’ (TST), a self-concept survey created by sociologist Manfred Kuhn, which invites individuals to describe themselves in relation to the prompt: “I am…”. One room within the gallery is dedicated to the presentation of 75 anonymous responses gathered by the artist, displayed as wall texts on individual panels. The exhibition takes its title from one of these responses. Acquiring these self-analysis statements can be viewed as the artist’s primary achievement, as they arguably reveal far more than the posed and edited photographic portraits, in their honesty and raw representation. These survey responses succeed in showing a world made up of inadequacies and fears; they assure the viewer that they are not alone in experiencing these subjective emotions. However, in terms of depth, two images in particular stand out: a territorial boardwalk couple, seemingly only displaying themselves, sitting surrounded by strongly worded signs (warning against unpermitted photography of them or their space); and a large, proud image of coiffed and lipsticked ‘Lindsay’ who is taking a break from dancing.

A small, ethereal video, depicting a dancing

couple, is projected onto the altar (the venue is a former Franciscan Church), providing a lovely spot-lit moment amid the masses. Elsewhere, an audio work features a seaside ‘freak show’ carnival announcer.

Nanigian has a background in business and, more pertinently here, psychology. She is therefore well-positioned to examine the value in this kind of artmaking, which incorporates qualitative research methods and the display of her subject’s objects and built environments. During a public conversation with Gemma Tipton on 22 September, Nanigian spoke of “elevating” and “paying respect” to the objects she acquired from vendors on Venice Beach that are now on display in the gallery. Objects – such as CD’s, necklaces, decorative chimes, supposed fossils of the earliest sea creatures and vinyl records (painted with images of Marilyn Monroe and David Bowie) – are presented in individual glass-fronted boxes. In an ‘inventory’ list to the side, the maker of each object provides some contextual, and sometimes amusing or profound, information about their lives or the Venice Beach environment, without associating names to the numbered objects.

One assumes that this “elevation” mentioned

by Nanigian is achieved through taking these objects from their beachfront market origin and recontextualising them in the gallery. It is important to note that the only ‘objects’ that can be sold along this particular Venice Beach strip are artworks. The inclusion of these uncredited art objects – which had to be thus, due to their maker’s presumed participation in the anonymous survey – prompts a series of questions: How do we value objects and who ascribes this value? Is placement in the gallery or museum the ultimate signifier of import? If so, who says? Perhaps more importantly, how do we value an object’s creator? Which artists are exalted, by whom and why? Who is an artist anyway? These are compelling questions for an exhibiting artist to raise in a show which, alongside its more general exploration of identity, also managed to question a key identity in this context – that of ‘artist’.

Lily Cahill is co-editor of Critical Bastards Magazine based in Dublin.

Theresa Nanigian, 'Just a bit extraordinary', installation view, Highlanes Gallery; image courtesy of Highlanes

‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ Ormston House, Limerick 7 – 27 September 2018

'Museum of Mythological Water Beasts', installation view, featuring Flag by Damien Flood, and a detail of Height by Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams; photograph by Jed Niezgoda

HAVING SPENT ALMOST an hour visiting the

exhibition, ‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ (curated by Mary Conlon and Niamh Brown) I was happily joined by my international colleague, Mat Rappaport, a Chicago-based artist and curator who was holidaying in Ireland.

Mat had given a riveting talk on his practice in LSAD the previous day and was keen to explore the vibrant Limerick art scene he had heard about in the States. We walked around the exhibition together and later discussed the merits of the show, which had captured our joint imagination, if for somewhat different reasons.

I particularly enjoyed the exhibition’s accumulative nature. As a long-running project – first initiated in 2016 and consisting of performances and interventions by exhibiting artists and project partners that run side-by-side – the exhibition celebrates the Shannon River as the heartbeat of Limerick city. Many of the exhibited works, most notably Chris Boland’s largescale sculpture Cargo (2018), confront the city’s aquatic life, whether in the form of a once thriving boat-building tradition, or a future when such traditions may well flourish again. The museum’s ‘mythology’ is therefore double-edged, referencing those practices in danger of disappearing and those currently being reimagined by the exhibiting artists.

Ruth Le Gear’s Water Senses is one such example, which includes a single-channel video exploring the mythology and memory of water.

A voice-over narrates across sublime footage of rural landscapes. This holistic study of water as a vital resource produced remedies based on traditions that have been lost with the advent of science. Depth by Andreas Kindler von Knobloch, Tom Watt and Tanad Williams takes the form of a staircase built into the gallery floor that is filled with Shannon water. It reflects light onto a nearby wall, creating a projected image evoking a calm river, but it is reflected from a flooded space. This majestic work challenges us to think of water as a revitalising and calming force that still poses an ominous threat in these environmentally-testing times.

Moving through the exhibition space, one confronts Caimin Walsh’s glass box of curiosities, titled Display, which houses found objects

taken from the River Shannon, in addition to a luscious ceramic sculpture, entitled Site, by Mary Conroy. While these pieces are curious and tactile, Ceara Conway’s siren-like Sinou reverberates, not intrusively, but just enough to add another layer of intrigue to an already interesting exhibition. In this regard, ‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ offers a multi-sensual experience. Like the sea that connects diverse lands – as explored in Erika Balsom’s recent essay, An Oceanic Feeling: Cinema and the Sea (2018) – the river is invested with revitalising qualities, all the while encouraging a reevaluation of the importance of water for us.

Afterwards, Mat drew my attention to the stuff I’d missed: subtle architectural referencing and the smart use of scaffolding to generate dialogue around Damien Flood’s mesmerising paintings (meta-commentaries as such). Mat was excited by the way the curators had engaged the city in so many ways. Having since returned to Chicago, he captured the show’s impact, stating: “I was struck by the curatorial approach, which catalysed research, art and community engagement in a multi-disciplinary and seemingly approachable manner. It is a model that places the arts at a vital intersection in a living, working city, by centering the inquiry on a shared space: the river. In the States, we often talk about ways of engaging the public through institutions, as if the goal is to encourage more people to walk through the door. ‘Museum of Mythological Water Beasts’ provides an exciting model in which the artworks are an extension of a larger dialogue, simultaneously imaging fantastic methods of interacting with the rivers and its histories, while rolling up sleeves and cross-training the gallery workers in plaster restoration. As an artist and academic, I related to the impulse to make artworks, while supporting local communities and helping to improve the places in which we live.”

Dara Waldron is a writer and researcher based in County Limerick. He teaches at LSAD. Mat Rappaport is an artist, curator and educator based in Chicago who teaches at Columbia College.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Organisation

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University of Atypical JANE MORROW REFLECTS ON 25-YEARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ATYPICAL, BELFAST.

Claire Cunningham, Give Me a Reason to Live, Bounce festival 2017; photograph by Paul Moore, courtesy of University of Atypical

MOST ORGANISATIONS WOULD throw a big, indulgent

party for their 25th birthday. It’s not that the former Arts & Disability Forum don’t love a party – they do – but they elected instead to mark this key anniversary by asking difficult questions of their staff, board, members and stakeholders: “Who are we? What contribution do we make? Why are we here and how can we continue to make the best work possible happen here?” As a result, they took the bold move of rebranding. They’d known for a while that the organisation’s name made it sound more like a “therapeutic talking shop” – warm and friendly, but hardly the empowering and challenging organisation that their programming declares them to be.

I spoke to the two fierce women spearheading these changes – Chief Executive Officer, Chris Ledger, and Arts Development Officer, Paula Larkin – about the organisation’s mission and context.

Formed in 1993 by a group of disabled and deaf people who wanted to be involved in the arts, the Arts & Disability Forum changed the game. Placing disabled and deaf artists at the centre of their activities, they set about changing attitudes regarding access to the arts in Northern Ireland. This governance model is enshrined in their constitution; only recently have applications for board membership been accepted from individuals who do not present as disabled or deaf. Through the years, five major strands of their operations developed: a gallery with an outreach/lifelong learning programme; The annual Bounce festival; the Arts & Disability Equality Charter (ADEC), which they author and disseminate via training; and the Individual Disabled Artist (iDA) Awards scheme – their biggest success, in terms of supporting the critical and professional development of artists across disciplines.

Rebranding the organisation required open conversations about language: how to communicate a person-centred approach, in line with the social model of disability and how to address accepted and inappropriate terminologies? In addition to prioritising the growth and professional development of their artist members, their remit is to educate the public. ‘University’ reflects a whole society; a coming together.

From this critical mass, a position of strength is achieved by a community who don’t necessarily feel fully understood or recognised all of the time. Similarly, the term ‘Atypical’ enables members of this community the freedom to identify in ways that they are comfortable with. It acknowledges a spectrum of lived experiences, without the prescription of labels (that invariably serve to differentiate, rather than unify). University

of Atypical advocates the use of the term ‘disabled people’, placing the emphasis on exclusionary systems in our society.1 The University of Atypical is primarily an arts organisation for which it is just as important to have a disability culture. The practitioners they work with autonomously make the choice whether to foreground disability or not. As intersectional frameworks have gained traction over the last 30 years, artists have been paramount in shaping a new set of values which address individual and collective experiences of disability, race, gender, sexuality, age, class and size, amongst others.

Chris identifies meaningful collaborations for the organisation based on the ‘Crips and Queers’ principle.2 She describes performance artist and LGBTQIA icon David Hoyle, (involved in the first Bounce festival, which coincided with London’s Paralympics in 2012), who used the performance to ‘come out’ with mental ill-health. This dark but gently humorous anecdote exemplifies the ethos of Atypical, an organisation which considers itself to be on the cheekier side of things, encouraging audiences to laugh along with them, whilst challenging their own preconceptions. Meanwhile, what Chris refers to as a “cruel revolution” has taken place. A decade of austerity has emboldened our blame culture, foregrounding unprecedented levels of scrutiny and the political withdrawal of public funding, threatening disabled and deaf artists as well as arts organisations receiving subsidy.

Chris tells me that some perceive University of Atypical’s work as therapeutic, which couldn’t be further from the organisation’s objectives. However, there are undisputed wellbeing outcomes from their work. Chris and Paula tell me about exciting plans to expand their artist-led public programme.

They’re committed to paying artists, but also recognise the benefits for artists to act in a voluntary capacity – making decisions as board members for example, or identifying and approaching venues that require support to change their access policies. I’m assured that it is a stretch for most organisations to achieve genuine inclusion – measured through the ADEC framework that Atypical manages – but venues are guided regarding best practice.

The Atypical Gallery hosts between six and eight exhibitions per year. Paula’s recent exhibition highlights include: Olivier Fermariello’s 2017 exhibition ‘Je t’aime moi aussi’ (photographic works on the apparent taboo of sex and disability); and Maurice Hobson’s posthumous ‘Faces Caught in Time’, “a deliberate and uncomfortable reminder of the human casualties of ideological violence”. This impactful

Maurice Hobson, photograph from 'Faces Caught In Time' (detail); photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy of University of Atypical

display has brought Hobson’s work back into the public eye and potentially into notable collections. Paula also outlines the strength of the relationships that they’ve developed with emerging practitioners, such as video artist Mark McKeown.

Chris’s selection features more performative and participatory works, such as Noemi Lakmaier’s weebles dinner party, ‘We Them Other’. Funding from Good Relations enabled the organisation to employ artists to work with politicians in Stormont and the wider public, to make Japanese paper cranes, marking the anniversary of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings. The current exhibition ‘She Stepped Out and I Stepped in Again’ features five female artists who collectively made performances whilst “weaving fluidly through each other’s steps and spaces”.

Paula admits that public expectations may be low, regarding the work they support and produce. Following hugely successful renovations of the gallery space in early 2018, she now wants more and better, and refuses to compromise on offering invited practitioners a professional and prestigious space. I pity the fool who apparently once mentioned “therapeutic watercolours” to these women! They laugh as they tell me that the skilled and dedicated team (including Leo Devlin, Hugh O’Donnell and Caroline Shiels, who have given many years to the organisation) have been likened to terriers, as opposed to bulldogs, because they like to play as well.

The very flat hierarchy in Atypical enables them to “just make things happen”, expanding their environment to fit them, not the other way around.

For more information visit: universityofatypical.org Jane Morrow is an independent curator and PhD researcher at the University of Ulster, with a specific interest in artist and organisational development.

Notes 1 There are 13.9 million disabled people in the UK, constituted by 8% of children, 19% of working-age adults and 45% of pension-age adults. See: scope.org.uk/media/disability-facts-figures 2 ‘Crip’ is considered to be an inclusive term, representing all disabilities, including people with vastly divergent physical and psychological differences. As an ‘insider’ term for disability culture, ‘crip’ is associated with the contemporary disability rights movement, in the same way that ‘queer’ has been elevated from a derogatory term by the gay community, to an umbrella term, referring to all LGBTQI people. See: wright.edu/event/ sex-disability-conference/crip-theory

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Organisation

Ursula Burke, 'Vestige', 2016; L–R: Fallen Tiger, Parian Porcelain ‘Busts’ and The Brazen Head; photograph by Oonagh Young; all images courtesy of Oonagh Young Gallery

By Design PÁDRAIC E. MOORE INTERVIEWS OONAGH YOUNG ABOUT THE TEN-YEAR EVOLUTION OF HER DUBLIN GALLERY.

Pádraic E. Moore: We first met in 2006, at which point you already had an established design practice.

Can you can give some insights into what made you want to open a gallery?

Oonagh Young: I’d always been drawn to visual art and studied visual communication before setting up a graphic design studio. I had to consider expanding during the ‘boom’, but realised I would become a manager, which made me question the direction I was taking. Working as a designer with several arts organisations at the time, gave me insights into how these organisations operated and a desire to learn more. Returning to education, I did an MA in Anglo Irish Literature and Drama, followed by an MA in Visual Arts Practice at IADT. Rather than starting from scratch, I decided to combine both strands of my practice, establishing the gallery, while continuing to work as a graphic designer from the same space.

PEM: Was there always an aspiration to have premises?

OY: Yes. When I graduated in 2007, I felt there was a lack of quality venues, particularly for emerging artists.

I thought that if I invested in a space, I could create an environment where artists would enjoy exhibiting their work. I wanted to attract good artists, in order to develop a quality programme, so by providing a gallery where walls and lighting had been considered a priority, the space itself became a sufficiently neutral vessel for each artist to make it their own.

PEM: The interior you developed with A2 Architects is utilitarian and very much a white cube environ-

ment. This adaptability and versatility seem central to your programme.

OY: I’ve always been eager to activate the venue by including other art forms, such as: ANÚ Theatre who staged part of ‘Vardo’ from The Monto Cycle in the gallery; readings from J.G. Ballard formed part of ‘Timecoloured Place’, as the gallery received the rights to re-publish his first short story; ‘Less + More’ featured John Rainey and Fiona Mulholland as part of Year of Design 2015 and included A2 Architects, who created an alternative to a plinth for viewing sculptural works in the gallery. This exhibition led to a book, entitled Transdisciplinary Practice, which I edited with Linda King.

PEM: Are there any exhibitions that were particularly pivotal to the history and evolution of the gallery?

OY: They are all important! One of the earliest was ‘Yellow,’ a durational performance by Amanda Coogan that took place in 2008 before she was represented by Kevin Kavanagh. In 2012, she also presented ‘Molly Blooms’, referencing the scales of justice statue on the top of Dublin Castle, who has her back to the city.

The exhibition, ‘Blasphemy’ (2010) was co-curated with Mary Cremin in response to the blasphemy laws still existing in the Irish constitution – an issue that we voted on during the recent presidential election.

The exhibition included work by artists such as David Godbold and Nevan Lahart and featured a screening of the film Rocky Road to Dublin, directed by Peter Lennon. I recall that Lennon could not attend but sent a letter that I read at the screening, which was real-

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Organisation

Top: The Circe Pavilion in Liberty Park, Dublin 1, part of the ‘Treeline Project’, 2017, curated by Oonagh Young and Mary Cremin and designed by Donal Colfer Architects; photograph by Ste Murray

Dominic Hawgood, 'Under the Influence', detail of Reconstruction of “The Anointing Water 1.0”; photograph by Dominic Hawgood

Bottom: Amy Stevens, 'Restless Nature', 2011; L–R: Strategic Calm, Shifting Ground and Riding the Fault Line; photograph by Denis Mortell

ly special. That exhibition later toured to The Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon.

‘TimecolouredPlace’ (2011) included commissioned works made by economicthoughtprojects (ETP) and Henderson Six, with poetry by Patrick Chapman. Other significant artists who have shown in the gallery include: Alan Phelan, Caoimhe Kilfeather, Amy Stephens, Vittorio Santoro, Dennis McNulty, David Beattie (who also curated ‘Tool Use’), Dominic Hawgood (PhotoIreland Festival), Ursula Burke, Tamsin Snow and Sarah Tynan, to name a few.

More recently, the ‘Treeline Project’ (also co-curated with Mary Cremin and funded by the Arts Council’s ‘Making Great Art’ award), anchored the gallery more firmly in the locality by proposing: a tree-planting project for the street; projecting the entire book of Joyce’s Ulysses on a loop; and building a pavilion (designed by Donal Colfer Architects) in Liberty Park, which was activated through a series of artistic projects and events. This project aimed to highlight cultural aspects of Dublin’s north city centre (Monto) and to alter a generally accepted and often very negative narrative attributed to the area.

PEM: This was one of several projects that you initiated to foster connections with local communities. Can you discuss other examples?

OY: Local children have always been curious about the gallery and I got to know some of them a little bit over time. It came to my attention that these kids were quite excluded, so to create awareness that this is their territory, I developed a project that materialised into a comic entitled BUZZ. The process entailed me meeting with several children in a local school and recording their insights on day-to-day life. I then

commissioned two illustrators to depict the stories directly from the audio files. This meant the children were anonymous, which gave them the freedom to tell their stories; to say whatever they wished. I held an exhibition of the children’s own work of city centre landmarks in the gallery to officially launch the comic and I feel this had a significant impact upon how the gallery was perceived. Because a lot of the children live around here, they now have a connection to the space.

Being a member of The Monto Arts group has been very important. Working closely with Sheena Barrett in The Lab, Helen Carey of Fire Station Artists’ Studios and Talbot Studios means there is a local support structure which is vital when running a space alone. We recently did a project called ‘Print n Run’ in the gallery this summer, as part of the Crinniú na nÓg festival, whereby artist Katherine Maguire facilitated the gathering of slogans from local children who were invited to screen-print their favourite statements onto T-shirts.

PEM: Let’s discuss your curatorial strategy. I’m sensing that your methodology is quite intuitive?

OY: I have approximately six shows a year and am generally on the lookout for interesting recent graduates or unrepresented mid-career artists who may have new work they want to explore or who have not shown for a long time.

Obviously, there is a desire for artists to make new work and this provides a context and incentive in which to do this. I don’t strive to fill the space constantly, as I continue to work as a designer in order to fund the gallery. This means that there is space in the schedule to include other art forms and I would like to think that people can be surprised by what takes place in the gallery.

PEM: Would you say that the two strands of your work influence one another and if so, how does this manifest?

OY: Absolutely; it is a symbiotic relationship. I’ve had the pleasure of working as a designer on many artists books and working with all the major art institutions in Dublin. This has helped me make many connections which have assisted in the programming and promotion of the artists I have shown in the gallery. On a more direct level, correlations can be made between blank walls and blank pages, where some sense of cohesion and/or continuity is required in an overall approach and layout. Ultimately when it comes to an exhibition or a book, it’s crucial to think about the whole picture. While a book can never replace the presence of an artwork, my aim as a designer is to reflect the essence of an artists’ practice in print form.

PEM: What’s next for the gallery?

OY: I am in the process of assembling a comprehensive website that will function as an archive and provide an overview of the diversity of projects. I’m looking forward to solo shows

by Colin Crotty (17 October – 16 November) and Brian Fay (22 November – 22 December) before the end of the year.

Pádraic E. Moore is a writer, curator and art historian currently based in Brussels and Dublin. padraicmoore.com

Oonagh Young is a Curator/Director of Oonagh Young Gallery and Graphic Designer/Director of Design HQ. oonaghyoung.com

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Organisation

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Martin Kippenberger and Wendy Judge after the opening of ‘Day in Dub’, an exhibition by Martin Kippenberger & Albert Oehlen, Kerlin Gallery, August 1991; photograph by Orla O’Brien

A Cherished Place DECLAN LONG PRESENTS AN OVERVIEW OF THE KERLIN GALLERY’S 30-YEAR HISTORY.

“Places you can go for free, run by strange people with visions who want to help artists by showing and selling their work”: this was Jerry Saltz, the New York art world’s notorious, necessary gadfly, writing in praise of Chelsea galleries right after Hurricane Sandy had flooded basements, damaged exhibition spaces and indiscriminately destroyed countless works of art. Galleries come and go; we might love them or loathe them; but in that moment of devastation, Saltz felt a need to make a stirring case for their defence: fundamentally, he said, “I love them. All. More than ever.”

Free places, strange people: these seem, in general, like good things. In Dublin, right now, there are quite a few versions of this special combination. There are venturesome, commendably crazy people with an against-theodds enthusiasm for finding and showing art they love, working long-term with artists they admire. And there are places, sometimes a little out of the way, just off our habitual routes, that, on the best days, offer free entry to new worlds. The Kerlin gallery, this year celebrating three decades in Dublin, is one such place. And it’s run by people who might be glad (I hope) to be called strange: motivated by out-of-the-ordinary commitment to art that pushes limits, prompts new thoughts, offers surprising pleasures, gets under our skin or takes us somewhere we’ve never been.

The pre-history of the current Kerlin occurred in Belfast: it was there that gallery founders John Kennedy and David Fitzgerald met and forged a partnership in the 1980s. But the Kerlin consolidated itself after a move to Dublin in 1988, opening its first space on Dawson Street. The first show in that location was, by current standards, relatively conservative: paintings by Clement McAleer. But McAleer’s rigorous and restless landscapes nonetheless established a questioning, questing spirit, with regard to the representation of place, in Ireland and elsewhere, that would be a vital aspect of the Kerlin’s continuing programme. Other early shows in Dublin included some by artists – who would maintain ongoing relationships with the gallery – whose work engaged intelligently and inventively with the depiction of cherished, contested or corrupted places: Stephen McKenna, Elizabeth Magill, Barrie Cooke. Like it or not, this was a subject that resonated under the inevitable, oppressive influence of the Troubles in the north – a formative, regressive political context for the gallery’s progressive cultural disposition – even if these artists didn’t necessarily engage that topic head-on. Other artists who came a little later to the Kerlin, such as Willie Doherty and Paul Seawright, most certainly did – in ways that had profound influence well beyond this island.

Even in the early stages of the Dublin gallery’s schedule, there were exhibitions by numerous artists who became pivotal to key trajectories of Irish art (though not all, of course, were Irish) and who had, moreover, established significant presences outside Ireland too: Richard Gorman, Brian Maguire, Dorothy Cross, David Godbold and Kathy Prendergast. The opening of a new space in 1994 added further substance and style to the gallery’s profile, raising the levels of its reputation and expanding its capacity for display. Designed by the British

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Organisation

Top: Willie Doherty, Dreams of Renewal, Dreams of Annihilation, 2017, triptych, framed pigment prints mounted on Dibond, edition of 3; image courtesy the artist & Kerlin Gallery

Dorothy Cross, Buoy, 2014, blue shark skin, white gold leaf, antique easel, Italian alabaster; image courtesy the artist & Kerlin Gallery

Bottom: ‘Face to Face’ (29 June – 18 August 2018), curated by Hendrik Driessen. All works collection of De Pont Museum, Tilburg. Installation view (L-R): Berlinde De Bruyckere, Het hart uitgerukt, 1997–1998, India ink on paper; Thomas Schütte, Untitled (United Enemies), 1994, modelling clay, fabric, wood, rope, PVC pipe and glass dome; image courtesy Kerlin Gallery

architect John Pawson – a demanding minimalist who once created a monastery that the monks found ‘too austere’ – the resulting Anne’s Lane Gallery is an undeniable architectural gem: one of the most perfectly realised places for the presentation of art in Ireland. Among the first shows in the new Anne’s Lane Gallery were some by artists who would be central figures in the gallery’s roster for years to come: Sean Scully, Willie Doherty, Mark Francis and William McKeown.

Listing is inevitable when recounting the contents of an incredible thirty-year programme such as the Kerlin’s – and unavoidably, as with all lists, some things will get left out.

History, as Arnold Toynbee said, is one damn thing after another, and the Kerlin has done a lot of damn things, some of them pretty damn remarkable. During the 1990s, a series of guest shows by invited non-gallery artists brought the work of major international figures to Dublin, mostly for the first time. How I wish I’d been in Dublin in 1991 to see exhibitions at the Dawson Street Gallery by German painters A.R. Penck, Martin Kippenberger and Albert Oehlen – the latter pair showing together in a legendary two-hander called ‘Days in Dub’. (Recently the New York gallerist Casey Kaplan Instagrammed a shot of a promotional poster for the show that’s still on the wall of a New York restaurant; the poster is also in the Tate collection.) The list, looking back through the 1990s programme, is quite something: Richard Hamilton, Francesco Clemente / Mimmo Paladino, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Andy Warhol (twice). At times, there have been great group shows too: I remember ‘Architecture Schmarchitecture’ (2003) as my (belated) introduction to the work of Isa Genzken, and a confirmation of my interest in, or enthusiasm for, Liam Gillick, Roger Hjorns, Jim Lambie, Sarah Morris and Thomas Scheibitz. Later there was ‘Less is more – more

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could be less’ (2007), a collaboration with Produzentengalerie, Hamburg, that featured, among others, Günther Förg, Thomas Schütte, Norbert Schwontkowski, Nicole Wermers and Thomas Scheibitz (again). In each case, as a pretty clueless fledgling critic, I found such shows both grounding and enabling – offering up-close encounters with exciting new work and creating fresh connections to traditions and tendencies of contemporary art outside Ireland.

Over the years, many more meaningful contributions have been made. Darragh Hogan joined Kennedy and Fitzgerald as a director in 2001. Lots of other personnel – including the current Dublin team of Brid McCarthy, Elly Collins, Rosa Abbott and Lee Welch – have played essential parts. The artist list has changed; some have come and gone, while many have maintained valued lasting relationships. Today the group of gallery artists includes – in addition to anyone mentioned thus far – a mix of longstanding and relatively new members: Philip Allen, Gerard Byrne, Aleana Egan, Maureen Gallace, Mark Garry, Liam Gillick, Guggi, Siobhan Hapaska, Calum Innes, Jaki Irvine, Merlin James, Sam Keogh, Samuel Lawrence Cunnane, Eoin McHugh, Isabel Nolan, Jan Pleitner, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Liliane Tomasko, Paul Winstanley and Zhou Li. In celebrating thirty years in Dublin, the Kerlin team has decided to plan something appropriate: that is, continuing to do what they’ve always done. Nostalgia is not their style.

(This might, in part, be a Belfast thing, borne out of need to break free from the burdensome weight of history.) The next show is always the most important one. And so, the 2018 programme is a series of exhibitions that continues, determinedly, to represent the best of what they do. Gerard Byrne’s ‘In Our Time’ at the start of the year was the Dublin

premier of an outstanding video installation by one of the most acclaimed artists working with lens-based media today.

Sam Keogh’s ‘Kapton Cadaverine’ was a useful platform for a young artist to advance his idiosyncratic style of sci-fi-inspired lecture-performance. A group show of striking new works by Dorothy Cross, Aleana Egan, Siobhán Hapaska, Isabel Nolan and Kathy Prendergast was an exceptional showcase of imaginatively far-out sculptural practices. Painting exhibitions by, respectively, German and US-based artists Jan Pleitner and Daniel Rios Rodriguez, highlighted new paths being followed in that medium.

Another group show, ‘Face to Face’, staged in collaboration with the De Pont Museum, Tilburg, was the latest in the gallery’s occasional gatherings of notable international figures: in this case Ai Weiwei, Fiona Banner, Dirk Braeckman, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Marlene Dumas, Roni Horn, Giuseppe Penone, Thomas Schütte, Fiona Tan, Luc Tuymans, Jeff Wall and Cathy Wilkes. This, by any measure, is an impressive line-up. Current and upcoming shows (Sean Scully and Liam Gillick) continue to press on at the highest standard. Like most serious galleries today, there is constant pressure to have a presence everywhere: participating in art fairs, working with international museums, seeing and showing new work all over the world. Nonetheless, as the Kerlin reaches the landmark stage of thirty years in Dublin, it makes sense to remember how much they have made a difference right here.

Declan Long is a critic and lecturer in modern and contemporary art at NCAD, where he is Co-Director of the MA Art in the Contemporary World.

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Organisation

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Tibetan Buddhist monks, ‘Kalachakra Sand Mandala’, 1994; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery

A Celebration INVITED ARTISTS AND THINKERS DISCUSS THE HISTORY OF THE DOUGLAS HYDE GALLERY ON ITS 40TH ANNIVERSARY. This is an abridged version of a public conversation that took place on 17 May at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, as part of a year-long programme marking the gallery’s fortieth anniversary. The panel, chaired by Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith and introduced by current DHg director Georgina Jackson, comprised artists who have previously had major solo exhibitions at the DHg. Each artist took the opportunity to reflect on the significant influence the DHg has had on their relationship with contemporary art.

Georgina Jackson: The Douglas Hyde Gallery holds an incredibly important space in Dublin, in Ireland and internationally. When Alice Maher was talking about her first important solo exhibition here in 1994, when IMMA was still in its infancy, she described the DHg as “the most important venue in Ireland and a launching pad for all aspiring artists. Everyone went there, everyone wanted to show there – it was a fulcrum of energy and a powerful place”. The gallery emerged out of the infectious enthusiasm and curiosity of a figure called George Dawson, a professor of genetics here in Trinity, who acknowledged the importance of artists, and art as necessary within the lives of students, Trinity College and beyond. This is a celebration of 40 years of the DHg and the many more years to come.

Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith: I have had a long relationship with The Douglas Hyde Gallery, which includes 17 years as a board member; so I get to go first, as Methuselah and seanchaí, and say a few words about my memories of the gallery. I was vaguely familiar with the Douglas Hyde as an exhibition venue in the early 1980s, as a student in UCD. The memory is hazy, but punctuated by a very vivid recollection of an Ed Kienholz show, ‘Tableaux’, in 1981.1 Other memories from the early years – the pre-John Hutchinson years, if you like – included the first show that really took my breath away, in a purely spectacular fashion, for the scale of its ambition: Anselm Kiefer’s ‘Jason and the Argonauts’ show in 1990, when Medb Ruane was at the helm.2 More formative for me, as I was beginning to write about art, locally at first, was a series of exhibitions (in the transition into John Hutchinson’s tenure as director of the DHg) charting Irish art in the 1980s – four or five group shows organised thematically. But my most memorable show of the 90s, which in some ways was life-changing, was the show ‘Chlorosis’ by Marlene Dumas in 19943, which I recall very vividly for a number of reasons. Firstly, I had no expectations. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was going to, it was a busy day, I was late to meet someone. I distinctly remember coming all the way down the stairs, out of breath, apologetic, looking for the person I was late to meet, finding him, saying sorry and then looking around. And just behind me was the title piece, a huge bank of watercolours on paper – a signature medium of Marlene Dumas then and now – and many other works, which completely stunned me. That was the beginning of a long interest in Marlene’s work, about which I’ve written several times, and a friendship I value.

Now, in order to indicate some notion of historical progression or chronology, I’m going to ask the artists to speak in the order in which they showed over the years.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Organisation

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Willie Doherty: I’m old enough to remember the DHg when it was a much younger institution. I was an art student in Belfast and I think there was a lot of excitement about the potential of this new gallery that had opened in Dublin, because these were in the days before IMMA. I think the art world generally felt that there really was a place for a dedicated art gallery that was serious, professional and had some relationship, not just with the city of Dublin and Trinity College, but with the rest of the world as well. So, there was always a degree of excitement around the exhibitions in the DHg and the ambition and scope that the gallery stood for. I actually took part in a group exhibition here in 1981 called ‘The Irish Exhibition of Living Art’, which I think may have happened every couple of years.4 I graduated from art school in Belfast in the summer of 1981 and to my surprise, they accepted a large photographic work that I’d made on three or four panels. That was quite a thing for a young artist who’d just left art school, to have a piece of work selected for an exhibition here. Like every young artist, you’re working from a position of invisibility and hoping your work might get somewhere. The first solo show I had here was in 1993. The work that I made was in some ways shaped by the architecture of the gallery itself. One of the things I’ve always liked about this gallery is you enter from the street and then you get this view from the balcony down into the space. I think it’s quite a unique perspective – you navigate the space from this entry point above. In that sense, the space has always presented a series of challenges for artists. Over the years, the way in which respective directors have understood the space evolved as the space evolved. Some of the shows John Hutchinson curated here really demonstrated a clear understanding of the dynamic of this architecture and the installation of the works here were often disarmingly simple, but complex at the same time. It’s always been for me a really important and very dynamic place, both as an artist and as a visitor.

Willie Doherty had solo exhibitions at the DHg in 1993 and again in 2008. He is a current board member of the gallery.

Gerard Byrne: Because I’m from Dublin, I feel like I’ve a very long history with the space. For me, something that’s really central for the DHg overall, has always been connecting practices in Ireland with practices that are centred elsewhere – I think that’s a really important gesture. Obviously, the Kiefer show was important because it was a blockbuster 5, but I remember the Bill Viola show here and that was really, really important.6 Viola came as a visiting artist to NCAD. Because it was media art, it felt very, very new at the time. I also have quite a palpable memory of Cecily Brennan’s show here in the early 90s – very large charcoal drawings from County Wicklow.7 I remember a feature in the Sunday Tribune on Cecily Brennan. An artist being written about in a newspaper – that was kind of a big deal in Ireland at the time. It was the first time I was able to make a connection between seeing something in a gallery space and actually having some sense of who that artist is, as a person. I somehow got involved in installing the shows at the DHg and that was a brilliant experience. The first show we installed was Jimmie Durham, which was an amazing show that came from the ICA in London.8 It was just so beautiful – I’ve loved his work ever since. Another very fond memory was the ‘Kalachakra Sand Mandala’ made by Tibetan Buddhist monks.9 My own show in 2002 was curated by Annie Fletcher. I made a photograph of Dorothy Walker specifically for the show, as I knew Dorothy through her son Corban. I don’t quite know what my rationale was for including it, except that somehow it spoke to the history of this place. I also made a work, New Sexual Lifestyles. I filmed it in the famous Goulding Summerhouse in Wicklow, designed by Ronnie Tallon of Scott-Tallon-Walker architects. Basil Goulding and Dorothy Walker were involved in a certain moment in Irish art, around the time when the DHg was formed in the late 70s. I was interested in somehow having that present in my show.

Gerard Byrne had a solo exhibition, ‘Herald or Press’, at the DHg in 2002. ‘A Visibility Matrix’ by Sven Anderson and Byrne was presented in the summer of 2018.

Isabel Nolan: Like Gerard, I have multiple relations with this space. It wasn’t until probably third or fourth year (in NCAD) that I started coming here regularly. I remember Marlene Dumas gave a talk and that was a phenomenal moment. But I think she still seemed so far away, and an artist seemed like such an abstract thing, that I didn’t really connect to it. In NCAD, everyone was talking about postmodernism, making collages and looking at Brit art. There was a lot of irony around at the time and I found it really uninteresting. Anyway, I walked in here one day, I was the only person in the space and there was an exhibition of these sulphurous, menacing, what seemed to me very large paintings by this Irish person called Patrick Hall, and I was blown away and I had this very simple insight that it’s ok to be thinking about death.10 I remember Bill Viola’s ‘The Messenger’ show was the first show that I absolutely hated. I thought I’d acquired some sort of criticality because I had the capacity to hate a show. I also spent a period here being a technician. Watching artists install their work, working in such a specific space with one curator, and looking at the way in which John worked with all of these different people and how they dealt with this space, was just phenomenal. It would go from someone like Miroslaw Balka11, who was this great big bear of a man, and kind of macho in a way, but the precision and exacting nature of his demands around making sure the show was correct. And then there was Koo Jeong-A, who had this show that was incredibly mysterious, called ‘The Land of Ousss’.12 I would wait all day for her to ask me to do something and she really didn’t need me. And I’d come in the next morning and a roll of Sellotape would have been moved one foot. You’d go, wow, it’s better. Mike Nelson… blew my mind because this space was quite empty with images around the walls and a whole installation underneath the stairs.13 So, to see all of

Top: Gerard Byrne ‘Herald or Press’, 2002; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery Middle: Cathy Wilkes, solo exhibition, 2004; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery Bottom: Alice Maher ‘Familiar’, 1994; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery

Article Continues

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Organisation

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

completely this idea of creation in a reverse. I was thinking about that, and how for the first show I had in the main gallery I started making this giant painting, as a curveball to the small paintings. In the end I didn’t actually include it at all, but it connected back to this idea of creating in reverse. When I had the subsequent show in Gallery 2, I was very aware of the small space not having any windows. I made a series of four paintings where each painting has its own light source, so they emit their own light – a fluorescent light, a flashlight, a kind of hallucinatory daylight. That space, Gallery 2, was always interesting, because its ethnographic objects seemed to really undermine the contemporary art in the main space – it seemed to have a clarity of purpose and intention behind it. I actually really liked that strange tension.

Mairead O’hEocha has shown in group and solo exhibitions at the DHg in 2011 and 2014 respectively.

Sam Keogh: I’m going to tell a very short anecdote about the Cathy Wilkes show here in 2004.14 I was about 16 or 17 and came in with a group from my secondary school.

My memories of some of the works are kind of smudged together. There was the top of a baby wipes box, which was turquoise, and in my mind, there was some words smeared in paint or shit – something brown. But looking at the documentation that exists, there wasn’t anything on it. There were paintings on the wall that I don’t actually remember, and there were these semi-figurative, minimal sculptures, made of wood and bits of metal, on these kind of metal stands. They were all over the floor. Some of them were maybe tipped over. And there was a belt sander on the floor, which kind of threatened these wooden objects with being turned into sawdust. The main thing I remember was the reaction of my classmates. There was a bunch of lads in my class who were quite confident, and I wasn’t – I was quite awkward. They really didn’t like the idea that they should be looking at this stuff and considering it as art. Their paranoia made me feel like this bunch of stuff in a room was on my side. It made me think maybe there’s something to this enterprise of arranging things in a room, which is art. It was my first experience of seeing that there was a weird visual language being hammered out by somebody, that was separate from the way you might usually talk to someone. I trusted that she was trying to communicate something that was nearly impossible to communicate. That was a very weird and exciting thing to be presented with. How do we make a new language?

Sam Keogh’s work featured in the group exhibition, ‘Dukkha’, at the DHg in 2014, while his solo show, ‘Four Fold’, was presented in the gallery in 2015.

Top: Kathy Prendergast, solo exhibition, 1996; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery Bottom: Sam Keogh ‘Four Fold’, 2015; image courtesy of the Douglas Hyde Gallery

that range of people and to watch it unfolding up close was really amazing. I was asked recently to write something about which artists have influenced me. It turns out that, at one point or another, most of them have shown here. For me, there’s something about this space and the architecture that, unlike many other galleries, has this incredible physicality and there’s something about coming in here and giving yourself over to the space. It’s a gallery you have a very bodily relationship with. And there was something special about the reliability of the DHg that it was going to offer something that was complex and kind of challenging and fascinating. I won’t keep going.

Isabel Nolan presented ‘The Paradise [29]’ at the DHg in 2008, while her solo exhibition, ‘Calling on Gravity’, was presented in 2017.

Mairead O’hEocha: It’s funny that you mentioned [Nelson’s] ‘Tourist Hotel’. That’s a really vivid memory for me, because he radically inverted the space. You came in here and there was a ‘fake show’. You went down the back and you stumbled into darkness.

There were dirty sleeping bags, matchboxes with incense in them, coins, Disney masks.

There were portable TVs with just the snow staring back at you. I hadn’t actually encountered an exhibition that so cleverly took on the space. He set a labyrinth of questions around culture, space and politics that left you delighted and confused. David Byrne’s How Music Works talks about creation in the reverse and how people have an assumption around musicians that they write, and the song comes out fully-formed.

He said the reality is 180 degrees from that. And he always considers the venue when he’s making work. He goes on to explain how African music, for instance, evolved and is quite percussive as it is played and heard outdoors, while choral music has very long reverbs and because of the architecture of churches, the notes get extended. I think what he’s saying is actually quite relevant to contemporary art. Mike Nelson’s work was

Sean Lynch: I want to make a bit of a counter-point about the incredible space here.

It’s only open seven hours a day. A lot of hours of the day, the gallery is closed. I wonder how it performs during that time? At night time, when the gallery is closed, we’re all in different places. Good gallery spaces have the ability to transcend their physicality.

They find themselves in different places at different times in people’s heads, trying to maybe be articulate, sometimes being verbalised in conversation, or just staying as a big empty space in your head as well, with the potentiality of multiple forms of art. I was too young to see Nicola Gordon-Bowe’s exhibition on Harry Clarke here, so she had to tell me about it.15 These particular strata that exist here – I’m interested in how we begin to understand them in conversation, before and after presentation, how they link communities together, and how they keep places like this as very relevant centres.

You know, you’re all touching the ground of the Douglas Hyde Gallery now, which is touching Trinity, which is touching Dublin, touching the Atlantic, touching China...

Somehow, we make our realities out of this flesh of the ground. Having an exhibition here last year was a very joyful time for me. My family and I were living in Vancouver and we moved back to Dublin for the duration of the show. I got to spend lots of time in the gallery, hanging out with the staff here and that’s a rarity sometimes, to have with an exhibition. I had such a gleeful and wonderful time with Rachel McIntyre working on the show. Michael Hill pointed at all the children’s drawings that you can see in the gallery space, done by kids on school tours. They’re still all here, not hidden away in different parts of the concrete. Sometimes you’ve made a show and you’re gone the next day. I felt a great sense of community here and it’s a very joyful place.

‘A Walk Through Time’ and ‘What Is An Apparatus’ by Sean Lynch were presented at the DHg in 2017.

The Douglas Hyde Gallery was founded by the Arts Council and Trinity College Dublin and opened on 1 March 1978.

Notes 1 Ed Kienholz, ‘Tableaux 1961-79’, 1981.

2 Anselm Kiefer, ‘Jason and the Argonauts’, 1990.

3 Marlene Dumas, ‘Chlorosis’, 1994; ‘Hungry Ghosts’ (group show), 1998.

4 ‘Irish Exhibition of Living Art’, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1984.

5 Anselm Kiefer, solo exhibition, 1990.

6 Bill Viola, solo exhibition, 1989.

7 Cecily Brennan, solo exhibition,1991.

8 Jimmie Durham, solo exhibition, 1994.

9 Tibetan Buddhist monks, ‘Kalachakra Sand Mandala’, 1994.

10 Patrick Hall, ‘Mountain’, 1995.

11 Miroslaw Balka, ‘Dig Dug Dug’, 2002-03 12 Koo Jeong-A, ‘The Land of Ousss’, 2002.

13 Mike Nelson ‘Tourist Hotel’, 1999.

14 Cathy Wilkes, solo exhibition, 2004.

15 Harry Clarke, ‘Retrospective’, 1979.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Residency

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An Artists’ City KATHY TYNAN REPORTS FROM PARIS ABOUT HER RESIDENCY AT THE CITÉ INTERNATIONALE DES ARTS.

Left: Kathy Tynan, studio view, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2018 Right: Kathy Tynan, Entre Chien et Loup, 2018, oil on canvas, 81 x 65cm; all images coutesy of the artist

IN 1937 AT THE ‘Exposition Universalle’ in Paris, a Finnish

painter called Eero Snellman gave an impassioned speech in which he shared his vision of a huge international artist’s residency in the heart of Paris. He called it an ‘Artists’ City’. Snellman gave a detailed and practical description of the physical shape that the residency would take, imagining a series of buildings containing simple but solid, purpose-built studios, with each facade looking onto a courtyard in which the residents could break bread, exchange conversation, perform and exhibit together. He also spoke of the dangers of undervaluing young French and international artists at a time when they were not being supported due to high rental costs in Paris. His speech was well received but, because of World War II, no action was taken on Snellman’s vision until 1960, when his ideas were made reality by the architect of civil buildings and national palaces, Felix Brunau. After garnering enough support from various cultural bodies in Paris, the Cité Internationale des Arts was finally established in 1965, counting among its initial residents such talented (if not morally dubious) youngsters as Serge Gainsbourg.

The Cité hosts around 1,200 artists from over 50 countries every year, across two locations – a cluster of large buildings in the Marais and a smaller one in Montmartre. There are two ways to apply: around 30% of residents apply independently, while the others are supported by a cultural partner. As a past resident of Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, I was lucky enough to be nominated for a three-month residency by the endlessly supportive TBG+S director, Clíodhna Shaffrey. Although the residency has grown and developed significantly since its initiation, it remains true to Snellman’s vision, in terms of being a truly international and interdisciplinary environment. My studio is in the original, largest building in the Marais, overlooking the River Seine. Although the long, dark hallways of the building felt a little intimidating when I first arrived, I quickly learned that each door leads to an entirely unique and intimate world, reflecting the individual character of each resident artist and the energy that comes with uninterrupted studio time.

The residency is open to all types of artists – from animators and singers, to painters and dancers – at different career

stages. Because of the vast number of residents, I found the first few weeks of my stay quite socially challenging. Similar to my first month as a young NCAD student, I got the impression that everyone had already formed their significant relationships and that I had somehow missed the boat. Most evenings, a couple of residents will host an open studio, providing the occasion for the others to meet them and view their work. Three questions are repeated over and over again during first meetings (and have surely been vibrating softly through these buildings since the 1960s): What country are you from? How much time have you got here? What kind of art do you do? But strangely, these questions seem to act as the perfect opening lines. Perhaps because they highlight the only three commonalities that each person is sure to share in this particular situation: that they are not at home; that they are in a position of temporality; and that they, of course, make art. I soon realised that every resident had similar feelings of mild alienation upon arrival and that this shared experience can lead more quickly than usual to the beginnings of real friendships. Vernacular and local cultural references are abandoned in favour of a mixture of broken English and French, as well as often embarrassing admissions of ignorance of one another’s cultures. But rather than creating awkwardness, this seems to form a more direct line of conversation and openness between people.

For the last six years I have been making paintings in various Dublin studios, which take the conditions of familiarity and neutrality as their starting points. Because I haven’t previously worked outside Ireland for a significant length of time, the familiar has been easy to find, while the neutral – in other words, the application of a gaze that is free from preconceptions – has been more elusive. I had predicted that during the residency my practice would be mostly influenced by the unfamiliar urban landscapes, museums and landmarks of Paris. While this has been the case, a more profound and unexpected influence on my practice has been an altered experience of myself, as someone with less cultural context. Based on conversations I’ve had with other residents, it seems that many of us are enjoying a sense of an ‘alienated belonging’, with its potential implications for the work we are

developing here. Most residents leave with a handful of new friends who are scattered all over the world and who are more than willing to make introductions on their behalf in their respective countries. In terms of networking, it’s a less cynical, longer game, involving less intentional ‘ladder climbing’. Instead, we have engaged in some international seed-bombing, which may or may not come to flower in the future, but the act itself feels full of possibility.

One day last month I was delighted when a fellow resident – a well-established Japanese artist who mainly works in video installation – asked me for an oil painting lesson. Because of our language barrier, we couldn’t understand each other very well, but after I’d demonstrated a few simple techniques, I asked her to have a go. I watched, fascinated as she selected one of my most frazzled old paintbrushes and began to move it around the canvas in the most strikingly elegant and unfamiliar way, as if the brush itself had taken on new life.

I also had some trouble communicating in my basic French during an initial studio visit with a painter and sculptor from the Ivory Coast, but as I showed him various images of my paintings on my laptop he pointed and joyfully exclaimed “Composition!” to which I maniacally nodded and responded “Oui! Composition!”. Not much else needed to be said. It has been these subtle moments of connection, as well as more in depth conversations and plans for future meetings and collaborations, that have made this residency feel so worthwhile.

Returning to Snellman’s visionary speech in 1937, his opening remarks seem significant: “As I imagine it, the City is open to all artists irrespective of race or nationality. They all live under the same roof and – I would make so bold as to hope – establish personal contacts that will most certainly enrich their intellectual lives”. While this aspirational framework is no doubt true of many artists’ residencies today, it is no less remarkable when such an optimistic idea takes on a lasting and meaningful form, influencing the lives of so many artists in abundant and incalculable ways.

Kathy Tynan is an artist living and working in Dublin city. kathytynan.net

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Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Conference

Critical Dialogue GRÁINNE COUGHLAN REPORTS ON THE CAPP CLOSING EVENT, ‘PRACTICE AND POWER’, WHICH TOOK PLACE OVER THE SUMMER.

CAPP closing event, ‘Practice and Power’, Dublin, June 2018; photograph by Joseph Carr; courtesy of Create

‘PRACTICE AND POWER’ – the final and most significant moment of dissemination for the Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme (CAPP) – took place across multiple venues in Dublin from 20 to 23 June. Established in 2014 as a fouryear programme funded by Creative Europe, CAPP engaged nine European cultural institutions, with Create (Ireland’s national development agency for collaborative practices) as the lead partner. This was the first time an Irish organisation has led such an ambitious programme. CAPP aimed to provide transnational connections for artists working in collaborative practice across Europe. The programme provided opportunities to engage marginalised communities and develop new audiences, while enhancing mobility and exchange through professional development workshops, cross-institutional residencies and Europe-wide commissions.

The ‘Practice and Power’ CAPP closing event was devised as a discursive platform comprising a series of workshops, panel discussions, exhibitions and events across Dublin’s many cultural organisations. It gathered together CAPP participants as well as international artists, educators and policy-makers to reflect on the experiences of CAPP, by considering the processes that activate such networks, the forms of work they produce and the communities they engage. In her introductory comments, Clodagh Kenny, arts consultant and Create board member, remarked on the significance of collaborative practice against the backdrop of nationalistic and protectionist politics currently facing Europe.1 In this context, the ambition of ‘Practice and Power’– to examine key tenets of collaborative practice, such as negotiation, representation and politics – became even more relevant.

NEGOTIATION

Dutch artist Jeanne Van Heeswijk delivered the first keynote of the event. When introducing Heeswijk, Professor Mick Wilson drew acute attention to the contradictions of conceptualising collaborative art practice as ‘alternative’ or ‘exterior’ to dominant forms of organisation. Rather than encourage simplistic dichotomies, Wilson emphasised the realities of collaborative practice, which often unfold co-dependently, within across or between varied cultural, social and political institutions.

Heeswijk’s presentation focused on two previous projects: ‘Freehouse’ (1998) which emerged as a community-based arts and research association in Rotterdam; and the more recent ‘Philadelphia Assembled’ (2017) which was initiated through invitation from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Both projects addressed how models of participatory self-organisation can encourage communities to take collective responsibly for their environment and to assess their position in relation to larger organisational structures, such as city councils or art institutions. Complimenting Wilson’s introduction, Heeswijk’s consideration of these larger structures underscored a growing necessity for socially-engaged artists to negotiate and manage collaborative relationships – not only between participants but also with institutions – in order to produce work that is both viable and sufficiently critical.

Following Heeswijk’s presentation, a panel of representatives from CAPP partner organisations reflected on their

own experiences of inter-institutional collaboration. In keeping with the themes of negotiation addressed by Heeswijk, Sören Meschede (the outgoing manager of the independent Madrid-based platform, Hablarenarte) described his initial frustrations in balancing CAPP responsibilities with his institution’s own agendas, thus highlighting a necessity for partners to collaboratively consolidate as a network. Similarly, the discussion reflected on the challenges of balancing creative aspirations with demands for ‘sustainability’, while working within the parameters of large-scale funding frameworks.

REPRESENTATION

As a crucial consideration for any form of collaborative project, ‘Practice and Power’ addressed the theme of representation in two main ways. Firstly (and most prominently), a number of panel discussions focused on the potential of collaborative art to recall or reinstate ‘excluded experiences’.

For example, at the Robert Emmet Community Development Centre, artist and educator Glenn Loughran presented his project ‘After the Future... of Work’ (2017), which he conducted as an artist-researcher in collaboration with fellow artists, digital technicians and participants from the local community in response to the closure and demolition of “the last sewing factory” in Dublin’s inner-city. Crucially, Loughran proposed “evental research” as an alternative to the “emancipatory traditions” of collaboration, by exploring how events produced by artistic modes of exchange, in dialogue with the community, can “performatively renew the significance of context”. Loughran discussed Intermittent (2017) – a commissioned musical composition inspired by the ‘jingle’ associated with the workers’ favourite radio programme – which was performed on the eve of the factory’s demolition.

The culmination of this sort of feedback between workers and artists allowed lived experiences of the community to be recalled and represented with renewed significance during the public event, while also questioning how these former factory workers will be represented in an increasingly precarious labour market.

Secondly, ‘Practice and Power’ offered an admittedly tenuous reflection on how complex processes of collaborative practice may be represented beyond the experiences of core participants, with the premiere of Susanne Bosch’s sound piece, The Realm of Possibility – An Acoustic Footprint. As a CAPP artist-researcher, Bosch recorded over 200 hours of dialogue from meetings, events and conversations within the CAPP network, with the resulting twenty-minute-long audio providing a snapshot of these exchanges. As collaborative practices grow, so too does the demand to publicly represent the myriad of experiences and processes that it constitutes. In this context, Bosch’s work is an important conduit to documenting and developing these emerging discourses.

POLITICS

Foregrounded by CAPP’s ambitions to facilitate “dynamic arts programming” and policy development, ‘Practice and Power’ provided opportunities to consider how organisations govern collaborative practice and their incumbent responsi-

bilities towards artists and publics.2 A panel comprising Irish and European art museum professionals addressed these concerns from an institutional perspective. The discussion emphasised the challenges of balancing artistic ambitions (to provide open and democratic spaces), against the financial and social responsibilities that define publicly-funded institutions. Helen O’Donoghue, Curator of Education and Community at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, highlighted the necessity for museums to be self-aware, drawing attention to their “powers of validation” as a consequence of their ongoing duties as “repositories”. Recognising how organisational conditions govern collaborative practice, necessitates what Lindsey Fryer (Head of Interpretation and Education at Tate Liverpool) described as “organisational structural shifts”, so that museums can engage more effectively with collaborative practices.

In the second keynote address, Pierre Luigi Sacco (Professor of Economy and Culture at University of Milan) expanded this inquiry by asserting the need to understand how collaborative practices are produced from an “ecological perspective”. According to Sacco, such processes should be inclusive of the frameworks of cultural institutions and industries, while being mindful of the capacity of collaborative practice to permeate such contexts and influence social policy. While Sacco’s optimism was encouraging, his tendency to historicise social collaboration in the context of the cultural industries was perhaps a missed opportunity to address the contemporary political instrumentalisation of collaboration.

PLACE

Following an experimental closing dinner designed by artist-chef Caique Tizzi – each course of which aimed to subtly reflect the four stages of CAPP – attendees were invited to participate in a number of ‘extracurricular’ events and excursions. Of particular interest was a day-trip to the small town of Callan in County Kilkenny, which, despite a population of just over two thousand inhabitants, boasts a vibrant arts scene rooted in the values of collaboration and community, spearheaded by progressive organisations such as Callan Workhouse Union, KCAT Arts Centre and Equinox Theatre Company. The visit intended to introduce Michelle Browns’ CAPP-funded project, ‘Bring Your Own Chair’, which explores the unique character of rural towns across Ireland’s southeast, investigating public space as a shared resource, through the lived experiences of participants. However, emphasis shifted towards the town’s wider ecology of socially-engaged practice which uses architectural initiatives, theatre, visual arts and research to address the past, present and future of Callan and its community. The passionate presentations made by various artists, organisers and participants highlighted the potential for collaborative art to foster inclusivity and enact civic change. After the previous days of reflection, the trip provided an opportunity to experience the realities and dynamics of collaboration in a particular context.

LEGACY

In conclusion, as a discursive forum, ‘Practice and Power’ significantly contributed to the legacy of CAPP’s development of European collaborative art practice. By inviting participants to consider the forms and organisational processes of contemporary practice, the closing event provoked contemplation of what future collaborative structures or alliances might look like. Secondly – and distinct to the abundant demands on collaborative arts for sustainability – ‘Practice and Power’ highlighted the continuation of dialogue as part of its critical legacy. However, this was underscored by an awareness that how we talk about collaborative practice really matters. In other words, interrogating the language of socially-engaged practice, including how it is used and what it might mean to a collaborative network is critical, if we are to avoid assumptions that may ultimately destabilise cooperation.

Gráinne Coughlan is PhD candidate with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCAM) at Dublin Institute of Technology. gradcam.ie

Notes 1 Clodagh Kenny, introduction to the ‘Practice and Power’ seminar, Dublin, 21 June 2018.

2 Collaborative Arts Partnership Programme http://www.cappnetwork. com/about-capp/about-the-project/

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Public Art

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ONE WISH (for Irish Public Art) ANNETTE MOLONEY, SINÉAD O’REILLY AND SALLY O’LEARY REFLECT ON 40 YEARS OF THE PER CENT FOR ART SCHEME, INVITING RESPONSES ON FUTURE ASPIRATIONS FOR PUBLIC ART COMMISSIONING.

The Project Twins, main entrance, Woodbrook College, Bray, 2015, mirror finish stainless steel (2.5m x 1.5m), curated by Aisling Prior; photograph by Eoin Holland, courtesy the Project Twins

THE PER CENT FOR ART SCHEME in Ireland is a unique fund for the commissioning of new artwork in all artforms, developed by professional artists working within community contexts. The Office of Public Works (OPW) began commissioning using the principles of Per Cent for Art in 1978, which means that this year marks the scheme’s 40th anniversary.

In the past, the scheme was known as the ‘Artistic Embellishment Scheme’, which was often problematic for artists, who frequently felt that they were being asked to provide something ‘decorative’ for large buildings or new road schemes, often at the last minute. Over the years, the scheme has been reviewed and updated, most recently in 2004, with the publication of the Irish National Guidelines on Public Art: Per Cent for Art Scheme. A key statement in the guidelines is a direct quote from Irish visual artist, Mick O’Kelly, who stated that: “Public art creates a dialogue with a people, a time and a place”.1 The Per Cent for Art Scheme aims to create opportunities and funding for people to engage with contemporary art and artists in everyday settings. The scheme is connected to major infrastructure projects, which gives a unique opportunity for artists to forge links with significant developments and social change in Ireland – from flood relief works (including a series of contemporary commissions managed by the OPW), social housing and roads developments within local authority contexts, to new schools and healthcare buildings. Local authorities, in particular, have made creative use of public art and Per Cent for Art Scheme opportunities and continue to show clear leadership in this area, through the development of public art policy, programmes and public engagement. A number of local authorities have a designated Public Art Manager or Curator in place, to manage and oversee all stages of commissioning.

There are many examples of Per Cent for Art projects that demonstrate the scheme’s potential to provide creative opportunities for professional artists and to extend the reach of contemporary art to new and diverse audiences, including the projects featured on publicart.ie. But there are also challenges in relation to the implementation of the scheme, which can be quite limiting. All commissioning processes need to be well-managed, so that artists have clear supports as they make new work, while also attracting artists who may not have previously engaged with public art opportunities. First

The Project Twins, main atrium, Woodbrook College, Bray, 2015, 8 large CNC cut layered acrylic perspex panels (2 m x 1.5 m each); curated by Aisling Prior; photograph by Eoin Holland, courtesy the Project Twins

time and once-off commissioners often need greater support and direction, as it can be a complex process, encompassing careful negotiation and creative risk.

The Arts Council of Ireland’s work in the area of public art is part of its development role, working to support artists and encourage public engagement. We regularly receive feedback that a review to improve the Per Cent for Art Scheme is needed, which in turn requires an agile approach that can work interdepartmentally. The previously established Interdepartmental Public Art Coordinating Group and Public Art Advisory Panel are no longer in operation, and there is a timely opportunity to address this, particularly in relation to increased infrastructure building programmes, outlined in current policy initiatives such as Project Ireland 2040.2 Our on-going work to support Irish public art is informed by regular contact with professional artists, as well as public art curators, producers and commissioners, such as those working in local authorities and public bodies. We gathered the following short statements in June 2018 from experienced public art commissioners to share their aspirations by completing the following sentence: If I had ONE WISH for Irish Public Art and the Per Cent for Art Scheme it would be this… “… that Irish Public Art is widely recognised, appreciated and celebrated as a fund for Artists – to provide artists with the time, budget and space needed to develop new work; to take risks and experiment without the pressure or expectation of a completed product or outcome. Overall I wish there was more awareness that the process in itself provides benefits for all involved.”

Gaynor Seville, Guild Manager, East Street Arts, Leeds UK, former Public Art Manager, Mayo County Council “...that imagination and ambition should be nurtured, enabling public art in Ireland to thrive, leaving everyone – artists and the public – wanting more.”

Muireann Ní Chonaill, Arts Officer, Laois County Council “… there is a clear need to celebrate and share the positive change people and places can experience through art encounters.”

Linda Shevlin, Artist and Curator TULCA 2018

“... the need to support artists throughout the entire commission. There should be a requirement for more artistic expertise represented in all selection panels and more support for the artistic process and the artist throughout the commission.”

Cliodhna Shaffrey, Director, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios “... that artists were truly inspired and excited to apply for Per Cent for Art commissions, and not put off by the process, as they often are at present.”

Liz Burns, Arts Officer, Wexford County Council The Per Cent for At Scheme offers exceptional opportunities for artists and communities to engage creatively and meaningfully with public infrastructure and services in original and exciting ways. We would encourage artists to consider the commission opportunities that arise through this scheme, as a way to support their practice and creative ambitions.

Publicart.ie shows a range of projects that may surprise you in their scope and there are always supports available, if there are questions, concerns or feedback to be discussed.

The Public Art Team in the Arts Council are: • • •

Sinéad O’Reilly, Head of Local Arts: sinead.oreilly@artscouncil.ie Annette Moloney, Arts Council Adviser, Per Cent for Art Scheme: annette.moloney@artscouncil.ie Sally O’Leary, Editor of Publicart.ie: editor@publicart.ie

Notes 1 This statement came directly from visual artist Mick O’Kelly, during the consultation process in 2004 on the Irish National Guidelines on Public Art: Per Cent for Art Scheme.

2 Project Ireland 2040 includes two core elements – a national planning framework and a national development plan – prioritising investment in public infrastructure and emphasising the wellbeing of all Irish citizens.

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Public Art

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Nathan O'Donnell, Clondalkin Paper Mills Collection, South Dublin County Libraries Archive

In Our Time NATHAN O’DONNELL DISCUSSES SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL’S PUBLIC ART PROJECT, ‘IN CONTEXT 4’.

DURING MY FIRST FIELDTRIP to Clondalkin, I went walking in Corkagh Park, the large green space adjoining the village, stretching to Kilmatead and Oldcastle. I had decided I would seek out the remains of a gunpowder mill, which, according to some online sources, survived more or less intact, somewhere in the park. I was vaguely following the route of the Camac river, but the park was much bigger than I’d anticipated.

Even after an hour walking, I had found no sign of the mill. I was using my iPhone to navigate, but the park boundaries weren’t showing on Google Maps, so I was just a blue icon hovering in a big empty space. And my battery was running out. I was almost at the fishing ponds when it started to rain. I tried one route after another, into woodlands and around by the car park, but there was no sign of any mill building. The rain intensified. I was miles from a bus stop. My phone was almost dead. I remember wondering “what am I doing here?”

At the end of 2016, I was awarded one of six artist’s commissions, as part of ‘In Context 4 – In Our Time’, the latest phase of South Dublin County Council’s ongoing public art programme (2016–19). The project I proposed, The Mill, was based upon the legacy of the industrial strikes and occupations that took place at the Clondalkin Paper Mill in the early 1980s. I wanted to think about some of the intersections between print culture, protest and place, and proposed working with a group from the area to produce a magazine in the tradition of left-wing radical publishing.

In the artist’s brief for ‘In Context 4 – In Our Time’, the programme’s rationale was outlined, founded upon the idea of the ‘artist as citizen’. Questions of citizenship, engagement and place were paramount. The commissioners described the fractured set of contexts that make up South Dublin County, as well as the mix of historic, geographic, social, linguistic and infrastructural conditions that constitute the county as a whole. They spoke about the ‘situation’ of the county, encouraging artists to find ways to respond to this, in whole or (more likely) in part, an approach familiar to architects, trained to respond to the conditions of a given site, rather than imposing a standard formal ‘solution’. With my initial proposal, I set out specific plans, project boundaries and a timetable that has since proven laughably unrealistic. But as I have spent more time in the place – often in that undirected observational state, wondering what exactly it is I’m doing – the conditions of the place have become clearer, and the project has gradually evolved.

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Public Art

Top: Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness, The Central Field; photograph by Kasia Kaminska

Fiona Dowling and George Higgs, Work Songs – First Earlies; photograph by Kasia Kaminska

Bottom: Ciaran Taylor, Rock to the Top – Harvest Walk; photograph by Muriel Foxton

One of the most significant aspects of the programme, for me, has been its breadth of duration. The curators, Claire Power and Aoife Tunney, have taken an open approach, not forcing any schedule upon the artists but rather allowing them to take whatever time they need. This allows the six projects to operate at a variety of speeds. Rhona Byrne and Yvonne McGuinness’s project, The Central Field, took place over a short period of time in April/May 2018, with a concentrated programme of activities taking place in Adamstown, at the centre of which was a temporary structure, an amphitheatre, built on land earmarked for development but lying fallow since the 2008 crash. Interestingly, the project came up against the much-touted ‘economic recovery’ of the last few years; developers’ interests in Adamstown were reviving at precisely the moment of Byrne and McGuinness’s engagement with this space of unutilised, unrealised potential. The artists are now developing a final presentation of their findings and outcomes which will be delivered within the timeframe of the ‘In Context 4’ programme, before the end of 2019.

Ciarán Taylor’s now completed project, Rock to the Top, was founded upon a simple conceit: a large boulder was placed on a pedestrianised plaza in Tallaght. Gradually, over the course of a year, it was chiselled down and carried by groups of walkers, to a spot in the Dublin Mountains, where it would form a sort of cairn. Over the course of twelve monthly hikes, a fluctuating group of walkers (300 in total by the end) made the trip from Rua Red, past Bohernabreena reservoir, and up to a designated point at the foot of Kippure. I joined one of these walks in autumn 2017. It was cold, but the small group was undeterred. Half-way along we stopped for a picnic in a farmer’s field; bales of hay were provided and a barbeque lit.

Other than this, no rigid structure was imposed on our journey – the walks were not programmed or otherwise burdened with expectation. As a result, the conversation with strangers was remarkably free, rich and full of unexpected connections.

The project concluded with a photo exhibition at Rua Red in October 2018.

Three other projects are ongoing. Work Songs, by Fiona Dowling and George Higgs, sets out to revive the art of organised singing at work. Their research led them to this largely disappeared tradition of industrial (and pre-industrial) cultures, when particular songs would have been associated with particular trades or working practices: cotton-spinner’s songs, for instance, or melodies sung by miners in the pits.

Dowling and Higgs are currently working with staff from various workplaces in South Dublin, exploring a revival of this tradition. Five ‘work songs’ are being devised with five different workplaces; to date, two have been performed, with the documentation viewable on the programme website (incontext4.ie).

Veronica Coburn’s Clamour and Roar – A Citizen’s Chorus responds directly to the project brief. As a playwright with a background in community theatre, Corburn has assembled a group of 48 volunteers who will work collaboratively with the artist and a composer, Debra Salem, to devise a piece of participatory choral theatre. The result will be staged at the Civic Theatre, Tallaght, in May 2019.

Finally, a project by Sarah Browne is scheduled to take place in 2019. Browne is responding to the culture of the gym, in particular the profusion of commercial gyms in the county, often located in industrial estates, with names like Macho Gym, Extreme Fitness, or Fit4Less. Taking these as her cue, Browne has set up relationships with several leisure

centres across the county (in Lucan, Clondalkin and Tallaght) and is planning a series of participatory performances at each of these sites, taking the format of the fitness class to discuss and challenge changing ideas of public health. These interventions will be workshopped and devised next year, with performances taking place in November 2019.

For my part, The Mill is still taking shape. An initial yearlong research phase – which involved conducting research about the strikes and making contact with young people in the area – has now come to end. In the project’s next phase I will be connecting with other groups in Clondalkin, running further workshops and developing a rationale for the upcoming publication.

These are six discrete projects, but there are a number of overlaps in terms of processes, preoccupations and thematic inquiries – with a focus on labour histories, perambulation, song and vocalisation, alternative and local histories, congregation, and the distinct presence of the mountains, felt across South Dublin County. However, I think the most common characteristic of projects across the programme, to the credit of the curators Power and Tunney, is a shared interest in the power of citizenship to determine our experience of a place.

The resulting programme poses a set of pivotal questions about how, in such troubled times as ours, we might reimagine a public realm.

Nathan O’Donnell is a writer, co-editor of Paper Visual Art Journal, and current IRC Enterprise Postdoctoral Fellow, based between IMMA and Trinity College Dublin.

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Public Art Roundup

ART OUTSIDE OF THE GALLERY

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

Happy Evere After

The Lost Tribe of Collis Sandes Woods

Artist’s name: Chad Keveny Title of work: Happy Evere After (Faire Parler Les Briques) Site: Clos des Lauriers Roses, 1140 Evere, Bruxelles, Belgium Commissioning body: La Région Bruxelloise Date advertised: December 2017 Date sited: September 2018 (on display until mid-November 2018) Budget: €2,000 Commission type: Public tender Project Partners: L’Entrela’ - Centre Culturel d’Evere

Artist’s name: Nik Taylor Title of work: The Lost Tribe of Collis Sandes Woods Site: Collis Sandes Woods & Tralee Educate Together National School Commissioning body: The Teacher Artist Partnership Residency Programme 2018 Dates carried out: 14 December 2017 – 3 May 2018 Budget: €1,000 Project Partners: DES, CAP Unit, DAF, DAHG and Arts Council of Ireland

Description: Happy Evere After (Faire Parler Les Briques) is a series of paintings created by Chad Keveny while on residency at L’Entrela’ – a cultural centre based in Evere, Bruxelles, Belgium. The project was a collaboration between the artist, the institution and the residents of the area. Keveny acted as a ‘mirror’ for the community, allowing them to see their lives from the outside, as well as giving visitors a glimpse into the life of the local the community.

The artworks created by Keveny are largescale Indian ink drawings on kraft paper, which were based on old photographs and interviews with local residents. The images reflect on significant everyday moments: birthdays, learning to ride a bike, walks in the park. During Heritage Weekend (15 and 16 September 2018), residents brought visitors on a tour of the area and their homes, which were designed in 1958 by the Belgian architect, Willy Van der Meeren. Keveny’s works were displayed along the route, where they will remain on display until mid-November 2018.

Description: The Lost Tribe of Collis Sandes Woods was created as part of a Teacher and Artist Partnership Residency. The artist Nik Taylor was paired with the teacher, Gail Groves, to work with first and second class pupils of Tralee Educate Together National School. The initial idea for the project’s theme came from the school’s location, its ethos and the diverse student population. The school is based in Collis Sandes House in Tralee town and is surrounded by woodland. The class of 21 children was made up of multinational, multi-faith, pupils of mixed ability with varying degrees of fluency in English. The project theme was ‘unity through difference’.

The artist worked in the classroom one afternoon a week on a modular project. Over nine sessions the children made components of a fictional tribal culture, including masks, jewellery, tunics, weapons, totem poles and a series of shelters. The project culminated in the construction of a tribal camp in Collis Sandes Woods. ‘The Lost Tribe’ donned their full costumes and inhabited their camp. They presented their tribe to an audience of teachers, fellow pupils and visiting parents. The final artifact is a series of ethnographic-type photographs documenting ‘The Lost Tribe’.

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Opportunities

Visual Artists' News Sheet | November – December 2018

GRANTS, AWARDS, OPEN CALLS, COMMISSIONS

Open Calls

Residencies

BEALTAINE 2019 TOURING AWARD

GOLDEN FLEECE AWARD 2019

NORDART 2019, GERMANY

DARKROOM PHOTOGRAPHIC RESIDENCY

Deadline 16 November

Deadline 23 November, 2pm

Deadline 30 November

Deadline 31 January 2019

Web bealtaine.ie

Web goldenfleeceaward.com

Web nordart.de

Web darkroom.ie/residency

PALLAS PROJECTS EXHIBITION CALL

FORM SCULPTURE EXHIBITION 2019

PER CENT FOR ART COMMISSION

EUROPEAN MEDIA ART RESIDENCY

Bealtaine is the festival that celebrates creativity as people age. The 2019 Touring Award is open to all art forms, inviting producers across all disciplines – including visual arts, dance, theatre and music – to submit proposals for consideration by the Bealtaine Festival. Bealtaine will provide a platform for presenting the tour in May along with some financial support. The production itself will be responsible for all aspects of the production and tour, with Bealtaine as a co-producer. The tour must happen during the month of May 2019.

The festival hopes to get a broad sense of what work is currently being developed or in production, across all art forms. There is also the potential for the festival to work with applicants at a later date and so while this award will be given for 2019, they are eager to broaden their network of artists and producers who fit the festival’s remit.

The touring award is €5,000, which can be drawn down on receipt of invoice from the artist or producer, in two installments. For more information, visit the Bealtaine website and download the application form.

Pallas Projects/Studios’ Artist-Initiated Projects, is an Arts Council-funded, open-submission, annual gallery programme. Its focus is on early and mid-career, emerging artists and recent graduates with an ambition to challenge and test their practice in the public realm. A relatively short turnaround time, of three to nine months, allows the programme to be responsive, reflecting what artists are currently making, and encouraging experimentation and risk-taking.

Applications are now open for ten threeweek exhibitions between February and November 2019. Solo, two-person and group exhibitions will be considered. Pallas welcome projects/bodies of work that are completed, near completion or work-in-progress that has clearly expressed outcomes, across all contemporary visual artforms.

This programme of self-directed projects will receive an artist’s fee/production budget, publicity, invigilation and other supports. Artists are asked to include in their proposal an outreach aspect, which considers different audiences/ communities of interest, such as but not limited to: events, workshops, talks, performances, and accompanying texts. For further information and an entry form, visit the website.

The Trustees of the Golden Fleece Award have announced that entries are now open for the 2019 Award.

The Golden Fleece Award provides resources for practicing contemporary visual artists and makers to innovate and develop their artistic vision. The award supports artists working in all forms of visual, craft and applied arts at critical junctures of their careers. Applicants should be Irish residents or from the island of Ireland.

The Golden Fleece Award is an independent artistic prize fund established as a charitable bequest by Helen Lillias Mitchell (1915–2000).

There is an annual prize fund of €20,000. It is usually possible to make a main award of between €12,000 and €15,000. How the rest of the fund is distributed varies from year to year at the trustees’ discretion.

All applications are assessed by a specialist panel, with a shortlist recommended to trustees.

There is no entry fee. Prizewinners will be announced in March 2019. For a full description of entry criteria and to make your application, visit their website.

Applications are now open for artists to submit works for consideration for the 2019 ForM Sculpture Exhibition. This outdoor sculpture exhibition takes place in Bangor Castle Walled Garden, Co. Down from Saturday 1 to Sunday 30 June 2019.

Artists are invited to propose site-specific works, or work that responds to the environment of Bangor Castle Walled Garden. This year two awards are available to selected artists: a £200 Panel Vote Award for artist materials of your choice; and a £200 Public Vote Award for artist materials of your choice.

Open to artists across Northern Ireland, Ireland and UK. Artists are responsible for delivery/travel expenses and/or other related costs associated with the exhibition. For submission forms, an artist’s brief and enquiries, contact Ards Art Centre or visit the website.

Kunstwerk Carlshütte is calling for applications for the NordArt 2019 International Exhibition of Visual Arts, inviting artists from across the world to submit their work. As an internationally established forum for cultural education and exchange, the NordArt has dedicated itself to the task of enhancing mutual understanding through the language of art.

Each year one artist is awarded the NordArtPrize – worth €10,000 – with the aim of supporting the art and culture scene. A Public Choice Award is awarded as well, through votes cast by exhibition visitors, nominating their favorite artist. The 2019 Exhibition is scheduled for 1 June – 6 October 2019. The annual exhibition is preceded by the international NordArt Symposium. Approximately 10 artists are invited to attend the symposium and create large works (sculpture, installation, painting) for the current NordArt. The NordArt annual art exhibition has been in place since 1999, with about 200 selected artists from all over the world. It ranks among the largest exhibitions of contemporary art in Europe.

The community at Gaelscoil Mhic Amhlaigh, Knocknacarra, Co. Galway, are commissioning a public art project for their new school building under the Per Cent for Art Scheme, operated by the Department of Education and Skills.

This is an opportunity to contribute a number of captivating artworks to the school. Professional artists are invited to be cognisant of their desire to include staff and children in the creative process, where possible. Varying approaches are welcomed, as well as collaborative proposals between different artists and art forms.

The budget for the project is €51,500. There is a two-stage selection process. Stage 1 is an expression of interest, where up to six individual or collaborative artists will be selected. In Stage 2, the selected artists will be invited to see the school, develop their proposal and will receive a stipend of €500 (inc. VAT) on receipt of their proposal. For further information contact Hilarly Morley. For details on the application process, visit the website.

Deadline 4 February 2019, 12 noon

The Photographic Artist Residency (4 March – 10 May) is focused on contemporary artists for whom photography is at the core of their practice. It is designed to allow participants the time, space and resources to develop a body of lens-based work that will culminate in a public exhibition, photobook, zine, etc. to be exhibited/ launched at The Darkroom. This residency will take place over 8 weeks with an additional twoweek slot allocated towards refining work for exhibition install.

Residencies include: full access to the black and white darkroom (except when classes are on in the darkroom); full access to the photography studio (except when classes are on in the studio); use of camera and studio equipment (with prior booking); access to Epson professional scanner and printer (with prior booking); the provision of all the chemicals and equipment for film processing and printing in the darkroom (residency recipient will have to provide their own photographic film and paper); mentorship, weekly feedback sessions, technical support, advice and access to coinciding Darkroom courses (depending on availability of space); use of Darkroom’s in-house photography library; and access to hot desk. Full details of application criteria, including necessary submission materials, can be found via the Darkroom website.

The new European Media Art Platform offers residencies for media artists in the fields of digital media, including: internet and computer-based artists, filmmakers, media-based performance, sound or video, as well as robotics or bio-art.

Artists with an EU passport can apply for a two-month residency between April and August 2019 (exact timing has to be negotiated with the host) at a number of institutions, including: Ars Electronica Center, Linz; Bandits Mages, Bourges, France; Foundation for Art & Creative Technology (FACT), Liverpool; IMPAKT, Utrecht, Netherlands; Kontejner, Zagreb, Croatia; LaBoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial, Guijón, Spain; M-Cult, Helsinki, Finland.

EMARE includes a €3,000 grant, a €4,000 project budget, free accommodation, travel expenses up to €500, free access to the technical facilities and media labs within the host institution, consulting by production and market experts and a professional presentation as well as the option to participate in exhibition tours at members’ festivals in 2019–2021. All selected artists will be invited for a networking conference from 1 to 3 of March in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Email arts@ardsandnorthdown.gov.uk

Deadline Stage 1: Friday 30 November, 5pm

Deadline 21 November, 5pm

Tel +44 (0)28 9181 0803

Email Hilary Morley, gma.percent@gmail.com

Deadline 3 December

Web pallasprojects.ie

Web ardsarts.com

Web gmapercent.com

Web call.emare.eu

professional development Winter 2018

Northern Ireland

Republic of Ireland Dublin City

Kerry

Belfast

Fermanagh & Omagh

ARTIST CRITIQUE

BEING CREATIVE

VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC

LAKELANDS – VISUAL ARTISTS CAFÉ

SUKI TEA TALKS – COLIN DARKE

Causeway Coast & Glens

with Jacqui McIntosh Date/Time: 2 Nov. 10:30–16:30.

Location: Royal Hibernian Academy.

Places/Cost: 12. €75 / €50 (VAI members).

PROJECT MANAGEMENT FOR THE ARTS

with Noel Kelly Date/Time: 5 & 12 Nov. 10:30–16:30.

Location: Visual Artists Ireland.

Places/Cost: 15. €160 / €80 (VAI members).

PREPARING PHOTOS OF YOUR ART: WEBSITES, PROPOSALS, PRINT

with Tim Durham Date/Time: 9 Nov. 10:00–17:00.

Location: Visual Artists Ireland.

Places/Cost: 10. €60 / €30 (VAI members).

Tools in how to maintain creativity and overcome blocks In partnership with Kerry County Council Date/Time: 10 Dec. 10:00–16:00.

Location: Siamsa Tire, Tralee.

Places/Cost: 12. €100/€50 (VAI members)/€20 (Kerry Artists).

Sligo VISUAL ARTS IN ALTERNATIVE SPACES AROUND SLIGO

In association with Sligo Arts Service Date/Time: 2 Nov. 10:00–15:00.

Location: City Hall, Quay Street, Sligo.

Places/Cost: 20+. €20 / €10 (VAI members).

BEING CREATIVE

Tools in how to maintain creativity and overcome blocks Date/Time: 3 Dec. 10:30–17:00.

Location: Visual Artists Ireland.

Places/Cost: 12. €100 / €50 (VAI members).

Date/Time: 14 Nov, 12 Dec, 16 Jan. 13:00 – 17:00.

Location: Visual Artists Irealnd [NI].

Places/Cost: 6. £5/FREE (VAI members).

Date/Time: 12 Nov. 13:00 – 14:30.

Location: Black Box. Places/Cost: FREE. CURATOR TALKS

Date/Time: 16 Nov. 14:00 – 16:00.

Location: Visual Artists Irealnd [NI].

Places/Cost: FREE. SPEED CURATING

Date/Time: 17 Nov. 11:00 – 17:00.

Location: Belfast Exposed.

Places/Cost: 120. £3 per appointment.

SUKI TEA TALKS – MARK MCGREEVY

Date/Time: December TBC. Location: QSS Bedford Street Studios.

Places/Cost: FREE. PEER CRITIQUE

Date/Time: December TBC. Location: Golden Thread Gallery.

Places/Cost: 6. £15/£10 (VAI Members).

ROI Bookings and Information To register a place or to find information on any of our upcoming Professional Development events in the Republic of Ireland, visit: visualartists.ie/professional-development-_

Development Partners

NI Bookings and Information To register a place or to find information on any of our upcoming Professional Development events in Northern Ireland, visit: visualartists.org.uk/booking

Date/Time: Spring TBC. Location: Waterways Ireland HQ, Enniskillen.

Places/Cost: 20+. FREE.

VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC

Date/Time: 13 Feb. 12:00 – 17:00.

Location: Flowerfield Arts Centre (TBC).

Places/Cost: 6. £5/FREE (VAI members).

Derry City & Strabane VISUAL ARTISTS HELPDESK/ PROJECT CLINIC

Date/Time: 22 Nov. 12:00 – 17:00.

Location: CCA Derry~Londonderry.

Places/Cost: 8. £5/FREE (VAI members).

CURATOR TALKS

Date/Time: December TBC. Location: Void Gallery.

Places/Cost: FREE. PEER CRITIQUE

Date/Time: December TBC. Location: CCA Derry~Londonderry.

Places/Cost: 6. £15/£10 (VAI Members).

Fees VAI members receive preferential discount of 50% on fees for all VAI, training and professional development events.

Tell us about your training needs!

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

VAI Show & Tell Events VAI will schedule Show & Tell events during 2018 and invites interested artists, groups, venues or partners to get in touch if interested in hosting a Show & Tell. E: monica@visualartists.ie

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