The Visual Artists’ News Sheet
May – June 2014
COLUMN
Get Together 2014
5
Roundup
micro and macro forces of ice in the
Beckett Bucket, an artist’s book by Andy
Natural Artifice
retreating ice flows” as well as exploring
Parsons and Glenn Holman, was selected
ideas of “water remedies”.
from the collection at UWE, Bristol to be
Be There!
www.corkfilmcentregallery.com
part of the RUKssian Artist Book Exhibition at Tsaritsyno State Museum,
Visual Artists Ireland’s Get Together 2014 takes place on Friday 23 May at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. It will be the third iteration of the event, our national day of talks, clinics, presentations, information sharing and connecting with fellow artists and art workers. As with previous Get Togethers, the day will reflect and celebrate the rich and diverse nature of the Irish visual arts sector. We are extremely grateful to IMMA Director Sarah Glennie and her team for allowing us to use the museum and for making the arrangements for what will be a full and busy day appear so easy. IMMA seems almost tailor made for the Get Together. VAI have been generously given the run of six fine spaces in the historic North wing of Royal Hospital Kilmainham: the Little Theatre, the Johnston Room, the Drawing Room, the Baroque Chapel, the Lecture Room and the Great Hall. The event is open and relevant to artists and everybody with a professional interest in the visual arts sector: writers, students, educators, arts officers, curators, museum and gallery directors, art historians, service providers, archivists, studio managers, facilitators, art administrators, philanthropists, policy makers and legislators. So don’t delay – book a place now! In response to feedback from attendees last year, crucial improvements and developments have been made to the structure and programme of the Get Together: we’ve created more time for people to network catch up with each other via formal and informal sessions; there will be an emphasis on developing and maintaining careers in the visual arts; talks will focus on specific areas of everyday work / life issues effecting us all; and leading Irish artists Daphne Wright, Locky Morris and Elizabeth Magill will share their stories and the benefit of their considerable experience. Another key focus will be on the particular challenges facing artists living and working in rural and remote settings. The Common Room Café will occupy the Great Hall and host a variety of organisations offering essential information, supports, services materials and advice on a one-to-one basis. Short and informal presentations addressing a range of topical subjects will take place in the Common Room Café throughout the day. The Common Room Café will also feature VAI’s outlet for artists’ books, catalogues, monographs, art ‘zines and experimental publications. Throughout the day a series of presentations will be made by key experts on essential day-to-day professional matters that impact all visual artists. Speakers will include: the Arts Council and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Axis Web, Art Clash, IMMA’s residency programme, the Crafts Council of Ireland, Rua Red, Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Maurice Ward Art Handling and the Burren College of Art. These sessions will also include a focused presentation on how you can contribute to VAI’s rapidly growing Local Area Groups initiative, an endeavour that is empowering visual artists and art workers all over Ireland. In terms of broad issues, we’ll be asking ‘Is public art in crisis?’ and discussing the matter with a number of public art experts. We also welcome the participation of the Mothership Project, who will consider the issues facing artists as parents, such as: ‘Are retrograde attitudes and practices in relation to artists and parenthood an inherent part of the art world?’ AICA Ireland, in partnership with VAI, have convened discussions on timely and prescient issues. UK art historian / theorist Paul Wood, together with critic / artist James Merrigan and curator / visual arts policy specialist Cliodnha Shaffrey will offer thoughtful discourse on ‘Art in a Time of Transition’. Declan Long will chair the discussion. Elaine A King (Carnegie Mellon University, USA), a specialist in the field of art and ethics, will tackle questions around ‘Artists and Ethics’ in the company of writers Gemma Tipton and Fionola Meredith. Artist Alan Phelan will chair this lively discussion. VAI’s much-celebrated Speed Curating event returns in an improved format and with a larger number of participating Irish and international curators. As ever it offers an accessible and informal means for artists to show and discuss their work with influential art world professionals. We’re also delighted to present a large-scale version of our VAI Show & Tell event, which we’ve been rolling out around the country for some time. This will provide a peer-to-peer developmental showcase for artists. An exciting new development for 2014 will be the documentary and film pitching event, a chance to meet producers and directors working in film, documentary and factual TV to share ideas and make introductions relating to visual-arts themed projects. This event has come about in relation to VAI’s ongoing concern for developing media coverage and public access to the visual arts. Speed Curating, Show & Tell and the Documentary and Film pitching event are booking-only events; we recommend that you act fast to secure a place! The day with close in time-honoured fashion with time for a glass of wine and a chance to catch up with people you may have missed during the day. Bookings / information: www.visualartists.ie
Henrot @ Lismore
Moscow (13 Mar – 18 May). Beckett Bucket
was created, Parsons explained, “by asking members of the public for their insights
and anecdotes about Samuel Beckett and then transcribing them as text and
drawing on the spot, creating a book as a performance”.
Paola Catizone, installation view of ‘Natural Artifice’
In March (7 – 29) Soma Contemporary,
www.floatingworldsprojects.blogspot.com
Moving Mural
Still from Grosse Fatigue
Waterford showed an exhibition of drawing, video and performance works
Camille Henrot’s film work Grosse Fatigue
by Paola Catizone. The show’s title,
made its Irish debut at Lismore Castle
‘Natural Artifice’, referred to the intrinsic
Arts, Waterford (8 Mar – 13 Apr). The film
differences between the various media
premiered at the Venice Biennale 2013
used by the artist, who combines them
and was described in the press release as
through ‘performative’ drawing. Catizone
an “ambitious video … that attempts to
described how, in this process, “direct
tell the story of the universe’s creation
experience and impermanence are
from a computer desktop and using the
proposed to the viewer, who becomes
collection of the Smithsonian Institute in
witness to the live emergence of lines”.
Washington DC”.
www.paolacatizone.com
Jim Cathcart, image from ‘Them that work the hardest’
Them that work the hardest, a “mobile and www.lismorecastlearts.ie
modular mural” project by the Dublin-
based Scottish artist Jim Cathcart was skin to air & edge of absence
eamon McAteer
shown at Draiocht, Dublin (26 Feb – 19
New works by Eamon McAteer were
Apr). The starting point for the project,
recently on show at the Gordon Gallery,
Cathcart noted, “was in listening again to
Derry (14 Mar – 12 Apr). McAteer has
recollected lines from songs dealing with
received several prestigious awards and
the experiences of people at work, while
been exhibited in public institutions
at the same time reflecting on personal,
such as AIB, INTO and Thornhill
family and community history”.
College.
www.draoicht.ie www.gordon-gallery.com
Kilfeather at Oonagh Young McKenna at The Butler
The Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin
Bernadette Cotter, installation view of ‘Skin to Air...’
presented
Caoimhe
Kilfeather’s
exhibition ‘Before it stirs the surface’ (25 Bernadette Cotter’s exhibition at the
Mar – 21 Apr). Kilfeather showed a
Sirius Arts Centre, Cork (7 Mar – 6 Apr)
selection of sculptural / installation work
‘Skin to Air and Edge of Absence’,
explored architecture and the built world,
comprised a large installation in two parts and a one-off performance. The
with a “sensitivity to the intrinsic qualities of raw matter”.
Stephen McKenna
works on show featured shards of broken
www.oonaghyoung.com
glass engraved with fragments of poems
‘Stephen
by Eavan Boland, Mary Oliver and
Watercolours’ at the The Butler Gallery,
Adrienne Rich.
Kilkenny (8 Mar – 20 Apr) presented a www.siriusartscentre.ie
McKenna:
Drawings
& subliminal Anarchy
range of works on paper reflecting McKenna’s travels and demonstrating
Must Go On
“the fluency of McKenna in motion”. The
Multimedia group show ‘Must Go On’ ran
watercolours and drawings in the show
at Rua Red, Dublin (8 Mar – 19 Apr) and
featured locations such as Derry, Carrara,
featured work by Peter Land, Sonia Shiel,
Pompeii Berlin, Galicia, San Sebastian
Clodagh Emoe, Anita Delaney, Felicity
and Istanbul.
Clear, Ella de Burca and Nicholas Keogh.
www.butlergallery.com
“Proposing a mix of the tragic-comic,” the press release noted, “the works playfully
Beckett Bucket in Moscow
engage with contemporary anxieties, offering a tonic through strategies that include endeavor and failure, illusion,
Stephen Dunne, Edifice, oil on canvas
slapstick and the provocative”.
Working in painting, drawing, moving
www.ruared.ie
image Polar Forces Ruth Le Gear’s film work Polar Forces,
the
investigation
of
Stephen Dunne exhibited new works at
created on a residency in the Arctic
Pallas Projects, Dublin (20 – 29 Mar)
waters of Svalbard in 2012, was shown at
under the title ‘Subliminal Anarchy’. The
Cork Film Centre Gallery (6 Mar – 5 Apr). In this work Le Gear contemplated “the
and
“speculative and theoretical fictions,”
artist described his aim to “generate a Image from Beckett Bucket
universe of delirious narrativity, to depict