GRACE EXHIBITION SPACE for INTERNATIONAL PERFORMANCE ART 501©3 www.Grace-Exhibition-Space.com

SPRING 2021 … a slice of our world March 12 – May 28, 2021 PRESS RELEASE link Travel and meeting in person are at the heart of the international community of performance artists. In this time of the pandemic, the personal sharing of ideas and communication has been impossible. At the suggestion of Belfast performance artist, Sinead O'Donnell, during a panel hosted by Boston-based performance artist Marilyn Arsem, Grace Exhibition Space offered to fill-in this absence with a series of performance art events offered live from around the world LIVESTREAM: www.grace-exhibition- GRACE: space.com/graceStreamingPerformance.php Opened in 2006, Grace Exhibition Space is devoted exclusively to Performance Art. We offer an opportunity to experience visceral and challenging works by the current generation of international performance artists whether emerging, mid-career or established. Our BBEYOND events are presented on the floor, not on a stage, dissolving the [BELFAST, NORTHERN ] boundary between artist and viewer. This is how performance art is meant to be experienced and our mission is the glorification of Celebrating 20 years! performance art.

Grace Exhibition Space presents over 30 curated live performance art exhibitions each year, showcasing new work by more than 400 performance artists from across the and the world since 2006. THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021

Grace Exhibition Space for International Performance Art Space IRS tax-exempt 501(c)3 status in 2015. 3:00 pm EST - New York Time 7:00 pm GMT - Belfast, Grace Exhibition Space follows the We Have a Voice Collectives Code of Conduct to Promote Safe(r) Workplaces in the Performing Time Arts For more information and resources, visit: www.wehavevoice.org

Grace Exhibition Space has earned a Guidestar/Candid Gold Seal of Transparency

ONLINE LIVE : BBeyond | Art In Life / Life In Art [Belfast, North Ireland] 3pm Thu March 18 EST

BBEYOND Art In Life / Life In Art [Belfast, North Ireland]

Bbeyond is committed to promoting the practice of performance art and artists in Northern Ireland and further afield. Our aim is to FOUNDING OF BBEYOND raise people’s consciousness of live/performance art as being integral to the world in and around us, inspiring reflection and Bbeyond came into being early in 2001, both as a result of enriching lived experience. individual artists interests in the Performance Art genre but also as an indirect result of a proposal made by Artur Tajber from Kraków, We host artists of international reputation throughout the Poland, during a Catalyst Arts discussion in 1998. Artur proposed performance art world and encourage newer artists to experience that a more formal link be established between Belfast and performance art practices for themselves. Bbeyond encourages Krakow/Poland. His proposal was based on a series of previous greater access to and appreciation of this visually based art form, projects between artists in Kraków and Belfast, including: Polish- through facilitating modes of active private/public participation, Irish Exchange started in mid eighties (initiated by Alastair allowing people from all sectors of society, not just the traditional MacLennan, Gerry Gleason, Pawel Chawinski and Artur Tajber), arts, to experience and enjoy performance art directly. experience of gt gallery in Kraków and its exchange programme, Available Resources – Orchard Gallery, Derry 1991, Free City of This hypothesis for Bbeyond has a two-fold nature, one the Kraków – Bunker Sztuki, Kraków 1995, and 24 Hour (Equinox ‘actual’, the other liminal, one based on the physical/literal project) – Fort Sztuki, Kraków, 1997. journey, the other on a more elusive journeying through the process of being and becoming. Brian Patterson and Malgosia Butterwick began discussions on establishing a further project between both cities. As result of their The literal, overtly physical aspect deals with the location of Belfast initial discussions, an informal committee was established, which and hosts international artists here to present work alongside local included Brian Patterson, Malgosia Butterwick, Alastair Mac artists, thereby increasing the knowledge and consciousness of Lennan, Peter Richards, Brian Kennedy, Rainer Pagel, and Brian performance art here and increasing opportunities for local artists Connolly. This committee was formalised into Bbeyond on 22nd to travel abroad. May 2001 and a Mission Statement was developed

The liminal nature deals with transition, transformation and transcendence. This is the more subtle aspect and the power of the work rests in that it can only be realised in the process of actual being and doing. “Bbeyond” has the potential to become a directional force towards a lived philosophy of being, that continues long after the framing of any specific performance has ended, becoming the real transitioning and transforming energy in the life consciousness of the practitioner, to literally ‘be beyond’.

ALISTAIR MACLENNAN [NORTHERN IRELAND] SINÉAD BHREATHNACH-CASHELL [NORTHERN IRELAND]

"A primary function of art is to bridge our mental and physical Sinéad Bhreathnach- Cashell investigates ways of engaging people worlds. Through crass materialism we've reduced art to cultural in creative expression through co operative play. This real estate. 'Actual' creativity can be neither bought nor sold, kaleidoscopic practice includes interactive installations; though it's husks, shells and skins often are. It's possible in art to performance art and curating. Born and based in Belfast, she is a use meta systems without over-reliance on physical residue and member of Bbeyond, the Array Collective, attendant marketplace hustling, jockeying and squabbling." "Art is #WeShallNotBeRemoved and a CCA Research Associate. Sinéad the demonstrated wish and will 'towards' resolving inner and outer works as a curator for Northern Ireland Screen’s Digital Film conflict, be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social, Archive, developing live cinema projects using the Ulster Television cultural...or any interfusion of these." "As well as ecology of archive. http://bbeyond.live/sinead-breathnach-cashell/ natural environment, there's ecology of mind and spirit, each an integrated aspect of the 'other'. Our challenge today is to live this ELAINE MCGINN [NORTHERN IRELAND] integration. Already we're late. Time we 'have' is not so vital as time we 'make'." Alastair MacLennan travels extensively in Eastern Born in Belfast 1963. Through the debris of political and societal and Western , , North America and Canada presenting change, Elaine McGinn graduated from the University of Ulster Actuations (performance/installations). He is a member of the Belfast and continued study in Art Therapy at Queens University performance art entity, Black Market International and a founding Belfast. McGinn has consistently produced works locally and member (and current board member) of Bbeyond internationally and has recently taken part in Rebel live Action “Eco Belfast.http://www.amaclennan-archive.ac.uk Art” international performance festival, Bangkok, Thailand and Suncheon, South . McGinn casts a net over an ocean of BRIAN PATTERSON [NORTHEN IRELAND] experience and extracts her truths trough variegated metaphor. Her Performance and drawings respond to an embodied art Brian Patterson is administrator and co-ordinator of projects for practice, engaging with the connections between inner Bbeyond and one of the motivational forces behind setting up transformation and societal change. McGinn aims to expand Bbeyond. Patterson previously, worked with Flax art Studios (1998 awareness of the crucial and complex role of the body in making -2003) organising their International Residency Programme, and and experiencing art. www.elainemcginn.com Catalyst Arts, (1996-1998), an artist-run organisation, to promote innovative and experimental working practices. He graduated 1992 KEIKE TWISSELMANN [/NORTHERN IRELAND] from Ulster University and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, mainly with installation work. In 2001, he contributed Since 1989 Keike Twisselmann's scope of work includes painting, to Routes, a project set up to promote the work of the transport poetry of the mind, film, performance art, automatic writing, union in keeping sectarianism out of the work place in Northern philosophy, politics, the laws of nature and humanity; noise and Ireland. “Our position within the cultural map of time is the result silence. However, her two main fields of output are in painting and of humanity's constant search for identity and meaning.” performance art. Living and working between Berlin and Belfast, Patterson’s working practice is concerned with the poetics of being her recent performance artwork during the pandemic focuses on a in relation to place (the present/ environment) and intellectually microcosm of body - "-totum pro parte" - reflecting how we have arrived here (through our past/histories), and the back onto the Renaissance philosophy where a microscopic body potentially to navigate our future/s. http://bbeyond.live/brian- part REFLECTS a whole universe. https://keiketwisselmann.com/ patterson/

SANDRA CORRIGAN BREATHNACH [NORTHERN IRELAND] ELENI KOLLIOPOULOU [GREECE/NORTHERN IRELAND]

Sandra Corrigan Breathnach is an interdisciplinary artist working Eleni Kolliopoulou (1980, Athens) is a mixed-media visual and mainly in Performance Art. Recent performances include performance artist and researcher particularly interested in the ‘Severance II’ P.E.P.A (Pequeno Evento Performance Art) online intersection between performance and philosophy. Kolliopoulou 2021, ‘Human’, Revision Festival Belfast 2020. Notable works studied at the University Kapodistriaka of Athens in the include, an 8 hour collaborative performance 'Flux In Flow' with Department of Methodology, History and Theory of Science (1998 - Artist Alastair MacLennan, Golden Thread Gallery Belfast 2019, 2003, BA). Kolliopoulou moved to Turin (Italy) on September 2007 ‘Voids’, Rencontre internationale d'art performance (R.i.A.P.) where she attended ‘Philip Radice School of Physical Theatre, Canada 2018, ‘Truth ?’ Pollen Gallery Belfast 2018, 'Breath And contemporary dance, dance theatre and Butoh dance and took part Blood' a collaborative Performance Installation Exhibition with in several public group performances. Between 2008 and 2013 Alastair MacLennan, Burren College Gallery, 2018, Acción Mad 16 – Kolliopoulou accomplished her BA and MA degree by the Academy XIII Encuentro De Arte De Acción, Matadero Madrid 2016. Corrigan of Fine Arts of Turin; She was in Germany (Hochscuele Burg – Breathnach created and organised R-A-W (Recorded Action Web Gibiechestein Halle an der Saale) as an Erasmus student for the Exhibition) 2021, a new Bbeyond online Performance Art Video academic year 2011/2012. Eleni was awarded the degree of Doctor Exhibition. In 2019 she initiated and Curated ‘Somatic Distortion’ a of Philosophy for her practice based PhD research at Ulster Performance Art event which she developed with the L.S.C. & The University (Northern Ireland, UK). Kolliopoulou’s research Glens Centre. Corrigan – Breathnach is Co - Chairperson of the concerned the use of Butoh body notion in immersive Performative performance art organisation Bbeyond Belfast. Installations.www.elenivisualart.eu www.sandracorriganbreathnach.com

SARAH RISEBOROUGH [NORTHERN IRELAND] JAMES KING [NORTHEN IRELAND] I began making live performance in 2013 after moving from traditional representational painting into sculpture, intervention James King lectured for thirty years in Community Drama at the and installation using low value, mass-produced materials. I’ve University of Ulster. His extra mural activity included agit prop worked in the UK and Europe in groups and in solo. I write street art/ theatre and clowning. Since retirement King has began mythological fiction and facilitate local community projects. I developing sound poetry and spoken word improvisation, which framed this practice ‘Between Body and Land’ as a way of coming feeds into his performance art practice, particularly through into deeper relationship with both, intending to co-create a culture Bbeyond monthly group performance events which are held in between, that connects land, body and community in a way that galleries and outdoor spaces. Since Covid restrictions King hosts transforms the territorial markers of colonial culture. By relocating BBDB weekly zoom group performance meets. King’s contribution art making from studio to performance context, the body mediates tends to provide a vocal sound landscape, helping to create a shifts between vertical and horizontal surfaces, from 2 dimensions sense of group cohesion. The essence of Kings contributions follow into 3 in an interplay of making marks and structures. The an organic process, flavoured by spontaneous, intuitive responses performance space allows the works to dialogue directly with the to inner and outer promptings and stimuli. body, facilitating moments of personal significance while creating a http://bbeyond.live/james-king/ shared abstract language of colour and form for the audience community.www.instagram.com/sriseborough