Image: Alicia Reyes McNamara, She who comes undone, 2019, Oil on canvas, 110 x 150 cm. Courtesy of the artist and Berlin Opticians Gallery. Opticians Berlin and artist the of Courtesy cm. 150 x 110 canvas, on Oil 2019, undone, comes who She McNamara, Reyes Alicia Image: The Visual Artists’ News Sheet VAN Issue 4: July – August 2021 A Visual Artists Publication

LISMORE CASTLE ARTS: ST CARTHAGE HALL CARTHAGE ST ARTS: LISMORE CASTLE IRELAND LISMORE, CO WATERFORD, ST, CHAPEL WWW.LISMORECASTLEARTS.IE ALICIA REYES MCNAMARA MCNAMARA REYES REYES ALICIA ALICIA Opticians Opticians by Berlin by Berlin Curated Curated 10 JULY - - 10 JULY 10 JULY 22 AUGUST 22 AUGUST 20212021

© Holt/Smithson Foundation, Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. York. New New (ARS), (ARS), Society Society Rights Rights Artists Artists at at VAGA VAGA by by Licensed Licensed Foundation, Foundation, Holt/Smithson Holt/Smithson © ©

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Nancy Holt, Concrete Poem (1968) (1968) Poem Poem Concrete Concrete Holt, Holt, Nancy Nancy

Inside This Issue

ARRAY COLLECTIVE THE NATIONAL COLLECTION

EXPERIMENTAL FILM SOCIETY PHOTO FESTIVAL Lismore Castle Arts Arts Lismore CastleLismore Castle Curated by Lisa Le Feuvre Feuvre Le Le Lisa Lisa by by Curated Curated Matthew Day Jackson, Dennis McNulty, McNulty, Dennis Dennis Jackson, Jackson, Day Day Matthew Matthew Paterson. Paterson. Katie Katie and and Moth Moth Charlotte Charlotte Nancy Holt with A.K. Burns, Burns, Burns, A.K. A.K. with with Holt Holt Nancy Nancy LISMORE CASTLE ARTS, LISMORE CASTLE, LISMORE, IRELAND CO WATERFORD, +353 (0)58 54061WWW.LISMORECASTLEARTS.IE 28 MARCH - 28 MARCH - 2021 2021 10 OCTOBER 10 OCTOBER LANGUAGE LANGUAGE

AND AND AND LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT Contents Editorial

On The Cover WELCOME to the July – August 2021 Issue of within the Irish visual arts community is The Visual Artists’ News Sheet. outlined in Susan Campbell’s report on the Array Collective, Pride, 2019; photograph by Laura O’Connor, courtesy To mark the much-anticipated reopening million-euro acquisition fund, through which Array and Tate Press Offi ce. of galleries, museums and art centres, we 422 artworks by 70 artists have been add- have compiled a Summer Gallery Guide to ed to the National Collection at IMMA and First Pages inform audiences about forthcoming exhi- . bitions happening in July and August across Among other profi les for this issue, 6. Roundup. Exhibitions and events from the past two months. Ireland and . This guide is Claire-Louise Bennett and Ruby Wallis con- 8. News. The latest developments in the arts sector. published on the VAN website (visualartist- tinue their collaborative project, Brian Fay sireland.com). interviews Michael Geddis and Joanna Columns We are thrilled to resume coverage of Kidney about their long-running collabo- exhibitions in VAN’s summer issue. Colin rative drawing project, Rachel Botha out- 9. One Hundred Summers. Cornelius Browne refl ects on the enduring Darke reviews ‘Sorry, Neither’ at the Naugh- lines recent developments in her curatorial legacy of painter, Joan Eardley. ton Gallery, as well as ‘Somnyama Ngonya- practice, while Joanne Laws interviews Cia- Fragmented Body. Mel French discusses her recent training in ma’ – the fi rst solo exhibition of renowned ra Roche about the evolution of her paint- silicone casting with model-maker, Paul McDonnell. South African photographer, Zanele Muholi, ing practice. Residency coverage for this on the island of Ireland, which was present- issue includes Rosie McGurran’s text on the Regional Focus: Donegal ed in partnership with Belfast Photo Festival Inishlacken Project, celebrating its twenti- 2021. Matt Packer interviews Iranian-Irish eth anniversary this year, and Bryan Gerard 10. The Winds are Wilder. Paul Hallahan, Visual Artist. fi lmmaker, Rouzbeh Rashidi, founder of the Duff y’s report on his experience of the inau- Glebe House and Gallery. Jean Kearney, Head Guide, Glebe House and Experimental Film Society, marking its twen- gural Bolay residency in the Linenhall Arts Gallery. tieth anniversary this year with a new pub- Centre. 11. On the Edge. Martha McCulloch, Coordinator, Artlink. lication and exhibition, ‘Luminous Void’, at In columns for this issue, Cornelius 12. Shape of The Place. Laura McCaff erty, Visual Artist. Project Arts Centre. Browne refl ects on the enduring legacy of Cé as tú? Myrid Carten, Visual Artist. In addition, reviewed in the Critique sec- painter, Joan Eardley, whom he refers to as 13. Community in Donegal. Jeremy Fitz Howard, Acting Manager, tion are: Sheila Rennick at Kevin Kavanagh the “patron saint of plein air painting”, and Regional Cultural Centre. Gallery; Fiona Hackett at RHA Ashford Gal- Mel French discusses her recent training lery; ‘Light and Language’ at Lismore Castle in silicone casting with model-maker, Paul Profi le Arts; ‘HOME: Being and Belonging in Con- McDonnell. temporary Ireland’ at The Glucksman; and This issue includes a Regional Focus on 14. Portraits of Resistance. Colin Darke reviews ‘Sorry, Neither’ and Richard Mosse at Butler Gallery. County Donegal, with insights from the Zanele Muholi at the Naughton Gallery, Belfast. This issue features an interview with Regional Cultural Centre, Artlink and Glebe 16. The Art of Now. Susan Campbell reports on recent acquisitions to the members of Belfast-based art collective, House and Gallery. In addition, artists Laura National Collection at IMMA and Crawford Art Gallery. Array, following their nomination for the McCaff erty, Myrid Carten and Paul Hallahan Turner Prize 2021, along with four other UK off er insights into the realities of maintaining Critique collectives. Another signifi cant development a visual art practice in the county.

19. Cover Image: A.K. Burns, The Dispossessed, 2018, installation view, Lismore Castle Arts, 2021. The Visual Artists' Editor: Joanne Laws 20. Sheila Rennick, ‘Screaming on Mute’, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery. News Sheet: Production/Design: Thomas Pool 21. Fiona Hackett , ‘The Long Disease: LA Stories’, RHA Ashford Gallery. News/Opportunities: Shelly McDonnell, Thomas Pool 22. ‘Light and Language’ at Lismore Castle Arts. Proofreading: Paul Dunne 23. ‘HOME: Being and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland’ at The The VAN Podcast (Post-production): Louis Haugh Glucksman. 24. Richard Mosse, ‘Incoming and Grid (Moria)’, Butler Gallery. Visual Artists Ireland: CEO/Director: Noel Kelly 25. Charlie Porter, What Artists Wear (Penguin, 2021). Offi ce Manager:Bernadett e Beecher 26. Adrian Duncan, Midfi eld Dynamo (Lilliput Press, 2021). NI Manager & Services Impact: Rob Hilken Advocacy & Advice: Shelly McDonnell Project Profi le Membership & Special Projects: Siobhán Mooney Services Design & Delivery: Michael D’Arcy 27. Mergemerge. Brian Fay interviews Michael Geddis and Joanna Logistics & Administration: Kaylah Benton Ní Bhroin Kidney about their long-running collaborative drawing project. News Provision: Thomas Pool 28. I Know, But Only Just. Claire-Louise Bennett and Ruby Wallis continue Publications: Joanne Laws their collaborative project. Accounts: Dina Mulchrone 30. The North is Now. Joanne Laws interviews members of the Belfast- based Array collective. Board of Directors: 32. Luminous Void. Matt Packer interviews Rouzbeh Rashidi, founder of Michael Corrigan (Chair), Michael Fitzpatrick, Richard the Experimental Film Society. Forrest, Paul Moore, Mary-Ruth Walsh, Cliodhna Ní Anluain (Secretary), Ben Readman, Gaby Smyth, Gina Career Development O’Kelly, Maeve Jennings.

34. Light and Shadow. Joanne Laws interviews artist Ciara Roche about Offi ce Northern Ireland Offi ce the evolution of her painting practice. 35. Working Interdependently. Rachel Botha outlines recent Visual Artists Ireland Visual Artists Ireland developments in her curatorial practice. Windmill View House 109 Royal Avenue 4 Oliver Bond Street Belfast Residency Report Merchants Quay, 8 BT1 1FF T: +353 (0)1 672 9488 T: +44 (0)28 958 70361 36. Living Island. Rosie McGurran outlines the evolution of the E: [email protected] E: [email protected] ‘Inishlacken Project’, celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. W: visualartists.ie W: visualartists-ni.org 37. High Impact. Bryan Gerard Duff y reports on his experience of the inaugural Bolay residency in the Linenhall Arts Centre. Principle Funders Project Funders Corporate Sponsors Project Partners

Last Pages

38. Opportunities. Grants, awards, open calls and commissions. International Memberships 39. VAI Lifelong Learning. Upcoming VAI helpdesks, cafés and webinars. Cooperative Commission Opportunity A call for project proposals

A brand-new commission opportunity for collaborative and socially engaged artists and/or arts collective, working at the intersection of art, theory/research and social action/justice.

A 15 month project (Sept 2021 – Dec 2022), with a budget of €60,000, open to local, national and international artists or arts collectives with a focus on collaborative and socially engaged arts practice.

This Cooperative Commission sets out to encourage meaningful and in-depth engagement with the communities of Tuam as well as the distinct cultural, geographical, architectural and socio-political landscape of this unique place. The LAB Gallery, Interested artists/ collectives should Hypnagogia Foley Street, Dublin 1 submit their application pack via the 01 222 5455 Creative Places Tuam website. NEW WORK BY ANN MARIA HEALY artsoffi [email protected] 27TH JUNE TO 8TH OCTOBER 2021 thelab.ie THE LAB GALLERY @LabDCC facebook.com/TheLABGalleryDublin

Supported by Dublin City Council, The Arts ADMISSION FREE Council and The Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics

creativeplacestuam.ie

The Butler Gallery in partnership with Kilkenny Arts Festival present the Irish premiere of INCOMING

11 June – 29 August 2021

Book free tickets at www.butlergallery.ie Visit website for Public Engagement Events

Butler Gallery Evans’ Home | John’s Quay | Kilkenny | R95 YX3F Fingal, A Place for Art Fingal County Council and RHA School Studio Award

Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with the RHA School are offering an opportunity of a funded studio space for a professional artist for a period of one year, commencing in September 2021. The award is open to practising artists at all stages in their professional careers working in visual art.

The award offers an artist the opportunity to develop their practice within the Closing date for receipt of applications: institutional framework of the RHA School Sunday 25th July 2021 at 5.00pm and covers the cost of studio rental and administration.

To be eligible to apply, applicants must Visit www.rhagallery.ie to complete an application form.

have been born, studied or currently reside For further information please contact RHA School by in the Fingal. email at [email protected] or by phone on (01) 661 2558.

www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts

ArtistsSS2021_VAI_Landscape_255.04x164.012mm_OD140621.indd 2 16/06/2021 11:36

May—Sept 2021 IMMA OUTDOORS Pavilions / Exhibitions / Artist Commissions / Workshops / Yoga / Performances / Music / Poetry / Studio Street / Cafes / Pop-up Shop

Enjoy IMMA Safely. [email protected] Admission Free. All Welcome. +353 1 612 9900 Book your tickets online for imma.ie events and exhibitions at imma.ie Laura Fitzgerald I have made a place 18 June – 19 September 2021

Laura Fitzgerald, Smallholder (Detail), 2021. © The Artist.

See our website and social media channels for the latest updates: crawfordartgallery.ie Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021 6 Exhibition Roundup

Dublin Belfast

A4 Sounds Gallery Dlr LexIcon ArtisAnn Gallery Belfast Photo Festival ‘Queer Utopia’ by Mariette Feeney was on dis- The group show ‘Tangled’ is on display at the Margaret Arthur RUA’s new collection of work Belfast Photo Festival took place from 3 to 30 play online and in-person at A4 Sounds Gallery Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon, until 18 July. ‘Tides of Life’ was on display in the gallery and June this year with the theme of ‘Future(s)’. From from 13 to 30 May. As stated by the gallery: The exhibition was created by Michael For- online from 2 to 26 June. From the gallery: the festival: “Taking ‘Future(s)’ as its theme, this “‘Queer Utopia’ is a collaborative sculptural and tune in collaboration with Southside Travellers “This exhibition is inspired by the ever-chang- year’s festival tackles issues as diverse as climate digital vision of a queer future: a pink, joyful, Action Group. From the gallery: “The exhibition ing light and colour of the coastlines and tides change, migration, the advancement of technol- playful space created in response to a series of includes both new and recent work from the art- of Counties Donegal and Down… [Margaret ogy, government surveillance and the power of discussions between the artist and other queer ists’ studios. The range of work varies from folk- Arthur] exhibits widely in Ireland, the UK, and protest, to explore how the future is shaped by people… Our queer utopia is a place of freedom, loric themed drawings by Alice Maher to inti- throughout Europe, and in the USA, where she our actions in the present. Rather than present- of righteous anger, a place full to the very brim mated ethnographic styled images of Traveller lived and worked for a year, holding a solo exhi- ing a singular vision of what this future might with loving and radical care for our comrades.” hair and hairstyles as seen in the photographs by bition at The Russell Rotunda, a Senate building be or look like, the festival instead offers up a Breda Mayock.” in Washington DC.” speculative, imaginative glimpse into… what might lie ahead.” a4sounds.org libraries.dlrcoco.ie artisann.org belfastphotofestival.com

Pallas Projects/Studios Temple Bar Gallery & Studios Golden Thread Gallery MAC Belfast John Conway’s ‘Object Im/permanence’ was Viewable online and in-person until 10 July, Paul Moore’s solo exhibition, ‘Fionnghlas’, was Three exhibitions are showing at The MAC until on display at Pallas Projects/Studios from 21 ‘Agitation Co-op’ features artists Michele Hor- on display from 25 to 30 May in the Project 8 August. Dutch filmmaker Jaap Pieters’s Super May to 5 June. From the gallery: “John’s ver- rigan, Catriona Leahy, Laurie Robins, Libita Space at Golden Thread Gallery. From the gal- 8mm film medley, ‘The Eye of Amsterdam’, is on bal description of the exhibition space evokes a Sibungu. From the gallery: “’Agitation Co-op’ lery: “Within the exhibition, Moore looks to display in The MAC’s Sunken Gallery, shown on Church-like quality; I imagine a quiet, reverent is an exhibition that investigates the subject of these experiences almost meditatively, creating three showreels, rotating throughout the dura- space that has been designed to make you take landscape from a range of vantage points; not a cathartic release during difficult times. This tion. Presented in the Tall Gallery is the first a moment, to think. In my mind, the gallery only social and political ideologies but also, map- continuing struggle with the present and the institutional exhibition of artist Maya Balcioglu, is large and filled with darkness that your eyes ping and topography… It is accompanied by an search for both extreme reality and out of body whose works are “neither figurative nor abstract adjust to as you walk in. The luminous icons online screening programme highlighting films experience marks a change in Moore’s practice but in an intermediary condition.” The Upper which intermittently fill with light are dazzling, by Forensic Architecture, Melanie Smith, and towards a more contemplative question about Gallery hosts the first UK exhibition of New appearing as if by magic and sizzling words into Eva Richardson McCrea, Frank Sweeney and how we as a society are equipped to deal with York-based painter, Ambera Wellmann, whose your eyes.” the Dublin Dockworkers Preservation Society.” adversity.” works “embody processes of erasure and revision, engaging with the potential of chance, vulnera- bility, and failure.” pallasprojects.org templebargallery.com goldenthreadgallery.co.uk themaclive.com

The Complex The Library Project Naughton Gallery PS² Tanad Aaron and Mark Swords collaborative The Library Project and Basic Space Dub- The group show ‘Sorry, Neither’ continues until Gary Shaw’s ‘GYRE 2’ was on display at PS2 project ‘Portico’ was shown at The Complex lin exhibited the group show ‘On Belonging’ 11 July. From the gallery: “Taking its title from from 27 May to 12 June. Shaw exhibited three from 7 to 28 May. An online programme of at The Library Project from 3 to 27 June. This Star Trek’s Lieutenant Nyota Uhura’s response work groups of his drawing output: Drawings of scheduled events coincided with the exhibition, collaborative group exhibition was guest curat- to being referred to as a ‘fair maiden’, ‘Sorry, circles, Sketches of passers-by and kinetic ani- to communicate the exhibition to digital audi- ed by Diana Bamimeke and featured work by Neither’ is an exploration of Afrofuturism and mations. From the gallery: “Gyre is a term most- ences. This featured a textual exchange of ideas Bassam Al-Sabah, Moran Been-noon, Maïa Black futurity within contemporary art and pop ly used in oceanography and means a circular or between the artists – which was digitalised to Nunes, Osaro, Oscar Fouz Lopez, and Salva- culture… The term ‘Afrofuturism’ refers to a cul- spiral path, a motion or large current… At first create an interactive experience and punctuated tore of Lucan. From the gallery: “Each of the tural movement that uses the frame of science glance the drawings look calming and medita- with links to research material and imagery – a exhibiting artists have been invited to respond fiction and fantasy to reimagine the history of tive like a mandorla, but then reveal a nervous video walk-through and audio description of the not only to the state of belonging – how it is the African diaspora and to invoke a vision of energy, where the lines turn to sparks in a fire exhibition, musical performances/practices, and conceived and made physical – but conversely, to a technically-advanced and generally hopeful wheel.” audio essays. not-belonging, and the outcomes of both in the future in which Black people thrive.” modern world.” thecomplex.ie basicspace.ie naughtongallery.org pssquared.org

John Conway, ‘Object Im/permanence’, 2021, installation view; image courtesy the artist and Pallas Projects/Studios. Paul Moore, Fionnghlas, image courtesy the artist and Golden Thread Gallery. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Exhibition Roundup 7

Elizabeth Price, Footnotes: Stiletto, 2020; image courtesy the artist and Void Gallery.

Regional & International

126 Artist-Run Gallery Backwater Artists Group Cork Midsummer Festival 2021 GOMA Gallery of Modern Art, Waterford The group show ‘Fuzzy Logic’, was on display The Cork-based Backwater Artist Group pre- This year the Cork Midsummer Festival (14 – 27 Elaine Hoey’s solo exhibition, ‘Flesh and at 126 from 19 May to 13 June, featuring art- miered their show ‘The Human Animal’ on 22 June) featured a diverse range of visual art proj- Tongue’, was presented from 8 June to 1 July at works by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Ben Reilly, David February and it will run until 12 November. ects, which were exhibited at venues across the GOMA Gallery of Modern Art, Waterford. As Dunne and Lorraine Cleary. According to the From the artist group: “In the midst of the city, including: Marie Brett, ‘The Day-Crossing stated in the press release, the exhibition, which press release, the exhibition was a “kaleidoscope COVID-19 pandemic a core strand of Backwa- Farm’; Laura Fitzgerald, ‘I have made a place’; presented new work by the artist, “questions the of approaches to the entropy of uncertainty ter’s 2021 artistic programme examines humani- Bassam Al-Sabah, ‘Longing, Beyond’; Eimear negative representation of the ‘monstrous’ female and fuzzy logic… Uncertainty is a term used in ty’s relationship with the natural world and takes Walshe, ‘The Land for the People’, developed body through the exploration of the myth of subtly different ways in several fields, including a closer look at ‘the human animal’ in this con- with NSF Neon public art commission; Fat- Medusa. Historically Medusa has been depicted philosophy, statistics, economics, finance, insur- text. The Human Animal: A Personal View of the ti Burke, ‘Open Road’, developed with The as either a monster or a beautiful woman who ance, psychology, sociology, engineering, and Human Species is a 1994 television documentary Glucksman; ‘FALL/OUT’, a series of installa- was raped, blamed, then transformed into a rag- information science. It applies to predictions series written and presented by zoologist, ethol- tions curated by Pluck Projects; and Doug Fish- ing monster and subsequently beheaded.” of future events, physical measurements already ogist and surrealist painter Desmond Morris.” bone, ‘Please Gamble Responsibly’, which con- made, or to the unknown.” tinues at Crawford Art Gallery until 28 August. 126gallery.com backwaterartists.ie corkmidsummer.com @gomagallerywaterford

Künstlerhaus Bremen NEON, Athens Pavilion of Ireland Limerick City Gallery of Art Irish artist Aleana Egan’s exhibition ‘small field’ The ‘Portals’ group show in Athens, on display The 2021 Irish Pavilion exhibition, ‘Entangle- The latest iteration of Mary-Ruth Walsh’s tour- was on display at Künstlerhaus Bremen from from 11 June to 31 December, features work ment’ by Alan Butler, opened at the 17th Ven- ing exhibition, ‘Skin Deep’, was on display at 8 May to 29 August. From the gallery: “‘small by Irish artist Daphne Wright. The exhibition ice Architecture Biennale on 22 May and runs Limerick City Gallery of Art from 14 May to field’… creates a setting of abstract sculptures is a collaboration between Hellenic Parliament until 21 November. From the artist: “‘Entangle- 27 June. The tour began at in that are assembled in multi-layered constella- and NEON and is shown at Hellenic Parlia- ment’ physicalises the materiality of data and 2020 and will end at Wexford Arts Centre in tions. Materials such as metal, wood, pigment ment (a former Public Tobacco Factory) Library the interwoven human, environmental and cul- October 2021. From the gallery: “Through the and fabric refer to their own properties, while and Printing House. From the gallery: “‘Portals’ tural impacts of communication technologies. medium of film, collage and sculpture, Walsh also remaining indeterminate: In this ambigu- aspires to convey the messages, ideas and visions The exhibition highlights how data production explores skin’s parallels to architecture. Using ity, the objects evoke immaterial moments – of contemporary artistic creation, investigating and consumption territorialise the physical Arnold Bocklin’s ‘The Isle of the Dead’ (1883) ideas, thoughts, feelings, moods, energies, and the new reality revealed through the prism of landscape and examines Ireland’s place in the as a reference, ‘Skin Deep’ brings us to an imag- relationships both towards each other as well as change and disruption.” The exhibition is curat- pan-national evolution of data infrastructure… inary island, a medical-tourism destination for interpersonal. Manifested in form, the internal ed by Elina Kountouri (NEON) and Madeleine ‘Entanglement’ responds to the [2021] theme... the pursuit of the perfect skin.” is turned outwards.” Grynsztejn (Pritzker, MCA Chicago). How will we live together?” kuenstlerhausbremen.de neon.org.gr labiennale.org gallery.limerick.ie

Roscommon Arts Centre South Tipperary Arts Centre The Dock, Carrick on Shannon Void Gallery Barbara Knežević’s ‘Scapes: Rose Quartz’ was The artist collective, Na Cailleacha (The Witch- Featuring artists Brian Fay, David Smith, Ellen ‘CHOREOGRAPH’, the first solo exhibition on display at Roscommon Arts Centre from 11 es), is comprised of eight older women who are Duffy, Eve O’Callaghan, Fiona Finlay and of Elizabeth Price in Northern Ireland, is on May to 18 June. From the gallery: “’Scapes: Rose currently based in Ireland but come from several Jamie Cross, the group show ‘Second Summer’ display from 22 June to 21 August at the Void Quartz’ is a sculptural work that is comprised of other countries as well as Ireland. Their group is on display at The Dock until 28 August. From Gallery. Price’s distinctive film works inhabit the an array of crystals, plants, ceramic coiled vessels, show was on display at South Tipperary Arts the gallery: “It’s an exhibition that gently asks digital world using computer animated voices, a single-channel video work and silicone surfac- Centre from 7 May to 12 June. From the gallery: questions of us, as it marks both the end and graphics and a saturated videography that give es that are carefully arranged on clear acrylic dis- “The collective set out to explore their experi- the start of a time – when we as a community the works a dystopic sensibility, exploring the play plinths. The arrangements of objects in this ence of being creative women in a collective way. are resurfacing from a period of remoteness. The human experience from industrialisation to the exhibition speak to the deep human faith in the In that way, they are doing what women have exhibition is full of pattern, colour, and whim- digital age. The films are anthropological, often power of the material things around us.” always done – working, sharing and supporting, sical moments that point to the domesticity of exploring mundane objects and imbuing them arguing and debating with each other, owning our recent lives.” with a relevance, and situating them within an their space, and their visibility.” historical moment.

roscommonartscentre.ie southtippartscentre.ie thedock.ie derryvoid.com Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 8 News THE LATEST FROM THE ARTS SECTOR

Array Nominated for Turner Prize 2021 Array Collective is a group of Belfast-based in Hastings. artists who create collaborative actions One of the world’s best-known prizes in response to issues affecting Northern for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims Ireland. Their work encompasses perfor- to promote public debate around new mances, protests, exhibitions and events. developments in contemporary British The Turner Prize 2021 jury commended the art. Established in 1984, the prize is named way Array Collective fuse seriousness with after the radical British painter JMW Turn- humour, and address contemporary issues er (1775-1851). The Turner Prize winner is using ancient folk imagery. Recent projects awarded £25,000 with £10,000 going to include public artworks in support of the each of the others shortlisted. decriminalisation of abortion in Northern The members of the Turner Prize 2021 Ireland, challenging legislative discrimi- jury are Aaron Cezar, Director, Delfina nation of the queer community, and par- Foundation; Kim McAleese, Programme ticipation in the group exhibition ‘Jerwood Director, Grand Union; Russell Tovey, Actor; Collaborate!’ in . and Zoé Whitley, Director, Chisenhale Other shortlisted arts groups include Gallery. The jury is chaired by Alex Farqu- London-based collective, Black Obsidian harson, Director, Tate Britain. Sound System; London-based duo, Cook- Turner Prize 2021 is supported by the ing Sections; -based project, Gentle/ AKO Foundation, with additional support Radical; and Project Art Works, a collective from The John Browne Charitable Trust of neurodiverse artists and makers based and Lance Uggla.

Array Collective and Friends, The North is Now (one week after decriminalisation), 2020; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy Array and Tate Press Office

Basic Income Guarantee Pilot Scheme as part of the UK City of Culture 2021 cele- for presenting and discussing architecture. Since Awards were made to artists in the follow- VAI welcomes the announcement that a Basic brations. The winner will be announced on 1 2000, the Irish pavilion has showcased the range ing disciplines: Dance, Literature and Language Income Guarantee pilot scheme for artists December 2021 at an award ceremony at Cov- and vigour of Ireland’s diverse architectural cul- Arts, Drama and Theatre, Music and Opera, will be part of the government’s recovery plan. entry Cathedral broadcast on the BBC. ture and this year Ireland’s creative talents have Visual Arts, Film, TV and Combined Arts. Speaking following the Cabinet meeting on 1 This is the first time a Turner Prize jury has delivered a special project with global resonance The next programme, the Chris Ledger Lega- June, Catherine Martin TD said that she was selected a shortlist consisting entirely of art- which I know will have wide reaching impacts.” cy awards, opened in May and is named after delighted to confirm that in the National Eco- ist collectives. All the nominees work close- Ireland at Venice is an initiative of Culture the former CEO of University of Atypical, who nomic Recovery Plan announced that day, she ly and continuously with communities across Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council and sadly passed away in the summer of 2020. has secured a commitment for Government to the breadth of the UK to inspire social change the commitment to support and fund Ireland’s prioritise a Basic Income guarantee pilot scheme through art. The collaborative practices selected presence at the Venice Architecture Biennale New Neon Commission at NSF for artists. for this year’s shortlist also reflect the solidarity enables Irish architects to achieve international The National Sculpture Factory (NSF) in asso- Minister Martin said: “This was the number and community demonstrated in response to the exposure in line with the Government’s com- ciation with Cork Midsummer Festival have one recommendation from artists and the sector pandemic. mitment to promote Ireland’s creative strengths commissioned a new public artwork by artist through the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce Alex Farquharson, Director of Tate Britain globally. Eimear Walshe, entitled The Land for the People. Report – Life Worth Living. It is an unprecedent- and Chair of the Turner Prize jury, said: “One Annex’s exhibition, situated in the Arsenale For the second year running, the National ed move and the pilot scheme will involve a sig- of the great joys of the Turner Prize is the way in Venice, responds to the overall theme How Sculpture Factory has commissioned a new pub- nificant number of artists.” it captures and reflects the mood of the moment will we live together? set by Hashim Sarkis, the lic artwork for the Cork Midsummer Festival in She added: “We recognise that bold steps are in contemporary British art. After a year of lock- curator of Venice Architecture Biennale 2021. the form of a neon artwork which will hang on necessary for our invaluable and much treasured downs when very few artists have been able to ‘Entanglement’ addresses the human, envi- the front facade of the NSF building. This year arts community to come back stronger than exhibit publicly, the jury has selected five out- ronmental and cultural impacts of communica- they have commissioned Walshe to create a new ever before. I will therefore develop a proposal standing collectives whose work has not only tion technologies by highlighting the materiality work which was publicly launched on the eve- for the Basic Income guarantee pilot scheme by continued through the pandemic but become of our digital age. The pavilion presents Ireland’s ning of the summer solstice, Monday 21 June, at July, working with my Cabinet colleague Minis- even more relevant as a result.” central place in the pan-national evolution of 11pm. The illumination of this artwork was live ter Heather Humphreys in the Department of Francis Nielsen, Cultural & Creative Direc- data infrastructure while reflecting the fact that streamed from the venue on Instagram TV and Social Protection”. tor of Culture Coventry, said: “We are incred- historically Ireland has played a significant role we can continue to watch it light up the dark- The Economic Recovery Plan (ERP) sets out ibly excited to work with the five collectives to in the story of data infrastructure. This dates ness of our evenings right through to the winter a framework for recovery as we emerge from the present their work at the Herbert as part of UK back to 1858, when the world’s first transatlan- solstice on Tuesday 21 December. COVID-19 pandemic. The ERP pays particular City of Culture 2021. We pride ourselves on tic telecommunication cable landed at Valen- The Land for the People draws on Walshe’s attention to sectors most impacted, such as tour- our socially engaged programme, rooted in and tia Island, off the south-west coast of Ireland. research in nineteenth and early twentieth cen- ism and hospitality, live events and the arts, and relevant to our local communities – something Extending from Newfoundland in Canada, the tury land contestation in Ireland, and its sig- will help kick start the recovery. echoed by the practice of each collective. This cable rendered the remote 11km-long island as nificance in the contemporary era. The project Minister Martin added: “This plan presented selection of artists and the timing of this Turn- the most connected node in a global telecom- comprises of a temporary neon sculpture and today goes a long way to meeting the commit- er Prize presents us with the opportunity to do munications network. an interactive publication based on nineteenth ments we made in the Programme for Govern- something truly exceptional.” ‘Entanglement’ will be open as part of The century political pamphlets. The project is the ment and in charting a path to recovery from Venice Architecture Biennale until 21 Novem- latest in a series of works by Walshe which aim the challenge of COVID-19. Crucially, the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2021 ber 2021 and viewers can also engage with to re-imagine land ownership and land use in Plan specifically recognises the unique challeng- The Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gael- the exhibition through a dedicated website Ireland. es that have been faced by sectors such as Tour- tacht, Sport and Media, Catherine Martin T.D. (entanglement.annex.ie) and Culture Ireland’s Eimear Walshe is an artist, writer, and edu- ism, the Events sector, Gaeltacht, Sports, Arts launched Ireland’s Pavilion at the Venice Archi- YouTube channel. On its return from Venice, cator from Longford. Their practice is based on and Culture and Media, and sets out a package tecture Biennale on Thursday 20 May 2021. ‘Entanglement’ will tour in Ireland in 2022, thus research in fiscal and sexual economies and his- of supports that are being put into place to safe- This year Ireland is represented by Annex, a ensuring that Irish audiences can see the exhibi- tories, working to reconcile the aesthetics, values guard and stimulate these sectors.” multi-disciplinary research and design collective, tion first-hand. and tastes of their queer and rural subjectivity in VAI look forward to seeing detailed plans for comprised of a core team of architects, artists, the production of sculpture, publishing, perfor- the roll out of the pilot scheme and to continu- and urbanists who are presenting an exhibition, Creating Time Awards 2020/21 mances, and lectures. Walshe lives and works in ing our advocacy work in this area. titled ‘Entanglement’, which addresses how our Winner of UK, , is one county Longford. Recent projects and presen- everyday lives have become increasingly entan- of 11 d/Deaf, disabled and neurodivergent art- tations include a Platform Commission for the Turner Prize Shortlist Announced gled with data technologies. ists to be awarded £1,000 by a new grant pro- 39th EVA International; ‘The Department of In early May, Tate Britain announced the short- Launching the opening of the exhibition gramme run by the University of Atypical. Sexual Revolution Studies’, Van Abbemuseum list for Turner Prize 2021: Array Collective, online, Minister Martin said: The Creating Time Awards is the first in a / Design Academy Eindhoven (2018); ‘Mirac- Black Obsidian Sound System, Cooking Sec- “I congratulate Annex on this innovative series of grant programmes funded by Unlimit- ulous Thirst: How to get off in days of depri- tions, Gentle/Radical, and Project Art Works. and cutting edge exhibition which I know has ed and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to support vation’, curated by Daniel Bermingham, Galway An exhibition of their work will be held at the been delivered in particularly challenging cir- Northern Ireland’s d/Deaf and disabled artists Arts Centre (2018); and ‘Separatist Tendencies Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry cumstances. The Venice Biennale remains the to develop their work and enable them to reach for The Deviant Programme’, Van Abbemuseum from 29 September 2021 to 12 January 2022 world’s most important international platform new audiences. (2017) Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021 Columns 9

Plein Air Skills

One Hundred Summers Fragmented Body

CORNELIUS BROWNE REFLECTS ON THE ENDURING LEGACY OF MEL FRENCH DISCUSSES HER RECENT TRAINING IN SILICONE BRITISH PAINTER, JOAN EARDLEY. CASTING WITH MODEL-MAKER, PAUL MCDONNELL.

what I wanted for my painting – that I stupid- AS FAR BACK as I can remember, I would see the same supplies, to ensure they would behave ly imagined I could rush out and in with my something on television or a friend’s toy I cov- and work in exactly the same way. canvas. You know what a job it was setting up eted, and would ask myself: “How can I make Sometimes Paul demonstrated and some- that canvas at the back of the house. Well, I’ve that?” I would fashion my own versions of these times we worked simultaneously. I took exten- had it 3 or 4 times to do and undo in the teeth things out of any materials I could readily lay sive notes and asked many questions; Paul gen- of the gale.” Mostly these letters were to her my hands on. I remember as a ten-year-old, erously shared his knowledge, skills and decades dear friend, Audrey Walker, whose first-hand saving up for months to buy a latex prosthet- of experience with good humour and the type of reminiscences of Eardley “painting outside in ic kit for £9.99 in Argos. Alone in the house, I enthusiasm evident in someone who loves what appalling weather” are supported by her pho- spent hours meticulously following instructions they do. I undertook some of the processes live, tographic record of the painter shoulder-deep and applying individual latex scars and wounds whilst both Paul and I worked ‘alongside’ each in summer fields or facing tempestuous winter that I had cast, painted and glued to my face. I other. I undertook other processes, such as cast- seas. “Wrapped up in her world” was how Walk- still remember distinctly the complete fear I felt ing, independently after the workshop, returning er described the woman in her viewfinder, deftly when I looked into the large wall mirror and saw the following day with my sample casts to prac- conveying the fullness of Eardley’s immersion in the impact of the prosthetics in their totality; tice hair punching. all she painted. the prosthetics were ripped off and the kit was Prior to working with Paul, I had commenced I was born at Rottenrow hospital, five years put away never to be used again. The point being sculpting an oversized tongue in oil-based clay. after Eardley’s death, my parents having left that my interest in understanding materials and Paul demonstrated surface manipulation and Donegal in the 1950s. The street over processes and using that knowledge to realise tool-use and then I applied the techniques to which the hospital loomed was one of Eardley’s ideas has been there since childhood. the sculpted tongue. All the workshops were favourite places to work, and from its windows Through my artistic career performance, recorded and emailed to me as ongoing refer- she was a familiar sight. Eardley spent so much video, photography, installation, drawing and ence material. The experience surpassed my time standing on streets to draw that the con- sculpture have been dominant. I have extensive expectations and my mind reeled with how this stant and intense action of looking up at her experience in moulding, making and casting new knowledge would empower my practice; I

Joan Eardley, Untitled, c.1950s; Photograph courtesy of subject and then down at the paper caused severe in various mediums including rubbers, plaster, was waking at night and making notes in my Glebe House and Gallery. back problems, forcing her to wear a surgical concrete, wax and Jesmonite. I was awarded sketchbook. Since the last workshop, I have con- collar. This vanished city, preserved by Eardley, The Irish Concrete Award for Sculpture twice. I tinued to experiment and develop further pos- greeted my unworldly parents as they arrived to push the possibilities of materials, often gaining sible applications for these new skills. Paul has THIS SUMMER MARKS the centenary of Joan join a Donegal community of migrant labour- specialist knowledge in specific mediums and kindly offered to have one final online meeting Eardley’s birth. A summer thunderstorm in 1989 ers, settled in the poorer tenement districts of then subverting ‘traditional’ processes, in order to reflect on these experiments and to address brought this painter into my life. Most days I Glasgow since the early twentieth century. Such to achieve what I need for my work. any questions that have arisen through them – was on the streets of Glasgow, entertaining pass- bonds exist between the two places that as a My practice explores the space between and so the learning continues. ers-by with what is likely considered the lowliest child I thought the River Clyde flowed all the human function and dysfunction, frequently form of outdoor art: scraping by as a pavement way from Glasgow to Donegal. Glasgow was referencing the human form literally, fantasti- Mel French is a multi-disciplinary visual artist. Fleeing the downpour, coins jingling, I permeated with a left-wing aesthetic, promoted cally and abjectly. My research often compares artist who holds a BA in Fine Art Sculpture flung myself into a tiny gallery and found myself by refugee Polish artist Josef Herman, in whose the physical and psychological states of animals from NCAD and an MA in Fine Art from The before a painting of Glasgow children, drawing studio Eardley found inspiration and friendship. and humans. I collect materials such as human New York Academy of Art. Upcoming exhi- with chalk on a pavement. The woman behind I myself was a socialist before I could tie my own detritus, hair, laundry lint and found objects. bitions include two-person shows with the desk was amused by the young man covered shoelaces. Recently, hair and fragmented body parts, such visual artist, Celine Sheridan, in Zoological in colourful chalk dust so obviously captivated. In Donegal, we are fortunate to have two as tongues and teats, have featured more fre- Museum, Trinity College Dublin in 2022 She told me a little about Eardley, of whom I Eardleys on public display. Both are part of quently within my work. At the end of last year, and Limerick City Gallery of Art (date TBC). had never heard. The remainder of that summer, the Derek Hill Collection at the Glebe House I felt the progress of new work was stalled by @melfrench I scoured Glasgow and Edinburgh for more and Gallery. Hill was an early admirer, making my lack of technical knowledge in hyperrealism, Eardleys. Ever since, she has travelled with me significant purchases and writing a tribute to relating to skin and surface effects (in silicone as a kind of patron saint of plein air. Eardley for Apollo magazine in 1964. For sever- and oil-based clay) and hair punching. I believed Eardley is often portrayed as a two-sided al summers, the Glebe have invited me to tutor specialist training would allow ideas to be real- artist: half-urban and half-rural. Urban Eard- plein air workshops in their magnificent gar- ised with the visceral aesthetic I had imagined in ley’s studio lay at the heart of an overcrowded dens. As I encourage painters to immerse them- sketches and maquettes. and unsanitary Glasgow slum. Through the back selves deeper in the experience of being alive at I contacted the model-maker Paul McDon- streets of Rottenrow, she pushed her easel in a this moment in this place, I’m often aware of the nell to discuss the possibility of undertaking pram, drawing and painting the tenements and presence of Eardley. She is nearby. bespoke engagement that would teach me the children who called them home. Rural Eard- According to Virginia Woolf, “great poets the skills I was hoping to learn. Paul has over ley was an all-weather outdoor painter in the do not die; they are continuing presences; they 16 years experience as a lecturer at IADT in remote fishing village of Catterline in Aberdeen- need only the opportunity to walk among us in prosthetics and as a model-maker. Paul and I shire. Her cottage had an earth floor, no elec- the flesh.” In this spirit, I overlook the fact that are familiar with each other’s practices and the tricity or running water, with forty abandoned Joan Eardley died at the young age of 42, her range of skillsets we each possess, which allowed canvasses nailed to the underside of its roof to ashes scattered on the shore at Catterline. She for immediate in-depth discussion and learning. help keep out the rain. Glorious rain poured into has now been alive for one hundred summers. Our introductory sessions, funded by Cre- Eardley’s painting life, however, along with wind And I have little difficulty imagining a wayfar- ative Ireland Westmeath, informed our strategy and snow and whatever else the North Sea flung er ducking indoors from a shower, one hundred of engagement, which would comprise online towards her easel, held down frequently by ropes summers from today. She will find herself before workshops covering materials and sourcing, and anchor. Paint became weather and weather a wild Eardley seascape, astonished that this manipulation and surface effects with oil-based became paint. The two Eardleys, I feel, also bled long-dead artist is so bracingly alive. clay, silicone casting, colouring and hair punch- into one another. Rottenrow and Catterline had ing. I later received an Arts Council Professional much in common; both small, poor, close-knit Development Award to fund these workshops. communities, existing under extreme pressure. Through consultation, we agreed on a list of spe- Eardley’s letters from Catterline form a cialist materials and tools, which Paul ordered, Cornelius Browne is a Donegal-based Mel French, oversized tongue sculpture in oil-based clay; mosaic of her engagements with the elements: divided and shipped to me. We were working Photograph courtesy the artist. “In between blizzards it has been so much just artist. remotely so it was important that we had exactly Regional Focus Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Glebe House and Gallery Donegal Jean Kearney Head Guide

The Winds are Wilder Paul Hallahan Visual Artist

THE WINDS ARE ferocious, the rains are heavi- getting tiresome. er, and the cold can get inside your bones, but Then an opportunity came up in mid-2020. when the sun appears in the north west, it all My housemates were also looking to move; we becomes clearer to me why I made the move to all knew the north west area and especially Bun- south Donegal in mid-2020. For a number of doran and south Donegal. So we began looking years, I dreamed of moving out of Dublin to a for somewhere to rent and we luckily found a more relaxed, rural community. The north west house and made the move in late summer. It’s was always on my radar as somewhere I would still all new to me here, and the difference of love to live and work. Moving back to Dub- knowing somewhere you have visited compared lin in 2015 after a brief period in land-locked to living there is vast. It has been above and Berlin (I need the ocean), the city gave me a beyond the best decision for me and it’s funny lot and helped me refocus on my practice while to think I had reservations last year. The winter taking in the energy of the city. I had slightly was hard with very short days, intense storms side-lined my practice and spent the years after and bitter cold, but there is no better way to get college curating and running a gallery in Water- to know a place than to live through its winter. ford. While at times I enjoyed thinking about As I arrived, I was working on a solo exhibi- art through exhibition-making, I also knew I tion, ‘Running, returning, running’, for Roscom- stumbled into curation without a formal deci- mon Arts Centre and a two-person exhibition, James Dixon, HMS ‘Wasp’ Gunboat Wrecked off Tory Island, Ireland, undated, c. 1960s, mixed media on paper; image sion. Between 2014 and 2015, I decided to be ‘Everybody knows’, for The Complex, so I ini- courtesy Glebe House and Gallery. an artist. tially finalised that work when I moved here. Over a five-year period, I worked all sorts of I did know a few people in the area before day jobs to support my practice and, like many moving, and with the help of local artist Celi- SITUATED 14KM OFF the northwest coast of not teach Dixon to paint but encouraged him to artists, after working a full day, I would go to na Muldoon, I was able to privately rent a new Donegal and surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, develop his own style. the studio in the evenings and weekends. After a studio locally. This new studio has invigorated Tory Island is the most remote of Ireland’s Dixon set to work. He drew inspiration from period of working intensely in my studio, and in my practice. I feel the mental space of living by inhabited islands. It is a place that people have his island home and the wild Atlantic storms Independent Studios Dublin, I was able to start the sea and in the countryside has affected my called home for over 4,500 years. The island is that frequently battered Tory and the ships that showing my works to the world. That studio work positively. I have started several new series steeped in history with pre-historic and early were lost, interspersed with myth and legends space, above any other spaces, helped me refocus of paintings and while I don’t directly expect the Christian remains. It is an island of music, song passed down through the generations by the and direct all of my energy into my work. I owe landscape of this beautiful place to be part of and stories, where the incredible spirit of the island’s storytellers. He painted events he had that studio a lot. new works right now, I know it will eventually people shines through. heard about, such as the sinking of the Titanic. It was a surprise to me that my practice enter the work somehow. It was on Tory Island that James Dixon He depicted them looking down upon the event moved towards painting from primarily video, It has been an odd time to make such a move ( Jimmy Dhonnchaidh Eoin) was born on 2 from the sky – a bird’s eye view. He often wrote but within the medium I felt I could control with all normal businesses closed since I arrived, June 1887. He had one sister, Grainne, and an inscription in a small rectangle in the corner time better and explore ideas in-depth. It also but even so, it has been great for me. There is an three brothers Johnnie, Dennis and Hughie. of each of his paintings, providing details of the allowed me to portray ideas better than I could energy of creative people in the north west I did They were a seafaring family and their skills as work with his name and the date. His paintings in moving image, text or installation. not expect to be so strong, and I look forward to fishermen and boat-builders were well-known provide a unique record of his life on his beloved Living and working in Dublin for a time was things opening back up again fully so I can meet throughout the community. island. energetic, but many different aspects of living and engage with more artists. So far, I have met Aside from the occasional visit to the main- Hill was impressed with his work and said and working there were making life harder for a number of artists based up here in the north land, Dixon remained on Tory Island his entire that he knew that he was in the presence of a me. There is a great artistic community, but I did west and the place has won over my heart. Bring life. He was a wonderful character, whose gentle genius. Hill likened Dixon’s work to that of the feel the city as a lifestyle choice offered me less on the wild winds, the heavy rain, bitter cold and unassuming nature belied his intelligence and Cornish artist, Alfred Wallis. Hill introduced and less. Getting engulfed by bus diesel fumes sunny days! skill. He always had a pipe in hand and the top Dixon’s artworks to the world, helping Dixon while cycling to the studio every morning was paulhallahan.com of his index finger was scorched from tapping to become an important figure in the history of the tobacco in his pipe. twentieth-century Irish art. Dixon had his first It was on a sunny Sunday morning in the solo exhibition in 1966 at the New Gallery in summer of 1956, that Dixon first encountered Belfast, containing 21 paintings. This was fol- Derek Hill – an artist who subsequently lived lowed shortly afterwards by another exhibition for nearly thirty years in Glebe House, later of his work at the Portal Gallery in London. He bequeathing it to the Irish state, along with his also exhibited at the Dawson Gallery in Dublin extensive private art collection. Hill was painting and the Autodidakt Gallery in Vienna. In the down by the foreshore on the island, looking out years following his death, Dixon’s paintings were across the sea to the beautiful mountains on the included in numerous exhibitions both national- mainland. He became aware of someone watch- ly and internationally including Queen’s Univer- ing him paint. That someone was Dixon, who sity Belfast, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, was seventy years old at the time. Little did they the Glebe Gallery in Donegal and in galleries in know that this chance meeting would change Vienna, London and New York. and enrich both of their lives and indeed inspire Dixon continued to paint in his own unique many people throughout the world. style and his friendship with Hill lasted up until A conversation struck-up between the two Dixon’s death in 1970. Through his example, men; Hill asked Dixon what he thought of his and with encouragement from Hill, the school painting. Dixon looked at the painting and then of Tory Island Artists was born. We’ll leave the looked at Hill and said that he thought that he last word to Dixon, who once said: “Painting has could do a lot better if he tried! Hill was intrigued got me to places I never could have gone.” and later that evening he made his way to Dix- on’s house, where he encouraged him to paint, glebegallery.ie giving him tubes of paint and some paper. How-

Paul Hallahan, studio view; photograph courtesy the artist. ever, Dixon declined the use of a paintbrush and instead insisted on making his own paintbrush from the hair cut from his donkey’s tail. Hill did Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021 Regional Focus 11

On the Edge

Martha McCulloch Coordinator, Artlink

WE COULD BE anywhere, but we chose here on a membership, financial support from The Arts the edge in the wind and the wild, in the heath- Council and Donegal County Council, and a ery hills and the damp, away from the centre, commitment to caring for and sustaining artists away from train stations. and celebrating what is unique about this place. The space we occupy at Fort Dunree is mod- No one could have foreseen the circumstanc- est; a multi-function room in a former military es of the past 16 months. Entire continents hospital building, where unannounced visi- disrupted by COVID-19, almost unimaginable tors are welcomed, meetings are held, funding changes in the daily patterns of life and sudden- applications are sweated over and art and tea are ly ‘working remotely’ – a concept once seen as made, and where the internet is what we euphe- aspirational, when city-bound people dreamed mistically call ‘intermittent’. We do however of working from home without the drudgery of have access to an elegant gallery, a rich history the commute or cubicle life – which became the and inspirational vistas over land and sea, which enforced reality for many. As it turned out, for are unique to this beautiful, remote site. Artlink, the concept of isolation and remoteness Fort Dunree is the best preserved of six forts, was perhaps less strange than might have been built by the British on Lough Swilly when fears presumed. Operating and collaborating at a dis- of a French invasion were high. The original fort, tance had long been an element in our working built in 1813, houses a military museum, while methods. Despite the shortcomings of infra- the surrounding headland is littered with WWI structure, temperamental Wi-Fi and occasional remains, gradually melting into the heather cov- power outages, we were able to meet regularly ered hillside. Lough Swilly, one of Ireland’s great with other organisations, albeit ‘virtually’, devel- natural harbours, may seem like a backwater, but oping much stronger connections than before. Fort Dunree; photograph by Martha McCulloch. it has played its part in significant historical Internationally, we were able to host events with events from the Viking invasions and the Flight artists from anywhere on the planet, attended by of the Earls to the 1798 Rising and WWI. an international audience. Artlink was celebrating 10 years of success Michael Flaherty, for instance, sounds like shortly after I arrived in Buncrana in 2001, one he runs the pub on the main street (yes, there of a host of people moving ‘home’ around that is a Flaherty’s Bar here), but he’s actually from time. I wasn’t raised here but my mother is from Port Union, Newfoundland, and invents devices the area and these roots give me license to call it that slow processes down and make them visible. home; so I’m not exactly a ‘blow-in’. I was drawn He’s our first Resident Artist from Newfound- here to be with family, to pursue my art practice, land, as part of our newly established partner- to step out of academia, to get space. But Artlink ship with Eastern Edge Gallery and is coming was also the draw. I couldn’t have imagined to Donegal to make a tidal weaving device as moving from Glasgow, with it’s vital and con- soon as restrictions allow. Anais Tonduer came nected arts community, to small town Buncrana, here from France and showed us the magic of without the possibility of becoming part of a the wind, while Matthew de Kersaint Giradeau community of artists. At this point Artlink, with made an animation from a face he saw in the substantial resources, was based in a restored land at Malin Head. Christine Mackey initiated nineteenth-century corn mill at the edge of the a living herbarium that has since morphed into Crana River and was held together by its three a thriving community garden, where this year we founding artists, Lisa Spillane-Doherty, Marie are growing oats to make straw hats. Barrett and Eileen Barr; but the organisation These are our people. They are drawn to us, to soon reached a turning point. Donegal, to the creative people here, who take By 2003, the founding artists had moved on their talent with a pinch of salt (probably from and the management structure changed. Mhai- the sea). We are a lot of people spread far and ri Sutherland, who was appointed as Creative wide and we also are the handful of people who Director, initiated the connection with Fort are the day-to-day email answerers, meeting Catherine Ellis, ‘Elephants in the Room’, installation view, Fort Dunree, April 2018; photograph by Martha McCulloch. Dunree, establishing a satellite exhibition space, attenders, floor moppers and non-hierarchical where pilot projects such as Edge Centring, an hot air balloon idea flyers. Being on the edge international residency, took place in 2007. The allows us a bit of spontaneity, to embrace inde- origins of Edge Centring began in 2006 when terminacy and allow artists to take risks with representatives from Norway and East Iceland their practice in this inspiring place. visited Donegal to locate a west European part- ner for the Gulf Stream Project which used the artlink.ie gulf stream as an actual and metaphorical link between the regions of Norway, East Iceland and the north-west coast of Ireland. This was the basis of a hugely successful partnership where- by each year we welcome an artist from either Norway or Iceland to take part in our residency programme. We recently extended this North Atlantic connection to Newfoundland, our clos- est neighbour across the ocean. Two more directors followed – Elaine Ford and Declan Sheehan – then in 2013, contract- ed funding saw Artlink relocate to Fort Dunree entirely, with scant resources but the determi- nation to keep going, which we have, and we changed in the process. Artlink has in some ways returned to its roots. It is once again non-hierarchical in its staff structure. Decisions are made by Team Artist-in-residence Anaïs Tondeur making drawings with the wind, Fort Dunree, 2018; photograph by Artlink – Patricia Spokes, Rebecca Strain and Martha McCulloch. myself, supported by the board. We now have Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 12 Regional Focus

Shape of The Place Cé as tú?

Laura McCafferty Myrid Carten Visual Artist Visual Artist

THIS PLACE PULLED hard. My body ached babysitter let the gang of children run in the to lie down and plug into the dark peaty earth. rainstorm. The wind caught the large parasol I “You’re in the wrong place,” came the voice as was holding, blowing me backwards up the gar- each footstep hit the pavements of Notting- den. Laughing. Beach days, digging to Australia, ham, where I’d lived for twenty years. I ignored blue lips from the cold Atlantic Sea, nettle stings this, convincing myself it was normal. In 2019 on my rear-hind with my nana singing, “Dock- it boomed loud, and Donegal called. “There are in in, Nettle out, Dockin in, Nettle out,” as she people dreaming of the hills of Donegal” played rubbed the leaves against my skin. I think of on repeat; my young family watched on. Eyes nana and granda looking after six-week-old me, closed, rocking, crooning. Those words spoke to when mum returned to work. I think of being in me. I’d become a cliché. this place from those early days. The key in the “Where is home?” he asked. “Is it Dublin, door (no need to knock) and the welcome hug. Belfast, Derry or Shroove?” With flushed faces, Is there a way to find something new in a we scrolled through houses and jobs to figure place full of memories? In April 2020 this place out how to swap Nottingham for Inishowen. gave me new things to think about. At first it was Seven months later, as the news of the pandemic a ‘log’ about the view from the window, written broke, we boarded the ferry to Dublin, making each morning in the one minute I had. The logs our way to Donegal. Arriving on Saturday 14 then grew into On The Other Side, a publication March 2020 at 9:30pm. I was now a Donegal featured in The Dublin Artist Book Fair that artist. November. New shapes, colours and patterns I left Derry in 1999 to start the Art Foun- appeared during walks. Followed soon by the dation in Belfast’s University of , telling need to make. Lacking materials and a studio, Myrid Carten, The Divide, 2014, installation view; image courtesy of the artist. my parents there was no such course in town. in the midst of the first lockdown, I ordered the They would later find out that this had been a basics and The Shape of The Placeemerged. With lie. I had the time of my life, but the division paper, scissors and glue, I turned the finds into of the city was hard-edged. “Where are you collages. This new body of work slowly grows How did I get involved? As a young man I chanced of my BA degree show at Goldsmiths, I dream from?” they would ask, and with my answer, on borrowed kitchen tables and makeshift work to flirt with it and it possessed me.– Brian Friel of myself digging in the bog at Earagail, my nod and pigeonhole me. Ringing the right taxi surfaces. In the same month, I received a Done- mother then doing the same, cutting back and firms or walking in theright area was perplex- gal County Council Artist Bursary to develop DÚN NA NGALL literally means ‘Fort of the forth between us. Before and after. I fly back ing. In 2000, I moved to Nottingham where textile works. Once these large cloth panels are Foreigners’. I confess that I’m a foreigner here. home to film. “Is that near the Grand Canyon?” no one knew much about all that or cared. In made, I will continue to experiment and figure Not a blow-in but a blow back – elevated above viewers ask about the work in London. This free 2003 graduating from a Decorative Arts BA, I out what happens next. My role as Public Pro- the former because of my local family. My child- epic scale and ambition have been useful for my became a self-employed artist, set up my studio grammes Curator at CCA Derry~Londonderry hood life was split between Donegal and Derry. career. and lectured at Nottingham Trent University – connects me to artists and writers nationally and But Donegal was home; distant and unknowable Repeatably I find myself drawn to barren continuing to live and work there until the move internationally. I am also part of N I N E, an – we see what we are. sites, to my childhood – the early dark solitude to Donegal last year. artist collective interested in the exploration of When I think of Donegal’s relation to my and later play – for films. Donegal enables the Maybe I’m not here long enough to know materiality and visual art processes. work, I hear Austrian poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. intimacy that comes from taking risks alone. The this place. I think about connections. Mum is Maybe I’m still getting used to the idea that In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke urges solitude, solitude gives the freedom to explore existential from here, granda’s family stretches back genera- I am now an artist in the place where I once patience and humility. Each wisdom pushes me themes. I feel a kinship with other Donegal art- tions. On the morning that he died at home, my soothed nettle stings with shreds of dock leaf. to go deeper into the foreignness within, into ists like Cara Donaghey and Cliodhna Timoney, aunt pointed to the headland, saying, “Remem- My connection to this place runs deep; its shapes Donegal. whose work shows traces of this dark adventure. ber this. Hold it with you.” I took in its shape. and patterns are still revealing themselves to me. I make films because I grew up here. It’s cin- For me, Donegal holds the truth of both one’s This place is full of childhood memories. Sun- ematic – it confronts us with our aloneness in aloneness and connection. Just as the landscape’s day lunches squeezed into nana’s kitchen, run- lauramccafferty.com time. Kierkegaard advocated standing on your change is constant and beyond us, human life is ning wild on summer evenings, falling off walls, nine-artists.com own before God, and one stands alone before finite and ongoing. We are tied to those before breaking bones. One summer night in 1988, our Donegal’s barren beauty. It’s an uneasy beau- and after us; our families. Here they ask Cé as ty, but isn’t all truth? Rilke said, “For beauty tú? – Who are you from? Not where. My Done- is nothing but the beginning of terror which gal family name is Gallagher, meaning ‘Foreign we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us Aid’. Useless – sure, the place’s crawling with us. so, because it serenely disdains to destroy us.” Instead, families are named after a recent signif- There’s a quietness – reassuring and insistent like icant ancestor. I am a ‘Mhanus’ after my great- death. But also, an alive wildness that shows how great grandfather. Because this high recognition small and desolate we are. You have to struggle is only given after death, I recently had the to remain human in it and confront what being uncanny experience of hearing my uncle called human is. ‘Danny Mhaggie’ – my grandmother is now We are all visitors in this old landscape, if our forebearer. This constant identification with not by space, then by time. And time here is not family fuels the desire to escape and be a stand- measurable by us. The mountains can disappear alone individual. Yet it rings of truth. We are under cloud or fog in an instant. They mutate both alone in the world and carriers of our kin; – both unwavering, solid and an ever-changing often subconsciously driven by repetition to ini- mirage. Perhaps this is why visual art was not tiate repair. Family dynamics get passed through big in school, the singular image not enough. generations – that name tells a lot. Then there Writing was encouraged because it explored is the gossip – frustrating as hell but it showed atmosphere, subjectivity and change. And then me how endlessly interesting people are to one I found film. Russian poet, Boris Pasternak, another. I make films about people and relation- remarked: “cinema ... is called upon to express ships because, like Donegal, it fascinates me. what is true in drama, its surrounding plasma. Let it photograph not tales, but the atmospheres myridcarten.com of tales.” This statement was echoed in 1928 by critic Viktor Shklovsky, who commented that filmmakers “film the air around their subject”.

Plugging into Donegal. Laura McCafferty plugged into the peat bog. Two arms, with the edges of purple cardigan Poet Annemarie Ní Churreáin wrote: “In sleeves showing, with two hands, fingers stretched wide, inserted into the green moss and heather of the peat bog in rural Donegal, you develop a sixth sense for the hills of Donegal. Photograph by Matthew Graham, courtesy the artist. what might be buried in darkness, for what came before you and will survive after.” Ahead Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021

Community in Donegal

Jeremy Fitz Howard Acting Manager, Regional Cultural Centre

Ursula Burke, Embroidery Frieze - The Politicians, 2016-17, embroidery thread on cotton; photograph by Jeremy Howard, courtesy the artist and Regional Cultural Centre.

IT ALWAYS FASCINATES me to hear how peo- catch up’. ple from other parts of Ireland describe Done- Online concerts have taught us to stop push- gal. Most get lost in a sea of superlatives while ing the ‘hard sell’ and spend more time devel- attempting to describe the landscape or fall oping meaningful relationships with these new THE JOURNAL OF FINE ART, DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, SCULPTURE, HERITAGE, DECORATIVE ARTS AND CRAFTS down the reminiscence rabbit-hole recounting worldwide micro-communities. We recently childhood holidays involving beaches, friend- hosted an online Irish music festival for North ly faces, dusty pint bottles, and of course, end- Texans and were delighted to introduce 23,000 less rain. One good friend relocated here for a of them to the music of Donegal. It’s an interest- decade or so and left with the conclusion that, ing switch but suddenly we have regional artists SUMMER (JUNE - AUGUST 2021) €10 (STG£9) ‘Donegal… is a state of mind’. That works well on a local stage playing to a global audience. This, for me. It manages to say everything without alongside galleries making a concerted move really saying anything – a treasured skill in this away from ‘blockbuster’ type touring exhibitions business. and shifting focus to the development of local What really strikes me the most about Done- artists of promise, will set the scene for healthi- gal is the inherent value we place on the commu- er and more sustainable professional visual arts nities we build around us. Large communities, communities across the country. small communities, communities every shape The Regional Cultural Centre’s forthcoming and size that often overlap where we least expect. visual arts programme will continue to welcome Maybe this eagerness to connect is a symptom major solo and group shows from internation- of living in such a diffusely populated county – al and leading Irish artists but with a renewed we tend to seek each other out and although this and increased focus on developing North West- tendency might not have helped with ‘keeping based contemporary artists over sustained peri- the numbers down’ in recent months, it can offer ods of time. The recent exodus from major cities us a great insight into how to build sustainable has afforded us the opportunity to make mean- audiences, both ‘in real life’ and online. ingful connections with young and emerging It’s this desire for shared experiences that we artists that ‘came home’ for the first time since have always built arts events around. We can leaving as teenagers. The age of Zoom will allow screen the critically acclaimed new film by a us to keep these conversations moving. Future Painters of the beloved director of world cinema but unless we RCC visual arts programmes will be present - serve tea afterwards and provide people with the ed over three dimensions: the physical gallery, opportunity to collectively dissect the evening, online spaces, and projects and exhibitions that they simply won’t come. Social connections take place in shared spaces within our local com- are central to the human experience and this is munities – each one as vital as the other. WEST becoming increasingly evident online during the Donegal can feel like an outpost on the COVID-19 lockdowns. I’ve noticed new ‘regu- periphery at times, but these communities lars’ who ‘catch up’ during our online gigs. Most make us strong. Emerging technologies help of these people have never met in real life but us connect with the rest of the world. We have SAVE 10% OFF SUBSCRIPTION formed close bonds in the comments section. an uncertain economic landscape ahead with Parents in our Young Artists social media group environmental issues around the corner that RATES TO THE IRISH ARTS REVIEW throwing virtual birthday parties for their kids will make COVID-19 look like ‘the good old ONE-YEAR SUBSCRIPTION FOR VAI MEMBERS so they can celebrate with these new friends that days’. However, I am confident that artists and they’ve never met. Our creative Zoom classes for arts organisations in Donegal will prevail. Our NOW €40! BOOK A SUBSCRIPTION TODAY older people have evolved into extended families ingrained sense of community gives us a head where the art takes second place to the conver- start in navigating societal shifts and the local WWW.IRISHARTSREVIEW.COM sations; participants often ‘accidentally’ join our frameworks we build now will ensure that we TEL: (01) 676 6711 Zoom waiting room at random times, in the stay dynamic and ready for change. ART AT AUCTION DESIGN ARTISTS ON VIEW PHOTOGRAPHY SCULPTURE HERITAGE ART LIVES hope of finding someone inside ready for ‘a little regionalculturalcentre.com Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 14 Profile

Zanele Muholi, Phaphama, at Cassilhaus, North Carolina, 2016, installation view ‘Somnyama Ngonyama’, Queen’s University Belfast quadrangle, 2021; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy the Naughton Gallery.

THE NAUGHTON GALLERY, located in Queen’s University Belfast, hosts two exhibitions which both incorporate considerations of African history and culture, coming from differing perspectives, but sharing a number of visual and ideological characteristics. The first, ‘Sorry, Neither’ (25 May – 11 July), is a group show in the gallery of mostly Autofuturist work and the second, which is shown in partnership with the Belfast Photo Festival, is a remarkable selection of self-portraits by South African visual activist and photographer, Zanele Muholi (3 June – 1 August). These are printed large scale and shown in the university grounds.

Portraits of Resistance Sorry, Neither The multi-layered art and activism movement Afrofuturism has developed over a number of years, with the jazz of Sun Ra, the funk of George Clin- ton and the science fiction novels of Octavia Butler its forerunners. In visual terms it has developed a recognisable, but fluid, aesthetic and the COLIN DARKE REVIEWS ‘SORRY, NEITHER’ AND ZANELE lineage of many of the recent works included in ‘Sorry, Neither’ can be MUHOLI AT THE NAUGHTON GALLERY. traced back particularly to Sun Ra, whose costumes and stage sets evoke the future cosmos from which he claimed to have travelled, seen in the low-budget 1974 film,Space is the Place. Afrofuturist film has developed considerably from this rather rudimentary beginning to, for example, the beautiful and moving ecological sacrifice in a futuristic East Africa in the short from 2009, Pumzi, written and directed by Wanuri Kahiu. The aes- thetic reached a wide audience in Ryan Coogler’s 2018 Marvel blockbust- er, Black Panther. Afrofuturism is an art of resistance, grounded in objective analysis and imaginative rethinking of history. It blurs the distinctions between past, present and future to create new realities which can highlight the nature of injustice and oppression or present alternatives which negate them. This marks a distinction from (other) forms of resistance, which assert the pri- macy of material reality over ideas – ever since Marx stated that it is not Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021 Profi le 15

consciousness that determines being, but social being that are complemented by their costumes of elaborate fabrics and determines consciousness. gold and bejewelled ornamentation, wiping out the criminal Th e two sides of this ideological contradiction can, per- legacy of Cecil Rhodes and European colonial history. haps, be reconciled through the formation of a strategy that Even more elaborate is Luke Nugent and Melissa Simon looks to W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness, Hartman’s ‘Equilibrium’ series, its subjects draped in intricate whereby African Americans recognise that their identities regalia which again merges African tradition with an imag- can be formulated through the juggling of their Africanness ined future. and their Americanness. As an extension of this, the material and the ideal, the traditional and the modern, the actual and Somnyama Ngonyama the potential, can impact on each other to create a dialecti- Th is ubiquitous outward gaze is at its most piercing and dis- cal basis for understanding historical realities and potential arming in Zanele Muholi’s show of self-portraits, ‘Somnya- futures. Th is can in turn form the basis of fi ctional discourse, ma Ngonyama’, which translates into English as “Hail, the existing across all artistic forms (exploring the historical Dark Lioness”. Th is is enhanced by Muholi’s exaggeration of truths of slavery, lynch mobs, Jim Crow and now the growth the blackness of their skin, which places their eyes at the focal of the Black Lives Matter movement in the face of the state point of each image, even in the few in which they glance murder of George Floyd), while simultaneously creating new sideward. Th e artist is virtually daring us to confront both futuristic, posthuman diageses in which the African diaspora their face and its harsh, but stunningly beautiful, contextual- has autonomously forged its realities. isation. Like much of the work included in the Belfast Photo Th e work shown in ‘Sorry, Neither’ is almost exclusively Festival, Muholi’s work is printed large and exhibited out- based on the human fi gure. Many are located in future or side, which in this case somehow enhances the intimacy and extra-terrestrial environments and at times display signs of unease of the audience experience. evolved or mutated physical characteristics – in the works Muholi has long been exploring complex intersections of of Benji Reid and Charlot Kristensen, for example, humans LGBTQI+ issues (including their own non-binary identi- have gained the ability to fl y. ty), labour, politics, history and tradition. As they have said, In Gianni Lee’s Th is Was Your Future but We Failed You “Photography for me is always fi rst and foremost a tool of (in which even the title travels through time), the heavi- activism, driven by the idea of social change.” A European ly-made-up character stares out at us contemplatively, with audience may struggle somewhat to comprehend fully the a futuristic seafront cityscape behind them. Th eir hands are signifi cation within the work, but Muholi themself has pro- blue-green with red-painted nails, emerging from a white vided some clues. In the very limited space available to me, I shirt which dissolves into brushmarks melting the sea. Th is can only touch on these complexities and I’d encourage visit- same character appears in Change Th at Man’s Heart or Kill ing the show as often as possible. Him, now sporting decorative armour and a full red skirt, A number of the pieces in the show, for example, refer to which again breaks down into gestural marks that blend into labour and to Muholi’s mother Bester specifi cally. In these, the visually chaotic background. they are adorned with, for example, clothes pegs and scouring Rickii Ly utilises digital photomontage to create his oth- pads. Th e exploitation of black domestic labour has histori- er-worldly “humaliens”, with elongated necks and airs of cally been a highly-visible sign of white supremacy in both indiff erence. In one piece (Th e Gift - Look, 2020), one of the apartheid South Africa and in the United States and Muholi strongest images in the show, a mother and daughter sit at a shows that this is far from becoming a lost memory. table laid out for a simple meal of fowl and fruit, its familiar- Employing a further long-standing racist characterisation, Bobby Rogers, The Blacker the Berry, 2017; image courtesy the artist and the Naughton ity countered by the mysterious gold fi ligree spheres placed in the piece titled Phaphama (which I believe translates as Gallery. on the yellow tablecloth. Th e verticality of the green curtain “rise” or “waken”), Muholi wears the shirt, bow tie and (leop- background echoes the elongation of her neck. ard-skin motif) waistcoat of the minstrel. Th eir expression is Katia Herrera employs long-standing and familiar science simultaneously one of sadness and accusation. Th is combina- fi ction aesthetics in order to assert the strength and endur- tion of direct emotional confrontation with the audience and ance of black women, exploring the universe with confi dence politically charged imagery forces a Brechtian relationship, and regality, wearing her gold insignia and disposing of ensuring objective critique and self-evaluation. Th e man- adversaries with her laser eyes. ner in which the work is presented, large-scale and al fresco, Bobby Rogers’s portraits of royalty from his photographic enhances this contemplative process. series, ‘Th e Blacker the Berry’, are at the same time beautiful and disarming. Th eir silver technology-enhanced eyes, gaz- Colin Darke is a multi-media artist based in Belfast. ing at us hypnotically to pull us through their fourth walls, colindarke.co.uk

Zanele Muholi, ‘Somnyama Ngonyama’, installation view, Queen’s University Belfast quadrangle, 2021; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy the Rickii Ly, The Gift – Look, 2020; image courtesy the artist and the Naughton Gallery Naughton Gallery. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 16 Profile

The Art of Now

SUSAN CAMPBELL REPORTS ON RECENT ACQUISITIONS TO THE NATIONAL COLLECTION AT IMMA AND CRAWFORD ART GALLERY.

Aideen Barry, not to be known, 2015, still from video; Image © Aideen Barry, commissioned by the Arts & Heritage Trust, UK, courtesy Crawford Art Gallery.

IN AN INITIATIVE designed to support the visual arts com- practitioners, working across a breadth of mediums. tion of the funding arose, according to Crawford director munity and provide some redress for the financial fallout from Currently celebrating its 30th birthday, IMMA’s acquisi- Mary McCarthy, due to artwork-led decision-making. “Some COVID-19, the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) and tions are guided by a policy outlined in its Strategic Collection works are series”, she explained, “and we wanted to create Crawford Art Gallery have received a combined total of €1 Development Plan 2017-2022. Giving insight into the kinds densities of works by some artists to give substance to the million in funding for acquisitions to the National Collec- of criteria applied to collecting “the art of now for the future”, collection.” tion. Drawn from the budget of the Department of Tour- it considers if works represent a key moment of achievement There was also consistency in the gender ratios, the major- ism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media, it targets in an artist’s career, resonate powerfully within a given con- ity of artists being female: 21 in the case of IMMA, alongside the mutually compatible aims of assisting artists living and/ text, complement the existing collection, and/or trigger new eight male and two non-binary artists; 24 for the Crawford, or working in Ireland and building the National Collection ways of working and thinking. in addition to 12 males and three artists from the LGBTQI+ for current and future generations. The museum’s purchase of 197 artworks by 31 artists rep- community. Commenting on these figures, McCarthy spoke Last October, when announcing what amounts to the most resents a sizable expansion of its 3,500-strong collection. The of “a continuous need to redress imbalance”. Cork-based art- significant spend on the national holding in over a decade, majority categories were painting (89), print (32) and drawing ist Stephen Doyle, whose practice references queer identity Minister Catherine Martin acknowledged the unprecedented (26), but sculptures, publications, installations, moving image, and culture, remarked that, through its purchase by the gal- difficulties being experienced by artists, impacted by a lack of performance, photographic and audio works also featured. All lery, his painting Meditating Tongqui (2020) “will go towards opportunity to make, exhibit and sell work. IMMA, which were pre-existing artworks – as opposed to new commissions documenting our existence and experiences”. focuses on national and international modern and contem- – with some dating to the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Most, In total, the Crawford sourced work by over 20 artists porary art, received €600,000, with the remaining €400,000 however, have been created since 2000, and many address the from or based in Cork, including Tom Climent’s mixed-me- allocated to the Crawford, which has collections ranging pressing issues of the current moment. Crawford added 225 dia painting, Eden (2020); Stephen Brandes’s paintings, Tod- from the eighteenth century through to the current time. artworks by 39 artists to its existing holding of over 3,000; nauberg Puppet Set and Chat Show (both acrylic on canvas, The institutions were tasked to work collaboratively in real- comprising 100 paintings, 58 photographs, 28 drawings, 14 2020); Sara Baume’s neon text piece, So Sick and Tired (2020), ising shared goals, which included reflecting developments prints, eight sculptures, four installations, one sound work, originally commissioned by the National Sculpture Factory within contemporary practice and filling gaps in representa- five digital films, one quilt and six embroideries. for Cork Midsummer Festival 2020; and Debbie Godsell’s tion. Between them, 422 artworks by 70 artists were selected The artwork-to-artist ratio was similar across the two screen-print-based works, Stack (2019-21) and Stray Sod through what has been described as a rigorous process. These institutions and suggests that in many cases, multiple works (2021). Some among this cohort are affiliated to supported include established, emerging and traditionally marginalised were bought from individual practitioners. This dissemina- studios for artists with physical and/or intellectual needs. Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021 Profile 17

Examples of their work include two untitled Crawford Art Gallery acrylic-on-board paintings by Yvonne Condon and three ink-on-paper drawings by John Keat- Aideen Barry ing (Shopping Trolley, Girl in Shopping Trolley Sara Baume and Girl on Dog). The gallery also purchased Stephen Brandes Encrusted Dog (2019), a mixed-media sculpture Angela Burchill by Kilkenny-based, KCAT studio artist, Declan Declan Byrne Byrne. Elaine Byrne An all-island focus was further reflected in Tom Climent its acquisition of the photographic print series Yvonne Condon A Living Colour Index (2020) by Belfast-based Elizabeth Cope Michael Hanna; the ceramic work Farther to the Gary Coyle East (2004-19) by Limerick’s Andrew Kearney; Stephen Doyle If we winter this one out (2020), a photographic Rita Duffy print by Elaine Byrne, Dublin; and the environ- Amanda Dunsmore mentally charged vinyl wall drawing, Irish Tree Kevin Gaffney Alphabet (2020) by Katie Holten, whose practice Debbie Godsell spans New York and County Louth. Michael Hanna In addition to a strong representation from Marie Holohan the many artists living and working in Dublin, Katie Holten the film Liberty’s Booty (1980) by Galway-based Brianna Hurley artist Vivienne Dick; paintings by Tipper- Andrew Kearney ary-based Patricia Hurl (Jingle Bells, Hush-a-bye John Keating Sara Baume, So sick and tired, 2020, neon text work commissioned by National Sculpture Factory for Cork Midsum- Baby, 1986, and Study for The Kerry Babies Tri- Fiona Kelly mer Festival 2020; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy the artist and Crawford Art Gallery. al, 1984); and Sligo-based Cléa van der Grijn’s Anne Kiely & Mary Palmer HD video, Jump (2018), were among those pur- Roseanne Lynch chased from outside the capital by IMMA. Brian Maguire The museum consolidated its collection of 18 Evgeniya Martirosyan works by Alice Maher, acquiring the large-scale Danny McCarthy sculpture, Mnemosyne (2002), which featured Roseleen Moore prominently in the Mayo-based artist’s 2012 Peter Nash mid-career retrospective. It also doubled its Ailbhe Ní Bhriain holding by the Northern Irish, London-based Íde Ní Shúilleabháin Anne Tallentire, purchasing These Aggregations Nuala O’Donovan (2019) – laminated MDF panels, pine wood Sarah O’Flaherty battens – and Setting Out 2 (2020), comprising Tom O’Sullivan builders string, screws, tape. Michael Quane Bassam Al-Sabah’s hand-tufted rug, Still, In Jennifer Trouton The Darkness (2019), augments the textile com- Charles Tyrrell ponent of the national holding and represents a Daphne Wright practice concerned with displacement, nostalgia and perseverance. Also acquired was the Iraq- IMMA born artist’s video work, Dissolving Beyond the Worm Moon (2019), described as a response to Bassam Al-Sabah “war, unrealised childhood fantasies, and repre- Marie Brett sentation within globalised media”. Sarah Browne & Jesse Jones Kathakers: Take a Bow I, and The Kathakars Anishta Chooramun 0:38 - 0:11 (Storytellers) (both 2019), by Mau- Amanda Coogan ritius-born artist Anishta Chooramun, probe Vivienne Dick themes of culture, perception and identity, Edy Fung combining abstract sculptural form with inspi- Emma Wolf-Haugh ration from a rhythmic North Indian dance. Patricia Hurl Alice Rekab’s Isatu an Ee Cat (2021), a digital Sandra Johnston Elizabeth Cope, Generation Gap (Menopausal series), 2006, oil on canvas, 183 x 244 cm; image courtesy the artist drawing on a composite photographic print, Eithne Jordan and Crawford Art Gallery. addresses the complexities of a mixed-race iden- John Lalor tity, while works by artist and Traveller Leanne Breda Lynch McDonagh “represent and record her commu- Alice Maher nity from within”. These includePrim and Prop- Leanne McDonagh er (mixed-media photographic print) from the Eoin McHugh artist’s 2014 ‘Reminiscence’ series, and a set of Alastair MacLennan pigment on photo rag prints from 2019, made Sibyl Montague to illustrate Why the Moon Travels, a book of Maïa Nunes tales from the Travellers’s oral tradition by Oein Brian O’Doherty DeBhairduin. Alanna O’Kelly As the range and diversity in this sampling Sarah Pierce shows, the significant injection of public funds Atoosa Pour Hosseini made in response to COVID-19 has consider- Alice Rekab ably enriched that part of the National Collec- Nigel Rolfe tion held by these two cultural repositories. As a Dermot Seymour reflection of its other intended aim, many of the Rajinder Singh featured artists testified to its positive impact on Anne Tallentire their practice, not just from the much-needed Cléa van der Grijn financial boost, but also the associated prestige Eimear Walshe and validation of their work.

Susan Campbell is visual arts writer and researcher. Alice Rekab, Isatu an Ee Cat, 2021, digital drawing on composite photographic print; image courtesy the artist and IMMA. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 18 Profile

Sandra Johnston, Wait it out, 2019; image courtesy the artist and IMMA.

Alastair MacLennan, Bled Edge, 1988; image courtesy the artist and IMMA

Rajinder Singh, My Sister’s Coven, 2019; image courtesy the artist and IMMA. Nigel Rolfe, European Dream, 2009; image courtesy the artist and IMMA. The Visual Artists' News Sheet Critique

Edition 56: July – August 2021

A.K. Burns, The Dispossessed, 2018, installation view, Lismore Castle Arts, 2021. Critique Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021

Sheila Rennick ‘Screaming on Mute’ Kevin Kavanagh Gallery 6 May – 5 June 2021

Sheila Rennick, Bye Bye Bar, 2020, oil on canvas, 75 x 60 cm; image courtesy the artist and the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery.

THE BRITISH LABOUR Leader Keir Starmer’s with the meaning and tone of the narratives. recent admission that the traditional left had lost Where Hogarth’s eighteenth-century nar- touch by failing to listen and engage with the ratives are characterised by their moral and societal grassroots that they claim to represent, redemptive tone, the protagonists in Rennick’s their inability to parse and solve the discontents soap operatic dramas are defi antly twenty-fi rst that led to Brexit and the subsequent vacuum century in their boundless non-judgemental Sheila Rennick, Summer 2020, 2020, oil on canvas, 140 x 140cm, (SR029), ; image courtesy the artist and the Kevin that the conservative right have shamelessly and world and there are no obvious moral arcs or Kavanagh Gallery. ruthlessly exploited for political gain, feeding on heroic journeying. Th e connective tissue for the bias and unsubstantiated narratives and fuelled actors in this theatre of the absurd is the digital by editorially free digital spaces, has been well age of blended work arrangements, Tinder hook documented in the UK and elsewhere. Th is ups and Instagram self-regard. In Working from space between unheard inchoate articulations Home (2020), the proverbial ‘pram in the hallway’ of coping class needs and the absence of shame is crawling on the fl oor of a kitchen-cum-din- as a regulating and moderating force within ing space, where pandemic work practice and the political class came to mind as the context domesticity merge into an overwhelming cock- for considering the practice of UK-based Irish tail, fuelled by wine and fast-food takeaways. In painter Sheila Rennick and her recent solo exhi- Zero Perks (2020), a sterile open plan offi ce, two bition, ‘Screaming on Mute’ at the Kevin Kava- male employees engage in horseplay as they ges- nagh Gallery. ture toward an isolated female with overtones of Rennick’s paintings sit comfortably within a a toxic male dominated work culture. In Sum- painting lineage that contextualises the macro mer 2020 (2020), a plane plummets into the socio-political in the micro machinations and sea, witnessed by beach goers astride an infl at- absurdities of a specifi c social milieu that rang- able unicorn and beside Guinness towels, only es from Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress to Weimar to emerge comedically on the other side of the Expressionism and more recently to painters composition. such as Genieve Figgis’s grizzled aristocracy. Placed in and amongst these psychodramas Although, unlike Figgis, as Rennick goes native are a menagerie of animals both domestic and in the post-Brexit jungle, her characters are more exotic – foxes, fl amingos, monkeys, dogs, whales likely to be clad in trainers than tiaras. In tone, and ponies – all of whom bear witness dispas- Rennick’s worldview resists punching down; sionately to the foibles and absurdities at play however, they are not overly infused with empa- and are conceivably wiser and more knowing thy, sentiment or compassion either. Rennick’s than their human counterparts. Emojis abound gaze comes closer to a deadpan bemusement at as a preferred option of emotional shorthand. where we fi nd ourselves. Taken at face value, this could sound like grim Many painters have experienced the chal- kitchen-sink realism but the paintings are deliv- lenge of negotiating a fi eld that has the weight ered with a buoyant sense of fun and humour. of a long historical tail, so while there are some Each painting has a clear narrative proposition classical allusions in her use of tondo supports yet leaves enough lateral space for viewers to and Rubenesque fi gures, in their material con- draw their own conclusions. struction Rennick’s paintings do not seem over- Perhaps these characters are ciphers for a ly hidebound by traditional formal constraints western capitalist society that theoretically is around colour, drawing accuracy or composition. structured to satisfy all human desire. What Th ere are no rules to be learned and then broken happens when nothing is denied or inaccessible? here, perhaps because they never existed to begin Th e characters in Rennick’s paintings seemingly with. Th e paint application builds layers from populate a world of capitalist abundance con- brisk thin under painting to thick fresh impasto. sisting of sun holidays, instant digital gratifi - As a colourist, her palette tends toward pastel cation and fl exible supported work culture. Yet powder blues, tinted oranges and unmodulated there persists a pervasive sense of vacuity and pinks that are iced on as the painting progresses, lack of nourishment that, like Starmer’s ignored like an ABBA song in which the melodic sugar and unheard classes, are worth unmuting for. rush can sweeten the lyrical toothache that lurks Sheila Rennick, Monkey Magic, 2019, Oil on canvas, 70 x 65 cm (SR010); image courtesy the artist and the Kevin Colin Martin is an artist and Head of the Kavanagh Gallery. below the surface. Th ese instinctual and unfi l- tered production values feel entirely integrated RHA School. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Critique

Fiona Hackett ‘The Long Disease: LA Stories’ RHA Ashford Gallery 10 May – 6 June 2021

Fiona Hackett,Untitled , from the series The Long Disease LA Stories, 2020, Archival pigment print, 63 m x 44 cm; Image courtesy of the artist and the RHA.

PHOTOGRAPHS ACHIEVE THEIR poignan- white, single storey building, its roughly plas- cy by freezing their subjects within a moment tered wall hosting a black and white image of of time. “Time stood still”, we often say, when Sophia Loren. A former Miss Italy and Oscar something stops us in our tracks. But time winning actress, Loren combines the glamour doesn’t stop. Time, as photographs remind us, and gravitas of an old-school star. Smouldering Fiona Hackett,Untitled (Cropped to square format), from the series The Long Disease LA Stories, 2020, Archival is always running out. Eventually staged in and chic, a no-parking sign frames her on the pigment print, 12.9 x 110 cm; Image courtesy of the artist and the RHA. May of this year, Fiona Hackett’s exhibition right, while on the verge in front, two real cac- was deferred from September 2020, and this tus plants anchor her image to terra firma, mak- unscheduled hiatus seems to play into the mean- ing gentle play with the painted textures of her ing of the exhibition itself. What happened in unseasonable furs. those intervening months; the accretion of time The show is arranged so the printed obitu- on those sunny streets, the fixed smiles of her ary columns and accompanying headshots are human subjects, already dead, drawn out beyond shown together in an irregular grid. There is no initial expectations. direct correspondence between the individual Hackett presents an unusual coupling here: obituaries and the variously sized, framed street- a set of framed photographs of Los Angeles scapes occupying the other walls. Instead, we get streetscapes, and a series of obituary columns, to think about them separately – the connec- enlarged and printed out from the pages of the tions develop in our minds. Like the figures in Los Angeles Times. The buildings depicted also the murals, all of these faithfully departed saw carry their own depictions, their walls painted their manifest destinies in the Golden State. But with murals suggesting a glamour beyond their Eden, to paraphrase Robert Frost, will always ordinary façades. The human subjects memori- sink into grief.2 alised in LA’s historic newspaper are glamorised Timothy Howe died peacefully at home in too, less in their grainy headshots, than in the 2014. Tim had been a surfer. He raised pigs. words of the anonymous staff writers responsi- He loved cooking and Jazz. His obituary ends ble for summing up their lives. “All photographs with how “his dark humour and insatiable love are memento mori”, Susan Sontag wrote.1 Pho- of women will be greatly missed.” Who provid- tography, memory and death seem naturally ed these extraordinary details? Who believed intertwined. Perhaps this unusual coupling is his “insatiable love of women” is what counted? not so unusual, after all. Or is that an example of his humour, a part- A large photograph, Untitled 4 (2020), shows ing shot in the manner of Spike Milligan’s, “I a painting of Gary Cooper – though it could be told you I was sick”. Julie Payne ‘came of age’ someone else, since all the works are untitled – a in the company of Humphry Bogart and Doris giant figure holding a flight helmet and goggles, Day. Later, she married the famous screenwrit- the orb of the moon framing him like an ancient er, Robert Towne, before reconnecting with her halo. A pair of concrete kickers at the base of high school sweetheart – a first love renewed for the painted wall suggest the mooring stations the end of time. In her portrait, Julie is breezily of a car park. But Gary won’t be stopping long; glamorous, her floppy fedora framing a pretty there are too many brave new worlds for him face with panda eyes. It could be a publicity still to conquer. Hackett’s photographs are relatively for a modern movie-star, but all it is now is the flat, her focus on façades resulting in the plane saddest kind of promotion. of interest being largely horizontal – the flatness of the prints themselves corresponding to the John Graham is an artist based in Dublin. flatness of her scenes. This lack of photographed A book on his recent drawing practice, 20 depth is complicated by the illusionistic depth Drawings, designed by Peter Maybury and in the painted murals, the photographer and the with a text by Brian Fay, was published in anonymous painters entangled within the illu- June. sionistic and the real. Like American photographer Stephen Shore, Notes: Hackett likes to use street signs or telegraph poles as framing devices, her shallow depths of 1Susan Sontag, On Photography (Penguin Books, field punctuated by these vertical elements. This 1979) p 15. can also have the effect of making the scene 2Robert Frost, ‘Nothing Gold Can Stay’, first Fiona Hackett,Untitled , from the series The Long Disease LA Stories, 2020, Archival pigment print, 42 x 29.7 cm; Image appear like a passing frame. The largest photo- published in the collection New Hampshire courtesy of the artist and the RHA. graph, Untitled 2 (2020), shows the façade of a (Henry Holt, 1923). Critique Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021

‘Light and Language’ Lismore Castle Arts 28 March – 10 October 2021

LISA LE FEUVRE is the executive director sky, earth, star – the cosmos contained by the lower gardens, the function of the barriers is an online platform for moving image and of the Holt/Smithson Foundation1. She has frames and reflections of the human eye, by a dissolved by glamourising and contorting them hybrid writing collaborations foregrounded Nancy Holt’s work in this exhi- pool of water, or by the lens. American artist, into shapes that invite their transgression. theunbound.info bition, with her opening remarks stressing the Matthew Day Jackson’s work, Commissioned In Boundary Conditions (2021), Irish artist importance of thinking and of asking questions Family Photo (2013), comprises 82 photographs Dennis McNulty creates a geolocated audio Notes: through the experience of art. of the artist and his family taken by a military walk via The Echoes App. This evokes The Trails Holt’s Electrical System (1982) is a site-re- camera, designed to record the extreme light series, where Holt and associates experienced 1The Holt/Smithson Foundation was set up in sponsive piece2. A network of more than 70 waves and shock reverberations of nuclear deto- the landscape through sound words and image 2014 to develop the distinctive creative legacies lightbulbs is connected via conduit pipework nations. This is chilling work; more evocative for – an idea that is extended by McNulty’s use of of Nancy Holt and Robert Smithson. It will end to the electrical system of Lismore Castle. It is being placed in the intimate setting of the upper geolocation5. The theme of an accelerating dys- in 2038. Holt and Smithson recalibrated the designed to externalise hidden networks that gallery, surrounded by Holt’s concrete poetry topia is continued in McNulty’s Maybe every- limits of art, changing what art can be and where connect the architecture to the landscape. We and other writings. thing dies… (2013), where the lyrics from the art can be found. Their art, writings, and ideas may wander through this maze of lightbulbs. “The world focuses Bruce Springsteen song, Atlantic City, are spelt were the fertile foundation from which contem- Are the matrix of pipes and wires comparable to And spins out again, seen.” out in haunting, digital time, on a minimalist porary art has grown. the roots and branches in the gardens? Could these A.K Burns’ 13-minute 16mm film (trans- structure – an apotropaic eye? 2The term ‘non-site’ was used by Land Artists to systems fail? ferred to HD video), Untitled (Eclipse) (2019), Does ‘the digital’ frame the limits of our being? signify work that was situated within an exhi- There are ‘thought prompts’; inscriptions shows a total solar eclipse in 2017, through foot- Interested in the sculptural relationship to bition space. A work was ‘site’ if situated on the carved by micro waterjet in sterling silver, dis- age from a field in Nebraska. experience, Charlotte Moth has created Blue land. played at intervals throughout the gallery. These What will the world be like when the sun dies reflecting the greens (2021) – a 90 cm blue mir- 3Nancy Holt, ca. 1970, typewriter ink on paper are works by Katie Paterson in response to – or with a different solar pattern – like on Mars? ror disc, mounted against a wall in the castle 11 x 8 1/2 in. (27.9 x 21.6 cm) © Holt/Smithson Holt’s conceptualisations and they whisper to The film is projected onto an angled screen – grounds, designed to reflect sunlight and foliage Foundation, licensed by VAGA at ARS, New you as you drift. the film grain is thus amplified. The colour looks of the gardens in a blue-green cast. York. “Objects soaked in moonlight for over one million washed out – jaded, from another time. There are Is the reflection (this reality) real, or is it an illu- 4Two of these ‘locators’ are in this exhibition; years” (2016) flares and bokeh, refraction and reflection, wildly sion? one in the riding house and one in Carthage “The Universe’s lights switched off one by one” ranging focus – ominous and unsettling. Hall. They are made from steel pipes, drawing (2015) Using her locators4 or ‘seeing devices’, Holt medium and black paint, in variable dimensions, Light and language were entangled concepts was always focusing and extending the limits according to the site. for Holt. She expressed her most pressing con- of vision and perceptual significance. AK Burns Jennifer Redmond is an artist, writer and 5This work will be available globally from 3-6 cerns in her concrete poetry3; Sun, moon, water, does this with The Dispossessed. Located in the editor at mink.run and at The Unbound, September 2021 on lismorecastlearts.ie

Nancy Holt, Electrical System, 1982, installation view, Lismore Castle Arts, 2021; photograph by Jed Niezgoda, © Holt/ Charlotte Moth,Blue reflecting the greens, 2021, installation view at Lismore Castle Arts, 2021. Smithson Foundation, licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Critique

HOME: Being and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland The Glucksman, University College Cork 11 May – 31 October 2021

THINKING OF ‘HOME’ today, it is hard not to Ireland. Amanda Rice’s photographs play with attach its suffix ‘less’, while ‘housing’ is stuck making-strange remnants of older architectural with its roommate ‘crisis’. The group exhibition, endeavors, while in her video, Site Where a Future ‘HOME: Being and Belonging in Contempo- Never Took Place (2015), the camera moves slow- rary Ireland’ at The Glucksman, turns its glance ly through a disused building, the soundtrack an towards a more general sense of home, one tied ominous hum. to notions of ‘belonging’ and ‘national identity’. Julie Merriman and Tinka Bechert engage This show is the third in a series connected to notions of ‘home’ at the level of style – the for- the gallery’s programming for the decade of mer with prints employing repeated images of centenaries. It also arises more obliquely from housing estates to form off-kilter grid designs; a unique moment in history, when people were and the latter, in New Flags (2020), by repurpos- largely confined to their homes during the glob- ing patterned fabrics to create textile assemblag- al coronavirus pandemic. es attached to canvases. The first work encountered in the show The rural aspect of Irish identity is touched alludes to the refugee crisis. Martin Boyle’s upon in two videos – Mieke Vanmechelen’s Somewhere Else (2017) – thirty-six pieces of atmospheric Residual Minority (2019) and Trea- crinkled, reflective golden material, derived from sa O’Brien’s The Blow-In (2016). Vanmechelen torn-up survival blankets rotating on the wall – documents the birth of a calf to a drone sound- contains connotations of shelter, while making scape that includes an organ-like motif, sur- reference to that displaced and distant ‘other’ of prisingly adding a mild celebratory tone to the home, ‘somewhere else’. On tables across from video. O’Brien’s film portrays some inhabitants this are placed a series of eight 3D-printed black of the community of Gort, County Galway – a MDF models of buildings with accompanying mix of locals and ‘blow-ins’ from Brazil, Roma- text, one of which is the fascist era Palazzo della nia and the village down the road – through the Civiltà Italiana, re-framed as the City Hall of a eyes of a main character, who interestingly has a re-imagined capital of Ireland. The text utilised sense of liking her own mode of ‘not belonging’. in Doireann Ní Ghrioghair’s Declaration of the Eileen Hutton’s video, Becoming (2020), is State Metropolis at Tara (2019) is from the early a short two-minute loop depicting a swallow 1940s and written by the architect of the Gar- snuggling into its nest. This display of the sim- den of Remembrance while he was a member ple pathos of animal existence works nicely with of an extreme right-wing group that fantasised the theme to shift our thoughts into the funda- about Ireland as a Catholic Fascist hinterland. mentality of some form of home or stable hab- The work probes an absurd and sinister imagi- itat for the flourishing of all species. Similarly, nary that has only recently been forcefully con- Brian Duggan’s more conceptual piece, Breath I tested in Irish society. Mean Something More Than Air (2020), displays Three artists respond to the theme through documents and filters from measurements of air painting. Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh’s work, Teorainn quality. It makes us think of the natural environ- No.6 (2019), uses a layering of large brushstrokes ment and technological innovation as integral Doireann Ní Ghrioghair, Declaration of the State Metropolis at Tara, 2019, and Martin Boyle, somewhere else, 2017; to depict what looks to be a shack on wheels. contributions to what we call home. photograph by Jed Niezgoda, courtesy of the artists and The Glucksman. Viewing the large horizontal brush strokes rep- The show contains interesting approaches resenting the planks of the ‘shack’, one tries to to the theme of home yet fails to fully engage make sense of another internal structure that with some of the most current topics connected seems to be hidden within this ‘limit/boundary’. to this key socio-political issue, such as the con- Kathy Tynan and Ciara Roche’s paintings are tinued failure of government to invest in a com- similar in style, each depicting ‘unremarkable’ prehensive social housing policy, the sweetheart interior and exterior scenes, respectively. Where land deals for developers, and the bulk-buying of Roche depicts shopfronts, most interesting at Irish real estate by investment funds, which has the level of signage and text displayed on these resulted in escalating homelessness, precarious buildings, Tynan’s interiors play with notions of rental situations and individuals being priced empty spaces and ‘paintings within paintings’. out of cities, due to the core issues of supply and Sara Baume’s Talisman (2018) assembles 100 affordability. Not that an exhibition focusing on little houses, made up of combinations of basic the housing crisis would change anything, but it 3D shapes – pyramids, cones, cubes and cuboids. would serve to bolster the exhibition by offering It is simple but very effective. The serial use of insights into the contemporary material condi- shapes nods to LeWitt, while the constructions tions necessary for a sense of home to be built. just looked strange. Somehow this display has reduced architecture to an absurdity: “Is that John Thompson is an artist, writer on art all houses are… a few shapes stuck together?” and philosophy and researcher whose Opposite is James L. Hayes work, consisting of interests are conceptual art, politics and plaster casts of the back of a canvas, repeated 63 materialist philosophy. times. With the canvas supports and interior on display, we are looking at the ‘architecture’ that allows the canvas to transmit images. A second work, Homegrown (2017), consists of a unique bronze cast of three stalks of asparagus, tied together by a loop of string, wound numerous times around their width. Kerry Guinan’s Landscapes (2018) consists of two photographs. One depicts a field with reeds blowing in the wind, while in the other, a build- ing developers’ hoarding abruptly curtails our view, an allusion to the ‘cutting off ’ by private developments of swathes of our cities.

Julia Pallone Gate Keepers (2012-19) consists Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh, Teorainn no.6, 2019, oil on canvas, 183 x 183cm; image courtesy of the artist and Kevin Kavana- of snapshots of the ubiquitous plastered walls gh Gallery, Dublin. that defend the lawns and bungalows of rural Critique Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021

Richard Mosse, ‘Incoming and Grid (Moria)’ Butler Gallery, Kilkenny 11 June – 29 August 2021

THE BUTLER GALLERY welcomes visitors to the work but seeing is simply the act of confi rming the open air of holding facilities, where children Irish premiere of two highly acclaimed screen- and allowing to register what you have heard. and adults are observed day and night as they based works by Kilkenny-born artist, Richard Th e tearing open of fabric. Cutting. Breathing. make the best of the conditions and what few Mosse. Th is is one of the fi rst main exhibitions Th e left screen comes on as the full extent of the freedoms they off er. since the gallery relocated from Butler Castle visual continues to be drawn with sounds. Skel- Th e camera used to deliver these black and to its newly renovated site by the river. Both etal remains are revealed before the screen goes white images illustrates not light but heat and works detail the often-fatal journey of refugees black and our attention is placed again on the at times we are watching all three screens, some- and migrants into the European Union and the central screen. A bone is sliced through with an thing that isn’t really possible given their size infrastructure that’s employed along its Medi- electrical saw until there is an unmistakably real and proximity. At other stages, just one screen terranean borders. Grid (Moria) (2017) focuses spray of black fl uid shorn from the marrow of focuses our attention, and this too is not always on one particular camp on the Greek island of the deceased. It is fair to say that the only way easy, as night-time sea rescue is followed by loss Lesbos. A fi re in 2020 has since destroyed the one might stomach this sort of visual content is of life and the harshness of survival that pre- camp but four years ago, Mosse undertook to through the almost metaphoric quality of the dominates any aesthetic or moral consideration. document the facility and its inhabitants, pro- technical equipment, used here by Mosse to Dappled light warms whatever it touches, and ducing a six-minute, 16-channel video work, convey what is sadly a routine occurrence that the moments of magical transcendence appear whose scanning motion provides a brief survey we are both aware of and blind to. at times to shimmer as light and heat fuse, of this open-air site and its surrounding area. In an earlier project set in Africa’s Congo bringing into focus the nature and culture of Presented as part of the Arts Council’s ‘Bright- Basin, the artist used saturated reds, pinks and human existence. As a viewer, what lifts you also ening Air/Coiscéim Coiligh’ – a ten-day sea- purples to bring warring militia and the lands keeps you seated; but as the fi lm’s composer Ben son of arts experiences in outdoor places – the over which they fi ght into to a sort of hyper life. Frost has said elsewhere of his often tensely son- work was displayed on one large screen, erected Where the locations and people of Th e Enclave ic output, you will be waiting a long time for the outside of the gallery building. Th e mechanical (2013) acquired the characteristics of a colour- base to drop. In that sense and others, this work’s operations of each divided section work in tan- ful if troubled community, Incoming off ers a sympathies provide the basis for an excoriation dem to illustrate a picture of captives awaiting haunting black and white portrait, again using of the leading causes of mass migration and the their release. military-grade camera and lens technology to containment of people, outlining simply another Incoming (2014-17), which has a running show us what we cannot ordinarily see. If the accepted feature of the military-industrial com- time of 52 minutes, is presented indoors as a armed Congolese tribes of that widely success- plex, from which we all await release. large three-channel projection. Th e video starts ful series appeared far from everyday life here with one central screen of the triptych active, and in Europe, Incoming is about bringing the story two black screens on either side. In a darkened nearer by showing us how close to it we really room, the sound and controlled climate makes are. In that sense, it follows a simple narrative for a hospitable but nervy environment. Th ere is structure, but that depends on how much of the Darren Caff rey is an artist and art writer just one long bench from which to observe this fi lm you watch. From the autopsy we move into currently based in the Southeast.

Richard Mosse, Grid (Moria), 2017; image courtesy of the artist, Jack Shainman Gallery and carlier | gebauer. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Critique – Book Review

What Artists Wear Charlie Porter Penguin, 2021, 376 pp.

THERE IS A glossy exuberance to how people dress in Dub- descriptions of crusty patches on cashmere, paint splattered Me Hardcore (1999), documents this form of dress, as worn lin right now, markedly diff erent from how we all looked a overalls under Comme des Garçons suits, and Agnes Martin’s at Northern Soul events. For Leckey and his peers, casual few weeks or months earlier, shuffl ing between home and the fi ttingly quilted Sears and Roebuck work jacket, all of which clothing was something that could only be worn by the ‘well- supermarket. Emerging from a pandemic – back to studios demonstrate a particular approach to suitability or appropri- off ’ and so labels like Fiorucci became desirable as a way to and exhibition openings – means a change in how we pres- ateness. overturn this. Charlotte Prodger worries on the possibility of ent to the world and how we dress for work, even if we are Th ere’s a slippery cliché that artists are class-migrators. appearing queer in a rural setting, where the nuances of what only re-describing our work selves to ourselves. We are all Porter addresses this by looking at some of artists’ clothing she is wearing may not be read. David Hockney describes changed, and we may choose to signal those changes, and the as workwear, clothing for making, often borrowed or hacked how his father wore a suit decorated with cut-out paper possibilities they open up, through what we wear. from other labours. Porter notes Andy Warhol’s switch from dots. “He taught me not to care what the neighbours think”, A graphic designer friend often wears a pencil in his top the chinos he always wore, to black jeans and then to blue Hockney tells Porter, but if the neighbours hadn’t noticed, pocket. He doesn’t really use it, but the pencil reminds him jeans which were a more legible link to his working-class, his father may not have done it, and Hockney’s subsequent and his clients that his work is based in craft. Another friend, middle American roots, as well as ubiquitous city wear. experiments with dress could be read as a rehearsal in audi- an artist who works mainly in video, describes how she cuts Bill Cunningham, the photographer and chronicler of ence, as well as aesthetic, development. her nails before a big project, a residual ritual from her train- fashion in New York, dressed unfailingly in a blue workers’ Th ere is a devastating moment when Porter, by his own ing in ceramics. jacket from the French department store, BHV. Described admission, assumes that a paint-covered pair of loafers belong In Charlie Porter’s new book, What Artists Wear, a num- as ‘bleu de travail’, it was picked up for about 10 euro in a to Jackson Pollock. Th ey are Lee Krasner’s; Pollock’s are pris- ber of artists describe an attachment to a particular item of DIY shop in Paris and functioned as a personal uniform – tine. Earlier Porter has told us that her career suff ered because clothing worn in the studio; others, Frida Kahlo or Picasso specifi c but unremarkable – which aff orded Cunningham the of his alcoholism and mental illness. In this light, Pollock’s for example, are identifi able by a particular clothing item or possibility of gliding from streets to runway shows as he doc- clean shoes seem as troubling as Yves Klein’s tuxedo. style. Th e studio wear is often an old garment that used to be umented what other people wore, the jacket’s handy pockets Porter leaves out, probably rightly, some kinds of specif- worn ‘out’, or workwear from another making or fi xing based fi lled with fi lm and lenses. After Cunningham died in 2016, ic performance wear and wearable sculpture, such as Hélio profession, adapted so that it is fi t-for-purpose. Sometimes it photographers gathered at New York Fashion week wearing Oiticica’s Parangolé Capes, or Franz Erhard Walther’s fabric involves wearing the same garment repeatedly until it takes versions of the blue jacket (now known as ‘Th e Bill’) as a trib- performance-forcing works. VALIE EXPORT’s chaps and on a role, similar to but not exactly like Winnicott’s descrip- ute. Cunningham must have known that this might happen. Lynda Benglis’s dildo don’t get a mention either. But these tion of a transitional object, a ‘blankey’ or comfort item that In What Artists Wear, Porter often writes in a long ellip- categories are diff erent: they are costumes or actual artworks has accumulated smells and patinas from previous work.1 sis, gently returning us to an item of clothing in a way that in themselves. Th is project covers everyday dress practice for How is what artists wear diff erent enough from what oth- defi nes how its symbolism has altered. Yves Klein wears a artists, from workwear to awards ceremonies; all part of the er people wear to merit special attention? How artists wear tuxedo while a group of women, employed by him, perfor- job, but not the job itself. clothes is often imagined as stemming either from a desire matively imprint their body shape in his patented Blue onto for fl amboyance or unconcern (or accidentally fl amboyant canvas or a wall. General Idea had parodied this in Shut the unconcern), close to the common portrayal of a preoccupied Fuck Up (1985), where we see a rather abject stuff ed poodle professor as ‘nutty’. Porter’s book undoes this with careful con- covered in blue paint spinning in front of a large painted X. cern, both for the clothing and the wearer. Where he doesn’t Porter takes the menace in the distance and power-signal- Vaari Claff ey is a curator based in Dublin. know the artist and what they tended to wear, he visits their ling of Klein’s tuxedo seriously – “Tailoring is not neutral”, clothing and picks over it for us or elicits a reliable testimony he notes. Much later, after having described the queering/ from someone observant and close. Th is is how we discover querying of the male power suit by Georgia O’Keefe and Gil- that Joseph Beuys’s (often emulated) hat functioned as a way bert and George, he remarks on how David Hammons oils Note: to cover over a metal plate in his head, which used to get cold. his own clothed body, leaving the bluish imprint of his jeans Early on, Porter identifi es a ‘defi ance’ in relation to how on the paper. 1Donald Winnicott, ‘Transitional objects and transitional phenomena; a artists wear clothes, but it could also be considered ‘tak- Mark Leckey spoke about ‘casuals’ in Temple Bar Gal- study of the fi rst not-me possession’,Th e International Journal of Psycho- ing liberties’ with materials, etiquette, and status. Th ere are lery + Studios a few years ago and his fi lm, Fiorucci Made analysis, 1953, 34 (2), pp 89-97.

Richard Hamilton; photograph by Tony Evans / Gett y Images. (Artwork: Barbara Hepworth, 1948; photograph courtesy Bowness. Sarah Lucas, Self-portrait with Fried Eggs, 1996, C-print; photograph © Kent State, 1970 © Richard Hamilton. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2021) Sarah Lucas, courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London. Critique – Book Review Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021

Midfield Dynamo Adrian Duncan The Lilliput Press, 2021, 152 pp.

I AM SITTING alone in the chapel of Kings College Hospital ioned: 1-4-4-2.” Defence, Midfield and Upfront. the most part, these characters are utterly detestable; their in London, where I am being treated for a long-term condi- Each story is given a field position based on a perceived relationships seem to make spectacle of the complicated and tion. I have been in hospital for 70 days. I came to write this personality. While this might at first seem novelty (and it is, aggressive reality of toxic masculinity. review, for the quiet. The pew is hard, and my back is arched partially), it is revelatory in so far as it provokes the thought When I return to my bed there is a football match playing so that the entirety of my vision is spent on the blank white that there is an element of the autobiographical present. A on the communal television. I take out my laptop to conclude ceiling. Slowly a damp patch appears, and I begin to look for story about a struggling, ‘failed’ artist named Vincent, About the review when I notice that many of the nurses watch on as meaning from its form, its undeniable beauty. I am favour- the Weight of a Bucket Salt takes the coach position, as the final Christian Eriksen collapses on the pitch and is resuscitated ing the aesthetic over the pragmatic, choosing to ignore the text in the book. Vincent’s story, the only text in third person, all on camera. They stand around the television in shock with impetus of its creation. This choice I am confronted with looms over preceding texts as a cautionary tale on being too their hands over their mouths. Meanwhile, in the same room, resembles the conceit which bounces at the centre of Pros- precious about ideals as a young artist, whilst being a razor- behind their backs, a man, my roommate, is slowly dying of inečki, one of the short stories in Adrian Duncan’s first collec- sharp critique of the messiness that entangles relationships in too many illnesses to list. I think that there is something to tion, Midfield Dynamo. the art world. be said about framing – how the frame might reinforce the In 1977, Pelé named his autobiography My Life and the Oblique critique is at the core of the ‘up front’ positions. In image of a certain violence, and that this is relevant to the Beautiful Game. The book’s acknowledgement page reads: “I We Too Have Wind-blown Plazas, an engineer who has emi- book, but I cannot quite figure out how, exactly. dedicate this book to all the people who have made this great grated to Abu Dhabi forces Duncan to come face to face with This collection is engrossing, seductive, deeply terrifying, game the Beautiful Game.” Arguably such beauty is the ful- the scale of exploitation that underpins the construction of and an absolute must-read for artists, engineers and those crum of wonder that imbues the protagonist of Prosinečki, as many of the city’s high-rise buildings. Having befriended his of us with a love for the beautiful game; at times, a terrible he dwells on his own style of play in relation to the former boss, the protagonist is witness to (and participant within) a beauty. Croatian football player, Robert Prosinečki. drug-infused orgy with his employer, all in the same 24 hours It is rare to see sport dealt with in fiction, if at all. The story as seeing the body of a worker splitting in half in front of him. first appeared in The Stinging Fly, edited by Sally Rooney, The absurdity which Duncan displays in his writing is well whose editorial style is detectable in the accessible intimacy nestled in the genre of horror. Frank Wasser is an Irish artist and writer who lives and immediacy that permeates the prose. Duncan, knowing Some stories seem to catch the writer realising that his and works in London. that Rooney is a football fan, submitted the story upon hear- characters are expendable, that they are after all most certain- ing of her being invited as a guest editor. ly fictional, they can do things that real people couldn’t pos- This is the third release from Duncan with The Lilliput sibly do, or could they? In Houses by the Sea, Finn befriends Press. Midfield Dynamo follows Love Notes from a German a local named Leonard. When Leonard’s life takes a dan- Building Site (2019) and A Sabbatical in Leipzig (2020). Both gerous boozy downward spiral, Finn stands back to let it all draw heavily from Duncan’s training as an engineer before unfold, even when Leonard is close to death. The assumed embarking upon an education in artmaking and writing. This humanity of Finn is sucked out of the character suddenly is Duncan’s first collection of short stories. They are arranged and somewhat inexplicably. A common point of connection in the formation of a soccer team in “the somewhat old-fash- between all these stories is a moment of violent upheaval. For

Fingal County Council’s Arts Office is delighted to present New considerations of familiar settings Ella de Burca Curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz Carroll Eithne Jordan Barbara Knežević Niamh McCann Helen O’Leary Niamh O’Malley Liliane Puthod Alice Rekab with Louise Meade Katie Watchorn Emma Wolf-Haugh

Guest Newbridge House 4 June — 19 Sept 2021 Niamh McCann, Not Tycho’s but Collin’s nose, 2018, bronze

To book a ticket visit www.newbridgehouseandfarm.com For further information visit www.fingalarts.ie Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Project Profile 27

Mergemerge

BRIAN FAY INTERVIEWS MICHAEL GEDDIS AND JOANNA KIDNEY ABOUT THEIR LONG-RUNNING COLLABORATIVE DRAWING PROJECT.

Brian Fay: A standard dynamic in drawing is the making of approach for the encaustic works, making a large number of opacity – each holding parts of the drawing within. The com- marks onto a blank surface. When drawing over the work of 30 x 30cm works, before embarking on the 1 x 1m scale, and bination of layering and scraping creates an optical depth others, how does this differ and what is at stake? the concertina folded drawings. The larger works developed containing fragments of the drawing, sometimes only faintly over a longer period of time, involving more passes between visible. It should be noted that Michael has remained extraor- Joanna Kidney: At the start of a drawing, which Michael has us to conclude. This generated exciting results in terms of dinarily tolerant of my brutal erasure and subtraction habits initiated and passed to me, I generally make my response in visual depth and complexity. throughout the collaboration! either the negative spaces or the openings in his forms. I tend not to work over his drawing in this early phase. The addi- MG: The larger scale definitely supported more protracted MG: I am very drawn to the intriguing visual properties of tions I make either echo the existing patterns and shapes or and developed visual conversations. I also like the way that drawings layered in translucent wax and find the illusion of introduce a varied range of marks. If what he has drawn is the larger drawings totally fill the visual field of viewers, as optical depth particularly fascinating. I enjoyed experiment- already a well-formed structure, I can find it difficult to find a they stand at a comfortable viewing distance. This effectively ing with fineness of line and colour to optimise this illusion. ‘way in’ to the drawing. My additions in these instances tend immerses them in our drawings and enhances their experi- In the large encaustic drawings, successive layers of wax and to arise from experimentation and chance. At this early stage ence of the work. During the course of the project, under drawings act like multiple geological strata by imparting a of the drawing, there is little at stake. Later on, when the Joanna’s influence, my drawing became slightly less figura- timeline and a sense of sequence. It is possible to peer deep drawing has grown and matured, there is obviously more to tive and more abstract. Such gestural marks were not possible into the wax and find tiny ‘fossilised’ fragments that subse- lose. Though sometimes risky, continuing to work instinctive- with the larger encaustic panels because I was using surgi- quently evolved into drawings in the upper layers. The unique ly is important for me in maintaining a dynamic quality to cal instruments to incise my marks into their surfaces. These properties of encaustic and Joanna’s accomplishment at our drawings. tools are designed for precision and do not lend themselves manipulating it allowed us to develop highly complex multi- readily to making large sweeping marks. ple-layered drawings that would probably be unachievable (or Michael Geddis: In my solo work, I never erase or rework undecipherable) using other mediums. marks made. When working with Joanna, I adopted this form BF: Could you talk about the properties of chance and con- of editing, in order to assist with integrating our contribu- trol in these collaborative works? tions into viable compositions. In our most recent work, by Brian Fay is an artist and Senior Lecturer in Fine Art necessity, Joanna initiated all the drawings by laying down MG: My drawings all start the same way – I spend a lot of and Visual Culture at Technological University Dublin. encaustic surfaces for me to inscribe marks into. At first time visualising in fine detail what I will draw before I start. brianfayartist.com glance, they often resembled slightly tinted and textured This is possibly a habit that I picked up when I was in veter- blank pages. However, after a bit of looking, I could usual- inary practice and spent many hours visualising detailed ana- Dr. Michael Geddis, based in Northern Ireland, is a ly discern hints or fragments of forms and patterns in their tomical structures before completing orthopaedic operations. visual artist/retired veterinary surgeon specialising subtle but interesting surfaces. I much preferred these helpful For me, these initial visualisations are entirely intuitive. In the in very finely detailed drawing. prompts to the totally sterile blank pages that we worked on case of our collaborative work, each time I receive a drawing michaelgeddisart.co.uk earlier in the project. back with Joanna’s changes, I regard it as a completely new drawing and repeat the process of visualisation using it as a Joanna Kidney is based in Wicklow. Her practice is a BF: Could you discuss the need for a taxonomy of drawings, starting point. continual enquiry of an abstract vocabulary through as you worked collaboratively? drawing and the expansion of drawing into paint and JK: Chance has always played a role in my work. It ties in space. MG: The taxonomy, based on key visual characteristics, with possibility, discovery and the unknown. Michael’s con- joannakidney.com enabled us to systematically sort and classify our initial out- trolled methodology was one of the foremost reasons I chose put of over 200 small drawings. As a result of this analysis, to work with him. When Michael passes me back one of our ‘Mergemerge’ will be exhibited at Ballinglen Arts we were able to develop an agreed list of generic descriptors drawings, I need to get to know it afresh before I start work- Foundation from 2 to 30 July 2021 and at Mermaid relating to both successful and unsuccessful drawings. Up ing on it. My additions generally work against the organised Arts Centre in 2022. until this point, our investigation into the process of joint- structure and defined forms characteristic of his additions. ly making intuitive drawings had been entirely open-ended. This tension between our differences energises the drawings Whilst not intended to be prescriptive, the list of descriptors and is a key aspect of our collaboration. for successful drawings provided a useful framework to focus this activity. Our descriptors for unsuccessful drawings were BF: How did your approach to drawing, sequential elements also a valuable tool. We used them to spot ‘dead-ender’ draw- and surfaces alter when you used the folded concertina for- ings that were likely to prove unsuccessful at an earlier stage, mat? which allowed us to make much better use of our time. MG: We adopted two distinct approaches using the con- JK: Using taxonomy to define and categorise a body of work certina format. In one, the entire concertina was visible to was a new and fascinating approach for me. Michael intro- both of us all the time. In the other, previous drawings were duced it about two years into the project. We’d been inten- obscured with wrapping. In the latter, the only prompt for tionally communicating almost entirely through visual means each of us was a tiny piece of the most recent drawing that until then, which had enabled us to assimilate each other’s had continued slightly onto the next blank surface. With visual vocabulary. The large number of drawings we made both approaches, I found drawing on the concertinas to be an during this time were varied and experimental in content; the artistically emancipating experience. taxonomy was brilliantly succinct in taking stock of them. JK: The process of making the concertina drawings together BF: Scale is important in drawing, as it has implications for was completely different from making the two-dimension- gesture, marks and relations with our own bodies. In the case al drawings. For me, the format invited a greater degree of of collaborative work, how did you decide what scale to work imagination and playfulness. There was an ease with making at, and how did this impact the drawings? these drawings, akin to doodling. With the folded format, we were working largely from memory of the hidden additions JK: We began the project with many small-scale drawings to each of us had previously made. This memory speaks to narra- allow us to get to know each other’s language, to be experi- tive and sequence, which are integral to this format. mental with techniques and materials, and to be able to send the initial drawings to each other via the post. After taking BF: How important is the idea of layering to the collabora- stock of the strengths and weaknesses of this series of draw- tive encaustic drawings? Michael Geddis and Joanna Kidney, Concertina 3 (detail), 20cm x ings, it was a natural progression to move up in scale and so JK: The encaustic drawings evolved through adding many 145cm, pencil and pastel on paper, 2018-2020 we began making larger drawings on paper. We took the same layers of paint – with varying degrees of translucency and Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 28 Project Profile

I Know, But Only Just

CLAIRE-LOUISE BENNETT AND RUBY WALLIS CONTINUE THEIR COLLABORATIVE PROJECT.

I do have some quite nice jars I like the idea of there being a few of them, different shapes and sizes, you know, like the way Victorians always had jars of weird life forms and things. There’s probably a name for that, but I don’t know what it is ʘ I watched it with fascination as it circled around the light, wa- vering, floating and rising, then the tiny animal changed direction and flew straight to me, all of a sudden there it was, a fragile frame, curled up on my chest ʘ Yesterday I was working on a scene in my book where a girl climbs onto a table at school to get into a box that’s on top of a cupboard in the classroom ʘ I miss being able to meet up ʘ Greeks and Romans placed great importance on the healing powers of cabbage ʘ Deviancy! I love that word ʘ I was able to study its minute velvety body in detail, it folded its wings and relaxed, we sat there together for quite a while I remember glowing with the feeling of it ʘ I also find the image of a woman holding a box really powerful ʘ She shrieked, took a tissue and pulled it from my nightdress. I was so surprised by her reaction ʘ I suppose that’s also what I mean by fluidity ʘ Boxes are so evocative, holding things, secrets, womb-like, cave-like, internal ʘ I hope you are having a good day, the beautiful sunshine was dis- tracting yesterday ʘ The deep, rich, red purple colour of the beet symbolizes the heart, blood, and love ʘ It could be fun to play Exquisite Corpse, I know you can play with drawings, words, photography too ʘ There’s something really nice about sitting in silence with someone both working away on something - like the way women used to do embroidery together, you’re in your own worlds and side by side, there’s something really female about that, I thought and the odd little things we’d come out with now and then ʘ Please save anything stained you have, even old stains ʘ It can be nice to go just around the back of Henry Street by the canal and eat them ʘ Meret Oppenheim, Mona Hatoum & Eva Hesse ʘ When I was doing the mandala one day I thought about how nice it would feel if you were at the table doing one too ʘ Gold leaf is lovely - maybe we could put it on our ears! ʘ Hopefully I’m wrong ʘ I love the strange hybrid entities that emerge from the Exquisite Corpse procedure - I really like the series the Chap- man brother’s did. Hybrid forms are kind of interesting actually ʘ trying to find octopus tentacles, first because of the ink and also because they are so completely weird ʘ I was looking at photos of Louise Brooks when she was older, she had ever such long hair ʘ I felt pretty low and apathetic yesterday but realized I’m pre-menstrual too, all edgy ʘ One is like a baboon, another like a bird - I forget the third animal - and another is human ʘ I’m drawn to the idea of keeping the ‘I’ out of it too, or at least the ‘I’ that is me ʘ If the weather is OK tomorrow evening do you want to have a beer and some fish and chips? ʘ Hannah Höch made some great collages ʘ Also gathering some ideas on stains, cuttlefish ink, wine, berries, etc... ʘ Like the Eve story, there is also the issue of ‘female curiosity’ at work in this myth - and that’s something I’ve been thinking about in various contexts recently, including in surrealist thinking and in the Tanning work specifically, as you know ʘ Wouldn’t it be great to be half animal? ʘ (I remember I daubed my ears with gold for your 40th birthday - ears look good gold) ʘ One evening after being bathed, powdered, brushed and tucked tightly into bed, I was sitting up, and in flew a tiny flickering dark winged creature ʘ I’ve been looking at the word jar, because I was thinking about how we say something ‘jars’ to describe something incongruous or unsettling, and ‘ajar’ which refers to something neither open nor closed - and again, something at variance ʘ The results are quite interesting ʘ I feel like I’m being slowly backed further and further into a corner sometimes ʘ having a big tail would be amazing ʘ I am too tired to say anything very sensible - I think the antibiotics make me a bit sleepy - do they do that? ʘ Thinking of the hidden, the energy released, and the dynamic of the opening ʘ Some energy, irreversible, from the box (This idea of havoc released also resonates with our current virus experience) ʘ A closed box is so exciting, and I love to see them - they were so magical as a child and some of that mag- ic has endured ʘ I feel like bustling about and seeing a few faces! ʘ How much longer do you think it will go on for? ʘ Making quite a mess here, like a kid with mud pies - squashing grapes, etc ʘ It’s sort of slow and very present, and totally impossible at the moment!! ʘ The sounds of our feet ʘ ʘ ʘ Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Project Profile 29

‘I Know, But Only Just’ is an ongoing project, first published in Winter Papers Vol. 6, 2020 with a second audio-visual iteration for ‘View Source’, curated by Fallow Media and commissioned by Solas Nua, Washington, 2021. winterpapers.com solasnua.org

Ruby Wallis is a visual artist and lectures at Burren College of Art. Wallis is a recent recipient of a Visual Arts Bursary Award from the Arts Council of Ireland. rubywallis.com

Claire-Louise Bennett is the author of Pond, Fish Out of Water, and Checkout 19.

Images:

Top left, bottom right & bottom left: stills from I Know, But Only Just, 2021, stop motion video, 3.5 minutes;

Middle left: Foldings, 2020, photomontage 36 x 45 cm.

Top right: Tearings, 2020, photomontage, 36 x 24cm.

All images © and courtesy the artists. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 30 Project Profile

Array Collective, Pride, 2019; photograph by Laura O’Connor, courtesy Array and Tate Press Office.

Joanne Laws: We were thrilled to hear that Array has been nominated for this year’s Turner Prize, along with four other UK-based art collectives. Do you have a sense of the work that led to your nomination?

Emma Campbell: It still does feel very bizarre when people congratulate us! As far as we understood from the jurors this year, they were specifically trying to look at arts collectives who had in some way kept up a version of their practice during lockdown, perhaps around issues of community cohesion. They also mentioned the ‘Jerwood Collaborate!’ exhibition we did in London, but to be honest, our social media presence seems to have The North is Now been a big part of it. We were also asked to do a video for A-N, because they had a special series on artists and social change, which the jurors mentioned.

Clodagh Lavelle: Normally nominations are based on an exhibition that JOANNE LAWS INTERVIEWS MEMBERS OF THE BELFAST- has happened previously, but because no galleries were really open last year, BASED ART COLLECTIVE, ARRAY. it focused on groups who were still visibly trying to work together in iso- lation. We created videos together, made online work and kept that sense of community alive through birthday nights and dress-up Zooms like the QFT screening of the DUP Opera, for example.

JL: What was the rationale for originally establishing the Array collec- tive? Did you have any founding principles, in terms of your collective identity, or how you might define a discourse or build communities for your collaborative practice?

EC: It happened organically at first, because there are lots of overlaps between friendship, art practice and community practice, but also because we were all just at the same rallies and protests. It wasn’t as if we were dropping into another community to speak on behalf of anyone else; all Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Project Profile 31

of us were in some way directly affected by the stuff we were Belfast. Has this artist-led grounding and DIY ethos has these things to endure. Are you all good friends? protesting about, like equal marriage and abortion rights. A shaped your working methods? couple of people from Array were running an activist stall, CL: I think that is absolutely key. We enjoy each other’s com- while others were doing stuff with Outburst and Pride, but EC: Neither of us have been involved with Catalyst but oth- pany and have a deep love and respect for each other. Because it wasn’t until we were asked to do the Jerwood exhibition in ers have. The unpaid directorships can make them inaccessi- of the culture of doing everything for nothing, you could so London, that we began to formalise our work. ble for some, but others gained good insight and experience. easily give it all up, if you were driving each other soft. We Array are careful enough to not take on work that would push drink together, we dance together, we enjoy sparking off each CL: For the Jerwood show, we realised that we were a col- us beyond our reasonable capabilities as a group. We’ve made other and coming up with ideas and all of that is definitely lective, rather than just 11 people putting in a lot of work. decisions to decline work before, just because we thought we rooted in friendship and care for each other – that’s more We didn’t talk about our values before that because they were couldn’t take it on, since it might not be good for everybody’s important than anything else. Yes, our careers as artists are implicit in some ways, but we did write a statement for the mental health or whatever. Lots of us are involved in com- important to us, but our relationships and love for each other Jerwood exhibition and organised a symposium with ‘house munity activist organisations, some work with young people, is key. rules’ which outlined being respectful to one another and hav- a number of us work with Household, and these kinds of ing the craic, whilst talking about some serious issues. We’re things inform what we do. EC: And I think that even extends beyond the 11 of us in all about hospitality and activism and karaoke and food and Array. We don’t just lift up each other’s work; we also want dancing and acting the maggot! CL: And the culture is definitely changing, as we are to share with our other friends in the community and draw becoming more aware of artists working for free. The labour attention to other people and bring them onboard. There’s JL: The political situation in Northern Ireland is central to exchange model of days gone by – “I’ll help you out, you help something really welcoming about the arts community in your projects, which often take the form of public proces- me out” – has lessened as we have more life commitments, Belfast. It’s really small and supportive and there’s generally sions, rallies and material activism on issues like reproduc- homes, children etc. There can be a lot of burn-out in the arts, a sense of camaraderie and pulling each other through some tive rights or equal marriage. What is the role of art in giving especially within that model of working and it limits who can awful shit as well, not just the cultural backdrop of being in visibility to national conversations such as these? take part as well. The whole Turner thing is a big deal, and it the north but also what Clodagh was talking about – this idea came as a surprise. One of the things we have for this project of being instrumentalised for your labour as an artist and the EC: I think art was really central to the campaign for abor- is a self-care/mental health message thread, in case anyone precariousness of our spaces. Even at a base level, Array have tion rights particularly. I think what works really well at finds it too overwhelming, so that we can be there to support been my childcare on occasion; we’ve been through many life protests are these kind of repetitive motifs – like Leanne each other. events together and it’s nice to have our art family. Dunne’s repeal jumper, for example – which people can very easily identify with, as part of a larger community. Artists can EC: We’re very clear with each other that we don’t expect also bring a bit more reflection and nuance to conversations everyone to be putting in 100% all of the time. That’s one on sometimes difficult issues. Because these issues are so seri- of the joys of having 11 of us. People have multiple day jobs Array Collective are a group of individual artists root- ous and traumatic for many people, it’s nice to be able to have and caring responsibilities, so it’s very much about making ed in Belfast, who join together to create collaborative something that can lighten the load a little bit with a sense accommodations for that and making sure that nobody feels actions in response to the socio-political issues affect- of humour. I think colour and spectacle is really key. It’s been too much under pressure. There’s also something in the safety ing Northern Ireland. important for social movements for hundreds of years, when of being with your people – the kind of people you don’t feel arraystudiosbelfast.com you think of trade unionist banners or Suffragettes banners, like you have to explain yourself to all the time. the Irish rebellion and so forth. However, none of us are The Turner Prize exhibition will take place at the Her- under any illusions that it’s the art that makes the change. JL: It’s worth considering the dynamic of friendship – which, bert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry from 29 We are very aware that we are a small part of much larger historically, has sustained all kinds of co-ops, collectives and September 2021 to 12 January 2022, as part of the UK movements, where there’s a lot going on. artist-led projects. While artistic collaboration, peer support City of Culture 2021 celebrations. The winner will be and shared labour are all central to the process of making announced on 1 December 2021 at an award ceremo- JL: Many of Array’s members have backgrounds in artist-led things public, it is friendship and the desire for collectivity – ny at Coventry Cathedral broadcast on the BBC. spaces, most notably as former directors of Catalyst Arts in the parties, shared meals and common interests – that allows theherbert.org

Array Collective and Friends, The North is Now (one week after decriminalisation), 2020; photograph by Simon Mills, courtesy Array and Tate Press Office Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 32 Project Profile

‘Luminous Void: Twenty Years of Experimental Film Society’, installation view, Project Arts Centre; photograph by Rouzbeh Rashidi, courtesy the artists and Project Arts Centre.

Matt Packer: The Experimental Film Society (EFS) was founded in Teh- ran, four years before your move to Dublin. To what extent did these dif- ferent contexts alter your vision for EFS?

Rouzbeh Rashidi: In 2000 I founded the Experimental Film Society. I made films in Iran until 2004 and then I moved to Ireland. During my filmmaking adventures in Iran, I would organise private screenings of new work (my movies and films by others) for friends and peers. During that time, I realised that you could not expect any support from film festivals or government agencies. If you want to survive, you must create the culture Luminous Void you want to be part of and build it yourself from scratch. Naturally, it is not a one-person job, so an experimental film collective was needed to achieve this goal. When I came to Dublin, I continued making films. As time passed, I came into contact with like-minded filmmakers in Ireland, and EFS started to grow again. Although an international entity, it must MATT PACKER INTERVIEWS ROUZBEH RASHIDI, FOUNDER OF be admitted that the Middle East and Ireland form the two definite geo- THE EXPERIMENTAL FILM SOCIETY. graphical poles of EFS. Arriving in Ireland, I found myself in a similar situation to what I had experienced in Iran: Irish film history can boast a few notable figures in experimental film, but there was never a substantial tradition of alternative cinema. Nothing was happening I could relate to or fit into as a filmmaker. Therefore, creating the safety and infrastructure of EFS was the only way for me to survive, both as an avant-garde artist and immigrant at the same time.

MP: One of the things that interests me about EFS is the relationship between the ‘institution’ of EFS and its constituent filmmakers. You have been very active in writing about your work, self-organising screening pro- grammes, and publishing anthologies of the EFS back catalogue. There’s a comprehensive, self-appointed, institutional ‘apparatus’ that surrounds your work as filmmakers that seems to be driven by more than just the Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Project Profile 33

pragmatics of promoting and distributing your work? believed that cinema only exists in traditional screenings and of each instalment without having the pressure of putting presentations such as in theatres. At the same time, I never them in the circulation of screening and distribution. This RR: I am not a writer; I am only a filmmaker and nothing accepted that cinematic material presented within a visual agenda perhaps correlated with my continuing existential else. But I write my ideas to contextualise and support my arts exhibitionary context betrays their cinematic DNA. I grasp of immigration. The films one makes are nothing but work. I find it very constructive to create a literature of ideas am always interested in discovering and finding out how a the haunting shadows and lights of the movies that one has about what I do. All of us at EFS are engaged with the craft cinematic project can inhabit a space. It all depends on how seen in the past. There is no original film, except for the very of filmmaking and are filmmakers first and foremost. But we you present, weaponise, juxtapose and orchestrate your proj- first ones by the medium’s pioneers. Therefore I decided to are also animated by a passion for film history; our films are ects. Every film I ever made began as an exhaustively plotted render all my experiments through the prism of science-fic- constantly interacting with, incorporating, or ingesting the narrative in its primordial stage. By the time it was rendered, tion and horror cinema, because they are the foundation of history of film directly or indirectly in a creative and mys- filtered and materialised through me, it had lost its original my upbringing as a cinephile and discovery of the medium. terious love affair. Therefore, a platform to discuss this has form, context and even purpose. What remains is an unex- Finally, I wanted to create a project that I would forget become necessary. plained ancient artefact in the form of an apparition – an about immediately on the spot, even while in the process of After more than two decades of making and screening eolith with the free will to cast a spell – a ritualistic experience making it. Due to the massive production rate of the work, films, I came to the realisation that I need to explain myself in for the audience designed by the filmmaker. Hence, I always I can’t remember making much of it. What this amnesia has critical terms to survive as an artist. And by ‘survive’, I mean seek a traditional or non-traditional space to present these not swallowed up seems to exist in an artificial memory, as if to continue making and screening films. EFS has organically works, as long as I am committed to the idea of ‘cinema’ itself. implanted in my mind by someone else without my knowl- created an underground niche for itself, but the type of work edge. The whole project seems so alien and distant. I always it produces is still fragile and emerging, as far as its visibility MP: I’d like to turn to your film work, specifically your dreamed about having a secret underground cinematic life in is concerned. For a long time, I felt the work should speak for ‘Homo Sapiens Project’ (2011-ongoing), which is a kind of my work, like a metaphorical secret addiction. If my feature itself, but I have seen that frank and, if necessary, controver- vast compilation ‘framework’ of shorter video pieces. It’s a films can be seen as a day job to earn a living, I created ‘Homo sial discussions around it have only had positive outcomes. mammoth project, both in terms of its scope and undertak- Sapiens Project’ as a private nightlife to feed my addiction to Therefore I have decided to systematically write about what ing. I’m interested in the way that ‘HSP’ renders the human filmmaking. They serve no purpose, and I could comfortably I do in my films, what I think about cinema in general, and body with a certain elasticity, both as an ambivalent subject live without them. The sheer volume of instalments in this how I feel about the work of others. of the lens and also in the act of viewership – an engagement series makes it impossible for audiences to watch all of them, which can only ever feel partial and insignificant when faced yet I still plan to continue making them. MP: Historically, there’s been a lot of discussion about defi- with the work’s totality. nitions of cinema, film, video, which have in turn been chan- Matt Packer is the Director of Eva International. neled through the separate discourses of film and visual art RR: Perhaps if I provide some of the reasons I decided to eva.ie respectively. I’m not sure I want to rehearse these arguments create the ‘Homo Sapiens Project’, it would somehow answer here, but I do think it’s interesting that you’re currently pre- your question. I began by asking a fundamental and yet sim- Rouzbeh Rashidi is an Iranian-Irish filmmaker and senting the work of EFS within a visual arts exhibitionary ple question: what is the notion and existence of cinema in founder of the Experimental Film Society. context at Project Arts Centre. To what extent are you inter- the 21st century? Form, in my view, is the most essential and rouzbehrashidi.com ested in these different conditions of presentation – the exhi- vital part of cinema. When you conceive a unique form, then bition, the screening etc. – in terms of how they ‘perform’ the narrative (and I believe all cinema is narrative to a degree), The exhibition, ‘Luminous Void: Twenty Years of work itself? drama, or story can be articulated with it. Then I realised that Experimental Film Society’, ran at Project Arts Centre I needed a system that provided me with the ability to engage from 13 May to 25 June. A book of the same name was RR: For me as a filmmaker, the most important thing is to with filmmaking on a technical level, such as experimenting also launched in late 2020, which can be ordered on refute the fact held by many, that the invention of cinema with different camera formats, lenses, filters and apparatus. I the EFS website. is now fully formed and complete. Consequently, I never also wanted to eliminate the name, identity and even purpose projectartscentre.ie

Maximillian Le Cain & Vicky Langan, Inside, 2017; film still courtesy the artists and EFS. Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Kinetics, 2018; film still courtesy the artist and EFS.

Maximillian Le Cain, Whale Skull, 2019; film still courtesy the artist and EFS. Atoosa Pour Hosseini, Refining the Senses, 2016; film still courtesy the artist and EFS. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 34 Career Development

Light and Shadow

JOANNE LAWS INTERVIEWS ARTIST CIARA ROCHE ABOUT THE EVOLUTION OF HER PAINTING PRACTICE.

Joanne Laws: Can you discuss what have you been working JL: Your paintings are being shown concurrently in several it is a representation of the huge numbers in my generation on during lockdown? Did you have access to your studio? venues: ‘of late…’, your solo show at Mother’s Tankstation; (and previous generations) who have emigrated to Australia. ‘Ochre’ a two-person exhibition with Emma Roche at Wex- After the intensity of preparing work for ‘of late…’ and Ciara Roche: I consider myself to be so lucky that my studio ford Arts Centre; ‘HOME: Being and Belonging in Con- ‘Ochre’, I felt I needed to do something a little different for is in my parents converted garage, which is just a few minutes’ temporary Ireland’, a group show at The Glucksman; and a while and the latest works for ‘MEET’ are paintings of my walk from where I live, so I had access to my studio through- ‘MEET’, a group show in Periphery Space. What can you place and with some of my people appearing in them. I feel out the pandemic. I spent all of my time there making many tell us about these different bodies of work? that ‘MEET’ is a safe space in which to test these works that small paintings but also testing larger scales and really push- I have not shown before; it’s exciting that they are different to ing myself with what it was that I was painting. I had a lot CR: ‘of late…’ at Mother’s Tankstation is the body of work all the other paintings currently on show. of failures in the studio but success also came. The paintings made throughout 2020 of places of retail, the paintings made made during this time were for two shows in particular – ‘of in the first two lockdowns – paintings coming from a place JL: Can you outline some of your current work or upcoming late…’ in Mother’s Tankstation and ‘Ochre’ in Wexford Arts of anger at first but progressing to some really fun paintings. projects? Centre. Allowing humour and cheek into the work, it ended up being Just as the pandemic hit, I was starting to really think the most enjoyable body of work to make. They can also be CR: At the moment, I am making some paintings with about what it was I wanted to say to the world. I remem- read in terms of the lockdown and all the empty public spaces figures in them. These are a continuation of the works in bered a trip to Kildare Village a few weeks before; I was there people became so accustomed to. ‘MEET’ and really just experiments and a break from retail- with four friends, and we were all browsing luxury bits. I was The paintings for ‘Ochre’ were made between January and heavy work. I plan to take some time over the summer to particularly taken with some top of the range bedsheets and May of this year. Working with Emma has been a joy. Her feed my practice by visiting places of interest for the purposes then it hit me – at the time, all of us were still living at home paintings are coming from a very different place, since she is of research. I have the beginnings of some new paintings in with our parents. I cannot afford health insurance and have at the stage of rearing a young family and she brings her own my mind, and I am very excited about spending prolonged no pension plans. Did I really want those bedsheets or did the experience into the work. Her paintings focus on a lack of time in the studio testing and pushing the work. I feel like world just make me think I did because the acquirement of time with a heavy dose of reality. We would bounce work off my recent paintings are just the beginning and that I have so stuff is a measure of your success when the things that nor- each other; I have continued to paint objects of desire for the much more to say. mally mean success are unattainable? I don’t have a depend- attainment of the perfect lifestyle – nutribullets, Tom Ford able income or a home of my own, but it’s ok I have every makeup, sexy yoga gear and spaces for idle time with a heavy shade of this Charlotte Tilbury lipstick. dose of superficiality! Ciara Roche is a painter based in County Wexford. Her I started thinking about this in relation to my painting. I The paintings in ‘HOME’ were made in Sydney, Austra- solo exhibition, ‘of late…’, continues at Mother’s Tank- can make beautiful paintings and I wanted to challenge the lia, when I lived there in 2019, and depict the bar, café and station until 3 July. idea of what I can or should paint – what deserved to be restaurant that I first felt at home in. It fits with the show, as motherstankstation.com painted? I began with paintings of lingerie shops (the perfect body); appliance stores (the perfect home); and Ikea show- rooms – would the viewer see the ideal home set up, or the fact that this is not a real home? In a way, the isolation of the pandemic helped in the making of this work. I felt like I was just doing it for myself and nobody else was ever going to see them, so I might as well make multiple paintings of shiny, sexy, disgusting stuff!

JL: In many of your paintings there is a heavy emphasis on light and shadow; can you outline the importance of this for your practice?

CR: I have always been obsessed with painting light. Previous bodies of work have all been around natural light, exploring the effects of certain painted lights on different scenes – how light is read in terms of narrative. Some have explored the dif- ference in painting cold Irish light and the heightened Aus- tralian light. More recent paintings of retail interiors play up the notion of seductive artificial lighting to draw the viewer in and then when I have your attention with the beautifully painted light, then you can really look at what is being paint- ed. I also love the challenge of rendering light, as it is really all about colour and I think in colour.

JL: The lack of figures in your paintings and the focus on structure suspends many of your pieces in time. How do you see temporality as a factor in your process?

CR: Leaving figures out also helps to let the viewer in. I rare- ly paint figures so the viewer can inhabit the scene them- selves, imagine themselves there. I never want figures in the paintings of public places – parks, cafés, shops – places for idleness, as I want the viewer to insert themselves and create a moment, to let their own thoughts fill the scene. I have painted people in my own home and I think these paintings work as this is a barrier to the viewer. There is already a figure there and you cannot come in now, as this is my private space, and these are my people. You can watch but cannot partake, since this is a moment set in reality – the time did exist and Ciara Roche, SMEGS, 2020, oil on canvas, 40cm x 50cm; image courtesy of the artist. there were witnesses. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Career Development 35

Working Interdependently

RACHEL BOTHA OUTLINES RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN HER CURATORIAL PRACTICE.

HOW DO YOU become a curator? How does a curator see I have financial stability for twelve months. It is crucial for me ny identifies strongly with its history, yet at the same time, a your work? These are frequent questions in the regular men- to use this precious time to explore, understand and adhere city has to function as a place to live. This creates a duality of toring sessions I have with members of The Douglas Hyde to the values I wish to embed in my practice. My self-di- experience; the charm and beauty of the historical juxtaposes Gallery’s Student Forum. Talking to the participants brings rected research focuses on the concept of interdependence with the lived experience of mundane routine. Robert’s work me back to that time of uncertainty after college. I remember and working collaboratively in terms of the artist curator examines the development of the city witnessed through its knowing that I wanted to work in the arts but had no idea relationship. I am understanding this from the broader con- architecture, from the exposed foundations of the city walls what I wanted to do. text of ‘the commons’, in building a resilient and sustainable to the chronological layers of building. Through a process of Your circumstances, at a certain time, determine the human network. The exhibition, ‘Common or Garden’ at Cat- extracting the familiar and reinterpreting this materially, he opportunities you can avail of. I was on the dole when unpaid alyst Arts – Leah’s Corbett’s Director Show – has grounded questions our imprint and demands on a city over time. internships were rampant, and it was the only way to gain this thinking and sparked further research. I have enrolled in ‘The limits of my language’ was an exhibition with invit- any gallery experience – those days are hopefully behind us. online courses such as ‘Contradictions of Capital, Curating, ed artists Chloe Brenan, Elaine Grainger and Johanna Nulty. Part-time arts-related work in Poetry Ireland and Fire Sta- and Care’ with Sascia Bailer at the Zurich University of the With a strong dialogue between the practices through respec- tion Artists’ Studios gave important insights into the office- Arts (ZHdK) and ‘Art as Politics!’ with Maria Hlavajova, the tive mediums of form, sound and film, they each attempt to based and organisational aspects of the arts sector. I met real director of BAK in Utrecht. I am taking an enquiry-led, con- articulate tacit knowledge, haptic memory and subconscious poets and artists in these positions, chatting in the canteen versation-driven research approach and interviewing artists experience. Working with the artists over the year (and after about looming deadlines and the pressures of working on a and curators. The findings will be collated in a small publica- continuous postponing) it became crucial for the work to be publication or exhibition – everyone was very busy. I am very tion, kindly funded by ArtLinks, Kilkenny County Council installed in the space, for it to exist beyond the studio and to thankful for these entry positions into arts organisations, but Arts Office. be shared with the public in some form. However, this exhibi- I knew that I wanted to do something more creative. I was Undertaking the Emerging Curator in Residence pro- tion of newly commissioned artworks was simply realised and also aware that I could be very easily lured in by even a sliver gramme at the Kilkenny Arts Office was a unique opportu- documented in the Kilkenny Arts Office Gallery, with Elaine of stability in Dublin. nity for me to curate a series of exhibitions in my hometown. Grainger’s work left to be engaged through the windows of So I signed up for a two-year directorship at Catalyst I felt a real sense of pride about this residency; it was a rare 76-77 John Street Lower until Sunday 23 May. In response Arts, an artist-led organisation in Belfast. It’s been an abso- chance for my family to see what I actually do, as opposed to this, a souvenir was collaboratively produced with writer lute whirlwind, and anything seems possible when working to hearing about how busy I am. However, I was also quite Michaela Nash and designers Models & Constructs, to be with a team who are so passionate and ambitious. That said, nervous about returning to a place that I know but have fallen posted out in an effort to emulate the exhibition experience this year we’ve been having serious discussions about work- out of sync with. Ian Maleney’s book of essays, Minor Mon- in printed matter. life balance and the impact of running a busy programme – uments, talks about the experience of becoming a ‘voyeur’ in Over the past year, I have been very fortunate to receive conversations which relate to the arts sector as a whole. This your own hometown – when you leave and return, you don’t a number of opportunities that have been significant to my issue of perpetual ‘busyness’ only really came to light when we always see the place in the same way. career development. Although outcomes have had to be were forced to stop. Talking to colleagues, friends and peers The residency was supposed to be six months but ended reimagined and adapted because of the circumstances of the about the harsh reality of working in the arts and the lack of up spanning a year, with the artists and I benefitting from a pandemic, I have had the immense pleasure to work with infrastructure for care demonstrates a precarity that leaves the fallow period of research and review. A solo exhibition with amazing artists and practitioners over an extended period of arts community anxious, exhausted and competitive. So how local artist Robert Dunne, titled ‘(the site + ruin)’, ran from 10 time. I am so grateful for this, and I hope to continue working can we create an arts sector that we want to work in? What April to 1 May. Due to restrictions, the exhibition could only in a slower and more interdependent ways in the future. change and support is needed? be engaged through the windows of 76-77 John Street Low- The Provost’s Curatorial Fellowship is an opportunity for er, but in the end, this suited the concept. Robert is drawn to Rachel Botha is the Provost’s Curatorial Fellow at The a Trinity graduate of the last five years. I am acutely aware of the in-between spaces; take for example the vacant shops on and a Director at Catalyst Arts, the privilege of this position – I receive a salary, which means High Street that are a part of the city but not in use. Kilken- Belfast.

Robert Dunne, Composite, 2020, wood, plaster, paint, metal, installation view, ‘(the site + ruin)’; Photograph by Kasia Kaminska, courtesy the artist Elaine Grainger, ‘the limits of my language’ installation view; Photograph and curator. by Brian Creggan, courtesy the artist and curator. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 36 Residency Report

Living Island

ROSIE MCGURRAN OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF THE INISHLACKEN PROJECT, CELEBRATING ITS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR.

Mick O’Dea giving a painting demonstration, 2014; photograph courtesy Rosie McGurran. Michael Doherty surveying his work, 2018; photograph courtesy Rosie McGurran.

AFTER READING THREE men on an island by James Mac- Inishnee. On such occasions, the peculiar light casts the fields The painter Mick O’Dea has long been a temporary Intyre in 2000, I was inspired by his illustrated story of a there in bright golden brilliance, like a Hollywood film set. In islander with us. The beach is one of his main subjects and summer spent on the small living island of Inishlacken in Autumn and late summer, the houses on the village street cast often he turns his back on the obvious view of the mountains 1951. He travelled there with fellow artist, George Campbell, long shadows with streaks of sunlight jabbing over the road to examine the sand and rocks. He has produced an exten- on the invitation of their friend and colleague, Gerard Dillon. into the harbour. These fascinations for light and colour must sive collection of Inishlacken landscapes, which often fea- The three men spent their days drawing and painting, being have also tantalised many other artists before me. ture other artists in the composition. English artist Caroline chased by geese, rowing to Roundstone village for supplies, Inishlacken continued to fascinate me, as it sat on its rocky Wright has set her performance works on the beaches and in taking a few pints in the pub and making friends. Their pres- perch waiting for artists to visit. In 2001, I established ‘The the water documenting and presenting her responses in vid- ence on the island was quotidian; painters have long visited Inishlacken Project’, a one-day visit with a few painters and eo and drawing. Belfast architect and artist Michael Doherty the west, particularly Roundstone. Fanfares are few – artists supporters, which eventually became an annual week-long holds a fervent commitment to plein air drawing and paint- are part of life there. The final pages of the book stopped me residency with artists spending long days and often nights ing; he is prolific and never wastes a moment. Dublin artists in my tracks. Years later, George Campbell and Gerard Dil- on the island. From a modest start, over two hundred art- Una Sealy and Dorothy Smith have approached the subject lon had died young, possibly with paintings in their heads. ists have since visited during that mid-summer week. The of left behind houses and their contents, while also work- The sadness gave way to an overwhelming sense that I should summer solstice gives optimum time for working in daylight. ing directly from the landscape. After years of absorbing the put artists back on that island. I knew no one locally and had We have often camped out to watch the bonfires light up island landscape for studio work, I have recently embraced a studio and career in Belfast. on the mainland on St John’s Eve, when the sun never really the practice of plein air painting, which has sharpened up my In June of that year, I was invited to participate in an art- sets. Artists have worked there in many different art forms, drawing and observation skills. ists’ residency in Roundstone. I had been visiting the area including painting, drawing, performance, photography, As a group, we have exhibited at Galway Arts Centre, the since my art college days, unaware of its significance in Irish sculpture, poetry and musical composition. Linen Hall Library and the Gerard Dillon Gallery in Belfast, art history. The two weeks of the residency gave way to fur- The island is small – one mile long and three quarters of Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr, The Red House Arts Center, New ther weeks in a rented apartment, and I was quietly becoming a mile wide. From Errisbeg, the manmade walls and fields York, Clifden Arts Festival and on Inishlacken itself for Cul- anchored in the village. I returned to my home in Belfast, make it look like a giant patchwork quilt, floating in the sea. ture Night. No one could have foreseen the circumstances bought a car and packed up my belongings in September. I The island was inhabited until the early sixties. The boreen and events of annus pandemicus 2020. The pandemic almost had secured a lease on the apartment for the winter; I only that circles the island is subsumed by bog and rocks in places. put a halt to the annual gathering but in September 2020, expected to stay a few months. A small house overlooking A water tower sits on the rocky highest part of the island, a small window opened when a group could go there. The the harbour then became my home. The water would reflect where a broken windmill and overgrown reservoir point to a island was perfect for social distancing and the weather held on the bedroom ceiling in the mornings; I often felt like I long-abandoned water system, which was revolutionary in its for a few days of much needed island isolation, breaking the was on a boat. time. Looking due north from that point, potato drill scars months of imposed isolation we had all lived through. The It is only fitting that an artist should want to live in a beau- run along fields towards the schoolhouse and small cottage further lockdowns make this year’s ‘Inishlacken Project’ seem tiful place. The natural and built environments of Roundstone where Gerard Dillon had lived. The grass gives way to the like an aspirational dream. We should have been celebrating and Inishlacken hold many obvious visual delights and oth- white sand of the beach; a line of stones, maybe once a wall, the twentieth anniversary of the project with another exhi- er concerns lying beneath the surface. Sitting at the foot of bejewel the sandy height of a shell midden. It is said that the bition in Syracuse, but hopefully we will be able to mark it Errisbeg Mountain, overseeing the changing light on the former landlord’s daughter is buried there. Another notable next year. Michael Doherty called me to suggest a twenty first Twelve Bens and Bertraboy Bay, the village is steeped in his- soul was a Luftwaffe pilot, whose body washed up on the commemoration instead, to celebrate “... a coming of age”, tory, but the constant factor is its beauty. The sun rises behind island. He was eventually repatriated by his family after the he said. Inishnee island – at shouting distance in a strong wind – and war. This is all framed by the Twelve Bens in the distance. sets behind the hill, often offering up mackerel skies and a These mountains change shape and colour constantly, a vexa- Rosie McGurran is a visual artist based in Roundstone. strange low light that illuminates the windows of homes on tion for many artists or a challenge to some. rosiemcgurran.com Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 Residency Report 37

High Impact

BRYAN GERARD DUFFY REPORTS ON HIS EXPERIENCE OF THE INAUGURAL BOLAY RESIDENCY IN THE LINENHALL ARTS CENTRE.

IN 2020, THE Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar reached ist, and this residency aims to fulfil that legacy in the best way survived something I really shouldn’t have. Some newspapers the significant milestone of 30 years at the heart of the com- possible, by providing time and space for an artist to focus called me the “Miracle Man”, while social media commen- munity in Mayo. Unfortunately, the year began on a sad note solely on their work.” tators called me “blind”, asking “how can you not see a train with the passing of the artist, Veronica Bolay, a friend of the Bolay was an acclaimed visual artist and a member of coming?” The car is now a write-off, and the shattered car centre and former board member, in January 2020. This was Aosdána and the Royal Hibernian Academy who sat on the windows have become a significant feature in the direction soon followed by closures due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Board of Directors of the Linenhall spanning a period of 13 of my art practice. However, the art centre’s response was brave and ambitious. years. Former Linenhall Director and Founder, Marie Farrell, It was a great honour to be the recipient of the inaugural who worked with Bolay for many years said: Site-specific Artworks Bolay Residency award at the Linenhall, which was estab- “Veronica Bolay was a great artist, and she was also a very I began to contemplate: (1) the process of the split-sec- lished to honour her life and work. The committee selected fine human being. In her many years of voluntary service as a ond ‘bracing for impact’ from the train; (2) the deconstruc- me from a pool of ten shortlisted Mayo artists, with the pur- member of the Board of the Linenhall Arts Centre, her gen- tion / reconstruction of society; and (3) the airbag as a buffer pose of developing two site-specific artworks in the build- tle, firm presence always ensured the work of the artist was at zone. In the midst of this, the Black Lives Matters movement ing. The residency took place over the course of eight weeks the centre of every decision made. I think it’s fitting that the gained traction, as statues of colonisers and slave traders were between the end of the first lockdown (August 2020) and the Linenhall honours her by ensuring that, once again, the work being torn down. The whole of lockdown became a series of beginning of the second Level 5 lockdown (October 2020). of the artist is at the core of this residency.” deconstructions, as we attempted to find elements of famil- At this time, access to the Arts Centre was allowed under iarity, routine and normality. the set guidelines; the gallery and coffee shop were open, but No Introductions Needed I started to reflect on my family legacy of Duffy’s Pho- all theatre events and workshops were cancelled. It was an My experience was made all the more special as Castle- tography, which was established in 1912. Our family holds opportune time to activate the first visual art residency at the bar is my hometown; in fact, my first encounter with the art one of the oldest private collections of photographs in Con- venue, since having an artist working and creating in the cen- world was at the Linenhall. I had a solo show, ‘The Fool by naught. We still have many of the ‘haunting’ glass plate nega- tre would bring life back to the building after the long peri- the Roadside’, in the main gallery in 2017; I co-facilitated tives, and so I began using these plates in a different manner. od of lockdown. What was once the community arts room workshops alongside artist Vukasin Nedeljkovic (Asylum Screens appeared throughout our communities to prevent the for approximately 20 years became my studio space during Archive), and we had a group show with a number of asylum spread of the virus, and we were no longer in a position to this time. And I had the freedom to roam. Funding of €2000 seekers from direct provision in 2008. I also regularly featured embrace each other. So, I began hammering imagery of peo- was made available for the development of the work, and free in the popular biannual Mayo Artists Show. I felt right at ple hugging into panes of laminated safety glass, reenforced lunch every day for the duration of the residency was one of home from the start. with toughened glass. The glass panels (80 x 100 cm) are now the surprising (and welcome) perks of the residency. I began the residency in a mode of personal reflection on hung in the Linenhall Arts Centre. As part of the residency award, I was offered mentorship events that occurred during the first lockdown. At the begin- While I waited for the glass panels to be sealed by Law- from Mayo-based artist, Alice Maher. I enjoyed and appre- ning of the pandemic, I was exploring the ‘in-between spaces’ less Glass Ltd. in Castlebar, I began work on the second of ciated every conversation I had with Alice, and I am beyond – buffer zones and safe spaces – of the Occupied Territo- the two site-specific works. I spray-painted swift and swallow grateful for her guidance and support. Alice places particular ries of Western Sahara, where political and military activity birds onto the outside seating area, with a Hitchcock moment importance on supporting upcoming artists in the county, is prohibited. However, a few weeks into lockdown, my art in mind. This space houses the swift nest conservation project and nationally. It was a belief held by Veronica Bolay too, as practice took a dramatic change with events unrelated to my and is quite active during the summer months. Alice states: art. In the remaining weeks of the residency, I developed an “The ‘quiet poetry’ of her work is often written about, but My car collided with a train at an unmanned Irish Rail interview series, titled ‘Hall Talk: Celebrating 30 Years at the it is the singular focus and absolute dedication she had to her crossing. I did not hear or see the train until I was on the Linenhall’ in which I interviewed some of the many local own personal visual language that I think of. She never once tracks; by then it was too late. How the accident occurred is voices that made up the Linenhall community over the past passed up an opportunity to help or encourage a younger art- less relevant at this moment in comparison to the fact that I three decades, featuring visual artists like Alice Maher, Breda Mayock, Nuala Clarke, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Breda Burns, Hina Khan, Tom Meskell, Áine O Hara, and Ian Wieczorek. ‘Hall Talk’ is available on the Linenhall’s Facebook, Instagram and YouTube pages. I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all the friendly Linenhall staff, the visual art selection committee, the local radio station/media, and the community for sup- porting and accommodating me during my time on the Bolay residency. A special thank you to the local artists who visited me and shared their uplifting memories and stories, and to the new powerhouse Linenhall Director, Bernadette Gre- enan, for her immense support and welcome under such dif- ficult circumstances. I can’t recommend this residency highly enough. The Bolay Residency is now an annual residency with a new large studio space, specifically designed for visual artists. In the midst of all the struggles of the past year, the future of the Linenhall’s ever-evolving visual arts programme certainly looks promising.

Bryan Gerard Duffy is an artist and filmmaker based in Mayo. bryangerardduffy.com

The official launch of the Bolay Residency site-spe- cific works will take place during the summer, once restrictions allow, with talks, presentations, and the big reveal of the new studio space. thelinenhall.com Gerard Duffy,Impact , 2020, installation view, laminated safety glass and toughened glass, each work 80 x 100cm; Photograph by Ger Duffy Media. Visual Artists' News Sheet | July – August 2021 38 Opportunities GRANTS, AWARDS, To keep up-to-date with the OPEN CALLS, COMMISSIONS latest opportunities, visit visualartists.ie/adverts

Funding / Awards / Commissions Residencies

Arts Council Agility Award Visual Artists Workspace Scheme Galway City Council Arts Grant Scheme Creative Residency in Sport From the Arts Council: This award aims to sup- From the Arts Council: The purpose of the From Galway City Council Arts Office: Galway From Dublin City Council Culture Company: port individual professional freelance artists and Visual Artists Workspace Scheme is to support City Council Arts Office invites applications for In partnership with Dublin City Sport & Well- arts workers at any stage in their careers to do artists’ workspaces throughout the country to the Arts Grant Scheme 2021 which will provide being Partnership, we invite applications from one or more of the following: provide the best possible working environment funding for arts organisations and arts groups artists to spend eight months ‘in residence’ with • Develop their practice for visual artists and, where feasible, to enable a for their projects and programmes. a designated sports club in the city • Develop their work level of subsidy for the artists working in these In order to be considered for funding the Made by Dublin City Council Culture Com- • Develop their skills spaces. organisation or group: pany, the Creative Residency programme creates • Create new work The scheme is in line with the Arts Council’s • Must operate primarily as an arts organ- partnerships to try out ideas, test new approach- • Present new work ten-year strategy (2016–25) ‘Making Great Art isation es and add to the cultural story of the city. Cre- This award was developed to support people Work: Leading the Development of the Arts • May be voluntary or professional ative Residencies encourage makers and experts following the Covid-19 crisis and is open to all. in Ireland’ which commits to ensuring “a sup- • Must operate on a not-for-profit basis to pilot new partnerships with organisations. We particularly welcome new applicants portive working environment that addresses key • Must be based in Galway City or oper- By bringing creative people and organisations and encourage applications from all areas of the points in the creative cycle by which art is made.” ate substantially within the city together, and by connecting through culture community regardless of your gender, sexual The scheme will award grants of up to €40,000 Art forms and projects supported include and conversation, we will develop and share new orientation, civil or family status, religion, age, towards core costs including the running costs of music, film, theatre, dance, visual arts, multi-me- ways of working. disability, race or membership of the Traveller the workspace such as light, heat, rent, admin- dia, combined arts, literature, architecture, tradi- The Creative Residency in Sport is a new and Community, or socio-economic background. istration and/or appropriate management costs. tional art, arts festivals and arts venues. exciting partnership between the Dublin City €5,000 in available funding. You can also A proportion of support up to a maximum of Grant assistance will be awarded only where Sport & Wellbeing Partnership and Dublin apply for additional costs to meet access needs 20% of the total request may be directed towards applications meet the criteria set down by Gal- City Council Culture Company. Through the you may have as part of your proposal. essential repair and maintenance. way City Council. Please note that the City residency, the selected artists will be encouraged All awards and schemes are informed by Please visit the Arts Council website and Council reserves its right to add to or reduce the to explore the theme of art and sport, with ref- the Arts Council’s ten-year strategy (2016-25), funding page for more details and how to apply. value of an award it may make, and to withhold erence to a designated local sports club, and to ‘Making Great Art Work: Leading the Devel- Note: workspaces that are successful in their an award at its discretion. create a final (permanent or temporary) creative opment of the Arts in Ireland’. application to this scheme cannot have received For more information and application forms work for public presentation at the end of the or have applied to other Arts Council Awards or visit: galwaycity.ie/artsgrants2021 residency. grant programmes for the same purpose. Deadline Deadline Deadline Deadline Thursday, 8 July, 5:30pm Thursday, 8 July, 5:30pm Friday, 9 July, 4pm Wednesday, 14 July

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Wexford Artist Workplace Scheme Creative Ireland Open Call 2, County Leitrim Creative Places Tuam Artist in Residence at UCD Earth Institute From Wexford County Council Arts Office: The From Leitrim County Council: A central theme From Create Ireland: Creative Places Tuam, led From UCD: ‘Creating a Sustainable Glob- Arts Office in partnership with Creative Ireland of Creative Ireland is collaboration in order to by Create, is delighted to announce a brand- al Society’ is one of the four strategic themes is pleased to announce they are launching a new facilitate an ecosystem of creativity and to nur- new commission opportunity for collaborative underpinning UCD’s 2020-2024 Strategy. The Artists’ Workspace Grant Scheme. ture the creative imagination through active and socially engaged artists and/or arts collec- theme addresses critical global and local chal- This scheme is seed funding to help visu- engagement with the arts and culture. tives, working at the intersection of art, theory/ lenges relating to biodiversity, climate, water, al artists, craft makers and creatives establish a Leitrim as a county is regarded for its unspoilt research and social action/ justice. food, the built environment, communities and practice by offering support in suitable, afford- landscape, culturally vibrant, rich in heritage We are seeking proposals for a 15 month work. able and flexible workspaces throughout the and remarkable, relative to its size, for its levels Cooperative Commission commencing in Sep- UCD Parity Studios are delighted to county, and enable a level of subsidy for artists/ of activity and capacity across a wide range of tember 2021 that engages with and responds announce the 2021-2022 residency which aims creatives working in these spaces. artforms and cultural arenas. Leitrim County to the unique town of Tuam, located north of to address one or more of these challenges, sup- The total fund is €20,000 and applicants may Council recognises the value and importance of Galway City in the west of Ireland. Funding is ported in partnership with UCD Earth Institute apply for a maximum fund of €5,000. creativity. We recognise that while the creative €60,000. and Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Coun- Awards will be in the region of €3,000 – sector plays a central function in the cultural We wish to work with artists and/or arts col- cil. €5,000 each. Workspaces must accommodate at wellbeing of the county, it also has vast impli- lectives that are seeking to further explore the The Earth Institute is UCD’s institute for least three professional artists working on site cations socially and economically; the three potential of the town and hinterlands through environmental and sustainability research. The and show in your application how you will share strands of which are inherently intertwined. collaborative and socially engaged art mak- Institute comprises a community of over 130 resources for the benefit of all artists sharing the Funding is €5,000. Applications must be ing practices. Creative Places Tuam is inviting senior academics and 200 early career research- workspace. developed by a community group, venue or proposals to deliver an engaging project that ers drawn from across the University’s six con- The scheme is in line with the ‘Creative Ire- organisation in partnership with individuals will embed the successful collective within the stituent Colleges, and seeks to promote inter- land Wexford’s Culture and Creativity Plan’ and with professional expertise in any creative or diverse communities that make up Tuam. disciplinary activity across the sciences, social the ‘Wexford County Arts Plan’, to support art- cultural arena such as visual or performing arts, We expect that through this cooperative sciences, arts, humanities, engineering and ists accessing affordable and flexible workspac- literature, heritage or other culture and creativi- commission the selected artists and/or arts col- architecture. Areas of multidisciplinary expertise es for making, exhibiting and selling work. It ty area. A group may approach the professional lective would create a strong connection into include biodiversity, climate, ecosystems, water, also aligns itself with the Arts Council ten-year practitioner with a view to developing a project and with the local ecosystem of social solidarity the built environment and sustainable commu- strategy (2016-25), which commits to ensuring or visa-versa. whilst engaging with the issues and concerns nities. a supportive working environment for artists. that matter to the communities of Tuam. Deadline Deadline Deadline Deadline Monday, 26 July, 2pm Friday, 23 July Wednesday, 21 July, 5pm Sunday, 11 July

Web Web Web Web wexfordcoco.ie leitrimcoco.ie creativeplacestuam.ie ucdartistsinresidence.com

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Lifelong Learning Summer 2021

WE ARE CONTINUING to run our Lifelong Learning programme online using Zoom (zoom.us), with a full schedule of regular events planned for the summer months, including talks, webinars, helpdesks, clinics and Visual Artists Cafés. An exhibition by Colm Mac Athlaoich

VAI members can att end our Lifelong Learning programme at reduced rates and can 11 May – 11 July 2021 also watch a selection of our previous Lifelong Learning Webinars, via the Members Area of the Visual Artists Ireland website (visualartists.ie).

To book a place for any of our upcoming events – and to get updates on new events – please visit visualartists.ie and sign-up to our mailing list.

As If I were a saint, oil on canvas, 2020

Helpdesks / Clinics QUEER AS YOU ARE A group exhibition by artists: Austin Hearne, Breda Lynch, Conor O’ Grady VAI Helpdesk (with Shelly McDonnell) VAI Helpdesk (with Shelly McDonnell) Date/Time: Wednesday, 7 July, 2pm – 5pm Date/Time: Friday 30 July, 2pm – 5pm Kian Benson Bailes, and Stephen Doyle Places: 6 Places: 6 Cost: FREE Cost: FREE 20 July – 19 September 2021 VAI Helpdesk (with Shelly McDonnell) Date/Time: Friday 16 July, 10am – 1pm Places: 6 Cost: FREE

Visual Artist Cafés Satan Was A Lesbian, cyanotype, Breda Lynch 2018

LUAN GALLERY Tues – Sat 11 – 5pm Tel: 090 6442154 Introducing... Berlin (In association with Artist Talk with Joy Gerrard Sun 12 – 5pm Email: [email protected] the Irish Embassy, Berlin) Date/Time: Tuesday 23 September, 3pm Gallery Admin Free Insta: @luangallery.ie Date/Time: Wednesday 7 July, 6pm (Dublin Places: 70 Time) / 7pm (Berlin Time) Cost: €5 (VAI Members); Places: 70 €10 (General Public); Cost: Free for Germany based Irish artists and VAI members Curator Talk with Kim McAleese Date/Time: Tuesday 28 September, 3pm Artist Talk with Miriam O’ Connor Places: 70 Date/Time: Tuesday 13 July, 3pm Cost: €5 (VAI Members); Places: 70 €10 (General Public); Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Public);

Artist Talk with Elaine Hoey Date/Time: Tuesday 3 August, 3pm Places: 70 Cost: €5 (VAI Members); €10 (General Public);

Lifelong Learning Partners Fingal, A Place for Art Fingal County Council and Graphic Studio Dublin Fine Art Print Residency Award

Fingal County Council Arts Office in partnership with Graphic Studio Dublin are offering a Fine Art Print Residency for a professional artist at any stage of their career, working in any discipline, who is interested in exploring print processes.

The two-week long residency will provide an ideal environment for the development Closing date for receipt of applications: of a creative project in printmaking, working Thursday 29th July 2021 at 4.00pm with a master printer.

To be eligible to apply, applicants must For further information and an application have been born, studied or currently reside form please contact Graphic Studio Dublin in Fingal. by email at [email protected] or visit www.graphicstudiodublin.com

www.fingalarts.ie www.fingal.ie/arts

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