Engage Art Studios

News

The Consoling Dream Necessity
Cecilia Danell
Talbot Gallery Studios
January 11th – February 4th 2012

Cecilia Danell is a Swedish artist based in Galway. Her work focuses on questions concerning identity, dealing with such themes as perception of the self and sensations of otherness. Her media spans a spectrum of painting, photography and video, all of which are utilized toward making hazy the boundary between fiction and reality. The surreal quality of her video and photographic pieces is well complemented by the installation works consisting of such materials as twigs, safety clips and folded graph paper. The potentially mundane associations these works call to mind throw into greater relief the polarity of Utopian and Dystopian landscapes, and the notion that what we regard as personal can have universal connotations.

Danell studied at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, where she obtained a first class honours degree in Fine Arts (2007-2008) having first achieved her Bachelors Degree in Art & Design with Distinction (2004-2007). As well as featuring in innumerable exhibitions and publications, she has received several awards since completing her college education, including the Arts Council of Ireland Project Award 2011, which is funding her upcoming show here at the Talbot. She is also the 2011 winner of the Wexford Arts Centre Emerging Artist Award.

We are delighted to have this opportunity to further promote Danell’s work. Her upcoming show is comprised of a new body of work geared toward a personal search for meaning, dealing with contemporary life as coloured by her Scandinavian heritage and upbringing. With her inspiration largely deriving from our physical encounter with the landscape and the merging of the outer environment with the inner being, Danell’s exhibition promises to elaborate the metaphorical act whereby the two are made interchangeable.

Talbot Gallery & Studios
Tue - Fri 10.30 - 5pm
Saturdays: 11 - 4pm
www.talbotgallery.com

Cecilia Danell - Emerging Visual Artist Award Winner, 2011

Wexford Arts Centre, Wexford County Council and the Arts Council are pleased to announce that Galway based visual artist Cecilia Danell is the recipient of the fifth annual Emerging Visual Artist Award.

The initiative supports promising visual artists in Ireland through providing a monetary prize of €5,000 plus a solo exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre. This award is aimed at recognising and supporting the development of committed emerging artists, in kick starting their career and achieving professional recognition. Following a national open competition selection process, Danell, was selected from over eighty submissions received. The submissions were assessed by an independent selection panel, all of which had appropriate expertise in the visual arts.

As the recipient of the award, Danell will be required to create a new body of work during the period of January – November 2012, which will be exhibited at Wexford Arts Centre during December 2012.

In Danell’s work, feelings of otherness and longing combine with questions concerning identity and the perception of the Self. Utopian and dystopian landscapes act as stage sets where the boundaries between the universal and the personal, the known and the unknown, reality and fiction become blurred.

For the exhibition at Wexford Arts Centre, Danell will continue her research into the landscape and the built environment as a metaphor for the human condition, with special focus on existentialist philosophy and psychology dealing with disengagement from the Self and out of body experiences. In Danell’s practice several different mediums and methods are used, with special focus on material properties, citing the modernist idea of truth to materials. Danell achieves this modernist transparency through selecting materials according to particular properties and inherent qualities, and intentionally reveals her process in the finished product.

Cecilia Danell is a Swedish artist based in Galway, Ireland. She graduated from GMIT in 2008 with a first class honours degree in painting and was awarded Paint Student of the Year. Since graduating Cecilia has exhibited in Ireland and the USA, including group and two person shows in The Red House Arts Centre in Syracuse NY, The Crow Gallery in Dublin, Galway Arts Centre, Occupy Space in Limerick, 126 Gallery, Tulca Season of Visual Arts and The Claremorris Open. She is a recipient of a 2010 Arts Council of Ireland bursary award and a 2011 Arts Council Project Award for her work Build your own: Scandinavian loneliness. Danell is currently represented by the Talbot Gallery at the RHA National Art Fair.

For further information contact www.wexfordartscentre.ie

Undertow
A curated project by Aideen Barry & Alice Maher
Preview: Wednesday 14 December 2011, 6-8pm

Ormston House is delighted to announce the inaugural members' exhibition: Undertow, a curated project by Aideen Barry and Alice Maher presenting the work of 11 Irish and international artists, opening Wednesday 14 December 2011, 6-8pm.

The artists are Gimena Blanco, Paul Hallahan, Lisa Marie Johnson, Ali Kirby, Karin Lindholm, Veronica Nicholson, Will O'Kane, Padraig Robinson, Kristian Smith, Ruby Wallis and Ian Wieczorek.

Undertow is that which flows beneath the surface. An undertow is a current that runs counter to, or in hidden parallel with the main current. The world beneath the surface is one of refracted imagery and unseen forces. We think we know what is there but we are not sure of its true form and density. In psychological terms we may fear the undertow because we cannot see it clearly, or we may indeed be attracted to its dangerous depths. What appears readable on the surface may at a deeper level be totally contrary to that reading. It is with this premise in mind that Aideen Barry and Alice Maher selected the work of 11 artists from the Ormston House membership, carefully orchestrating a conversation with the artists, the space and the very public and historic environment in which these works will be presented, they have selected work that ranges from the absurd to the banal, to the comical, to the abject. Areas of alternative, forbidden or unseen lifestyles and practices are key to the curatorial discourse surrounding Undertow and audiences will be drawn into the counter-current beneath the glassy surfaces of reality.

Further information on each of the artists will be available at the gallery and on our website: www.ormstonhouse.com
The exhibition will run until 28 January 2012.
The gallery is open Wednesday-Saturday, 12-6pm or by appointment.
We will close for the holidays from 21 December 2011-10 January 2012.

Catalyst presents The Featherweight Portable Museum, a joint venture between Catalyst Arts (Belfast) and Media Pyhat (Finland), bringing together an eclectic body of work made by selected UK, Irish and Finnish artists in a travelling multi-media exhibition. The first show...case of the exhibition will take place at Catalyst Arts on Thursday 1st of December, with screenings, installations and performance art running from 6pm to 9pm. The work (a combination of the independent selections made by both organisations) will travel to Finland next year.

For more information visit www.catalystarts.org.

Pallas Periodical Review
Selected by Ruth Carroll, Carl Giffney, Mark Cullen & Gavin Murphy
19/11/11—17/12/11

David Beattie, Morton Feldman, Bea McMahon, Seán Shanahan, John Smith, Mark Clare, Maeve Curtis, Gillan Lawler, Aidan Lynam, Fergal McCarthy, Not Abel, Cecily Brennan, Carol Anne Connolly, Emma Houlihan, Andreas Von Knobloch, Nevin Lahart, Joseph Coveney, Michelle Considine, Barbara Knezevic, Colm Mac Athlaoich, Maggie Madden

An artwork, like a book is not made up of individual words on a page (or images on a screen), each of which with a meaning, but is instead “caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences.” Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

Pallas Periodical Review is not a group exhibition per se, it is a discursive action, with the gallery as a magazine-like layout of images that speak (The field talking to itself). An exhibition as resource, in which we invite agents within the field to engage with what were for them significant moments, practices, works, activity, objects, nodes within the network.

To coincide with our new gallery space, refinement of our name and identity, and highlighting our dual role as a programming and resource organisation, Pallas Projects/Studios presents Pallas Periodical Review – a unique, yearly survey of Irish contemporary art practices. Structured as an editorial review with a critical and discursive position, it will look at commercial gallery shows, museum exhibitions, artist-led and independent projects, publishing, and curatorial practices.

The format has PP/S invite two peers – artists, writers, educators, curators – at the beginning of each year to review and subsequently nominate a number of art practices, which at the end of that year will be selected via an editorial meeting. Such a review-type exhibition within Irish art practice will act to revisit, be a reminder, a critical appraisal and consolidation of ideas and knowledge within the field of contemporary Irish art.

Additionally, Pallas Periodical Review has a fundraising element, with the works, or associated publications, editions etc. available to purchase during the course of the exhibition. All proceeds of which to go towards the 2012 exhibition programme.

Image: still from John Smith (with Graeme Miller), Lost Sound, 1998–2001, 28 mins, 15 secs.

Since its humble beginnings in the gym of St. Colman’s College in 1978, the Claremorris Open Exhibition has evolved into one of the major events on the Irish visual arts calendar. Indeed, COE is now a truly international event, attracting some of the top Curators from both home and abroad as well as hosting works by artists from an increasing number of countries.

From a pool of over three hundred proposals, Curator Chris Hammond has selected thirty-four artists whose work will be displayed in the forthcoming Claremorris Open Exhibition. Among those included is Brid Egan of Galway.

The exhibition will open for viewing for three weeks in September, starting Saturday, Sep 3rd.

Tim Acheson
Miranda Blennerhasset
Niamh Clarke
Adham Faramawy
Adam Fearon
John Gayer
Andrew Manson
Eoin Mac Lochlainn
Donough Mc Namaraa
Niall Moore
Meadhbh O' Connor
Blaine O'Donnell
Vicky Smith

Curated by Padraic E. Moore

Preview - Sat Aug 13 / 7pm

The Black Mariah
2nd Floor
Triskel
Tobin Street
Cork
Ireland

www.theblackmariah.com

Maev Curtis

Irish Artist Maeve Curtis has been selected for this year’s prestigious Threadneedle Prize in London. Artists of all nationalities living in the UK and Ireland are eligible to apply. Selectors Julie Lomax, Head of Visual Art, Arts Council England, Lisa Milroy, Head of Graduate Painting, Slade School of Fine Art and Godfrey Worsdale, 2011 Turner Prize Juror and Director, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art chose only 52 pieces out of 4350 submissions for exhibition and for the Prize to be held at The Mall Galleries in Central London this September. Described as the ‘alternative to the Turner Prize’, the Threadneedle Prize is the UK’s leading showcase for painting and sculpture that promotes the practice of representational art yet challenges its language and assumptions. With over £40,000 of prize money to be won, The Threadneedle Prize is one of the largest prizes for a single work of art in the UK and Ireland.

For more details, check out: http://www.threadneedleprize.com/ or http://www.maevecurtis.ie/

Angry Hammers presents:

In The Asphalt City, a group exhibition of Galway contemporary visual art.

The Docks Shed, Galway city, July 16th through July 30th, open daily, 12-6pm.

"In the asphalt city I am at home. From the very start
Provided with every last rite:
With newspapers. And tobacco. And brandy.
Suspicious and lazy and satisfied in the end."

From "Of Poor B.B." by Bertolt Brecht.

In The Asphalt City, is a fourteen day exhibition of contemporary visual art held in the Galway Docks Shed, opening the 15th of July and running until the 30th of July, 2011. The nine artists involved are born of, based or educated in Galway city. Using a variety of disciplines, including sculpture, video, installation and drawing the works included address a diverse range of themes such as economics, identity and mortality. The artists are: James Ward, Austin Ivers, Tom Singer, Ann Maria Healy, Dave Callan, Jonathon Sammon, David Finn, Alwyn Revill and Ian Hart.

In The Asphalt City is the inaugural exhibition of Angry Hammers, an artist-led initiative dedicated to providing unique opportunities for contemporary visual artists.

Kindly supported by the Galway City Council and Galway Harbour Company.

For more information contact: angryhammers@gmail.com

©ause Collective is pleased to announce the international launch of:

In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth)
Cause Collective artists Ryan Alexiev, Hank Willis Thomas and Jim Ricks
Galway Arts Festival, Galway Ireland
July 11– 24, 2011

In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) is a giant inflatable speech bubble and video recording booth that is traveling the world.

Commissioned by the Arts Council of Ireland and the SF Foundation, the ©ause Collective artists Ryan Alexiev, Hank Willis Thomas and Jim Ricks are launching the project In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) at the Galway Arts Festival in Ireland.

The festival takes place July 11-24, 2011 and is Ireland’s largest international arts festival. The artists are based in San Francisco, New York and Galway respectively. Much of their work has dealt with ways in which media images inform the way people perceive themselves as well as others globally. They became increasingly interested in finding ways to use installation and video art as a medium for innovative cross- cultural communication. This project initiates that conversation.

In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) is an installation comprised of a touring, portable, inflatable ‘Truth Booth’ that will showcase at the Galway Arts Festival. The exterior is iconically shaped like a giant cartoon speech bubble with the word ‘TRUTH’ boldly printed on the side. The interior acts much like a photo booth, but serves to compile 2 minute long video responses from the public. Once seated inside they will then be invited to record their opinions and thoughts on the question “The truth is...”

The booth will travel to well-known arts festivals, city locations, rural fairs, and the odd stop in between throughout Ireland until the end of September. As such, it will capture the diversity of viewpoints and of people in Ireland at a time of change and uncertainty. To expand and engage with audiences, the movements of the ‘Truth Booth’ and sample responses will be tracked on a dedicated website.

Once the tour is completed in Ireland this September, The Truth Booth will travel the world.

Ryan Alexiev was born in Los Angeles and raised in Alaska by Bulgarian immigrants. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994 and an MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2007.

Hank Willis Thomas was raised in New York City. He received a BFA in Photography and Africana Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He received an MFA in Photography and an MA in Visual Criticism at the California College of the Arts.

Born in California, Jim Ricks received his MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway and Burren College of Art programme and his BFA from the California College of the Arts.

www.thetruthbooth.org | www.causecollective.com | www.galwayartsfestival.com

The Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen
A touring public artwork by Jim Ricks
June 7th - 21st 2011
The Aughty regions of County Galway

Official launch: June 7th, 2011, 9:00 am at The Huntsman Inn, Galway

“The best public art piece... ever.” – Alice Maher, Artist

“The artist has combined an icon of ancient Ireland with an icon of contemporary Ireland, playfully re-presenting elements of Irish culture, often over-used commercially to attract tourism, in an accessible, witty, and visually arresting way.” – Kernan Andrews, Galway Advertiser

The Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen by Jim Ricks is a monumental inflatable sculpture designed for members of the public, of all ages, to interact with. The artwork will be touring venues around the Aughty Region of County Galway during June of 2011. The Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen is a replica, at twice the scale, of the famous 6,000 year old megalithic portal tomb of the same name, which is located in the Burren, Co. Clare. Jim Ricks created the interactive soft sculpture with the intention of bringing a portal dolmen to Aughty, a region which has no dolmens, only wedge tombs.

The official launch of The Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen will be on June 7th, 2011 in front of the Huntsman Inn in Galway. The piece will be set up first thing in the morning (weather permitting!) followed by a small reception at 9am. It will be touring the Slieve Aughty region of Galway for 2 weeks. The tour will close with an afternoon appearance adjacent to the real Poulnabrone Dolmen in the Burren, on the June 21st solstice.

Jim Ricks’ practice is characterised by challenges and disruptions to ownership, intellectual property rights and any conception of originality. As such, he openly imitates art and life through available means and materials. This process embraces creativity through divergence and welcomes the accidents that occur in the ‘knock off’ process as the (automatic) art itself. The work also frequently explore the grey area between flattery and theft. Ricks’ work is influenced by his background as a prolific graffiti artist and a political activist.

Born in California, Jim Ricks received his MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway and Burren College of Art programme and his BFA from the California College of the Arts. He has exhibited internationally, most recently with with The Black Mariah for the Terminal Convention, Cork, and at What are You Thinking?, The Niland Gallery, Galway. In 2010 he received the Artlink ‘New Art Award’; exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy (Dublin); had solo shows at Fort Dunree (Co. Donegal), Occupy Space (Limerick) and Pallas Contemporary Projects (Dublin); took part in group shows with Dock Discourse at 126 and offsite (Galway), The Galway Arts Festival (Galway), Monster Truck Temple Bar (Dublin) and Pallas Contemporary Projects (Dublin). In 2009 he exhibited in the Galway Arts Centre (Galway), Monster Truck Gallery (Dublin), IMOCA (Dublin) and participated in Frieze Projects’ COPYSTAND: Autonomous Manufacturing Zone (London). Ricks is currently working on the touring public work In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth), a collaboration with Cause Collective (US) in 2011.

Supported by the Galway County Council, the Clare County Council Arts Office, Ground Up Artists Collective, The Huntsman Inn and Eight Bar and Restaurant.

For more information about the artist please see: www.jimricks.info

To see the Bouncy Dolmen in action please visit us here.
Read what the Irish Times says about it here.
Read what the Galway Advertiser says about it here.
Check it out on publicart.ie here.

Acute Angle
An Exhibition of Works by Angela O'Brien
Town Hall Theatre, Galway
7th - 18th May

"The works are influenced by architectural interiors and exteriors. I like to photograph the familiar and seemingly mundane aspects of buildings and incorporate then into painting to highlight their abstract qualities and features and give them a life of their own.

The interior changes from the viewers' angle, up and down, left and right, and I try to bring these simultaneous alternate viewpoints together to convey their sense of multi-dimensional space.
The interior of a building also changes from morning to evening, altering and changing its appearance taking on qualities of an organic entity that develops and changes in atmosphere and appearance"

Live @ Occupy Space
Occupy Space, Limerick
May 5th 2011, 8pm

Live @ 8 is a multi-disciplinary Live Art event that has been running every two months at Bar 8, The Docks in Galway city since April 2008. Since then, the organisers; Áine Phillips, Vivienne dick and Maeve Mulrennan, have hosted hundreds of artists works in Bar 8, Galway. It also has an open policy for working with other curators, and invites a guest curator for most events.

Now Live @ 8 is going on tour and will present an exciting programme of Live art, video and installation in Limerick's successful Occupy Space.

The theme of the night is presenting Galway to Limerick and will feature new work from a plethora of Galway-based or Galway-associated Visual Artists and film makers. Live @ Occupy is the kick-off venue in a tour which will also include events in The guesthouse, Cork and The Trades Club, Sligo later this year.

The event is free, and viewers should expect the unexpected: Live Performance throughout the evening, a film and artist’s video programme and music by Galway based artist Dave Callan. The night will conclude with a performance by a special guest, based in Limerick, who has been asked to respond to Live @ 8's objective to support a Live Art audience in alternative spaces.

The event will include video work from Galway based emerging film maker Michael Ryan, new performances by knee-jerk (who people may know from their last performance in Limerick: a giant pass-the-parcel along Catherine St), Ann Maria Healy and Victoria McCormack. Audiences will also be treated to the premiere of a new film installation work by Vivienne Dick and Áine Phillips, inspired by Phillips' performance 'Redress' and the research of film maker Edwaerd Muybridge. Watch out for posters and updates on Occupy's website for the full listing of amazing artists.

You Had Another Skin (The Super 8 Series)
New work by Cecilia Danell
February 22nd – April 2nd 2011
Opening Reception: Tuesday, February 22nd from 6pm.
EIGHT

"I held your hand. You had another skin. I believed all you told me"
– J.P Sartre, The Room

The series of paintings presented in You Had Another Skin (The Super 8 Series) are part of an ongoing body of work and look at the house as a metaphor for the psyche and the human condition, referencing Jungian dream theory.

In October 2010 Cecilia Danell travelled to Sweden and documented a number of semi-abandoned villages in rural areas, which resuted in the Super 8 film You had another skin. These paintings are stills from the film; every building depicted is derelict, left behind to slowly decay while silence and lost ambitions turn Utopia into Dystopia. The title holds many meanings, including the proverbial act of shedding one's skin which points to a transition or reinvention, here seen in the transformation of a place. There is also the suggestion that the skin may act as a mask or 'persona', shrouding the real self, leading to the philosophical question of 'the Other' as being something different from us but also a possible aspect of the self - 'you had an-other skin'.

Cecilia Danell is a Swedish artist based in Galway since 2004 and a member of Engage Art Studios. She graduated from the GMIT in 2008 with a first class honours degree in painting and was awarded Paint student of the year. She has exhibited in Ireland and the USA including group and two person shows in the Galway Arts centre, 126 Gallery, Red House Arts Center in Syracuse NY, Crow Gallery, Dublin, Claremorris Open (2007, 2010), where she was one of the 2007 prize winners, and most recently Tulca Season of Visual Arts. Danell is a recipient of an Arts Council Bursary Award for 2011.

EIGHT supports both local and international artists in a unique curatorial programme that combines high art and high food. Owner Tom Sheridan and his team are dedicated to providing a modern approach to hospitality in Galway. The food at EIGHT is unique, hearty and sourced locally. It is produced by the legendary Michelin Star trained chef Jess Murphy. Murphy has just been named the Best Chef in Connaught 2010 by Food & Wine Magazine and 2011 Bridgestone Guide's “Top 10 Hot Chefs to Watch”.

www.ceciliadanell.com
www.eight.ie

Untitled, Eileen Hutton, 2010

The 4th Annual 126 Members' Show
OUT OF A BOX

Opening reception January 6th, 7 - 9pm.
Runs until January the 29th at gallery 126, Queen Street, Galway.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present its forth annual members' show, to be held this year for the first time in our Queen Street premises. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The members were asked to respond to the theme 'Out of a Box'.

The term 'out of the box' is said to derive from a famous puzzle created by early 20th century British mathematician Henry Ernest Dudeney, in which someone is asked to interconnect nine dots in a three-by-three grid by using four straight lines drawn without the pencil leaving the paper. In order to be successful, the puzzle solver has to realize that the boundries of the dot array are psychological. The only way to solve the puzzle is to extend the lines beyond the artificial boundary created by the nine dots.

We have curated a range of work that reflects our diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines and media, painting, video, sculpture, installation and photography. The way the artists have responded to the theme conceptually has been equally diverse, ranging from the academic and aesthetic, to the critical, to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

The artists showing are: Fionn Kidney, Niamh Ó Beirne, Austin Ivers, Timothy Emlyn Jones, Sarah Lundy, Jim Ricks, Micheál Conlon, Eileen Hutton, Christopher Banahan, Lorraine Neeson and Nina Amazing.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member.

Image: “I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it”. Graphite on paper. 31cm x 23cm.

I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it
Maeve Curtis
Norman Villa Gallery
5th - 20th November

Opening Reception on Friday 5th November, 6-8 p.m.
Guest Speaker: Writer Mike McCormack

What if, in our headlong rush towards technology we missed something...something that could affect our very soul? This is the question that Maeve Curtis explores in her solo show opening on Friday 5th November with guest speaker, writer Mike McCormack at the Norman Villa Gallery in Galway.

I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it is a further development of Curtis’ meditation on the mysteries and metaphysics which ghost around the invention of photography.

A fear of photography was prevalent amongst the intelligentsia of late nineteenth century Paris, some of whom were convinced that each time a photograph was ‘taken’ it removed something from our soul.

Curtis investigates this anxiety using as her starting point her own family snapshots. Giving consideration to strangers and loved ones alike, and equipped with the tools of paint and graphite she sets out to recover these lost moments of the soul in a gentle attempt to release them into an otherworldly place of arrivals and departures.

The show runs until November 20th at Norman Villa Gallery, 86 Lower Salthill, Galway Wed-Sat 12-6pm tel: 091 521131

RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW
Irish Performance Art
Kilmainham Gaol
Thursday 4th November 6-10pm

Performance Art Live (P.A. Live) presents 'RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW' an event featuring some of Ireland's top contemporary artists working within the realm of performance art north and south of the Border. This unique event, curated by Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Niamh Murphy will be held for one night, Thursday the 4th of November from 6pm, in the historic and powerful surroundings of Kilmainham Gaol, in Dublin.

Visitors to this free event will have the pleasure of experiencing twenty leading live artists, performing simultaneously over a four hour period throughout the cells and open areas of Kilmainham Jails East Wing.

Many nationally and internationally acclaimed artists will be performing on the night including Alastair MacLennan, a renowned and leading practitioner of performance art since the seventies. Maclennans work has influenced many live artists working today and in his own words admires artists “….who overcome the most, within and outwith themselves, 'take on' the human condition, and who (in effective art) comment on political and social corruption.”

Other artists who will perform on the night are: Aine Phillips, Amanda Coogan, Brian Connolly, Dominic Thorpe, Declan Rooney, Frances Mezzetti, Brian Patterson, Sinead McCann, Catherine Barragry, Fergus Byrne, Michelle Browne, Ann Maria Healy, Francis Fay, Pauline Cummins, Victoria Mc Cormack, Alex Conway, Sandra Johnston, Helena Walsh, Meabh Redmond and Niamh Murphy.

This is a free event organised by Performance Art Live (P.A. Live) kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland in association with the office of Public Works (OPW). P.A. Live was set up in 2009 and is committed to the promotion of performance art in Ireland.

Pallas Contemporary Projects presents:

Synchromaterialism
Jim Ricks
Preview: 7-9pm Friday 15th of October 2010
Continues: 16th October – 13th November 2010

Jim Ricks has developed the method of synchromaterialism as a means to consider the territory where art meets capitalism. To do this properly, history must be re-worked, splintered and re-imagined. Ricks will use the quotidian fragments of capitalism and empire in the last century to weave a new ‘conspiratorial’ narrative that undercuts and supersedes the prevailing mainstream ones. Subjective slices of everyday life and history are collected and, depending on scarcity, re-created. They will be displayed according to an intuitive synchronicity based on politics, aesthetics, history, and philosophy. Disjointed and unexpected symbols of struggle and power will form a ring of interconnected information in the gallery space.

An ongoing theme in Ricks’ practice of collecting iconic, odd and politically accessible chachka has led him to markets from Cairo to San Diego to Berlin to Ebay and beyond. He uses the most basic mechanisms of capitalism: markets, transactions and accumulation as the underlying system for the creation of a body of work. However, if Ricks cannot purchase an artefact for a reasonable price or at all, he will remake it. The ‘art’ of this work comes into play with his editorial vision and curation of these found and re-created objects and there re- positioning alongside disparate other ones.

By not covering one particular aspect of capitalism Ricks asks the viewer the more abstract questions: How do we know these things?; How did these things come to be?

Born in California, Jim Ricks received his MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway and Burren College of Art programme and his BFA from the California College of the Arts. Ricks is currently working on a touring public work, Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen, as well as collaborating on In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) with Cause Collective (US), Summer 2011.

Jim Ricks is a project based contemporary visual artist that aims to disrupt the bourgeois narrative. His’ work is influenced by his background as a prolific graffiti artist and a political activist. This is his first solo exhibition in Dublin.

Pallas Contemporary Projects focuses on the exchange of Irish and international artists with a strong conceptual approach working in different media.

info@pallasprojects.org | www.pallasprojects.org

Pallas is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

Yellow Reperformed
St Mary's Abbey
Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival
6pm -10pm 30 September - 5 October 2010

WHAT: Yellow Reperformed
WHEN: 6-10pm nightly from Thurs 30 Sept – Tues 5 Oct, 2010
WHERE: St. Mary’s Abbey, off Capel St, Dub
ADMISSION: Free, the audience is free to come and go.

On Saturday the 2nd October Ann Maria Healy will tackle Coogan's seminal durational performance, Yellow. Healy's practice, while emerging, impressed Coogan by its tenacity and grit while making physically challegening work. Healys reperforamnce of Yellow will be an viceral and intoxicating take on Coogan's script - Not to be missed.

Healy is a multi media artist whose practice includes live performance, sound, installation and photography. Her work explores the bodies' relationship to space and time. In particular focusing on cycles, how they can affect and shape our lives. She brings a particular emotional complexity to how she embodies the performance essence, with a great emphasis on the emotional. She participated in STRAYLIGHT/DARKLIGHT 09 in a durational performance and is a graduate of GMIT.

Over a continuous four hour period, each woman will wear a large yellow dress, continuously washing her enormous skirt over and over in a bucket of soapy water, to the music of Franz Schubert. A collective experience of endurance for performer and audience, the work examines the frail and yet indomitable nature of the human spirit, and the concepts of survival and rebirth.

Amanda Coogan - 30 September
Deirdre Roycroft - 1 October
Ann Maria Healy - 2 October
Anna Berndston - 3 October
Olwen Fouere - 4 October
Victoria Mc Cormack - 5 October

Curated by Helen Carey
Lighting by Paul Keoghan
Film & Sound by Paddy Cahill

Abode
Opens Thursday 5th August at 6.30pm.
Continues until Friday 27th August
Airfield

A two person exhibition of new work by artists Jennifer Cunningham and Cathy Hayes. Jennifer uses the media of painting, print and video to explore landscape as a backdrop for the psychological inner struggle of her subjects. Time and form are subverted and reinvented through structural fragmentation which is used to amplify the sense of the uncanny. Hayes paintings focus on domestic interiors and the role of the female, referencing contemporary art conventions as well as the traditional skills of sewing and quiltmaking that were once an intrinsic part of homemaking.

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© Reuters 2009

14th January 2009 (We will say it has nothing to do with us)
New work by Jim Ricks
Artlink 'New Art Award 2009' and the Earagail Festival
Fort Dunree, Buncrana, Co. Donegal
July 15 – August 14, 2010

"Jim Ricks in 14th January 2009 (We will say it has nothing to do with us) uses press images as the basis of an investigation into the Middle East conflict with particular reference to the occupation of Gaza by Israel. The images date from 14th January 2009, the beginning of Israel’s invasion of the territory. He uses fragments of these photographs to create new contexts that explore our desensitisation to the realities of life under Israeli occupation and contrasts the unreality of the Fashion world with its emphasis on glamour and pretence which seeks to charm us and distance us from the grim reality of real-world conflict. The artist wishes to highlight the suffering of the Palestinian people through an exploration of the distance placed by those who control our consumerist society – who wish to make us forget or ignore reality by emphasising an unreal commercial realm where we can seemingly find fulfilment without concern for our fellow’s suffering – with actual conditions in the Middle East. Ricks also uses the medium of press photographs to explore the role of documentary photography (usually considered to be a form of photography covering significant and historical events; formally associated mainly with journalism but also now used by many artists and amateur photographers) in an age where we are overwhelmed by so many images from so many sources that we become desensitised to the horror that may be contained within..."

The Artlink 'New Art Award' projects were selected from an open competition in 2009 by the following selection panel: Dave Beech, Art Critic and Artist, UK; Maoliosa Boyle, Manager, Void, Derry; Brian Duggan Artist and Founder of Pallas, Dublin; Elaine Forde, Former Director, Artlink, Donegal; Adrian Kelly Curator, Glebe Gallery, Donegal; Mark Wallinger Artist, UK.

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Galway Arts Centre will host the event

PerformanceiS

July 3rd from 3pm - 7pm with a drinks reception afterwards in the Gallery Space.

This event will see four seasoned performance artists Victoria McCormack, Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Ann Maria Healy present an evening of powerful new works. These artists will take over two floors of the Gallery over the duration of four hours as a group presentation. During this time the audience will be given the opportunity to experience, immerse and engage with four powerful performance works simultaneously.

More so than any other strand of visual art this medium has a direct engagement with the audience as the transfer of force between the body of the artist and the spectator creates a very strong and special bond. Performance art is becoming widely acknowledged in current times as a vital and influential creative medium, where new possibilities are imagined for artists, audiences and spaces.

The An Instructional tour showcases an eclectic mix of Video, Performance and Installation work.

Curated by Ciara Scanlan & Matthew Nevin, the exhibition holds a dynamic collection of Visual Art from contemporary Irish, British, European & North American Artists. MART has developed an extensive network of connections with contemporary visual art spaces globally and is bringing this creative travelling show to Norway, UK, Germany, Slovak Republic and the Republic of Ireland.

Performances

Áine Phillips Strap Wrap
Cian McConn & Eve Vaughan IN and OUT
Joan Healy & Louise Ward Producting Loopholes
Katherine Nolan Surface Attention
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar De Carmen Dialogues with the garden.

Video

Barry Hughes Four Views
Darragh O' Callaghan Boxing who
David Bickley Aqua Arte
Emanuel Rhoss Suburban Genesis
Malina Cailan They Said, They Did
Mischa Twitchin Remembrance
Nicky Larkin Skateboards & Tanks
Peta Adderley Air
Ruth Le Gear Water that sleeps
Vukasin Nedeljkovic 69/851/07

Installations

Adam Gibney The Semionauts Agora: Scene 343
Chris Johnsen & Øyvind Næss
Ciara Scanlan Cash For Grabs ™
Clodagh Lavelle Mike Mike.......where’s your head.......you’re not dead.
Colleen Keough Somewhere: above the sky
Debbie Jenkinson Three Word Phrase II
Eleanor Lawler Dirty Girls
Emma Wade H.U.G.S. (Jacket 3)
Ivan Twohig Shape Workshop
James Hayes A room full of domestic bliss
Jim Ricks 5/5/05
Matthew Nevin The Core Project
Noel Molloy Soprano
Sabina Mac Mahon The Relics of St. Clare of Assisi
Sofie Losher Compulsion
Stephen Woods Portrait of an Artist as a Deity

www.mart.ie

Dock Discourse

Opening Night Friday 11th 6pm at 126 Gallery, Queen Street, Galway.

We are delighted to announce the show will be opened by Michael D Higgins TD.

Dock Discourse June 2010 is a four-week exhibition, installation and discussion event project, around the changing nature of the Galway Docks. Initiated and curated by local architect Aoife Considine, Dock Discourse is a multi disciplinary project engaging with artists, thinkers and the general public to comment and question the nature of change taking place in and around the Galway Docks. The works are concerned with ideas of environmental change, development processes, the role of the artist in the changing city along with reconsidering the spaces, structures and habits of this part of the city on the waterfront.

Artists involved in the exhibition are Aideen Barry, Cian McConn, Roisin Coyle, Cecelia Dannell and Jennifer Cunningham with Jim Ricks, Jennie Moran and Michelle Browne carrying out on site installation projects in the middle pier of the docks on the 17th of June. The artists taking part in the project come from a range of backgrounds but a common theme in their work ties them to the project either through the location or interest.

The artists explore both the territory of the real and the imagined, the past and the proposed future brings the debate of how to record and think about elements of this part of the city and the role of utopian visions for the future. The play on the role of utopian constructions is used as a way of not only as a way to propose an alternative future but as a protest of the present. This theme will also be explored through the discussion event with an invited panel of artists, architects, urban thinkers and activists to be held on the 24th of June at 6pm.

The project is kindly supported by Galway City Council, Galway Harbour Company, The Galway Independent, Bar 8 and 126 Gallery.

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{un}familiar
A group exhibition featuring work by
Michelle Browne
Benjamin de Búrca
Cecilia Danell
Vera Klute
Sabina Mac Mahon
and Julia Pallone
curated by Maeve Mulrennan

On Thursday June 3rd Galway Arts Centre presents {un}familiar a group exhibition curated by GAC’s Visual Arts Officer, Maeve Mulrennan. This exhibition has already been exhibited in the Red House Arts Center, Syracuse New York as part of GAC’s ongoing partnership with the organisation.

The starting point for this exhibition was the curator’s encounter with the research of Professor Olaf Blanke, from the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience (LNCO) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Research on out of body experiences, disengagement from the real self and having a double was communicated to artists. Blanke’s case studies proved the most stimulating. In responding to Blanke’s texts the artists present work which explores the deconstruction of meaning, separation of the self, uncanny spaces and peoples efforts to understand and explain our world through imagery, icons, dreams and nightmares. As a consequence the exhibition combines different perspectives in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, collage and video. Each work is not a direct response: rather it combines this research with the artists’ current research and art making, therefore situating this investigation on out of body experiences within a wider context. The exhibition aims to allow space for the viewer to contemplate how the self is not a stable entity and there can be sometimes confusion with another, and how confusion around identity can lead to anxiety, and a search to return to the self. A Utopian version of events can be constructed through imagery, the rearranging of narrative and dreams, in order to replace a repressive anxious state with something more bearable.

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You are warmly invited to attend The Lost Runway, a residency by Áine Phillips at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, London.

16th February to 20th February with live public performance at 2pm on Saturday 20th February 2010.

The Lost Runway

The Lost Runway is a collection of sculptural costumes dedicated to lost and missing girls, created during the residency in the Stanley Picker Gallery and publicly presented at a final runway show performance. Each costume is a live personal monument worn for a lost girl and embodies the story of her life and identity in a visual, sculptural and performative way.

Using the conventions of a fashion show format, The Lost Runway becomes an ideological space where beauty and desire are more urgent for their link with loss and longing. Each lost girl represented is memorialized and endowed with power and presence. The work is a testimonial to lost lives and the life-long seeking of their friends and families. The work gives public form to, and performs private memory in the service of human freedom and the right to the protection of life.

www.stanleypickergallery.org
www.ainephillips.com

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You are warmly invited to

Collapsed

A new performance by Galway Arts Centre Artist-in-Residence Ann Maria Healy

Tuesday 9th February

7pm - 9pm

Gallery 3, Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway

Ann Maria Healy is a multi - media artist, whose practice includes installation, sound, photography and live performance. Her work explores the bodies' relationship to space and time. In particular focusing on cycles, how they can affect and shape our lives. Ann Maria graduated from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology in 2009 with first class honours.

Collapsed is a two hour durational performance questioning the notion of vacuums.

www.annmariahealy.carbonmade.com
www.galwayartscentre.ie

This residency is supported by the Galway City & County Arts Offices and is awarded to a GMIT Honours Degree student annually

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126 with the RHA presents:

The 3rd Annual 126 Members' Show
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

Part of the Artist Curates series at the RHA.

Opening reception January 14th 6 - 8pm at the Royal Hibernian Academy, runs until February 27th.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present its third annual members' show hosted this year by the Royal Hibernian Academy. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The membership was asked to respond to the theme 'Video Killed The Radio Star' and 126, artist-run gallery has curated a range of work which reflects the diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines, including: painting, video, works on paper, sculpture, installation and photography. The works speak of and to society at a time of perceived change with responses that range from the critical and cynical to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

Artists showing are: Paul Murnaghan, Dominic Thorpe, Angela Darby, Fiona Chambers, Jim Ricks, David Finn, Padraig Robinson, Kevin Mooney, Austin Ivers, Nina Amazing, Timothy Acheson & Jennifer Cunningham, Kathryn Maguire, James Merrigan and Breda Lynch.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member.

This project has been made possible by the RHA.
126, Artist-run gallery
Queen St., Galway
Ireland
www.126.ie
091 569871

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and their membership.

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