The final issue of 2019 profiles a range of significant projects including: Dorothy Cross’s recent performative event, Heartship; Sinead McCann’s socially-engaged project, film and touring exhibition, The Trial; and Eimear Walshe’s recent commemorative project, commissioned by Roscommon County Council. In addition, Ailve McCormack visits current Turner Prize 2019 nominee, Tai Shani, in her studio at Gasworks, London.
Shifting our focus to the island of Syros in Greece, Christopher Steenson, reports on the site-specific sound residency, Sounding Paths 2019, which he attended in July, while Andrew Duggan discusses his presentation of unravel_rios at Eye’s Walk Digital Festival. In other … Read the rest
SARA BAUME INTERVIEWS DOROTHY CROSS ABOUT HEARTSHIP AND OTHER RECENT ARTWORKS.
In February 1999, the ghost of a small ship appeared in Scotsman’s Bay. It returned every night for three weeks, glowing on into dawn, fading as the hours passed and revealing itself, in daylight, to be a decommissioned lightship called Albatross, which had been covered in phosphorescent paint and moored to the spot. Its protracted presence off the coast of Dún Laoghaire has since become one of the defining works of contemporary Irish art, as well as the stuff of urban folklore.
Twenty years later, on a glittering afternoon … Read the rest
AILVE MCCORMACK INTERVIEWS TURNER PRIZE NOMINEE, TAI SHANI, ABOUT THE THEMES IN HER WORK.
I visited Tai Shani in her studio at Gasworks in south London, as she was preparing to send work off to Turner Contemporary, Margate, for the Turner Prize 2019 exhibition.1 Her studio is a bright, light-filled space, ram-packed with objects and creations. Upon entering, I made my way past some giant cardboard pillars. Looking to my right, I noticed some dripping, jewel-like puddles, set out on a table in front of which sat a giant hand, cupping in its palm a tiny 3D-printed face. It’s … Read the rest
LILY CAHILL INTERVIEWS EIMEAR WALSHE ABOUT A RECENT COMMEMORATIVE PROJECT, COMMISSIONED BY ROSCOMMON COUNTY COUNCIL.
Eimear Walshe was awarded The Margaret Cousins Commission by Roscommon County Council, funded through Creative Ireland, to “celebrate and commemorate our extraordinary citizens through exceptional and unexpected visual art projects”1. Margaret (‘Gretta’) Cousins (1878 – 1954), theosophist, nationalist and suffragist, was born in Boyle, County Roscommon. Eimear’s commission resulted in a radio play, I Know Why Women Cry at Weddings, and a supporting publication, Gretta. The publication was launched, along with a live immersive performance of the radio play, in the … Read the rest
MATT PACKER INTRODUCES A NEW SERIES OF COLUMNS FOCUSING ON INTERNATIONALISM.
What is bad mobility? I was in Brussels, taking part in a Creative Europe workshop on the i-Portunus artists’ international mobility funding scheme, when this question came up and resounded around the room in uneasy silence.
The workshop brought together institutional representatives who are in the business of working internationally – artist residency centres, intermediatory arts bodies, biennials and festivals – and a number of artists who had recently been awarded mobility grants to allow them to travel, research, produce work and ‘internationalise’ their practice in an unstructured process-driven … Read the rest
Rua Red, Tallaght
6 September – 5 October 2019
‘Open Minds’ featured over 70 artworks made in Irish prison education programmes, with the installation at Rua Red furnishing a metaphor for imprisonment. We know nothing of these artists’ lives. They were necessarily anonymous, with artworks attributed not to the artists, but to the institutions that confined them. No context concerning them was available, save for the titles they had given their work. It was rarely clear quite what was on show. Prison Staircase, a spiralling, assiduous pencil drawing from Wheatfield Prison, was typically enigmatic. But a sense of the … Read the rest
Mermaid Arts Centre, Wicklow
13 September – 26 October 2019
Joanne Boyle’s solo exhibition at Mermaid Arts Centre can be viewed as a testing ground for her ideas around material processes and display. The exhibition comprises oil paintings and glazed porcelain pieces, reflecting Boyle’s attempts to “articulate the non-everyday occurrence alongside the everyday”. The idea of an exhibition as an installation is also evident. As Boris Groys observed in his essay ‘Politics of Installation’: “Today, there is no longer any ‘ontological’ difference between making art and displaying art. In the context of contemporary art, to make art is to show … Read the rest
Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen
20 September 2019 (Culture Night)
David Ian Bickley’s latest film, Threads, was presented on Culture Night in a darkened studio space at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. In the small landing leading to this space, Three Candles was installed, comprising a prose piece and a video interview with local historian Gerald O’Brien, shown on a monitor with headphones. The story tells of a body lost in a river and located using folk-magic means. This tale was the inspiration for Threads, as well as the prose piece, a meandering stream of consciousness, presented … Read the rest
Olivier Cornet Gallery, Dublin
12 September – 6 October 2019
Claire Halpin’s exhibition, ‘Raw War’, is a mystical interpretation of the horror of war. Using miniature retablo-style compositions, Halpin captures the human instinct to contain tragedy within defined boundaries of understanding. In one series, small square panels feature sharply edged circular paintings of disaster on the Mediterranean, as refugees crowd vessels in search of safety. Halpin pins these events within a telescopic lens, referencing surveillance by the military, governments and news media. With startling clarity and expression, she skilfully renders the confusion of people clambering into sinking boats or attempting … Read the rest
Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Cork
12 September – 11 October 2019
Unsteadiness is a deliberate quality of Sarah Long’s work, recently exhibited at Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group in Cork. For this exhibition, titled ‘Kingdom’, Long presented five mixed-media works on canvas and one wire-based sculpture. Behind blotches of paint, the canvases lie host to trembling pencil lines, indexing a shakiness of either the hand or ground. Tremors would exit through the utensil either way, traveling between floor and body and, in Long’s show, right to the tip of the art objects themselves; as a viewer nears the glass … Read the rest