2017 06 November/December | The VAN & miniVAN

The miniVAN

From gritty urban graffiti to abstract surrealism, The miniVAN deftly navigates the ever-evolving artistic landscape, reflecting the pulse of modern culture.

Inspired by the pioneering spirit of Visual Artists News Sheet, The miniVAN sets out to redefine the landscape of contemporary art, providing a comprehensive platform for both established artists and emerging talents. As we honour the roots of the past, we fervently embrace the spirit of change, envisioning a future where art continues to inspire and challenge the human experience.

Packed with captivating features, exclusive interviews, and thought-provoking editorials, each issue of The miniVAN is a collectible art piece in itself. Readers can expect insider insights, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and a celebration of the unsung heroes shaping the artistic zeitgeist.

The visionary team behind The miniVAN comprises renowned art writers, respected artists and curators, and passionate creatives dedicated to curating an enriching experience for readers and artists alike.

The miniVAN invites you to embark on an extraordinary journey that transcends the boundaries of imagination. Whether you’re an art aficionado, a budding artist, or simply curious about the transformative power of visual expression, The miniVAN promises to ignite your passion and broaden your horizons, bringing you from the inside of an artist’s studio to the wide realm of creative practices that exist outside of how we think of visual art.

Solemn and Bedazzling

LISA GODSON EXAMINES ARTISTS’ BANNERS THROUGH A MATERIAL CULTURE LENS, SITUATING THEM WITHIN THE BROADER HISTORY OF SOCIAL PROTEST MOVEMENTS. Among the placards, signs and posters held aloft at the sixth annual March for Choice in Dublin on September 30 were a set of remarkable banners created by artists Alice Maher, Rachel Fallon and Breda Mayock. As Fallon explains: “We had a meeting at the beginning of the year about what way the artists’ campaign could go, in terms of repealing the Eighth Amendment. It was important to do something that was ‘us’ and that spoke of our expertise in making things”. Until the early twentieth century, processions with spectacular…

10. pádraig spillane 'wish landscape dream lover', 2015

Tactile Simulations

SARAH HAYDEN INTERVIEWS PÁDRAIG SPILLANE ABOUT THE TRAJECTORY OF HIS PRACTICE AND HIS RECENT EXHIBITION, ‘WHAT PASSES BETWEEN US’, AT SIRIUS ARTS CENTRE. Sarah Hayden: For several years, your practice has tended towards three dimensions, and yet it maintains a preoccupation with surfaces. How do you conceive of this development and how does it interact with your interest in interrogating ‘depthless’, two-dimensional images? Pádraig Spillane: My interest in surfaces centres on how they can be reordered. This can involve searching the innards of materials, or cutting and tearing printed matter, to examine how things look and feel in proximity to each other. The images and objects I use – whether…

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Eating: Their Own Words

STEPHEN BRANDES DISCUSSES THE FOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY – A NEW PUBLICATION BY THE DOMESTIC GODLESS. This year, the gastronomic art collective the Domestic Godless celebrate 15 years of working together and exploring food – its taste, its appearance, its history and cultural values – as material for subversive experimentation. The occasion will be marked with a three-week-long residency at Crawford Art Gallery in Cork in November, and will be followed next year with a national tour to several arts centres around the country. Over those 15 years, we have repeatedly been asked questions relating to our research interests and practice, such as: “What exactly do you do?”…

Image 8 cliona harmey 'rain', (2002) , standard dv video installation, duration 5.53

BEAUFORT (“about the weather”) / Simulations / White Line Series

Solstice Arts Centre, 25 August – 13 October 2017 On show at Solstice Arts Centre are three solo exhibitions by different artists, each with their own title and separate room. Free from a fixed or unifying theme, the exhibitions are loosely bound by a general sense of abstraction within the artists’ creative processes, along with some allusion to local history, heritage or landscape. Upon entering the first space, David Quinn’s works appear minimalistic, with a series of nine intimately-sized pieces in muted colours. The strength in Quinn’s works emerges when we draw closer and discover the detail present. The works are built up of layers that variously comprise gesso, oil…

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What’s with the Apocalypse? / Twilight

Paul Mosse ‘What’s with the Apocalypse?’, VISUAL, 16 September – 12 January 2017 Pat Collins ‘Twilight’, VISUAL, 9 September – 28 January 2017 This season’s exhibitions at VISUAL have been programmed around the themes of landscape, nature and found materials. In the Digital Gallery on the first floor, is a screening of Pat Collins’s new moving image work, Twilight (2017). Filmed off the West Cork coast over a two-year period, Twilight is as vibrant as a living painting. The quality of light captured in the footage vividly portrays the pinks and oranges of a sunset, which gradually give way to midnight blue, as darkness encompasses the scene. Voluminous grey clouds pick up…

10 pspillane from altered light digitalcollage 2017

What Passes Between Us

Sirius Arts Centre, 3 September – 15 October 2017 Pádraig Spillane’s exhibition of new work, ‘What Passes Between Us’, is presented across two galleries at Sirius Arts Centre. Four upright, mild-steel, modular frames, approximately adult height, stand in the centre of the floor in each space. A single sheet of clear PVC is cast across the top of one of the frames, while several wall-mounted digital prints complete the presentation. Two specially-commissioned electronic and vocal sound pieces – composed by Simon O’Connor and sung by Michelle O’Rourke – are transmitted into the galleries from speakers situated on the floor. The minimalist presentation suits these light-filled spaces. In the centre gallery,…

Kate nolan ‘untitled’, 2017, photographic print, image courtesy the artist.

Lacuna: New perspectives on the border in Ireland

Gallery of Photography, September 9 – October 22 The result of the 2016 British referendum on the future of European Union membership has brought about a new era of social and political anxiety regarding the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland. ‘Brexit’ is a neologism that has been mobilised by ultra-conservative politicians and sections of the British media alike, to portray what was in reality a marginal ‘yes vote’, as the inevitable political expression of the zeitgeist of British isolationism and nationalism. On the island of Ireland, Brexit has resurrected the spectre of the border which has haunted Irish politics for nearly a century. Kate Nolan’s exhibition ‘Lacuna’ at…

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The Way Things Go: An Homage

The Butler Gallery, 12 August – 15 October 2017 Aideen Barry, Hannah Fitz, Atsushi Kaga, Nevan Lahart, Maggie Madden, Jonathan Mayhew, Caroline McCarthy, Isabel Nolan and Liam O’Callaghan Thirty years ago, Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss unveiled their influential work, The Way Things Go (1987) – a 30-minute 16mm video transfer film that documents the complex chain reactions of an ingenious Rube Goldberg-esque contraption built by the duo. The action takes place in a warehouse, where industrial detritus (including tyres, ladders, pipes, oil-soaked rags and chains) is used to create a sequence of cause-and-effect actions. Shifting mechanical levers and hypnotic balancing acts trigger sparks, fires and cycles of…

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