Author Archives: SummerhallTV

OKO + Tim Berne : Irish Tour 2016

Posted on by

Renowned Irish improvisers OKO have teamed up with uncompromising musician and prolific
composer Tim Berne, and will tour new works in five venues through Ireland in March 2016. Since the moved to New York City in the mid W’70s, alto and baritone saxophonist, composer, and bandleader Tim Berne has been an important member of that city’s creative music community; he asserts a strong and singular musical personality throughout his diverse and frequently absorbing works.

He has released a significant body of work over the decades spanning dozens of critically acclaimed recordings, being a unique and separate musical voice since his first forays into free jazz. His inclusion on this tour is a major coup for OKO and for jazz in Ireland in general. To have a musician of such high quality and vision to perform throughout the country in collaboration with native musicians is an exciting prospect.

Irish group OKO present high fidelity improvised music coaxed from an array of acoustic and electric instruments, transcending genre boundaries to offer a fully immersive aural experience.

They released their debut album “I Love You Computer!Mountain” on Diatribe records in March 2014 to much acclaim.

In these five concerts, Berne and OKO will perform together as a single entity to create! new, exciting & challenging work.

This tour is presented with support from the Arts Council Touring & Dissemination of Work Scheme.

Emma Dwyer : There are Little Kingdoms – Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray

Posted on by

A walk and talk through the exhibition with the four artists and curator will take place at 5pm on Thurs 11 February, followed by the opening at 6pm.

“An indisputable fact: our towns are sexed. Look around you. It’s easy enough tell one from the other. Foley’s town, for example, is most certainly a woman — just take in the salt of her estuarine air — but she’s not a notably well-mannered or delicate woman. She is in fact a belligerent old bitch.” – Kevin Barry, There Are Little Kingdoms.

Borrowing its title from Kevin Barry’s collection of short stories quoted above, There Are Little Kingdoms features the work of four Irish artists – who each tell us their own story. From King James II enjoying a meal under a sycamore tree at the house of John Keyes and later burning everything in the area but that house, to the categorisation of every rock, stone and pebble on Bray beach, the logs from Finland which have turned our soil Scandinavian and the motivational wheelie bins of Dublin 8. Every tree, house, town and mountain has a story. Whether it’s the absurd, historical, fictional or anchored in unbelievable fact. Meaning can be slippy and a slight change in the way we look at something can completely change how we see it. What these four artists have in common is a sideways glance at the world and their place in it.

Sarah McCrory : Glasgow International

Posted on by

Glasgow International is a world-renowned biennial festival of contemporary art. Glasgow International showcases the best of local and international art for wide-ranging audiences. The forthcoming seventh edition will happen in the city from 8th – 25th April 2016, again under the guidance of Director, Sarah McCrory.

The festival will continue to showcase Glasgow as a unique major centre for the production and display of contemporary visual art. Taking place in various venues and locations across the city, including Glasgow’s major art spaces and cultural institutions, the Festival will be comprised of an ambitious programme which includes exhibitions, events, talks, performances and projects by international and Glasgow-based artists.

To learn more about Glasgow International since we began in 2005 please visit glasgowinternational.org/about/about-glasgow-international/

Sarah Searson, Phil Foley & Cliodhna Timoney : A Knowing Nature

Posted on by

‘A Knowing Nature’ is a group show featuring Anita Groener, Phil Foley, Julie Merriman, Cliodhna Timoney and Chanelle Walshe. ‘A Knowing Nature’ brings together the works of artists at the middle and early stages of their careers. The common line that encircles them is an individualistic, focused and determined pursuit of a personal artistic language. The exhibition looks purely at that pursuit through drawing, painting, sculpture and installation. Artists included are Julie Merriman, Chanelle Walshe, Phil Foley, Cliodhna Timoney and Anita Groener.
Till 12 March 2016
thedock.ie

Julie Kelleher : Juno and the Paycock, Everyman Theatre, Cork

Posted on by

At the Everyman Theatre till 20th February

Meet the Boyles: a hilarious, drunken father; a ferociously loyal mother; a wounded son; and a daughter with “notions”.

Theirs is a family beset by poverty and war but offered the tantalising promise of sudden riches. How that happens and how they react to it is at the core of this wonderful tragicomedy, O’Casey’s funniest and most moving exploration of humour, politics, laughter and impoverished heartbreak.

O’Casey’s work is based in the Dublin tenements, but the circumstance and experiences of the Boyles could have happened in any town or city and, with this in mind, we have re-imagined the play as it might have happened in the heart of Cork city.

Miranda Driscoll : Sirius, Cobh

Posted on by

Sirius Arts Centre is a multi-disciplinary arts organisation in the Cobh-Glanmire municipal district of east Cork. It is housed in a beautiful Italiante building that was designed by Anthony Salvin in 1854 to house the Royal Cork Yacht Club, the oldest in the world. Salvin was best known for his restoration work on Windsor Castle and the Tower of London. This is the only example of Salvin’s work in Ireland.
For twenty-six years the building has housed the Sirius Arts Centre; an organisation that is dedicated to the facilitation and development of artistic expression on a local, national and international stage. This is the only organisation of its kind in the east Cork area.
Sirius is an arts centre that serves as an intermediary between art and the public that endeavours to raise public awareness of art. It offers developing opportunities for both emerging and more established artists from both Ireland and abroad. The programme is dedicated to the facilitation and development of artistic expression, with additional community programming that encourages exploration through direct participation in the arts.

This is achieved through a mix of activities including: visual arts programming and exhibitions, an international artist in residence programme, music performances, community arts programmes and workshops, all of which bring people to east Cork. The Sirius Arts Centre building provides the organisation with a unique environment and gives continuing life to a heritage building of architectural and historical importance in Cobh.

Bedwyr Williams : Century Egg

Posted on by

In his new film Century Egg (2015) Williams explores the ways in which museums offer a combination of ‘the extraordinary and the completely banal’. Objects and artefacts found in Cambridge museums are the starting point for the artist’s loosely-linked narratives and animated flights of fancy. The title refers to a Chinese delicacy: a boiled egg covered in ash and left for a number of weeks, or months, until its value (and appearance) is completely transformed.

For British Art Show 8 in Edinburgh Bedwyr Williams’ work will be exhibited at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.

Mick O’Dea : The Foggy Dew, RHA

Posted on by

Mick O’Dea PRHA is known for his paintings of the War of Independence, images culled from found and researched photographs. The very act of painting and enlarging figures from the past redeems them from the chill of photographic documentation recalling them as living breathing subjects. The fact that he extended that exercise to both sides of that war points to the complications that history now holds as we move away from the ideology of the nation state. O’Dea was stimulated by his childhood experience of the 50th anniversary of the Rising in 1966, to have a life long interest in Irish history and spurring him on, as an adult artist, to re-imagine and re-create events from that era.

Mick O’Dea has decided to embrace the events of that Easter weekend in four monumental canvases sited in the vicinity of central Dublin – the GPO, Upper O’Connell Street, the RHA on Middle Abbey Street and College Green. His large writ images offer both details and approximations, accuracy and ambiguity. O’Dea, who also trained as a sculptor, for the first time in twenty years adds three dimensional elements to his exhibition. Funky and figurative, these objects have a potency that rises above the abject materials of their making and comments on matters of monumentality, history and humanity.

The artist is introducing a further risk to the exhibition by opting for a theatrical presentation of the work. The stark spots and dark shadows amplifying our oscillating comprehension of historic events as they are but through the alembic of recollection, recreation and revisionism. The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Trinity historian Ciaran O’Neill, co-published with Ballina Arts Centre and Mayo County County Council. A version of the exhibition will be shown in Ballinglen Art Foundation, Ballycastle and Ballina Arts Centre in late July and August 2016.

Maeve McCarthy : The Return, RHA

Posted on by

Maeve McCarthy is known for her small scale rural nighttime landscapes executed in tempera and oils on traditional gesso panels, with ideas of place and home, leaving, longing and returning. Exploring memory, childhood and loss, she now changes scale with six large atmospheric charcoal drawings accompanied by a collaborative short film. The starting point is a return to Glenageary, Co Dublin and the tending of her late mother’s garden, along with memories of the ancestral Co. Down farm of her grandmother who shared the family house and was a formative influence.

“My grandmother Mumsie (Elsie), grew up on a farm outside Newry, the second eldest of nine girls. She had been a school teacher in Glenariff, Co Antrim from 1913 to 1923. Of that time of war, we knew that her cousin had been shot dead at her family home in Newry in 1921, but when Elsie passed away in 1978 a mass card of a young man dating from June 1922 was found. My mother discovered that he had been her fiancé, killed by the Special Police in an IRA action. Elsie was introduced to my grandfather soon after and moved to Dublin. His family had been neighbours in Co Down who had set up business as timber merchants in the Liberties a generation before. She loved the sea, and moved the family to Sandycove from the inner city in the mid 30’s.

We often returned North in Summer, crossing the border to spend time at the farmhouse where Elsie’s sister Mena still lived and to visit relatives in farms nearby. I remember the beautiful orchard and garden with Hydrangeas out front and views towards the Mourne and Cooley mountains. Our visits ceased at the height of the troubles in the 70’s. In the 80’s, following the death of my great aunt, the farm was sold to a second cousin.

After a family funeral in early 2015, I and my brother Peter, a filmmaker, visited the farm for the first time since childhood. Memories and wonderings were triggered – not just of our own childhood Summers, but of the lives lived there: our grandmother, her sisters, parents and when our mother visited as a child every summer with her brothers and sisters.

Returning in winter 2015 we set about making a short film

Paul Donegan : Pickering’s Gin

Posted on by

Next up in our Summerhall Residents series is Pickering’s Gin. This multi award winning, marvellously mixed gin is hand crafted at Summerhall Distillery – the first exclusive gin distillery to be established in Edinburgh for over 150 years. We spoke to Paul Donegan about the origins of the distillery and learned about the magic of making a London dry gin.

pickeringsgin.com

Martin Boyle : Snap! Droichead Arts Centre

Posted on by

In “Snap!” Martin Boyle makes connections between images by identifying sequences in banal everyday subject matter, dissolving notions of originality and ownership; instead projecting an absurd sense of order onto the visual chaos of daily life.

Martin Boyle lives and works in Belfast. He completed a Masters of Fine Art in 2008 at the University Of Ulster, Belfast, and a BA Honours from the Limerick School of Art and Design. Recent Work include ‘Human body’ Accident, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2015); Existence of Flamethrowers in Your Street, G126, Galway, Ireland (2015) and Everything’s Connected, Art Centre Ongoing, Tokyo, Japan (2014).

Ann Mulrooney : Gareth Kennedy

Posted on by

Gareth Kennedy, Post Colony VISUAL Carlow Till 19 June
Post Colony (2014) explores the microcosm of natural, industrial and colonial histories through a specific project in Killarney National Park, Co. Kerry, focusing on the invasive species Rhododendron x superponticum.

First introduced to Ireland in the 1700’s as an ornamental landscape feature, this plant has become deeply problematic within the national park and across many celebrated landscapes of Ireland and the British Isles, threatening native species. Ironically the invasive plant, a hybrid creation of the eighteenth century botanical nursery, has also become an iconic touristic image in the park, with its prolific purple blooms. Kennedy presents a speculative history of the park landscape from the Plantation of Munster in the late 16th Century to the park’s current status as a tourist destination and special area of conservation.

Ryan Gander : Fieldwork

Posted on by

Ryan Gander
Talbot Rice Gallery 13 February – 8 May

Ryan Gander’s shape-shifting practice is grounded in his habit of compulsive collecting: ‘not just physical stuff,’ he explains, ‘but words and pictures and descriptions of situations.’

For British Art Show 8 in Edinburgh, Gander presents Fieldwork (2015), a series of objects and assemblages that are by turns funny, macabre or banal. Revolving on a vast concealed conveyor belt, these assemblages can be glimpsed – one at a time through an aperture in the gallery wall. As they pass, the viewer is invited to speculate on the stories they tell, their relationship to one another and their significance to the artist. In the accompanying publication, Fieldwork: An Incomplete Reader, Gander provides a series of largely autobiographical texts that respond to or provide a context for his idiosyncratic collection.

Bridget O’Gorman : In The Flesh, The Lab

Posted on by

In the Flesh, The Lab, Foley Street, Dublin 1 28th January to 12th March 2016

The LAB Gallery is pleased to present In the Flesh by Bridget O’Gorman. This is the first series of three exhibitions where contemporary artists have been invited to make new work in response to the 1916 Rising in collaboration with other research partners and institutions.

In the Flesh is a collaboration between artist Bridget O’Gorman, historian Brenda Malone at the National Museum of Ireland Collins Barracks and writer Sue Rainsford. This new video focuses on the museum store at Collins Barracks and the artefacts stored there – many of which were donated by the relatives of those who were involved in the 1916 rising. In the film these objects are never revealed to the viewer instead they are described through Rainsford’s script which gives a voice to the artefacts which have been protected from destabilising atmospheric contaminants, human touch and light.

This ‘people’s collection’ which will be on display at Collins Barracks later in the year, contains many items that tell the history of the object itself and evidence of the person that used it. These include a tea flask used during 1916 that bears the fingerprints of its owner and a felt hat worn by James Connolly that carries the trajectory marks of a passing bullet.

As with all objects related to turbulent times; the fire arms, incendiary devices and printed manifestos of the ‘peoples collection’ have deteriorated and require conservation in order to stabilise them. The film examines the vocabulary used by museum conservators to describe different types of deterioration. Ironically words such as blistering and weeping are also used to describe injuries to the human body, injuries that could well have been inflicted by the artefacts that are being conserved.

The second video work focuses on the hands of conservator Hannah Power as she carefully attends to the body of a rifle. This representation of conservation asks us to examine the juxtaposition of the delicacy of the work of the conservator with the violence inherent in the gun itself.

Shown alongside this footage are a set of folded aluminium structures, interspersed with objects fabricated from modelling clay, ballistic gels and soaps which are used by museum professionals and police departments to simulate how human flesh reacts to trauma caused by the penetration of fire arm or blade. Amongst those items are a set of pinched sculptures, moulded through the heat of the hand, bearing its fingerprints – exploiting the plastic memory of physiotherapy putty and resistance bands – referencing the human body and its relation to the inanimate material.

Videos filmed on location at The National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks, 2015.

Rosa Abbott : Jan Pleitner, Water for the Tribe

Posted on by

The Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, presents ‘Water for the Tribe’, an exhibition of new painting by Jan Pleitner. Pleitner’s paintings are striking and expressive: an intense exploration of colour and energy. Characterised by fast lines and deep pigments that bleed into one another, the artist takes a highly tactile approach to painting, scraping through layers of paint as readily as he builds them up.

Further information: kerlin.ie E: rosa@kerlin.ie, T: 01 670 9093

Charlotte Duffy : Make As If

Posted on by

MAKE AS IF

Charlotte Duffy – aka Waste of Paint Productions is putting on a show ‘Make As If’. She hopes to restore the den builder in all of us from our childhood days, challenging the way we look and relate to the spaces around us.

Fri 5 Feb – Sat 13 Feb
Coburg House, Edinburgh
coburghouse.co.uk

Chris Murray and Carlotta Hester : Bob Dylan NYC 1961-64 + The Pure Drop

Posted on by

Irish premiere exhibition of Ted Russell’s intimate, previously unseen, photographs of Bob Dylan in New York City. The photographs chronicle days in the life of the then unknown folk artist – backstage and onstage at the folk clubs, hanging out in his apartment with his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo, at his writing desk, and on the street. They give a fresh, candid glimpse of what life in Greenwich Village was like for the 20 year-old folk bard.

During the summers of 2010, 2011, and 2012, American artist Carlotta Hester made over 150 drawings in County Cavan. Each is an exquisite rendering of traditional Irish musicians, singers and dancers captured at the height of their creative flow. For this exhibition, the artist has selected 24 drawings which present a visual distillation of Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann, the largest of all traditional Irish music festivals.

Photographs @ Ted Russell/Govinda Gallery.

Dennis and Debbie Club : OMA

Posted on by

Dennis and Debbie Club are Dennis J. Reinmueller and Debbie Moody- their recent emergence on the Scottish art scene has been a breath of fresh air – merging digital trickery with humour and three dimensional sculpture,

For LUST AND THE APPLE’s main gallery space they have created an installation in honour of Reinmeuller’s now dead grandmother (Oma is German for grandmother) who happened to be an expert crocheter as well as Nazi!

Anna O’Sullivan : The Butler Gallery

Posted on by

The Butler Gallery has an extraordinary resource in its fine permanent collection. Established in 1943, the collection has continued to flourish through gift, loan and purchase. It is a rich archive to which the inquisitive eye may turn and return. The gallery has an on-going commitment to keep this diverse collection fluid, exhibited and enjoyed by the public. Including loans from the Sir Basil Goulding Collection and private collections, the Butler Gallery Collection is an eclectic catalogue that can be read and appreciated on many levels.

We continue to explore this valuable resource and revisit beloved favourites, showcase new acquisitions, and introduce new long-term loans to the collection. This selection reflects the broad character of the collection itself and embraces a variety of genres from painting, drawing and printmaking, to photography and media works.

We are delighted to feature a recent gift from the Bligh and Sato families of a group of works by the renowned printmaker and woodblock artist Moya Bligh (1954-2009). Bligh, a native of Kilkenny, spent almost 30 years in Japan where she lived and worked. In addition to an impressive group of abstract prints, this exhibition also features Joyce Plane, 1982, a ceramic paper dart of a page from the Kilkenny People, mounted on Kilkenny Limestone. This sculptural work, a collaboration with ceramic artist Lisa Young, was inspired by a line in the ‘Scylla and Charybdis’ episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses where Leopold Bloom wants to see “the files of the Kilkenny People for last year.”

The exhibition also introduces new gifts and loans to the collection including works by Felicity Clear, David King, Stephen McKenna, Richard Mosse and Gypsy Ray. The exhibition also includes Sitting Room, 2012, a film work by the hugely gifted Patrick Jolley (1964-2012), kindly on loan from the estate of Patrick Jolley.

These collective works convey a contemporary freshness and are a window into this ever- evolving collection, which we are fortunate to maintain in Kilkenny.

Marc O’Riain : IDI Awards Exhibition

Posted on by

The IDI Awards Exhibition is in Waterford from the end of January in the SOMA Gallery from January 29th and running for a month.

The IDI Irish Design awards feature the best of furniture, product, interiors, architecture, fashion, textiles, app, user experience, graphics and web design in Ireland. The IDI Irish Design Awards are Ireland’s only multi-disciplinary professional design prizes. Since the 1990s, the awards have recognised excellence and innovation in creative practice.

Paul Robertson : Fiona Beveridge

Posted on by

Lust and the Apple’s exhibition of Fiona Beveridge’s ‘Chalkstone Gateau + Goby’ introduced by Paul Robertson. Here is a collection of mixed media tactile forms compromised of found items that together assemble fragmented elements of a factory; a chalk factory that encourages the evolution of ocean minerals into porous, living chalk.Beveridge’s plan and placement of her sculptural forms are scattered in a disorganized pattern, echoing the vitality and distinction into the processes brought to life via mark making. This particular project is influenced by the evolution of our Ocean’s natural systems of adaption and transformation to account for new forces such as the organic creation of chalk.

For more information: lustandtheapple.com/The ongoing exploration of everyday objects comes from an interest in surface morphology, metamorphosis and synesthesia; she is curious of how our different senses can blend together to create surrealism from looking at a specific colour or shape.