• Exhibition: Signs and Ciphers @ Golden Thread

    August 29, 2017 - By 

    Described as less of a retrospective into his work and more of an investigation into certain prevailing themes and characteristics, Signs and Ciphers is a new dual location exhibition and features the work of Northern Irish artist Alistair Wilson. The first two parts to this four-part exhibition are on show in Belfast’s Golden Thread Gallery and features newer work from Wilson. The remaining two parts open later this year in Portadown’s Millennium Court Arts Centre, and feature older works stretching back to the 1970’s. Wilson, who represented Northern Ireland at the 2005 Venice Biennale, is an investigative artist, exploring the materials he surrounds himself with,…

  • Exhibition: Observations @ Belfast Exposed

    August 31, 2017 - By 

    Celestograph by August Strindberg, 1894. Image kindly provided by the National Library of Sweden Outside of his native Sweden August Strindberg is predominantly known as a playwright and a poet, such was the high regard his was held in within these disciplines. Strindberg was in fact a polymath who explored painting (he was friends with Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin) and the photographic arts. It is the latter, and specifically his late 19th Century experiments in capturing he might sky, that severs as the departure point for Observations, the current show in Belfast Exposed. For his ‘Celestographs’, Strindberg placed sensitised plates…

  • Exhibition: Collected Shadows @ Void

    August 25, 2017 - By 

    Established twenty-five years ago, the original brief for the Archive of Modern Conflict was to collect and preserve materials relating to the First and Second World War – this saw the AMC primarily archive photographs but also manuscripts and materials. Over the course of the next quarter century this initial premise was expanded on and the AMC is now best viewed as an archive of the world, amassing photographs from multiple centuries on a wide variety of themes and topics. In conjunction with the Southbank Centre’s Hayward Touring, an initiative which organises touring exhibitions through the UK and NI, the AMC…

  • Exhibition: Concerning the Other @ Olivier Cornet

    September 8, 2017 - By 

    Opening this Sunday in the Olivier Cornet Gallery, on Dublin’s Great Denmark Street, is a new group exhibition titled Concerning the Other. The show has been curated by Olivier Cornet, Claire Halpin and Eoin Mac Lochlainn; and sees the artists involved respond to the themes of diversity and concern, in terms of refugees and minorities from areas of conflict. Recent and on-going struggles make this a vital discourse that requires a collective response, and this approach is echoed in the work created. Instead of submitting individual pieces the ten artists collaborated on works together, with each adding a layer upon the previous’ work. By…

  • Exhibition: The Core Project @ RUA RED

    August 22, 2017 - By 

    The Core Project is the latest exhibition from Irish artist Matthew Nevin, and is currently on show in Tallaght’s RUA RED creative hub. The work is one that Nevin has been developing since 2010 and sees the artist present over 150 videos of individuals in each sovereign state in the world. The participants are all responding to the same question: What is going to happen next? Nevin ensured each was ignorant to this question prior to filming their video, which results in a more visceral than calculated response being captured and documented. Modern life, and the art world included, is becoming more and more intertwined with technology…

  • Workshops & Exhibition: Cork Photo Gallery

    August 11, 2017 - By 

    Cork Photo Gallery have announced details of their forthcoming workshop series with events due to take place throughout September and into October. Workshops range from photography tutorials at dawn with Marcin Lewandowski (details available online here) to outdoor painting classes with Paul McKenna (details available online here). Running in conjunction with these more specific adult classes, Cork Photo Gallery have also released details of their forthcoming children’s workshops – with events for kids of all ages, with workshops even catering for 6 to 16 months. As well as these events, the gallery is currently showing In Print, an exhibition featuring the work of photographer…

  • Exhibition: And Creatures Dream…A New Language @ Wexford Arts Centre

    August 21, 2017 - By 

    This week is your last to see And Creatures Dream…A New Language as its due to close this Friday, August 25th. The exhibition, which is spread across both the Wexford Arts Centre and the Wexford County Council buildings, comments on the visual arts in the county, with a focus on painting. The exhibition’s title is taken from American poet Susan Stewart’s 2011 piece A Language and references the artists’ perception and memory as they create their work. The artists on show (which include Robert Armstrong, Eamonn Carter, Aileen Murphy, Breda Stacey and Michael Warren) explore and present the medium of painting in diverse and ever challenging…

  • Exhibition: Subjects & Objects @ VISUAL Carlow

    August 10, 2017 - By 

    Frank Kafka’s 1922 short story, A Hunger Artist, provides the departure point for American filmmaker Daria Martin’s latest film, also titled A Hunger Artist. In Kafka’s story an artist performs public fasts, which are fashionable at the time, but feeling under-loved and under-appreciated he tries to extend the length of time he subjects himself to these performances against his managers wishes. After fasting falls out of fashion he finds himself working in a circus; and in the end he neither desires food nor attention, becoming ignored. Eventually he dies and is replaced by a panther, who is gazed upon and admired by his…

  • Exhibition: Memorabilia @ Belfast Exposed

    August 15, 2017 - By 

    This week is the last to the Memorabilia exhibition in Belfast Exposed – closing this Saturday August 19th. Gábor Arion Kudász, son of Hungarian artist Emese Kudász, began photographing and documenting his mother’s archive in the years that followed her death in 2010. Gábor’s cataloguing of his mother’s work threw up a interesting observation – is the coherence between objects one that existed prior to his undertaking of the task? Or is it one generated through the creation of an archive? What is for certain is the context these works were created in is separate to the context they are placed under when…

  • Exhibition: SANDMAN @ The Complex

    July 27, 2017 - By 

    Tonight sees the opening of SANDMAN in Dublin’s The Complex. SANDMAN is the second exhibition from Stream, an artist-led project, and follows on from their successful first show in the same space in April. The brief for this show saw Stream ask “the artists involved to produce work which considers the human tendency to worship; to elevate objects, ideas or people to semi-divine or miraculous status. We would like the artists to contemplate the role of worship or superstition within our current Western culture and our future culture, from a religious or secular perspective” The exhibition’s theme also draws on elements of…