• In Conversation With… Eleanor McCaughey

    August 28, 2017 - By 

    Absinthe hour – oil on Canvas, 2017 I first encountered the work of Eleanor McCaughey in 2015 when I saw her solo exhibition Image is Everything in Dublin’s Eight. There McCaughey collated and presented an Americana she had fictionalised using found photographs that depicted American diplomats and their families during the Cold War years. In that show hints existed to the new shift in direction her practice was about to take, and in the intervening years I voyeuristically watched this evolution through social media – peppering it with real life contacts at various exhibition openings. It was at one of those recent…

  • 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: Nasty Women Dublin

    August 3, 2017 - By 

    Opening tonight in Dublin’s Pallas Projects & Studios is Nasty Women Dublin. Originating in New York, the fundraising initiative has spread to over 40 destinations globally and is described as: “a global art movement that serves to demonstrate solidarity among artists who identify with being a Nasty Woman in the face of threats to roll back women’s rights, individual rights, and abortion rights. With over forty fundraising art exhibitions taking place around the United States and abroad, Nasty Women Exhibitions also serve to support organisations defending these rights and to be a platform for organisation and resistance.” For this incarnation…