• CIRCA Art Magazine: This Matters Now

    March 16, 2017 - By 

    Tadhg O’Sullivan, still from The Great Wall, 2014, HD film, 74 min. Courtesy of the artist. The new issue of CIRCA Art Magazine’s This Matters Now series is now online. The edition features responses to recent show’s in VISUAL Carlow, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and Butler Gallery. As well as these five texts, you can also read the previous three issues from this series, and the issues from last year’s series as well. As a repository of texts on Irish art this continues to grow and forward a vital discourse. This Matters Now can be read online here.

  • Alan Butler @ Green on Red

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    HELIOSYNTH, a new show featuring the work Alan Butler, opens tonight in Green On Red Gallery in Spencer Dock. Butler is a fascinating artist who works often approaches or immerses itself in worlds of a virtual nature. A recent project, entitled Down and out in Los Santos, see Butler post haunting images from the Rockstar game on various social media platforms. Often bleak, the imagery resonates across themes of humanity and urbanisation. Butler has returned to this virtual world in HELIOSYNTH with a teaser trailer featuring a cat strutting across a Martian surface to Beethoven’s Piano Sonata no. 14 in C#m – see below.…

  • Standard Exhibition @ ArtBox

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    Opening tonight in ArtBox on Dublin’s James Joyce Street is Standard Exhibition, and exciting group show featuring 6 emerging artists – Neil Carroll, Conor Mary Foy, Olivia Hassett, David Lunney, Alex de Roeck and Zoe Sheehy. The exhibition is curated by former Monster Truck curator and current OPW Registrar Davey Moor – Moor also provides writings, along with the artists themselves, to  the show’s accompanying publication Six Conversations About Flags. The exhibition, as alluded to in the publication’s title, sees works around the theme of flags, be they vessels for “psychological terror through esoteric symbolism; ambiguous markers of uncertain intent; micro-heraldry? or conduits for elemental power; alternative (symbol) facts; all…

  • Picture This: Sean Lynch @ Douglas Hyde Gallery

    March 9, 2017 - By 

    Sean Lynch – A Walk Through Time (Image courtesy of the artist and Douglas Hyde Gallery)  What: A Walk Through Time // What Is An Apparatus? Where: Douglas Hyde Gallery When: February 17th – April 5th Words: Aidan Kelly Murphy History, and the narrative arcs that flow through it, is rarely presented to us for review, instead it is often curated. ‘History is written by the winners’, is a phrase often used to illustrate this manipulation of stories and events; but even a quick delve into the origins of this quote reveals multiple attributions to Winston Churchill, Napoleon Bonaparte and…

  • Lost in Narration @ The MAC Belfast

    March 20, 2017 - By 

    Featuring a triumvirate of Italian artists, Riccardo Giacconi, Invernomuto and Luca Trevisani, with guest curation by fellow Italian Manuela Pacella, Lost in Narration is an exciting new exhibition on in Belfast’s The MAC. While the players may be of Italian origin, the subject matter leaves the confines of Europe and discuss events in Columbia, Jamaica, Ethiopia and Kenya. Though the individual narratives within each project are disparate, a continuity across the work prevails, and one that is reinforced through their research lead practices. Lost in Narration continues until June 18th, with more info available here.

  • I Wanted to Write a Poem @ Wexford Arts Centre

    March 21, 2017 - By 

    This is the last week to catch Jonathan Mayhew’s latest show I Wanted to Write a Poem on in Wexford Arts Centre until Saturday 25th March. Mayhew, who was awarded Wexford Arts Centre’s 2015 Emerging Visual Artist Award, has presented a body of work that sees heavy links between the literary and visual arms of art. Both practices are intertwined by Mayhew in the exhibition, with the title itself being drawn from the autobiography of imagist poet William Carlos Williams. In I Wanted to Write a Poem Mayhew explores the ability of poetry to convey far deeper meaning through more simplistic collections of words.…

  • Picture This: Meanwhile @ CIT Wandesford Quay

    February 22, 2017 - By 

    What: Meanwhile Where: CIT Wandesford Quay When: February 3rd – February 25th Words: Judt Fisher “This exhibition is a celebration,”  said Catherine Fehily, head of CIT Crawford College of Art and Design as she opened the new show Meanwhile in the Wandesford Quay Gallery.  “These artists have succeeded in combining creative thought with critical intelligence, resilience and tenacity resulting in D.I.Y-led productivity and action, and we are proud.” Meanwhile is curated by Aideen Quirke and shows work from artists who graduated from  Crawford College of Art and Design between 2008-2013. These artists through their work, the organisations they have founded and events they have organised…

  • Picture This: Parc Du Souvenir @ Oonagh Young Gallery

    February 15, 2017 - By 

    Stephen Brandes – Parc Du Souvenir (Image Courtesy of Stephen Brandes) What: Parc Du Souvenir Where: Oonagh Young Gallery When: January 26th – February 24th Words: Aidan Kelly Murphy Albert Sitzfleisch is a failed architect. A failed architect who works for the Council of Europe. The year is 2068, a date that is tantalisingly close but also just out of reach – will we all make it to this year? Holed up in his rented cabin in the southwest of Ireland, following 30 years of travelling around Europe, Sitzfleisch has with him for company his memories and views of the continent…

  • Artist Talk: Cliona Harmey @ Sirius

    February 21, 2017 - By 

    This Friday sees artist Cliona Harmey in Cobh’s Sirius Arts Centre for a discussion around her practice. Harmey made a series of visits to Cobh and Sirius Arts Centre in both 2015 and 2016 as she continues to work on new projects. This new work will be discussed alongside a pair of short films made last year at Hawlbowline Naval base with members of the Irish Defence forces. Harmey’s practice has often taken on naval themes which was most notably executed in 2015’s wonderful Dublin Ships installation – see photo above. The talk kicks off at 1pm on Friday with more information…