• the arts column: December 11th

    In our new weekly arts column we’ll be rounding-up some key events in the Irish art world be they exhibition opening and closings, art talks and workshops, submission deadlines and guidelines, and everything in between that fits under the arts umbrella. This week we’re looking at four shows across Ireland which are drawing to a close as we approach Christmas. Martin Healy’s The Augury @ Butler Gallery, Kilkenny This week is your last chance to catch Martin Healy’s show The Augury in Kilkenny’s Butler Gallery. The work sees Healy explore our often fraught and conflicting relationship with the natural world, with particular focus…

  • Exhibition: Subjects & Objects @ VISUAL Carlow

    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: The Triadic Ballet @ VISUAL Carlow

    In 1922, and a year prior to him being named as the Head of the Bauhuas School’s Theatre Workshop, Oskar Schlemmer unveiled his first major theatrical work: The Triadic Ballet. The ballet saw 3 participants (always 2 males and 1 female) perform 12 dances in 18 costumes spread across 3 acts. The dancers, akin to life-size marionette dolls, were transformed into abstract geometric shapes as Schlemmer explored modernity and the human form. The ballet was shown extensively during the artist’s time at Bauhaus (’21-’29), with touring performances taking place. In 1970 Bavaria Film GmbH captured a colour film of the ballet with…

  • CIRCA Art Magazine: This Matters Now

    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.