Openness, a recent exhibition by Noel Hensey, consists of a site-specific sculpture inspired by the visual humour of the 1980’s American television series Police Squad! (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker, 1982) alongside a video work entitled History. The sculpture, Openness Sculpture is specifically concerned with a scene in the series where the central character Sergeant Frank Drebin is in a police lab with a lab technician. In the scene, Sergeant Drebin and the technician walk from one room to another, the technician opens a door between… Read More »
REVIEW: Broken Stiles
The appointment of Anthony McFarland as Director of the Museum of Contemporary Art comes amid global upheavals that are altering the political and cultural landscape, but the International Curator and former Irish Army Captain has formidable leadership experience and is determined to hit the ground running. The off-message nature of the Museum’s latest group show Broken Stiles will be welcomed by many as a refreshing departure from recent institutional exhibition making. “The exhibition,” says McFarland, “aims to air the uncertainties surrounding ideas of order, ownership… Read More »
REVIEW: You missed the 9th Berlin Biennale
The 9th Berlin Biennale (BB9) is over and you missed it. It was curated by DIS, not a “fashion collective”, they are a New York-based art collective comprised of Lauren Boyle, Solomon Chase, Marco Roso and David Toro. Notable projects include: http://disimages.com/ and http://dismagazine.com/ and https://youtu.be/ivqvw2QQ8FE. All too frequently in the sphere of ‘high art’ we are are presented with the tokenistic political language of Marxism and postcolonial marginalia. This year’s Biennale is not an overt show of protest or statements, yet remains political. As one friend put… Read More »
REVIEW: Beyond Violet
Almost tribal. There is something deadly in the work of Sibyl Montague. It’s a quiet sensation of threat dabbling between precarity, vulnerability and material seduction. Montague’s work tends to look, at first glance, benign enough. Look a second more and it grows wildly beautiful – in a wabi sabi way – or mesmerisingly slick. It is within these subtleties, running just under the work’s wiry grip, wherein lies lethal potential. The exhibition Beyond Violet at Wexford Arts Centre is set across two floors. The floors… Read More »
REVIEW: …alarming …invasive …a violation …lawless …disrespectful
There are very few exhibitions that I feel such a draw to see multiple times and the need to bring other viewers along to – …alarming …invasive …a violation …lawless …disrespectful – the first solo exhibition of the London-based, Norwegian artist Sebastian Lloyd Rees in Ireland, was one such show. With Sebastian Lloyd Rees we have an artist who is interested in effect and the histories of effect. His work as part of this exhibition is deeply rooted in the themes of conflict, inequality,… Read More »
REVIEW: ∞ (Broken Mirrors)
∞ (Broken Mirrors) begins in the NCAD Gallery lobby with Lee Welch’s New Now. An arch is marked out in cross hatched mini-roller-width blueish looking grey paint, suggesting a doubling of the gallery’s current entrance through an older form in this newly remade space (the gallery was once the Thomas Street Fire Station). A large flatscreen displays a cinematically filmed, zoomed in, pre-digital electric flip clock by Jonathan Mayhew. Early in my life it was already too late is perpetually at 5:59, so closely… Read More »
REVIEW: What Is and What Might Be
The title, What Is And What Might Be, suggests an assessment of the here and now, and its potentials; the future and the plans to get there. And although the curators state that Lacan’s reference to Holbein’s distorted skull is their conceptual starting point, I’m not sure this matters in lieu of the ideas the actual experience provoked. A painting show, the selection of works and their organisation in this particular space pulled at and unpacked ideas to me primarily architectural. In both a literal… Read More »
REVIEW: Four Fold
The mutilated remains of a Bog Man cover the gallery floor. The gallery approach becomes a medical observation deck, affording a view of the downstairs installation from above. In full colour, Sam Keogh has enlarged a photograph of the two millennia old Irish ‘Old Croghan Man’. Coming down, the iridescent tanned skin of just a ragged torso, arms, and hands is to be walked over. Four sections of the image are peeled and propped up with decorated bone-sticks. These in turn are anchored in place… Read More »
REVIEW: Disequilibrium Displacement
Disequilibrium DisplacementDiogo Pimentao Garden Galleries, Irish Museum of Modern Art 10 April – 5 July 2015 Review by Darren Caffrey In the downstairs room of IMMA’s Garden Galleries, the work of Diogo Pimentao can be found. Titled Disequilibrium Displacement, it is perhaps best not to understand it in terms of words. For the purpose of this review, words will have to suffice however. Luckily, this exhibit comes with more words than just those of its title. The gallery text says “…using very simple materials like paper,… Read More »
REVIEW: The Parallax View
The Parallax View Alan Butler, curated by Niamh Brown Ormston House, Limerick 12 December 2014 – 31 January 2015 Review by Jim Ricks As the end of Alan Butler’s solo exhibition, The Parallax View, loomed, on impulse I bought a same-day return ticket from Dublin to Limerick. Up far earlier than usual to catch a 10 o’clock, and in a half sleep, half caffeinated delirium, I decided to perform. The performance took place on Twitter. I declared a very self-reflexive, so much meta, self-aware, double… Read More »
REVIEW: 6IX Degrees
6IX Degrees Curator, Naomi Sex/ Artist, Alan-James Burns/ Curator, Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll/ Artist, Linda Quinlan/ Curator, Sarah Pierce/ Artists Jan Verwoertand Federica Bueti.Conceived and facilitated by Naomi Sex Irish Museum of Modern Art 4pm – 7pm, 13 December 2014 Review by John Graham “I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world”. – Paul ‘Poitier’, Six Degrees of Separation, John Guare By 4pm the winter light was already leaving the courtyard separating the artists’ studios from the… Read More »
REVIEW: Out the hole, around the tree and back in again
Out the hole, around the tree and back in again, Graduate Exhibition 2014 Avril Corroon National College of Art and Design, Dublin 14 – 22 June 2014 Review by Eoghan McIntyre “There are times when even the most potent governor must wink at transgression, in order to preserve the laws inviolate for the future.”1 – Herman Melville Transgression alludes to a stepping over, going beyond, the breaking of a convention or boundary. In its most basic sense transgression is the rejection of perceived rationality, an… Read More »
REVIEW: Civil Occupation
The art a city absorbs says a lot about its inhabitants. What the city nurtures from itself, but also what is invited in. As waves of trends of collectives and movements come and go, people can become jaded. Every now and then a show comes along that makes you review your art intake. The Ellis King Gallery has been open just under a year, so for anyone who hasn’t visited I will describe the gallery. It’s located on the outskirts of Dublin city, but is… Read More »
REVIEW: Lacuna in Parallax
Lacuna in Parallax Lucy McKenna The Source, Thurles 12 September – 25 October 2014 by Jim Ricks “The thing about symmetry is that the beholder is positioned at the centre of the image”1 A train journey south towards Limerick on an overcast day brought me to Thurles, Co. Tipperary. Rising out of a wholly typical Irish place (and its pubs, takeaways, banks, butchers, Norman tower house, slow moving river, etc.) was the completely unexpected, substantial zinc-clad trapezoid edifice of The Source. Minus the apparently… Read More »
REVIEW: Patient Staring
Patient Staring Works by Anne Hendrick, Aileen Murphy, and Emma Roche. Curated by Paul Doran Wexford Arts Centre 19 October – 3 December 2014 Review by Susan Edwards Tucked upstairs in the Wexford Arts Centre was a group of some feisty, thought provoking little paintings. It consisted only of eight works of art and coincided with the Wexford Opera Festival. Even before looking at the body of art, one is met with the exhibition title, Patient Staring, and the connotations that statement brings to mind…. Read More »
REVIEW: Made by Whites for Whites
Two new bodies of works spanned the two Jack Shainman locations in Chelsea. Both formally related, but each very distinct in tack. For the purposes of this review I will focus on Made by Whites for Whites at 20th Street, although the contrast made by the other, Rescue, at 24th, is interesting. Nick Cave is primarily known for and has worked almost singularly on a body of work he calls Soundsuits. These are fantastic costumes that have their finger on the pulse of Dadaism at… Read More »
Pinochet Porn – The Dictator and the Maid
Pinochet Porn – The Dictator and the Maid Works by Ellen Cantor, curated by Dallas Seitz and The Black Mariah.The Black Mariah, Cork6 October – 7 December 2014 Review by Darren Caffrey The Dictator and The Maid by American video artist Ellen Cantor was made as part of her magnum opus entitled Pinochet Porn. Cantor describes the work: “Pinochet Porn, a feature length soap opera on super 8! A story of five children growing up during the Pinochet regime into adulthood.” In 2013 she died,… Read More »
These Immovable Walls: Performing Power
These Immovable Walls: Performing PowerPauline Cummins, Maurice O’Connell, Sandra Johnston, Philip Napier, Katerina Seda, Dominic Thorpe, and Carey Young. Curated by Michelle BrowneDublin Castle11 – 12 July 2014 Review by Darren Caffrey Black is all you see. It remains hanging in the mind long after. The work offered by Dominic Thorpe is set in darkness. Overall, the set-up for his performance Proximity Mouthcan be said to operate as a system. It begins outside. When the door opens, the previous viewer is released. Only then… Read More »
REVIEW: Agitationism – EVA International ‘Ireland’s Biennial’
The city of Limerick shares EVA 2014 between two main venues. The main gallery is Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA). The second space is a disused milk plant on the other side of the river. This latter site reflects the changing economics of the city, from an agricultural hub to one of culture. Indeed the plant once owned by Golden Vale shows the signs of disrepair. While LCGA’s white walls interiorise and vacate the space for the art work to be shown, the… Read More »
The Enclave (Part 1)
The Enclave by Richard Mosse Curated by Anna O’Sullivan Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin February – March 2014 Review by Darren Caffrey Part 1 of a 3 part series on Ireland at Venice 2013 The Enclave in the RHA consisted of a video installation and a small selection of exceptionally large examples of landscape photography. Each reflecting an apparent pastoral craze in retro active colour changing film, taking as a setting the various advantages of light and dark. The show is over but its showing and… Read More »