Shower Of Kunst

Critical Online Journal

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 »

2016 SHOWER OF KUNST UNDERGRAD SPOTLIGHT AWARD

Amy Malone of NCAD is this year’s pick for our Spotlight Award.  Congratulations.  Malone’s work lies somewhere between sculpture, hand crafted, textile, text based, the concept driven, and activist.  Her installation, We are now ready to move to something else, stood out as one of the most pared back and focused in the undergraduate degree shows this year.  She approached the heavy issues of labour exploitation in the big business of the international textile trade with a contemporary sculptural flair.  We loved it. Thesis excerpt: Unraveling The Consumer’s… 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 »

Images: The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist

  During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Baghdad’s National Museum of Iraq, the home of a large collection of world heritage objects, which not protected. The unsecured building was looted, and Approximately 15,000 objects Disappeared, leaving a terrible void in the museum collection and the international collection of relics of human history.For his first exhibition with Galerie Barbara Wien, Michael Rakowitz presents The invisible enemy shoulderstand not exist, to ongoing project since 2007. It is a direct response to the pillage of Baghdad’s museum, and… 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 »

IMAGES: Red Horse

  The Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University is showing a rare exhibition of 12 drawings by acclaimed ledger artist Red Horse, a Minneconjou Lakota Sioux warrior who fought against George Armstrong Custer and the 7th Cavalry at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in June 1876. Red Horse: Drawings of the Battle of the Little Bighorn brings together key collaborators from Stanford and its communities to explore these indigenous-centered illustrations from diverse perspectives. The Cantor’s exhibition marks the first time that a representative selection of… Read More »

IMAGES: Kung Fu in Africa

    Kung Fu in Africa: Golden Age Hand-Painted Movie Posters from Ghana (1985 – 1999) Master African artisan-painters Joe Mensah, Leonardo, Death is Wonder, Alex Nkrumah Boateng, D.A. Jasper, Stoger, Bright Obeng, Gilbert Forson, Samuel, Dan Nyenkumah, Africatta, Babs, Muslim. Curated by Ernie Wolfe III Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong 11 March – 12 April 2016 Image Courtesy of Hanart TZ Gallery; Photography by Kitmin Lee www.hanart.com

Berned Out

Why We Socialists Don’t Support Bernie Sanders for President Despite the fact that the Democratic Party is, along with the Republican Party, one of the twin pillars of U.S. imperialism, much of the U.S. left is looking for ways to accommodate—if not support—Bernie Sanders’ campaign to be the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.1 Some of these groups support liberal Democrats like Sanders as a matter of policy.2 Others need a special candidate to campaign for.3 In Bernie Sanders, many would-be left and… Read More »

Debunking the Imagery of the “Irish Slaves” Meme

Those that promote the meme of Irish perpetual hereditary chattel slavery use a variety of images entirely unrelated to indentured servitude to accompany their anti-history.  Liam Hogan examined a selection of them. 1. Sale of a Slave Girl in Rome by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1884) The most popular image to accompany the spurious “Irish: the Forgotten White Slaves” articles. It is cropped from a painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme. In this work, Gérôme imagined a scene in a Roman slave market… about two thousand years ago. 2. The… Read More »

Images: PAIN TERO FLIGHT

  For this group exhibition, Pain Tero Flight, co-curated with Alicia Eler, participating artists were asked to interrogate the art, business and public persona of American pastoral painter Thomas Kinkade, who died in 2012. Kinkade rigorously maintained that the popularity of his work highlights the elitism in contemporary art world power structures, a position that may be less tenable in light of the last decade’s growth in popularity of contemporary art experiences. At the same time, Kinkade’s oeuvre continues to raise questions about the agency of… Read More »

2015 Shower of Kunst Undergrad Spotlight Award

Congratulations to NCAD Graduate Luke Byrne for his multimedia installation, Tony Ferrari : Superbowl Sunday, at the NCAD Degree Show in June of 2015. Self described as: “Guns, explosions, denim, war, shockingly lifelike prosthetics, cocktails, palm trees, special effects, Hollywood, other guys, milk, meat, dads, cool right? I know.” Byrne and his work, which deals with masculinity in a self aware, insightful, and absurd manner, is (finally) in the spotlight at www.showerofkunst.com. In previous years we have covered various Irish Degree Shows with extensive images of numerous… Read More »

On the sidelines of graffiti on the Apartheid wall

There is no doubt that the Apartheid wall is a very tempting drawing surface for graffiti artists, only if it wasn’t positioned in such situation. When contemplating about this issue – taking into consideration the presence of the apartheid wall and the message it represents- one can learn that any act of drawing on such a surface would only beautify it to an extent where dealing with the Apartheid wall’s existence becomes natural and acceptable to the viewer’s eye making it also mentally acceptable. For… 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 »

IMAGES: The Funnies

                                The Funnies Charlie Billingham, Mel Bochner, Cosima von Bonin, Werner Büttner, George Condo, Philip Guston, Sanya Kantarovsky, Martin Kippenberger, Sarah Lucas, Simon Mathers, Helmut Middendorf, Oliver Osborne, Jon Pylypchuk, Anne Speier, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Jesse Wine, and Rose Wylie  MOT International, Brussels 20 November 2015 – 30 January 2016 All images courtesy of the artist and MOT International London & Brussels www.motinternational.com

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 »