Irish Art Scene

What is a nation? And what do we need to be considered part of a nation? This event aims to consider our identity as curators, as Italians, as Europeans in a precarious time, especially because of politics and economics. We are living in hard times: both Ireland and Italy are suffering due to the global crisis and our governments are forced to cut funds to support culture. Thus the art system is in danger and a lot of people have decided to leave their own country to find other possibilities abroad. The “new emigration”, composed of graduates and highly educated people, art professionals, doctors, engineers, is changing an entire social system, especially in Italy. Taking inspiration from the financial crisis and funding cuts, the event will focus on the reaction of artists to these issues, their interpretations of the causes and effects, and their strategies to address or overcome them. Quoting Boris Groys, “artists today are using the same forms and proces...

Helen Sharp is an artist living and working in Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. Helen grew up on the tiny Hebridean island of Vatersay in Scotland and left the islands to take up a place in Edinburgh College of Art where she gained a First Class honours in Sculpture and received the Andrew Grant Bequest Scholarship for Highest Academic Achievement. Helen went on to gain a Masters with Distinction in Time Based Art from Dartington College of Arts gaining the highest degree result in her year. After some time teaching and also exhibiting internationally many times, Helen went on to be director of Catalyst Arts Gallery in Belfast and then to complete a PhD in Art from the University of Ulster. Alongside and equally as important to her academic career, Helen has continued her art practice and recently had a major solo show called the `Hero and Now’, exhibiting film,  photography, print and installation. Helen was one of five shortlisted artists for the Cultural Olympiad...

This major mid-career survey of the work of the internationally admired Brazilian artist Rivane Neuenschwander covers a decade of her work. A Day Like Any Other highlights her unique contribution to the narrative of Brazilian Conceptualism and reveals her wide ranging, interdisciplinary practice that merges painting, photography, film, sculpture, installation, collaborative actions and participatory events. Three installations in the exhibition involve direct visitor participation. The first, I Wish Your Wish , 2003, is based on a tradition at a church in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, where the faithful tie silk ribbons to their wrists and to the gates of the church; and, according to tradition, their wishes are granted when the ribbons wear away and fall off. At IMMA hundreds of similar ribbons are printed with visitors’ wishes from Neuenschwander’s past projects exhibited elsewhere. Visitors are invited to remove a ribbon from the wall and tie it around their wrist. Acc...

Located In the north east inner city Dublin, Fire Station Artists’ Studios was established in 1993 to support professional visual artists. Fire Station provides subsidised residential live/work spaces for visual artists. The studios are let for up to two years and nine months and for shorter periods for international artists. A long term residency at Fire Station allows an artist to focus on their practice and general career development in a supportive and well-resourced environment. Fire Station provides large scale sculpture workshop facilities and training opportunities for artists through its Skills Programme. This programme has expanded to include digital and film training and continues to host technical training and master classes which incorporate critical reflection. A key policy of Fire Station is to contribute to the debate on collaborative and socially engaged arts practice. This is achieved through working with both local and international ar...

Located in Dublin city center, Broadstone Studios is an independent visual artists’ studio workspace that was founded in 1997 by visual artist Jacinta Lynch. The core philosophy of the studio is one of autonomy that supports professional development for contemporary visual artists through the provision of affordable studio workspace within a safe, secure, accessible and creative environment. Support facilities include a black & white darkroom, digital video editing facilities and a large ground floor project and exhibition space. The large open project space enables the studios to provide public access for a predominantly private artists workspace through a series of practice led initiatives, partnerships and collaborations. Broadstone Studios works in partnership with many artists’ studio organisations, both nationally and internationally to research new models for studio providers, to lobby and advocate on behalf of visual arts workspace’s and to create networ...

This exhibition is devoted to images of China by Scottish photographer John Thomson (1837-1921). Born in Edinburgh Thomson first travelled to Asia in 1862, where he set up a professional photographic studio.  Fascinated by local cultures, Thomson returned in 1868, settling in Hong Kong.  Over the next four years he made extensive trips to Guangdong, Fujian, Beijing, China’s north-east and down the Yangtze.  This exhibition is drawn from his time in these regions. In the early days of photography, when negatives were made on glass plates, a cumbersome mass of equipment was required but Thomson was nevertheless able to capture a wide variety of images.  His works present the human aspects of life in China through the extensive record of everyday-street scenes, rarely captured by other photographers of that era. After returning to Britain, Thomson took an active role informing the public about China, through illustrated lectures and publications. ...

Block T is an organisation that has been operating from a formerly disused tile warehouse located in Smithfield Square, Dublin since July 2010. Block T  provides a platform for visual and performing arts, as well as fostering philosophical, social and technological innovation, locally and internationally through education and exchange. Producing an interdisciplinary and varied programme, Block T hopes to establish engagement that encompasses a diverse and wide ranging audience Block T's wider mission is to provide a platform for creative thinking from all avenues. It strives to help independent, self-sufficient and productive individuals to bridge the gay between theory and practice in their art or discipline and to give them exposure to a wider audience. Block T is a 8000 square foot space which encompasses 11 resident artist studios, a gallery space, a workshop room, a performance room, a communal room and a photography darkroom. View Larger Map

The term Unknown Knowns which constitutes the title of this exhibition, is the description used by the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek when he refers to the “unconscious beliefs and prejudices that determine how we perceive reality and intervene in it.” Things we know, but don’t know we know, dictate how we address situations we encounter. Obviously it is impossible to know what the unknown known is because if we did it would become the known known, but the work in this exhibition addresses the theme of unconscious knowledge. The three artists have explored and represented specific elements of this through their work. Shown through a diverse range of works, from the manipulation of materials that we know on some level are familiar to us, to the investigation into the possibility of another self and how this can determine our lives, to the idea of the second life and the attempt to survive for eternity, all three artists’ work delve into certain aspects ...

Black Church Print Studio is an artistic collective and one of the leading contemporary fine art print studios in Ireland. It was established in 1982 as a non-profit organisation and is grant-aided by the Arts Council, Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and Dublin City Council. The Studio provides fully equipped facilities for all types of fine art printmaking from traditional to innovative techniques, offering facilities in etching, photo-intagilo, screen-printing, lithography, relief and giclee printing. Its main focus is to enable Studio Members to create high quality limited editions and to expand the boundaries of printmaking by embracing new, innovative processes. It has 70 full-time artist members with 24 hour access. Black Church Print Studio is a friendly and supportive environment with full-time technical and administrative staff and part-time digital support. The Studio has an exhibition, artist in residence and peer critique programme to support the  ...

Signal is proud to present the exhibition of paintings and drawings by artist Brigid O’Brien.  Brigid has exhibited widely in group shows in Dublin, Wicklow and London.  She has worked with other artists and people with disabilities, designing gardens and painting murals in places of long –term care.  As an artist, drawings are her specialty, she has a unique quirky view of life which she portrays in her work.  Allotments were a feature of the earlier part of the last century. I recall observing the patterns left by them on railway banks around Dublin in the nineteen sixties. Quaint, they looked, old fashioned and definitely part of our past.  Fifty years later, in tall glass buildings, decisions are made that affect all of us. A sense of anxiety is now seemingly part of what we are.  Outside of the economics, the protests and resignations, a new movement has started. It is an underground revolution. It is happening in your...

Peter Burns creates paintings and sculptures in a variety of materials and has a very tactile approach to his work. Based on his research into literature, art history, myth and allegory, Peter’s paintings are often playful re-workings of romantic themes with allusions to faraway places. The sculptures are often very fragile, an important feature which lends the sculptures a warmth and pathos. Since graduating with a Masters in Fine Art from NCAD (2009), Peter has been involved in numerous solo and group exhibitions, the most recent being a solo exhibition in the Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast and as part of a group show at this years Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition in Dublin.  Anne Hendrick’s paintings deal with the nature of reality and the truth within the seen image by simulating architectural, psychological and social spaces or situations within a landscape. The work questions ideas surrounding representation and the idea of an embellished truth. Dua...

Meath County Council Arts Office in Association with Solstice Arts Centre are delighted to announce Sarah Standing, as the 2011 winner of the’ Going Solo Award’. This award is intended to support recent graduates of art living in, or from Co. Meath, and to assist young and emerging artists in the development of their professional careers. From Navan, Sarah has taken part in a number of group shows in Dublin and Cork. ‘Going Solo’ will be her first major solo exhibition. Of her art practice and forthcoming exhibition she says; ‘This body of work analyses and explores the architecture and concept of the house and home. It manifests from language, theory and signage attained to its form. The intention being to present the relationship we build with and within the architecture of the house. My practice exists of small to medium scale, painted installations. It combines elements of both sculpture and painting’. It promises to be an exciting exhibition which w...

Where would you find TV3 Ireland am presenter Sinead Desmond, footballer Robbie Keane, novelist Roddy Doyle, cook Rachel Allen, UTV and Sky TV presenter Eamonn Holmes, and musician Andrea Corr in one room? Signs of Life is organised by the Irish Deaf Society (IDS) and is the first ever Irish Sign Language (ISL) celebrity photography exhibition. These photos, snapped by deaf photographer Johnny Corcoran, provide a glimpse of the beauty of ISL through the eyes of 26 celebrities, each signing the letter of the ISL alphabet. The aim of the exhibition is to encourage public awareness and appreciation of one of only two unique lrish languages. ISL is the native language of the Irish Deaf Community and is used everyday by more than 40,000 people. <br>d View Larger Map

Saturday 19th November 2011 Engage Art Studios & Artspace Studios, 12:00 -5:00pm Curators Talk by WHW 6:00pm, Nuns Island Theatre. Open Studio Day Galway is an opportunity to learn more about Galway’s contemporary artists, by meeting them in their studios to discuss their work and practice between 12:00 – 5:00pm. Open Studio Day Galway includes a Curators talk by WHW, (What, How and for Whom ) a curatorial collective formed in 1999 and based in Zagreb, Croatia.  WHW are the curators of the Croatian participation at the 54th Venice Biennale 2011, and the 11th Istanbul Biennial in 2009 and have directed the program of Gallery Nova, a non-profit, city owned gallery in Zagreb since 2003. Engage Art Studios , Cathedral Building , Middle Street. Engage Art Studios is an artist-run studio space in Galway city centre. Founded in 2004, Engage supports ambitious, young, professional-minded and emerging artists in a professional environment. The studios provide...

Dublin based artist Martina O'Brien will present her exhibition Expanse 2 in The Cascade Gallery, Waterside Theatre and Arts Centre from Friday 21st October to the end of November 2011. This exhibition is a follow up from her recent shows in The Watergate Theatre, Kilkenny in conjunction with the Kilkenny Arts Office August/ September 2011 and The Sol Art Gallery, Dublin, early October 2011. This body of work is about the internal and external landscape/seascape and the relationship between both. The work is itself a unique hybrid of painting and emotion. It is made up of layers of paint and mixed media and there is a contradiction between the actual and the inner which is emphasized by the three-dimensions that this layering produces. The internal landscape - beneath the skin and within the psyche, is the artist's inspiration. Light from the outside world refracts through a mosaic of experiences, paints fractals of light and colour, patterns within. Darkness, it...

Georgia Hopkins was born in the U.S., in Savannah, GA., and during her childhood was moved to Ireland, living in Co.Kerry and Co.Louth. After studying in Belfast, Georgia moved to Cork, where she has found her spiritual home, and has lived for nearly 20 years. Georgia is a self-taught artist, and has been exhibiting her work publicly since 1998. She has completed five residencies at the Cill Rialaig Artists Centre, and her work is strongly focused on the power of the natural world. Georgia’s work has been exhibited in Ireland and abroad, and is represented in private collections nationally and internationally. ‘My paintings are all essentially atmospheric, meditative pieces. They tend towards seascapes, landscapes or abstracts, they are small in scale, and are all painted in water-based media, primarily gouache and watercolour. Mood, light, water and nature are the recurring themes and inspiration points in all of my work, the choice of water-based medium allowing the ...

Mike Disfarmer Gallery 1    Mike Disfarmer, born Michael Meyer in 1884, changed his name to distance himself from the community in which he grew up, even going so far as to claim that he’d been blown into the family home by a tornado. For over forty years he was the local photographer in Heber Springs, Arkansas, making inexpensive studio photos to satisfy the needs and whims of his rural neighbours; in doing so he developed a distinctive style and well-honed sensibility which made him one of the masters of American portrait photography. At first, many of Mike Disfarmer’s photographs seem familiar; they bring to mind well-known images of southern American communities in the Depression years. A closer look reveals their singularity: these are portraits of people who are happy to have their pictures taken and are content to pay for them. They are people who are keen to impress and look their best, because the photos were made to be shared with famil...

The Copper House Gallery will launch Settlement , a multi-disciplinary exhibition by Anthony Haughey on Wednesday 26th October 2011 from 6pm-8pm. Writer, journalist and political commentator, Fintan O’Toole, will open the exhibition. Settlement , a photographic installation by Anthony Haughey, charts the fallout from the collapse of Ireland’s ‘property bubble’, a result of the overheated Celtic Tiger economy. For this exhibition Anthony Haughey has created an installation in Fire’s new Copper House Gallery, which reflects the financial, ecological and domestic impact of Ireland’s economic collapse. His installation will incorporate a collaboration with some of Irelands architects - in collaboration with DIT Department of Architecture and Urban Design, NAMAlab, UCD School of Architecture and Mahoney Architects. As part of the   Settlement exhibition, The Copper House Gallery will host a public discussion on Tuesday 1st November 2011 ...