Context Gallery

check our website www.contextgallery.co.uk

2009-07-17T12:45:00.004+01:00

check our website www.contextgallery.co.uk

2009-06-24T13:54:00.005+01:00

WE KNOW MORE THAN WE CAN TELL

2009-04-30T13:50:00.009+01:00

The newly renovated Context Gallery will be opened by Nóirín  McKinney, Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Wednesday, May 6th 2009, at 6:45pm

The reception for We Know More Than We can Tell… follows at 7:30pm

We Know More Than We Can Tell

Haraldur Jónsson
Jesper Just
Susan MacWilliam

Curated by Theo Sims

May 6th – 20th June, 2009
Opening Reception: Wednesday 6th May, 7.30pm

Refreshments provided by Corona

Haraldur Jónsson
Crumpled Darkness
2005-09, paper, dimensions variable
photo friðrik örn hjaltested © Haraldur Jonsson

Jesper Just

A Vicious Undertow
2007, 10:00 min
Black and white
Super 16mm
Courtesy Galleri Christina Wilson <http://www.jesperjust.com/www.christinawilson.net> , Copenhagen

Susan MacWilliam
Explaining Magic to Mercer
2005, Video, Colour, Stereo

10mins40secs
© Susan MacWilliam

www.this.is/comet
www.jesperjust.com
www.susanmacwilliam.com

The exhibition examines the different ways that the exploration of emotion and language can be articulated, sometimes without words. Visual art has an extraordinary capacity to extend its reach beyond words, and the work of these artists’ explores this rich and intangible territory. The traditional rules of language and narrative are subverted in the video work of Jesper Just, and a poetic response to language itself constructed within the sculptural/audio work of Haraldur Jonsson. Aspects of the imperceptible are negotiated between generations, in the video installation presented by Susan MacWilliam.

Haraldur Jónsson presents an audio work of a recording of a young Icelandic boy, reading out the names of fifty emotions in English, (a language unfamiliar to the boy). He slowly and delicately stumbles through the letters making up written words such as exuberant, passionate, defeated, cheated and jubilant. Jónsson will also present a sculpture/installation piece called Crumpled Darkness that delicately articulates the complexities of the experience of darkness, something profoundly resonant in Iceland.

Jesper Just’s short film, A Vicious Undertow masterly uses lush scenery, glossy production, and entrancing audio in order to reveal a complex and nuanced narrative. Just refuses to allow any articulation of a traditional story line, in spite of the films narrative, drawn out with a beautiful score of whistling and stares that offer up no end or resolution. A Vicious Undertow is scored and arranged with versions of Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues, Rebel Waltz by the Clash and Gift of Redby Dorit Chrysler.

Susan MacWilliam presents Explaining Magic To Mercer; a short video that captures the openness of a young mind to accept and discuss intangible concepts such as telepathy, parapsychology and magic. The video features MacWilliam discussing with her five year old nephew Mercer, the bizarre and extraordinary phenomena attributed to the historical figures that have featured in her other works such as Kuda Bux, Madame Duplessis and Rosa Kuleshova. Susan MacWilliam will represent Northern Ireland in the Venice Biennale, 2009.

WE THE PEOPLE

2009-04-13T14:28:00.012+01:00

The Board of Directors of the Context Gallery welcome you to the newly renovated gallery for the launch of the exhibition:

SHARON HAYES

curated by Gregory McCartney

opening Friday 17th April @ 7:30pm

17th April - 1st May 2009

Context Gallery is proud to host the work of Sharon Hayes as the fourth show in the series We The People... curated by Gregory McCartney. The exhibition consists of an audio installation, based on recordings from a multi-part performance performed in New York.

I March In The Parade Of Liberty But As Long A I Love You I'm Not Free, was a eight-part performance that took palce between December 2007 and January 2008, where Hayes walked from the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York to sites of public speech such as Union Square, Tompkins Square, Confucius Square in Chinatown, and Christoper Street Park.

"In this work, I stood on the street with a bullhorn in New York City and spoke a love letter to an anonymous 'you'. I look like I'm doing 'public speech' but I'm speaking to a lover who I've been separated from some reason that the texts don't quite explain. While I'm talking about love and desire, I am also bringing the war and the way in which the war interrupts and doesn't interrupt our daily lives, our activities, our desire, our love. For me, this work attempts to speak about certain intersections between love and politics that aren't so often talked about." (Hayes)

Continuing the artist's interrogation of the infinitesimal distance that separates the public from the private, this work is a reflection on the difference between speaking and listening - a kind of confession combining the idiom of politics, the transmission of secrets, and the language of love.

The subsequent audio installation is comprised of a PA system, speaker, and a single framed spray-painted work on paper.

Sharon Hayes is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin

www.tanyaleighton.com

www.shaze.info

2009-03-26T15:04:00.007Z

We have now moved back to our renovated space in Artillery Street.

You are all welcome to join us for our next show:

WE THE PEOPLE

SHARON HAYES

Opening Friday 17th April @ 7:30 pm

17th April - 1st May 2009

2009-03-19T15:44:00.001Z

WE THE PEOPLE

2009-02-21T13:27:00.010Z

Carolyn Monastra

Xaviera Simmons

Jose Ruiz

Curated by Gregory McCartney

Opening Saturday 7th March @ 7:30 pm

7th March – 25th March 2009

Whatever one thinks of it, it is an undoubted fact that the USA is at the forefront of modern existence, be it political, social or cultural.

Context Gallery in the third show in the series, ‘We the People’ brings to Derry an exploration of emerging American artists’ relationship with their country. Each of the artists will bring a different viewpoint and a different voice. It is important that we gain a sense of the many artistic viewpoints emanating from many differing cultures that make-up modern America as the issues explored in the work will inevitably have an effect locally. We tend to only hear a monolithic pro-or-anti position in regard to the contemporary USA. This project allows for a more considered approach. Context Gallery presenting its last show in St. Columb’s Hall, will use this platform to establish relationships between emerging art in the USA and emerging art in Ireland. The show is curated by Gregory McCartney in association with Context Gallery.

Carolyn Monastra

A graduate of Yale University’s School of Art, Carolyn Monastra’s interest in photography began as a high school student in Cleveland, Ohio. She continued her studies in the medium at Fordham University in New York City. After being a social worker for several years she enrolled in the MFA program at Yale University’s School of Art. Carolyn has exhibited in many venues in the United States and in the winter of 2009 she will be in her first international exhibit at Context Gallery in Derry, Ireland. Her awards include a travel grant from the English Speaking Union, a grant from the city of New Haven, and a multi-media fellowship from The Rotunda Gallery and Brooklyn Cable Access TV. Recent residencies at renowned art colonies, including The Djerassi Foundation, The Millay Colony, and Blue Mountain Center, have provided her with inspirational environments in which to pursue her work in the landscape. Her photographs are in The Margulies Warehouse Collection in Miami, The Johnson & Johnson Corporate Art Collection, and numerous private collections in the US and abroad. Carolyn currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

carolynmonastra.com

Xaviera Simmons

Xaviera Simmons produces photographs, installation, videos and performances that expand on notions surrounding landscape, aesthetics, participation and history. Simmons received a BFA in photography from Bard College in 2004 after two years of pilgrimage retracing the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade. In 2005 she participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program while simultaneously completing a 2 year actor training program with the Maggie Flanigan Studio. In 2008, Xaviera was awarded a Jerome Foundation travel/study grant, an In The Public Realm commission from The Public Art Fund and was the recipient of the prestigious David C. Driskell Prize awarded by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Xaviera is the 2009 recipient of an Art matters fellowship and will participate in exhibitions at Context Gallery (Derry), jack Shainman Gallery (New York) and the Nasher Museum at Duke University (North Carolina) among numerous other exhibitions this year.

www.xavierasimmons.com (coming soon)

xavierasimmons@gmail

Jose Ruiz

José Ruiz is a Peruvian-born, New York City-based artist and curator who received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute’s New Genres Program. Ruiz has shown his concept-based installations, videos, images and objects nationally and internationally while maintaining his socio-political interests and preference for showing them in non-profit and alternative exhibition spaces. His interdisciplinary and collaborative interests allow him to currently operate as the Gallery Director & Curator at the Bronx River Art Center, a curatorial consultant for the Queens Museum of Art, and in the following artist collectives: Decatur Blue (Washington, DC), Band Wagon (New York, NY), and The Global Collective (UK, France, Netherlands, USA). His artwork is represented by G Fine Art (Washington, DC) and Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco, CA). Ruiz has recently participated in the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning’s Workspace Program and Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art’s Emerge 10 Artist Fellowship Program.

info@joseruizart.com

2009-02-12T13:44:00.001Z

Beyond - Mairead Dunne and Mary O’Kane

2009-01-02T12:10:00.008Z

Mairead Dunne: birds in flight

Mary O'Kane: Beyond

16 january - 14 februrary 2009

Opening Reception: 7:30pm, friday 16 january

Artist's talk: 2pm, thursday 15 january

curated by James Kerr

In the final exhibition of the Derry?London?London? Derry? series, James Kerr curates Mairead Dunne and Mary O'Kane, two Belfast based emerging artists. Both artists explore the human psyche through an investigation of the physically of the London Street environs in terms of the geographical, historical, political and religious and social.

Dunne's work explores the relationship between past, present, life and mortality on London Street. Through a series of disused abandoned TV sets she creates self-contained worlds containing subject matter which hangs between reality and illusion.

These sculpturally defined environments are inhabited by scenes of the imaginary in an attempt to recapture the spirit of the street.

Similarly O'Kane creates a series of surreal environments as representation of the unconscious memories the physical place evokes. Her intention is to reinvent the forgotten or what lies beyond or beneath the physical surface. These interpretations address the concept of history and the complex layers and illusion associated with recorded and spoken history.

There is a sense of oddness, sadness and unease that permeates both artists' work. In Dunne's abandoned TV sets lies a melancholy where the sense of isolation mirrors the emptiness of London street. The work is also embedded in nostalgia where the old television sets and imagery evoke memories of a forgotten era whilst recalling both the media frenzy that the period of the Troubles evoked and the sense of community and escapism that the television evoked.

O'Kane's environments also recall the past in a manner that explores the concept of the uncanny, that feeling of the unfamiliar in the ordinary and the frightening in the familiar as she creates narratives that delve below the surface of London Street and encourages the viewer to look within themselves as they engage with the work. Both artists have recently graduated from University of Ulster.

James Kerr is Director of the Verbal Art Centre and a former Director of the Context Gallery.

The opening reception is sponsored by LoveOlive

Seán Lynch

2008-11-21T13:01:00.011Z

5 December 2008 – 2 January, 2009
opening reception: 7.30pm, Friday, 5th December
artist talk: 2pm, Thursday, 4th December

Curated by Gregory McCartney

Seán Lynch’s diverse artworks investigate and shine a spotlight on a wide range of subjects, magnifying traces of an often-idiosyncratic existence. Throughout Europe the culture of progress predominates rather than a culture of survival. Lynch is specifically interested in the friction between these two processes, often referring to Walter Benjamin’s subtle notion of ‘revolutionary nostalgia,’ an approach that considers the resonance of history and site in critical relation to contemporary discourse. In his first solo exhibition in Northern Ireland, the Context Gallery presents a survey of artworks realised by Lynch in the last three years.

The videowork Latoon, recalls folklorist Eddie Lenihan’s 1999 campaign to save a whitethorn bush from being destroyed by the construction of a €90 million road scheme in County Clare. In 1999, he claimed that this bush is an important meeting place for supernatural forces of the region, and warned that its destruction would result in death and great misfortune for motorists travelling on the proposed new road. Clare County Council, acting on his advice, eventually changed the direction of the road away from the bush. In 2006, Lenihan agrees to further explain the significance of the bush. As Lynch’s camera crew arrive at Latoon, they encounter the construction of another road nearby, and the bush once more seems to be in danger…

Another video work, records the introduction of peregrine falcons, the fastest creature in the world, into the Moyross housing estate in Limerick City. These birds, once populous around Ireland before the use of pesticides in the 1960s made them an endangered species, now fly over the rooftops of a housing estate about to disappear, with a regeneration plan being now announced. With miniature video cameras attached to their bodies, their free flights record a place about to disappear under the failed agendas of urban planning.

Continuing an interest in hidden narratives of site, Lynch traces the location of the last street Walter Benjamin walked on, in Portbou, Spain. Completing the show, a series of photographs detail Dana’s triumphant homecoming to Dublin Airport in 1970, after winning the Eurovision Song Contest. An editioned poster, availible to all visitors to the exhibition, recalls her touchdown and subsequent trip to Derry in detail. Incidentially, Dana sang an Irish lullaby in Saint Columb’s Hall, now the location of the Context Gallery, when she was six years old. She won a talent competition with her recital.

Seán Lynch was born in Kerry in 1978. He studied history at the University of Limerick and fine art at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt. He has completed solo exhibitions at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin (2008), Heaven’s Full, London (2008), Galway Arts Centre (2007), Limerick City Gallery of Art (2007), and Ritter and Staiff, Frankfurt (2006). He has featured in recent group exhibitions at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork and Office Baroque, Antwerp.

London Street: A Visual Exploration

2008-10-01T16:33:00.007+01:00

10th October – 21st November
Opening Reception: 7.30, Friday 10th October

Curator: Sarah Edge, Head of School Media, Film and Journalism, University of Ulster

Three Collaborative Projects:
Anne Burke and Gail Baylis: Photography
Anne Crilly and Vincent O'Callaghan: Video
Sarah Edge, Rowan Morrey and Shelly Garrett: Interactive Media

London Street is a Georgian street steeped in history and located in the centre of Derry City, shadowed by the historic city walls. This was the creative springboard for each of these new visual projects.
Together these projects offer the viewer a stimulating and thought-provoking journey through a number of virtual London Streets.
These three art projects have been created as part of a novel collaboration between academic staff, located within the School of Media, Film and Journalism at the University of Ulster and emerging artists who have a close connection to the School.
Two of these young artists are recent graduates, one is currently studying for an MA in Documentary Practice and one was based in the School’s Centre for Media Research.
This staff ‘student’ collaboration worked in different ways whereby academics help forge a productive relationship between theory and practice and the emerging artists help such ideas grow creatively, culminating in the works produced for this show.
Sarah Edge, Curator

ANNE CRILLY with VINCENT O'CALLAGHAN:
London Street: Surrender
This video installation explores Derry as the Maiden City. London St, within the city walls and in the shadow of St Columb’s Cathedral, projects an aura of respectability yet, just around the corner, behind the elegant facades of Pump Street, is a hidden history of women which can be explored. 4 Pump Street was, in a past life, a brothel serving the respectable elders of the city. Today, ‘Pathways’ at the other end of Pump Street, is the education and outreach department of Foyle Women’s Aid which offers support and education for victims of domestic violence. Anne Crilly and Vincent O’Callaghan’s audio-visual investigation of ‘London Street- Surrender’ explores issues surrounding the historical and contemporary control and surrender of women.

SARAH EDGE with ROWAN MORREY and SHELLY GARRETT: Interactive walkthrough- Path to the Portal, an Interactive Diorama
London Street is a path, a journey in itself, to one of the city’s gates. Photographs themselves are gates into our memories; to our own journeys long since passed, soon to be revisited. Sound is the ‘music’ without which a walk down the street would seem unreal and even disturbing and unnatural. This work combines these elements in Adobe/Macromedia Flash to allow the viewer to create their own paths to the portals along London Street.
The project is a myriad of still photos, compiled in Flash, mapping the path through London Street and out to Butcher’s Gate. Still images shot at intervals along the street provide the viewer with a more revealing and textured feel to the project. Shot in monochromatic as well as in colour the user can walk the street using the keyboard and enter the many “gates” or “portals” of the buildings along the journey, peeling back the historic skin to find the blood of modern life and commercialism alive and well in this historic setting. This is combined with audio that captures the modernity of the atmosphere belying the historic nature of the buildings which in turn, mask the businesses and companies that operate from within.

GAIL BAYLIS with ANNE BURKE: Photographic installation, History begins at ground level, with footsteps
How can we understand the materiality of London Street, a street still encountered primarily by the experience of the pedestrian? Michel De Certeau's theorization of the city gaze affords one inroad into engaging with the particularities and characteristics of this street. This work speaks not only of the street's material identity but also its past. Street directories afford a means to access this history at ground level - they reference the city through the trades and professions to be found in its streets. However, the written record alone, while offering a means into the experience of London Street, cannot articulate the visual register of the experience of walking that street. For this we need to pay attention to the coordinates of the street gaze.
This installation does not aim to define but, rather, it registers the inherent transience in the street gaze. That gaze is resistant to definition and to capture by the camera. It is fleeting, mobile, diffused; has passed in the moment of its recording. It is a subversive practice - oppositional to the aerial gaze wherein distance serves to render movement as containable and static and in which the camera operates as a means for surveillance.

Context Gallery hires new Director

2008-09-18T11:58:00.004+01:00

Press Release:

The Context Gallery, Derry

The Context Gallery is pleased to announce the appointment of the new Director, Theo Sims. Sims has organised numerous national and international exhibitions and projects and brings a wealth of experience to the Context.

Theo Sims has moved back to Northern Ireland from Canada where he was the Programming Coordinator at a contemporary artist-run centre called aceartinc. located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Sims's achievements are particularly evident with his support and promotion of emerging artists such as Melanie Authier, Adad Hannah, Frieso Boning and this years Sobey Award nominee Daniel Barrow. Sims has worked with international artists such as Donigan Cumming, Rebecca Belmore and Steingrimur Eyfjord and has most recently founded and co-organised (In)Visible Cities, a festival of performance and off-site installations featuring artists such as Nhan Duc Nguyen, FASTWURMS, Cheryl L'Hirondelle and Finger In The Dyke Productions.

Prior to working at aceartinc., Sims was the Managing Editor for BlackFlash Magazine, a contemporary arts magazine focussing of photography and lens based art and he has also enjoyed success as an independent artist; his work being featured in the exhibition, Crack the Sky, curated by Wayne Baerwaldt, for La Biennale de Montréal 2007. He has also had several solo shows across Canada with forthcoming exhibitions in Vancouver and Ontario.

Theo Sims is an alumnus of the University of Ulster, (receiving his MA in 1994), and previous member of Orchid Studio's in Belfast from 1991-1998. He is looking forward to steering the gallery ahead in its fifteenth year of operation and launching the newly renovated space in the spring of 2009.

The Context Gallery was established in 1993 specifically to support and encourage emerging fine and applied Irish artists, and to develop links between emerging Irish artists and emerging artists in other countries. It the only gallery in the North-West of Ireland dedicated to providing a platform for emerging artists.

2008-07-09T16:16:00.013+01:00

Anna Boyle

curated by Damien Duffy

Opening Saturday 19th July 2008 @ 8 pm

Exhibition runs until 26th September 2008

The project Derry London grew out of a discussion regarding a painting made in 1988, A grey stained raw canvas affair with the text Derry – London, painted in capitals at either side of the canvas, like an exploded cartography that mapped a nonsite, of neither Irish or English.

The choice to leave the homeland and to opt for a sense of exiled exclusion within London. An `ideality` of not belonging as an option in a landscape of entrenched identities. The use of London St. as a locus for this series of exhibitions could be mirrored in Derry St. in west London, the link built into the streets of both places. The post agreement landscape now serves to protect both identities via the relinquishment of the politics of antagonism towards the politics of inclusion and difference. The eventual recognition of difference within citizenship marks a move to a normalized society, that works on various social contracts that allow us as subjects to form our worlds, be they collective or individualistic.

It is this landscape of the social contract and the psychological spaces these allow us to create that Anna Boyle works with in Derry London. Text derived from the contacts offered tend towards a guarantee of met needs or the need for recipients of services offered. `We will` is a floral tribute made of thousands of hand crafted paper flowers points to a positive wilful `yes` whose real direction is left open, funereal in its delivery the statements positivity is underwritten in the manner of a memorial.
This language of flowers is an immediate reference to the so many floral tributes that adorn the main public space in London St., namely the Cathedral. The collective identity is at once attributable to the specificity of religious identity rather than the secular contracts offered in the other works.

I had originally started with the text “individual conduct” our conduct, the idea of how we take part in civil society which brought me on to contracts of kinds I mentioned before and I started to think of Londonderry or Derry London as a kind of contract of identities and I guess trying to negotiate these identities within the workings of social contracts and also exploring the idea of a “communal shelter” with these statements, what we rely on as groups of people, our identities, traditions, religious, cultural etc, and the more modern plastic offers from commercial industry. There’s an element of memorial about the work large affirmations, but also they are a form of protest rejecting clienthood, dependency, and coded relationships, searching for human space.` The inclusivity that now so underwrites the new political cartography of NI is that which permeates the larger social landscape as subjects within global capitalism, “we need you, for our need” marks out the requirement of both producers and consumers alike, as both are now intrinsically one as subjects now enter the shop floor of world making, cooperation now leads us towards the production of common goods which in turn can produce new and unique lines of flight for the subject and the socious, allowing for the continual recreation of our world as product of our imaginings.

Damien Duffy, 2008

Anna Boyle, currently living and working in Dublin, studied at N.C.A.D Dublin 1997-2001 BA Art and Design Education, and a MFA in 2001-2003 at University of Ulster, Belfast.

Solo Exhibitions:
2007 - WE’RE GOING TO DIE, Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast,
“Its not clear at this stage..” Draiocht Arts Centre, Dublin
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2006 - Biennial of Drawing, Bohemia Museum, Pilsen, Czech Republic,
2005 OFFSIDE, Hugh Lane, Dublin City Gallery, Dublin.
“Final Phase Launching”, (Two person Show) Pallas Heights, Dublin.
Claremorris Open, Claremorris Co Mayo.
Iontas, Sligo Art Gallery, Sligo
Working towards solo exhibitions:
2009 - Triskel Arts Centre, Cork, 2010 Roscommon Arts Centre Co Roscommon

2008-06-27T12:14:00.003+01:00

"Past to Present"

HND Fine Art Student Exhibition NWRC

Commissioned Artwork Project for the Context Gallery and the North West Visual Archive

The student work in this exhibition has made in response to the work a group of selected artists who have exhibited in the North West in the last three decades. These artists include Victor Sloan, Alaistar McLennan, Dermot Seymour, Alice Maher and others who have all exhibited at either the Context Gallery or The Orchard Gallery. The students were asked to closely consider both the concepts and processes used by these artists and to freely interpret thereafter. This has resulted in a wide range of exciting and individual works that have been realised by a wide variety of means, including photography, sculpture, painting, installation and in one case, taxidermy.

The students would like to thanks the staff of the Context Gallery and the North West Visual Archive for their support.

Annette O’Toole
Christine Gilloway
Danielle Gallagher
John Mc Eldowney
Cahal Argue

2008-05-13T15:44:00.002+01:00

Maria McKinney

curated by Jonathan Burgess

Opening Friday 16th May @ 8 pm

Exhibition runs until 14th June 2008

Still acknowledged - whether consciously or not - London Street still provides one of the many invisible boundaries segregating a city from an element of it's population. Running parallel with the4 main thoroughfare through Londonderry, London street is a world away from the hustle and bustle of a modern 21st Century city centre. A narrow street from pump Street to New gate with the high church buildings which bank and bolster a heritage and history which is seldom acknowledged, creating an echo chamber for tightly strung snares, which snap the history awake for a few brief moments each year. Still a place of incendiary where a thin gloss of modern does nothing to disturb the roots of the old. God bless london Street. Jonathan Burgess

The place London St. alludes to the idea of a centre and a periphery while also marking the extension of an empire. A namesake will extend a lineage and prolong its longevity as a people, place or establishment. The nucleus is where power resides. It has an aspirational position in relation to its outer regions. For this exhibition McKinney will produce a series of drawings and sculptures. her work explores subjects of boredom and activities used to pass the time, echoing the nature of their objective.

Since graduating from the University of Ulster in 2005, Maria McKinney has exhibited at both a national and international level including the National gallery of Ireland, the RHA and RDS Dublin; Golden Thread Gallery and Old Museum Arts Centre, Belfast; Crawford Municipal Art Gallery, Cork and Sligo Gallery of Art. She also exhibited in Resolutions at the Katzen Arts Centre in association with the Smithsonian Institute, washington and the 411 gallery in Shanghai, China. Her work is included in the Office of Public Works, Bank of Ireland and private collections. Her practice includes drawing, sculpture, installation and intervention. She is currently a member of Orchid Studios.

2008-04-03T17:52:00.004+01:00

Context Galleries

presents

Aideen Doran

Alyson Edgar

Fergal McSwiggan

Curated by Emma Donaldson

Derry? London? London? Derry?

Opening 8pm Saturday 5th April 2008

The Exhibition will run until 3rd May 2008

Aideen Doran

Two cities built upon a stratified clutter of histories... like Leonias rubbish, the boundaries between these places uncertain, shifting, threatening an avalanche. An unstable line, drawn from the centre (London) to the periphery (Derry)- a fragmenting sense of place- London Street, on the margin of the walled city. Drawing/ erasing/ over-writing/ re-drawing/ recovering/ constructing...The linear time of labour involved in these processes condenses into seconds of film, looping and folding back upon its volume. Entropy parallels renewal. Macro/micro histories, local/national scales conflated. Provisional monuments, provided for uncertain places.Representing the space - constructing a removal from itThe hand-made, hand drawn suggest vernacular means of managing the politics of space, translating these histories into the everyday life, the invisible into the visible.Ordering/ mapping/ describing/ navigating...These complex relationships become a web of information, collapsing under its own gravity.

Aideen Doran graduated from the University of Ulster, Belfast in 2007. Previous shows include RDS Student Art Awards, Dublin (2006), Heal, Naughton Gallery, Belfast (2007) and EV+A 2008; Too Early for Vacation, Limerick. She currently lives in Belfast, working at Flax Art Studios as part of their Graduating Student Residency programme.

Alyson Edgar

I am an artist working on an exhibition for the Context Gallery entitled “Derry/ London – London/ Derry?”, which will be shown in the Orchard Gallery space at the beginning on April.
I am interested in discovering alternative ways by which to map a landscape. In this forthcoming exhibition I intend to study the map/ route patterns that surround London Street, patterns made by those who use the street most.
I would greatly appreciate your participation. All the information gathered from collaborations will become the installed art in the gallery.
Initially I would appreciate it if you could write only your home postcode on the back of this card. This would be the postcode from which you commute to London Street. Please retain both this card and its envelope as they will be displayed in the gallery as part of the work.
Kind regards and many thanks in advance!
Hope to speak to you soon,
Alyson Edgar.
edgar.a@hotmail.co.uk
07980553343

Born in Belfast, N. Ireland Alyson Edgar creates work that focuses on the visualisation and cartographic documentation of journeys.
Unfamiliar landscapes are logged and archived in an interactive and collaborative manner, utilising elements of serendipity and voyeurism.
Her work is presented in a structured pseudo-scientific format cataloguing the events of each investigation.

Bio details:
Born in Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1985. Graduated with BA Hons in Fine and Applied Art: Installation/ Sculpture, from University of Ulster: Belfast, 2007.
Selected exhibitions : “Claremorris Open Exhibition”, Co. Mayo 2007. “Energy in Art” Phoenix Gas Headquarters, Belfast 2004.
Publications : Degree Shows: Critics Choices - CIRCA, Issue 121; Claremorris Open Exhibition Catalogue 2007; Perspective 2004 – ‘Arts Review’.

Fergal McSwiggan

Ulster Wayward

Why go outside? What is there to do? Public spaces in Northern Ireland. Rural, urban and suburban. How they are occupied, how they are abandoned, how they are desirable and undesirable. Public interaction with self and environment. London St in Derry/Londonderry, Gerry/Londongerry. What do we do now with our open spaces, on a Saturday night in Belfast or Derry, or on a Wednesday afternoon in Omagh or Strabane? Open public spaces were used for many different activities during the troubles, what are they used for now? A walk through the Lagan Meadows, or a walk along the Derry walls. A drive through the South Sperrins scenic route, or through the North-West Passage. Camping out in Belvoir Park, or camping on London street. Walking the Ulster Wayward.

Fergal McSwiggan lives in Belfast and works and recreates here and all over Ireland. Originally from Omagh, County Tyrone, his work is concerned with issues of communication, place and identity, tourism and recreation, as well as rural and urban public space in post-conflict Northern Ireland. He is interested in the misrepresented visual culture of Northern Ireland, and how it was in the past, often seen as urban and violent, when it is predominantly pastoral and peaceful.

2008-02-21T12:26:00.004Z

Context 'We the People...' Outreach Show

16th Feb 08 - 22nd Mar 08

Swift Sequential Intimacies

07th Mar 08 @ 8pm

- 15th March 08

Cliona Harmey; Allan Hughes; Paul Murnaghan; Slavek Kwi

Opening 8pm Friday 7th March Main Theatre, St Columb’s Hall

Exhibition runs until 15th March 2008

Opening Hours 11 am - 5pm

Context Galleries presents ‘Swift Sequential Intimacies’ a weeklong exhibition by Cliona Harmey, Allan Hughes, Paul Murnaghan and Slavek Kwi investigating the Main Theatre Space in St. Columb’s Hall using the medium of sound.

Cliona Harmey’s ‘Seating Set’ work takes the form of a series of differently sequenced recordings using the sound of the on site theatre seating. Cliona Harmey is an artist who works across a variety of media including video, photography, sound and the Internet. Much of her work is about the process of recording, particularly small mutable everyday phenomena.She is currently based in Dublin and is a lecturer at The National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She studied Sculpture, graduating in 1992 and has exhibited in curated shows in Ireland and internationally. In 1999- 2000 she completed a one year residency at Arthouse Multimedia Centre, Dublin, which introduced her to working in the area of moving image and sound. She recently completed a multidisciplinary MA in Visual Practices at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology which combines students of curating, writing and art practice. She is also one of the founding members of Blackletter.ie an online open publishing system for artists.

Allan Hughes’ ‘Auditoria’ work sets down somewhere inside a narrative of surveillance and counter-surveillance and begins to negotiate a course through our relationship to the surrounding audio environment. The work consistently makes reference to instances of looking but withholds this privilege from the spectator and instead establishes a system of auditory mise en scené by locating the listener in a series of audio settings (5.1 surround, stereo and mono). This not only locates them in the listening space but works to reproduce other spaces, repositioning their listening experience within the diegesis and the technologies that appear within. The course the work takes, aims to reflect our constantly fluctuating relationship to recording and mediated technologies and their impact on our understanding of events, people and places around us. That despite the promises to “bring us closer” they also function to produce a more precarious and detached subjectivity, maintaining a network that constantly keeps us apart.
Allan Hughes is a board member of Factotum and the Digital Arts Studios at Queen Street. His work has been presented both nationally and internationally, most recently for “Northern Bound” at Sla rosa in Quebec, a solo show at the Old Museum Arts Centre in Belfast and an exhibition in the G126 gallery in Galway. He is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Ulster entitled “Synchronisation, Authority & Duplicity: Screening The Voice”, where his research focuses on the development of our relationship to synchronised dialogue in cinema and more specifically our production and understanding of the recorded voice and it’s inclination to multiply meaning in the act of listening.

Paul Murnaghan's work Time loss recognition for heat exposure in humans (A sound work composed from the utterances of domestic pets) explores connective phenomena within the psychology of belief. Research within this area has led him to advertise his memory capacity for sale (Memorious - 2006) and to publish a contract in which an art space agreed to commission work that no one would ever see (Auto Da Fe - 2007).
Murnaghan constructs mnemonic devices which act as catalysts towards rendezvous, ritual and installation. Curation is a part of this process and projects rarely happen without other people and the generosity of exchange.With this new composition he uses the communicative powers of domestic pets to examine the telepathy of intense relationships.
Paul Murnaghan is a Dublin based artist and a graduate of the Masters in Visual Arts Practice I.A.D.T. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally and was Artistic Director / curator of 5th Gallery at Guinness Storehouse for its existence (2000-03). Recent work includes 'Synesthesia Sat' which he curated as part of Birr Arts Festival, Co.Offaly. Forthcoming exhibitions include 'A line describing nothings', in May at The Lab, Foley St, Dublin and 'Neocreedo' in August at Platform, Vaasa, Finland.

Slavek Kwi’s new submersive 4D_soundwork ‘Morpheme (Signals from the Outer Zone of Human Perception – Movement 2) on 5.1 system uses recordings of sounds that exist on the periphery of human perception, such as underwater recordings, ultrasound and electromagnetic signals. Composition combines sounds generated from ultrasounds as sonar of bats and echo-location clicks of pink dolphins and other sounds of nocturnal amazon rainforest with signal-sounds from urban environment and inside airplane. The work was created February 2008, Ivy Cottage_Ireland.
Slavek Kwi is explorer, sound-artist and composer fascinated by sound-environments for the last 27 years, creating complex audio-situations mainly from site specific recordings, resulting in digitally frozen contemplations as multi-channel cinema for ears, sound-installations and soundworks designed for CDs. Interested also in free-music research as part of social investigation and employing the space and any objects it contains as musical instrument. His works oscillates between purely sound based and multidisciplinary projects. From the early nineties Slavek has operated under the name Artificial Memory Trace. He has published 11 CD/LP-albums and contributed to numerous international compilations and projects. AMT works are performed, distributed and/or broadcasted across Europe, North America, Australia and Mexico. For details see www.artificialmemorytrace.com

Robert Boyd, Xanadu

2007-10-11T12:07:00.000+01:00

Xanadu by Robert Boyd is the first part of the We The People, a series of solo and group exhibitions showcasing the best of contemporary emerging artists from New York, curated by Gregory McCartney, presented in the Context's offsite spaces at St Columbs Hall

Culled from hundreds of hours of archival footage including that of doomsday cults, iconic political figures and global fundamentalist movements, Robert Boyd’s synchronized 4-channel video installation Xanadu tweaks, condenses, and re-frames modern events into seconds-long image bites, representing a history of apocalyptic thought as a series of MTV-style music videos within a setting reminiscent of a discotheque.

Having peaked in the late 70s at a high point of Carter-era optimism, disco was formed from an amalgam of black, Latin, and gay subcultures. Vilified at the time for its seeming promotion of male effeminacy (i.e. homosexuality), its embrace of a proactive female sexuality, and its racial non-distinction, disco, with its voracious capacity to sample and reshape excerpts from multiple musical genres, had the ability to reduce “everything to its surfaces […] so that the profound and the inane have an equal opportunity to stimulate.”* Robert Boyd’s Xanadu exploits the duality that disco provides and combines it with the organizational structure of disco’s visual reincarnation—the music video—to dramatize recent social and political events.

The choice of disco reverses the classic 70s punk vs. disco dichotomy, in which the harbingers of “no future” were clearly the self-disenfranchised punks. In Boyd’s construction, supported by extreme and often violent footage meticulously gathered over the course of several years, we see a current worldview in which mass annihilation and the Apocalypse are solidly in the hands of those empowered by their people. His choice of dance music suggests a volatile segue from the “feel good” generation of the late 70s to the current “feel bad” generation of the 00s. Taken as a whole, the Xanadu videos insinuate that humanity is not apathetic about its own demise but, on the contrary, is furtively engineering it through a form of collective self-destruction.

Introducing the theme of the Apocalypse, Boyd’s video “Heaven’s Little Helper,” 2005, begins with an excerpt from Masada, a 1981 mini-series about the Zealots, a sect of Jews who defended their right to be free from an oppressive Roman regime through an act of mass-suicide. Fast-forwarding into “family” footage of seemingly wholesome hippies and children dancing in natural settings, Boyd marks the end of sunny popular culture in the U.S. with iconic images of the Manson Family. Continuing in this vein, the video incorporates archival footage of some of the most infamous doomsday-cult gurus and their devout disciples including the Hello Kitty-flanked Shoko Asahara of Aum Shinrikyo, architect of the sarin gas attacks on Tokyo subways; the Reverend Jim Jones of the People’s Temple; Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate; and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians.

“Patriot Act,” 2004, takes a global historical sampling of iconic leaders of the Left and Right since World War II to stage a secular milieu of “followers,” insinuating that genocide can take place only through collective effort. The speed of the video accelerates as images of parades and victory celebrations rapidly devolve into images of war and genocide, leading to the video’s cataclysmic end. Edited between views of numbed and orderly masses, startling images of violence and death, both iconic and suppressed, are deployed. Caught in the blur are images of the men who have redefined the political landscape of the world from some of the most pivotal moments in history.

“Judgment Day,” 2006, chronicles the rise of fundamentalist religions around the globe, including audio and video excerpts from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell of the Christian Right in the U.S.; Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland; Islamic fundamentalists Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, and Ayatollah Khomeini; Daniella Weiss and Eliezer Waldman of Israel’s Gush Eminum; and Hindu nationalists Bal Thackeray and L.K. Advani. The video depicts their desperate, increasingly violent, and sometimes successful attempts at establishing theocracies. Further leveling the terrains of religious and political extremism, “Judgment Day” blurs the already indistinct lines between civil necessity and fanaticism, and the shattering consequences thereof. The video also contains the only original footage in the exhibition, an excerpt from the artist’s own video of the World Trade Center collapse.

The series’ culmination, “Xanadu,” 2006, is a three-channel video that begins with George W. Bush’s post-9/11 address to the nation, in which he declares the end of the “feel good” era and the beginning of a new one. This era, the artist suggests, is Xanadu—a conglomerate of our fears, paranoia, and prejudices—an envisioned Apocalypse in the process of being actualized.

Serving as both the prologue and epilogue for Xanadu, Boyd’s “Exit Strategy,” 2005, features Rapture-ready prophets such as Charles Manson, Brenda McCann of Manson’s Family, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Shoko Asahara and Luc Jouret of the Order of the Solar Temple. Addressing topics such as death, suicide, the President, and the dire state of the world as they perceived it, the video contains audio and video excerpts from some of their final hours, including Jim Jones’ suicide sermon at Jonestown, David Koresh’s 911 call with the FBI, and Marshall Applewhite’s farewell video, among other tragic and telling moments.

By contrasting the familiar and the fringe, the popular and the notorious, Boyd’s Xanadu suggests a displacement between the euphoric idyll promised by disco and the chilling reality of collective human brutality.
( Text by Lia Gangitano )

* Tom Smucker, “Disco: a soundtrack for communal ecstasy,” The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, 3rd ed. (New York:Random House, 1992).

Exhibition previews Friday19 October @ 8pm, and runs until 24 November, in St Columbs Hall's old Orchard Gallery space and main theatre

Prehen House Artists

2007-03-24T11:21:00.001Z

contextgalleries@ prehen house

2007-03-24T11:15:00.000Z

Context Galleries @ Prehen House

Preview Saturday March 24th 2007 @ 8.30 pm at Prehen House
Simultaneous opening of four solo exhibitions:
John Beattie, Mark Clare, Breda Lynch, Katrina Maguire
Exhibitions runs until Friday 10th August 2007

Prehen House has recently developed as a site for presenting multi-disciplinary arts, with poetry, music, performance and community arts regularly programmed. This Context Galleries project will present four simultaneous site-specific linked solo shows by John Beattie, Mark Clare, Breda Lynch, and Katrina Maguire in Prehen House and grounds. The house is open Tues-Sunday 2pm-5pm March-October, and at all other times by telephone appointment. There will also be four artist’s catalogues, each launched at a monthly artist’s talk, and four evenings of screenings / performance, one programmed by each artist.
Prehen House website: http://www.geocities.com/colinpeck/prehen.html

Dates of Events:

march 24th: simultaneous opening of the four solo exhibitions
april 27th:Breda Lynch launch and talk and programmed event
may 26th: Mark Clare launch and talk and programmed event
june 30th:John Beattie launch and talk and programmed event
aug: 10th:Katrina Maguire launch and talk and programmed event

There have been two special additions to Context Galleries @ Prehen House:

The first is a satellite project which will present a broader selection of artist's work at the old Orchard Gallery site on Orchard Street, Derry. Dates/artists are:

july 14th - july 28th: The Place of the Crows, Breda Lynch:
aug 4th - aug 18th: Katrina Maguire:
sep 8th- oct 8th: John Beattie.

The second is the Context Galleries education project Sharing Heritage, a series of four specially commissioned art cards, one from each artist, and four cards from the pupils of St Cecilias School, Derry. The project presents work examining individual perceptions of "heritage" sites in the city. The cards will be distributed nationally.

Prehen House is served by and Ulsterbus Foyle route FY6 which departs from Foyle Street in city centre and has a stop outside the entrance to Prehen House at Sunningdale Drive: it departs at 15 minutes past the hour and is a ten minute journey.

Prehen House, Waterside, Derry
Tel: 028 71342829
email: http://www.geocities.com/colinpeck/prehen.html

Context Galleries,
5-7 Artillery Street
Derry BT48 6RG
Tel: 028 71373538
email: contextgallery@yahoo.co.uk

Sara Greavu, 'Love and Theft'

2007-02-10T22:01:00.001Z

Sara Greavu, 'Love and Theft'
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Sara Greavu, 'Love and Theft"

2007-02-10T21:37:00.000Z

Exhibition has been rescheduled to commence in Feb 2007 and run until March 2007

Sara Greavu, originally from the USA, has resided in Derry for over a decade, and is currently completing a practice based PhD at University of Ulster. Previous solo shows include All Souls, Context Galleries, 2003; group shows include The Moore Street Lending Library, Dublin, 2005; b-lomo, Context Galleries, 2003; Resident, as a Context Artist in Residence with Bayview Educational Guidance Centre, 2003.

This series of photos, taken on Halloween 2005 are part of of a larger project I am involved in which deals with displays of ‘ethnic drag’ and whiteness in Ireland. I am fascinated by the prevalence of these costumes portraying ethnic ‘others’ and I am interested in unpicking the reasons for their popularity. Ireland has a long history of blackface performance: almost from the inception of the minstrel show in the US in the 1820s, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment here; this endured through most of the 20th century with the (British made) Black and White Minstrel Show being aired here until the early 80s. Given the location of the Context Gallery as part of the Playhouse building, I wanted to refer to this tradition and ask what this modern, homegrown version of minstrelsy says about an Irish concept of identity and otherness. At the same time, Ireland’s colonial history has given it a unique perspective among the nations of Western Europe. There is a sense of solidarity with other colonised or subaltern nations, visible, for instance in the flying of Palestinian flags. I am interested in how these markers of identity sit with the cross-racial mimicry depicted in my work.The photos on the outside of the building are digitally manipulated to isolate the individual figures: the street becomes the ‘black box’ stage and an ersatz lens flare highlights the use of the camera to capture the images, and also places the viewer ‘backstage’ or inside of the performance.The series of postcards The Colonial Harem: Scenes and Types are looking at another popular set of costumes: the ‘harem girl’ or belly dancer. I am relating these images to postcards produced in Algeria and Morocco in the early part of the last century. The faux-ethnigraphic postcards illustrate a Western fantasy or a ‘phantasm’ of harem life and were produced by French photographers for a French audience. These postcards, collected and interpreted by Malek Alloula in his seminal text, The Colonial Harem, were ‘everywhere’ in Algeria, “covering all the colonial space, immediately available to the tourist, the soldier, the colonist…[The postcard] is ubiquitous. It can be found not only at the scene of the crime it perpetrates but at far remove as well.” (Alloula)In the Ireland of today, of increasing immigration and ‘guest workers’, of the citizenship referendum and American troop transports refuelling at Shannon airport en route to Iraq, how can we read these performances of race? Do they work to construct or shore-up a communal sense of nation and ‘whiteness’? Do they, indeed, constitute a performance of whiteness through the means of a masquerade of blackness? Could they also be seen to represent a more ambiguous relationship to the racial ‘other, one of identification, commonality or desire?
Sara Greavu

Miriam de Burca, 'Stealing Weeds'

2006-12-13T17:56:00.000Z

Miriam de Burca, 'Stealing Weeds'
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Miriam de Burca, 'Stealing Weeds'

2006-12-13T17:37:00.000Z

16th December 2006 – 20th January 2007

Miriam de Burca is currently completing a practice based PhD at University of Ulster. Recent projects include: The Golden Mile, Belfast 2003; Veneer/Folheado, Galeria Zedosbois, Lisbon, Portugal 2003; BE+FAST, Ljubljana, Slovenia 2004; The Belfast Way, Herzilya Museum of Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel 2005; Perspective, Ormeau Baths, Belfast 2005; Dogs Have No Religion, Artists From Northern Ireland at Czech Museum of Fine Arts, 2006.

Weeds have grown from soil recently fertilised by the ashes of an 11th Night bonfire. The wasteland’s annual cycle of construction and subsequent destruction has entered into its interval phase; the return of the small organisms. Benefiting from the minerals left by the fire, they begin to re-inhabit the area, slowly building up a temporary landscape.

A contradiction in terms, it would seem, ‘stealing weeds’. How can it be stealing if they are only weeds? And, if they are considered to be of no worth, why would one feel the need to go to such lengths? After all, they grow abundantly and thrive wherever the ground offers the minimum requirements for light, nutrition and drainage. They are considered a nuisance; they spring up where they are not wanted. Yet here they are being specially selected, uprooted, and taken away. Should anyone have objected to it?

Is it not a form of colonisation when one aggressively tears at the ground and takes elements of it away for scrutiny?

More important than the question whether digging up the plants is theft or not, is the fact that it feels like theft. The physical act of crossing through the implicit threshold and into the centre of the interface gives the sensation of making an imposition. There is a psychological heat still emanating from the ashen ground that causes one to hurry, to step and dig and leave quickly. (‘Careful or you’ll burn the soles of your feet.’)

Ultimately, there is no feeling of victory, no conquest made. Rather than gaining a sense of ownership over that proximate piece of land, the psychological boundary between ‘here and there’ remains as intact as before, the experience leaving only a slight feeling of guilt; that the weeds had been taken from someone else’s land; de facto stolen.
Miriam de Búrca

@ Flip, a context galleries offsite project

2006-12-13T17:15:00.000Z

@ Flip, a context galleries offsite project
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Chris Quinn

2006-12-13T17:07:00.000Z

Photograph by Chris Quinn at Flip
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Anne Marie McArdle

2006-12-13T17:04:00.000Z

Anne Marie McArdle
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

A print by Anne Marie McArdle, showing at Flip

Christine Mackey, Points of Departure

2006-11-08T13:11:00.000Z

Christine Mackey, Points of Departure
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Points of Departure, Christine Mackey

2006-11-08T13:08:00.000Z

Points of Departure
Christine Mackey

gallery one, nov 11 – dec 9

Christine Mackey gained a BA Sculpture in NCAD Dublin 1992, and MA Visual Performance, Dartington College, 2002. She was nominated as one of four finalists for the AIB Award 2004.

The work in this exhibition stems from Christine Mackey’s response to her travels in Central America and particularly her response to the terrain and the people she encountered there. She was artist in residence in Teor e/Tica, San José, the capital and largest city in Costa Rica, located in the center of the country, high on a mountain plateau.

The central premise of this work deals in terms of an anthropological (the study of humankind) practice but one it terms of collecting, through which a local knowledge of place is gained through an ongoing dialogical exchange both physically and virtually. Grant Kester, assistant professor of contemporary art history and theory at Arizona State University, has given a useful description of a dialogical relationship in artwork as follows: “a dialogical relationship that breaks down the conventional distinction between artist, art work and audience - a relationship that allows the viewer to "speak back" to the artist in certain ways, and in which this reply becomes in effect a part of the "work" itself” (Dialogical Aesthetics: A Critical Framework For Littoral Art, Grant Kester, Variant issue 9)

Christine Mackey’s method of working, which she terms ‘Process in Motion’ relates to the actual gaining of knowledge about a civilization or community through collation and discoveries. In essence the exhibition is an archival installation of her travels and experiences in Central America and research into its artists and their response to their environment. Thus she decided to build an archive of Central American artists that amounted to small art works, documentation of artists work on CD and DVD, catalogues and books related to Central American artists and current arts practice. She is appropriating methods used by archivists in this project. She doesn’t intend this project to be an exhaustive archive of Central American art and artists. Rather she is using archival methods to visually articulate her personal (and that of the artists she encountered) response to the local environment and populace. She is also entwining her own personal circumstance into the work, in this case the tragic death of her mother, Brigid, in a car accident whilst the artist was in Panama. She is placing subjective experience into mapping and the archiving resulting from that mapping.

The nature and use of archives are being changed, particularly through artists using methods and terminology traditionally used by archivists. Traditionally archives stood for a ‘dead-end’ comprehensiveness where as many documents as possible about a particular subject filled many boxes on dusty shelves. Artists by questioning the nature, role and use of data and their appropriation and creative updating of archival methods have created a debate about the definition of an archive.

Christine Mackey commissioned a number of artists, an art critic and an environmental sociologist to develop textual work or small sketches in relation to a short text that she gave them to respond to. She is interested in the tactics used by individuals and artists to navigate daily existence in environment where local and globalised strategies are imposed upon them by local and outside agencies. In this she is influenced by the French philosopher Michael de Certeau who explored the ‘tactics’ used by people to adapt to ‘strategies’ imposed upon them by for example government. She is also influenced by the anthropologist James Clifford’s recent work concerns the response of local politics to globalization. He is researching the effects of regional, national, and international power on different cultures by studying museums, festivals, tourism, and ethnic performance. Much of his work focuses the decolonization of the pacific region and its impact on the culture of the indigenous people such as native Californians pacific islanders.

This exhibition can be seen as an archival mapping of the artist’s journey in Central America. As the artist puts it: ‘the exhibition thus ‘constitutes an assembly of narratives and interchanges, moving from one place to another; an accumulation of voices between time zones and continents deliberated as a line across space and as a dedication to the memory of Brigid’.

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition 90 page full colour catalogue.

North West Visual Arts Archive

2006-11-08T12:39:00.000Z

Archive
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Live Archive 0 – 1

2006-11-08T12:16:00.000Z

North West Visual Arts Archive
@ Context Galleries 2
11th November – 09th December 2006

The North West Visual Arts Archive presents Live Archive 0 – 1 the first of its Live Archive exhibition/project programme. Live Archive 0 – 1 is a linear history of Derry’s now defunct Orchard Gallery in installation form using gallery ephemera such as catalogues, invitation cards, gallery handouts and reviews.

The Orchard Gallery ran from 1978 to 2003 and established itself as an exciting and innovative institution at the forefront of contemporary art showing many of the leading names of Irish, European and world art. It put Derry on the world map as far as contemporary art was concerned. The installation is also an interactive research project which will offer the public the opportunity to contribute their memories, anecdotes and opinions of the gallery to the project thus creating a written narrative to accompany the exhibition. It is important that a regional arts archive protects and explores the local arts heritage of the area, as the nature of visual art is often very ephemeral and easily lost. But with the Live Archive projects this heritage will be updated and added to in an imaginative and thought-provoking manner. It is also very apparent that the meaning of the term ‘archive’ is no longer fixed. Many artists have appropriated archival terminology and strategies and used them in their own work thus there is now a fluidity of definition as to what archiving actually means. The North West Visual Arts Archive recognises this and will explore new methods of articulating the remit of the archive.

The North West Visual Arts Archive aims to accumulate, collate and make publicly available a coherently structured and easily accessible visual arts archive covering the local North West region, encompassing the counties of Derry, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Cavan, Donegal, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and Sligo. The archive is continually added to and updated as new documents become available.

The archive is not intended to be merely a passive resource. Rather it is envisaged as a living entity with exhibitions, publications, lectures and workshops evolving from it. The Live Archive project is designed to visually articulate the remit of the archive and as a means of supporting local artistic practice and indeed the contemporary art scene in the North West. Archives have the capacity to cross artistic disciplines and boundaries and use multiple formats to initiate creative dialogue and projects with regard to past, present and future art production in the region.

At the end of Live Art: 0 – 1 The North West Visual Arts Archive will move to its permanent home in the Verbal Arts Centre, Derry though will continue to initiate off-site Live Archive projects, the first planned for spring/summer 2007 being a project looking at Derry art and artists working today.

Thanks to Colin Darke for permission to use his research notes on the early years of the gallery.

Live Archive 0 – 1:
Gregory McCartney: Project Coordinator
Cinza Parola: Research Assistant
Mara Cavalli: Research Assistant

Email: nwarchives@yahoo.co.uk

Alex Cheung, ruBbEr pLaNs

2006-09-30T15:06:00.000+01:00

Alex Cheung, ruBbEr pLaNs, video still
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

video still from short film ruBbEr pLaNs

ruBbEr pLaNs, a film by alex cheung

2006-09-30T15:01:00.000+01:00

In 2005, Context Galleries received a project award from the Promoting Interculturalism Programme of The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Community Relations Council. Working with production company Plethora Productions, the project award was dedicated to developing and producing a new film and filmmaking skills base within the young Chinese community of the city of Derry. Rubber Plans, the film produced in the project and screened here, is the first short film by Alex Cheung, born and raised in the city, whose parents moved here from Hong Kong. The filmmaking process involved mentoring and training from Plethora Productions, Blast Furnace Recording Studios and Sound Engineer Kwame Daniels to a crew and cast from the young Chinese community of the city of Derry. Alongside the screenings here, the film Rubber Plans will be promoted to the international film festival circuit, further developing the potential of Northern Ireland’s first film from within the Chinese community.

Film screenings preview 8pm, Oct 7. Film screenings continue until Nov 4.

Nuala Herron, Of Beauty in Ruin

2006-09-30T14:57:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron is a young painter from Derry, currently based in Edinburgh. The artist graduated in BA(Hons) Fine and Applied Art (Painting) at University of Ulster in 2003. Context Galleries is delighted to be bringing new work by this young artist to a first solo exhibition in her home town.

As a painter, I attempt to show beauty in what might often go unnoticed: everyday realities of the Domestic Life of a family, clothes hanging on a washing line, delapidated buildings.

In this collection of paintings I hope to show a glimpse of the frailty and transience of beauty in ruin. These ruins, delapidated and desolate scenes are a manifestation of my understanding of reality.

My paintings often evolve from photographs, some of which were taken while travelling around Europe. Rather than photographing the obvious I was more interested in delapidated buildings,walls and doors. These images were more significant to me and revealed more depth, value and beauty than their peeling surfaces suggested.

While I could appreciate the aesthetic of ruins I was also aware of a certain perversity by which we find pleasure in contemplating decay. With this in mind I have tried to create paintings 'Of Beauty in Ruin' which are honest and engaging.

Exhibition previews 8pm,Oct 7 Exhibition runs until Nov 4th

Nuala Herron, The Bogside

2006-09-30T14:49:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, The Bogside, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

This painting was inspired by a photograph taken of my mother during the early part of The Troubles in 1971. It is set in Rosville Street, an area scarred by almost daily rioting, hijacking and vehicle burning. Although much of the scene is bleak and the truck has been burnt out, the prominence of the figure causes this to fade into the background. ( Painting: 3ft x 3ft, Oil on canvas)

Nuala Herron, Closed

2006-09-30T14:48:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, Closed, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

From a photograph taken in Havana Cuba, I have attempted to capture the various textures seen on this boarded-up window: the peeling paint,the roughness of the stone,the burnt wood and flimsy cardboard.By building up several layers of paint and then scraping away some layers, I hoped to create a similar texture. (Painting: 3ftx3ft, Oil on canvas )

Nuala Herron, The Pipeline

2006-09-30T14:46:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, The Pipeline, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Despite the poverty and devastation found in India, I have always been attracted to the colours and textures captured in many photographs taken. Having collected photographs for several years I had the urge to paint this particular scene, which shows a pipeline muscling snakelike through a suburb of Mumbai to supply rich areas with plenty of water. (3ftx3ft, Oil on canvas)

Nuala Herron, A Shadow Casted

2006-09-30T14:43:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, A Shadow Casted, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

In this painting, I have tried to capture a fleeting moment, something ordinary,everyday and potentially lost. The building itself is slightly decaying and the fact that it is painted prominently in shades of greys and brown enhances this. The white sheet which is being shook from the top window could signify many things, one being the continuity of life. ( painting: 3ftx3ft, Oil on canvas)

Nuala Herron, Besieged by Time

2006-09-30T14:39:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, Besieged by Time, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

With an interest in washing lines and the feelings they connote for me, I wanted to bring this into at least one of my paintings. After discovering the photographer Robert Polidori, I came across a photograph called 'Palador La Guarida' from which I took inspiration for this painting. (3ftx3ft, Oil on canvas)

Nuala Herron, Searching

2006-09-30T14:29:00.000+01:00

Nuala Herron, Searching, 3ftx3ft, oil on canvas
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

As a realist painter, I have always been drawn to painting older people and find it challenging to capture the the textures of their skin. I saw so much beauty and significance in this searching face which might be seen by many to be lost youth. I thought this was appropriate to include in my exhibition 'Of Beauty in Ruin.'
(3ftx3ft, oil on canvas)

Nuala Herron ‘Beauty in Ruin’

2006-09-30T14:04:00.000+01:00

In this collection of paintings the artist attempts to show a glimpse of the frailty and transience of beauty in ruin. Herron is exploring the picturesque, a time-honoured area of investigation for artists though of course putting it into a modern context. Picturesque meaning literally "in the manner of a picture; fit to be made into a picture" was a word used as early as 1703 (Oxford English Dictionary), and derived from an Italian term pittoresco, meaning, "in the manner of a painter," As meaning like beauty is transient the term ‘picturesque’ is now held in some distain and taken to mean simply pretty or charming.

In 18th Century philosophy and criticism it was however a valid stream of artistic exploration holding the middle ground between the beautiful (in the strictly traditional sense of classical i.e. Grecian aesthetic ideals) and the sublime (that appreciation of the vastness and terrible power of nature as articulated in the theories of philosophers Edmund Burke and Immanuel Kant). The picturesque borrowed from both extremes, conjoining elements of what was considered at the time ‘ideally’ beautiful (i.e. fitting the philosophical notions of beauty offered by notably the Greek philosopher and statesman Plato) with the non-rational (i.e. wild, instinctual, untamed and possibly dangerous) sublime. The notion of the picturesque was primarily articulated by the clergyman and writer William Gilpin in 1768 in a travel book designed for the English leisured classes, where he defined the picturesque as ‘that is what agreeable in a picture’. His perception of what was ‘agreeable’ however deviated from the norms of the time to include rugged landscapes and decaying buildings and even ‘decaying’ people. The artist includes portraits in her study of the potential beauty of decay and ruin. The equation of human aging with the decay of infrastructure has also a lengthy history which again leads ultimately back (in painting at least) to the theories of the Reverend Gilpin.

Unfortunately the picturesque became a fad and swarms of tourists pounced upon suitably craggy areas of England and Europe which eventually led to the devaluing of the term. Though even in the 19th Century the art critic and poet John Ruskin considered it a genuinely modern aesthetic category. Herron brings the picturesque into the contemporary context in this exhibition by including elements such as a study of an individual (her mother) in a post-riot landscape posing on a hijacked and subsequently burned vehicle and a landscape showing industrial intrusion, decay and pollution in India.

Herron’s paintings are often also studies in surface and colour which show the artist’s interest in portraying to a level which almost reaches the abstract, building facades, doors and shuttered windows. She takes the picturesque and often mixes it with painterly concerns in regard to technique and intertwines comments upon domesticity. These buildings are old and decaying but they are lived in. These areas have a massive pipeline running through it but people live and work there.

The artist often bases her painting on photographs, not always her own, thus appropriating other’s images for her own devices and reinterpreting them to give them new meaning. This can be seen in particular with her reinterpretation of a photograph by Robert Polidori of a building in Havana, Cuba in which the artist articulates her appreciation of decay and beauty and gives prominence to the obvious domestic associations of the building by highlighting the white sheets on the washing line.

(Text by Gregory McCartney)

This the artist’s first solo show in the Context though she did appear in the ‘Take Away’ group show in 2004.
The exhibition runs 7th October – 4th November 2006

Works made in Ballylaw Womens Group with Martha Lewtas embroidery class

2006-09-05T15:23:00.000+01:00

Works made in Ballylaw Womens Group with Martha Lewtas embroidery class
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Greysteel Women's Activity Group with Tina McLaughlin quilting class

2006-08-29T14:50:00.000+01:00

IMGP3836
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Resident 4

2006-08-29T14:22:00.000+01:00

Resident 4

An exhibition of works produced in the 4th year of the Context Galleries Education and Outreach Project: a collaborative project between the following artists and organisations:

Lilliput Theatre Group and Laura Saenz of The Dancing Tree have produced a video entitled ‘What is Love?’ exploring participants perceptions of love.

Greysteel Women’s Activity Group and Tina McLaughlin have made a series of beautiful patchwork quilts that articulate the tradition use of patch-working in the Derry area.

Ballylaw Women’s Group and Martha Lewtas have created a series of delicate embroidered pieces which display great skill and dexterity of all who participated.

Maybrook Adult Training Centre with Tracy Cullen and Danny Mc Laughlin have produced video and a collage of photographs exploring the group’s various activities in locations around Derry.

Finally, Context Galleries is pleased to have part of the Wheelworks ‘Respect’ project in the gallery. This project helps to increase tolerance and respect for each and every community in our society.

Galleries 1 & 2
Exhibition previews 6pm Saturday 2nd September
Exhibition runs until September 30th

Supported by Derry City Council, Adapt, Lottery Awards For All, and The Art Council of Northern Ireland

Peter Hughes, 2006, 12inchesx12inches

2006-07-29T13:57:00.002+01:00

Peter Hughes, 2006, 12inchesx12inches
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Julius Guzy, Israeli-Palestinian conflict How we pacified our genocidal neighbours, 2005, watercolour and body colour, 29 x 40 cm

2006-07-29T13:57:00.001+01:00

Julius Guzy, Israeli-Palestinian conflict How we pacified our genocidal neighbours, 2005, watercolour and body colour, 29 x 40 cm
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Patrick Bradley, Bazooka, oil on canvas, 8 inchesx8inches, 2006

2006-07-29T13:57:00.000+01:00

Patrick Bradley, Bazooka, oil on canvas, 8 inchesx8inches, 2006
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

three painters

2006-07-29T13:44:00.000+01:00

patrick bradley
julius guzy
peter hughes

exhibition previews 8pm saturday august 5
exhibition runs until august 26

Context Galleries is delighted to present a Summer show of recent work by three painters based in Derry. Patrick Bradley, Julius Guzy, Peter Hughes each last exhibited with the Context as part of the Maiden City Festival 2005. At that time Peter Hughes was awarded a commission from the festival. This Summer exhibition gives an opportunity to view a larger selection of the artists’ works.

Patrick Bradley
Patrick Bradley is an artist and gallerist who has been active in Derry for over twenty years. He has created several temporary exhibition spaces in the town for contemporary art.
He studied at Belfast Art College 1984-1987; is co-founder of Redemption! art gallery in Derry 1988; founder of Strike! art gallery in Derry, 2000. His most recent solo exhibition was at the Work House Museum, Derry, 2004.

My work is organic in nature, there are usually no preset ideas. I start with marks, gesture and colours, letting them develop, trusting the knowing nature of the mind unclouded by thoughts, aiming for a balance, a ‘rightness’.

Peter Hughes
Peter Hughes studied at Belfast College of Art 1995-96 and Exeter College of Art 1996-98. His work has been exhibited in Germany frequently over the last 20 years. Recent exhibition include The Gasyard, Derry; a major show in the Context in 2003; and in 2005 an award from the Maiden City Festival Commission, for his work in a group exhibition at the Context.

My paintings represent a search for a form of visual energy.
‘A seeking of charisma within the self
A seeking of the self within the world’

Julius Guzy
Julius Guzy has lived and worked in Derry since 1988. His work is viewable on his website, juliuspaintings.co.uk Since June 2003 he has been teaching himself to draw figures directly from his imagination and since June 2005 his pictures have become overtly political. In most cases their titles tell you exactly what they're about.

He will be exhibiting the following:
A large (90 x 64 cm) sketch for a painting entitled: the genocide in Rwanda represented as a large satyrical papier mache sculpturein the Passeo de las Germanias in Gandia, Spain. (In Valencian Spanish, Falla is a word which means "a thing of no value")

Sketch for a painting about the Separation Wall built by the Israeli govenment entitled: How we pacified our genocidal neighbours.

An anti-war against Iraq christmass card, with holy family and the three kings, camels and shepherds, head hooded by canvass bag Iraqi father and child, soldiers and rest of the world watching television, exploding people, burning figures fleeing the bombing of Babylon, and the heavens happilly spinning without a care for what we do.

A set of sketches concerning global warming, flying spaghetti monsters and pirates including a major watercolour sketch for a painting of Pirates attacking Tower of Babel.

A painting entitled Our garden of Eden or the cities of Babel bombing the world, their buldozers uprooting trees and flattening and burning the planet, the shooting in June 2006 of Bruno: one of the last brown bears in Europe, the wanton anihilation of all the animals including the killing by hanging of a giraffe, our children breaking young trees and stamping on snails, and Julius caught in the flames of creative passion painting landscapes.

Then if there is the space for it, he will be showing a work in progress: a reconstruction of a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci entitled the Battle of Anghiari, which Julius believes to be a satirical work about the glorification of war.

the aai awards 21

2006-07-29T13:14:00.000+01:00

new architecture 21
exhibition previews 8pm saturday august 5th
exhibition runs until august 26th

This exhibition is our annual display from the winners of the AAI Awards, the series of annual awards for excellence in architectural design presented by The Architectural Association of Ireland. This year features the AAI Awards 2006, the 21st in the series.

The award winning architects’ projects presented are:

The Downes Bronze Medal may be awarded at the discretion of the Assessors. This year, the jury awarded the Downes Bronze Medal to:

Poustinia, Glencomeragh House of Prayer, Kilsheelan, Clonmel, Co Tipperary. Architects Bates Maher

The maximum number of AAI Awards is seven. This year the jury selected seven projects for Awards. They are (in alphabetical order by architect):

Sorrento Heights, Dalkey, Co Dublin Boyd Cody Architects
City House and Workplace, 41 Francis Street, Dublin 8 Donaghy + Dimond Architects
Extension to Dept of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Trinity College Grafton Architects
Engineers Ireland, 20 Clyde Road, Dublin 4 McCullough Mulvin Architects
House at Crouch End, London Niall McLoughlin Architects
Brooke Heussaff Library, 607 South Circular Road, Dublin 8 NJBA Architects 13a Thor Place, Stoneybatter, Dublin 7 ODOS Architects

A number of entries may be selected for Special Mention. This year the jury selected 8 projects for Special Mention. They are (in alphabetical order by architect):

House, Richmond Place, Rathmines, Dublin 6 Boyd Cody Architects
Two Up Two Down, John Dillon Street, Dublin 8 de Paor Architects
Kitchen-Garden-Party-Wall, 13 Arran Road, Drumcondra, Dublin 9 Donaghy + Dimond Architects
Martin Valley Sculpture Park, Cork FKL Architects
Reuben Street Apartments, Dublin 8 FKL Architects
Ijburg, Blok 4, Amsterdam GE Maccreanor, Maccreanor Lavington Architects
No.33 St. Kevin's Road, Portobello, Dublin 8 David O'Shea, Darrell O'Donoghue, ODOS Architects
Athlone Civic Centre, Library & Town Square Keith Williams, Richard Brown, Keith Williams Architects

The assessors for the AAI Awards 2006 were as follows: Andrej Hrausky, architectural critic, architect, and director of DESSA Architecture Centre and Association, Ljubljana (Slovenia); Carmeé Pinõs, architect, Barcelona (Spain); Dominic Steven, architect, Leitrim; Prof. Ciaran Benson, professor of psychology, University College Dublin (distinguished non-architect).

Martina Corry, Untitled, 2005 photographic paper, aluminium 35x48.7cm

2006-06-16T11:53:00.000+01:00

Martina Corry, Untitled, 2005 photographic paper, aluminium 35x48.7cm
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Martina Corry

2006-06-16T11:46:00.000+01:00

Martina Corry
Photography

Exhibition previews 8pm, June 17th Exhibition runs until July 22nd

Martina Corry is a visual artist working within the field of photography and graduated from the University of Ulster in 1999 with an MFA (with Distinction) specialising in photography. This is her first solo show at Context Galleries.

Most of the artist’s images are made without using the optics (i.e. the lamp, lens, colour, gobo and mirror system that produces a projected image) of the camera. In the darkroom images are generated through actions carried out on the photographic paper. Actions such as creasing, crumpling, folding, cutting and drawing engage directly with the picture surface as a material in itself.

Corry is interested in how photographs are experienced simultaneously as image and object, tangibly real and yet somehow remote. Not merely images, but seen, encountered and negotiated as real objects. Often employing a single motif or action, previous works have explored ideas concerning memory and intimacy through the absence of figuration. Recent works have explored memory and vision through the activity of drawing and mark making.

The use of materials such as fibre optics (specially manufactured, hair-thin glass fibre for the transmission of communications in the form of light) in the image making process addresses the fundamentals of the chemical based photographic process namely the play of light on the surface of a light sensitive material. Fibre optics are today used widely in communication systems. In the technology’s early development, optical transmission was possible due to the “phenomenon of total internal reflection, which can confine light in a material surrounded by other materials with lower reflective index, such as glass in air.” (Jeff Hecht)

The images are made as opposed to having been taken- in the way a camera could be said to passively ‘take’ a photograph. The image is built up over a period of time and rather than merely representing a past event records and represents itself, inextricably linking the real and the represented.

Many of the works in this exhibition are luminograms. (A luminogram is the resulting image caused by exposing the photosensitive medium to light without the intervention of an object. The light is modulated by varying the intensity through distance from the photosensitive surface, power of the light source, or by the use of filters or gels or motion of the light. The paper can itself be shaped to create the desired effects in the final image.) Gottfried Jäger describes these as “the result of pure light design; the rudimentary expression of an interaction of light and photosensitive material… a kind of self representation of light.”

Andrew James Boyle, The Raven, video stills

2006-06-16T11:40:00.000+01:00

Andrew James Boyle, The Raven, video stills
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

The Raven, Andrew James Boyle

2006-06-16T11:21:00.000+01:00

The Raven
Andrew James Boyle
Exhibition previews 8pm Saturday 17 June, 2006.
Exhibition runs until July 15th

Andrew James Boyle graduated in Media at NWIFHE in 2006. He has previously exhibited and selected work as part of the Context Galleries project, Videographies in November 2005; and was awarded the NWHB Moving Image Media Award in May 2006.

“If you wish to forget anything on the spot, make a note that this thing is to be remembered.” Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’ is brought to the foreground by the artist Andrew James Boyle in his attempt to project the poem in a significantly contemporary fashion. Andrew’s work is constituted as contemporary as the poem is read aloud by familiar faces that penetrate the domain of the media on a daily basis. It seems that the poem remains intransigent in it’s effectiveness, even in today’s modern society it has left an imprint on our minds as it appears to have an eclectic influence on film makers, writers and musicians in the 21st century.
‘My next thought concerned to the choice of an impression or effect, to be conveyed: and here I may as well observe that, throughout the construction, I kept steadily in view the design of rendering the work universally acceptable’ Edgar Allan Poe
One can only imagine the writer sitting at his desk with the lights turned down, pondering over his manuscript. Poe’s world is one which escapes into the Romantic and the Gothic; a world reflecting his own inner turmoil and pain. It conjures the question as to how Andrew James Boyle’s work and that of Poe’s are inextricably linked. Since the Romantic and the Gothic are justified as tools to escape the realities of life, modern society poses the opposite, there is no room for privacy. Our media is overshadowed by reality TV shows, we gloat on the misfortunes of others in this seemingly godless world. However as each person reads out a verse from the poem, the literal word demonstrates a living embodiment and diverse mannerist nature of ‘The Raven’. Christine Mullin, Curator

This exhibition is a Context First Curatorial Project selected by Christine Mullin, recent Context Gallery trainee. Context First Curatorial Projects is a scheme allowing gallery trainees from the region to develop the experience of working with artists for the first time.

This work, The Raven, features a complete video performance of Edgar Allan Poe’s haunting poem from 1845, The Raven. All eighteen verses of the poem are read by a cast of comedians, actors, singers, musicians, a DJ, a politician and a mime artist. Each reader reads a single verse of the poem to camera for the artist. Each act of reading is a performance which characterizes both the poem and the reader. The readers were filmed backstage, in green rooms, on tour buses, in college corridors and concert hall storerooms; at various gigs, performances, and public events over 2005 and 2006. Readers include:

Des Bishop, comedian
John Hume, politician, Nobel Prize Winner
Ardal O’Hanlon, comedian
Paul Linehan, vocalist and bassist of Irish band The Frank and Walters
Glen Hansard, vocalist of Irish band The Frames
Amy Farina, vocalist and drummer of American band The Evens
Richmond Shepherd, American mime artist/director/producer
Colin Fox, bassist of English band Delays
Dara O’Briain, comedian
Pony & Pee Pee, vocalist and keyboards of Irish band The Chalets
Paul Noonan, vocalist of Irish band Bell X1
Colin Murphy, comedian
Pete Doherty, vocalist of English bands Babyshmables, The Libertines
Ian McKaye, vocalist of American band Fugazi
Jack L, singer
Tony Robinson, British actor, author and presenter
Neil Hannon, vocalist of British band The Divine Comedy

The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
`'Tis some visitor,' I muttered, `tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more.'

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore -
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating
`'Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door -
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; -
This it is, and nothing more,'

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,
`Sir,' said I, `or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;
But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,
And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,
That I scarce was sure I heard you' - here I opened wide the door; -
Darkness there, and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,
Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.
`Surely,' said I, `surely that is something at my window lattice;
Let me see then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore -
Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; -
'Tis the wind and nothing more!'

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door -
Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door -
Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,
By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore,
`Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou,' I said, `art sure no craven.
Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the nightly shore -
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

Much I marvelled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,
Though its answer little meaning - little relevancy bore;
For we cannot help agreeing that no living human being
Ever yet was blessed with seeing bird above his chamber door -
Bird or beast above the sculptured bust above his chamber door,
With such name as `Nevermore.'

But the raven, sitting lonely on the placid bust, spoke only,
That one word, as if his soul in that one word he did outpour.
Nothing further then he uttered - not a feather then he fluttered -
Till I scarcely more than muttered `Other friends have flown before -
On the morrow will he leave me, as my hopes have flown before.'
Then the bird said, `Nevermore.'

Startled at the stillness broken by reply so aptly spoken,
`Doubtless,' said I, `what it utters is its only stock and store,
Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore -
Till the dirges of his hope that melancholy burden bore
Of "Never-nevermore."'

But the raven still beguiling all my sad soul into smiling,
Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in front of bird and bust and door;
Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking
Fancy unto fancy, thinking what this ominous bird of yore -
What this grim, ungainly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore
Meant in croaking `Nevermore.'

This I sat engaged in guessing, but no syllable expressing
To the fowl whose fiery eyes now burned into my bosom's core;
This and more I sat divining, with my head at ease reclining
On the cushion's velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o'er,
But whose velvet violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o'er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, perfumed from an unseen censer
Swung by Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor.
`Wretch,' I cried, `thy God hath lent thee - by these angels he has sent thee
Respite - respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget this lost Lenore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil! -
Whether tempter sent, or whether tempest tossed thee here ashore,
Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted -
On this home by horror haunted - tell me truly, I implore -
Is there - is there balm in Gilead? - tell me - tell me, I implore!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Prophet!' said I, `thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!
By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -
Tell this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,
It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels named Lenore -
Clasp a rare and radiant maiden, whom the angels named Lenore?'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

`Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!' I shrieked upstarting -
`Get thee back into the tempest and the Night's Plutonian shore!
Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!
Leave my loneliness unbroken! - quit the bust above my door!
Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!'
Quoth the raven, `Nevermore.'

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;
And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,
And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;
And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor
Shall be lifted - nevermore!

Delta 32: When the Jazz Man Testifies The Wise Man Believes…

2006-06-03T16:31:00.000+01:00

the final instalment of...
Abridged 0 – 4: An(other) Irishman in New York
Curator Greg McCartney, selecting for a 2007 Context project, continues his reports from an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Residency in New York.

Well, Sky Sports, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Daily Mirror, The Express, The Mail and all your so called football ‘experts’ contained within – Your boys took a hell of a beating! Champions Chelsea again! Sorry about that, had to get that off my chest. And welcome Michael Ballack and Andriy Shevchenko. The world’s best. Don’t need to say more. So I won’t.

So this is pretty much my last entry this side of the ocean. The project at this end is nearly complete. I’m happy the way it’s turned out. I’ve met a lot of people; saw much art in many studios and many galleries. It’s been very beneficial and I’m pretty certain I will return. I’ve worked hard (ok nobody will actually believe me when I say that and isn’t working down a coalmine but still…) and I’m hoping that the project gets funded and that Derry sees some damn fine artists and some damn fine art (sorry for the Twin Peaks terminology – a damn fine show.). Is there any lessons to be learned to take back home? Hmmm probably is, though they tend to become apparent in time rather than anything startling and revelatory. We currently operate in a different sphere where thankfully it’s isn’t imperative on us to sell though in the future who knows what will happen.

My impressions of New York? Well, a great city, an untidy city, a noisy city, an angry city (see previous blog for the reasons) a diverse city (you can’t possibly realise how diverse until you get here) and a city that has too many galleries. Never thought I’d here myself say that, but bloody hell there’s a lot. If all that was important was the exhibition itself this wouldn’t be such a problem but when the need to sell is uppermost, well you tend to get a lot of dodgy abstract paintings with a lot of red dots appearing beside them. So imaginative artists don’t really benefit from the vast number or if they do they have to come up with something saleable. There are notable exceptions (see previous blogs for examples) of course. Could I operate in this arena? Probably could though coming from the public background I tend to think in terms of ‘show’ rather than what will sell. But with a space and some money (much easier said than done) I think I could do something over here. (Go West…Life is Better there…Go West…In the Open Air…and all that!) Hasn’t everyone from Columbus onwards said that though? Mind you, still even at this stage haven’t got the hang of the food thing!

It’ll be interesting to discover fully what’s been happening at home and to immerse myself in the deluge of funding form filling again. The OBG controversy has succumbed to real world politics as was inevitable I suppose. We’ll await developments on the newly reopened space with interest and won’t say ‘told you so’ if museum type things occur.

It was great seeing so many studios and talking to so many artists. Sadly of course the remit of the project meant that all the work I saw, even though it was interesting didn’t always fit. It’s often hard to get away from the form filling so visiting a million converted warehouses and factories was beneficial. Also there could be some lessons for establishing studios learned from here. For example there’s a set of studios right in the heart of Manhattan loaned to an artists organisation by the company that owns the (very plush) building. Basically they’ve given them a very (ahem) basic floor, which has been simply divided up but hey with workable and wide lifts it seems pretty good to me. Maybe there could be some similar avenue explored in Derry?

Thanks are due in no small way to the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Declan Sheehan of Context Galleries who are responsible for me being here. Thank you kindly.

Well this is a shorter piece to end on than usual because the author is now going to operate in fully fledged tourist mode. And there’s nothing wrong with that! The Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty awaits…So Goodbye, and Abridged 0-3: Romance & Assassination(that confused you! – see previous blog for explanation) will appear very soon as will the first Abridged public art project, Abridged 0-5.

Have A Nice Day!

Everybody Shouts on 'I Love Lucy'…

2006-05-24T16:09:00.000+01:00

the continuation of...
Abridged 0 – 4: An(other) Irishman in New York
Curator Greg McCartney, selecting for a 2007 Context project, continues his reports from an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Residency in New York.

Well I’m coming towards the end of my time here. I’ve enjoyed myself immensely it has to be said. And the last couple of weeks hopefully will be as good as the rest. I’ve met a lot of nice people who have very kindly showed me their work. It’s been interesting to see how life is for artists here. It’s difficult I think. Of course there is opportunity but it really depends upon how much you wish to compromise your artistic ideals in order to make a living. The Context is a great platform for them to experiment, and there is no pressure to sell, though of course it’s nice if it happens. Given Arts Council acquiescence this should be a great project. I’ll explain the remit I gave myself, in consultation with Declan Sheehan at the Context. I figured I wanted work that was specifically ‘American’ in the widest possible sense, and wanted to discover how artists based here explore their relationship to their environment. The work chosen reflects many issues currently being debated here and will be absolutely relevant to post-Troubles, so to speak, Northern Ireland and Derry particularly. I was convinced of this when this project was conceived and reading the newspaper from home over the internet has made me even more determined. It seems that, lets not call the hoods, lets call them fascists (I’m trying very hard not to swear here!) have been attacking Polish workers and gay couples with hatchets and the like in their own homes. ( see report Poles forced to flee home: A TERRIFIED Polish couple and their two-year-old son have been left with nowhere to live after they were forced to flee their Waterside home at the weekend following a horror race attack., Derry Journal website: http://www.derrytoday.com, news section, accessed 24 May 2006)

Now it has to be said that in my time both the Left and Right has disliked me in equal measure (as a poet that’s probably as it should be) so I don’t represent any particular group, but everyone has to make a stand against this rising tide of vicious stupidity and cupidity and if curatorially I can do so, even in any small way, I will - though of course as my ego demands on my own terms. The ‘community representatives’ who should be making a stand are by their silence or PATHETIC justifications (as if stating that "somebody was seen wearing a Celtic shirt" could be any justification of the act) compliant. I would say both the Left and Right have failed but that’s for another time (and I’d be agreeing with a hyper trendy French philosopher – won’t happen that often – though to be fair even he objects to the use that hyper trendy critics have put his writing to).

So in a sense this curatorial project is heavy handed in philosophical terms. But it has to be. When viciousness is on the rise you don’t solve it by being subtle. You get your equivalent of a big stick. Saying that, the work in my proposed shows may be subtle (some of it isn’t). There is enough room for the work to breathe within the concept as will be very apparent.

Well... Greg was at the United Nations. In fact for a brief time he was the official representative of Argentina. All my dodgy visions of Eva Peron suddenly reappeared. Don’t Cry for me indeed! Which is strangely tied into the project in that the people of Derry will be hearing that song (Madonna version) a lot next Autumn. Which is also tied to the fact that the next book from my favourite author Malcolm Pryce is…Don’t ‘Cry for me Aberystwyth’. (I’m currently reading Aberystwyth Mon Amour). Weird. Anyway where was I? Oh yeah the UN. To be honest, it looks a bit grotty. It is impressive but 1970s grotty (Sorry kids, the 1970s were grotty, I was there, actually so were the 1980s). They’re also running out of space. There’s a new country created every 20 minutes so where the A’s should be at the front (everyone is seated alphabetically) the likes of Vietnam and Venezuela have been shoved. Sadly I couldn’t seize power, I had no air cover, though the dodgy green carpet deserved to be…ahem…carpet bombed. Still the concert was nice and a pleasant evening was had.

I’ve settled in pretty well here overall, though still haven’t got the hang of the food thing. I never thought it possible to have too much choice. But it’s true. There’s a café every second door and if your well versed in food geographies you’re in heaven but if you’re like me, wondering where the baked beans are on the shelf (they aren’t apart from mutant varieties of) then you’re in trouble. And since my culinary skills generally end with setting timers that go ping after 3 minutes the fact that I haven’t got a micro-wave isn’t helping. But I adapt so things are good. I won’t mention Rounders this entry except to note it hasn’t got any less boring. I did get to see a great El Salvadorean league football (not soccer, football thank you!) match on a Latin-American channel the other day.

What is interesting is the national advertising obsession with personal finance, health and cars, in the written media and on television. Every advert seems to be about one of these. You won’t get an ad for bananas at 50 pence a pound at Dunnes. This is because only the middle income matters. Those who can’t afford heathcare, personal finance plans and cars don’t matter. And since this country is essentially a one party state, (the Republicans are just the Democrats with a hangover) it won’t change, especially when the political parties and media are bought and paid for by corporate interests. God, I’m sounding like a sticker in Sandino’s Bar! (see http://www.sandinos.com/ ) Just in case everyone thinks that I’ve suddenly become hopelessly righteous I have to say that I have no objections in principle to corporations or even corrupt politicians as long as they don’t steal from the most vulnerable or ruin the country for their own personal gain.

But that’s about it for now I think. Still no mention of Donald Trump. Good stuff.

What Would You Do If I Sang Out Of Tune? Recreationism And The War On Terriers

2006-05-24T15:58:00.000+01:00

the continuation of...
Abridged 0 – 4: An(other) Irishman in New York
Curator Greg McCartney, selecting for a 2007 Context project, continues his reports from an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Residency in New York.

I’ve been to a few exhibition openings over here. Mark Kostabi’s for example whose work I actually like. There’s nothing wrong with rampant commercialism so long as it’s bloody obvious. The space was basically a shop, which is fair enough. You don’t go into McDonald’s and then complain it’s too commercial. I’ve also seen a few good shows at the non-for-profit galleries. There were a few openings however that are of interest in the context of what is happening in the art world back home at the moment. Interesting in the nature of the exhibition and the crowd that went to the exhibition. Now these shows were in the main filled with competent but rather dull (think Eric Clapton or Van Morrison records) abstraction, which certain Belfast journalists would no doubt wet themselves over. All the painterly qualities were there but God were they boring. But there were a lot of overdressed people looking at paintings and then a lot of red dots appeared beside the paintings. There wasn’t an elitist coterie to be seen anywhere. It appears that this is what we’re going to get in Belfast to replace the Ormeau Baths Gallery. This is what critics and journalists mean when they talk about widening access in galleries. They’re not praising galleries like the Context who’ve given shows to a million emerging artists in a million formats. They don’t want the snotty artist just out of college who wants to blow a hole in the gallery wall to have access to the gallery. Nor do they want the person who thinks blowing a hole in the gallery might be interesting to have access. They want the visual art version of pub bands interminably covering the classics. Safe, but hell it sells. Essentially we are talking commerce here, no bad thing in itself as everyone has to earn a living after all. But the worst of the worst is to disguise commerce with accessibility and education. So we’ll all get to see Jack B and Louis Le etc etc again and again and whatever happens to be touring at the time and no doubt from time to time the ‘rising’ young stars who’ve won the Dublin art awards. Coincidentally those blatantly commercial galleries who have works by the ‘famous’ or ‘emerging’ Irish artists will see an increase in their use of red dots. Now I’m not going to say that I liked every exhibition in the Ormeau Baths (there isn’t a single gallery in existence that has had great shows every time) but the attempt was always made at least to have a programme that brought interesting contemporary art from home and abroad to the public attention. And for one I’d take the mixing of the decks and the screaming guitar by some scrawny kid or strange European conceptualism over Van bloody Morrison any day. Now this may seem like another one of my rants but I think it’s important for people to realise what they’re getting. They’re giving certain journalists and their circle (who buy art apparently) a nice night out with friends and maybe something to put in their new conservatory. They’re giving tourists a half hour shelter from the rain. Conceptually they’re getting a museum. This approach works in New York where’s there’s millions of galleries (that have to sell to survive) and really a lot of potential customers. But we only have a few contemporary spaces. Remember people that the worst exhibitions aren’t the ones you hate but the ones that you can’t remember. And I haven’t even mentioned anything of people losing their jobs.

But I’ve seen a lot of shows that I will remember over here. Robert Boyd at Participant Inc. was excellent. I only caught the end of Camille Rose Garcia at Jonathan Levine but what I saw was great. I saw a great group show Push Me-Pull Me at the ISE Cultural Foundation which had some interesting pieces in it and was very well curated. I’ve also visited a lot of artist studios and have seen very interesting work. Everyone I’ve visited has treated me very kindly so I thank them all for that.

It’s an interesting time to be in America, but then again it’s probably always an interesting time to be in America. Immigration and Spying are the big topics over here. Illegal immigrants have taken to the streets in opposition to a bill which will result in a lot of them being sent back and others allowed to stay on in ‘guest worker’ schemes. I read a piece in the paper who interviewed some Irish guys (in a pub of course) that were complaining of these (Latin Americans) taking their jobs. Somehow this doesn’t surprise me.

Well it turns out the National Security Agency have been listening (technically ‘collecting patterns’ but who’re they kidding as they say around here) to inland telephone calls. It should come as no surprise. That what an NSA does. They’re doing it under the banner of national security (and the war on terriers) which in the past every government has found useful to cover a multitude of sins.

It has to be said I’m enjoying myself immensely here. In case anyone reading these blogs thinks otherwise. I like being in America, there’s a sense of the epic here. I like the people, or peoples more accurately perhaps. Of course I do the colonialist thing and I watch the BBC news and programmes on Public Service Television because American mainstream television for the most part is appalling, though you do get some new episodes of the Simpsons. And I drink tea because unlike Derry you can get decent tea here. But America has produced great art, music, literature and television. And it has the subway which I might have mentioned before. Taking of which - nothing cheers you up like the sudden appearance in a Monty Python Spanish Inquisition manner of a Samba band on the subway train. Brilliant! I did though on the train from Jamaica Centre endure a half hour sermon (and I’m using the word in its correct sense) intended to save presumably my soul. Now leaving aside my potential damnation it was interesting to listen to the woman preaching. I’ve never heard the name Jesus produced with, well I’m not sure if it was vehemence or passion, probably both. Also and this is the difference from Derry, nobody laughed! (Ok being the typical Derry guy, I had a half smile (warning for my readership don’t smile at anyone wanting to save your soul; it doesn’t go down well) – not too bad!) Had she been on a Derry bus there would have been one or two thirteen year old smart alecs shouting obscenities. Most people stared at the floor. One or two even chorused Amen. Did I mention how much I like the subways?

There is one disturbing trait in America and I’ll term this Recreationism. This is where American males (mostly) manage to convince themselves that Rounders is a vital part of their evolution. IT ISN’T! The rest of the world isn’t fooled. It’s only played by primary school girls. It’s the least macho game possible! And to see overweight men waddling at speed in a circle is just disturbing. Also IT’S BORING. It makes cricket interesting. I know I’m savaging a national institution here but it deserves it. And I’m going to continue to call it Rounders.

Well that’s about it for now I guess. I haven’t mentioned the idiot doorperson at the Mercury Lounge. You can only do cool and arrogant if you are a) cool b) have something to be arrogant about. And I know I still haven’t mentioned Donald Trump and I still don’t care. Also nothing of politics and the middle income. Hmmmm maybe next time. Next time will also feature my exciting adventures in and possible takeover of the United Nations. Now does anyone have a white cat I can borrow?

A Pre-Owned Song? A Second Hand Uzi?

2006-05-10T16:42:00.000+01:00

the continuation of...
Abridged 0 – 4: An(other) Irishman in New York
Curator Greg McCartney, selecting for a 2007 Context project, continues his reports from an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Residency in New York.

Well, I’ll start with the subways. The subways are great. Every city should have one. In fact I should have my own personal one. They don’t come with the graffiti of yesteryear, so there is a nice depersonalised uniformity about them. There is a scratchfiti so to speak where tag marks are scratched into windows with sharp instruments or acid-like chemicals. It has in theory artistic potential I suppose but at the moment it just looks like vandalism. I’m finding my feet with the subways and people are friendly and helpful enough when asked for directions.

I suppose I should mention the art. I’ve seen a hell of a lot of exhibitions. You don’t from the outside realise how many galleries there actually are over here until you actually visit New York. I won’t mention the work that is potentially coming to Derry because it isn’t fair as nothing has been finalised and well it would ruin the surprise wouldn’t it? (In parenthesis I’m currently getting my futbol fix by watching Inter Milan v Roma on a Latin-American channel – they only ever seem to show rounders – (you know what sport I mean) on television here) Anyway back to the art; I saw one of the most beautiful videos works I’ve ever seen by Hiraki Sawa (Sorry, Roma have just scored and the commentators are doing the Goooooooooaaaaal thing; possibly in self parody, possibly not.) at the James Cohen gallery in Chelsea. Imagine sitting there for an hour watching nothing happen apart from a little model plane fly across a window pane or little carousel horses swim across a bathtub. Sometimes the most profound insights into the human condition can come out of the most subtle glances. Words like ‘charm’ and ‘enchantment’ have been used patronisingly but their original meaning was powerful and if a work of art can enchant a person, well you know its bloody good. This guy Sawa will be big, so if anybody gallery connected sees this; bring him to Ireland!

I’ve talked to some very nice people here in New York who have kindly given me their time (I won’t embarrass you by naming names – you know who you are) and so a thank you for that. I’ve seen a lot of different types of spaces, most variations of the white cube and quite a few on the same physical scale as the Context and Void. We’re lucky to have such good spaces as we do in Derry and hopefully we won’t ruin them. Anyway back to the art; Lynne Gelfman’s painting in a really small underground (literally rather than philosophically) space were pretty amazing. Abstraction done with verve and imagination. Multi-layered constructs playing with the viewer’s perception. Really great and standing out in the morass of dodgy but saleable abstraction. Bizarrely, or perhaps not to his many fans, John Waters’ exhibition at the Marianne Boesky gallery was really memorable. Not even remotely subtle and in the grand tradition of his films (though there was no, ahem ‘excrement’ eating he said politely in this show). Among the standout pieces were disturbingly lifelike recreations of Michael Jackson and Charles Manson as grown-up babies. Weird! (In case you’re interested the match ended 1-1 and with Roma down to ten men too.)

Well that’s about it for this report, though I realise I haven’t mentioned Donald Trump as I promised. Well I’m not going to. But back to the subways. One of the rather melancholy aspects of subway journeys are the panhandlers. Some to be fair are rather joyful, as in the young guys break-dancing. A back somersault on a moving train is very impressive I can tell you. Or the gospel singers which appear every now and again. But others are just sad. Like the stumbling old ladies playing harmonicas or the young and very ill looking men looking for dollars. Of course you can’t give to everyone, but you feel like you should. And there’s the very good chance you’re being completely conned but what can you do? God I think I’m inventing working-class guilt. Oh dear.

Well next report will consist of more rambling about art, American television (an obvious target but all I can say is in comparison Channel 5 is an intellectual Godsend…though maybe not Channel Four), politics and the ‘middle income’, tea, Rounders (sorry but it was only a matter of time before I got on my high-horse about it) and Donald Trump.

Sarah Edge

2006-05-10T16:21:00.000+01:00

SELECTIVE SUBJECTIVE:
THE HISTORICAL PHOTOGRAPH AS A TRACE OF HISTORY
a net art project by Sarah Edge
at the CMR website from May 9th 2006
http://www.arts.ulster.ac.uk/media/cmr.html

This interactive website grew from the exhibition MemoryMythPhotography at Context Galleries in January 2005.
Catalogue available

Kim Montgomery

2006-05-10T16:16:00.000+01:00

Kim Montgomery
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Kim Montgomery, from: neither you nor I are what we hope to become someday

2006-05-10T16:15:00.000+01:00

Kim Montgomery, from: neither you nor I are what we hope to become someday
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Kim Montgomery

2006-05-10T15:49:00.000+01:00

neither you nor I are what we hope to become someday
Kim Montgomery
Gallery 1 May 13th – June 10th 2006
Artist’s talk 2pm, Thursday 18 May

Kim Montgomery’s work references popular culture, art history, icons and iconography. She identifies modern day ‘icons’, living and dead, objects or places, and creates for them using canvases sharing the traditional measurements of Christian icons. Her interest focuses on the male figure in popular conscousness and how beauty and self-destruction in idolised young men have traditionally gone hand-in-hand and been celebrated and exploited - particularly in the Twentieth Century with such figures as Sid Vicious. The artist is interested in these glamorously subversive figures and their appeal to in particular the young who often identify with them seeing them as rebels against conformity. Montgomery also recognises objects that have gained a cult following among the young. These products deliberately mix mass production and pseudo-subversion, encouraging a spirituality combined with fashion and economics.
The artist also explores the relationship between the idol and herself, the idoliser and the methods of facilitating this worship. Montgomery recreates in paint such throwaway yet obsessively collected and (for the producers) profit making ephemera as posters, postcards, badges etc. In this she references movements like Pop Art, an art movement that began in Britain and the United States in the 1950s that used the images and techniques of mass media, advertising, and popular culture, to make points about contemporary culture, often in an ironic manner.

Kim Montgomery graduated in Fine Art at the University of Ulster in 2004. Previous exhibitions include group shows, From Ritual to Romance, Catalyst Gallery, Belfast, 2003; Take Away, Context Gallery 2004. This is the artist’s solo show.

Peter Kelly, ST1 5HY

2006-05-10T15:39:00.000+01:00

Peter Kelly, ST1 5HY
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Peter Kelly

2006-05-10T15:29:00.000+01:00

ST1 5HY
Peter Kelly
Gallery 2 May 13th – June 10th 2006

Peter Kelly’s work uses photography, text, and objects to examine life in what was once designated as “the worst street in England”, Century Street in Stoke, in which the artist lived for one year. It chronicles instances of crime, destitution and dereliction, yet places these in their context, and looks within them for elements of the tragic and the absurd.

ST1 5HY is based on my experience of living on no.77 Century Street between 16th Sept 2003 – 29th May 2004. It started life as a purely photographic project even though I had never attempted, or been particularly interested in, documentary photography. But as life and events unfolded I felt there was an opportunity to pursue this style of photography. I chose to photograph mainly between 6 and 7am as I didn’t want people in the frame, I was more interested in the evidence that there had been a human presence there.
It was important to not simply condemn the street in its present standing, but to research into its past to uncover clues as to how it ended up as statistically the worst street in England and Wales. The research included Census records, ordinance survey maps and business directories. The more information I gathered the more the need to refine this data into a relevant way that connected the past with the present.
My interest started to focus on the 12 (the 13th being no.77) houses that are abandoned, vandalised, for sale and empty. At the same time I began experimenting decorating pottery with images from the ongoing photographic project. This not only connected the project to Stoke-on-Trent, but also very specifically to Century Street. There where two ceramic factories situated on the street from the early 1800’2 to the mid-1900’s. The ceramics also gave me a medium on which to place the various strands of research, which now included recording dialogue from the street.
ST1 5HY does not seek to judge, but to present my own experiences of living on Century Street along with over 150 years of human and industrial history in a coherent and accessible manner.

Exhibitions previews at 8pm, Saturday 13 May
Exhibition runs until June 10

forthcoming

2006-05-02T20:04:00.000+01:00

forthcoming
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Abridged 0 – 4: An(other) Irishman in New York

2006-04-29T12:56:00.000+01:00

Curator Greg McCartney, selecting for a 2007 Context project, reports from an Arts Council of Northern Ireland Residency in New York.

Week 1. ‘Once again a knife wielding maniac has shown us the way…’

Well what a first week it’s been in this irritable if not actually angry city! In Derry would they stop a bus until a guy who’s insisting that it’s his constitutional right to drink a coffee on the bus actually drinks the coffee? Back home we’d just call him strange and let him drink the coffee. But here the employees are equally afraid that the guy has a gun or that the boss might appear and find a guy drinking illegal coffee so lose their job. This happened five minutes after I arrived.

As you’ve already guessed these blog entries from our man in New York will ramble much like he’s been wandering through the New York streets. There will be reports on good art, bad art, silly art and of course expensive art, which is a category in itself. Plus anything else that comes to mind! And Donald Trump.

Well I started my explorations in Chelsea (and not just because of the Hotel or the Football team…well maybe a little) as that is very a lot of galleries live. And I do mean ‘a lot of’! There seem to be millions, piled upon each other; from street level to sixth floor. After about the tenth show your eyes start to glaze over. They used to apparently subject prisoners in the Spanish Civil War to repeated exposure to abstract paintings as a form of torture. Let me tell you it works! I’d have told them anything! There is of course no doubt excellent essential commercial reasons for dodgy abstraction but bloody hell…However there is good stuff amongst the dross. It’s just a matter of walking a lot. And avoid the traffic. Traffic it may be argued is at the bottom of the very aggressive US foreign policy. Anyone who has to either drive or cross roads here (i.e. everyone) knows that road laws are just advisory and not to be adhered to especially if avoidance is advantageous to self. Consequently there is a constant battle of wills between cars and pedestrians, cars and cars, lorries and everyone. Thus New York is continually narked. Imagine if it’s the same in Washington. Someone has to suffer. Road rage therefore could be the driving force behind American foreign policy.

I feel that it’s my duty to point out that if you have bad skin, hair, are ‘chubby’ or acne then Chelsea galleries (with one or two hopefully honourable exceptions of whom more in future) probably won’t employ you. They are entirely populated by very ‘beautiful’ types. Though this might of course be completely coincidental. The spaces I have come across so far themselves are a mixed bag. The more expensive (and I used the term deliberately) galleries have essentially made for themselves white cubes with big windows in former factory buildings. The smaller galleries seem to make more imaginative use of the spaces they inhabit. I’m going to go into more detail about the shows I’ve seen in future entries but artists that should be googled include Christina Ray, Lynne Gelfman, James Surls, Jon Waters (yeah, that one) and Maurico Alejo. I’ll go into more detail anon.

Well that’ll do as an introduction. By the way I’ve stolen the Factory records habit of giving a number to everything. Talent borrows, genius steals and all that. More soon about exhibitions, artists and galleries. And Donald Trump.

Primary Forms, NWIFHE HND Show 2006

2006-04-28T19:45:00.000+01:00

Primary Forms, NWIFHE HND Show 2006
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Primary Forms

2006-04-28T19:34:00.000+01:00

N.W.I.F.H.E HND Fine Art Final Year Exhibition
Previews Friday 28 April 8pm Exhibition Runs To 6 May

Context Galleries furthers its support for visual arts in the region with this exhibition of final year work by the students of the North West Institute of Further & Higher Education. The exhibition includes a rich diversity of media and approaches, from painting to video to installation, and is a unique opportunity for all to see the emerging artists of the city at the high point of their careers to date.

Featured artists:

Ben King Signed inside lilac by the D.N.A of Ben King describes six senses, sense which give the ability of existence. Received by senses, processed by emotion and expressed as art to become aware of the capabilities of sound, sight, taste, touch, smell and balance is what gives us freedom in this concrete jungle.

Padraig Lynch My work is based on the theme of depression and gambling as I feel as a young person within society that it is a problem seldom dealt with and is easily overshadowed by other issues i.e. alcoholism and drug addiction. I used a range of materials including oil paints, newspaper, latex, plaster, mod roc etc. I’ve also used a range of mark-making techniques to create an atmosphere, and to put across my feelings.

Tommy Long In my work I tackle the social issue of alcohol abuse. I have painted the street drinkers of Derry because I want to bring people face to face with the alcoholic. I want to show that behind each of these faces is a real person, a person entitled to the same respect as all of us. Alcoholism is a disease that affects all classes. I want to portray these sufferers with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Mark McDermott The Do-It-Yourself Autopsy
The Do-It-Yourself Autopsy is a German Expressionist influenced conceptual piece meditating on the nature of “Shock Art” and what exactly it is. It is also a satire, of sorts on “extreme artists” who use art as an excuse to mutilate and defile their bodies.

Eva Conboy Extinct ,Plaster and Polystyrene
Weathered pieces of wood, buoys washed up on the beach, polystyrene packaging are some of the found objects I incorporate directly or indirectly in my work. This piece is an attempt to integrate materials and processes of the past with themes and issues of the contemporary world. It is part planned, part improvised. Essentially, through sculpture I want to make a physical celebration of what is thrown away, discarded or ignored in the ever more disposable world.

Eoghan Deane Primarily the work deals in the amalgamation of materials, symbols and narratives and how they intersperse with each others elements to propagate questions of biological growth and entropy. This process is structured around the Greed Mythological tale of the God Apollo and the Satyr Marsyas where a musical contest is performed. Marsyas loses and is flayed of his skin as punishment for being in a state of hubris.
This story is consumed and excreted by the gallery literally and metaphorically, the sculptures and drawings presented mark these stages of consumption, the passage of digestion and the conclusion of excretion. The sculptures and drawings have elements that recognise and narrate the biological process occurring in the gallery and also the story of Marsyas’ journey from the beginning of the game to its conclusive properties.

Brian Mallon The last icon is dead and gone.
My work is based on the idea of media martyrs and youth culture relying on figures in the public eye for a life basis. It is about hero worship. Media: canvas and spray paint.

Grainne Stewart My work is based around social issues, involving refugees, asylum seekers and the effect of desolation that has on people. I would consider my work as an attempt to show suffering that arises out of conflict, as it is my belief that life is precious, as is such when I portray suffering it is to show that life is too short for it. Bad things should not happen, but they do! I want to make people think about it, but not to judge it. I want to portray these sufferers with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Daniel Gallanagh I express my feelings of the heightened, euphoric times I have had in my life. These times should not be forgotten but should be celebrated. This is possible with such a powerful media like paint and the process of painting emulates these feelings and make it possible to relieve and recreate these moments in time. Through construction, appropriate mark making gestures, appropriate medium and expressive colour each session is similar to a physical rendering of the moment. Feelings experienced and captured in the mechanics of process!

Sinead Millar
This piece is about feminism and all great women artists who have campaigned to get women recognised in the art world as professional artists and not as they where once labelled as “extensions of their husband’s genius”. This piece symbolises all that women have done over the years so that women today could be equal in relation to human rights, in and out of the art world.

Noel C.Barr The Cube
“I am personally driven to create my work using knowledge from my past, present and future that I dream about….”
“I socialise with every day obstacles and creative people for inspiration. Within inspiration I usually go into a trance like state.”
Why is that?
Is it because we are surrounded with temptations, barricades, obstructions mentally that we can’t see past, therefore resulting in a pause, maybe only for a milli-second or a second until what we were thinking about returns.
Using video to explore my urges to try different mediums, each video will have a significant meaning relating to peoples lives in general, but it’s connecting them to solve the puzzles to questions are sub-conscience often ask us when we go through change or experience something different…
But beyond the moving image there will be a vacuum created within the room, between the viewers thoughts, confusion and moving images and the other wall they become, the missing jigsaw piece. In other words, there is a cube like shape completed when the lid is fixed on top, the audience is the lid to close off the confined obstacles, to close off, or shall I say hide away, because nothing every completely disappears. It’s always somewhere else, maybe in a different state but still there………..

Matthew PorterExperimental Photography: Through my photographs I am trying to show the reoccurring patterns that exist throughout the universe. I approached a non representational way using paint as well as plants to create abstract natural forms.

See entry below for footage of Safe Cracker

2006-04-15T14:41:00.000+01:00

See entry below for footage of Safe Cracker
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Mark Hill, Safe Cracker

2006-04-15T14:27:00.000+01:00

Check our new link to view fantastic footage for our 2003 project Safe Cracker with artist Mark Hill. Go to link on the right Safe Break @ White Diamond, then click on the diamond logo, then click on link White Diamond, then click on link Safe Break, and then click on the link for Safecracker video.
Enjoy!

Katie Blue & Paul Matosic

2006-03-24T17:34:00.000Z

Exhibition invite - Katie Blue & Paul Matosic
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Katie Blue & Paul Matosic

2006-03-24T17:30:00.000Z

You are invited to the opening of
Finders Keepers exhibition by Katie Blue
&
Multipli-City by Paul Matosic
On Saturday 25th March 5 – 8 pm Context Galleries
Exhibit is open from 25th March – 22nd April 2006

A project from the Source : PLAY-ART MATERIALS CENTRE
in association with The Playhouse, supported by Co-Operation Ireland

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006

2006-02-22T13:31:00.000Z

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006

2006-02-22T13:30:00.000Z

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006

2006-02-22T13:29:00.000Z

Damien Duffy, from New Work 2006
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Damien Duffy – New Work

2006-02-22T13:19:00.000Z

Context Galleries 1
25 Feb 06 – 18th Mar 06
These paintings represent something of a shift in focus for the artist whose previous work was primarily abstract. Duffy here uses methods of painting that are deliberately ‘wrong’ or ‘bad’, ignoring traditional tastes of harmony of composition and technique. This new work mixes elements of representation with abstraction. The work is influenced by Giotto (1267-1337) in particular his fresco ‘Joachim’s Dream’.‘Joachim’s Dream’ is part of a cycle of fresco depicting the life of Joachim, an Old Testament figure, at the Cappella Srovegni (Arena Chapel) Padua, Italy. Duffy is influenced by the strong architectural elements in Giotto’s work, who for example in ‘Joachim’s Dream’ depicts Joachim in an almost cube-like manner. Giotto’s fresco depicts Joachim sheltering in a hut and a rock. Duffy’s work explores habitats, shelters, retreats from the world. Doors and windows punctuate abstract swirls though it isn’t clear if we are viewing the inside or outside of the structure. There are echoes of Samuel Beckett in these works particularly Beckett’s concerns with claustrophobia and constriction. In these paintings the viewer is both inside and outside the work, trapped inside the work and at the same time witnessing the scene from the outside. There are elements of the theatre in the construction of the works. The windows and doors remind the viewer of facades or props. Neither abstraction or representation completely dominates.

from research towards Light Project, Emma Donaldson

2006-02-16T16:04:00.000Z

from research towards Light Project, Emma Donaldson
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

research towards Light Project, Emma Donaldson

2006-02-16T16:02:00.000Z

research towards Light Project, Emma Donaldson
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Light Project, Emma Donaldson

2006-02-16T15:40:00.000Z

Emma Donaldson
Light Project

Passage Entrance to the Playhouse Arts Centre –
Light Project Prototype II
Gallery 2 (process room) –
Light Project Prototype I

Previews Saturday 25th February @ 8pm
Prototype I runs until 11th March
Prototype II runs until 31st March

A public artwork sited in the passage entrance to the Playhouse Theatre:
also a full process room in Gallery Two devoted to the development of the work, and its prototypes.

Emma Donaldson works with a range of media including drawing, object making, sound work, video and writing. She is from Armagh, studied at Wimbledon School of Art, The Royal College of Art and graduated from the Architectural Association in 1996. She has exhibited in Europe and America, and developed three projects with Context Galleries since 2001.

The Light Project evolves from the artist’s interests in her experience of ‘environment’, that is where she lived, where she worked, where she socialised, where she walked etc. She considers that our daily lives in environments such as these are managed by invisible yet powerful systems that govern our behaviour. For example we these days would find it very difficult to get by without the electrical systems that control everything from our alarm clock to our banking. But we have little or no control of these systems which are often owned by government, conglomerate or other private enterprise. Even our memories depend upon patterns governing our activity in the past e.g. commercial, cultural, political or technological trends. Also how we see the past depends on the systems that manage our lives now. The Light Project represent the movement or pattern of these systems; in particular in this instance simulating the usage of electricity and water in the Playhouse thus reflecting the work and leisure patterns of those who work in and use the building.

Prototype I (Gallery 2)
Prototype I is made up of two shapes. Both are made of plywood and covered in paper. One is spherical and has a circle of red coloured 60 watt lamps fitted in a spherical shape set within it. The other is tablet shaped and contains blue coloured 60 watt lamps. The paper covering is a pattern paper commonly used in the garment industry.

Prototype II (Entrance Passageway)
Prototype II is made from stainless steel and is covered by a woven lyrca fabric often used for women’s underwear. This fabric covers a series of lamps, connected to a sensor itself connected to the electricity and water supply of the building enabling the Prototype II lamps to signal Louis Macneice’s ‘Autobiography’ and Samuel Beckett’s ‘Brief Dream’ poems in Morse Code (see below for translation). Morse Code was a system devised by Samuel Morse consisting of dots and dashes representing the different letters of the alphabet so that messages can be sent either by lamp or wireless. The artist is interested in the rhythms of these poems as much as she is in their themes, which explore the effect of Macneice’s mother’s death upon the poet (‘Autobiography’) and a dream world where anything is possible (‘Brief Dream’). When the usage of water or electricity increases the speed of the Morse Code signal also increases. Conversely when usage decreases the signal slows down.

Autobiography (Louis MacNeice)
My father made the walls resound,/He wore his collar the wrong way round./When I was five the black dreams came/Nothing after was quite the same./When I woke they did not care;/Nobody, nobody was there./In my childhood trees were green/And there was plenty to be seen./When my silent terror cried,/Nobody, nobody replied./I got up; the chilly sun/ Saw me walk away alone./My mother wore a yellow dress;/Gentle, gently, gentleness./The dark was talking to the dead/The lamp was dark beside my bed./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come./Come back early or never come.
Brief Dream (Samuel Beckett)
go end there/one fine day/where never till then/till as much as to say/no matter where/no matter when

Light Project Prototype #2: from the artist’s proposal:
Summary
As a sculptural installation the Light Project incorporates within its performance a ‘replaying’ of the situation occurring in the host gallery building. The sculpture exists as two coloured spherical shapes suspended from the ceiling. Within each suspended structure is a ring of lamps projecting outwards to function as signals. These lamps are programmed to deliver, by way of Morse Code, the poetry of Samuel Beckett’s ‘Brief Dream’ and Louis Macneice’s ‘Autobiography’. Where the Light project stretches the parameter of site–specific and responsive sculpture is in its connection to the essential services of mains electricity and main water supplies maintaining, administrating and enabling the gallery to provide a public service. These services are monitored, measured and fed back into the computer managing the Morse signals and, when demands on these services change the speed of the lamp signals will change accordingly. The project aims to sustain the significance of the artwork for the public and should be understood as both experimental and a beginning.

Norma Lowney, at Context Galleries, pic 1

2006-01-25T12:54:00.000Z

Norma Lowney, at Context Galleries, pic 1
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Norma Lowney, at Context Galleries, pic 2

2006-01-25T12:53:00.000Z

Norma Lowney, at Context Galleries, pic 2
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Norma Lowney, Interaction

2006-01-25T12:52:00.000Z

Norma Lowney, Interaction
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Norma Lowney

2006-01-24T13:19:00.000Z

Norma Lowney
when wallpaper left home…
gallery1, 28 jan – 20 feb
the zoo story by edward albee
a qqd production with set & production design by norma lowney
gallery2, thursday 9 – sat 11 feb

In a unique project embracing both visual arts and theatre, Context Galleries presents new work by the artist Norma Lowney, who is based in Limerick and is currently set designer for Limerick’s Impact Theatre (recent productions include Magnum Hopeless & Valparaiso). Norma Lowney graduated with an Hons Higher Diploma in Education from Limerick School of Art and Design, 2005, and a B.A. Hons in Fine and Applied Art from University of Ulster, Belfast 2004. Exhibitions include: ADT Exhibition, LSAD, Limerick, 2005; Cork Open, Crawford Gallery, Cork, 2004/05; Signature, University of Ulster, Belfast, 2004; Panoply, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, 2004; Countess Markievicz Medal, United Arts Club, Dublin, 2004; Sounding Space, Waterfront Hall, Belfast, 2003.

My interests lie in transforming the gallery space into a visual wonderland, in dissolving the physical matter of that space so that it becomes pure pattern. I endeavour to control all aspects of that space in order to evoke a response in the audience.

Pattern and wallpaper are dominant themes in my work, as they reflect the domestic realm, the past and the inevitable recurrence of this pattern in the future. I have always been fascinated by the marks that people leave behind. The traces of their existence left as a reminder for us who follow in their wake.

This exhibition, “When Wallpaper Left Home and Made an Exhibition of Itself”, has as its over-riding objective the intention to involve and embrace the viewer .The space has been transformed into one of pattern, light and sound. The installation breaks down the traditional pretence of the gallery, as it refers to and explains its creation.

Anne Hendrick, in New Irish Painting

2005-12-01T15:52:00.000Z

Anne Hendrick, in New Irish Painting
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

New Irish Painting, artists / catalogue cover

2005-11-24T16:49:00.000Z

New Irish painting
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Matthew O'Kane, in New Irish Painting

2005-11-24T16:48:00.001Z

Matthew O'Kane
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Olive Ambrose, in New Irish Painting

2005-11-24T16:48:00.000Z

Olive Ambrose
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Tempy Osborne, in New Irish Painting

2005-11-24T16:47:00.000Z

Tempy Osborne
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

New Irish Painting

2005-11-24T16:42:00.000Z

New Irish Painting

an introduction by Robert Armstrong, Head of Painting, NCAD

Making art is full of new beginnings. Every day, every work, every false start, every Eureka moment, every doubt and hesitation, every mistake . . . every new beginning (again!) until finally the work is shown and then starts the beginning of another process involving the audience.

The recent resurgence in popularity of painting is welcome, though it can’t be long before painting again will be diagnosed with terminal illness. Rude good health has encouraged a burgeoning of exciting new painting practice. Diversity is in - even within individual practice. No one ideology is driving painting practice. No one style is dominant. Anything goes! Perhaps now more than ever. Painting is moving out of the galleries, off the walls, into computer animation software – travelling wherever it may to interrogate its history and to satisfy the hopes and challenges set by the young artists who choose to work with and extend the potential of the medium. This is simultaneously a liberation and a challenge.

These students of the National College of Art & Design Painting Department are at the beginning of their careers, and they are up for the challenge. Their work is full of the excitement and optimism that would be expected. They welcome this opportunity to exhibit their work, and NCAD is happy to support them with this exhibition in the Context Galleries in Derry. We acknowledge in particular the enthusiasm of Marianne O’Kane in curating this exhibition.

NCAD /CONTEXT GALLERIES EXHIBITION
'New Irish Painting'

Forthcoming at Context Galleries in December 2005, is an important exhibition, entitled 'New Irish Painting' by twenty-five final year BA Fine Art Painting students from the National College of Art and Design. This is an innovative one off exhibition curated by Marianne O'Kane, Curator of Cavanacor Gallery and a member of the Context Board of Directors.

This is the largest group survey exhibition of painting at the Context Galleries to date. The Context Galleries are renowned for platforming the practise of young graduates and emerging artists and yet this exhibition also illustrates the importance of the art institution itself, in that all students are in their final months of art education. There is a tendency for Fine Art graduates to focus on conceptual and lens based practise after completing their training and while this is valid and noteworthy, 'New Irish Painting' focuses solely on painting and profiles the best work of the students in this discipline. The exhibition will feature one representative work by each participant. The students are from throughout Ireland, north and south. There is a vibrant and diverse range of painting full of experimental fervour and creative passion.

The Curator has identified a unique dynamic in the art college, where collaborative workshops and discussion naturally occur between the students. It is being curated through a series of college and studio visits, accompanied by discussions with the participating group. NCAD have commended the venture as the first of its kind and a unique North/South collaboration. A publication, funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the National College of Art and Design will accompany the exhibition. This catalogue contains a feature essay by Marianne O'Kane, Curator and a Foreword by Robert Armstrong Head of Painting at the National College of Art and Design.

The participating students are: Maire O'Mahony, Oisin Byrne, Louise Butler, Lucy Sheridan, Matthew O'Kane, Carol Anne McGowan, Priscila Fernades, Kim McGlynn, Sarah O'Neill, Emer G. McKeever, Anne Hendrick, Rachel Egan, Jane Hughes, Emma Roche, David O'Kane, Aoife Miskella, Amy Sheridan, Tempy Osborne, Fiona Chambers, Liam Ryan, Mark Simpson, Maria Hildrick, Sophie Loughnan, Samantha Clarke and Olive Ambroise. 'New Irish Painting' provides a unique opportunity to view the work of up and coming names in the Irish art world and purchase their work.

10 December 2005 – 21 January 2006

Portrait of Ali, Colin Peck

2005-11-24T16:40:00.000Z

Colin Peck, Portrait of Ali
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

portraits of ali

2005-11-24T16:35:00.000Z

portraits of ali
colin peck

Context Galleries presents an exhibition of new photographs by Colin Peck, the internationally known documentary filmmaker based in Prehen House, Derry.

The photographs, collectively known as Portraits of Ali are an intense series of experimental portraits using long exposure and medium format photography.

Colin Peck has worked as documentary filmmaker throughout Europe and Asia, with his works broadcast by most major networks including ARTE, BBC, ARD, ABC, NHK, RTL.

Exhibition previews Saturday 26th November at 8pm.
Exhibition continues until December 3rd.

background image, John Matthews, Tonight Lets Get Lost

2005-11-17T17:58:00.000Z

background image, John Matthews, Tonight Lets Get Lost
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Videographies

2005-11-17T17:51:00.001Z

Context Galleries presents a specially programmed event as a parallel to the Foyle Film Festival 2005:

Videographies

In March 2005, filmmaker Tracy Cullen approached Context Galleries with a concept for an exhibition which would open up to young people both the medium and the practice of art using video. With the generous support of The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland Use Your Imagination Award, we have been able to present this as a key commitment to our Outreach process and to supporting emerging artists.

In this unique exhibition and access project, a team of young people from a rich multiplicity of backgrounds have collectively selected, programmed and designed a Context Galleries exhibition, on the theme of peace-building, of art works on video. These videos were responses to our calls to artists to submit works on that theme. As part of the team’s process of exploring the idea of peace-building and the medium of video, they have also made their own video on that theme, with filmmaker Tracy Cullen.

The videographers are:

Andrew Boyle
Rosanne Dowling
Erin McDevitt
Conor Norris
Simona Spinola

The artists from Ireland, Finland, Scotland and USA that they have selected are:

Bronwen Casson
Jacqueline Galvin
Stephen Gunning
Elina Hartzell
John Matthews
Ailie Rutherford
Lee Welch

Exhibition opens at 8pm, Wednesday 16 November
Exhibition continues until December 3

work in The Moving Image by Catherine Chaumont

2005-11-17T17:51:00.000Z

Moving Image pic by Catherine Chaumont
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

The Moving Image… Magic boxes and story films...Boscaí Draíochta agus Scannáin Seanchais

2005-11-17T17:45:00.001Z

Context Galleries presents specially programmed events in parallel with the Foyle Film Festival 2005:

The Moving Image… Magic boxes and story films
Boscaí Draíochta agus Scannáin Seanchais

A collaboration between Jan Caspers and artists from three different countries, Catherine Chaumont of Québec, Canada, Ian Joyce of Donegal, Ireland and Julia Oschatz of Germany, ‘The Moving Image’ combines traditional printmaking with the moving images of early story film reels thus drawing an interesting parallel to the contemporary Foyle Film Festival which takes place at the same time.

Each artist presents three print cycles. The prints will eventually be mounted on conveyor belts and operated as continuous loops in mechanical screen cases. Thus only one set of three images will remain visible at any time, resulting in ever changing aspects of the landscapes, stories and abstract representations that form the subject of the cycles.

Born in Germany, Jan Caspers has worked in the medium of story and shadow films for a number of years. In the summer of 2003 he brought together three visual artists as part of an Údaras na Gaeltachta project entitled ‘Boscaí Draíochta – Scannáin Seanchais’. This project aimed to complement the work of schoolchildren who had made story films of their own with the work of artists with different visual vocabularies.

Catherine Chaumont is from Québec and works as a printmaker and piano teacher in Montréal. Her main interest is in the combination of visual art with language and music.

Ian Joyce is from Ireland and works as a printmaker and audiovisual artist in Donegal. He runs Cló Ceardlann na gCnoc, a printmaking workshop and artists’ resource centre in Bunbeg in the Donegal Gaeltacht.

Julia Oschatz is from Germany and works as a painter and visual artist in Frankfurt. She has exhibited widely in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Iceland and New York.

Preview Wednesday November 16th. Runs until December 3rd 2005.

Piece

2005-11-17T17:40:00.000Z

Piece

...an exhibition of Craft, Applied Art and Design loosely based on the theme of "peace".

Thirteen artists were selected by a prestigious selection panel to exhibit a very diverse range of work. From ceramics, jewellery, glass, textiles and mixed media, this new exhibition organised by Craftmark is a unique opportunity to view work inspired by the artists' very personal interpretation of the theme.

The exhibition was opened by Her Worship the mayor, Councillor Lynn Fleming.

Tuesday 15th November 2005 until Tuesday 22nd November.

Presented at the Context Galleries by Craftmark in association with the Economic Development Section, Derry City Council.

For more information see:

http://www.craftmark.ie/html/exhibitions.asp

background image: Ruth Rogers, Rush Hour Bomb, 2005

2005-11-17T17:39:00.000Z

background image: Ruth Rogers, Rush Hour Bomb, 2005
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Damaged Collateral

2005-11-17T17:20:00.000Z

Damaged Collateral:
Inner City Gothic
And the Suburban Sublime

George Bolster – Denzil Browne – Amanda Dunsmore
Fiona Larkin – James Lumsden – Sean Lynch
Theresa Nanigian – Ruth Rogers

Bird Flu, Binge Drinking, Anti – Social Behaviour, Suicide Bombers and Global Warming. Fear is Man’s best friend. Paranoia is on first name terms. ‘Damaged Collateral: Inner City Gothic and the Suburban Sublime’ the new exhibition at Context Galleries sheds light on our various demons. From the playful to the downright sinister Damaged Collateral explores the fear that haunts modern living and the failure of political and philosophical utopias. Theresa Nanigian explores the constantly shifting zone between stagnation and anarchy and spontaneous adaptability while George Bolster documents the insidious and sometimes blatant marketing of violence to children through toys and games. Ruth Rogers takes innocuous images from newspaper colour supplements and subverts them into carrying highly-charged messages using only the intervention of correction fluid and the newspaper's own main headline. Sean Lynch details crowd barriers, stacked for potential use at urban gatherings such as July 12 in Belfast, Columbus day in New York and St Patrick’s Day in Dublin. The visuality around these objects presents the clear agendas that we, as urban dwellers, must deal with. Amanda Dunsmore documents abandoned building complexes in Weimar, in Eastern Germany, constructed by the Nazis and appropriated by the Soviets, their decaying rooms holding more than remnants of ideologies. James Lumsden’s work is from into two distinct yet related series; Fascination aims to reflect the power of propaganda to manipulate, seduce and coerce - where fictions can be seen to become truths through constant repetition. In the paintings Revelation and Disclosure an illusion of light is highlighted as a fabrication by the exposure within the picture plane of the underlying material support. If the illusory light is seen as a metaphor for an unattainable utopian perfection, the revelation of the material reality beneath the painting acts as a reminder to question, to look beneath the surface of what is perceived. Fiona Larkin also questions the media she uses, this time photography in a series of three works which use elements of collage to disrupt the perfect surface of the photographs. Denzil Browne uses pin-hole camera techniques in a series of night time images, the long exposure time depopulating the works creating eerie atmospheric nightscapes filled with tension and the probability of trouble.

Works

Sean Lynch: Social Sculpture 1, 2 & 3 (2005)

Fiona Larkin: The Kindness of Strangers (2005)

George Bolster: Conditioned: Follow – Off to School – Distraction – Text – Playground (2003 A0 Lazerjet Print)

Ruth Rogers

Denzil Browne

Amanda Dunsmore: ‘Peripherie' 5 minute loop with separate CD audio
(1997 – 2004)

James Lumsden: Revelation; Fascination (Polyptych)

Theresa Nanigian – Threshold (2004)

27th October – 12th November 2005
Including
War of the WorldsA recreation of the infamous Orson Welles radio broadcast
By the Orbit Theatre Company

Resident (installation shot): featuring works by Hilary Morton

2005-10-13T16:18:00.001+01:00

Resident installation pic, featuring works by Hilary Morton
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Resident (installation shot): featuring works by Mark Hill, Julius Guzy, Alie Rutherford

2005-10-13T16:18:00.000+01:00

Resident installation pic, featuring works by Mark Hill, Julius Guzy, Alie Rutherford
Originally uploaded by contextgalleries.

Resident

2005-10-13T16:08:00.000+01:00

Context Galleries runs the Artist in Resident project to bring visual arts out to communities who would not be able to readily avail of such activities. This year we are showing the work produced by 10 communities in the Derry City Council area as they worked with our professional artists.

St Bernadette’s Pre School PlaygroupThe playgroup staff asked the artist to assist them with signage for their building as it is hard to locate in this built up area. The small children sponged and hand printed the surface of the sign and it was finished by the artist in mosaic lettering. To be installed on the building at Hazlebank, Derry
Artist: Hilary Morton

Praxis Care GroupThe Richmond Hall in Eden Terrace gathers local people with a learning disability to share daily activities such as craft work and such recreational activities. They painted freely with much encouragement from the artist who is an experienced painter himself. A love of life and colour is evident in the paintings and the large 8 x 12 mural.
Artist: Julius Guzy

Travellers Support Group
The tradition of metal work and knowledge of horses in the Travelling community are reflected in the large flying horse constructions in the middle of the gallery. Their enthusiasm matched with the metal work skills of the artist produced this spectacular work which will be installed at the Ballyarnett Park site,
141 Racecourse Road, Derry
Artist: Mark Hill

New Building Community and Environmental Association
This rural village have an annual festival for the whole community and they decided to work on a sea theme making flying fish wind socks, octopus costumes and a sea creature to wander through their parade. Dressmaking and carnival arts skills, often using recycled materials are used to great effect.
Artist: Sarah Lewtas

Lilliput Theatre Company
This is a theatre group located in the Playhouse whose membership is learning disabled adults . They worked with Todd Herman and Amanda Coslor from the Dancing Tree, San Francisco, who specialise in doing art work with marginalized groupings. The film Welcome to my Home, running in gallery 2, is a touching testimony to their love of home, family and neighbourhood.
Artists: The Dancing Tree

Galliagh Women’s Group
Traditional photography had been the original description for the work on this residency but with the enthusiasm and demands of the women and the expertise of the artist the end product evolved into a light box display incorporating local history, imagery from their lives and neighbourhood. Displayed in gallery 2.
Artist: Denzil Browne

Melrose Day Centre
The adults attending this supportive day centre were invited to paint to their hearts content with quality canvasses and paints and brushes. Some were done in 5 minutes, some in hours! More and more people joined in as the enthusiasm for colour and freedom of expression spread!
Artist: Julius Guzy

Fountain Youth Club
The children of the club decided on the varied imagery in this mural which can be seen on their building in the Fountain. They participated in every aspect of the work from design to completion and it reflects the places they would love to visit by rail, sea and air, their beloved Samba band and the disliked CCTV cameras!
Artist: Blaze FX

Creggan Pre School Training Trust
The children from their After Schools Club worked with artist Hilary Morton to produce a large collective banner displaying the loves of their lives! And the adventures of marbleing and its unexpected results are displayed in the large frames, all to be displayed in their building.
Artist: Hilary Morton

Shantallow Community Arts
A Night at the Oscars is a film which records an evenings entertainment as part of the Shantallow Arts Festival. Local people in Gallaigh voted for their favourite films and then Oscars were awarded for the winners. The cinema, a local hall, was beautifully fitted out for the evening with red carpet and plush curtaining!
Artist: Ailie Rutherford

For information about the artists or communities on the Artist in Residence Project contact the Project Officer, Sheila Fairon at email aircontext@yahoo.co.uk.

The gallery is open 11.00am to 5.00pm Tuesday to Saturday and the exhibition runs for 2 weeks until Friday 21 October 2005.