I want to be your dog-GLASGOW

The Glue Factory, 22 Farnell Street, Glasgow, G4 9SE

10 October – 2 November, 2013: Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays, 12-6pm.

Preview: Thursday 10 October, 6-9pm.

I want to be your dog is an exhibition that isn’t about anything in particular – but I guess if it were to be about something it would probably be about dogs. If not, it might be about sex, or submission, or Iggy Pop. Or it might be about all of these things, or it might be about something else entirely. 

Artists: Beagles & Ramsay / Bryan Derballa / Cathrine & Katharine / David Eager Maher / Erica Eyres / Gavin Turk / Georgia Rose Murray / Harry Hill / Jim Fitzpatrick / Joe Duggan / Lewis den Hertog / Magda Archer / Michael Beirne / Nevan Lahart / Paul Hallahan / Rachael Corcoran / Rachel Maclean / Richard Kern / Sonia Shiel / Stephen Marshall / Vanessa Donoso-Lopez / And quite possibly Lee Welch

Curated by Rachael Corcoran. 

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   -

Vanessa Donoso López, installation shots, The Glue Factory, Glasgow 2013

A PAINFUL EXCESS OF PLEASURE. Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin

A PAINFUL EXCESS OF PLEASURE

Vanessa Donoso López
Kevin Kavanagh gallery

Opening reception
Thursday, September 26^th 2013, 6-8pm
September 26^th-October 26^th  2013

We move and displace ourselves from the moment we are born.  We try to identify with objects from an early age, in order to make a connection between our inner reality and the world outside of us. ­1

When an individual displaces themselves to an unknown geographic space, deliberately placing oneself in an alien context, they transform into the fundamental protagonist of a challenge, a challenge that is often initiated with the acceptance of loneliness.  Nonetheless we are able to enjoy the freedom that anonymity allows us and to appreciate the possibilities that uncertainty offers us.

Vanessa Donoso López  traces the journey from a familiar place to an unknown environment, and the type of experiences  one  encounters in order  to assimilate in this transition.  A Painful Excess of Pleasure, attempts to deal with this notion of a struggle between the enjoyment of experiencing a  new environment and at the same time the pain of trying to adjust to it.  Jouissance ( A painful excess of pleasure)  is Jacques Lacan’s notion which posits that the subject divides and is compelled to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment and to endure a  pain beyond pleasure.

For this show Donoso López works with transitional objects, such as collected and handmade furniture, objects in glass boxes and various plants that act as vessels, holding the experience of surviving and changing in altering contexts.  The plants are presented as  traces of their original self made from a homemade laser machine- rekindling a sort of low-tech artisanal skill.  Alongside these works Donoso López  places a series of drawings which contemplate and explore the subject and its psychic duplicity.

The gallery hosts a large greenhouse structure, which like so many of Donoso López  pieces, acts as a container and a laboratory in which plants can alter and grow. This space invites the audience to walk in and around the objects within, traversing elements of the artist’s “inner psychic reality” and “external reality” and  her past and present. The  provisionality of the structure and the imperfect domestic objects talk of the balance between being settled and being uprooted. Vanessa Donoso López ‘s  work is committed to exploring concepts of transitional phenomena allied to contemporary  life, with its cross-cultural identity and narratives, its mutability and intricacy, and its potential for the loss of identity, language, and compatibility with original cultures.

Vanessa Donoso López was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1978 and now lives and works in Dublin. She studied in Spain at Llotja School of Art and Design, Barcelona and the University of Barcelona, and at Winchester College of Art in UK. Since graduating in 2004 Donos López  has exhibited both internationally and nationally and prolifically shown work throughout Ireland and Europe. Her decision to move to Ireland was deliberately to place herself within  unknown location, culture and landscape.

1  In 1951 English paediatrician and psychoanalyst Denis W. Winnicott introduced the theory of transitional object. This object, he suggested occupies an intermediate space between the “inner psychic reality” and the “external reality”.


Kevin Kavanagh
Chancery Lane | Dublin 8 | Ireland | +353 (0)1 475 9514 | kevinkavanagh.ie

Installation shots:

DEATH DRIVE, Galway Arts Centre. Ireland.

Vanessa Donoso Lopez
Stine Marie Jacobsen
Maximilian Le Cain
Siobhán McGibbon

Curated by Maeve Mulrennan
Galway Arts Centre
September 7 – October 5 2013
Opening reception 6pm Friday 6th September

Death Drive is a group exhibition by four artists; Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Stine Marie Jacobsen, Maximilian Le Cain and Siobhán McGibbon.

The artists were invited to explore the idea of Freud’s Death Drive within their practices. Freud’s theory claimed that each person has a drive towards becoming an inorganic state; it is what pushes us into reimagining and re-enacting traumas; either literally or through our relationships with other people and places throughout our lifetimes. For this exhibition, Donoso Lopez, Le Cain, Jacobsen and McGibbon were specifically asked to consider the actions of repetition and re-enactment as forms of dealing with trauma and traumatic memories. This connects to the Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein’s theory on the Death Drive in children, with her focus concentrating on the recurring patterns that emerge through play and on the underpinning anxieties that this indicates.

Each artist in this exhibition investigates the presence of the human and its relation to site and /or personal experience, and how experience, memory and distortion affect the self. This distortion and anxiety leads to an element of the grotesque, particularly in McGibbon’s work. Melanie Klein’s theory that Death Drive anxieties manifest in aggression is explored indirectly, and is often an aggression turned inward in the form of glitches and repetition, as seen in Donoso Lopez and Le Cain’s works. Death Drive is an exploration of reenactment vs. remembering. Stine Marie Jacobsen’s text work follows this reenactment vs. remembering line of enquiry, regarding the conflict between memory and the cinematic. Jacobsen’s current practice humourously takes on the most serious and dark issues of the human psyche, using mediums such as video, performance, photography, drawing, writing and curating. Key themes in her work are cinema, death and violence, gender, anonymity, as well as their portrayal and presentation in film and reality. Her text discusses the perceived notion of memory being like a cinematic narrative and how this has been disproven. It also uses the metaphor of a true story of a photograph being taken with an 8 hour exposure, and the protection that is needed when being ‘exposed’ for this amount of time.

Klein's observation of children's play led her to see their preoccupation with what went on inside themselves and their experience of the people in their world. 'Internal object' is a term used commonly in Kleinian theory to denote an inner mental and emotional image of an external figure, also known as an external object, together with the experience of that figure. The inner world is seen to be populated with internal objects. This theory of perception can be linked in to each artist’s works; their individual explorations of taboo and self culminate in an exhibition that invites the viewer to consider their own perceptions of self. These ‘Internal Objects’ have been made external by the artists in Death Drive. Vanessa Donoso Lopez’ work uses the process of children’s play and experimentation as a starting position for her work. Says the Spansish born, Dublin based artist of her work; “I live struggling with language and cultural barriers, purposefully removed and often -almost- isolated. To get over this apparently self imposed trauma, I create, in a repetitive way, transitional objects and explore concepts of transitional phenomena.” Aswell as an interest in Melanie Klein, Donoso Lopez also draws on psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s theory based on a phenomenon commonly observed: early adoption and fierce possession by children of an object. According to his theory, this object occupies a space between what he calls "inner psychic reality" and "external reality" of the child. Over time, the object’s importance declines and gradually loses it’s meaning for the child. Still, Winnicott argues, what it represents remains and stays unconsciously present in every one of us.

Speaking of his process in relation to this exhibition, Cork based film maker Maximilian Le Cain states; “Most of my editing work is done at night. These works I make are nocturnal. My culture is cinema, including experimental film. There is cinema and what is called ‘reality’. There is the body, mine in this instance, and then there is the night. There are limits, failures and overwhelming sensations. Sound, image, silence: oblivion. It is at the obscure intersection of all these that I jot down my audio-visual sketches… Imagine a cinema possessed by the aesthetics of interruption. A cinema that makes space stutter, light gaseous and time circular. This aesthetics of interruption functions as a vehicle or catalyst for externalizing pulses, anxieties, desires.”

Galway based artist Siobhán McGibbon is currently investigating what she calls ‘The future of Normal’. She has a keen interest in the diagnosis and treatment of perceived abnormalities. This research is contextualized by narratives of real people, such as Jose Mestre, a man with an 11lb haemangioma tumour on his face and Ronnie and Donnie Galyon, the world’s oldest conjoined twins.


Death Drive runs from September 6th to October 5th in Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway. More information on each artist can be found on:

www.vanessadonosolopez.com
www.stinemariejacobsen.com
www.maximilianlecain.com
www.siobhanmcgibbon.com

Death Drive, Vanessa Donoso López. Installation Shots. Galway Arts Centre.

moving to temple bar studios, Dublin in 2014

Latest NewsRSS 

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios announces seven new studio members for 2013/14

22 July 2013

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is pleased to announce seven new studio artists for the year 2013/14. The new member artists were awarded their studios following an open submission application process, which took place in May 2013.

In total, one Membership Studio for a three-year period was awarded to Jacki Irvine. Additionally, Sarah Pierce was granted a one-year extension on her Membership Studio. This year, four One-Year Project Studios were allocated to and Miranda Blennerhasset, Lucy Andrews, Vanessa Donoso Lopez and Neil Carroll.

2013 sees the continuation of the TBG+S Graduate Artist’s Studio. This award allocates a large studio, free of charge, as well as a variety of mentoring and development opportunities, to a recent graduate of a Fine Art BA programme. The recipient, David Fagan, was selected via an open submission process which saw a particularly high number and standard of entrants.

In our 30th anniversary year, TBG+S is pleased to be able to continue the tradition of working with artists at various stages of their artistic development. The quality of work and high level of activity of our new studio members will continue to ensure that TBG+S is the most vibrant and exciting community in which artists can work in Ireland. We are looking forward to supporting this new group of TBG+S studio members to make their work in 2013 and 2014.

The seven artists will take up their new studios at TBG+S between now and spring 2014.

To request further information for press contact press@templebargallery.com

Information on TBG+S and studio awards:

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios open call for applications to Membership and Project Studios is advertised in spring of each year on www.templebargallery.com and in the Visual Artists Newsletter, VAI e-bulletin service and on the TBG+S website. The next open call for studios will be advertised in February/March 2014.

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is an artist-governed organisation. Membership Studios give artists full membership status and voting rights at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios for a period of three years with the option to apply to extend studio tenure for a further one year.

Project studios give artist associate membership status. Associate members do not have voting rights but can act as proxy to full members and are asked to take part fully in all members business.

JOUISSANCE- barcelona- july 2013

The displacement of the individual to an unknown geografic space, as a deliberated act of placing oneself in an alien context, becomes a journey not only spatial but vital, it transforms the traveler in the fundamental protagonist of a challenge, a challenge that often gets initiated with the acceptation of loneliness.

In this new start or initiative voyage, the main anchor originates in oneself and one's epidermic border that keeps us apart from the external chaos, the hostility of what is strange, the initial disagreement with the surrounding.

Nonetheless we are able to enjoy the freedom that anonymity confers us, to appreciate the possibilities that uncertainty offer us, the rupture with the happenstance that use to constrained us. And this experience transport us to a vertiginous pain, to a delight (jouissance) that place us in discomfort’s anteroom.

But this trip is also a process of osmosis and to exist within unalike realities implies the conversion of the language, the domestication of new sceneries, the acceptation of the otherness. To be someone else being oneself.

The creative fertility of these diaspora identities, materialises through a drawing or a poem, and becomes a subjectivated work lying crossways by a volatile state of mind, aroused by the permanent provisionality.

The peculiarity of this project is, without a doubt, the creative communion of two different exile experiences, uprooting , voluntary expatriation, searching inspiration in cultural contexts diametrically different but, nevertheless, bonded in an imaginary community.

^{jouissance or a painful excess of pleasure urges a return to the origins, origins that after such a long absence are perceived in an altered way but in the memory are kept intact.}

Barcelona becomes the reencounter space that allowed us overcome the servitude of distance.



See installation shots;

THE FOUNDING PHANT, Ormston House, Limerick

Please join us for the preview of The Founding Phant during the Riverfest celebrations on Saturday 4 May from 6-8pm. Alan Magee | Alan Phelan | Anitra Hamilton | Bryan Moore | Caroline Doolin | Darya von Berner | Deirdre Power | Kristian Smith | Levin Haegele | Oisín O'Brien | Padraig Robinson | Róisín McArdle | Sarah Lundy | Tara Woods-Moran | Vanessa Donoso López Curated by Paul Quast and Joan Stack Exhibition dates: 5 April - 18 April 2013 www.prequel-ormstonhouse.com www.ormstonhouse.com Detail from Freedom of the City (2013) by Deirdre Power, framed photograph and article from the Limerick Leader, 70cm x 70cm. Photo credit: Dermot Lynch. Society today is comprised of a series of spectacles which aim to inspire, astound and encourage reverence to anything which appears striking, out of the ordinary or impressive in nature. Whether the spectacle exists through some exploitation of physics, technology, discovery, détournement or even the intrusion of the extraordinary into the mundane, the ever-evolving nature of the term 'spectacle' remains deeply associated with and reflective of the culture in which it appears; "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.”1 Critical theories state that spectacles manifest themselves as an enormous positive event which exists for the sole purpose of identifying aspects which are unnatural and that the monument of their success becomes their eventual downfall from prestige. However, it is with their striking rise to prominence that spectacles serve the purpose of informing and educating viewers of the reasons behind their reverence. They are a vital part of the way the world is viewed and have been a cornerstone for inspiring the pursual of knowledge, understanding and celebration over millennia. The foundation for this open call began as a challenge to artists to create their own spectacle in society equal to that of an aged spectacle to take place in Limerick City 200 years ago. The starting point for this challenge stemmed from a Limerick newspaper article,2 published on the 4th May 1813, which detailed the first elephant to visit Limerick City (housed on the site of the current 9-10 Patrick Street building). ____________________________________________________________ 1.  Society of the Spectacle, Debord, Guy. Zone Books, 1967. 2.  Limerick Chronicle, 4th May 1813 edition.

follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend   Ormston House Gallery, 9-10 Patrick Street, Limerick City, Ireland info@ormstonhouse.com www.ormstonhouse.com Ormston House is open Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment

40/40/40 - MADRID / WARSAW / ROME - 2013

40/40/40 Exhibition - Atrium, 51 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2.Mon, 25 Feb 2013
40/40/40 is a travelling exhibition of contemporary art works from the Irish State Art Collection organised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Office of Public Works. 　
The artworks have been created by 40 artists under the age of forty, who are Irish or have chosen to base themselves in Ireland.　 It is in celebration of the 40th Anniversary of Ireland as a Member State of the EU.

The works reflect the current art practice of these artists and cross a variety of media
– photography, drawing, sculpture and painting. The unique vision of each artist reflects the diversity of new work being created on our island.　 The exhibition will take place between the months of March and July and will travel to three cities in Europe – opening first in Madrid (March/April), then to Warsaw (May/June), and lastly Rome in June and July 2013.

Look at the PDF catalogue:    http://www.opw.ie/en/media/404040%20Catalogue.pdf


Pictured with Minister Brian Hayes in the Atrium in 51 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2 yesterday were:

(L-R) Ministers of State Brian Hayes and Lucinda Creighton pictured with exhibiting artist Vanessa Donoso Lopez. Her piece is entitled "Wild Hybrid Ceramic Animals Adiestrator".

(L-R) Ministers of State Brian Hayes and Lucinda Creighton pictured with Jacqui Moore,

Art Advisor for the OPW.

　
　

(L-R) Ministers of State Brian Hayes and Lucinda Creighton pictured with exhibiting artist Colm MacAthloach. His piece is entitled "Hallelujah".

(L-R) Ministers of State Brian Hayes and Lucinda Creighton pictured with exhibiting artist Michelle Considne. Her piece is entitled "Road Diverted".







La VANGUARDIA.com

Conde Duque inaugura este miércoles una exposición de arte contemporáneo irlandés

MADRID, 19 (EUROPA PRESS)

El Conde Duque inaugura este miércoles una exposición de arte contemporáneo irlandés que conmemora el 40 aniversario de la entrada de Irlanda en la Unión Europea y la actual presidencia irlandesa, según ha informado el Ayuntamiento de Madrid.

La muestra, que permanecerá en la Sala 2 del centro hasta el próximo 20 de abril, se titula '40/40/40' e incluye 43 obras de diverso formato -ilustración, escultura, pintura y fotografía-, creadas por 40 artistas menores de 40 años, irlandeses o residentes en Irlanda. 

Entre ellos se encuentran Lisa Gingles, originaria de Belfast, que estudió en Inglaterra y ahora vive y trabaja en Valencia, y Vanessa Donoso López, nacida en Barcelona y que ahora vive y trabaja en Dublín.

El proyecto '40/40/40' refleja la influencia de esa adhesión en la sociedad, la vida cotidiana y el arte irlandés contemporáneo, así como la diversidad del panorama artístico irlandés contemporáneo. Tras su presentación en Madrid, '40/40/40' viajará a Varsovia y Roma. 

Esta muestra forma parte de un programa más amplio puesto en marcha por el Gobierno irlandés bajo el título 'La cultura conecta', que fomenta las conexiones culturales entre Irlanda y el resto de Europa, en cuyo marco se organizarán diferentes eventos en todos los estados miembros de la Unión Europea, a lo largo de la presidencia irlandesa.

El mismo miércoles se celebrará un acto de inauguración que contará con la presencia del director general de Museos y Música del Ayuntamiento de Madrid, Juan José Herrera de la Muela; el embajador de Irlanda, Justin Harman; el secretario de Estado de Cultura, José María Lasalle; el secretario de Estado de la Unión Europea, Iñigo Méndez de Vigo, y la artista irlandesa Lisa Gingles.

Esta exposición se suma a las dos muestras fotográficas que acoge actualmente el Conde Duque, 'Miradas de Asturias', de Alberto García-Alix, y 'Hereros: Pastores ancestrales de Angola', con imágenes de Sergio Guerra.

Leer más: http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/madrid/20130319/54369425414/conde-duque-inaugura-este-miercoles-una-exposicion-de-arte-contemporaneo-irlandes.html#ixzz2OedWxmRl
Síguenos en: https://twitter.com/@LaVanguardia | http://facebook.com/LaVanguardia

Mas artículos en castellano relacionados;

*http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/madrid/20130319/54369425414/conde-duque-inaugura-este-miercoles-una-exposicion-de-arte-contemporaneo-irlandes.html

*http://ecodiario.eleconomista.es/cultura/noticias/4686216/03/13/Una-muestra-del-arte-irlandes-contemporaneo-llega-a-Madrid.html

*http://www.euroxpress.es/index.php/noticias/2013/3/20/madrid-hasta-el-20-de-abril/

*http://www.esmadrid.com/condeduque/cargarFichaEvento.do?anio=0&texto=&identificador=1018422&idSala=0&fechaDesde=&idCategoria=0&fechaHasta=

*http://www.ociopormadrid.es/2013/03/404040-arte-irlandes-contemporaneo-en.html

*http://www.hoyesarte.com/exposiciones-de-arte/en-cartel.html?start=8

*http://www.europapress.es/madrid/noticia-conde-duque-inaugura-miercoles-exposicion-arte-contemporaneo-irlandes-20130319172916.html
*http://alsalirdelcurro.wordpress.com/

'Thick, turgid and lacking in soothing oil' ORMSTON HOUSE, Limerick

    Vanessa Donoso López, 'Mama, threads are not just for sawing'.



"Thick, turgid and lacking in soothing oil"

Winter Members' Exhibition curated by Joe Duggan and Mike Fitzpatrick Preview:
Thursday 24 January, 8-10pm Exhibition dates: 25 January - 16 February 2013

Please join us for the preview of our Winter Members' Exhibition featuring works by John Burke, Angela Darby, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Levi Hanes, Ramon Kassam, Emmet Kierans, Bartosz Kolata, Chris Leach and Frances Leach on Thursday 24 January, 8-10pm.

At the request of Mary Conlon, London-based artist Joe Duggan and I selected this year’s OHM exhibition and we must apologise for several reasons, firstly for not selecting the 100 plus other members. And there are many other reasons for APOLOGISING for what we selected! Too much thick turgid painting, the use of brown paint in particular and some of it, just plain messy and more so works which are deliberately not beautiful. We are also responsible for selecting tiny ‘big’ drawings, why couldn’t they have been bigger? We accept the blame for the inclusion of specific stylistic ‘neo-contemporary’ figurative works, some of which are rather wonderful silent screaming paintings, depressing yes, but in that rather charming film noir cropped manner.

One large print work represents the making of old symbolic money (slightly different from the current IOUs we are allowed to use) weaving a lost cause Lady Lavery genuflecting to a past nostalgia. Handmade symbol of wealth left out in the rain. Sure we all know that wet damp feeling, afraid we are going to seize up in a country lacking in soothing oils or lacking any oil. There are also installations of works including bunting, brains and lampshades. Finally we included a video work which shows plastic bags billowing with air created by blowing wind out of a dustbin, empty but evocative.

Ormston House, the exhibition space conceived and brilliantly directed by Mary Conlon, with the assistance of a group of present and past LSAD students, are currently hosting their Winter Members' Exhibition. Conlon came to Limerick as the third Shinnors Curatorial Scholar, the collaboration between Limerick City Gallery of Art and Limerick School of Art and Design, LIT. She brought the space into being as part her on-going PhD curatorial research with the help of the Creative Limerick initiative of Limerick City Council which allows underused commercial spaces to become sites of cultural activity. Ormston House have developed a significant reputation over its short history. There is something highly energetic and smart about how the space is curated and organised on a minuscule budget with voluntary labour. One is struck by how this space demands standards that seem way beyond its means.

PS: A must-see show, with some of our best, brightest and unabashed artists, who just really enjoy making work that some of you will love.

Mike Fitzpatrick

Ormston House Gallery, 9-10 Patrick Street, Limerick City, Ireland

info@ormstonhouse.com

www.ormstonhouse.com

Ormston House is open Wednesday-Saturday 12-6pm or by appointment



HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR 2012, The Irish Times Aidan Dunne

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2012/1227/1224328176466.html

Empty pockets, but rich pickings in art

'

     Vanessa Donoso López. 'It never rains to everybody's taste'

    Queen Street Studios and Gallery, Belfast.2012  

    Photo; Tony Corey
   

                           

AIDAN DUNNE

Despite a lack of funding and reduced support in 2012, artists rose to the challenge and created brilliant work
Early this year, two important positions in the Irish art world were filled after prolonged speculation. Sarah Glennie took over as director of Imma, following the highly successful tenure of Enrique Juncosa, and Sean Rainbird took the reins at the National Gallery, following the retirement of Raymond Keaveney, long a steady hand in one of our most closely watched, jealously regarded national institutions.
Glennie and Rainbird took on formidable challenges, some overlapping. They both had to face directly into talks about the startling, Twilight-like resurrection of the plan to amalgamate Imma, the National Gallery and the Crawford Art Gallery. Both of them are dealing with very difficult budgets, with serious implications for programme planning, acquisitions and staffing. And their two galleries are undergoing significant renovation and refurbishment, necessitating the closure of Imma’s main galleries and a large proportion of the National Gallery at Merrion Square. Encouragingly, the signs so far are that they are more than up to the challenges.
Not everything in the garden was rosy, however. Opened in 2009, Carlow’s Visual National Centre for Contemporary Art ran smack into the recession from the word go. The board’s decision not to renew director Carissa Farrell’s contract, despite praise for her programming, signalled a rethink about how it functions.
Visual is a large-scale venue and there’s been comment that its scale is at variance with its location. To build an audience commensurate with the scale of the galleries would take time and thoughtful work, and the town may have nursed unrealistic expectations, perhaps based on the enthusiastic response to the annual Éigse festival. But while audiences can be relied upon to flock to festivals, they are less likely to attend regular exhibitions.
Interestingly, Athlone has taken a different tack with its recently opened Luan Gallery. It is capacious but modestly scaled, in a carefully adapted and transformed, widely liked building, centrally positioned in the town. A studio residency schedule and arts workshops were in place a year in advance, and the gallery is linked to another tourist amenity, the adjacent castle. Expectations seem realistic.
Andy Warhol’s aphoristic equation of art with business is not unrealistic or unreasonable if you consider the international art market and headline news stories. People routinely equate art and market value, as though it’s like winning the lottery. By that reckoning, monetary value is the bottom line. But long before the auction houses, the oligarchs and the headline writers get there, art is born out of passion and conviction far removed from the profit motive. There are perpetual efforts – so far not entirely successful – to keep it outside of that domain completely.
In the middle ground, we have “commercial” galleries, mostly run by people who are, indeed, passionate and committed. If they weren’t, we would not have anything like the number of galleries that currently survive here. In the new Ireland, everybody owes money or is owed money and artists and gallerists are no exception. Year on year, the art market is struggling. Routinely, artists subsidise their art. They make work because they feel compelled to, but it costs rather than earns them money.
While we have a public gallery infrastructure, generally within the framework of regional arts centres, they are under pressure because national and local funding has been squeezed, and unfortunately artists are at the bottom of the food chain. If that sounds bleak it’s because the situation is quite bleak. Witness Visual and the cash-strapped Letterkenny Regional Arts Centre, or the question over the future of Galway’s 126 artist-run gallery, which has lost its very modest funding.
Against this background it is perhaps surprising that the contemporary art scene is so lively. Limerick, for example, was a centre of activity, and not alone because of the return of Eva and the continuing vitality of the Limerick City Gallery of Art with new director Helen Carey. In the absence of money, the city has incentivised cultural enterprise in other, imaginative ways, aiding such initiatives as Ormston House and Limerick Printmakers. Other projects, such as Askeaton Contemporary Arts and Belltable’s revived visual arts programme (Michelle Horrigan is the link between the two) lend depth to contemporary arts in the region. Similarly, Belfast seemed quite energised this year, with innovative venues operating in tandem with more established galleries and the MAC.
Perhaps surprisingly, it was a very good year for exhibitions, though there were fewer of them; it may be no harm that runs are longer. Some of the impressive large-scale shows countrywide included Merlin James’s survey at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, David Mach’s blockbuster biblical sculpture and collages in Precious Light at the Galway Arts Festival, and Paul Mosse and Hans Op de Beeck’s equally superb exhibitions at the Butler Gallery in February and August respectively.


Summer treats
The work of the great figurative sculptor Hans Josephsohn, who died during the year, was ideally located at Lismore Castle as its summer exhibition. Simon Norfolk’s Crawford Gallery show was a fascinating dialogue with the work of the 19th-century Irish photographer John Burke, whose steps he retraced in Afghanistan.
Making Familiar at Temple Bar Gallery was a serious attempt to consider the state of contemporary painting, curated by Robert Armstrong and James Merrigan. Among many solo shows of note were Jennifer Cunningham at the Galway Arts Festival, Sam Keogh’s Terrestris, his fantastic contribution to Conjuring for Beginners at the Project in July, Charles Tyrrell at the Taylor Gallery, Willie Doherty and Callum Innes at the Kerlin, Mary Lohan at the Hamilton in Sligo and, with David Quinn, at the Fenderesky in Belfast, and Vanessa Donoso López’s It never rains to everyone’s taste at Queen Street Studio’s gallery. And The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, a set of scrolls based on the oldest work of Japanese prose fiction, newly restored, made a stunning exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library in the summer.
It was a little disappointing, in May, that Ireland’s favourite painting – beating off Vermeer, no less – turned out to be Frederic William Burton’s Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs, at the National Gallery. It is undeniably and enduringly popular with gallery visitors, as postcard sales attest. At the same time, it is a stolid rather than an outstanding or exciting piece of work, and in terms of subject matter and treatment it is a prime slice of Victorian schmaltz.
Sadly, two great artists died this year: Louis le Brocquy, a towering figure in 20th century Irish art, and Paddy Jolley, one of the most ambitious and brilliant younger artists to have emerged in years.
5 best shows of 2012 Skating in Wyoming, snipers in Sarajevo and a new era for Eva
The Josef Albers show at the Glucksman in April was a landmark. Made possible through the commitment of The Josef Anni Albers Foundation in the US, and particularly director Nicholas Fox Weber, the exhibition was a richly textured, remarkably well-rounded survey of the life and work of one of the most celebrated abstract artists of the 20th century. The only flaw was the presentation of Albers as the Sacred Modernist and a Catholic artist. The work suggested these were peripheral concerns.

Limerick’s Eva embarked on a new era. The exhibition After the Future opened in June under the auspices of new director Woodrow Kernohan. Guest curator was Dutch-based Annie Fletcher. Together, they produced an impressive, international event. Fletcher had in mind art that articulated alternative ways of dealing with contemporary, often oppressive realities. Outstanding highlights included Pilvi Takala’s inventive take on corporate life (documenting her experience as a trainee in Deloitte ), Adrian O’Connell’s dramatic Library and Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s poetically surreal video installation.

Brian Duggan’s Everything can be done, in principle, the centrepiece of Éigse at VISUAL in Carlow, involved building a rollerskating rink in a facsimile of an 1890s Wyoming timber bar in the gallery, and providing skates for visitors. For everyone, including curator Helen Carey, it was a huge undertaking. The inspiration was Michael Cimino’s cult 1980 film, Heaven’s Gate, which went famously and ruinously over budget. Duggan’s work is fascinated with the idea of failure, and the notion of community, each and in combination very relevant to Ireland now.

Anri Sala’s 1395 Days Without Red, at Imma, Earlsfort Terrace, in June, is a collaboration between Sala, New York-born composer and conductor Ari Benjamin Meyers and French filmmaker Liria Bégéja. Set during the Siege of Sarajevo, from April 1992 to February 1996, it ingeniously charts the progress of a woman – actress Mirabel Verdú – on her way to work (with the Sarajevo Symphony Orchestra, which never gave up through the siege), as Serbian snipers fired at will.

Imma’s Alice Maher survey, Alice Maher: Becoming, at Earlsfort Terrace, from October, is a triumph, striking a lively balance between older and new work. The title indicates Maher’s fascination not just with metamorphosis, but also with how, as individuals, we carve out personal identities in the midst of institutional conditioning. Don’t miss it.