To Have / To Own at Kunsti Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa, Finland

Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art, Vaasa, Finland, 4.12.2011–31.1.2012

Tuesday — Sunday 11 a.m. — 5 p.m.
Thursday 11 a.m. — 8 p.m.
Monday closed

A group show organised by Platform

Dragos Alexandrescu (FI/RO) & Sarah Browne (IE)
Maria Nordbäck (FI) & Brynhild Bye (NO)
Stefan Constantinescu (SE/RO)
Kane Do (DE/US)
Audun Eriksen (NO)
Maria Ångerman (FI) & Miha Erman (SI)
FinnFemFel (FI) & Simo Brotherus (SE/FI)
Rasmus Hedlund (FI) & Maria Lundström (FI) & Eija Leinonen (FI) & Tuomo Väänänen (FI)
Esther Pilkington (GB/AT)
Jimmy Pulli (FI) & Christian Rupp (AT)
Anri Sala (DE/AL)
Helga Steppan (SE)
Andrew Taggart & Chloe Lewis (NO/CA)

Curator: Ulrika Ferm (DE/FI)

The exhibition To have/To own at Kuntsi Museum of Modern Art in Vaasa is a part of a larger program organized by Platform in celebration of their first ten years of activities. Earlier this year Platform organized an international symposium and launched the catalogue, Don’t look back. With this program, Platform seeks to highlight the importance of their past and present activities to the artists who have participated, as well as the local community and the cultural life of Vaasa.

The theme for the year 2011 To have/To own is a reaction to the on-going events where art as well as other aspects of society, have gone through huge social, cultural, economic and ecological changes. The selection of the theme is based on the hope that different artists’ and individuals’ reactions toward and understanding of the terms “to have” and “to own” would raise questions and generate discussion on cultural heritage, nomadic patterns, communication, independence, and sustainability.

One part of the exhibition consists of the projects carried out by Platform artists-in-residence during 2011. From circa 270 responses to an open call on the theme of To have/To own, six artists were chosen to spend time in Vaasa. The artists had differing approaches to the theme.  All of these projects will be presented in the exhibition. The other works in the show are based on collaborations. Active members of Platform have decided to form internal collaborations or invited other artists to either collaborate with them or participate in the show. The curatorial starting point for this part of the exhibition was to make the Platform members invest their artistic capital in a joint project – where collaboration is encouraged.

Image: Sarah Browne, detail from Episodes from a Crisis, 2010. Series of 9 collages narrating the Irish banking crisis through Financial Times newspaper articles and a Portuguese photoromance. Each piece 75cm x 55cm.

Kennedy Browne / Think Tank Troubling Ireland public hearing

Troubling Ireland Public Hearing
Friday 16th September, 2–4.30pm
Liberty Hall, Dublin 1

Presentations by project curators, commissioners & participants. Further details on the Troubling Ireland website.

Commissioned by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin, Ireland. Conceptualised by Kuratorisk Aktion, Denmark.

Kennedy Browne / Think Tank Troubling Ireland poster campaign

 

Troubling Ireland poster campaign
12th–23rd Sept 2011, Dublin City Centre
12th–19th Sept 2011, Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Co. Leitrim

Troubling Ireland public hearing
Friday 16th September, 2–4.30pm
Liberty Hall, Dublin 1

In 2010, the Danish curatorial collective Kuratorisk Aktion was commissioned by the Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin to frame and convene a think tank for artists and curators in Ireland. Drawing on their expertise and experience in social, political and cultural activism, and in colonialism and postcolonialism, Kuratorisk Aktion conceived the idea of ‘troubling’ Ireland. The think tank would provide a critical, aesthetic and discursive platform for socially engaged practitioners in which received notions of Irish identity, history and politics, and Ireland’s relationship to global capitalism, would be probed and unravelled. The chosen participants were Gareth Kennedy and Sarah Browne (as collaborative partnership Kennedy Browne), Anthony Haughey, Anna Macleod, Augustine O’Donoghue, Susan Thomson and Helen Carey.

Over the course of a year, from September 2010 to May 2011, five meetings were held in cities of social and political significance, north and south of the border: Dublin, Manorhamilton (Co. Leitrim), Belfast and Limerick. In each location, different problematics were engaged: British plantation economy and class relations, Ireland’s colonisation and division, the Celtic Tiger boom and bust, and possible paths to a more convivial and equitable future. These meetings comprised presentations, readings, screenings, walks, lectures and discussions, and concluded in summer 2011 with a collective decision to launch a Troubling Ireland Campaign, beginning with a public poster campaign and website in September 2011 and ending with a major exhibition in 2013.

Running from 12th—23rd September 2011, the poster campaign presents seven posters mounted around Dublin city centre, and related sites, as well as Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Manorhamilton (runs 12th—19th September 2011). Each poster is an initial response from the think tank participants to the concept of ‘troubling Ireland’, ultimately inviting viewers to also partake in the act of ‘troubling’. The poster campaign is accompanied by this website, which in addition to presenting the ideas behind each poster and their producers, includes a reflection on the think tank process by cultural geographer Bryonie Reid. To coincide with this poster campaign, the think tank organises a Public Hearing in Liberty Hall, Dublin on Friday, 16th September 2011, from 2–4:30 pm, where the audience is invited to discuss the think tank’s aims with its participants. Admission is free and all are welcome.

The campaign will end in 2013, when participants of the think tank will exhibit work arising from sustained individual engagements with the theme in a major travelling exhibition.

Image: Kennedy Browne, Ireland is Good For You, 2011. More info here

Commissioned by Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin, Ireland. Conceptualised by Kuratorisk Aktion, Denmark.

 

The Common Sense of Stones – performative lecture with Jesse Jones at Commonage, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

 

S E M I N A R
_06 August

Sarah Browne, Jesse Jones, Oliver Lowenstein, Patrick Lydon, Martin McCabe, Mark Price, Eyal Weizman

Commonage Seminar brings together prominent thinkers in the realm of art and architecture. The seminar will reflect on ways in which ‘the commons’ has become a site of resistance and also reflect on Commonage as an architectural research project is embedded and located in the town of Callan. The seminar will take place in the recently vacated agricultural co-operative building, a location that will be temporarily redesigned and reconfigured as a gathering space. The critical forum will act as further thinking to a programme of architectural\artistic interventions and highlight the position of Commonage as a forum focused on both doing and thinking.

Venue: Co-Op Building, Green Street, Callan
Price: €10 (includes lunch)
Time: 11am – 5.30pm
Bookings: commonagecallan@gmail.com

Sarah Browne‘s research-based art practice explores our understanding of ‘the economy’, particularly its emotional, moral and ritualistic workings. Browne co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and next year will produce solo exhibitions and a new book, How to Use Fool’s Gold, with Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, and Project Arts Centre, Dublin.

Jesse Jones (b. 1978, Dublin) currently lives and works in Dublin, where she received her MA in Visual Arts practices at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design, and Technology in 2005. Her films and videos have been screened and exhibited internationally in such notable exhibitions as the 11th International Istanbul Biennial. She has recently exhibited her first major solo show in REDCAT gallery Los Angeles and has also recently completed a commission for collective gallery UK. Other exhibitions include Nought to sixty at the ICA, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; Project Arts Centre, Dublin; and Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Oliver Lowenstein is the editor of UK journal Fourth Door Review, a unique cross-disciplinary publishing venture. Published annually, Fourth Door Review, explores the relationships between ecology and technology, art and architecture and new media and new music. He contributes regularly to the national and international architectural, design and environmental press and also runs the Cycle Stations Project, Roots Architecture as well as a number of other projects.

Patrick Lydon has lived and worked in Camphill communities for 39 years. Born and educated in Boston, USA, he emigrated to Ireland as a university student seeking a radical change in his life’s aims, with the strong incentive to find a way different to fighting in Vietnam. He discovered community life sharing with the blessing of exceptional people, trained as a farmer, and has lived and worked with people with developmental disabilities in a farming context, together with his wife Gladys and their four children.He has long had a strong interest in generative and formative forces, and a particular fascination with the challenges of architecture and social design. He is committed to finding new approaches for supporting individuals in their development, and in finding design approaches that encourage social inclusion.

Martin McCabe studied Fine Art and Film and Television in Dublin. He currently lectures in the DIT in Critical and Theoretical Studies on the BA Photography programme. He is also an associate of the Centre for Transcultural Research and Media Practice (CTMP) since 2000. Since January 2009, he was seconded as the DIT Fellow at the Graduate School of Creative Artsand Media (GradCAM). His research interests include visual and network cultures.

Mark Price is a Board member of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, a member of the Save 16 Moore Street Committee, and of the Steering Committee of the Irish Anti-War Movement. He is a lecturer and studio tutor in UCD School of Architecture. He is an architect in private practice in Dublin since 1993. Price is a contributor to first International Society for the Philosophy of Architecture Symposium, Newcastle University June 2010.

Eyal Weizman is an architect and director of the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. He studied architecture at the Architectural Association in London and completed his PhD at the London Consortium/Birkbeck College. Since 2007 he is a member of the architectural collective “decolonizing architecture” in Beit Sahour/Palestine. www.decolonizing.ps Since 2008 he is a member of B’Tselem board of directors. www.btselem.org. Weizman has taught, lectured, curated and organised conferences in many institutions worldwide. His books include The Lesser Evil [Nottetempo, 2009], Hollow Land [Verso Books, 2007], A Civilian Occupation [Verso Books, 2003], the series Territories 1,2 and 3, Yellow Rhythms and many articles in journals, magazines and edited books. Weizman is a regular contributor and an editorial board member for several journals and magazines including Humanity, Cabinet and Inflexions. Weizman is the recipient of the James Stirling Memorial Lecture Prize for 2006-2007 and was chosen to deliver the Edward Said Memorial Lecture at Warwick 2010.

The Original Affluent Society – Event Documentation

Thanks to all participants who took part in this event. The first day’s discussion focused on the sociology of gift economies, and moved to discussing art objects as a kind of public gift that engaged with the possibilities and difficulties that entails. What if a gift is unwanted by a public? Can reciprocity be forced?

This first discussion went well over the alloted time, so on the following day we cut out our walk to Project and focused more closely on a discussion of the text in the Geology Museum. Surrounded by fossils and rock samples, it was an opportunity for a revised understanding of our attitude and ordering of the past into ways we might currently understand. While the text focuses on the Paleolithic era, we were still able to use it to discuss contemporary rituals of economic donations, from IMF loans to charitable gifts, particularly in the context of Ireland’s current financial crisis.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photos by Sarah Browne & Damien McGlynn.

Second Burial at Le Blanc: Interview on Culturefile, Lyric FM

Interview with Regan Hutchins (Friday June 10th) available as a podcast here.

Culturefile, RTE Lyric FM, produced by Soundsdoable, Dublin.

The Original Affluent Society at the Geology Museum, Trinity College, Dublin

 

The Original Affluent Society
By Sarah Browne & Jesse Jones
16 June 2011, 1pm – 2pm
Geology Museum, Trinity College Dublin & Project Arts Centre Gallery

Project Arts Centre presents a very special event led by artists Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones.

Taking its departure from Browne’s current exhibition, Second Burial at Le Blanc, a discussion will begin in the Geology Museum, Trinity College Dublin with a presentation of extracts from anthropologist Marshall Sahlins’ book Stone Age Economics. From here the group will move onwards, via the Central Bank on Dame Street, to Project Arts Centre for a brief discussion focused on themes of economic ritual, invented tradition and obsolescence as explored by the work in Second Burial at Le Blanc.

Attendance is free but places are limited. To book your place contact the gallery on 01 8819 613 ext.146, or email gallery@projectartscentre.ie.

More information about The Original Affluent Society available here.


Project Arts Centre | 39 East Essex Street  | Temple Bar | Dublin 2 | Ireland
+353 1 881 9613 | gallery@projectartscentre.ie | www.projectartscentre.ie
Gallery open Monday – Saturday, 11am – 8pm

Second Burial at Le Blanc: Exhibition Images

Press for Second Burial at Le Blanc

 

“Le Blanc is the last village in France where francs are still being accepted as payment for goods and services,” Sarah Browne points out in her introduction to her exhibition Second Burial at Le Blanc . The commune, on the banks of the River Creuse in central France, capitalises on a legislative loophole: French banks accept and exchange francs for euros until, that is, February 17th, 2012.

Browne went there, publicised and organised a procession, and devised a Wi-Fi tickertape machine that records euro exchange rates and counts down the time to the cut-off point next year. It’s a handsome object that normally resides in Le Blanc but is currently at the Project, together with the lively newspaper, On Hoarding, Accumulating and Gifting , that was distributed to publicise the procession. That’s the subject of a 10-minute 16mm film also in the show.

As the eurozone lurches from crisis to crisis, Browne prompts us to look at the deeper meanings of currency or, as Marx memorably described it, “frozen desire”.

Aidan Dunne in The Ticket, The Irish Times, May 20th 2011

Press for Fearghus Ó Conchúir’s Tabernacle

…towering over all for intensity was Tabernacle , the final show of the festival in which choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir bravely steps into the minefield of the Irish body and its bruising and confusing encounters with the power of Catholic Church.If Songs of the Wanderers represented a cleansing ritual, the healing catharsis is not quite there yet in this challenging and disturbing work. Familiar religious iconography; sexuality, innocent and manipulative; isolation and acceptance; authority and compliance, they are all there in a layered work that is subtle, a little overlong, but with Iarla Ó Lionáird’s voice an eerie supplication for release, this work will surely merit a wider audience.

Review in The Irish Times by Seona MacReamonn

 

 

This very spirit of translating a theme so weighted in reference and debate without deviating into a subjective commentary is something which has been at the core of O’Conchuir’s work since its inception, and it’s something that is key in making his choreography so empathetic with an audience. Tabernacle has consistently acted like an open forum that in a way has been curated by O’Conchuir himself. He has actively encouraged an interaction with his work in progress, which in turn feeds back into his own creative output. Perhaps most obviously this can be seen in the collaboration with composer Iarla O’Lionáird and visual artist Sarah Browne. But it certainly didn’t end there. Over the course of the work’s development O’Conchúir opened his rehearsals to the public and invited thoughts and comment before it ever even seen the stage.

There is a distinct vulnerability to Tabernacle that underpins an honesty in the movement of the performers as each individual explores their purpose and comes to terms with their own selves. And yet a quiet resiliance prevails. The tangible quality of their individual quests progresses through the space and through collective construction, as the group work with and against eachother, and ultimately accumulates in their movements falling back into the individual rhythm of their own bodies.

Tabernacle doesn’t extol or confront an audience with definitive concepts on the Catholc Church, but it refuses to shy away from it either. It’s a intricate balacing act that O’Conchúir has executed superbly, and more to the point, in a subtle and probing manner. This performance captures the process of how religion as a wider thematic structure provides a basis for the composition of ideals; how the individual learns, explores, manipulates or takes solace within this structure and how this layering of social and personal memory is reflected in the body.

Review by Eims O’Reilly

Photograph by Jonathan Mitchell