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Limerick City Gallery of Art

Peter Plagens Nick Miller: Drawing Life from Landscape

Nick Miller
Truckscapes
Drawings from a mobile studio 1998-2007
January 17th - February 24th 2008

Limerick City Gallery of Art
Carnegie Building
Pery Square
Limerick, Ireland
T: +353 (0)61 310633
artgallery@limerickcity.ie

http://www.limerickcity.ie/LCGA

Limerick City Gallery of Art is delighted to present a major exhibition by Nick Miller. Truckscapes, Drawings from a mobile studio - a series of large-scale ink drawings made over the last ten years that directly engage the landscape. ‘Miller’s prickly, symphonic rectangles of line, tone and surface are startlingly, visually alive. And the soulful resonance of his portraits of place arises ever so naturally from them’.* LCGA is the Irish venue for the exhibition which was first shown at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris in September/October 2007.

Nick Miller is an artist who has moved with dexterity and conviction between Portraiture, Still Life, Landscape and The Figure. He has refined the focus of his interest working directly in the presence of his subject, keeping the process animated and charged by a continual confrontation with ‘real presence’. His work has a unique intensity of vision and realization that continues to challenge expectations of being in, seeing and painting the world. While working from the foundation of tradition in painting and drawing, he continues to revitalize those traditions into something contemporary and timeless.

In 1997 he began working from the back of a mobile studio – a converted truck: painting the land around his home in Co. Sligo. This mobile studio makes possible a direct engagement with ‘Landscape’ as a subject. The truck doors open to nature in a full frontal assault. It has allowed a merging of an enclosed ‘culture of the studio’ with the thrill and immediacy of ‘Plein Air’ painting.

Since the beginning of his unusual “Truckscape” project, Miller has worked on large-scale black ink drawings made on heavy-duty paper that is scored and redrawn both with brush and power tools. The result is a series of intense, highly worked, mostly black and white images that are a homage, both to the landscape and to the vehicular studio from which they are drawn and seen. Drawing and painting hold equal measure in his work and these are not preparatory sketches. They are, more often than not, made in the aftermath of a painting of the same subject.

To coincide with the exhibition Rubicon Gallery has published Truckscapes, Drawings from a mobile studio, a book which documenting the project, and including an insightful essay by Peter Plagens, a New York based critic, artist and contributing editor at Newsweek and Artforum. Miller will also present a parallel project at Rubicon Gallery Dublin, 19th January - 15th February, showing the first new works, marking his recent move to his new studio at the foot of Ben Bulben.
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*Peter Plagens Nick Miller: Drawing Life from Landscape.

Biographical Note:
Born in London in 1962, Nick Miller moved to Ireland in 1984 and now lives in Co. Sligo. He has exhibited in Ireland, Britain, the US and Netherlands, including solo shows at IMMA and the RHA. His works are included in major public and private collections in Ireland, Europe and Asia. He is a member of Aosdána. Nick Miller is represented by Rubicon Gallery http://www.rubicongallery.ie
T: +353 (0)1 6708055

Admission is FREE
Limerick City Gallery of Art, Carnegie Building, Pery Square, Limerick, Ireland.
For further information go to http://www.limerickcity.ie/LCGA T: +353 (0)61 310633 or contact artgallery@limerickcity.ie

Opening Hours: Mon-Fri 10-6pm; Thurs 10-7pm; Sat 10-5pm; Sun 2-5pm.
Closed Bank Holidays.
Limerick City Gallery of Art is part of Limerick City Council and is supported by The Arts Council, The Heritage Council, Fáilte Ireland and Fás.

Westfälischer Kunstverein

Ali Kazma, Video still from: Clock Master, 2007

LAST THINGS/SON SEYLER

Nevin Aladag – Bashir Borlakov – Inci Eviner – Leyla Gediz – ha za vu zu – Emre Hüner – Ali Kazma – Hale Tenger

Organized by: Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul

http://www.westfaelischer-kunstverein.de
http://www.platform.garanti.com.tr

The Last Things are what it comes down to in the very end – the basic needs, the ultimate thoughts, perhaps a smile on the brink. Even though theology resorts to concepts like death, judgment day, heaven and hell in regard to the eventual fate of humanity, the underlying question is basically existence and/or nonexistence. The exhibition Last Things, a collaboration between two comparable institutions in different cultures, is a reflection on individual takes on existence and finitude.

The first part, organized by Platform Garanti, presents artists from the generation born in the 1970s and 1980s and working in Istanbul. Artists group ha za vu zu’s glittering and broken disco ball is an object that has witnessed a sad and violent end. Emre Hüner’s video shown originally in the 10th International Istanbul Biennial depicts an apocalyptical picture around abandoned industrial sites, waste pools and buildings in the center and the periphery of the city. Inci Eviner’s piercing photographs with eerie compositions insistently retrieve lost panoramas and reveal what is secluded and concealed. Eviner’s creatures eluding rational descriptions linger between life and death. In Bashir Borlakov’s photograph, the man, who levitates off the ground holding onto two geese in the vast Caucasus Mountains seems to be reenacting a local myth about liberation, salvation and ascending to heaven. With a precise and medical stance, Ali Kazma’s videos stare without a bli
nk, at life and death. In Hale Tenger’s video titled ‘Beirut’, the flitting curtains on the identical windows of a huge building seem to suggest that what is apparent can hide ineffable violence. In one of Leyla Gediz’s paintings included in the show, the artist’s reflection appears on the face of a beautiful young woman who had committed suicide. In her other painting, we gaze at the back of a middle-aged man wearing an overcoat that doesn’t seem to fit well, in an obscure, creepy ambiguity. Amidst these works that trace the very different aspects and limits of our existence, Nevin Aladag’s “kissing” planes reflects on the poetics of the arrested moment. The works in the exhibition touch on moments of existence we all might know or come to know.

The exhibition project in Münster will be followed by its counterpart in Istanbul in Fall 2008.

Last Things/Son Seyler, a two-part exhibition taking place in Münster and Istanbul, is generously funded by Kunststiftung NRW and Goethe-Institut in the program ‘European Partnerships’.

Last Things/Son Seyler
Nevin Aladag – Bashir Borlakov – Inci Eviner – Leyla Gediz – ha za vu zu – Emre Hüner – Ali Kazma – Hale Tenger
January 26 - March 23, 2008
open Tues-Sun 10am-6pm, Thursday 10am-9pm

Westfälischer Kunstverein
Domplatz 10
D-48143 Münster
T +49-251-46157
F +49-251-45479
http://www.westfaelischer-kunstverein.de

Reykjavík Arts Festival

Reykjavík Arts Festival
May 15 - June 5, 2008

New Series of Visual and Performing Arts Programs

including Experiment Marathon Reykjavík
Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist in collaboration with artist Ólafur Elíasson
At the Reykjavík Art Museum

Opening Weekend
May 15-18, 2008
With Chartered Flights to Akureyri and Seydisfjördur

http://www.artfest.is

The Reykjavík Arts Festival will launch on May 15, 2008 with a groundbreaking series of visual and performing arts programs that will involve most of the city’s exhibition spaces and extend to other locations in Iceland. This year will mark the Festival’s second focus on contemporary visual art, following the critically acclaimed program presented in 2005 and curated by Jessica Morgan of Tate Modern and Björn Roth, son of artist Dieter Roth. It will feature more than 30 exhibitions of over 60 Icelandic and international artists, with most exhibitions on view trough July or August 2008. The Festival will also present a full performing arts program from May 15 through June 5, 2008.

Rooted in Iceland’s famous tradition of hospitality, a special opening weekend will celebrate the launch of the Festival, with receptions held at most venues, and featuring a one-day flight around the country to visit the exhibitions presented in the North and East. The program will end with an art project and reception at the Blue Lagoon geothermal pool.

One of the highlights will be the Experiment Marathon Reykjavík, an exhibition and program of related events organized by the Reykjavík Art Museum (RAM) and the Serpentine Gallery, London. From May 15, the RAM will become a laboratory in which leading artists, architects, film-makers, academics, and scientists will create an environment of invention through a series of installations, screenings, performances, and experimental films. The exhibition and related events are curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Co-Director of Exhibitions and Programs and Director of International Projects, Serpentine Gallery, London, in collaboration with artist Ólafur Elíasson.

The Experiment Marathon Reykjavík builds on the enormous success of the recent Serpentine Gallery Marathons, which have taken place in successive Serpentine Gallery Pavilions, an annual architectural commission conceived in 2000 by Serpentine Gallery Director, Julia Peyton-Jones. In the 2007 Serpentine Gallery Experiment Marathon, which took place in the Pavilion designed by Ólafur Elíasson and Kjetil Thorsen, leading artists, writers, and scientists performed a huge variety of experiments, exploring perception, artificial intelligence, the body, and language. Participants included John Brockman, Steven Pinker, Marina Abramovic, and John Baldessari. The event was a collaboration with Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. The Serpentine Gallery Marathon series began in 2006 with the 24-hour Interview Marathon conducted by Rem Koolhaas and Hans Ulrich Obrist.

Other highlights include; in Reykjavík:
• Dreams of the Sublime and Nowhere in Icelandic Contemporary Art at the Reykjavík Art Museum/Kjarvalsstadir. Presented concurrently with work by landscape architect Martha Schwarz
• Art Against Architecture at the National Gallery of Iceland, featuring the works of Finnbogi Pétursson, Monica Bonvicini, Elín Hansdóttir, Steina (Vasulka), and Franz West
• Reflection - Icelandic Contemporary Photography, a group exhibition in The National Gallery of Photography in The National Museum of Iceland
• Work by Paul Armand Gette and Halldór Ásgeirsson at The ASÍ Art Museum
• An exhibition of works by Swedish artist Karl Holmqvist at The Living Art Museum (aka Nylo)
• Croatian Contemporary Art at Gallery 100°
• An exhibition by Rúrí at Start Art
• An exhibition of work by Sirra Sigrun Sigurdardottir at Kling & Bang
• A series of events entitled Module taking place throughout Reykjavík and organized by Ladån/The Mobile Box
• Dialog Project created by Anne Leoniak and Fiann Paul on view at the crossroads of Lækjargata and Austurstræti
• An installation entitled Atlantis, created by Tea Mäkipää and Halldór Úlfarsson in Reykjavík’s small pond, Tjörnin
• An exhibition by Ernesto Neto at Gallery i8 and an exhibition of Andrea Maack at Gallerí Ágúst

Near Reykjavík:
• An exhibition entitled Wanwood, with artists Hannes Lárusson, Gudjón Ketilsson, and Helgi Hjaltalín at the Reykjanes Museum
• Work by Magnús Kjartansson (1949–2006) at LA Art Museum

In North Iceland:
• Facing China at the Akureyri Art Museum with paintings and sculptures by prominent contemporary Chinese artists
• Displacement at The Icelandic Folk Art Museum featuring work by several artists, including
Anna Líndal

In East Iceland:
• A joint project presented by three arts institutes on the themes of installation and performance, curated by Björn Roth. Participants include Hrafnkell Sigurdsson, Christof Buchel, and dancer
Erna Ómarsdóttir.

Most exhibitions will be on view through July/August. A complete Festival program—including concerts, theater, dance, and opera performances—will be available on the festival’s website, http://www.artfest.is , at the end of February.

Press Conferences will be held in Reykjavík on February 26, and in New York and London the first week of March 2008.

The Main Festival Sponsors are Kaupping Bank, Icelandair, Samskip and Radisson SAAS.

About the Reykjavík Arts Festival:
One of the oldest and most respected arts festivals in Europe, the Reykjavík Arts Festival seeks to promote Icelandic and international culture in all fields of art. Recognized as a premiere venue for outstanding acts in the performing arts, the Festival started expanding its focus on contemporary visual arts in 2005 with an ambitious tribute to Dieter Roth curated by Jessica Morgan of Tate Modern and Björn Roth, son of the artist. The Minister of Culture and Education and the Mayor of Reykavík founded the Festival in cooperation with arts institutions and the Federation of Icelandic Artists. Thorunn Sigurdardottir serves as the current artistic director.

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Media Contact:
For further information, interviews and images, please refer to the following contacts:
Kellie Honeycutt
Blue Medium, Inc.
T: +1 212 675-1800
F: +1 212 675-1855
E: kellie@bluemedium.com

Gudrún Kristjánsdóttir
PR and Communications Director
Reykjavík Arts Festival
T: +354 561 2444
F: +354 562 2350
E: gudrun@artfest.is