Artipedia - Arts News

Galway Arts Centre

Linda Quinlan
I’ve seen your bravery and I will follow you there, 2007
DVD still, 2-channel DVD projection
Courtesy of the artist

Linda Quinlan
Like Horses and Fog
June 6 - July 5, 2008

Preview Wednesday, June 5 at 6pm

http://www.galwayartscentre.ie
http://www.lindaquinlan.com

Linda Quinlan’s arrival in Tasmania for a residency early in 2007 coincided with the fly-by of Comet McNaught. Although Tasmania should have been an ideal spot from which to view the comet, Quinlan was never able to see the heavenly body, much less record it, so instead she made her own, filming at an angle inside a pinhole camera filled with smoke. The video of that ersatz celestial event comprises half of I’ve seen your bravery and I will follow you there, a two-channel projection that constitutes the centerpiece of her recent body of work. The other half features a shot of the pinhole camera itself, standing in a clearing among trees, lonely save for the calls of unseen birds. We Forgot to Write The End, a single-channel video, features a stray dog frisking on the grounds of the abandoned Beaumaris Zoo, where the last known thylacine, the carnivorous marsupial known as the Tasmanian tiger, died in captivity in 1936. Taken together, these two works create a mood of
reverie, a nostalgic meditation on what is lost and can never be regained, on what—because of inclement weather or extinction caused by man—must always remain obscure and ineffable. Quinlan writes a melancholy poetry of the
irretrievably unknowable.

The artist installs her videos among paintings, drawings, and sculptures, forming an ensemble of exquisite and precisely calibrated contingency. A Nigerian necklace of Bakelite beads hangs from a long brass pole that leans precariously against the wall on a small patch of rabbit fur (I Don’t Think They’ll Ever Catch Us); two panels, delicately painted with motifs of twisting ribbons and radiating circles that may refer to the molecular or to the cosmic, are hinged to the wall and to each other, making their position in the world as tenuous as their compositions (Things Surround Us); a watercolor discovered in an Australian thrift store shows a flowering cactus and perches uncertainly on a sharply angled M-shaped bracket (I Can Hardly Sit Still). This watercolor became the jumping-off point for the work of five other artists, from Ireland and the U.K., invited by Quinlan to contribute to the project. Even the catalogue of her recent exhibition at the Crawford Gallery in
Cork—with fictional interviews, inconclusive correspondence, and enigmatic found photographs—may be construed as an integral component of her investigation into the aporias of knowledge and the caesuras in the narratives we use to understand
the world.

Linda Quinlan’s exhibition is accompanied the first major publication on the her work, featuring an essay by Sally O’Reilly, a short story by Cathal Coughlan, and texts by the artist. Many works have been created specifically for this publication, including contributions from Anna Barham (UK), David Joyce (IRL), Lorna McIntyre (UK), Giles Round (UK), and Lee Welch (IRL). This publication has been generously funded by Allied Irish Bank.

Linda Quinlan (B.1977) lives and works in Dublin and is a member of Temple Bar Gallery and Studios. She exhibits widely both at home and internationally. Recent exhibitions include, Come Together, at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, I am always touched by your presence, (Dear), at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Like Horses and Fog, at The Crawford Gallery, Cork and An Other Place, at the Long Gallery, Hobart. She was recently selected for The Advanced Course in Visual Arts at The Fonazione Ratti Museum, Como, Italy with Yona Friedman. Forthcoming exhibitions include L’Art en Europe, an international exhibition at Chateau Pommery, Reims, CSAV at Careof Gallery, Milan, Preview Art Fair, Berlin and a solo exhibition at Ard Bia, Berlin. In 2006 she was awarded the prestigious AIB prize. Her work is in the collection of The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Irish Arts Council and several private collections.

Joseph R. Wolin.

Joseph R. Wolin is an independent curator and critic living in New York.

The Galway Arts Centre
47 Dominick St
Galway
Ireland
+353 (0) 91 565886
Opening hours Mon - Sat, 10am - 6pm.
info@galwayartscentre.ie
http://www.galwayartscentre.ie
http://www.lindaquinlan.com

Prefix Photo magazine,
issue 17, available now

Subscribe at http://www.prefix.ca

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the release of the seventeenth issue of Prefix Photo magazine. Its theme is “the last photograph.” The issue features contributors writing on a host of photo, media and installation artists, including the following:

Cuauhtémoc Medina offers a meditation on Rosângela Rennó’s A Última foto and the conversion from analogue photography to digital imagery.

Louis Kaplan interprets Simon Glass’ gicleé prints entitled The Ten Commandments/ Prohibited Weapons through the lens of Walter Benjamin and Jacques Derrida.

Kim Sawchuk writes about Nichola Feldman-Kiss’ mean body database series and the mass production of human-shaped databases and anthropometric standards.

Other contributors include Robert Burley, Nichola Feldman-Kiss, Johannes Franzen, Simon Glass, Kenneth J. Harvey, Ryoji Ikeda, Rosângela Rennó, and more.

Prefix Photo is available by subscription and in fine bookstores and newsstands in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Singapore and China.

Prefix Photo is published with the assistance of its staff, volunteers and patrons, as well as the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. Prefix Photo also acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Magazine Fund toward its editorial and production costs. The Ontario Arts Council is an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art gratefully acknowledges its Supporting Sponsors C.J. Graphics and Steam Whistle Brewing; its Official Catering Sponsor, à la Carte Kitchen; and its Official Hotel Sponsor, the Sutton Place Hotel.

Busan Biennale 2008

Theme: Expenditure
Period: Sep. 06. - Nov. 15. 2008 (71 days)
Opening ceremony: Sep. 06. 2008
Venues: Busan Museum of Modern Art and others
Exhibitions:
Contemporary Art Exhibition
Sea Art Festival,
Busan Sculpture Project
Participating artists: 183 artists from 34 countries
Host/organizer:
Busan Metropolitan City
Busan Biennale Organizing Committee
Contact: telephone 82-51-888-6691~9
fax 82-51-888-6693
bbiennale@paran.com

http://www.busanbiennale.org

The 2008 Busan Biennale shows uniqueness of contemporary art from both east and west. 183 artists from 34 countries will represent a distinctive philosophy of “expenditure” and a vivid scene of contemporary art through a variety of artworks including paintings, photographs, videos, installations, outdoor sculptures, etc. Made up of the Contemporary Art Exhibition, the Sea Art Festival and the Busan Sculpture Project, The 2008 Busan Biennale unfolds at the Busan Museum of Modern Art, Gwangalli Beach, APEC Naru Park from September 6th to November 15th.

The Contemporary Art Exhibition will be hosted in the Busan Museum of Modern Art, employing not only the interior spaces of the gallery but also the walls, parking lots, and outdoor spaces nearby to highlight the characteristics of individual art fields. Special exhibits are planned in the measurement room of the Busan Yachting Center, arranging the works of major artists or large-scale installation works. There will be 103artists’ works from 25countries exhibiting.

The exhibits seek to approach contemporary art from critical viewpoints, believing that contemporary art is mired in the trap of reproducing the false images of saturated, oversupplied, repeated symbolic values. Since the symptoms of expenditure appear not only in contemporary society and culture but also in art, especially, in the whole spectrum of contemporary art, it will become a major keyword to reading the latest art trends, which seeks to visualize features of provocation and disintegration.

The Sea Art Festival, which is expected to be a festive venue composed of a variety of works, performances, art and music, will unfold on Gwangalli Beach and nearby areas as a project crossing the boundary between art and everyday life, emphasizing the friendliness of contemporary art. A wide variety of participation art will be exhibited, including ecological works made of environmentally-friendly materials, which will naturally disappear, performance art, and artworks that allow visitors to find or look into something, etc. 58 artists from 18 countries will participate in the festival.

The theme of the Sea Art Festival, “Voyage Without Boundaries,” symbolizes the navigation of desires moving toward unfathomable areas. The future seen from the perspective of quantum mechanics is uncertainty itself, emphasizing randomness and unpredictability. Since the future is not determined, it presents freedom and choice, with several factors and motives complementing to participate and engage. The Sea Art Festival brings to the world of reality the conditional “if,” which cannot exist in history. The history that we believe is inevitable is rewritten through the distortion of time and space. New artists, who create new artistic - not historical - events, will serve as explorers navigating to find new routes. These new pioneers discover and revise new routes, based upon their intuition and judgement, to find the present address of contemporary art.

The Busan Sculpture Project is inviting 20 artists from 12 countries. The exhibits will be hosted in APEC Naru Park. Materials like stone, concrete, brick, metal, wood will show harmony with grass, flowers, and trees in nature. Going beyond the existing boundary of the sculpture genre, the Project will pursue to harmonize spatial geographical works, such as installation, architecture, landscape architecture, sound, etc. with a city, art, and a garden.

The exhibits will not seek to visually transform a park itself, but rather, extend the epistemological denotation of the space itself. Thus, in addition to artistic and utilitarian works, such as site-specific sculptures and street furniture, the Busan Sculpture Project will be made up of synesthetic works that will change the whole space into one creative space. By installing artworks on the boundaries of a park, the Project will naturally connect what used to be a divided landscape, revealing contemplation on a divide in communication amid advanced information technology and the cure for the problem. The Project will also deal with introspection into an unproductive consumption activity in contemporary consumption-centered society through a stroll on a garden, which is categorized as an “unproductive activity,” in contemporary society, where every system is arranged according to the mechanism
of production.

183 artists from 34 countries participate in the 2008 Busan Biennale. Please find how many artists are invited from each country in the followings.

Contemporary Art Exhibition
Georgia 1, The Netherlands 2, Denmark 1, Germany 2, Romania 2, Morocco 1, USA 17, Mexico 1, Venezuela 1, Sweden 1, Switzerland 1, England 4, Israel 1, Italy 2, India 2, Japan 9, China 8, Cyprus 1, Canada 3, Trinidad and Tobago 1, Thailand 5, Portugal 1, France 6, Australia 1 and Korea 29

Sea Art Festival
New Zealand 1, Germany 2, Taiwan 1, Sweden 1, Switzerland 1, Singapore 1, Ireland 1, England 2, Indonesia 1, Japan 7, China 3, Trinidad and Tobago 1, Thailand 1, Poland 2, France 2, Philippines 2, Australia 1 and Korea 30

Busan Sculpture Project
New Zealand 1, The Netherlands 1, USA 2, Vietnam 1, Scotland 1, Ireland 1, England 1, Indonesia 1, Japan 2, China 2, Canada 1 and Korea 6

Busan Biennale 2008
Sep. 6 - Nov. 15, 2008,
Press Opening
Sep. 5. 2008, Auditorium at the Busan Museum of Modern Art
Opening Ceremony
Sep. 6. 2008

For inquiries, contact:
Busan Biennale Organizing Committee
23rd Floor, Busan City Hall, Yeonsan 5-dong, Yeonje-gu, Busan Metropolitan City
Tel. 82-51-888-6691~9 / Fax 82-51-888-6693 / bbiennale@paran.com
http://www.busanbiennale.org

Billy Mavreas, Wallet…, c-print, 2008.

The Helen Pitt Gallery artist run centre presents:

[Workaday02]
Billy Mavreas: AND ANOTHER THING

Friday May 23 to Saturday June 14, 2008
Reception: Friday, June 6 at 8:00 pm

Montreal-based artist and cartoonist, BILLY MAVREAS, presents AND ANOTHER THING as the second installment of the Helen Pitt Gallery’s Workaday series, a three-exhibition experiment addressing issues of creative process, labour and the performative gesture. For each of these exhibitions, the artists involved will be spending three weeks working live within the gallery space to develop a new project or body of work in situ. Viewers are invited to drop in regularly to witness the evolution of these projects and see the artists at work.

Working largely with a photocopier, but also with sculptural elements and found objects, Mavreas will be creating an improvised, collaged installation that defies the divisions of writing and drawing; narrative and semiology; anthropology and science fiction.

At the Helen Pitt Gallery, Mavreas will, in his own words, undertake “a radical expansion of ideas. An accumulation and sloughing off. A shared play and a solo manic exercise. A turn or phrase, a rant, a monologue, a listening, an encouragement. The texture of things noticed or felt. An array of tenses, dislodged temporal streams. Layered noise. Hidden information. Buried text. Lost meanings. Worlds within worlds.”

Throughout the exhibition, audience members will be invited to participate in Mavreas’ exhibition by coming with photocopiable items (objects, original artwork, pocket or wallet contents) to be incorporated in Mavreas’ project.

Notoriously difficult to pin down, Mavreas’ process-based practice does nonetheless suggest a critical response to Modernism’s severity, reductionism and paradoxical dialectics, engaging instead with its less ordered, more expansive traditions of mysticism and transcendentalism developed by such diverse figures as Wassily Kandinsky, John Cage, René Daumal, and Aleister Crowley. And yet, Mavreas’ work is entirely his own. His distinctive creative universe—often populated with bunnies with keen knowledge of dimensional portals and time travel, gourd-like blobs that conflate the phallus/vagina dichotomy, talismans and runes—evokes a social urgency, a reconsideration of language and action, and ultimately seeks a metaphysical understanding to the hard edges of thought, reason and the structure of contemporary life.

BILLY MAVREAS is a Greek-Canadian artist living in Montreal. For almost twenty years, Mavreas has produced rock posters, comics, artist books, visual poetry, installation, mail art, web art, performance, essay writing and guerilla consultancy. His artwork and various projects have been shown and published internationally. He is the author of The Overlords of Glee (conundrum press, 2001), Hell Passport Commentary (Perro Verlag, 2006) and the upcoming Inside Outside Overlap (Timeless Books, 2008) among many others. Mavreas is also the proprietor of his enduring project, Monastiraki, a Mile-End magickal curiosity shoppe and art gallery.

HELEN PITT GALLERY
#102-148 Alexander Street
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada V6A 1B5
http://www.helenpittgallery.org
Contact: Lance Blomgren, Director/Curator