TRADE 2008 – 2009
TRADE is a collaborative visual arts programme between Leitrim and Roscommon County Councils providing knowledge, resources and opportunities for visual artists to engage internationally. Rather than considering ‘rural’ as ‘isolationary’, TRADE emphasises that art is a global construct and encourages a freeflow of ideas and opportunities both for local artists to engage internationally as well as for international artists to participate locally.
Founded in 2004, TRADE (then called Artist as Traveller), invited artists such as Hou Hanru, Hüseyin Bhari Alptekin, Shin Egashira and Julie Bacon among others. Trade 2005 invited artists’ agencies including N55, myvillages.org and M & M proyectos.
Since 2006, TRADE consists of two elements—a residential programme and a seminar event. Under our first residential programme, artists Alfredo Jaar and Rebecca Fortnum each worked with a group of artists from the two counties over the course of a year. The outcomes of these residencies were presented at the TRADE seminar the following December.
John Gibbons And Darren Almond are currently leading two programmes of work with ten artists from Roscommon and Leitrim. At the seminar, Gibbons and Almond will give presentations about their own practice, whilst the two groups of artists they have been working with over the last number of months will give group presentations about their experience of the TRADE programme. Other key speakers over the weekend include Rod Mangham and Brian Dillon and three artists, Katie Browne, Anna Mc Leod and Christine Mackey, who have been participating in international residencies sponsored by TRADE. The weekend is facilitated by Declan McGonigle, Tara Byrne, Tessa Gilbin, Mike Fitzpatrick and Aideen Barry. TRADE is a partnership programme of Roscommon and Leitrim Arts Offices, supported by Roscommon and Leitrim County Councils and the Arts Council of Ireland.
JOHN GIBBONS RESIDENCY
Cathy Carman / Seamus Dunbar / Cathal Roche / Anna Spearman
Working with John Gibbons has led our group of independent artists into the ‘performance’ of weekly cross-arts improvisation sessions. On our journey, improvisation and play have come to follow our many group discussions, home cooked meals, site and studio visits. Our shared and private creative work have become a playful continuation of that group dialogue. Working in this way, we have established a collaborative practice in which we work independently, in subgroups and as a single unit. As we continue on our journey, work expands through a democratic exchange with the town. Time becomes marked by new events, the ebb and flow of relationships. For the seminar the group will present aspects of their journey through discussion, live performance and a visit to our TRADE shop front on Bridge Street.
DARREN ALMOND RESIDENCY
Padraig Cunningham / Johnnie Lawson / Róisín Loughrey / Margo McNulty
TRADE has become a point of departure, allowing us to examine our practice as individuals while working in a collaborative environment. We valued the process of integration but felt the need to explore this independently rather than as a group practice. Spurred by Darren, Trade became a dialogue of ideas, peer critique and resources. Individually we hoped the dialogue with Darren and between ourselves would shift our work into new areas of exploration but reflect the openness of this conversation. We also felt the need to work in a practical manor giving ourselves a ‘deadline’ as a point of focus to the dialogue that Trade had become. This led to the source and use of an alternative exhibition space that will be opening in conjunction with the seminar. Exhibiting on a common ground, in five warehouse units, should bring our work into focus and provide a opportunity not only to show alongside Darren, but to demonstrate the relationship that developed through TRADE. Katie Browne, Anna MacLeod, Christine Mackey
TRADE is about providing opportunities for artists from these counties to engage internationally and for international artists to engage with artists here. As well as inviting artists to conduct residencies in Roscommon and Leitrim we offer opportunities for artists to participate in an international programme which they have developed for themselves. This may be a formal residency, a period where they will receive mentoring from an international artist, or any other programme of work with an artist or agency abroad. This year Katie Browne worked with artists in Brazil while Anna MacLeod and Christine Mackey participated in programmes and exhibitions in Poland and Greece.
BURSARY ARTISTS
Katie Browne, Anna MacLeod, Christine Mackey
TRADE is about providing opportunities for artists from these counties to engage internationally and for international artists to engage with artists here. As well as inviting artists to conduct residencies in Roscommon and Leitrim we offer opportunities for artists to participate in an international programme which they have developed for themselves. This may be a formal residency, a period where they will receive mentoring from an international artist, or any other programme of work with an artist or agency abroad. This year Katie Browne worked with artists in Brazil while Anna MacLeod and Christine Mackey participated in programmes and exhibitions in Poland and Greece.
BIOGRAPHIES
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
John Gibbons was born in Ireland in 1949. He was Professor of Sculpture at Winchester School of Art up to 2008 and is a member of Aosdána. His earlier work in constructed steel included sometimes recognisable elements of found scrap objects, plates and colour but since the mid nineties these have given way to the pure, linear material of stainless steel rods. Transparent, skeletal containers of varying complexity and scale have consistently been emerging since, in a continuing exploration of interior and exterior space. John’s work displays and inherent order and symmetry, together with an intense connection with both physical and spiritual aspects of human experience. He has exhibited extensively internationally and his work is part of many collections including the Tate, London.
Darren Almond was born in Wigan in 1971 and studied at Winchester School of Art. He is renowned for his evocative photography, films, sculptures and installations which harness the symbolic and emotional potential of objects, places and situations. Ideas about memory permeate much of Almond’s work. His solo exhibition Darren Almond: Night as Day at the Tate in 2001 consisted of long exposure photographs taken at night. The idea of the journey is also important in Almond’s work. In 2003, his film “If I had you”, installed at the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi explores, amongst other things, the particular atmosphere of Blackpool Dance Halls. Recent solo shows include “K21”, Kunsthalle Zurich, Tate Britain and White Cube. His work was shortlisted for the 2005 Turner Prize.
Rod Mengham is Reader in Modern English Literature at the University of Cambridge, where he is also Curator of Works of Art at Jesus College. He is the author of books on Charles Dickens, Emily Bronte and Henry Green, as well as of The Descent of Language (1993). He has edited collections of essays on contemporary fiction, violence and avant-garde art, and the fiction of the 1940s. He has written on art for various magazines and composes the catalogues for the biennial ‘Sculpture in the Close’ exhibition, at Jesus College, Cambridge. He is also the editor of the Equipage series of poetry pamphlets and co-editor and co-translator of Altered State: the New Polish Poetry (Arc Publications, 2003). His own poems have been published under the title Unsung: New and Selected Poems (Folio/ Salt, 1996; 2nd edition, 2001).
Brian Dillon is the UK Editor of Cabinet Magazine. His writing has appeared in Frieze, The London Review of Books, The New Statesman, Modern Painters, Art Review and The Wire. His first book, In the Dark Room, won the Irish Book Awards non-fiction prize, 2006. He is currently working on Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives, to be published in 2010.
FACILLITATORS
Declan McGonagle began his career as the first organiser at the Orchard Gallery in Derry. He went on to be Director of Exhibitions at the ICA, London, and then Director at the Orchard Gallery. After eleven years as Director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, he held a string of other key roles including Irish Commissioner for the Venice Biennale in 1992, the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1994 and Director of Dublin’s City Arts Centre’s Civil Arts Inquiry. He is currently Director of Interface, Centre for Research in Art, Technologies and Design and Chair of Art and Design, at the University of Ulster, Belfast.
Mike Fitzpatrick is a curator and artist, and is currently Director of Limerick School of Art & Design. Prior to this he was director of Limerick City Gallery of Art. He has participated on the Independent Study Programme, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Studio Fellowship at PS1 Museum, LIC, New York and Research Studies at University of Liverpool. His solo Exhibitions include ‘Everything Must Go’ Art in General, New York, ‘Selling America’ Silverstein Gallery, New York and Galway Art Centre, BIAD Birmingham, Limerick City Gallery of Art, OMAC, Belfast and Project Art Centre, Dublin. He has exhibited in several groups shows in Ireland, UK, USA, Hungry, Australia and Italy. Fitzpatrick is a member of IKT, Organisation of International Curators. He is a committee member of ev+a, the Exhibition of Visual Art, Limerick. He has organised over 80 exhibitions at LCGA and was Ireland’s commissioner for the Venice Biennale 2007.
Aideen Barry is a Visual Artist, working in the mediums of performance, film, sculpture, lens based media, musical composition, drawing and animation. She is the West of Ireland representative for Visual Artists Ireland and lectures at the Galway/Mayo Institute of Technology, Art & Design dept. in Galway. Barry lives and works in Co. Galway. Recent Exhibitions in Ireland include: the disjoined and the morphological at The Mermaid Arts Centre (Bray), and of hypothetical evolutions of an other, Galway Arts Centre (Galway), in September 2009 she showed in Futures at the Royal Hibernian Academy. Barry has shown internationally at Centre Cultural des Irlandais, ( Paris), and more recently in Sound Design for Future Films at Moderna Museet, (Sweden), The Wexner Centre for the Arts in Ohio (USA), and The Walter Phillips Gallery (Canada). In April 2008 Head of Exhibitions, Sean Kissane of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, selected Barry, to represent Ireland at The LOOP Biennial in Barcelona, Spain. Barry was Artist in Residence at the Banff Centre in Canada in 2007. She also undertook a residency for Convoy, in Seydisfjourder, in Iceland, which was funded by The Skaftfell Centre, Iceland and Culture Ireland. In 2008 Barry was awarded a New Work Award from The Arts Council of Ireland and she undertook a residency at Kennedy Space Centre NASA. In 2010 Barry will represent Ireland at Liste, Young Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland, nominated by Mothertank’s Station, Barry will make a new work for this world fair. In 2010, Barry will show in Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, will launch her first Artist’s Monograph and will solo at Joyce Yahouda Gallery in Montreal.
Tessa Giblin is Curator of Visual Arts at Project Arts Centre in Dublin. Since 2006, she has realised a variety of exhibitions and projects including PHILIP, BLACKBOXING, NONKNOWLEDGE and The Prehistory of the Crisis (I), and solo exhibitions with Sung Hwan Kim & David Michael diGregorio, Aurélien Froment, Rosa Barba & David Maljkovic, Jeremiah Day & Simone Forti, Jesse Jones and Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan. She completed the de Appel Curatorial Training Programme in 2006 with the collaborative exhibition Mercury in Retrograde, following which she became Head of Exhibitions at Smart Project Space, Amsterdam. A graduate of the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts (NZ) in 2000, she founded and directed the public project Gridlocked and gallery Fresh in Christchurch. A selection of other curated exhibitions include Sleepwalker, ARTSPACE 2005; Work it, Scape, Art & Industry Biennial 2004 with Tobias Berger; The Bed You Lie In, ARTSPACE 2004. She has written for artists, magazines and exhibitions and is currently project leading the curatorial seminar module for the MA in Visual Arts (MAVIS) of IADT, Dun Laoghaire, Ireland.
Valerie Connor was the commissioner and curator for Ireland’s national participation at the 50th Venice Biennale of Art and 26th Bienal de Sao Paulo. She is an adviser to The Arts Council of Ireland and serves on the board of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. As Visual Arts Director at Project Arts Centre throughout the redevelopment of the building, she programmed projects ‘off-site’ and for the new gallery, moving into independent curatorial work in collaboration with other producers, artists and local authorities. She has written an op-ed column for Contemporary magazine and has had criticism published in academic anthologies, art periodicals and exhibition catalogues. She exhibited with the artist group Blue Funk and now lectures in photography at the Dublin Institute of Technology.