TRADE 2006 – 2007
In 2006/2007 TRADE explored the different methodologies artists use to make art. We investigated why processes are developed for particular reasons and how this is evident in the final artwork. We looked to see what aspects of a process are attributable to the artist’s methods and what aspects are attributable and relevant to the situation where the work is made.
The seminar featured national and international artists, curators and thinkers including Alfredo Jaar (Chile/USA) and Rebecca Fortnum (UK) who each worked with a group of five artists from Leitrim and Roscommon over a number of months. The programme also featured writer and critic Patricia Phillips (Head of Art at Cornell University) and artist Phillida Barlow (Professor of Art at Slade School of Art).
Irish artists presenting at TRADE included Carol Anne Connolly, Gareth Kennedy, Alice Lyons, Christine Mackey, Anna MacLeod, Angie Duignan, Francis McGonagle, Cathy Reynolds, Holly Asaa, Laura Gallagher and Kristy Varenga.
Conversations with keynote speakers and artists presenting at TRADE was chaired and facilitated by Declan McGonagle (University of Ulster), Mike Fitzpatrick (Limerick City Gallery), Siún Hanrahan (Artist/D.I.T) Ailbhe Murphy (Artist/Consultant) and Sarah Searson (Curator/Consultant).
Resource Room
A Resource Room provided a range of material and tools for artists including –
– Brochures and application forms from established international residency centres worldwide.
– Practical advice on funding, submissions and sample applications for residency programmes.
– How to develop a web identity, network with artist communities around the world and access opportunities for web-based exhibitions.
– A collection of art-related books from Leitrim/Roscommon County Libraries
– A free TRADE 2007 CD-Rom featuring a selection of the information on display.
Alfredo Jaar Residency
Carol Anne Connolly, Gareth Kennedy, Alice Lyons, Christine Mackey, Anna MacLeod
The Residency group comprising Carol Anne Connolly, Gareth Kennedy, Alice Lyons, Christine Mackey and Anna MacLeod have been working with Alfredo Jaar since February 2007. The group have met to discuss issues pertaining to the Leitrim/ Roscommon area and, through their dialogue and research, have individually created projects based on the topic: “the gentrification of landscape” (working title). These projects will be presented in the form of a publication in December 2007 and in 2008, the group is working to realise their work as public interventions in the two counties.
Rebecca Fortnum Residency
Angie Duignan, Francis McGonagle, Cathy Reynolds, Holly Asaa, Laura Gallagher
London based artist Rebecca Fortnum is leading the second Trade Residency with five artists from the Leitrim / Roscommon region – Angie Duignan, Francis McGonagle, Cathy Reynolds, Holly Asaa and Laura Gallagher who have been working together as a group since September 2007. The idea of the residency is to marry aspects of global art practise with local elements. Rebecca’s approach to the project echoes her own interest in an artist’s personal practise and subject matter and questions process and intent. Rebecca has created documents through dialogues with contemporary British artists exploring visual intelligence and investigating the relationship between thinking and making. Through their own individual projects the five artists are re-examining their process of working in order to gain new insights into their practice while allowing a greater understanding of their work to emerge in public. Through documentation of their individual processes, the steps of their creative process will become visible and can be later traced or utilised to develop the work further. The importance of documentation is also recognised and promoted. At TRADE, the five artists will be reporting on their residency which will conclude in 2008.
Biographies
Ailbhe Murphy is a visual artist who has worked extensively in community development contexts in Dublin. Major projects include Unspoken Truths (1991 – 1996), Once is Too Much (1995 -1997). In 2003 she initiated Tower Songs, a cross city project with CityArts which has engaged a number of communities in Dublin undergoing major regeneration. In 2007 with sociologist Ciaran Smyth, she established Vagabond Reviews, an interdisciplinary platform for art practice and critical inquiry. Commissioned by Dublin City Council, Vagabond Reviews is currently conducting research on international models of support for innovative arts practice in urban and suburban open space. Ailbhe is currently pursuing a practice-based PhD with Interface at the University of Ulster, Belfast.
Alfredo Jaar is an artist, architect and filmmaker who lives and works in New York. He was born in Santiago de Chile in 1956. His work has been shown extensively around the world. He has participated in the Venice (86 and 07); São Paulo (87 and 89); Sydney (90); Istanbul (95); Kwangju (95 and 00); Johannesburg (97) and Sevilla (06) Biennales as well as Documenta (87 and 02) in Kassel. Important individual exhibitions include The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Whitachapel, London; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Fundacion Telefonica, Santiago. A major retrospective of his work was organized by the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lausanne, Switzerland this year. His most recent project, Muxima, a film that focuses on Angola, has been exhibited at the Biarritz Festival; the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC; the Fundacion Tapies, Barcelona; Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Venice Biennale, 2007. He has created more than 40 Public Interventions around the world. More than 36 monographic publications have been published about his work. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1985 and a MacArthur Award in 2000. In 2006 he received the Premio Extremadura a la Creacion (Spain).
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.
Kristy Verenga lived, worked and exhibited in New York City for 15 years before going to Barcelona in 1999 and then coming to Roscommon Town in 2005, initially as artist –in- residence at the Roscommon Arts Centre. In New York, her studio was on the waterfront in Red Hook, Brooklyn where she worked in an old factory building which faced the Hudson and East Rivers. The origin of her use and fondness for intense colour and organic shapes comes from those years overlooking the grey skyline of Manhattan. The combination of this black and white, hard-edged landscape and years of meditation have had a profound influence on her work. Her paintings are an extension of contemplation and deep listening. The residency in India at Sanskriti Kendra provided inspiration as well as sanctuary in which to work amongst the intensity and emotion of New Delhi. Verenga also worked on two collaborative projects with fellow Kendra resident, Shaun Cassidy.
Mike Fitzpatrick is a curator and artist, and is currently 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.
Patricia C. Phillips’ research and critical writing involve contemporary public art, architecture, sculpture, landscape, and the intersection of these areas and she has lectured widely in universities across the world on these subjects. Since 1980, her essays and reviews have been widely published including Artforum, Art in American, Flash Art, Sculpture, and Public Art Review and is author of It is Difficult, a survey of the work of Alfredo Jaar. In 1991, she became chair of the Art Department at the State University of New York at New Paltz serving as dean of the School of Fine & Performing Arts from 1996-2002 before becoming professor and chair of the Art Department from 2003-2007. She is currently professor and chair of the Department of Art in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning at Cornell University. Curatorial and design projects include Disney Animators and Animation; The POP Project and Making Sense: Five Installations on Sensation. She curated City Speculations, a major exhibition at the Queens Museum of Art. She is the editor of City Speculations (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996). In July 2002, she was appointed the Editor-in-Chief of the Art Journal, a quarterly publication on contemporary art published by the College Art Association and she also serves on the editorial advisory board of Public Art Review.
Phyllida Barlow is a Professor of Fine Art at the Slade School of Fine Art. She has exhibited widely including Spacex in Exeter, for Beacon Project, Lincolnshire, and Studio 1.1 Gallery, London in 2005. She was commissioned for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and for GANA, Seoul, Korea, in 2006. Other exhibitions include Peninsula for BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2004, SKIT for Bloomberg Space, London, 2005, and Under Over for 1, Canada Square, London in 2007. Also in 2007 a solo exhibition – New Sculpture, Gallery and Grounds – at the New Art Centre, Roche Court offered the opportunity to develop single, autonomous wall-based and free standing sculptures in the gallery alongside a three part installation in the grounds. A solo exhibition for FIAC, Leon, Mexico, and a three part installation for etc., a group exhibition at the Amagerfaelledvej 5 Projekter Space, Copenhagen, have taken place recently in 2007. During 2007-2008, an arts council award will enable Barlow to bring together interested artists to make work without any particular outcome being expected of the work, where the focus will be on process rather than on conclusion. The title of this project is ‘What Do Artists Do’.
Rebecca Fortnum read English at Oxford before gaining an MFA from Newcastle University and taking up a fellowship at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, USA. She has been a Visiting Fellow in Painting at Plymouth University and Winchester School of Art; a visiting artist at The Art Institute of Chicago and Lecturer at Norwich School of Art, Wimbledon School of Art, Bath Spa University, Central St Martins School of Art and currently Camberwell College of Art, University of the Arts, London and Research Fellow at the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts. She has received several awards and has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Spacex Gallery, Exeter; The Winchester Gallery; Kapil Jariwala Gallery, London; Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham; The Drawing Gallery, London; and Gallery 33, Berlin. She has exhibited in group shows in New York, Maine, Budapest, Salzburg, Marseilles and Gdansk as well as numerous UK exhibitions. Recent group shows include Fluent; painting and words, Unframed; the politics and practices of women’s contemporary painting and Inspiration to Order. She was instrumental in founding the artist-run spaces Cubitt Gallery and Gasworks Gallery in London and has worked as curator and an art writer, contributing to various magazines and books. Her book, Contemporary British Women Artists, in their own words, was published in 2007 by IB Tauris. She is currently a recipient of the Space for 10 mid career artists award.
Sally Maidment graduated from the Institute of Technology, in Sligo in 1999 and has since exhibited and worked as a printmaker nationally and internationally. She was administrator of the arts education and facilitation company Artscope until 2002 when she left to concentrate on her arts practice and to complete her degree in printmaking. Maidment is currently based in Glasgow working as a part time administrator in the Research & Postgraduate Department of the Glasgow School of Art and working on a number of art-related projects. Recent residencies and administration projects include: The Eyes of the Docks: a multimedia installation project in the docklands of Cork (touring to: Belfast, Amsterdam & New York); TRACKS residency project with artists from Europe and the Middle East; The Book of Minds book making project in St. Finbarr’s Hospital, Cork; The Past in the Present Conference, Glasgow School of Art; Poetry Now 2007, Dun Laoghaire. Maidment is coordinating The Resource Room at TRADE.
Sarah Searson is a graduate of Visual Arts at DIT, and Arts Management and Cultural Policy at UCD and holds an MA in Public Cultures from Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design. Sarah has exhibited in Dublin and New York and was Arts Officer with Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council from 2000-2005 during which she established The Festival of World Cultures, The Dublin Youth Dance Company and a number of artist residencies and programmes. She developed two National Poetry Awards as part of the Poetry Now Festival and was instrumental in the capital development programmes for the Pavilion Theatre and the Dance Theatre of Ireland both in Dun Laoghaire. Sarah is currently working with South Dublin County Council’s In Context 3 public art programme. She has produced and curated a symposium of visual art at Emo Court in County Laois in 2005, in 2006 she co-curated Tulca. She has been public art policy advisor to Wicklow County Council and has worked for the Association of Local Authority Arts Officers and numerous local authorities country-wide. She currently teaches on the M.A. in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at U.C.D. and with Visual Arts students at the D.I.T.
Siún Hanrahan is a writer and artist, and is research co-ordinator for Art, Design & Printing at Dublin Institute of Technology. She completed her PhD in 1997 at the University of Ulster and has published in a number of edited anthologies, as well as in journals such as Leonardo (MIT Press), Source, and the Irish Arts Review.