TRADE 2008 – 2009
David Michalek is currently leading the TRADE residency with a group of four artists from the two counties. At the seminar, Michalek will give a presentation on his own work while the group of artists he has been working with will give a presentation on their experiences of TRADE. Four Leitrim/Roscommon artists from previous residencies have been invited to return to talk about how their practice has progressed in the time since their involvement with the programme.
TRADE has invited Rafael López Borrego, Director of Programming of DA2 in Salamanca (Spain) and Dobrila Denegri, Director of Centre of Contemporary Art in Torún (Poland) to talk about their involvement with international residency programmes and the purpose and potential for facilitating international artist movement. TRADE has also invited Philip Napier whose recent exhibition at the Dock ‘Unpacking the Terror’ concerns itself with the social, political and economic implications of global trade and Audrey Reynolds whose work is often a reflection from elsewhere but as much concerned with distance in memory and time as it is with physical distance.
Throughout the weekend, artist and curator Linda Shevlin will coordinate a Resource Room where delegates can access publications, information and application details about opportunities for artists to engage internationally.
The weekend is facilitated by Declan McGonagle; Belinda McKeon; Sarah Searson and Eilís Lavelle and coordinated by Alice Lyons and Philip Delamere.
Alongside the TRADE seminar, the European Cultural Contact Point (CCP) Ireland, will host Focus on Funding for Culture – a day long exploration of opportunities for activities within the Cultural sector to access EU funding.
Keynote Speakers
Rafael López Borrego studied History of Art at Salamanca University. From 1995 to 2004 he taught History of Contemporary Art at the Salamanca University. In 2004 he was appointed exhibitions coordinator of DA2 – Domus Artium 2002, Centre of Contemporary Art of Salamanca. In 2009 he was the director of the Contemporary Art Fair – Art Salamanca. He is president of the Cultural Association Millennium dedicated to promoting contemporary visual arts in Castille and Leon. Since June 2011 he is the director of programming of DA2.
Dobrila Denegri is an art historian and curator living and working in Rome, Belgrade and Torún (Poland). Her activity as curator and writer started in the early ‘90s. In 2002 she became artistic director of nKA/ICA (Belgrade), an independent cultural association which organized “Real Presence” for young artists. From 2002 to 2008 she was curator at Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome and since 2010 is artistic director of Centre of Contemporary Art in Torún. From 2007 to 2009 she lectured at La Sapienza University in Rome and since 2011 she has taught contemporary art at Polimoda in Florence.
David Michalek began his professional photographic career in the mid-1990s as a portrait artist for publications including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and Vogue before moving into performance, installation, and multi-disciplinary projects. His has shown nationally and internationally including the Brooklyn Museum, Trafalgar Square, Opera Bastille, Venice Biennale, Yale University and Lincoln Center. He has collaborated on staged works with Peter Sellars for Kafka Fragments at Carnegie Hall’s and St. François d’Assise at the Salzburg Festival and Paris Opera. Other film and video work for theater includes The Tallis Scholars with John Malpede and L.A.P.D., and with the Brooklyn Philharmonic for The Brooklyn Museum’s “Music Off the Walls” series. He lectures on religion and the arts at Yale Divinity School. David Michalek lives in New York with his wife Wendy Whelan, principal dancer of New York City Ballet.
Philip Napier is an artist and also currently the Head of Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. Napier is a former Rome scholar and has represented Ireland in the XXII Sao Paulo Biennale, Brazil, and Great Britain at the inaugural Kwangju Biennale in South Korea. He has shown widely internationally developing projects and manifestations often rerouteing meaning and power sited in situations of public realm debate.
Audrey Reynolds studied at Bath College of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London. She has held solo exhibitions at Outpost, Norwich (2011), Arcade, London (2010) and at Fordham Gallery, London (2007). She has also participated in group exhibitions at The Approach, London (2010), V22 Presents, London (2009), MOT international, London (2008), Ancient & Modern, London (2008), Hats Plus, London (2007), Netwerk Centre for Contemporary Art, Aalst, Belgium and in the 60th Anniversary Show at Gimpel Fils, London (2006). She lives and works in London. Audrey Reynolds is represented by Ancient & Modern, London.
Facilitators
Eilís Lavelle is a freelance curator and Gallery Manager based in Co. Wicklow. Previous projects include Timelines an exhibition & screening at the Mermaid Arts Centre in October 2007. Timelines featured a diverse range of practices including drawing, painting, video, film and animation. Work by 8 Irish and International artists, animators and film makers accompanied the exhibition. Other projects include curating a drawing exhibition for the Wicklow County Council to open in October 2008.
Joanne Laws is a critical writer, based in Leitrim. She has a background in Fine Art, Art & Design Education, and Visual Arts Practice. Currently, she is devoting her time to writing, teaching and research. She is a regular contributor to The Visual Artist’s News Sheet, and has published writing across a variety of Irish and international printed and online platforms.
Alice Lyons is a writer with an interest in bringing poetry to new contexts and media. Her poems have appeared as public art projects in municipal art centres and rural sheds; in newspapers and journals such as Tygodnik Powszechny (Kraków) and POETRY (Chicago) and as poetry films in cinema and gallery screenings worldwide. She is the author of two collections of poems and is the recipient of the Patrick Kavanagh Award for Poetry. Her poetry film, Developers, co-directed with Orla Mc Hardy and funded by a film project award from the Arts Council is in the final stages of production. She is currently a doctoral candidate at the Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry at Queen’s University in Belfast. Alice works as curator for the visual arts at The Dock.
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 was Director of Interface, Centre for Research in Art, Technologies and Design and Chair of Art and Design, at the University of Ulster, Belfast from 2004 to 2008. He is currently the Director of the National College of Art & Design in Dublin.
Belinda McKeon studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College Dublin (BA) and University College, Dublin (MLitt). She has written on the arts for The Irish Times for over ten years. She curated DLR Poetry Now, from 2008 to 2011, and has curated a number of events in the US, including the literary strand of Imagine Ireland. McKeon’s debut novel, Solace, was published by Picador (UK) and Scribner (US) this year.
Sarah Searson is a curator and policy advisor. She has worked extensively with public authorities in Ireland advising on policy and practices. Recent projects include www.publicart.ie (with Cliodhna Shaffrey). Currently she is working with The Grangegorman Development Agency. Details of her writing, projects, lectures, and curation work can be found on her website www.sarahsearson.com
Linda Shevlin is an artist based in Roscommon. Her practice includes exhibitions, public projects and curating. Her work has been exhibited extensively including at The Dock, Galway Arts Centre; Triskel Arts Centre, Cork; The Model, Sligo, and as part of Tulca 2011 in Galway. Shevlin has also curated large scale exhibitions including Sacred, an exhibition of works from the collection of IMMA and the ACNI, commissioned artists Karl Burke and Miriam De Burca and invited artists including Grace Weir, Daphne Wright and Mariele Neudecker. Shevlin completed her Masters in Visual Arts Practices through IADT in 2009 and was recently appointed membership on the Board of Directors of Visual Artists Ireland.
Residency Artists
Angie Duignan graduated from LSAD in 1995 and is currently undertaking an MA at NCAD. Her work encompasses photography, video and audio instillation as well as freelance curation and project facilitation. She has worked in schools and Artist-in-Prison programmes, and participated in both the Art@Work and TRADE Residency programmes. She is the Mid-Western Regional Representative for Artist Studio Network Ireland. She is currently showing in ‘The Imagination of Children’ at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London and is curating a group show ‘Interchange’ for Center for Emerging Visual Artists, Philadelphia April 2012.
Róisín Loughrey graduated from the National Film School, Dún Laoghaire in 2003 with her multi-award winning film ‘Fall Into Half-Angel’. Her work since then has been shown at home and internationally, including Museum of Modern Art, New York (MoMA); SmartLab International Symposium, London; Independent Exposure 07 – Seattle / San Francisco/Anchorage/ Houstenand Film Expo Texas 2007. She recently participated in the Roscommon County Council art@work residency programme. She is currently exhibiting in the V&A Museum of Childhood, London and is doing a Masters degree in NCAD, Dublin.
Anna Macleod is a visual artist based in North Leitrim. In her work she employs a variety of strategies and processes to mediate complex ideas associated with contemporary and historical cultural readings of land use and resources. Her practice also concerns the initiation, development and involvement in artist led projects and symposia in Poland, Spain, Australia, Iceland, Latvia and Ireland creating spaces for interaction, dialogue and interdisciplinary participation. Participation in events in 2011 include: Buddha Enlightened 2-be, India, ‘iSystems/systeMY’ Poland, Hardrock Revision, Colorado, Troubling Ireland and ‘Surface Tension’ The Future of Water, Dublin. She lectures at the Dublin Institute of Technology and completed an MA in Visual Art Practices at the Institute of Design, Art & Technology in 2009.
David Pierce was born into a comfortable family surrounded by normal society. Wonderful teenage years were disillusioned by hypocrisy. The remaining threads led towards the debauchery and salaciousness that is an artist’s life, and one of the best educations acquired. Then a move to Frenchpark.
Stephen Rennicks produces work with multiple layers of meaning which have often ultimately been about bringing people into the moment. In doing this he has so far explored the everyday, time and myth using installation, video, audio, text and concept. Since his Secret Residency at Dublin airport in 2005 he has been steadily developing his Deeper into Nothing technique for making art and looking at life anew.
Anna Spearman is currently based in Cornwall where she recently completed an MA in Fine Art: Contemporary Practice at Falmouth University. “My approach to making art is to be as open as I can, to welcome the sense of not knowing, and the possibility of being surprised.”
David Spence graduated in fine art and worked as a teacher and a model engineer, eventually moved to Ireland and became involved with community development and the use of art as a mechanism for societal change.
Brigitta Varadi is renowned for her innovative award winning textiles. She creates both site-specific installations and unique pieces. Her work is in private and public collections including the Office of Public Works. She has received several awards in support for her residencies and exhibitions from the Arts Council of Ireland, Roscommon County Council and Culture Ireland. Solo exhibitions include, Marmara University-Turkey, Kulttuurikauppila-Finland, Town Hall Art Centre and Sligo Art Gallery, Ireland.