Visit to ArtEZ Institute of the Arts Enschede

Poster in the Entrance Hall of the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts Enschede

I was in Enschede, The Netherlands earlier this month for my exhibition opening, and also at ArtEZ Institute of the Arts, (Aki/ ArtEZ) to give a lecture about my work, specifically on the development of a body of work and the refining of thought through a reflective practice. Following the lecture I met with students and gave tutorials.

I first visited the college last year to co-deliver a workshop using large format film cameras in the photography department as part of their multi-institutional Memento project. It was a delight to to meet staff I had met previously and to discuss the possibility of further staff exchanges between AKI & CIT/Crawford College of Art & Design in the future. My involvement is with the print, ceramics and photography departments there, and they are innovative and enthusiastic to share their time with us in CIT/ Crawford and we talked of some interesting projects we would like to develop together.

Thanks again to the Dean & Staff of ArtEZ Academy of the Arts (AKI) for the invitation to come to Enschede, and to Erasmus and Culture Ireland for helping to fund the visit. It was a very successful & interesting trip both as an artist and educator.

Solo Exhibition at Fotogalerie Objectief Enschede

Invitation to Document at the Fotogalerie Objectief in Enschede

This week I am in Holland for my solo exhibition Document at the Fotogalerie Objectief in Enschede. The exhibition will be opened by Anke Weeda, the Dean of ArtEZ Art & Design Institute at 8pm on April 4th & will show until the 28th April 2012.

I will also be giving a talk about my work at 11am at ArtEZ Art & Design Institute in Enschede and doing some portfolio reviews with students starting at 1.30pm on Wednesday 4th April.

I want to thank Marcel Vos for all his help in organising this exhibition & talks. I also want to thank Culture Ireland for their kind support & funding.

Reflecting on the Guesthouse Residency

Installation at The Guesthouse
Photographed by Tony Compagno

The residency at The Guesthouse was a valuable opportunity to read and to play with another way of expressing my considerations rather than through a photographic print. Through reflective practice and dialogue I spent the time considering the art piece as the event, rather than as a documentation of the event. This is the installation that you see in the photos and what I presented at the Sunday lunch.

Experiencing the Installation
Photographed by Tony Compagno

The final image of the poetry book was a first edition of Poems by Anthony Cronin from 1957 which I found in the Guesthouse. I was very taken by the poem 'For a Father' in which he talks about how mannerisms come through in later generations. To me that is also relevant to how one piece of work leads to another, which leads to another, and the thought or concept that appears in a later piece is recognisable in some early form in the work that goes before it.

First Edition of Poems by Anthony Cronin
Photographed by Tony Compagno

I was also joined on the Residency by Pádraig Spillane - curator, photographer, philosopher and Vadagam maker extraordinaire. I want to thank Stephen McGlynn and all at The Guesthouse for the opportunity to do this residency. I am also delighted to say that a photograph that I made in Belfast during the Belfast Photo Festival has been accepted into the Rua Red Winter Show which will run from the 12th of November to the 10th December 2011.

Belfast Photo Festival - Part 2

Detonating Rough Gound at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Sophie Ristelhuber
(Belfast Photo Festival)

Detonating Rough Gound at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Paul Seawright
(Belfast Photo Festival)

I had planned to leave Belfast on Saturday to drive home to Cork, stopping for the night in Dublin, as I was not sure the borrowed (and brilliant) Skoda Estate which had brought me and my work up would be able to make the journey home in one go. However I was persuaded to stay by a merry band of adventurers, led by Peggy Sue Amison (Curator of the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh). We headed off first to see Detonating Rough Ground, Paul Seawright & Sophie Ristelhueber’s show at Ormeau Baths Gallery, engaging with the memory of conflict. There I stood up close to the work, and swam in the expanses of grey & the beautiful gentle mid tones of Paul’s images.

Glory Trip 197 from Full Spectrum Dominance by Simon Norfolk (Michael Hoppen Gallery)

A restaurant next to the Kabul municipal bus garage by Simon Norfolk from 'Burke and Norfolk'
(NY Times Lens Blog)

Then we moved on to Simon Norfolk’s work. Simon gave two really interesting and insightful talks about two different bodies of work. He launched his book ‘Burke and Norfolk,’ which is also an exhibition recently seen at Tate Modern. The body of work is of photographs taken in Afghanistan recently presented alongside photographs taken in Afghanistan in the 19th century by Irish photographer, John Burke. I enjoyed hearing Simon talk about the story of John Burke and what was involved for him in making the photographs in the late 1800s. Simon is also showing Full Spectrum Dominance, a series of beautifully presented large format colour images of military rocket and missile launches in America. His artist’s talk was another entertaining and informative event, about the experience of making the work, and his facination around the events he witnessed. He has the rare and beautiful ability of sharing his enthusism for history, life and photography.

Simon Norfolk's talk at Belfast Photo Festival

The evening ended with dinner at The Galley, on board a perfectly positioned barge, with the hugely inclusive and generous Peggy and a number of new friends. (Incidentally the Galley is run by Belfast Exposed Event Managers Brown & Bri.) Among the group were the festival director Michael Weir, artists Elliot Ross, Emmanuelle Waeckerle, Simon Burch, Simon Norfolk, Belfast exposed director Pauline Hadaway & Paul Durcan editor of Source magazine. And I was thrilled to reconnect with Nora Hickey, the Director of the Mermaid Arts Centre who I had worked with previously at Glucksman Art Gallery. I want to thank them all for a wonderful evening!

The Belfast Photo Festival is one to watch. The 25 year old (yes really!) director Michael Weir and his team of enthusiastic volunteers have put together a wonderful programme of events and it feels like a well oiled machine rather than an event in its infancy. I wish them heartfelt congratulations and good wishes for continued success with this wonderful biennial photographic festival that I am so delighted to be a part of. I also want to thank the coordinator of the Queen Street Studios Gallery Brendan O'Neill for all his help and support in bringing my work to the festival.

The Belfast Photo Festival continues until 14th August at locations across the city and Document continues until 27th August at Queen Street Studios Gallery, Belfast.

Belfast Photo Festival 2011 - Part 1

Opening of Document at the Queen Street Studio Gallery at the Belfast Photo Festival

I had a wonderful time last weekend at the opening weekend of the Belfast Photography Festival. I found the whole event welcoming, interesting and inspiring. I met lots of great people, saw beautiful work and had lots of fun. It was a long, full weekend so I've decided to tell the story in two parts.

It began for me with the opening of my exhibition Document and my artist's talk at the Queen Street Studio Gallery on Thursday 4th. It was the opening night of the festival and a number of exhibitions opened across the city. I want to thank everyone who came despite the torrential rain, I really appreciated the welcoming audience. Brendan O'Neill, the co-ordinator of Queen Street Studios Gallery introduced my artist talk and after I spoke I answered some very interesting questions.

Document at the Queen Street Studios, Belfast Photo Festival

One question addressed the idea of the work as an object in the space - as my work is not presented as a traditional photograph with a window mount in a frame - and asked how this aligns itself more to the presentation of a painting or sculptural work. The answer is that I do see the space as an integral element in the reading of my work, and I was very happy with the gallery space for that reason. The Queen Street Gallery reminded me a bit of the Chelsea galleries in New York. You enter an unobtrusive door and climb the stairs which opens into a bright white wooden floored space. My work sits happily there. The metal prints sit opposite a wall of windows so the light emphasised the idea of the tones in the print being affected by where you position yourself as the viewer.

Animal (25), 2007 by Elliot Ross

Also opening the same night was Elliot Ross's exhibition Animal which happened to be in the same building. So I nipped downstairs to introduce myself and really enjoyed his work, his humour, and the chocolate biscuits on offer! His work is a look at what the animal looking out at you from the page might have been feeling and how we as animals project our human emotions into the encounter with this other animal. He also launched his book of the same name at the festival.

Attention Seekers by Miriam O'Connor

Miriam O'Connor in conversation with Matt Packer

Later that evening was a very busy launch party. I was thrilled to meet Paul Seawright, Donovan Wylie and a number of other lecturers from the that MFA at University of Ulster at my show and we all seemed to be doing the rounds of openings, artist talks and book launches throughout the weekend. Another of the openings I got to was Miriam O'Connor’s exhibition Attention Seekers at The Third Space Gallery. I really enjoyed seeing the work, which is a look at inbetween spaces and inbetween moments, beautiful playful responses to everyday scenes. On Friday I attended an event where the Miriam was ‘in conversation’ with Matt Packer, curator of the Glucksman Art Gallery.

...To Be Continued