2 June until 31 August 2007
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© Victor Sloan
As part of the Special Cinematic Events programme, and in association with the Gallery of Photography, Victor Sloan’s work Walk will be shown during the Diversions Festival, which takes place in Dublin from 2 June until 31 August 2007. Walk will be projected outdoors in Meeting House Square at 10pm and 10.30pm on Friday 13 July 2007.
Films also included in this selection of very special cinematic presentations are: The U.S. vs. John Lennon; Bruce Springsteen – Live in Dublin and The Dead, John Huston’s last film.
As the Diversions Festival enters into its eight year, it has grown to become one of Ireland’s leading outdoor festivals and the biggest free celebration of arts and culture in the summer in the city. This year we have designed the festival to allow you to encounter a whole range of quality cultural experiences throughout Temple Bar, across film, music, opera, circus, live performance, family activities and markets for three months of the summer…but it doesn’t stop there because every day of the year Dublin’s Cultural Quarter is bursting with creativity, imagination and energy and the Diversions festival offers you a just a glimpse of that!
Meeting House Square Temple Bar Dublin 2Temple Bar Cultural Trust,
12 East Essex Street,
Temple Bar,
Dublin 2
12 East Essex Street,
Temple Bar,
Dublin 2
9am – 5.30pm Monday – Friday
[closed for lunch 1pm – 2.15pm]
Telephone: +353 1 677 2255
Web: www.templebar.ie
eMail: info@templebar.ie
[closed for lunch 1pm – 2.15pm]
Telephone: +353 1 677 2255
Web: www.templebar.ie
eMail: info@templebar.ie
Gallery of Photography email: gallery@irish-photography.com
web: www.irish-photography.com
web: www.irish-photography.com
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Things we may have missed
Golden Thread GallerySwitch Room
Reception: Friday 13th April 2007, 6.00pm – 8.00pm at the gtGallery, Switch Room, 84 – 94 Great Patrick Street, Belfast.
Followed by the Relocation Party at the Black Box, Hill Street, Belfast.
Exhibition continues through to Wednesday 30 May 2007. Tuesday – Friday 11.00am – 5.00pm & Saturday 1.00pm – 4.00pm
© Victor Sloan
Things we may have missed is an exhibition showcasing aspects of gtGallery’s history to date and is our première exhibition at the Switch Room premises. The exhibition features many of the artists that we have had the privilege to work with in the nine years we have spent on the Crumlin Road.Things we may have missed, a curated collection of works taken from our past projects, will provide a unique opportunity to celebrate aspects of the rich and diverse Northern Irish culture through the visual arts.
Without the nine years of valuable support from the Flax Trust, we would not have been in the position to respond to this new and exciting opportunity – and we would like to thank them for it. We are now looking forward to furthering our relationship with Robinson McIlwaine Architects, whose enthusiasm and support to date has been much appreciated.
Thanks should also be extended to all of you who have supported, visited and worked with us during our years on the Crumlin Road and we hope that you will all continue to do so in our new location. We would also like to thank our key partners and core funders; the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Belfast City Council and the Ardoyne Shankill Health Partnership.
Schools, colleges and community group visits to the gallery are welcomed. Please contact the gallery to book group tours and talks in advance, or to find out more about our associated activities.
Peter RichardsGallery Director & Curator
Artists exhibited are: Aisling O’Beirn, Alex Knox, Alistair Wilson, Allan Hughes, Benji de Burca, Bob Sloan, Brendan Jamison, Carbon Design, Charles Walsh, Ciara Finnegan, Dan Shipsides, Daniel Jewesbury, Darren Murray, David Crone, Deirdre McKenna, Dougal McKenzie, Gail Prentice, Gail Ritchie, Gary Shaw, Gerry Gleason, Graham Gingles, Ian Charlesworth, Ima Pico, Jack Pakenham, Joanna Karolini, Lisa Malone, Locky Morris, Maria McKinney, Marie Barrett, Mark McGreevy, Martina Correy, Mary McIntyre, Mike Hogg, Moira McIver, Peter Richards, Philip Napier, Plan X, Rita Duffy, Sam McKee, Susan MacWilliam, Shane Cullen, Theo Simms, Tom Bevan, Una Walker, Ursula Burke, Victor Sloan, Willie Doherty, Willie McKeown
Golden Thread Gallery, Switch Room, 84-94 Great Patrick Street, Belfast, BT1 2LU
t: +44 (0)28 9033 0920
e: info@gtgallery.co.uk
w: http://goldenthreadgallery.co.uk/
e: info@gtgallery.co.uk
w: http://goldenthreadgallery.co.uk/
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Luxus
Victor Sloan and Glenn Patterson
Millennium Court Arts Centre
25 January - 24 March 2007
© Victor Sloan
Opening Night Reception: Wednesday 24 January 2007, 7.30 - 9.00pm
Artists' Talk: Thursday 15 February 2007, 7.00 - 8.00pm
Artists available for interviews
MCAC is delighted to host the exhibition and book launch of ‘Luxus: A Visual and Verbal Collaboration by Victor Sloan and Glenn Patterson’. It is the first exhibition in a two-part series of new work entitled ‘Interrogating Contested Spaces’ involving the collaboration of major Northern Irish visual and verbal artists. The aim is to create dialogue and inform discourse between rural and urban disputed places, between creator and participant/viewer, between the urban regenerator and the general public and finally between the visual and verbal interpretations or creations.
All of the artists’ work — through the visual and verbal interpretation of an exhibition and book — will explore these issues. They will do so through engaging memory or memories linked by history, visual landscapes in a local, national and international context, through the use of various materials and processes, with different sources of inspiration and intellectual investigation. The final product is a hard-bound book, highlighting the collaborative examination by the two artists and their processes, as well as an exhibition, a book launch and reading.
While primarily looking at Berlin, and tangentially Portadown, the first project ‘Luxus’, by Victor Sloan and Glenn Patterson, engages with the notion of The City in urban renewal. These urban spaces share notions of ‘locality’ in relation to common post-conflict spaces. Issues regarding territory and power structures pervade our psyche and the book/exhibition project aims to verbalise and visualise this change in social process and transition. Taking Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood as the background the artists examine the process of what is luxus (luxury).
For this project internationally known photographer Sloan and acclaimed Northern Irish writer Patterson were commissioned to create new images and text, which become the visual and verbal manifestations of this interrogation. The images are primarily from the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, much of which is being turned into new luxury apartments. Located in this area is a strange little bar called ‘Luxus’, an establishment that emits many sentiments but none of them reflect luxury.
In this new work, digital manipulation supersedes the physical mark making of Sloan’s earlier artworks. Instead of the intentional self-made scratches, marks and blemishes for which Sloan is so well known, these new images contain more discreet and subtle changes that would only become obvious to the a viewer who has seen the original photograph. Additionally, the images are blown up to a large scale for the exhibition, producing noise and grain on the surface. The end result lends itself to Sloan’s well-known style, but this time the marks are created digitally rather than by hand. There is an immediacy and spontaneity that capture an impression and feeling of a single moment in a certain time and place. Sloan’s approach to subject matter has not necessarily changed but the process has moved from a physical to digital landscape with work that still very much harnesses the haunted and anxious moods of the artist’s own visual landscape. Sloan has also produced a video piece that can be placed within the context of the redevelopment East Berlin and how specific urban spaces remain authentic and original (or not) with within the contemporary urban development.
For this project Patterson’s observant writing style complements the exhibition’s artwork and concept. Patterson is known for his critical analysis of social interaction within different communities and his poignant and witty commentaries. The text looks at the city of Berlin, the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, the Luxus bar and the people that frequent it. Like a social voyeur Patterson offers the reader an offbeat tour along a less travelled path through one of Europe’s most engaging and remarkable cities, observing the remnants of the DDR, The Second World War and the fascinating characters that exist within this ‘altered state’.
There are not many opportunities for artists to have a visual or verbal ‘white box’ in which they can create. MCAC prides itself on the ability to encourage the idea of ‘anything goes and anything is possible’ in creating artwork. This project has been made possible by the fact that the Arts Council of Northern Ireland continues to support the commissioning of new work supporting high-quality, well-known artists and writers processes in their investigation and artistic production. MCAC and the artists are indebted to their support. Additionally, the Craigavon Borough Council also supported the project through partnership funding. MCAC has long been interested in the creation of new bodies of work that engages not only with the gallery space specifically but also the notion of ‘place’ of Craigavon. This project, and the artwork created, certainly does so.
The exhibition is accompanied by an Artists’ Book entitled ‘Luxus’. It is available to the press upon request and to the public for £10.00 each.
As part of the exhibition there will be a series of auxiliary activities, which include:
- In-reach/Outreach project: For 12-16 year olds focusing on the techniques and themes examined in the exhibition.
- Video Editing: An opportunity to learn about this fascinating and important process. 8 February 6:30 - 8:30pm (4 weeks)
- Image Manipulation: Using local locations you will learn the skills required to recreate unique images in the style employed by Sloan. 10 February 10:00 am -12:00pm (4 weeks)
- Film: ‘Wings of Desire’, this German Modern Classic by renowned director Wim Wenders, follows the activities of angels living in a divided, war-scarred Berlin as they try to comfort the mortals that dwell there. (Not to be missed). Saturday 3 February 3:00pm.
The Artists:
Victor Sloan was born in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone in Northern Ireland. He lives and works in Portadown, Co. Armagh. He studied Painting at Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art. Victor Sloan is an influential artist and educator. As one of Ireland's major visual artists, he has developed an international reputation for creating powerful images, which display his prodigious versatility and inventiveness. Sloan is known for his works commenting on various political, social and cultural aspects of Northern Ireland. As well as working with the medium of photography, he also uses video, etching and screen-printing. The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast initiated a retrospective exhibition in 2001. In 2002 Victor Sloan was awarded an MBE. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy. He has won many awards including the Academy’s Conor Prize in 1988 and the Gold Medal in 1995. Victor Sloan has exhibited widely throughout Europe, North America, South America and Asia. His work is to be found in numerous private and public collections worldwide.
Glenn Patterson was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia taught by Malcolm Bradbury. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1988 and was Writer in the Community for Lisburn and Craigavon under a scheme administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is the author of five novels including Burning Your Own(1988), Fat Lad (1992), Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain (1995), The International (1999), and Number 5 (2003), all of which received critical acclaim and awards. His most recent novel, That Which Was (2004), is also set in Belfast and explores the interaction between memory, history and society. Glenn Patterson has been Writer in Residence at the Universities of East Anglia, Cork and Queen's University, Belfast, and was one of two writers (with poet Bernardine Evaristo) selected by the British Council and the Arts Council to attend the 'Literaturexpress Europa 2000' international literature tour.
Millennium Court Arts Centre houses two purpose built gallery spaces and has been described as one of Northern Ireland’s premiere art spaces. In addition to this, the centre includes a verbal arts room with a visual and verbal archive library, a multimedia suite equipped fully with video editing and sound recording studio. Within the complex there is also a darkroom, visual arts workshop and artist-in-residence suite, all of which combine to create a vibrant and unique environment in which to cultivate and enhance the cultural environment of the community.
Millennium Court Arts Centre
William Street, Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland
Tel: 028 (ROI 048) 38394415 Fax: 028 (ROI 048) 38394483
