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Untitled, Eileen Hutton, 2010

The 4th Annual 126 Members' Show
OUT OF A BOX

Opening reception January 6th, 7 - 9pm.
Runs until January the 29th at gallery 126, Queen Street, Galway.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present its forth annual members' show, to be held this year for the first time in our Queen Street premises. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The members were asked to respond to the theme 'Out of a Box'.

The term 'out of the box' is said to derive from a famous puzzle created by early 20th century British mathematician Henry Ernest Dudeney, in which someone is asked to interconnect nine dots in a three-by-three grid by using four straight lines drawn without the pencil leaving the paper. In order to be successful, the puzzle solver has to realize that the boundries of the dot array are psychological. The only way to solve the puzzle is to extend the lines beyond the artificial boundary created by the nine dots.

We have curated a range of work that reflects our diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines and media, painting, video, sculpture, installation and photography. The way the artists have responded to the theme conceptually has been equally diverse, ranging from the academic and aesthetic, to the critical, to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

The artists showing are: Fionn Kidney, Niamh Ó Beirne, Austin Ivers, Timothy Emlyn Jones, Sarah Lundy, Jim Ricks, Micheál Conlon, Eileen Hutton, Christopher Banahan, Lorraine Neeson and Nina Amazing.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member.

Image: “I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it”. Graphite on paper. 31cm x 23cm.

I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it
Maeve Curtis
Norman Villa Gallery
5th - 20th November

Opening Reception on Friday 5th November, 6-8 p.m.
Guest Speaker: Writer Mike McCormack

What if, in our headlong rush towards technology we missed something...something that could affect our very soul? This is the question that Maeve Curtis explores in her solo show opening on Friday 5th November with guest speaker, writer Mike McCormack at the Norman Villa Gallery in Galway.

I wait towards you, pale with the effort of it is a further development of Curtis’ meditation on the mysteries and metaphysics which ghost around the invention of photography.

A fear of photography was prevalent amongst the intelligentsia of late nineteenth century Paris, some of whom were convinced that each time a photograph was ‘taken’ it removed something from our soul.

Curtis investigates this anxiety using as her starting point her own family snapshots. Giving consideration to strangers and loved ones alike, and equipped with the tools of paint and graphite she sets out to recover these lost moments of the soul in a gentle attempt to release them into an otherworldly place of arrivals and departures.

The show runs until November 20th at Norman Villa Gallery, 86 Lower Salthill, Galway Wed-Sat 12-6pm tel: 091 521131

RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW
Irish Performance Art
Kilmainham Gaol
Thursday 4th November 6-10pm

Performance Art Live (P.A. Live) presents 'RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW' an event featuring some of Ireland's top contemporary artists working within the realm of performance art north and south of the Border. This unique event, curated by Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Niamh Murphy will be held for one night, Thursday the 4th of November from 6pm, in the historic and powerful surroundings of Kilmainham Gaol, in Dublin.

Visitors to this free event will have the pleasure of experiencing twenty leading live artists, performing simultaneously over a four hour period throughout the cells and open areas of Kilmainham Jails East Wing.

Many nationally and internationally acclaimed artists will be performing on the night including Alastair MacLennan, a renowned and leading practitioner of performance art since the seventies. Maclennans work has influenced many live artists working today and in his own words admires artists “….who overcome the most, within and outwith themselves, 'take on' the human condition, and who (in effective art) comment on political and social corruption.”

Other artists who will perform on the night are: Aine Phillips, Amanda Coogan, Brian Connolly, Dominic Thorpe, Declan Rooney, Frances Mezzetti, Brian Patterson, Sinead McCann, Catherine Barragry, Fergus Byrne, Michelle Browne, Ann Maria Healy, Francis Fay, Pauline Cummins, Victoria Mc Cormack, Alex Conway, Sandra Johnston, Helena Walsh, Meabh Redmond and Niamh Murphy.

This is a free event organised by Performance Art Live (P.A. Live) kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland in association with the office of Public Works (OPW). P.A. Live was set up in 2009 and is committed to the promotion of performance art in Ireland.

Pallas Contemporary Projects presents:

Synchromaterialism
Jim Ricks
Preview: 7-9pm Friday 15th of October 2010
Continues: 16th October – 13th November 2010

Jim Ricks has developed the method of synchromaterialism as a means to consider the territory where art meets capitalism. To do this properly, history must be re-worked, splintered and re-imagined. Ricks will use the quotidian fragments of capitalism and empire in the last century to weave a new ‘conspiratorial’ narrative that undercuts and supersedes the prevailing mainstream ones. Subjective slices of everyday life and history are collected and, depending on scarcity, re-created. They will be displayed according to an intuitive synchronicity based on politics, aesthetics, history, and philosophy. Disjointed and unexpected symbols of struggle and power will form a ring of interconnected information in the gallery space.

An ongoing theme in Ricks’ practice of collecting iconic, odd and politically accessible chachka has led him to markets from Cairo to San Diego to Berlin to Ebay and beyond. He uses the most basic mechanisms of capitalism: markets, transactions and accumulation as the underlying system for the creation of a body of work. However, if Ricks cannot purchase an artefact for a reasonable price or at all, he will remake it. The ‘art’ of this work comes into play with his editorial vision and curation of these found and re-created objects and there re- positioning alongside disparate other ones.

By not covering one particular aspect of capitalism Ricks asks the viewer the more abstract questions: How do we know these things?; How did these things come to be?

Born in California, Jim Ricks received his MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway and Burren College of Art programme and his BFA from the California College of the Arts. Ricks is currently working on a touring public work, Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen, as well as collaborating on In Search of the Truth (The Truth Booth) with Cause Collective (US), Summer 2011.

Jim Ricks is a project based contemporary visual artist that aims to disrupt the bourgeois narrative. His’ work is influenced by his background as a prolific graffiti artist and a political activist. This is his first solo exhibition in Dublin.

Pallas Contemporary Projects focuses on the exchange of Irish and international artists with a strong conceptual approach working in different media.

info@pallasprojects.org | www.pallasprojects.org

Pallas is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

Yellow Reperformed
St Mary's Abbey
Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival
6pm -10pm 30 September - 5 October 2010

WHAT: Yellow Reperformed
WHEN: 6-10pm nightly from Thurs 30 Sept – Tues 5 Oct, 2010
WHERE: St. Mary’s Abbey, off Capel St, Dub
ADMISSION: Free, the audience is free to come and go.

On Saturday the 2nd October Ann Maria Healy will tackle Coogan's seminal durational performance, Yellow. Healy's practice, while emerging, impressed Coogan by its tenacity and grit while making physically challegening work. Healys reperforamnce of Yellow will be an viceral and intoxicating take on Coogan's script - Not to be missed.

Healy is a multi media artist whose practice includes live performance, sound, installation and photography. Her work explores the bodies' relationship to space and time. In particular focusing on cycles, how they can affect and shape our lives. She brings a particular emotional complexity to how she embodies the performance essence, with a great emphasis on the emotional. She participated in STRAYLIGHT/DARKLIGHT 09 in a durational performance and is a graduate of GMIT.

Over a continuous four hour period, each woman will wear a large yellow dress, continuously washing her enormous skirt over and over in a bucket of soapy water, to the music of Franz Schubert. A collective experience of endurance for performer and audience, the work examines the frail and yet indomitable nature of the human spirit, and the concepts of survival and rebirth.

Amanda Coogan - 30 September
Deirdre Roycroft - 1 October
Ann Maria Healy - 2 October
Anna Berndston - 3 October
Olwen Fouere - 4 October
Victoria Mc Cormack - 5 October

Curated by Helen Carey
Lighting by Paul Keoghan
Film & Sound by Paddy Cahill

Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen
A new public art project by Jim Ricks
August 2010 – Spring 2011
Part of the Galway County Council Percent for Art Scheme 2010

The “Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen” by Jim Ricks is a giant inflattable sculpture designed for members of the public, of all ages, to interact with and bounce on. The artwork will be touring venues around the Aughty Region of County Galway during August and Spring 2011. This is part of a new series of public art works in the Aughty region, commissioned by Galway County Council.

The “Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen” is a replica, at twice the scale, of the famous 6,000 year old megalithic portal tomb of the same name, which is located in the Burren, Co. Clare. Jim Ricks created the interactive soft sculpture with the intention of bringing a portal dolmen to Aughty, a region which has no dolmens, only wedge tombs. The artist has combined an icon of ancient Ireland with an icon of contemporary Ireland, playfully re-presenting elements of Irish culture, often over-used commercially to attract tourism, in an accessible, witty and visually spectacular way.

Abode
Opens Thursday 5th August at 6.30pm.
Continues until Friday 27th August
Airfield

A two person exhibition of new work by artists Jennifer Cunningham and Cathy Hayes. Jennifer uses the media of painting, print and video to explore landscape as a backdrop for the psychological inner struggle of her subjects. Time and form are subverted and reinvented through structural fragmentation which is used to amplify the sense of the uncanny. Hayes paintings focus on domestic interiors and the role of the female, referencing contemporary art conventions as well as the traditional skills of sewing and quiltmaking that were once an intrinsic part of homemaking.

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© Reuters 2009

14th January 2009 (We will say it has nothing to do with us)
New work by Jim Ricks
Artlink 'New Art Award 2009' and the Earagail Festival
Fort Dunree, Buncrana, Co. Donegal
July 15 – August 14, 2010

"Jim Ricks in 14th January 2009 (We will say it has nothing to do with us) uses press images as the basis of an investigation into the Middle East conflict with particular reference to the occupation of Gaza by Israel. The images date from 14th January 2009, the beginning of Israel’s invasion of the territory. He uses fragments of these photographs to create new contexts that explore our desensitisation to the realities of life under Israeli occupation and contrasts the unreality of the Fashion world with its emphasis on glamour and pretence which seeks to charm us and distance us from the grim reality of real-world conflict. The artist wishes to highlight the suffering of the Palestinian people through an exploration of the distance placed by those who control our consumerist society – who wish to make us forget or ignore reality by emphasising an unreal commercial realm where we can seemingly find fulfilment without concern for our fellow’s suffering – with actual conditions in the Middle East. Ricks also uses the medium of press photographs to explore the role of documentary photography (usually considered to be a form of photography covering significant and historical events; formally associated mainly with journalism but also now used by many artists and amateur photographers) in an age where we are overwhelmed by so many images from so many sources that we become desensitised to the horror that may be contained within..."

The Artlink 'New Art Award' projects were selected from an open competition in 2009 by the following selection panel: Dave Beech, Art Critic and Artist, UK; Maoliosa Boyle, Manager, Void, Derry; Brian Duggan Artist and Founder of Pallas, Dublin; Elaine Forde, Former Director, Artlink, Donegal; Adrian Kelly Curator, Glebe Gallery, Donegal; Mark Wallinger Artist, UK.

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Galway Arts Centre will host the event

PerformanceiS

July 3rd from 3pm - 7pm with a drinks reception afterwards in the Gallery Space.

This event will see four seasoned performance artists Victoria McCormack, Amanda Coogan, Dominic Thorpe and Ann Maria Healy present an evening of powerful new works. These artists will take over two floors of the Gallery over the duration of four hours as a group presentation. During this time the audience will be given the opportunity to experience, immerse and engage with four powerful performance works simultaneously.

More so than any other strand of visual art this medium has a direct engagement with the audience as the transfer of force between the body of the artist and the spectator creates a very strong and special bond. Performance art is becoming widely acknowledged in current times as a vital and influential creative medium, where new possibilities are imagined for artists, audiences and spaces.

The An Instructional tour showcases an eclectic mix of Video, Performance and Installation work.

Curated by Ciara Scanlan & Matthew Nevin, the exhibition holds a dynamic collection of Visual Art from contemporary Irish, British, European & North American Artists. MART has developed an extensive network of connections with contemporary visual art spaces globally and is bringing this creative travelling show to Norway, UK, Germany, Slovak Republic and the Republic of Ireland.

Performances

Áine Phillips Strap Wrap
Cian McConn & Eve Vaughan IN and OUT
Joan Healy & Louise Ward Producting Loopholes
Katherine Nolan Surface Attention
Martinka Bobrikova & Oscar De Carmen Dialogues with the garden.

Video

Barry Hughes Four Views
Darragh O' Callaghan Boxing who
David Bickley Aqua Arte
Emanuel Rhoss Suburban Genesis
Malina Cailan They Said, They Did
Mischa Twitchin Remembrance
Nicky Larkin Skateboards & Tanks
Peta Adderley Air
Ruth Le Gear Water that sleeps
Vukasin Nedeljkovic 69/851/07

Installations

Adam Gibney The Semionauts Agora: Scene 343
Chris Johnsen & Øyvind Næss
Ciara Scanlan Cash For Grabs ™
Clodagh Lavelle Mike Mike.......where’s your head.......you’re not dead.
Colleen Keough Somewhere: above the sky
Debbie Jenkinson Three Word Phrase II
Eleanor Lawler Dirty Girls
Emma Wade H.U.G.S. (Jacket 3)
Ivan Twohig Shape Workshop
James Hayes A room full of domestic bliss
Jim Ricks 5/5/05
Matthew Nevin The Core Project
Noel Molloy Soprano
Sabina Mac Mahon The Relics of St. Clare of Assisi
Sofie Losher Compulsion
Stephen Woods Portrait of an Artist as a Deity

www.mart.ie

Dock Discourse

Opening Night Friday 11th 6pm at 126 Gallery, Queen Street, Galway.

We are delighted to announce the show will be opened by Michael D Higgins TD.

Dock Discourse June 2010 is a four-week exhibition, installation and discussion event project, around the changing nature of the Galway Docks. Initiated and curated by local architect Aoife Considine, Dock Discourse is a multi disciplinary project engaging with artists, thinkers and the general public to comment and question the nature of change taking place in and around the Galway Docks. The works are concerned with ideas of environmental change, development processes, the role of the artist in the changing city along with reconsidering the spaces, structures and habits of this part of the city on the waterfront.

Artists involved in the exhibition are Aideen Barry, Cian McConn, Roisin Coyle, Cecelia Dannell and Jennifer Cunningham with Jim Ricks, Jennie Moran and Michelle Browne carrying out on site installation projects in the middle pier of the docks on the 17th of June. The artists taking part in the project come from a range of backgrounds but a common theme in their work ties them to the project either through the location or interest.

The artists explore both the territory of the real and the imagined, the past and the proposed future brings the debate of how to record and think about elements of this part of the city and the role of utopian visions for the future. The play on the role of utopian constructions is used as a way of not only as a way to propose an alternative future but as a protest of the present. This theme will also be explored through the discussion event with an invited panel of artists, architects, urban thinkers and activists to be held on the 24th of June at 6pm.

The project is kindly supported by Galway City Council, Galway Harbour Company, The Galway Independent, Bar 8 and 126 Gallery.

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{un}familiar
A group exhibition featuring work by
Michelle Browne
Benjamin de Búrca
Cecilia Danell
Vera Klute
Sabina Mac Mahon
and Julia Pallone
curated by Maeve Mulrennan

On Thursday June 3rd Galway Arts Centre presents {un}familiar a group exhibition curated by GAC’s Visual Arts Officer, Maeve Mulrennan. This exhibition has already been exhibited in the Red House Arts Center, Syracuse New York as part of GAC’s ongoing partnership with the organisation.

The starting point for this exhibition was the curator’s encounter with the research of Professor Olaf Blanke, from the Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience (LNCO) in Lausanne, Switzerland. Research on out of body experiences, disengagement from the real self and having a double was communicated to artists. Blanke’s case studies proved the most stimulating. In responding to Blanke’s texts the artists present work which explores the deconstruction of meaning, separation of the self, uncanny spaces and peoples efforts to understand and explain our world through imagery, icons, dreams and nightmares. As a consequence the exhibition combines different perspectives in a variety of media including painting, sculpture, collage and video. Each work is not a direct response: rather it combines this research with the artists’ current research and art making, therefore situating this investigation on out of body experiences within a wider context. The exhibition aims to allow space for the viewer to contemplate how the self is not a stable entity and there can be sometimes confusion with another, and how confusion around identity can lead to anxiety, and a search to return to the self. A Utopian version of events can be constructed through imagery, the rearranging of narrative and dreams, in order to replace a repressive anxious state with something more bearable.

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You are warmly invited to attend The Lost Runway, a residency by Áine Phillips at the Stanley Picker Gallery, Kingston, London.

16th February to 20th February with live public performance at 2pm on Saturday 20th February 2010.

The Lost Runway

The Lost Runway is a collection of sculptural costumes dedicated to lost and missing girls, created during the residency in the Stanley Picker Gallery and publicly presented at a final runway show performance. Each costume is a live personal monument worn for a lost girl and embodies the story of her life and identity in a visual, sculptural and performative way.

Using the conventions of a fashion show format, The Lost Runway becomes an ideological space where beauty and desire are more urgent for their link with loss and longing. Each lost girl represented is memorialized and endowed with power and presence. The work is a testimonial to lost lives and the life-long seeking of their friends and families. The work gives public form to, and performs private memory in the service of human freedom and the right to the protection of life.

www.stanleypickergallery.org
www.ainephillips.com

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You are warmly invited to

Collapsed

A new performance by Galway Arts Centre Artist-in-Residence Ann Maria Healy

Tuesday 9th February

7pm - 9pm

Gallery 3, Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street, Galway

Ann Maria Healy is a multi - media artist, whose practice includes installation, sound, photography and live performance. Her work explores the bodies' relationship to space and time. In particular focusing on cycles, how they can affect and shape our lives. Ann Maria graduated from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology in 2009 with first class honours.

Collapsed is a two hour durational performance questioning the notion of vacuums.

www.annmariahealy.carbonmade.com
www.galwayartscentre.ie

This residency is supported by the Galway City & County Arts Offices and is awarded to a GMIT Honours Degree student annually

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126 with the RHA presents:

The 3rd Annual 126 Members' Show
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

Part of the Artist Curates series at the RHA.

Opening reception January 14th 6 - 8pm at the Royal Hibernian Academy, runs until February 27th.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present its third annual members' show hosted this year by the Royal Hibernian Academy. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The membership was asked to respond to the theme 'Video Killed The Radio Star' and 126, artist-run gallery has curated a range of work which reflects the diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines, including: painting, video, works on paper, sculpture, installation and photography. The works speak of and to society at a time of perceived change with responses that range from the critical and cynical to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

Artists showing are: Paul Murnaghan, Dominic Thorpe, Angela Darby, Fiona Chambers, Jim Ricks, David Finn, Padraig Robinson, Kevin Mooney, Austin Ivers, Nina Amazing, Timothy Acheson & Jennifer Cunningham, Kathryn Maguire, James Merrigan and Breda Lynch.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member.

This project has been made possible by the RHA.
126, Artist-run gallery
Queen St., Galway
Ireland
www.126.ie
091 569871

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and their membership.

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