SEEING THINGS

SEEING THINGS// Kevin Mooney

Exhibition Dates: June 1st-24th, Private View: Thursday June 1st (6-8).

In this latest body of work Kevin Mooney presents a series of paintings inspired by the ancient history of art in Ireland, and more specifically the poetry of Seamus Heaney. The series takes its title from the Heaney poem “Seeing Things”. Making reference to his father’s passing, Heaney’s work explores the thread of nature itself, the senses laid bare; exposing the links between body, spirit and heritage. In “Seeing Things” land becomes material, exposed and reflexive, the stuff of life coming to the surface and what has gone before momentarily intermingling with the now. It is here that much of Mooney’s work resides.

Inishbofin on a Sunday morning.
Sunlight, turfsmoke, seagulls, boatslip, diesel. 

That afternoon
I saw him face to face, he came to me
With his damp footprints out of the river,
And there was nothing between us there
That might not still be happily ever after

The paintings themselves explore a confusion of land and sky; the textures of both are complex and heavy, each meeting and closing in on the other – overlapping sometimes, yet resiliently retaining them-selves. For much of Mooney’s practice this idea of overlap occurs both physically and metaphorically – his paintings explore this other space of our existence, the one that appears just out of the physical viewpoint. Shades of green and pewter expose the land, tempering the space of the work with a perceived knowableness. Nebulous heads furl and uncurl, eyes appear wide-eyed and surfacing, manipulating the weft of the linen into a diorama of imagined faces. Gold flecks and scrapings expose the under painting, as if the artist is aiming to create something tangible, and at the same time expose the folly of doing so.

As an Irish painter Mooney is not coming from that space of defined lineage, more a chaotic and rich re-appropriation of styles that span our ancient pagan symbology, a schism of European figuration and 20^th Century abstraction. Therefore this deconstruction of painting, the slipping into and out of figuration and symbol, allows for an informed analysis of where painting today is coming from, and ultimately, where it is going.

“One cannot crystallise in material form what does not yet exist in material form. The spirit that will lead us into the realms of tomorrow can only be recognised through feeling (to which the talent of the artist is the path). Theory is the lantern that illuminates the crystallised forms of yesterday and before.” 1

1. Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1914

Hilary Murray, Curator ArtBox

Kevin Mooney is an Irish artist based in Cork. He graduated from the Masters in Fine Art, NCAD in 2012. Solo shows include “Twilight Head Cult”, Ormston House, Limerick, 2016, “Wave”, Pallas Projects, Dublin 2014, “Dog Island Tales”, Talbot Gallery, Dublin 2014, Nag Gallery, Dublin 2010, “Timeline” Queen Street Gallery, Belfast, 2010 and “Facade”, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow, 2009. Selected group exhibitions include “Looking Forward, Looking Back Now”, at Tactic Gallery, Cork, “What Is and What Might Be”, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, 2015, “Making Familiar”, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, 2012, “Horizon Sprawl”, Ormston House, Limerick 2012, and “Video Killed the Radio Star”, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin 2010. He received a Visual Artists Bursary from the Arts Council of Ireland in 2012, 2013 and 2016. In 2015 he was shortlisted for Wexford Arts Centre’s Emerging Artist Award. He was also shortlisted for the Thames and Hudson publication “100 Painters of Tomorrow” in 2013. In 2012, he was longlisted for the Saatchi New Sensations Prize.

The Waiting Room

Ella Bertilsson & Ulla Juske

Exhibition Dates: April 27th-May 20th

The Waiting Room is a narrative driven audio-installation that challenges our perception of time. Waiting rooms are liminal, transitional places. A place where you wait to go somewhere else, impersonal and quickly forgotten. Waiting rooms are often functional spaces where the visitor has little control on how much time the wait will last. Here Ella Bertilsson and Ulla Juske’s waiting room at ArtBox creates a zone of attention; emphasising and acknowledging the subjective experience of time passing. Keeping track of time, on time, time to come, wasting time, killing time, time on our hands, times up, time is running out, as the time goes by, watched pot never boils, loosing track of time, expecting something to happen…

Part of the installation is a selection from Austin Hearne’s latest collection ‘Little Flowers’. Sexy, beautiful, ugly, dead, dying, everywhere. Flowers; symbols of life, love and death, memorials to those past and passing. We are all flowers, battling time, only we have infinitely more than our showy friends. They remind us of our vibrancy, our individuality, our autonomy and cruelly our end. The installation will also be kept company by an essay of sorts by CSO Keeffe, who was invited by the artists to face up to the fact of her and your impermanence.

A Waiting Room Special Edition work (Ed. 5) by Ella Bertillsson and Ulla Juske containing a set of 5 20×20 cm prints, as well as a single larger edition print 23x35cm, (Ed. 10) are available to purchase through the gallery.

The artists would like to thank the following:
The University of Iceland
Uppsala University
Stockholm University
STAR, Stockholm Amateur Astronomers
Amateur Astronomy Society of Seltjarnarness
Estonian Embassy
ArtBox
OPW
MART
Paul Plunkett
Davey Moor
George Brennan
Richard Howard
Annika Edlund
Lena Kjersén Edman

This exhibition is kindly supported by the OPW and The Estonian Embassy.

Standard Exhibition

STANDARD EXHIBITION

Neil Carroll, Conor Mary Foy, Olivia Hassett, David Lunney, Alex de Roeck and Zoe Sheehy

Curated by Davey Moor

Dates: 10th March – April 8th.

Preview Thursday, 9th March (6-8pm).

Standard Exhibition is a six-person group show comprising artworks which take the form of flags for some reason {psychological terror through esoteric symbolism; ambiguous markers of uncertain intent; micro-heraldry?} or another {conduits for elemental power; alternative (symbol) facts; all artwork are flags?}

The publication, Six Conversations About Flags, featuring writing by Curator Davey Moor and artists will accompany the exhibition. A limited edition work by Conor Mary Foy will also be available to order. Please contact the gallery for more details.

A panel discussion on Vexillology and Art, chaired by Stanislav Zamyatin, CEO, Vexillology Ireland, will take place on Saturday, April 8th from 2-3pm at ArtBox Gallery. Booking is required: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/vexillology-and-art-panel-discussion-tickets-32500562056

Process Residency: Ali Kirby

Residency Dates: Jan. 5th-Feb. 1st

Open Studio: Feb 2nd-10th, preview Thurs Feb 2nd (6-8pm).

Ali Kirby creates sculptural assemblages and installations that visually respond to the built environment. Ordinary construction materials are re-purposed to create seemingly robust structures that reveal their fragility upon inspection. Concrete, plaster, soap and textiles often sit side by side in these sculptural arrangements that position themselves somewhere between interior and exterior space. Her approach to materials and colour is intuitive, often employing a muted palette, soft textures and hard edges to create the various surfaces and forms normally associated with architecture. These soft-edged fabrics and forms butt up against concrete or wood in an attempt to draw our attention to the relationships between materials, how they connect, support, become damaged or distressed and ultimately reveal their potential for transformation.

 

Ali Kirby, born in Dublin, Ireland, recently graduated with first class honours (BA) in Fine Art from LSAD, specialising in Sculpture & Combined Media. Recent exhibitions include only connect (2017) Kevin Kavanagh gallery, Dublin, all shimmers here (2016) MART gallery, Dublin, Describing  Architecture – Memory and Place (2015) City Assembly House, Dublin, the 185th RHA Annual Exhibition (2015) Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Periodical Review #4 (2015) Ormston House, Limerick, Periodical Review #4 (2014) Pallas Projects,Dublin, First Light, LSAD Graduate Show (2014), LSAD, Limerick, Essays for the House of Memory (2014) Ormston House, Limerick, Open Drawing Awards (2013) LSAD, Limerick, Single Channel (2013) Chartier Arts Venue, Connecticut, USA, Undertow (2012) the LAB, Dublin, Undertow (2011) Ormston House, Limerick, Open Drawing Awards (2010) LSAD, Limerick.

ArtBox Bazaar

Sonia Shiel: Pet Boy and the Bird’s Dream

Live Performance: Friday, November 25th (6-7pm), as part of Dublin Gallery Weekend. This installation will also be on display Saturday 26th, and Sunday 27th. 

Booking is recommended: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/pet-boy-and-the-birds-dream-tickets-29403321125

Pet Boy and The Bird’s Dream, has been developed as part of Avocado – a UCD Parity Studios’ Artist-in-Residence production, by the 2016-17 Arts and Humanities’ Artist-in-Residence Sonia Shiel. It involves the materialisation of dove-tailing short-stories into a new play and will see its adaptation to film, sculpture and installation with a series of events throughout 2016 and 2017, and this first performance of it in ArtBox on the 25th of November. Pet Boy and the Bird’s Dream is written and directed by Sonia Shiel. It acts as a prologue to her project at UCD, which will culminate in a major performance and installation in autumn 2017. UCD Parity Studios is a university wide programme connecting the rich ecology of art practice in Ireland with research and education at University College Dublin. The performance will take the shape of a staged read through, akin to free reader theatre, or chamber theatre. The installation will feature intrinsic props and set pieces, around which the action is performed, gestured and narrated, conjuring surreal encounters between fictional characters and the illusory world around them.

Sonia Shiel has had recent exhibitions at The Crawford Gallery, Cork; The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork; Rua Red, Dublin; ISCP, New York; The Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin; and The Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, among others. In 2014, Sonia Shiel received the Arts Council’s Project Award, with which she completed the Art & Law Fellowship Program, at Fordham Law School, while participating on the International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP) in New York. In 2015, she was Artist-inResidence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art and received Arts Council Visual Artists Bursary 2015. She has been the recipient of many competitive awards including the (HIAP) Helsinki International Artist-in-residence; Culture Ireland and Arts Council funding; the Centre Culturel Irlandais Award; the TBG+S Frankfurt Exchange Program; Banff Centre for the Arts, Leighton Residency Award, Canada; the Hennessy Craig Award (RHA); The Tony O’Malley Award; and TBG&S Membership Residency, among others. Her works are in public and private collections including the Arts Council of Ireland and the Office of Public Works. She is represented by the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. UCD

PARITY STUDIOS ARTIST IN RESIDENCE PROGRAM Through the UCD Artist in Residence Programme, Elective modules and Public Engagement Programme, UCD Parity Studios Residencies support critical thinking and creative approaches to cross- disciplinary research, pedagogy and communication. It offers year long residencies to professional artists who are interested in developing collaborative projects in a university environment. Artist studios, based in converted laboratories in UCD School of Physics, provide a bright working hub and supportive environment for this unique community of artists at University College Dublin. Supported by UCD Colleges of Science, Social Sciences and Law, Arts and Humanities and College of Business, the Residency Program creates a dynamic network of professional artists, academics, researchers and students, working at the intersections of their disciplines. Pet Boy and the Bird’s Dream has been kindly supported by the UCD School of Arts and Humanities and The UCD Drama Society, with special thanks to Eamonn Jordan and Seán Mac Dhonnagáin.

Sausage Fest

Jemma Egan | Sheila Rennick

28th October -18th Nov. Preview: 28th Oct (6-8pm)

Sausage Fest is an exhibition by UK based artists Jemma Egan and Sheila Rennick. Through their diverse practices, questions of taste, aesthetics and class culture are explored through painting, sculpture and moving image where both artists investigate cultural identity through a contemporary lens.

Rennick’s paintings based on screen-grabs from online dating applications feature male figures presenting themselves to potential suitors. In stereotypical representations of hyper-masculinity and bravado, each man is depicted in Rennick’s distinctive loose and free styling. Her lurid and unrestricted technique undermines each of the characters’ supposed confident stance.  Alongside these portraits is a painting of of a pair of discarded female underwear, perhaps a trophy of a past sexual conquest, an image to allure and arouse, or an imagined interaction.

Egan’s sculptural and video works are derived from specific sources references and images based on fast-food products. Like Rennick, Egan explores question of taste, instant gratification or the quick fix. We are fed a diet consisting of mostly pork products, which has obvious sexual connotations, banger.  A video work of a pussy’s tail seductively swaying from side to side further implicates the viewer.

Rather than looking from the outside, both artists are rooted within the context and culture they are referencing, so despite hints of satire and humour, there is still a certain affinity with the subject-matter. Together Egan and Rennick demonstrate a palpable interest in what lies between what we might desire or hold in disgust. Furthermore, the work included in Sausage Fest not only alludes towards sexuality, but pokes at our abject and engrained needs.

Sausage Fest is guest curated for ArtBox by Séamus McCormack.

Jemma Egan is an artist based in London. She completed an MA in Sculpture at The Royal College of Art in 2015 and BA in Fine Art in Liverpool in 2005. Recent exhibitions include: It means more to me than most people, Zabludowicz Collection-Invites, London, 2016 (solo); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, The Bluecoat, Liverpool and ICA, London, 2016; dip, CBS Gallery, Liverpool, 2016; Is it Heavy or Is it Light?, Assembly Point, London, 2016. Upcoming projects include an Arts Council and British Council AIDF research trip to Las Vegas, 2017 and an artist residency at Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop, 2017.

Sheila Rennick graduated from NCAD with a degree in Fine Art Painting in 2004 and upon graduating swas co-recipient of the prestigious CAP Foundation Award. In 2006 she completed an MA in Painting at St. Martins College, London. She was one of thirty artists selected from across the UK for the notable Jerwood Contemporary Painting exhibition, 2007.  Recent exhibitions include Save Changes at Stour Space, Hackney Wick, London, 2015 and Somethign for Nothing, Hillsboro Fine Art, 2016 (solo).  Rennick was selected for Futures at the RHA, Dublin and in 2016 was awarded runner up at The Marmite Painting Prize at Block 336, London.  She lives and works in London. Sheila Rennick is represented by Hillsboro Fine Art.

Séamus McCormack is a curator and artist based in London and is Programme Manager, New Contemporaries.  Previously he was Assistant Curator: Whitechapel Gallery; Assistant Curator: Collections, IMMA and Project Coordinator: Exhibitions, IMMA.  At IMMA he curated exhibitions Traces (2009); Roadkill (2014) and was co-curator of Mobile Encounters (2014) and Primal Architecture (2014).  At Whitechapel he was Assistant Curator on Christopher Williams – The Production Line Of Happiness; Harun Farocki – Parallel; The Kibbo Kift Kindred and Electronic Superhighway. He has co-edited numerous publications and written on artists including Haroon Mirza, Paul Sharits, Jonas Lund, Ulla Wiggen, Christopher Williams, Janine Davidson and Elaine Leader. As an artist he has exhibited his work in solo and group exhibitions

Main Image: From Here to Eternity single screen moving image, looped (steel hot dogs with oil on brass) 2014

The Subnatural and MONTO

Inspired by the notion of Subnature and the terrain of historic MONTO. ArtBox invites you to enjoy a menu by chef Clare Anne O’Keefe and responsive artwork by artist Bridget O’Gorman.

This event takes place at the gallery from Tuesday 18th-Friday 21st October 1-2pm (daily), booking is essential.

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/the-subnatural-and-monto-a-food-and-art-intervention-tickets-27748884661

As part of ArtBox’s LUNCHBOX, we invite you to join us for “The Subnatural and MONTO”, a food and art intervention. The event will take place in ArtBox gallery on James Joyce Street from 1-2pm, October 18th-21st. The event will begin with an artistic intervention, inspired by the spaces of the historic MONTO by Bridget O’Gorman and moving onto a meal which will take a creative look at the local terroir, using “subnature” as its point of reference. Courses include a deconstructed “black” coddle, and an urban foraged salad. Vegan options available upon request.

The term “subnature” was coined by architectural theorist David Gissen in 2009 to describe the less desirable aspects of the built environment: puddles, pollution, and pigeons. Subnature questions the historical assumption behind the mostly unquestioned hierarchy in which light, air, and greenery are perceived as “good,” while the equally natural dust, dirt, and weeds are unwelcome. Subnature and MONTO aims to engage with historical perceptions of subnatural environments and attempt to re-imagine them for the future.

“Send it back from deep inside to where it came from transformed and used up”

“Taking a long, deep gulp of thickened blackened air now releasing it”

Bridget O’Gorman graduated with a BA in Fine Art Painting from the Crawford College of Art (IRL) in 2003. In 2008 she completed an MFA between the Department of Applied Art and The School of Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. Recent solo and selected group exhibitions include In The Flesh at The Lab Gallery IE 2016, Telling the Bees at the Galway Arts Centre IE 2015. She is the recipient of various awards including the Golden Fleece Award Shortlist/Commendation 2015, Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award 2016/14.

Clare Anne O’Keefe has curated a series of edible artworks for Dublin’s Science Gallery. She recently collaborated with the Centre for Genomic Gastronomy and the bio-artist Oron Catts on ArtMeatFlesh, a live performance in Smock Alley Theatre centred around the philosophies of future foods. She is currently working with Dr Jane Stout (TCD) to create Insect /animal pollinator recipes and a stage performance as part of “PROBE”; an art and science festival night.

Mystery Ewer

Jane Fogarty | Mark Swords

Exhibition dates: September 10th – October 8th.

Preview: Friday, September 9th (6-8pm)

Mystery Ewer, features new work by artists Mark Swords & Jane Fogarty. Referencing the trans-disciplinary nature of contemporary practice through the work of these two artists, Mystery Ewer explores the boundaries of perceived genre. Throughout history exchange and dialogue have existed between distinct media, more recently the notion of media specificity has become a non-issue. Today’s “sculpture” derives much of its source material from painting, and “painting” from sculpture.

Jane Fogarty’s work derives from the artist’s interest in the history of painting. Fogarty’s sculptural work focuses attention on exploring those spaces that sit between sculpture and painting. Mark Swords’ paintings are well known for their ongoing dialogue with the spaces within and surrounding them, the paintings often moving out of their frames inhabiting the exhibition space. This exhibition takes its title from Adrian Saxe’s 1989 work “Untitled, Mystery Ewer”. Saxe, a member of the 1960’s Funk Art Movement (1) (along with Robert Arneson at UC Davis), explored the limits to, and integrity of clay as a sculptural medium in response to the dominance of painting’s Abstract Expressionist notion of medium specificity (2). The works featured in Mystery Ewer contain an amusing cross-referencing of genres and materials, exchanging the frame of painting and sculpture across works as each artist explores the fluidity and range of contemporary practice today.

This exhibition is curated by Hilary Murray, assisted by Isobel Foley and Katy Gaffney. Mark Swords is represented by Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin.

1. http://centralpt.com/upload/417/10001_FunkArtLessonssm.pdf

2. http://sites.uci.edu/form/files/2015/01/Greenberg-Clement-Avant-Garde-and-Kitsch-copy.pdf

Main Image: Mark Swords, Untitled (detail) (2016), left;  Jane Fogarty, Untitled (2016) right and below.

 

PhotoIreland 2016: UU MFA

PhotoIreland 2016: MA in Fine Art in Photography, Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art.

Exhibition Dates: July 8th-23rd. Preview, Friday, July 8th (6-8pm)

New works from the MA in Fine Art in Photography, Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art. This exhibition marks the culmination of study for a group of MFA Photography Students at Ulster University’s Belfast School of Art. The photographs are part of a greater body of research that each student has completed for their final year project.

Artists: Aaron Dickson, Richard Gosnold, Dianne Whyte, Tim West, Dalyce Wilson, Katrina Taggart

This exhibition is part of the PhotoIreland festival, 2016.

Main image: Richard Gosnold, 2016. Copyright the artist.