Things do not tend to happen by chance. Or at the least things about the DeLorean. Two consecutive events about it have been brought to our attention recently: Sean Lynch exhibition ‘DeLorean: Progress Report’, just closed recently at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, and Duncan Campbell’s documentary film ‘Make It New John‘ showing at Tramway, Glasgow till the 14th of March. Campbell’s is a co-commission by Glasgow’s Tramway in partnership with The Chisenhale Gallery, London, the Artists Film and Video Umbrella and the Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo.

Make it new John is made up of four fragmentary and often contrary sections. Campbell deliberately opted to end his possibly unreliable versions of events prior to the drugs sting that DeLorean was later acquitted of as his company faced financial ruin. ‘I’m not trying to be deliberately obscure,’ Campbell insists, ‘but you have to tailor what you do so you’re not dictated to by a framework. What I’m doing is more about montaging a story that was almost Shakespearian, where what’s important is what you leave out.’
The List

But as it happens this is more than just ‘putting former headline-makers back into the limelight‘. And it is very interesting to see these different approaches and how each one of them has used the DeLorean to speak about personal recurrent concerns, both framed within a historic research. I am looking forward to see Campbell’s work. Though, having listen to Sean Lynch speak about his work, his research based practice, and the context of this work, I am certain that Campbell’s work would not be able to deliver the same punch. Aw, life is tough.

‘DeLorean: Progress Report’, Sean Lynch

Sean Lynch’s photographs, installations and publications continue to investigate and bring to attention understandings and representations of history. His first solo exhibition at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery takes as a starting point the bankruptcy and subsequent aftermath of the DeLorean car factory, which operated in Dunmurry, outside Belfast, from 1981-2. A series of photographs trace a path taken by the artist throughout 2009 to seek out and find the location of the tooling once used to make the body of the car, essentially the formgivers that gave DeLorean its famous profile. Sold off and dispersed to scrapyards through the country in1984, it was rumoured that the tooling was purchased by fishermen to be used as anchors. Lynch eventually located them at the bottom of Galway Bay, where crabs and lobsters now live in the coral around the nooks and shapes that once pressed out stainless steel panels of the car’s exterior. Also, presented for the first time is ongoing work to produce sections of a DeLorean by handmade rather than industrial means.

‘Make It New John’, Duncan Campbell

For his first major solo exhibition in Scotland, the highly regarded Glasgow-based artist Duncan Campbell (born 1972, Dublin) will present his latest film piece, a co-commission by Tramway in partnership with Chisenhale Gallery, London; the Artists’ Film and Video Umbrella and theModel Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo. The film looks back over the life of John DeLorean and the car plant he set up in Belfast. Combining archive news material with newly-filmed footage, the film considers DeLorean’s own personal rise and fall as echoed in the example of the impressively stylish but technically flawed DMC12 sports car that was produced at the factory. The commission will continue the artists’ exploration of documentary film – started in his earlier films Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003) and the acclaimed Bernadette (2008) – where what constitutes reality and truth in such films becomes a shifting notion.

A great video interview about the film with Campbell at the Telegraph.
And more on The List.

Opening: Thursday 11 February at 6:30pm
12 February – 10 April
Admission free
To launch the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the Alliance Française in Dublin, a collection of acclaimed work by the important Irish artist Seán Hillen will be shown for the first time in Dublin since the 1990’s.
Best known for his ‘Irelantis’ series, where competing myths and visions cohabit a deliciously witty montage, Hillen is one of the most significant artists of his generation.
Hillen has also undertaken sculptural pieces, most recently the Omagh Bomb Memorial which has received both popular and critical acclaim.
As the ‘Irelantis’ images have come to be seen as the most vivid and emblematic expression of the dreams and anxieties of ‘Celtic Tiger’ Ireland, his works from the ‘Troubles’ era, based on his own gritty photographs, have become more widely-known internationally and are now studied as masterworks of the medium.

The ‘Irelantis’ images have since burrowed deep into Irish culture, appearing on nearly 20 book covers and in this exhibition the public will get a rare opportunity to see several of the delicate almost miniature original collages, together with a selection of a new definitive edition of archival prints.

From the book’s introduction by Fintan O’Toole
“Seán Hillen’s Irelantis images are maps of a world in which the imagination is part
of reality, the visual equivalent of the sound the sun makes as it sinks into the sea.
As soon as they strike the eye, Hillen’s collages also hit whatever remains of
the bold child within us. They have the lawless energy that impels people to draw
moustaches on photographs of the Mona Lisa, or to decorate mundane stories with fantastic lies…”

A full colour catalogue presenting the exhibited work will be available for sale at the Alliance Française.

Check also
Sean Hillen: http://www.seanhillen.com
Irelantis: http://www.irelantis.com

Opening: November 25, 6.30pm. Exhibition continues until January 24 2010.

The Gallery of Photography is proud to present the premiere showing of a new body of work by Jackie Nickerson, one of the foremost photographic artists working today. In ‘Ten Miles Round’, Jackie Nickerson (Winner of the AIB Prize) explores the predominately rural community around her home in coastal Co Louth. In large-scale colour landscapes and portraits, she builds a psychological portrait of her community. The landscapes challenge conventional notions of the picturesque, offering instead a more engaged view of the land. Through Nickerson’s lens, muddy, rutted lanes and straggly hedgerows are imbued with the quiet poetry of the everyday. People and place are united by the distinctive, cloud-filtered, northern light. Infused with a subtle grace, the work is a profound meditation on what it is, and how it feels, to belong.

A full-colour 48-page catalogue accompanies the exhibition. It features 17 exquisitely reproduced images and an essay by Aidan Dunne. It is available in the Gallery Bookshop, price €10. The photographs are all lightjet digital c-prints mounted on dibond and framed. Each piece is available for sale in a limited edition of 3.

Artist’s Talk: Jackie Nickerson will talk about her work, on Wednesday December 2nd at 1.15pm in the Gallery. Admission free, all welcome.

About the artist: In 2008, Jackie Nickerson was nominated by the Gallery of Photography for the AIB Prize, which she won. Much coveted, the AIB Prize is one of the major art awards in Europe and identifies artists of exceptional talent. She won the Curtin O’Donoghue prize in 2009 and has been shortlisted for the John Kobal award and nominated for several prestigious prizes such as the Becks Futures Award and the Prix Pictet. In 2002, Jonathan Cape published FARM, a book of portraits of farm workers taken all over southern Africa and in 2008 SteidlMACK published Faith which captures Catholic religious communities in Ireland. Her work is represented in many important public and private collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and the Santa Barbara Museum. She is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York.

All events and access to the Gallery are free.

For further information, press scans or to interview the artist, contact The Gallery of Photography

Norman Mailer has stated that boxing is a metaphor for life. Investment of time and energy in a tradition like boxing can be explained through the desire to achieve stability in a rapidly changing world. It may also engender a yearning for a more vital existence and a longing for authenticity. In this photographic work, Mandy O’Neill uses the world of the amateur boxer to explore such ideas and to examine aspects of the human condition.

These images were taken over a two-year period at St Saviours Boxing club, Dorset St in Dublin.

Mandy O’Neill is a Visual Artist based in Dublin. She graduated with a BA in Photography from the DIT College of Photography in 2005. She has recently exhibited at ‘RUA RED’ Dublin 2009 and the RHA Dublin 2009.

Alliance Francaise
1, Kildare Street , Dublin 2

Opening Thursday 26 November at 6.30pm
Admission free
27 November 2009 – 6 February 2010

Coming this Autumn, a magnificent exhibition that will bring to Dublin a taste of the old New York photographed by some big names like Cindy Sherman, Diane Arbus, Berenice Abbot, Alfred Stieglitz, and more.
It will be at IMMA from the 25 Nov 2009 to the 07 Feb 2010.

Picturing New York comprises 150 masterworks from the photographic collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, covering the period from the 1880s to the present day. It celebrates the tradition of photographing New York, a tradition that frames and influences the perception of this vibrant urban centre. Including photographs by such influential photographers as Berenice Abbot, Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, Lisette Model, Alfred Stieglitz and Cindy Sherman, it explores both New York and its inhabitants, highlighting associations – from the vast, overwhelming architecture and bright lights, to the diversity of people that lie at the soul of the city.

The photographs reveal New York as a city of contrasts and extremes through images of towering blocks and tenements, party-goers and street-dwellers, hurried groups and solitary individuals. Picturing New York demonstrates the symbiosis between the city’s progression from past to present and the evolution of photography as a medium and as an art form. Additionally, these photographs of New York contribute significantly to the notion that the photograph, as a work of art, is capable of constructing a sense of place and a sense of self.

Picturing New York: Photographs from The Museum of Modern Art is organised by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and is travelling under the auspices of the International Council of MoMA. It is curated by Sarah Meister, Associate Curator, Department of Drawings at MoMA. The exhibition will also be  presented at La Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain (26 March to 14 June 2009) and the Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy, (11 July to 11 October  2009).

The exhibition is accompanied by a fully-illustrated catalogue produced by Thames & Hudson which includes a foreword by Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA, an essay by the curator Sarah Meister, and text by notable New Yorkers.

via IMMA

From RTE,

“ON TV, ONLINE AND THE RTÉ STILLS LIBRARY, LOOK OF THE IRISH CELEBRATES THE PHOTOS WHICH HAVE SHOWN US WHO WE ARE SINCE 1839.”

‘The Look of the Irish’ is a series of 9 programs dedicated to Photography and representation. This is the list:

Fergus Bourke: In His Own Words

RTÉ One, 11.10pm on Sunday 9 August 2009

Made shortly before his death, this moving portrait of renowned photographer Fergus Bourke was first shown in May 2007. It introduces us to his life and work and the wide array of Irish life captured through his lens, including Dublin street scenes, pioneering photo-journalism, remarkable portrait photographs and classic images of Connemara and the Irish countryside.

Day By Day By Day

RTÉ One, 7.30pm on Monday 10 August 2009

Robert, William, and Alec Day photographed their native Cork for over 100 years, creating a unique and unsurpassed photographic record of the city and its surroundings. This new documentary tells the story of an unusual family and the images they produced, from visiting kings and streetscapes to naked ladies and departing liners.

The Day Before Yesterday

RTÉ One, 8.30pm on Monday 10 August 2009

First broadcast in April 1994, ‘The Day Before Yesterday’ looks back at Ireland in the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s, as shown through the lens of Jesuit and photographer Fr. Francis Browne. Scripted and narrated by Michael Ryan, over 2,000 photographs from Fr. Browne’s collection of 40,000 are seen onscreen, a fascinating account of the birth and growth of independent Ireland record, of the people and the times.

David Farrell – Elusive Moments

RTÉ One, 11.05pm on Monday 10 August 2009

David Farrell is the only Irish photographer to have won the European Publishers’ Award for Photography, for his hugely successful exhibition Innocent Landscapes, dealing with the searches for the so-called “disappeared” from the conflict in the north of Ireland. Shot in Dublin, Wicklow, Cork, Italy and Paris, Elusive Moments follows two years of his working life, taking photographs, editing and printing his pictures, preparing them for exhibitions, and dealing with the marketplace.

Riviera Cocktail

RTÉ One, 11.25pm on Tuesday 11 August 2009

The Côte D’Azur in the 1950’s was the most glamorous place on the planet, where high society, big business, art, music and literature gathered to play. And Irish photographer Edward Quinn (1920 – 1997) was there to record it, producing exclusive photos of Grace Kelly, Federico Fellini, Pablo Picasso, Audrey Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Kirk Douglas, Sophia Loren, Edith Piaf, Max Ernst, Frank Sinatra, Brigitte Bardot, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich, Miles Davis and so many more.

Sweet Cork Of Thee – Edwardian Cork On Camera

RTÉ One, 7.30pm on Wednesday 12 August 2009

Some 15 years before Tomas MacCurtain and Terence McSwiney defined Cork’s republican credentials, English cinematographers Mitchell and Kenyon observed an altogether more ‘loyal’ Cork than that portrayed in the Rebel Cork story. In this RTÉ Archive Unit documentary, first shown on Christmas Day 2005, Pat Butler casts a wry eye on the Citizens of Cork, as they sport and play and go about their lives on the Banks of the Lee in 1902, spiced with Victorian and Edwardian ballads.

Dark Room

RTÉ One, 11.55pm on Wednesday 12 August 2009

First shown in February 2003, Dark Room looks at the life of the famous Irish photographer, Harry Thuillier, Jnr. Born in Dublin in 1984, his subject matter was noted for its particular darkness, including ancient skulls, limbs decorated with opium pods and flowering nudes. He survived an attack on a Dublin street which left him with only 80% vision in his right eye, and went on to make very distinctive and beautiful work, until his unexpected and mysterious death in Milan in December 1997.

The Man Who Shot Beckett

RTÉ One, 11.05pm on Thursday 13 August 2009

John Minihan is probably the most important Irish photographer alive today, his subjects ranging from Francis Bacon to John Hurt, Princess Diana to William Burroughs, his acclaimed pictures of Athy, and the famous series of photographs he took of Samuel Beckett in London and Paris. This profile of Minihan was first shown as part of RTÉ Beckett 100 in April 2006 and celebrates the friendship between Beckett and the photographer, a friendship that produced some of the most remarkable images of the great writer.

Townlands: Not Fade Away

RTÉ One, 8.30pm on Friday 14 August 2009

In the wet and windy summer of 1913 two young women arrived in Ireland from France. Marguerite Mespoulet and Madelaine Mignon were women on a mission – to document what they regarded as the dying remnants of a great Celtic culture. During May and June 1913 they made a total of 75 colour photographs, stunning images, many with the delicacy of paintings, which together with their travel notebook, form a unique and fascinating record of an Ireland that, even then, was quickly fading away. (First shown in August 2004.)

The official site for ‘The Look of the Irish’ is here:

http://www.rte.ie/lookoftheirish/index.html

Joachim. From the exhibition "Under a Grey Sky" at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, October - November 2009. © Simon Burch

Exciting new work by emerging and established Irish photographers will be displayed at this year’s Photo Rencontres in Arles, France, the biggest event of the international photography calendar.

Supported by the Arts Council and Culture Ireland, the Gallery of Photography is presenting an exciting showcase of Irish photographic talent at the International Photo Rencontres in Arles, France.

The packed programme includes solo presentations by four leading photographers, and a specially curated group show, providing fascinating insights into the social landscape of new Ireland. The featured works are:

Noel Bowler – ‘Iman’. An exploration of the ethnic diversity of Islam in Ireland
Eoin O Conaill – ‘Common Place’. New colour landscapes from throughout Ireland.
Simon Burch – ‘Under a Grey Sky’. Landscapes and portraits from the boglands of the mid-West.
Jackie Nickerson – ‘DOMICILE’. A psychological portrait of a small community in County Louth.

The solo presentations are complemented by a specially-curated group exhibition, ‘Home Economics’. It features seven of the most promising of the next generation of Irish photographic artists, Ciarán Óg Arnold, Martin Cregg, Aislinn Delaney, Peter Doyle, Garvan Gallagher, Kevin Griffin and Daniel Scully. ‘Home Economics’ brings together a vibrant and diverse series of works, which portray the complexity of Ireland’s social transformation during and after the Celtic Tiger years.

The exhibitions will be presented at the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie in Arles, France on July 10th 2009.
Venue: 9, Rue du Roure, La Roquette, Arles.
Press reception: July 10th 2009, 9pm.

Supported by Culture Ireland and the Arts Council.

For further information, press scans or to interview the artist, please contact: Tanya Kiang, Gallery of Photography 353-1-6714654, tanya@galleryofphotography.ie

via galleryofphotography.ie

Even though it has slipped off the DIT’s Calendar of events (well, at least its here), it is indeed a very important event: Photoworks 2009 is opening this evening from 6.30 at the Gallery of Photography and The National Photographic Archive, showcasing the work of the BA Photography graduate students.

“The 2009 BA Photography graduate exhibition features the diverse photographic projects of seventeen final year students. It includes the work of graduate Peter Murray, Smedia Photographer of the Year 2009 and Andreas Scholz, whose work is currently on show at the RHA Annual Exhibition. The exhibition showcases the best of emerging talent in Irish contemporary photography and is testament to the long-standing reputation of the photography programme at the School of Media, D.I.T.

The exhibition will be launched with a reception at 6:30pm on Tuesday, 9 June at the Gallery of Photography and the National Photographic Archive in Meeting House Square, Temple Bar.”

A review post with more images will follow after the opening.

The Mondrian’s Room Gallery, (was) located in South Anne Street, Dublin. They showcased last November 2008 some unique glass plates (autochromes) by The Lumiere Brothers, which represent the invention of colour Photography. Despite the fact that such a relevant collection of artifacts was offered for public enjoyment, very little was mentioned in all ‘expert’ media and the everyday papers. What a pity.

I just happened to be walking by the area when I saw one of the plates on the window display. I couldn’t believe it!







(Find more at Mondrian’s Room site)

But who is behind Mondrian’s Room?

In their site you can also see other available work from Doisneau, Muybridge and other historic figures.

The shop is now closed, but here’s what is coming from them in 2009:

For a start, our gallery and activities will become more mobile.

As major renovation works will be commencing shortly on the South Anne Street buildings, over the next 6 months Aebhric and I will be focussing our energies on developing future exhibitions, and travelling around Europe to source new artworks and collaborating with European curators and collectors. We hope to reopen our gallery space in Autumn.

In early May, we will be relaunching our website with lots of new content and features, to broaden the reach and services of Mondrian’s Room.

During the Summer, we will be working on a new TV programme designed to excite people about international art and photography, and continue exposing Irish audiences to a whole new world of artworks never before seen here. Sneak-peaks will be available on our website.

Our consultancy services will also be expanded, due to growing demand. In February, Mondrian’s Room worked on the installation of the major James Coleman exhibition, currently on view until 26th April at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hibernian Academy, and Project Arts Centre. (James Coleman)

As usual, we will also be sourcing specific artworks for our clients and providing investment advice. Whether you’re looking for drawings, photos, or paintings from any period or country, we will be very pleased to help you in any of your art enquiries.

Looking forward to that!!

via Mondrian’s Room

The Vision of the Other:
Modernity & the Photographed Face.

KOWASA gallery presents “The Vision of the Other: Modernity and the Photographed Face”, a group show which attempts to define the way in which the human face was photographically constructed before its abolition by Postmodernism. The exhibition primarily offers a thorough insight into the history of portrait photography with a special emphasis on the shift of the portrait from being a mere “extension of the painted body” to being the photographic genre par excellence. At the same time it highlights the aesthetic and conceptual evolution of early portraiture from Pictorialism towards a modernist experimentation and subjectivity.

The exhibition gathers more than 70 black and white prints whose protagonists are Coco Chanel, Ernest Heminway, André Breton, Marc Chagall, Dalí, Josep Pla, Andy Warhol, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Jean-Paul Sartre, Marilyn Monroe and others. Among the more than 50 participant photographers appear such internationally renowned names as Nadar, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, Jacques Henri Lartigue, Horst P. Horst, Edward Steichen, Josef Sudek, Arnold Newman, Man Ray; national photographers include Joan Colom, Francesc Català-Roca, Xavier Miserachs and Alberto Schommer.

Throughout the exhibition ATELIERETAGUARDIA will be organizing portrait sessions using the technique of wet-plate collodion, one of the most emblematic photographic processes of the 19th century. ATELIERETAGUARDIA heliografía contemporánea is a platform for the study and practice of 19th century photographic technology.

The advent of photography contributed to the re-evaluation of portrait art in regard to painting as, in the words of Samuel Morse, an “improved Rembrandt”. Obtained through processes which required a long exposure and which resulted in many imperfections, the first portraits in the 19th century often suggested an attack on the vanity of their subjects. Following this, it is hardly surprising that the increasing aesthetic demands of the time very soon resulted in an army of portraits-makers at the service of retouching mastery. If the conviction that photography “robbed” the soul reigned in the 19th century, in the 20th century photography would become the soul’s mirror. Under the impact of this idea which made a deep impression on the popular imagination, portrait photography was conferred the mission of capturing with sophistication the historic aura, whilst reflecting in its discourse the predominant social and cultural stereotypes.

The poses of introspection, the overacting of the bourgeois fetishes and a harmonious representation of all the parts of the body constitute to some of the visual characteristics of this orthodox rhetoric of the portrait. Whereas the direct photographic take was supposed to provide sufficient data for recognizing oneself, the portrait -the supposed door to the soul- paradoxically ended up violating this principle by prioritizing a visual vocabulary that flaunted the pertinence of the individual into a social class.

Pictorialism (late 19th century-early 20th) came to embody this ideology with its hymn to the inner being and its constant flirt with painting. Even if the status of the individual as agent of a social hierarchy was now fading in favour of a spiritual reflection that projected the emotional qualities of the person depicted, this did not mean to say that the Pictorialists were infringing upon the rules of the game -to the contrary, the deal between the socially imagined and the final representation was still preserved. This pictorialist concept remained firmly rooted in fine-art photography portraiture throughout the 20th century despite its ongoing ruptures and changes. Even the critical accomplishments of the European avant-gardes, which were widely popularized during the thirties and the post-war era, were adopted by portrait photography so as to construct a much more dynamic, persuasive discourse whose variants continued to fortify the mythologies and popular narratives of the time. Among the most characteristic cases is the portraiture of celebrities and actresses, whereby face and body were shaped in accordance to the myth. Likewise, the portraits of public personalities -politicians and artists-are enveloped by means of obsequious poses that associate them irrevocably with their respective names. Here, more than ever, the face turns into a public affair.

In the meantime, with the introduction of hand-held cameras, the naturalization of poses and snapshot culture were gaining terrain.

In the twenties, the avant-gardes denounced the mystic ambition of discovering what lay behind the face, and instead began to pursue aesthetic experimentation. In this new way of looking, according to which, in the words of László Moholy-Nagy, “each pore, wrinkle or freckle has its importance”, the goals were quite distinct: the time had arrived to become definitively divorced from painting, to celebrate the inherent properties of photography -the camera eye, the negative and the positive. It was time to push aside the classist mise-en-scène and focus on a much more abstract and geometric representation of the external world. This experimentation with the photographic medium included over-exposures, formalism, special angles, close-up, and photomontage.

Another important element of modernist portraiture in its most mature phase is the insertion of psychoanalysis and Freudian theories in its visual discourse. If the orthodox portrait propagated the unity of identity, these theories, first adopted by the Surrealists and the artistic circles linked to them, reinvented the face as something superficial, planting evidence for the duality between the person and their “persona”, namely the masquerade one constructs for others -that is to say the polarization between the ego, the super-ego and the eradicated social image.

For its part, direct photography was expressing its scepticism before the subject, under the decisive influence of the Marxist theories which advocated the consciousness of a social being. The debate became intensified after the second-world war. Portrait photography came out of the studio for good, capturing its subjects in poses of apparent informality within their natural environments -the artist in his studio, the composer beside his piano, the writer among his books, and above all, the photographer with his camera. Faces captured with carelessness demystified the system and the established social imagery by establishing an iconology of social synecdoche. Snapshot and candid street photography broke the complicity among the sitter and the photographer, and dynamized the traditional conception of the portrait. The problem now shifted to what Barthes has described as the battle of two identities with distinct domains: on the one hand, there is the photographer-voyeur, and on the other the photographed subject which elaborates its social masquerade to back up its image. In this new age, rather than being the “mirrors of the soul” of the sitters, portraits reflected the personality of the photographer. This ongoing rupture of the portrait as a unity accepted ambiguity and humour at the time of representation. The modernist faith concerning myth still persisted, although, at this time it was not projected by the external world but instead, by the author and his camera. It would not be long before the gaze turned its back on it. In the early seventies, the definitive “rupture of the mirror” would cause the final abolition of both implicated parts, the sitter and the “auteur” behind the camera.