Catalyst Arts presents:

BLACK MOUNTAIN

2nd November – 14th December 2017

Cecilia Borettaz | Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti | Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch | Hamish MacPherson

Screening programme: Redmond Entwistle | Adriana Monti

Black Mountain is a six-week project that uses the gallery space as a platform to bring together artists, researchers, curators and the general public.

The title refers to Black Mountain College, one of the most well known experimental art schools of post-war America, based in a remote area of North Carolina. What made Black Mountain unique was the teachers’ and students’ approach to creative production, often involving collective making and encouraging overlaps between disciplines including dance, architecture, painting, theatre and music.

The faculty of professors were all highly regarded practitioners in the fields of art, music and architecture such as Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller and John Cage among others. They shared a strong, common interest in the processes of experimentation, considered in its broader meaning of both empirical scientific method and ‘experience’ which involves knowledge and skills.

Those aspects of Black Mountain’s legacy seems to be reflected in the contemporary self-organized (free!) schools and alternative education models in contemporary art, where utopian structures and radical ideas have been tested and reframed through the experience and experimentation of the artists, students and researchers involved.

In this framework, is it possible to turn a gallery space into a living, metamorphic exhibition that allows artistic processes to be visible and open to changes and engagement? What can we learn from a collective experience of sharing knowledge? In our current environment of instability, inequality and misrecognition of the role of the arts, education and critical thinking – this project aims to be a starting point for a further reflection about the importance of artists initiatives and their impact in the local community.

Overturning the notion of the traditional exhibition, invited collaborators will work in Catalyst Arts using this period as a micro-residency, developing site-specific commissions that will generate a series of publicly engaged workshops, talks and screenings.

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Download the full public programme here.

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Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch will be the first to take residency in the space. Andreas is a Dublin-based artist whose practice embraces collectivity and participation through the creation of structures, objects and spaces that question material and social relations. ‘We Build a Framework’ is a new project developed for Black Mountain. Drawing inspiration from steel framework construction –  a contemporary system of building that allows for maximum internal flexibility and open space – Andreas seeks to find parallels between the organisational structure of Catalyst and architectural support systems. Though a public, hands-on-event Andreas will explain and demonstrate with the participants the working principles of the structure and its potentials combinations.

Hamish MacPherson is a London-based artist who uses ideas and methods from choreography and dance to think about politics. He makes workshops, non-digital games, performances, writings, images and other things in dance, visual arts, academic and community contexts. While in Catalyst, he will lead ‘In which we prepare for…’, a series of workshops focused on ‘prepping’ – the process of preparing for an unknown, imminent future.

Cecilia Borettaz is an artist based in Brussel working with painting, printmaking, installation and storytelling. She will use the gallery space as her studio for one week, where she will experiment with new materials and techniques for her ongoing project ‘Dissolution of Abstraction’. The studio is meant to be a place of exchange for the audience, who are invited to take part in the artistic process. During her micro-residency in Catalyst, Cecilia would lead an artist talk about her practice, where she will present ‘Perhaps by fate, perhaps by choice’, her theoretical research on a personal family archive.

Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti is the final contributor in Black Mountain. Lucrezia is an independent curator and co-founder of the research-driven, non-profit space CLOG, based in Turin, Italy. Her current focus of research is the recent overflow of alternative education systems in visual arts, questioning its relevance and meaning in the contemporary art context. Through a series of public discussions, screenings and collective readings Lucrezia will deepen and expand the themes of attention, anarchist epistemology, metanoia, speculative poetics, and fugitive studies.

The last event in the exhibition’s public programme is a screening showcasing artists’ moving image works about specific educational experiments, such as 150 Hours Programme (Italy) and the first years of CalArts (Los Angeles, USA). ‘Scuola Senza Fine’ (1983) by Adriana Monti and ‘Walk-Through’ (2012) by Redmond Entwistle, which spotlight how current pedagogical models and their relationship to new forms of social, political and economic environments have emerged since the 1970s.

This project is kindly supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Symbiosis

Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show 2017

5th – 15th October 2017 / 6th October: Performance event at FIX17

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Julia Brown | Aideen Farrel | Levi Hanes | Branwen Kavanagh | Jasmin Märker

Cara Roberts | Joy Stacey | Drydan Wilson

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Symbiosis is Catalyst Arts’ annual Student and Recent Graduate Show, which premiered this year in conjunction with FIX17 Performance Biennial.

The Student and Recent Graduate Show is a showcase of the very best of work from UK and Ireland based graduates and final year students. Catalyst are delighted to be offering exposure at a formative stage in the artists’ development.  FIX is a Live Art Biennial established by Catalyst Arts in 1994, now in its twelfth iteration.  This year four of our recent graduates performed as part of the FIX17 programme on Friday 6th October.

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Image: Levi Hanes, Mirror in a Field, 2015. DV image still.

FIX17 Performance Biennial

Thursday 5th – Sunday 8th October 2017

www.fix17.org

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The twelfth instalment of Fix Festival took place over four days in Catalyst Arts and the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC).

Fix is an internationally renowned and distinctly Belfast biennial, established by Catalyst Arts in 1994. For twenty-three years Fix has consistently delivered an innovative programme of local and international live, sonic and performance artists to the city of Belfast and is one of Europe’s longest running live art festivals. The legacy of Fix has been to create opportunities locally for emerging and established practitioners, providing work for artists, photographers, videographers, writers, curators and arts administrators.

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Festival Programme:

Thursday 5th October | 6-9pm

Robbie Maguire | Grace Denton | Beagles and Ramsay | Patrick Cole

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Friday 6th October | 6-9pm

[as part of Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show]

Jasmin Märker | Cara Roberts | Branwen Kavanagh | Dryden Wilson

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Saturday 7th October | 6-9pm

Ciara Lenihan | Siân Hutchings | Robert Curgenven

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Sunday 8th October | 2-9pm

Francesca Steele | Sandra Johnston | Eleni Kolliopoulou

Cleveland Watkiss – 8pm Sonic Arts Research Centre

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Catalyst Arts presents:

She Speaks

AMINI 2017 Festival of Artist Moving Image

Friday 29th September / 2.30pm / The MAC, Belfast

For their first festival showcase of artist moving image work, Artist Moving Image Northern Ireland (AMINI) asked Catalyst to curate a special screening, entitled ‘She Speaks’.  ‘She Speaks’ is a selection of film and moving image works produced by women artists, from 1968 to present. In different ways each artist and film-maker explores the transformation and (mis) interpretations of domestic routines, objects, images and narratives, translated whilst simultaneously subverting their symbolic meaning and reconfiguring female representation.

Screening Selection:

‘Saute Ma Ville’ (1968) – Chantal Akerman, (13 mins)

‘Chiara Fumai reads Valerie Solanas’ (2016) – Chiara Fumai, (10 mins)

‘After Picasso, God’ (2016) – Sophie Cundale, (42 mins)

For full festival programme  and more details about AMINI click here.

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Chantal Akerman (1950 – 2015) was an internationally renowned Belgian filmmaker and a key figure in European experimental cinema.   Her 1975 film ‘Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles’ is considered a keystone of feminist filmmaking.  She participated in Documenta XI (2002), Venice Biennale (2001) and was a jury member at the 51st Berlin International Film Festival.  Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2003), MIT, Massachusetts (2008) and the Museum for Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2012).

Chiara Fumai (1978 – 2017) was an Italian artist based in Milan and then Brussels until her death earlier this year.  Her video-performances and multimedia installations deal with ideas around radical feminism, media culture, anarchism and the occult.  Exhibitions and performances have been presented at CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid (2015), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2014), De Appel Arts Center, Amsterdam (2014) and Documenta XIII, Kassel (2012).

Sophie Cundale (b.1987) is an artist based in London.  Her film ‘After Picasso, God’ (2016) was co-commissioned by Serpentine Galleries and South London Gallery.  Recent work has been presented at Temporary Gallery, Cologne (2016), Spike Island, Bristol  (2016), Peckham Plex, London (2016) and Govett-Brewster, New Zealand (2016).

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*Image credit: Saute Ma Ville (1968) – Chantal Akerman

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Catalyst Arts presents:

Dancing on Borrowed Ground

Chloe Cooper | Dylan Miner | Contrapoints | Elizabeth Haines | William Raban

19th August – 16th September 2017

9th September | Belfast Anarchist Bookfair

Dancing on Borrowed Ground reclaims a little bit of land for those who seek to resist the dogma and dictats of hegemonic orders. It asserts a love of plurality and disavowal of the hubristic cruelty of normative non-think, seeking freedom in solidarity and respect. The exhibition celebrates a bridging of the theoretical divide between self-creation and communal harmony by producing a site for radical discourse and contemplation. Artists Chloe Cooper, Dylan Miner, Contrapoints, William Raban and Elizabeth Haines undermine authority and agitate for alternative becomings. Their work – performative, documentary, academic and activist – illuminating contemporary political practice and rendering the world anew by fostering unity through dialogue and spurring on transformation through positive action. Catalyst Arts will also host the 10th Belfast Anarchist Bookfair, organised by the Just Books Solidarity Centre, encouraging visitors to cast off the pernicious shackles of repressive regimes by liberating their critical consciousness in this celebratory gathering of activists.

Chloe Cooper is an artist whose performative interrogations of sexuality, imagery and politics bring an infectious critical curiosity to bear on the world by asking us to consider our actions and how we relate to others. She co-leads a sex re-education research project called Bedfellows with Phoebe Davies and Jenny Moore and works with groups of people to respond to what the hell is going on.

Dylan A.T. Miner is a Wiisaakodewinini (Métis) artist, activist, and scholar. He is currently Director of American Indian and Indigenous Studies and Associate Professor in the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. Miner is also adjunct curator of Indigenous art at the MSU Museum and a founding member of the Justseeds artists collective. He has published approximately sixty journal articles, book chapters, critical essays, and encyclopedia entries. In 2010, he was awarded an Artist Leadership Fellowship through the National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution). He has worked with institutions including School of the Art Institute of Chicago, École supérieure des beaux-arts in Nantes, Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Rabbit Island and the Santa Fe Art Institute. His book Creating Aztlán: Chicano Art, Indigenous Sovereignty, and Lowriding Across Turtle Island was published in 2014 by the University of Arizona Press. Miner is currently completing a book on Indigenous Aesthetics: Art, Activism, Autonomy

Elizabeth Haines is a researcher based at the University of Bristol and the Science Museum. Her interests focus on the ways in which technologies (from plant breeding techniques, to hand-drawn maps) produce patterns in our experiences and behaviours. In collaboration with Catalyst  Arts and Just Books, she will be exploring the Just Books library as a monument to the time clawed back from daily life and re-invested in an anarchist future.

William Raban is an artist filmmaker who has exhibited worldwide in both art and film contexts. Initially known for his landscape and expanded cinema films of the 1970s, Raban’s landscape interests, were framed in the 80s towards a more historical and socio-political context: the history of London and the Thames. Reminiscent of Humphrey Jennings’ wartime films, Raban’s films from the 90s onwards look at the island of Britain and its people, in the context of the global economy and the effects of urban change. He is currently Professor of Film at the London College of Communication (University of the Arts London).

Contrapoints. Imagine the political situation that would arise in a world where journalists and academics were given no more credence than the loudest person in the pub, and you’ll have some insight into the strange universe of YouTube political punditry. New media have radically democratized the distribution of information, but at the expense of traditional media gatekeeping and consensus. This new chaos opens up some frightening possibilities; for instance, isolated people with racist and authoritarian views can now unite in an online community and acquire confidence and strength in numbers. Contrapoints’ videos are an effort to cope with this situation, to confront the mouthpieces of the “alt-right” – the loose association of trolls and pundits who cloak far-right ideology in irony and memes. She appropriates some of their own strategies – playfulness, irony, the false pretense that politics is “just a joke” – to create an opposing social justice narrative, while also steering away from the sanctimony that sometimes impedes activist rhetoric.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings.

Catalyst Arts presents:

VIEWING COPY

VIVIENNE DICK    EOGHAN RYAN   THE RADICAL FILM ARCHIVE   MAEVE CONNOLLY

7th July – 4th August 2017 | Opening: 6th July, 6-9pm with a performance by Eoghan Ryan

VIEWING COPY is an exhibition of work by artists Eoghan Ryan and Vivienne Dick alongside The Radical Film Archive and a newly commissioned text by Maeve Connolly.

This project is driven by an exploration into the hierarchical economy and circulation of video in artist moving image practice, directly referencing the particular and peculiar status of the ‘Viewing Copy’ within the market of contemporary art and its continued covert resistance to contemporary capitalism. The project considers the physicality of the screen and materiality of video formats as a framing device for autobiographical content, brought into focus as a measure and mediation of subjectivity, with the potential for generating alternative representations and a shared cultural, collective memory.

Irish artist Vivienne Dick (b. Donegal, 1950) is an internationally-celebrated film-maker and artist. Dick was a key figure within ‘No Wave’, a short-lived avant-garde scene in the late 1970s in New York led by a collective of musicians, filmmakers and artists including Nan Goldin, Lydia Lunch, Arto Lindsay, James Chance and many others. Dick returned to Ireland in 1985, where she was a member of The London Filmmakers Co-op for many years and produced a number of films in 16mm, and in video. Her films have been screened at cinemas, museums and film festival internationally, including Tate Britain, Moma and the Whitney in New York, IMMA in Dublin, and included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, Anthology Film Archives, NYC and the Irish Film Archives.

Eoghan Ryan (b. Dublin, 1987) is an Irish artist currently based in Berlin. His work incorporates moving image, installation, text, sculpture and performance, It looks to biological inheritances, personal anxieties, afflictions and affiliations as proposals for alternate forms of intimacy, renewal and collapse within the pre-ordained hierarchies that we occupy. He has recently shown at IMMA, Dublin, the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto in collaboration with Jassem Hindi, BDP Press, Berlin and the IFI, Dublin in the frame of As We May Think organised by Alice Butler. He has been awarded The Nina Stuart Artist in Residence at South London Gallery/Space studios 2013, the Artists International Development Fund 2014, the Critical Forum award at the Plastik  Moving Image festival 2015 and the Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary 2017.

The Radical Film Archive started when founder, Michael Dunn, was given a hard-drive that was supposed to be thrown out. Instead of disposing of it he decided to use it as the basis of a self-educational resource. Dunn holds events for people to discuss what they think should be in or out of the archive, gives access to the films and encourages screenings. In the recent past, more time has been devoted to ideas around militant curation, that is to say, getting ideas to the places where they are most useful, with screenings happening in the camps in Calais, Ventimiglia and Belgrade. By creating this archive together, all have the chance to share in preserving rare and under-told stories that could be easily lost. Catalyst Arts has invited five artists, Johnathan Cook, Bryan Gerard Duffy & Emmet Sheerin, Seamus Harahan, Aniara Omann to contribute to the archive as part of the exhibition. A recording of a presentation ‘The Moving Image as Limited Edition’ by Erika Balsom at PLASTIK Festival of Artist Moving Image, 2017, will also be available.

On 20th July Catalyst Arts hosted a free workshop organised by The Radical Film Archive.

Maeve Connolly co-directs the MA in Art & Research Collaboration (ARC) at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dublin. She is the author of TV Museum: Contemporary Art and the Age of Television (Intellect, 2014), on television as cultural form, object of critique and site of artistic intervention, and The Place of Artists’ Cinema: Space, Site and Screen (Intellect, 2009), on aspects of the cinematic turn in contemporary art. Recent publications include an article on archiving artists’ moving image in MIRAJ: Moving Image Review Art Journal (2016), and contributions to various anthologies, such as  Workshop of the Film Form, (Fundacja Arton and Sternberg Press, 2017), Great Expectations: Prospects for the Future of Curatorial Education (Koenig Books, 2016) and Exhibiting the Moving Image: History Revisited (JRP Ringier, 2015). She is currently researching the relationship between infrastructural change and contemporary art.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Catalyst Commissions

Aideen Doran | Ryan Moffett

1st – 8th June

‘Catalyst Commissions’ brings together two artists, Aideen Doran and Ryan Moffett, who were selected to develop new work over a three month and one year period, respectively, with support from the board of directors at Catalyst Arts. This exhibition is the culmination of a research and development period for both artists with new lens based works presented in the gallery.

In his practice Belfast based artist Ryan Moffett explores the topics of representation, authenticity and fiction. Creating fictional narratives influenced by factual events, he explores the perceived ‘truths’ held within research rich spaces, such as documentary practice, museums, national geographic magazines, anthropological texts, and zoological gardens. After finishing a photographic project in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, Catalyst Arts approached Moffett to propose undertaking a residency with an organisation that does not offer residency programmes. For the residency Moffett wanted to develop a photographic process inspired by the dioramas he had studied in New York. In order to do this he required free access to a large, wild estate where he could photograph landscapes and collect material, as well as access to a space to set up a photographic studio on site. After exploring several avenues we discovered Benburb Priory, currently a priory and conference centre run by the Servite Order, which proved ideal and very accommodating, and we would like to warmly thank the staff at Benburb Priory for being such hospitable and enthusiastic hosts. This beautiful, rambling estate is populated by an unusual array of characters, spaces and animals: from ex-convicts managing the forest to a handful of remaining clergy; from a dilapidated tree house perched high atop a solitary oak, overlooking woodland and rivers to the Victorian bridge and abandoned factory, now mostly reclaimed by nature; and two worryingly forward, yet luckily ancient Saint Bernards, who roam with menacing abandon. This output from the residency Artist Abroad marks the beginning of a process which was developed in Benburb. The work is composed using photographs and materials collected from the landscape, and the visual approach collages both document and imagination.

Glasgow based artist Aideen Doran was selected as part of a Members open call for a new artist moving image commission in partnership with FLATPACK, Birmingham, 2017. Doran presented a new work entitled ‘The Mechanical Child’ which premiered as part of ‘On the Edge’ screening event at FLATPACK. This new work of Doran emerges from the artist’s research into the nature of consciousness, exploring the possibilities for new kinds of empathy and exchange between human and non-human minds. It draws upon the 20th century psychiatrist Bruno Bettelheim’s case study of ‘Joey, A Mechanical Boy’, published in his (since discredited) book The Empty Fortress. Bettelheim theorised that not only were neurological conditions such as autism were caused by inattentive, uncaring parents (Refrigerator Moms) but also that the unique sensory and affective characteristics of autism-spectrum disorders could be cured with Freudian psychoanalytic techniques, a theory that caused untold damage to the lives of autistic children and their families. In his case study of the mechanical boy, ‘Joey’ suffered under a delusion that he was part machine, a hybrid creature of electricity and flesh and identified more with the inert objects of technology than with other children. Bettelheim attempts to coax the little boy out of his fantasy by reinvigorating his empathetic responses to the world of humans.This highly problematic case study becomes a point from which to explore the uncanny, unsettling – yet also potentially emancipatory – new possibilities for mind and body in a world of vibrant matter.

 

Catalyst Arts presents:

PRE-FIX | VENICE 2017 

Keef Winter | Shipsides and Beggs Projects

18:30-22:00 | 14th May 2017

Serra dei Giardini, Viale Giuseppe Garibaldi 1254, Venice, Italy

PRE-FIX, the illegitimate seed/spore/pre cum of this year’s instalment of possibly Europe’s longest running performance and live art biennial FIX, laps the honeyed banks of Italy’s Adriatic Queen.

Officially the unofficial representation for Northern Ireland in Venice. PRE-FIX is not a collateral event but we will bring a flag, our shoestring and a rental drum kit. Imagine a bit-piece, post-openings carousel orgy of soul purification, where the languid beauty of serra lawn is caressed by the savage melodies of a distant shore. *pavilion not included*

PRE-FIX will feature newly commissioned works by Northern Irish artists  Shipsides and Beggs Projects and Keef Winter, curated by Catalyst Arts. The event is hosted by Microclima and supported by the British Council.

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PROGRAMME

6.30 pm / Presentation by Catalyst Arts.

7pm / Performance : Keef Winter, Handyman, 2017, 40’ mins.

7.40 pm  / 15 Minutes Break with interactive soundscape (Shipsides and Beggs Projects)

7.55 pm / Audio Visual happening : Shipsides and Beggs Projects, Decimation in D major, 40’ mins, 2017.

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Shipsides and Beggs Projects; Dan Shipsides (based Belfast) and Neal Beggs (based Nantes) are individual artists who have worked together on regular basis since 2004 – sharing a love of art, mountains, music and creative madness. As Shipsides and Beggs Projects they have exhibited nationally and internationally including; L’Atelier, Nantes (Collectif R), Bel Ordinarie, Pau (No Shooting in this Area), L’Orangerie, Bastogne, Belgium (Still Not Out Of The Woods – Zombie Line), Chateau Gontier, France (Gothic Cinema), ACCA, Melbourne (Desire Lines), The MAC, Belfast (Still not out of the woods), Aliceday Gallery, Brussels (Vigil | Star) and CIAC, Carros (Frontiers & other songs of Freedom).

Keef Winter (b. 1980, N. Ireland) lives and works in London. Winter studied architecture at Edinburgh College of Art and received a PhD in Philosophy entitled ‘The Handyman Aesthetic’ from Ulster University. His recent exhibitions include: ‘On Becoming Fluid’, Hardwick Gallery, Gloucestershire (2017); ‘Sticky Enough’, Chalton Gallery, London (2016); ‘Salon Sebastian Monteux’, Glasgow International (2016); ‘Deep Inside’, Galeria Breve; Mexico City (2016); ‘Neutral’, TULCA Festival of Visual Art, Galway (2014).

Catalyst Arts presents:

TESTING | Members Show 2017

4th – 11th May

TESTING aims to give space to explore alternative perspectives and new approaches within your practice. We want you to play devil’s advocate with your usual working method, tease it, play with it, wriggle around it, blow it up and stick it back together, trick it and confront it. Without testing new ideas we run the chance of getting too comfortable and of missing that which could possibly lead to a more creative outcome. For this show we ask our members to see Catalyst Arts as a testing ground for experimentation and to showcase new perspectives and possibilities within your work.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Re:Nouveau

Friday 28th – Saturday 29th April | Opening: Thursday 27th April

Re:Nouveau is the end of year exhibition by 2nd year Lens and Sculpture students of the Belfast School of Art.

This exhibition is organised and curated solely by the 2nd year students (who are mentored by Shirley MacWilliam, Robert Connolly and Ralf Sander). Students will present a professional body of work reflecting understanding and knowledge of contemporary art practice within sculpture , video, photography, installation and performance. The Exhibition will run for two days only, therefore we are hoping to see you at the opening night supporting and celebrating this emerging new talent in the heart of Belfast.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Love is Love – A Walk Down Memory Lane with LGBTQ Rights Dave

by Chloe Cooper

Saturday 25th March | 5pm

Departing from The MAC, 10 Exchange Street, Belfast, BT1 2LS

arriving at Catalyst Arts, 5 College Court, Belfast, BT1 6BS

Catalyst Walks is Catalyst Arts’ peripatetic programme that lets you enjoy art while getting out in the open air and feeling good about life. For this iteration artist Chloe Cooper will be riffing off the themes in our current exhibition As the Story was Told. The walk considers the narcissism of confessional narratives, the politics of sexuality, and the skulduggery/pragmatism of people taking on other people’s politics for their own benefit/the benefit of many. It’s basically an embodied exploration of appropriation, assimilation, and arseholes.

Chloe Cooper has recently exhibited and performed works at Dedications, ArtReview Bar, London (2017); Pop Up Feminist Library, Tate Modern, London (2017); Bedfellows: Sex Re-Education, Tate Modern, London (2016); Encounters, Galleri Mejan, Royal Institute of Art, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Art From Elsewhere, Arnolfini, Bristol (2016); Chloe Cooper: Bronzin’ (Totally Bronze), Tate Britain, London (2016); 21st Century Fox in the Snow, Embassy, Edinburgh (2016); Secret Reasons, AND Publishing, London (2016); Doing What Comes Naturally Presents: Spare Rib at The Feminist Library, London (2015); Take Away Monad Mollusc, London Conference in Critical Thought 2015, UCL, London (2015); Feelings, Blockages and Pots, Centrum, Berlin (2015); Reactor Halls E15: You can’t win them all, ladies & gentlemen, Primary, Nottingham (2015); Looks Performatour, ICA, London (2015); Loop-the-Loop, Five Years, London (2015) and Teachers Study Day, Sandberg Institute/Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam (2015).

Catalyst Arts presents:

As The Story Was Told

YURI ANCARANI  |  GERARD BYRNE  |  JAMIE CREWE  |  DIEGO MARCON

10th-31st March 2017 | Opening Preview: 9th March, 6-9pm

As The Story Was Told borrows its title from a short story of the same name by Samuel Beckett published in 1987, which  focuses on an exploration into frames of reference, stories told by an Other and the ongoing interplay of authority from a first person narrator. The text is concerned with the nature of the creative act, the struggle between the dissociation of storytelling, the split within the creative artist as embodied in the narration and the difficulty of uniting these two dwellings. This group show brings together four artists whose lens-based works re-consider and present gathered documents from recent history, texts and objects in a contemporary context  using methods of restaging, re-enactment and narration.

Gerard Byrne’s visually rich and intellectually complex work encompassing photography, film, theatre and multi-screen installation, examines the slippage between time and the act of image creation. Characterised by a laconic humour, Byrne’s projects examine the ambiguities of language and of what is gained or lost in the translation from text to image. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include; Mead Gallery, Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2016); Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St.Gallen, Switzerland (2015); FRAC Pays de la Loire, Nantes, France (2014) and The Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2013).

Glasgow based artist Jamie Crewe’s methods as a maker are born out of pragmatism and restraint; objects are made in a semi-improvised way, contrasting with the “high” cultural principles of their source references, and imbuing the work with the precocious care of an amateur. In contrast to this, other more precise and nuanced strategies are employed, building to an overall sense of embraced incoherence. Recent solo and group presentations include; Female Executioner, Gasworks, London, UK (2017), But what was most awful was a girl who was singing, Transmission, Glasgow, SCT (2016) and Like A Floral Knife, Embassy Gallery, Edinburgh, SCT (2016).

Italian video artist and film-maker Yuri Ancarani’s works come from a continuous mingling of documentary cinema and contemporary art, and are the result of a research aimed to explore regions not visible in daily life, realities in which the artist delves in first person. Recent screenings have been presented at Centre d’Art Contemporary, Geneva (2012); MAXXI of Rome (2014, 2012); Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2012); The Encyclopedic Palace, 55th International Venice Biennale (2013) and the fifth Prague Biennial (2011). He has received numerous awards and honors, including the Short Film Grand Prize at the 10th International Independent Film Festival, Lisbon and the Grand Prix in Lab Competition, Clermont-Ferrand Film Festival.

Diego Marcon works mainly with video and film, focusing his research on the relationship between reality and representation. His works have been shown internationally in spaces and institutions such as; Whitechapel Gallery (London, UK), Fondation d’entreprise Ricard (Paris, France), De Vleeshal (Middelburg, The Netherlands), Centre international d’art et du paysage (Vassivière, France) NAi -National Architecture Institute (Rotterdam, The Netherlands), Artspace (Auckland, New Zeland), MATADERO (Madrid, Spain), Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (Torino, Italy), PAC – Padiglione Arte Contemporanea (Milano, Italy), MACRO and Palazzo delle, Esposizioni (Roma, Italy), Fiorucci Art Trust (London, UK), Peep-Hole, Gasconade, Careof (Milano, Italy).

Throughout the month of March, Catalyst Arts will host a Screening Room Series which will present a one day programme of curated screenings by Artist Moving Image Northern Ireland in response to themes within the exhibition. The programme will also host  discussions and events which will run alongside the exhibition and act as a forum for dialogue and debate around current contemporary artist moving image practices in Ireland, the UK and Europe.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings.

Catalyst Arts presents:

DOUBLE PARRHESIA

KATHRYN ELKIN   ADAM LEWIS-JACOB   MARIA TOUMAZOU

3nd February – 21st February 2017 | Opening Preview: 2nd February, 6-9pm

DOUBLE PARRHESIA considers the potential of shared cultural memory, affectual labour and self-organisation, to generate new modalities in contemporary art practice and institutional activism.

This project draws its title from Gerald Raunig’s essay ‘What is a Progressive (Art) Institution?’ which considers how an art institution can become part of a political multitude by making use of Michel Foucault’s concept of ‘parrhesia’. Raunig envisions an art institution that performs a ‘double parrhesia’; of both criticising hegemonic power and disclosing the truth about its own position. Each of the artists involved in the exhibition have practices which oscillate between the self and the collective, individual practices and artist-led initiatives. This duality, transition and exchange between positions has the potential to carve out a space in which to cultivate collaboration, test methods of sustainability and generate a radical collective consciousness.

Kathryn Elkin’s performance and video works concern role-playing and improvising and typically manifest through citing a referent- such as an artist, a song, a writer, or performer – upon which she applies personal methods of translation, transcription and representation. ‘Film 2016’ was exhibited at CCA Glasgow as part of a major solo exhibition titled ‘Television’ in 2016. Elkin has shown work throughout the UK, including ICA, London; Tate Modern, London; Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Transmission, Glasgow; S1, Sheffield and CCA, Derry. She is the recipient of the 217 Warwick Stafford Fellowship at Northumbria University and teaches part-time at Liverpool John Moore’s University.

Based in Nicosia, Cyprus, Maria Toumazou’s practice identifies and rehearses gestures that mediate the tensions of material and affectual labour. In 2011 she co-founded Neoterismoi Toumazou (Neo Toum), an artist-led space and a collective in Nicosia. She is also co-founder of the publishing imprint MARIA†.Editions based in Nicosia and New York. Toumazou completed a BA in Art Practice Goldsmiths College where she was awarded The Nicolas and Andrei Tooth Traveling Scholarship in 2011 and her MFA from The Glasgow School of Art in 2014. Recent exhibitions of her work include ‘Vanity: How to burn bridges you haven’t build, Garage, Nicosia; BRADLEY xx, Glasgow International 2016, Glasgow; AyeBaDome:Super, Thkio Ppalies, Nicosia; and í drögum, Akureyri Art Museum, Akureyri.

Glasgow-based Adam Lewis-Jacob primarily works in video, animation and installation. Through the development of collaborative methodologies, Lewis-Jacob sets up situations of shared authorship and an exploration of filmmaking as a space for relinquishing total control; incorporating traces of process and performance, amidst a surplus of objects, information and images. He is the co-founder of the artist run exhibition space Celine and a current committee member at Transmission Gallery in Glasgow.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Forms of Resistance

Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle  |  Francesco Nordio |  Vukasin Nedeljkovic

12th January – 24th January

13th January 5pm | Francesco Nordio | Artist Talk

21st January 5pm | Vukasin Nedeljkovic | Artist Talk

 

Forms of Resistance explores and calls into question the idea of resistance, meant as a reaction against different established powers driven by artists, collectives or even a whole community.

Manna and Storihle’s experimental documentary ‘the Goodness Regime’ explores the ambiguity of Norway’s image as a peacemaking nation, while Nedeljkovic’s work – part of the ongoing project ‘Asylum Archive’ – investigates the tough reality of Asylum Seekers’ provision centers in Ireland. On the other hand, Nordio’s work ‘About Culture. A Proposal For A Revolution’ creates a set of guidelines in the form of a how-to-do book, that describes how a cultural shift could be conducted – both on a global scale and in everyday life.

In this open playground, these various approaches coexist and overlap into a fluid itinerary that will expand over the course of the exhibition through various talks and discussions with the artists involved.

This project is kindly supported by Arts Council of Northern Ireland.