25 Years of Catalyst Arts

Posted on 23/03/201925/03/2019 by Catalyst Arts

15 November – 15 December 2018

Opening 15th November 6 – 9pm

In 1993 a group of MFA graduates from the Belfast School of Art began to organise exhibitions, exchanges and events in the city, calling their new artist-led project Catalyst Arts. They established a non-hierarchical structure, naming themselves joint co-directors, and agreed that a director would stay for 2 years and then pass the gauntlet to someone else. In accordance with its constitution, Catalyst is run by unpaid volunteers and seeks to adopt a poly-vocal strategy towards the promotion of contemporary art practices, by showcasing artists and projects from the widest possible range of disciplines.

A quarter of a century and almost 100 co-directors later, the current committee present a programme of events to celebrate Catalyst’s 25th anniversary. In the gallery a wealth of material from the Catalyst archive will be on display, woven together with contributions from past directors. The exhibition is a way to make visible Catalyst’s impact on the field of contemporary art practice over the past two and half decades, especially in the UK and Ireland.

Alongside the exhibition will be a talk on Catalyst’s extensive but incomplete archive, a walking tour of previous Catalyst locations and a Symposium examining artist-led practices from around the UK and Ireland.

Public Programme

15 November 6 – 9pm | Opening event | Catalyst Arts

24 November 3 – 5pm | Symposium Session 1 | The MAC

1 December 3 – 5pm | Symposium Session 2 | The Black Box

6 December 7pm | Catalyst Walks – 25 Years | beginning at Catalyst Arts

25 Years of Catalyst Arts is kindly supported by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.

Synthesis

Posted on 11/09/201823/03/2019 by Catalyst Arts

We understand the world around us by combining fragments of information, gathered and stored over a lifetime. Synthesis is the process of combining new information with previous understandings. In the gallery space, a space made for observation, we synthesise a unique experience through engagement with materials. With a focus on our sensory perceptions, this raises two questions:

How do spatial elements and physical context affect how we experience light and sound?

-and-

How do light and sound affect how we experience spatial elements and physical context?

The combining of these stimulants together results in the creation of something new. This exhibition combines Sound Art, Visual Installation, and Reactive Sculpture that each affect and are affected by the space they reside in. These stimulants provide the audience members with new information and each individual synthesises there own interpretation.

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Artist Bios

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Gábor Lázár is an electronic musician born in 1989 in Budapest. His first release was a split tape with Russell Haswell in 2013, then in the same year he was invited by Lorenzo Senni to release a CD on Presto!? which led to Gábor’s first album ’ILS’ published early 2014. Right after ‘ILS’ he’s got invited by Conor Thomas to make a record for The Death of Rave, a label managed by a record distributor called Boomkat. His work ‘EP16’ has been critically acclaimed by magazines and festivals, at this time Gábor was already touring extensively in Europe, also taking part in artist residencies at House of Electronic Arts in Basel, at EMS in Stockholm and was a Shape Platform Artist as well. He made audio visual installations at Santa Monica Art Center in Barcelona and at Rewire Festival. In 2014 he met Mark Fell and they recorded a collaborative album in Budapest which was released in 2015 as ’The Neurobiology of Moral Decision Making’. The album was #11 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s 20 Best Avant Albums and #3 on Boomkat’s Favourite 100 Albums of the year and it was played by Aphex Twin at multiple festivals including Field Day London and Primavera Sound Barcelona which was described by The Quietus as one of the most head-spinning moments of Aphex Twin’s set. Later in 2017 he released a new album called Crisis of Representation on Shelter Press then in 2018 he turned back to The Death of Rave to release a new album called ‘Unfold’ which marks a new era of his works.

www.gaborlazar.com/

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Thomas McConville is.

www.facebook.com/mcconvillemusic

soundcloud.com/thomasmcconville

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Paul Stapleton is an improviser, sound designer, musician, researcher and inventor originally from Southern California, currently based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He designs and performs with a variety of modular metallic sound sculptures, custom made electronics, found objects and electric guitars in locations ranging from experimental music clubs in Berlin to remote beaches on Vancouver Island. Since 2007, he has been lecturing at the Sonic Arts Research Centre (SARC), where he teaches and supervises MA & PhD research in improvisation, performance ecosystem design and site-specific sound art. His album ‘FAUNA’ with saxophonist Simon Rose has received acclaim from music critics such as Ken Waxman (Jazzword), Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg (Orynx), Mark Corroto (All About Jazz), Marc Medwin (New York City Jazz Record) and others. His sound design and composition work as part of the immersive audio theatre piece Reassembled, Slightly Askew (2015) has received widespread critical praise, including 4 star reviews in The Guardian, Time Out London and the Evening Standard. Other major works-in-progress include the distributed instrument project Ambiguous Devices with Tom Davis, and the Translating Improvisation research group co-directed with Sara Ramshaw.

www.paulstapleton.net/

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John Harding is a designer and researcher who works within various areas which oscillate between the fields of Music and Creative Technologies. John’s work has particular focus on the development of new interfaces for musical expression and he owns and operates the popular creative tech blog site brrr.ink, which details forays into areas spanning Synthesis, Creative Coding, Music Technologies, Electronics, Rapid Prototyping and Creative Visuals. He is also Co-Cheif Technology Officer at Delta Sound Labs, based in the USA a company that develops new Music Technology related hardware and Software with worldwide distribution both in Europe and the USA. John has been part of the core teaching team at Creative Technologies at Ulster University Magee for over a decade.
www.brrr.ink/
https://instagram.com/brrr.ink
https://www.deltasoundlabs.com

Kindly supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

BETWEEN THINGS – Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show 2018

Posted on 21/08/201804/10/2018 by Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts presents:

BETWEEN THINGS 
Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show 2018

  Harry Walsh Foreman | Min-young Kim | Johanna Nulty | Marijn Ottenhof

Tuesday, 28th of August – Thursday, 6th of September
Opening hours: Tue – Sat, 11 – 5

Opening: Tuesday 28th August, 6 – 9 pm
6:30 pm: Exhibition Tour led by participating artists and Catalyst Co-directors
Performance by Marijn Ottenhof

BETWEEN THINGS builds on Catalyst’s reputation for showcasing the very best of work from UK and Ireland based recent graduates and final year students within this annual exhibition. Catalyst are delighted to be offering critical support and exposure at a formative stage in the artists’ development.

 Harry Walsh Foreman was born in Dublin where for the most part he has been based since either making art, teaching art or sometimes both. Having recently graduated from the MFA in Fine Art Paint in the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in Dublin, he has exhibited extensively through Ireland in numerous group shows where he has honed his particular approach which celebrates the human and the marks we make on the world from the architecture of a skyline to the tagging on a storefront. It is made in celebration of the local, the small-scale, the eccentric and the down-right ordinary. It is a search for the moments which contain a multitude of possibilities for examining the humour of the everyday.

Employing a various form of digital media, from CGI to game simulation, the work of Korean artist Min-young Kim reflects and discusses our relationship (and dependence) on digital technology and screen-based platforms and the use and deployment of software technologies within the realm of the social and biomedicine. Technical skills and scientific metaphors used in her work are therefore highly anchored in contemporary technosphere whereby smart devices, tracking-capturing systems and algorithmic computer processing alter our perception of the natural or the humanistic. Min-young Kim graduated with a MA in Contemporary Art Practices from the Royal College of Art, London in 2018 and with a BFA in Fashion Design from Ewha Womans University, South Korea in 2010.

Johanna Nulty is a visual artist based in Belfast. She studied Fine Art BA in Sligo Institute and is currently completing her MFA at Ulster University. The main components in Nulty’s practice are sculpture, video and installation. Nulty is interested in exploring sound from mass produced materials. Amalgamating the different sounds, creating visual and audio videos. Interested in ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) which is a term used for an experience characterised by static like or tingling sensation on the skin and how it affects the viewer physically and emotionally. Nulty is more interested in the materials themselves, the sound they make, how to capture it and the idea of materials creating a rhythm or pattern sound. She is also interested by the idea of ‘chance’, things that happen not so intended or forced but still having a structure to compose. Chance actions differ from erroneously carried out actions only in that they disdain the support of a conscious intention and really need no pretext. Creating sounds from the materials used, unaware of the effect such simple actions would present or allow.

In her work, Marijn Ottenhof investigates social and political systems and the human need for rules and logic. In staged situations, language and sculptural elements are used to draw audiences into performative moments. Existing texts are integrated into scripts and by the removal from their original context, are rendered more abstract and poetical. In the same way, surreal decors form an abstraction of known situations as a backdrop.  Ottenhof studied at the Royal College of Art in The Hague and is now based in London, where she is currently enrolled in an MA at the Royal College of Art.

Photos: Jordan Hutchings

Between Us And

Posted on 12/08/2018 by Catalyst Arts

BETWEEN US AND

Curated by Catalyst Arts, Belfast

At EMBASSY Gallery, Edinburgh

15/06/18 – 01/07/18

Helena Hamilton | Kate Fahey | Marianne Keating

Catalyst Arts and EMBASSY present Between us and, an exhibition of recent and new multimedia works by artists Helena Hamilton, Kate Fahey and Marianne Keating.

The passing body of the spectator is dissolved into the darkened space, witness and participant in conversation between objects. Technologies quietly murmur to one another, a disembodied eye floats over coasts familiar and foreign, screens appear to dream and silent light makes its presence heard.

The title Between us and suggests an incomplete thought, inviting the viewer to reimagine the connection between eye and image, space and sound, object and person.

The opening event will take place on Friday 15th June 2018, 7 – 10PM

Kate Fahey and Marianne Keating will present artist talks on Saturday 16th June, 2PM.

The Catalyst-curated exhibition will run over two weeks in EMBASSY Gallery Edinburgh, as part of Annuale Festival 2018. This conversation between artist-led organisations will continue over July and August 2018, when Catalyst Arts, Belfast will host The Best Way Out is Always Through, a four week programme of art, workshops and events curated by EMBASSY.

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Helena Hamilton is a Belfast based artist. Her practice incorporates both visual and sonic elements to create work which crosses the lines between object, sound, digital interaction and action/performance. She received an MA in Sonic Arts (Queens University Belfast, 2014) and holds a BA Honours degree in Fine Art (University of Ulster, 2009). Helena is represented by The Agency Gallery, London.

She has exhibited and performed in both gallery spaces and contemporary music/sound festivals. Recent solo exhibitions include: Semblance and Event, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, NI/The Agency Gallery, London (2018). Showcases include: Digital Design Weekend, Victoria and Albert Museum, London (2017). Recent artist residencies include: Art Centre Ongoing, Tokyo, Japan (2016); Goldsmiths University of London, EAVI Group (2015).

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Kate Fahey works across the boundaries of various mediums including moving images, sound, stills, sculpture, and installation, her practice explores our relationship with images through contemporary screen based perspectives, aerial, satellite and elevated (drones eye) views, particularly through the technological hard and softwares of encounter. Focusing on imagery predominantly appropriated from YouTube, her multidisciplinary fine art practice engages with the surface and materiality of the aerial image, employing metafictional and subjective approaches to disrupt their habitual modes of spectatorship online.

Currently, she is an AHRC funded practice based PhD candidate at the University of the Arts, London, artist in residence at Lewisham Arthouse. She is a recent recipient of the Mead Residency Award to the British School at Rome (2017). Upcoming projects include Repetitive Strain (solo) at Lewisham Arthouse and an Artists’ Exhibition Residency at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2018). She lives and works in Peckham.

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Marianne Keating is currently a PhD candidate in the Visual and Material Culture & Contemporary Art Practice Research Centre, Kingston University London (2016- 2020), funded by Kingston University, KSA Studentship Award and a AHRC TECHNE Associate. She graduated with an MA in Print from the Royal College of Art, London 2013 and BA in Fine Art from Limerick School of Art and Design, Ireland in 2002.

She has exhibited extensively including exhibitions in London, Paris, New York, Melbourne and Shanghai. Recent exhibitions include a range of solo and group exhibitions including: Landlessness, StudioRCA, London UK (2017), Unstable Monuments, Cornwall, UK (2016), 中外艺术家作品联展开幕, Hangzhou, China (2014), and In Search for Trevor Owen, Montego Bay, Jamaica (2013). Upcoming exhibitions in include Bloomberg New Contemporaries at the Liverpool Biennial 2018 and South London Gallery.

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Kindly supported by Culture Ireland and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

Interzone

Posted on 12/08/201819/10/2018 by Catalyst Arts

INTERZONE

24th May – 5th July 2018

Barry Cullen | Jonny McEwen | Una Monaghan | Saul Rayson | Susannah Stark

Interzone brings together a group of internationally prominent and emergent artists whose approaches to their individual art practices embrace sound, installation and visual components. The project is a six week conversation, the gallery re-imagined as liminal land between borders, playing host to a sustained exploration of the multi-faceted, complex, mutually invigorating relationships possible across visual and sonic art practices and rejecting outmoded separation between disciplines within contemporary art. Codes, glitches and loops permeate the assembled constituents of the exhibition, instigating a shifting inter-connection between what is seen and heard. The title references both the International Zone setting of William S Burroughs taboo breaking 1959 novel Naked Lunch and the mysterious, dreamlike “Zone” in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film Stalker.

Interzone will be complemented by a series of live Sonic Art performances on the opening night and to coincide with June and July Late Night Art Belfast.

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Barry Joseph Cullen is an audio and video worker who has exhibited, performed and researched in Europe, the Middle East, North and South America. He is currently researching making DIY electronic instruments at the Sonic Arts Research Centre at Queen’s University Belfast. His practice involves working with traditional and modern tools. The work usually includes delivering DIY electronics, audio technology and motion graphics workshops, interactive AV installation works, performance (DJing, VJing and live instrumentation) and creative technical support.Performance projects use a mix of: improvisation, noise, environmental sound and play.

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Born in Enniskillen in 1966, Jonny McEwen began painting in 1986 and first exhibited in 1991. A Graduate of the Art College in Belfast, he has exhibited widely in Ireland, England, Wales and Germany Including several solo shows in Belfast Dublin and Cork. McEwen’s work is part of the following public collections: UTV, Dept of Environment NI, Secretary of States Office, Dept of Finance, Office of Public Works, University of Cork; as well as many private collections. In 2014 McEwen completed his Masters in fine Art at the University of Ulster, where his work developed to include a digital practice using Video and computer code.His new work includes painting and digital installation, with aesthetics crossing over between the digital and analogue works.

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Úna Monaghan is a harper, composer, researcher and sound artist from Belfast. Her recent work has combined traditional music with bronze sculpture, sound art and movement sensors. Her compositions have been presented on BBC and RTÉ television and radio, in theatre productions, and at international festivals and conferences, such as the International Computer Music Conference, York Festival of Ideas, and New York Electroacoustic Music Festival. Úna has held artist residencies at the Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, the Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas Montréal, and the Future Music Lab at the Atlantic Music Festival, Maine, USA. Úna also works as a sound engineer specialising in Irish traditional music, and experimental, live electronic and multichannel music, a role in which she travels worldwide. Úna is the Rosamund Harding Research Fellow in Music at Newnham College, University of Cambridge. Her research examines the intersections between Irish traditional music, experimental music practices, improvisation and interactive technologies. She performs with harp and electronics, and released an album of her compositions for harp and electronics, named “For” in 2018.

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Composer, improviser and percussionist Saul Rayson studied with various drum teachers including Allen Cox and Kim Plainfield at The Drummers Collective in New York. Saul’s Musical career has encompassed various musical environments and endeavours. As a sideman, he has worked with many artists and bands including Mark Van Hoen ‘Locust’ (R&S Records), Seefeel (Too Pure Records), Velocette (Wijja records) Baby Fox (Road Runner Recorders), Mike Flowers (Sony Music) and Owen Lamont ‘Hold On’. Saul’s collaborative work includes: ARC (Allen, Rayson, Cullen), Subfusc ‘Sonic Kitchen’, and Iain McCurdy ‘Acoustic Capacitance’ (performed at Maynooth University, Csound 30 Conference 2016). Saul also performs and composes as a solo artist often under ‘Subfusc’ and other pseudonyms and played at Sonorities 2018. Saul trained as a recording engineering at Fortress Studios in London and has worked with artists such as Lisa Millet, Ted Barns (Beth Orton, Clayhill), Tummy Touch Records and Jamaican Records. He also worked for mastering and archiving studio, Ideal Mastering. Saul has experimented with extending his sounds in both performance and recording, with computer environments, Supercollider and Pure Data. In recent years, he has been building hardware, in the form of a Eurorack systems. This exploration has involved the extension and adaptation of drums with the use of contact mics and addition of material through the drum membrane and various developments in the ways to excite the drums, using drums as both a sound and control source. During this time, his use of improvisation has impacted greatly on his composition and performance work. Saul is a lecturer at South Eastern Regional College where he teaches music performance and production.

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Susannah Stark graduated from Grays School of Art in Aberdeen (2011) and Royal College of Art in London (2016) where she studied printmaking, and primarily works with music, voice, sound and print-based installation. Her work North East Wis-Dom was shown at the Third CAFAM Biennial, Negotiating Space CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, China, (2016/17), Idols and Impossible Structures, International Print Centre New York, USA (2017) and in Ambient Occlusion, Gossamer Fog, London (2017). In 2016 she collaborated with musician Donald Hayden on a commissioned surround sound audio work The Wheel for Soundscape Park at Art Basel in Miami Beach, USA. In 2017 they worked together on surround sound audio as part of exhibition Lilt, Twang, Tremor at the CCA in Glasgow (2017/18), which included a talk and live music/voice performance (January 2018). This work was then shown as a solo presentation Searchlights at bb15, Linz, Austria (2018). In 2017 she collaborated with artist Karolina Lebek on an exhibition with live music/spoken word performance Unnatural Wealth curated by A- – -Z at StudioRCA in London (2017), and with artist Suzanne Dery on an exhibition and performance The Minch at the Market Gallery, Glasgow (2017). Recent screenings include Unnatural Wealth CCA, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art (2018), Glare curated by LUX Scotland and Gallery Celine , Glasgow Film Theatre (2018). She has recently completed residencies at Hospitalfield, Arbroath, Scotland (2017) The Fountainhead, Miami, USA (2017) and bb15, Austria (2018) and is currently working on new music for release on EP later in 2018.

Kindly supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

The Best Way Out Is Always Through

Posted on 13/07/201821/08/2018 by Catalyst Arts

THE BEST WAY OUT IS ALWAYS THROUGH
Curated by EMBASSY Gallery, Edinburgh
At Catalyst Arts, Belfast
19/07/18 – 16/08/18

Adam Hussain | Lynne McBride | Jake Watts

“The Best Way Out is Always Through” seeks to assume the form of an open framework for knowledge exchange and production. Adopting the possibilities granted by the inclusion of a working open-source CNC router in the space, this framework will adopt three items of functional furniture as points of departure; a library, table & chairs will be fabricated in-situ using the CNC router. Scotland based artists Adam Hussain, Lynne McBride and Jake Watts, have been invited to produce new cross-disciplinary work in response. Opportunities for engagement, in the form of readings, workshops, performances and live fabrication seminars, will take place throughout the duration of the programme.

Adam Hussain works between improvisation, video and poetic text. He considers his work at the junction between somatic dance thinking and the ancient movement practices of Sufi ritual. His artistic inquiry focuses on the body as the site for experimentation through processes of questioning, exploring how one might occupy liminal spaces. He currently resides in Edinburgh and helps co-choreograph live site-specific installations as part of his artistic contribution to Edinburgh-based Improvisation collective, I.M.P.

Lynne McBride is an Edinburgh based artist and educator whose work often considers artist led archives. She recently completed the AIR Tech Residency at the Edinburgh college where she began a project inviting HND Contemporary Art Practice students to engage with and create responses to Artist led archives around Scotland. To date, these have included: GENERATOR projects, Embassy Gallery, and Market Gallery.

Jake Watts is an artist who is also currently a practice-based PhD Candidate at the University of Edinburgh researching ‘Workshops: Investigating and Developing Participatory Environments for Artistic Learning’. Jake is also a member of Shift/Work
(www.shift-work.org.uk).

Members Show | Programme Your Retroactive Wish

Posted on 17/05/201817/05/2018 by Catalyst Arts

you are a programmed tape recorder set to record and playback listen to your present time tapes and you will begin to see who you are and what you are doing here mix yesterday in with today and hear tomorrow your future rising out of old recordings

who programs you

who decides what tapes play back in present time

who plays back your old humiliations and defeats holding you in prerecorded present time

you don’t have to listen to that sound

you can program your own playback

you can decide what tapes you want played back in present time

William S. Burroughs

Regret is a way of relating to objects and actions of the past, connecting our desires and wills to what we do and what we make. The Members Show this year takes the idea of regret – the retroactive wish – as a potentially compelling way of seeing what we’ve made and of bringing an element of looking-back into the present. Clément Rosset summarises Schopenhauer, saying that regret has no meaning; to do something different would have been to want something different. Even without meaning, a retroactive wish might carry something – the ghost of an intention, a persistent illusion.

Catalyst members are all invited to show a piece of work in any medium – work that they have made recently, that they have willed into existence, suspending or embracing the possibility of retroactive wishes.

66% There | 2nd Year Lens and Sculpture

Posted on 26/04/2018 by Catalyst Arts

66% There

18th – 21st April | Opening: 17th April 6-9pm

66% There is a group exhibition showcasing an array of work by the 2nd year Lens and Sculpture students from the Belfast School of Art. The various works explore concepts ranging from politics and belief systems to notions of identity and belonging, and express a contemporary view of current affairs through media such as installation, drawing, video and sound. The artists focus on bringing together their individual practices in a collaborative setting to reflect on their work to date, as well as their potential for the future.

Catalyst Arts Graduate Award | Sweatin’

Posted on 12/04/201812/04/2018 by Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts Graduate Award:

Sweatin’

Helouise O’Reilly

30th March – 7th April 2018 | Opening 29th March 6-9pm

‘I have a lucky number 11. I don’t know why I call it lucky because it’s very rare that I would ever check on it…and I do sweat on it a lot. Never comes out…’

How we interpret numbers depends on our perception. They act as codes, possessing and relaying information to tell us about the world around us. Through our life, numbers can become interwoven with our identity. It could be argued that some people feel a stronger association with numbers than others.

The exhibition, Sweatin’, explores these ideas within the context of a working-class bingo hall in the city centre of Belfast. Traditionally a female dominated environment, bingo can be a place of escape, relaxation and mutual support with plenty of craic! Drawn initially to the subject through her own family connections with the game, O’Reilly spent intensive periods of time in the environment in question, listening and observing…and sometimes playing. Sweatin’ offers a portrait of Belfast, whilst also providing a platform for broader discussions surrounding numerical associations, cultural superstitions and the perceived notion of luck.

Helouise O’Reilly received the Catalyst Arts Graduate Award upon completion of the Masters in Fine Art course at the University of Ulster and is currently a member of Flax Art Studios. She has exhibited nationally and internationally and had work featured in the Belfast Film Festival.

This exhibition is kindly supported by The Fenton Arts Trust and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland.

NOW ANOTHER PROCEDURE IS TO RUN

Posted on 16/03/201816/03/2018 by Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts presents:

NOW ANOTHER PROCEDURE IS TO RUN

08-02-18 – 15-03-18

ALLAN HUGHES, MARK JACKSON | GAIL PICKERING | JAWBONE JAWBONE

‘NOW ANOTHER PROCEDURE IS TO RUN’ brings together works employing historical analogue videotape, live transmission and televisual images to explore and critique on the collective actions and self-indulgent desires of contemporary society. The installation will present itself as series of live broadcasts, with live/lived experiences, non-fictional and fictional storytelling that are intertwined within its surface materiality as much as its content which constructs new narrative spaces and platforms. These systems contain political and aesthetic implications that address the subjectivity of popular visual formats and enable reflection of our contemporary relationship with images. The works of these artists probe the overlap, slippage and disconnect between reality and representation.

Allan Hughes (1974-) and Mark Jackson (1976-) are The Blue Mountain, a dreamwork based in the Tyneside conurbation. They recycle souls using triangles inscribed on their arms as a tripartite that leads to creative action. As Senior Lecturers in Fine Art and Visual & Material Cultures at Northumbria University they climb up gleaming edifices: Marl Jackson and Alllan Hughes, paranormal investigators from the 1980s cast in an Anthony Gormley studio. They have wings instead of arms like the Angel of the North but their bodies are small, like miniatures, and they have phocomelia: errors, typos, missing bits, umbilical hernias and projecting brains, because the metal doesn’t flow back on itself when cast with a centrifuge. Recent visitations have included Blue Mountain Equals Arcturus at The Northern Charter in Newcastle upon Tyne, Blue Mountain at Manchester Contemporary, My Part of Your Home, (curated by Giles Bailey & CIRCA Projects) at Shipley Gallery Gateshead and a material production collaboration with Plastique Fantastique for Shonky a Hayward Touring Show. They will launch their Blue Mountain Starter Set, a set of 28mm white metal miniatures at IMT Gallery, London in April 2018.

Gail Pickering works with moving image, performance and installation. A key aspect is her use of historical material as staged through voice, mimicry and through the various accomplices and protagonists with whom she has collaborated in her videos and performances. The tension between the moving image and live presence offers an instability that recurs throughout her work in a desire to position it and us within a temporal and spatial present. In each exhibition of “Near Real Time” Pickering adds and subtracts material and varies the choreography of its installation, at its core performative. Pickering graduated with an MFA from Goldsmiths in 2001. Her work has been exhibited widely, including Tate Modern; ICA, London; South London Gallery; Centre of Contemporary Art, Vilnius; Magasin Centre for Contemporary Art, Grenoble, France; Kunstverien Stuttgart, Germany; Gasworks and the Royal Academy of Arts, London. Pickering recently had two major solo exhibitions at La Ferme Du Buission, Paris, 2014 and the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, 2014-15 and was nominated for the Jarman Award in 2015.

Nikki Katrina Carroll (b. 1994, Grantham) and Matthew Young (b. 1993 Stockton-on-Tees) are based in Graduate Studios Northumbria, Newcastle upon Tyne. Artistically they collaborate through their third identity, Jawbone Jawbone. As habitual re-users of imagery they aim to generate visual motifs that appear in various mediums and forms. Expanding from a simplistic image or conventional belief, they channel a daydream-like aesthetic to influence their decision making. Through this approach their multidisciplinary works become elements attempting to understand 3D life; whilst playfully reflecting on common sense. Recent shows include I Can’t Remember the Last Time I Used Cardamom, TESTT Gallery, Durham; Les Boîtes Suede Gallery w/ Slugtown, Edinburgh; Dishwasher Safe System Gallery, Newcastle; Bish Bash Bosh by We The North, The Royal Standard, Liverpool and Deep Down the Ear Canal, Slugtown, Newcastle.

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

LUX Salon | Looking Aside

Posted on 13/03/201813/03/2018 by Catalyst Arts

LUX Salon: Looking Aside

Saturday 10th March 2018 | 3 – 5pm

LUX, Waterlow Park Centre, London

LUX and Catalyst Arts present Looking Aside, a screening programme curated by Catalyst Arts and Seamus Harahan on the occasion of his BL CK B X exhibition: shiney wet stones.

The programme of works have been chosen for their inventive image-making and action-making, creating transformative pathways through a marked sense of attention and generosity towards their material – a description not unlike Seamus’ work itself. The work has been selected from a varied pool of emerging practitioners connected to Catalyst, Seamus and Belfast. With work by Jamie Buckley, Aideen Doran, Kathryn Elkin, Laura McMorrow and Kate Murphy.

Programme

Laura McMorrow, The Lost Acre, 2018 (4m)
Kate Murphy, Animal, 2016 (1m)
Kate Murphy, Little Film, 2016 (1m)
Aideen Doran, The Mechanical Child, 2017 (6m)
Kathryn Elkin, Why La Bamba, 2015 (17m)
Kate Murphy, Goose Leg Limping, 2016 (5m)
Jamie Buckley, DORF, 2015 (7m)

Jamie Buckley is an artist who is originally from Kerry, Ireland but is now based in Munich, Germany. He completed an MFA at the University of Ulster, Belfast in 2012 and a BA at the Limerick School of Art and Design. Screenings and exhibitions include: AMINI, Belfast (2017, 2015); Rencontres Internationales, Paris/Berlin (2014, 2012); This Must Be The Place, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (2013); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Institute of Contemporary Art, London and Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2012).

Aideen Doran (b. 1984, Lurgan, Northern Ireland) lives and works in Glasgow, Scotland. She has been shortlisted for the Margaret Tait award in 2018 and 2016, and her work has been supported by Glasgow Life, Creative Scotland, The British Council, Northern Film and Media and The Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Recent exhibitions and screenings include: Glasgow Film Festival (2018), Catalyst Commissions, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, (2017); On the Edge, Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham, (2017); AMINI screening programme, The MAC, Belfast, UK (2016); Coppice, Verge Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2016); SetBackground, Embassy, Edinburgh, UK (2016); After Hours, Platform Arts, Belfast, UK (2015).

Kathryn Elkin (born in Belfast, 1983) is a graduate of Glasgow School of Art (2005) and Goldsmiths College (2012) and former LUX Associate Artist (2013). She is currently based in Berwick Upon Tweed. She has shown work throughout the UK, including ICA, Tate Modern, Collective Gallery, Transmission, S1 and CCA Derry. She has screened works at London Film Festival, Union Docs, New York and Courtisane Festival, Ghent. She is the recipient of the 2017 Warwick Stafford Fellowship at Northumbria University and teaches part-time at Liverpool John Moore’s University.

Laura McMorrow is a visual artist from Leitrim, Ireland. She holds a Masters in Fine Art from the University of Ulster, Belfast (2012) and a BA in painting from Limerick School of Art and Design (2008). She was awarded the Emerging Irish Artist Residency award (2017) and has work in the National Drawing Collection of Ireland. Recent exhibitions include The Lost Acre, Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2018) and Barnacle, Burren College of Art (2018). Her practice incorporates video installation, sculpture, collage, and painting.

Kate Murphy lives in Norwich and uses a studio. She was born in 1989, Belfast, Northern Ireland and did a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at the University of Ulster in 2007. She did a degree in Fine Art at Norwich University College of the Arts and spent four months in Karlsruhe for Erasmus, graduating in 2011. Exhibitions include; Blumen, Unthank Art Space (2017); Soft Ramp, Gildengate House (2016); VIDEO, PAINTINGS with Russell Osborne, 13a (2014); Eastern Pavilions Exhibition, Bethnel Green Library (2011); OUTPOST Open : Film, national touring programme (2011).–

LUX is an international arts agency that supports and promotes artists’ moving image practices and the ideas that surround them. The only organisation of its kind in the UK, LUX represents the country’s only significant collection of artists’ film and video, and is the largest distributor of such work in Europe. LUX works with a large number of major institutions including museums, galleries, festivals and educational establishments, as well as directly with the public and artists. The organisation’s main activities are distribution, exhibition, publishing, education, research, and professional development support for artists and arts professionals.

Image credits: Laura McMorrow, The Lost Acre, 2018; Aideen Doran, The Mechanical Child, 2017; Kathryn Elkin, Why La Bamba, 2015; Kate Murphy, Goose Leg Limping, 2016; Jamie Buckley, DORF, 2015.

EXEGESIS | MFA Interim Show

Posted on 17/01/201815/02/2018 by Catalyst Arts

EXEGESIS

11th – 17th January | Opening: 11th January 6-9pm

EXEGESIS is a group exhibition of the current final year students within the Ulster University’s prestigious and long standing MFA Fine Art course.

MFA Belfast present the hard core, soft centred, minimalist, maximalist, critical, complimentary, painterly, pixelated, gendered, genderless, placed, displaced, decadent, sparse, remembered, forgotten, historic and imaginary through a constellation of concepts, conceived as image, object and video. This raucous, rip roaring appraisal of the possibilities within contemporary art examines the development of highly individual artistic practices within collaborative studio and gallery environments.