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.

    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

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.

Exhibiting Artists: Rebecca Allen | Lynice Cathcart |Dara Nolobey Condun | Amy Devlin | Marianne Dupain | June Hill | Anna Horvathova | Landi Love | Paddy McKeown | Gemma Montgomery | Aimée Nelson | Joanna Palmer | Elizabeth Phillips | Natalia Stojevski | Ausrine Su | Adèle Vallet

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.

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.

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.

Exhibiting Artists: Amy Higgins | Aaron Yendall | Cathy Cannon | Dan Ferguson | Gearoid McGinley | Joey O’Gorman | Mary Gilfillan-Griffin | Naomi Litvack | Rachel Alexander | Vasiliki Stasinaki

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.

–

Download the full public programme here.

–

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

–

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

Cara Roberts | Joy Stacey | Drydan Wilson

–

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.

_

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

FIX17 Performance Biennial

Thursday 5th – Sunday 8th October 2017

www.fix17.org

–

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.

–

Festival Programme:

Thursday 5th October | 6-9pm

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

–

Friday 6th October | 6-9pm

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

Jasmin Märker | Cara Roberts | Branwen Kavanagh | Dryden Wilson

–

Saturday 7th October | 6-9pm

Ciara Lenihan | Siân Hutchings | Robert Curgenven

–

Sunday 8th October | 2-9pm

Francesca Steele | Sandra Johnston | Eleni Kolliopoulou

Cleveland Watkiss – 8pm Sonic Arts Research Centre

–

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.

—————–

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).

_

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

_

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.

—————-

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.

—————-

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.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Trickster

Chloe Brenan | Alexandra Brunt 

1st – 17th December

Catalyst Arts is delighted to announce details of it’s recent members open call  ‘Trickster’ featuring Dublin based artists Chloe Brenan and Alexandra Brunt. Opening 6PM, Thursday 1st December

The trickster is a mythological entity or archetype, indicative of absurd or destabilising re-evaluations of perception and its limitations. The work of both artists explore ideas of rearranging perceptual modes to break down and ultimately reassemble conceptions of self and objective reality respectively.

Dublin based artist Alexandra Brunt presents a series of three recent Sound works. These artworks explore Brunt’s interest in perception, phenomenology and consider the fabrication of participatory experience through sound. Through the Juxtaposition of object, body and the female voice the artworks depict a playful yet sinister dialogue of the immaterial subject matter embodied within the work. Her artworks challenge states of reality and physiological phenomena, with particular focus on cultural modes of fragmentation, agency and structures of power.

The work of Chloe Brenan tends to hinge on minimalist interactions with objects and surfaces, often stepping between the languages of text, moving image, print, installation and analogue photographic media.The Hole In The Donut is a moving image piece that explores the representation and destabilization of linear conceptions of time. Astrological phenomena serve as points of reference; celestial orbits and cycles, lunar/solar eclipses, and the periodic alignment of planets in the sky. The piece addresses the absurd, futile and melancholic human need to make sense, order and pattern out of a vast, often chaotic, universe.

These phenomena are considered by way of an investigation into the limits of analogue photographic media, utilizing structural filmmaking techniques such as fixed framing, accelerated shutter speed, close up shots, slow motion, and the polyrhythmic use of three conflicting rhythms. Circular props of various sizes, which act as frames for negative space, are dropped in front of a 16mm camera camera lens in a particular order so that it fleetingly captures what they eye cannot see. The descending objects are then edited into a triptych of three separate rhythmic pieces, played out alongside one another. The cascading objects and sounds, though initially in unison, immediately begin to fall out of sync, eventually realigning, only to dissolve into disharmony once again. This elliptical process repeats infinitely. The loops act as interruptions to linear forward movement, and instead, like planets within a solar system, the objects are bound together in a diverging and intersecting, contrapunctal system. The space created by these loops is that of a perpetual present, emphasized by the torus shaped objects that in themselves have no beginning or end point. Conversely, the series Resonance Overlaps takes its title from a particular phenomenon in celestial mechanics that sees the diffusion or breakdown of planetary orbits; where the synchronous spin paths of two orbiting satellites intersect, exerting a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other. This produces an orbital eccentricity, or ‘chaotic sea’ in which spin orbits are broken down and from which new paths are created. This dissolution of order into disharmony, and vice versa, is explored through the use of roller marks, typically utilized in the preparation stage of printmaking. Various inked lines intersect at irregular intervals, producing a series of marks that exist somewhere in between a grid or net structure coming into focus or dissolving into a haze.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Mediating Environments

Matthew Bourree | Paula Deji | John Wild

Open Thursday 3rd November – Wednesday 23 November

John Wild performance 7.30pm on the opening night

The world beyond the confines of our body is intimately connected to our actions – as much cultural artefact as something wild and other, ‘out there’ – nature and techne vitally expressed through our lives and creations. We continually feed into and are moulded by an interminable flux of co-creative relationships and cycles, reflexive actors who fall in and out of sync with innumerable collectives and circumstances. How we perceive these complex ecologies and the meanings we derive from what we do within them, frames our worldview, subtly affecting how we are subsumed by social fields and evolutionary flows. In this time of accelerating change and spiritual transformation can we come to terms with our uncertain predicament? How to navigate the indescribable, manifold environments in which we are embedded?

Catalyst Arts presents:

INDIGENOUS

22^nd October – In conjunction with Belfast Open Studios

Opening: 21^st October 6-9pm

Catalyst Arts is pleased to present a group show of recent work from locally-based artists in conjunction with Belfast Open Studios, 2016.

INDIGENOUS showcases a selection of work from artists currently based in Belfast and offers a glimpse into diverse approaches and methodologies towards the process of art making within the city.

Catalyst Arts presents:

‘In the Mouth of the Wolf’

Clodagh Emoe, Anahita Razmi, School of Missing Studies, Subject to Authority Reading group, COLLECTED

 Thur 18th Aug 6 – 9pm / Event Thur 1st Sept 6-7pm / Closing Event Sat 10th Sept

‘I could be dead. He slit my tongue into ribbons. My head is hanging off the table, blood falling on the floor. I could be dead because I feel nothing but this happened before. Minutes without pain until it surged back through me like a river. Eyes full of water. A blurred insect slips out from behind a table leg and begins to feed on the pooling blood. Concentrate.’ -Francis McKee ‘What in the world can I do’

This project is driven by the act of witness and the encounter in contested spaces whether municipal or ideological. It looks at how artists approach research and the dissemination of thought and how the knowledge structures they access, personally, politically and philosophically are forming a channel for public practice. A series of multi-format texts form the basis of this project, examining the instrumentalisation of modes of broadcast and publishing, how narratives are constructed within contemporary communication and education systems and how these narratives may be authored by artists.

The ongoing destabilisation of institutional power structures globally has given rise to a more acute attempt to enforce social hierarchy and meritocracy socially, politically and economically. Yet traditional methods of exerting social dominance have become ineffective at maintaining stability in the current age of personal broadcast and visual agency. Increasingly, previously under-represented groups are affecting these narratives and gaining agency on their own representation in media through the proliferation of digital, visual footage, frequently charged with a dominant narrative of personal perception rather than that of an objective document of observation.

‘In the mouth of the wolf’ proposes a slight, altered reality where journalism and reporting is a defunct and unoccupied field. Artists have been drawn into the vacuum by gravitational force and are controlling the distribution of capabilities and the exercise of influence disseminating thought and action through new channels as the voice of authority. The gallery becomes a public square where thinking may be felt, a station for subjectivity, disembodied voices and notions of the unseen, a platform for hidden acts to be received by a new audience and a space for thought.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Very Good Waves Now

Student and Recent Graduate Show 2016

Marian Balfe | Daniel Coleman | Cillian Finnerty | Peter Glasgow | Aine McBride | Andrew McSweeney | Cliodhna Timoney

15h July – 5th August

Very Good Waves Now will build 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.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Outside Line

Tanad Williams

12th May | Opening

‘Outside Line’ a new permanent commission by Tanad Williams.

Beginning through a shared residency in 2015 in a flexible period of research and investigation, Williams engaged with the early issues, strains and identity of the gallery’s archival space. Proofing for possibilities of fitted cooperation an expanded utility for public archival actions was drafted. Unfolding a progressively combined approach to building regulations and sculpture while upholding the poise and warm precision of the unqualified handyman, a skilfully manufactured architectural intervention is presented.

Indicative of ambitious contemporary restoration proposals ‘Outside Line’ sits assuredly creating a source designed around reading. A structural elixir it reflects how it is we approach cached information and the objects we associate with it.

Williams works with philosophically engaged objects, dialogues and texts. Rooted in academic research and linguistic investigation, the final object is constructed so as to represent both its material reality and its theoretical conception.

This work has being kindly made possible through the support of The Elephant Trust.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Sephour 06

21st – 26th April

A exhibition of work by 2nd Year Sculpture and Lens students at the University of Ulster.

Sephour is an anagram of Orpheus

Sephour is Orpheus transformed

Sephour is a homonym of Zephyr

Since migrating from the old Orpheus Building to they’re new purpose built art department, the 2nd year Fine Art (Sculpture/Lens) students have been negotiating and developing their relationship with the new space. This Exhibition welcomed an audience to view their progress.

This was the first group exhibition from the new Sculpture/Lens studios on the 6th floor.

Catalyst Arts presents:

THE ARTIST OBSERVATORY

 LUCY MCKENNA

FEBRUARY – APRIL 2016

‘The Artist Observatory’ is the second edition of a new alternative residency programme piloted by Catalyst Arts. This series began last autumn with Alice Clark as ‘Artist-at-Sea’ on board marine and oceanographic research vessel the RV Corystes and continues with artist Lucy McKenna taking up research residence at Armagh Observatory and Planetarium this spring. At a time when artists are experiencing a decline in accessible resources and facilities in the pursuit of their work and research, Catalyst Arts is committed to the mediation of new approaches to facilitating unique research opportunities for artists tailored to their specific practice and field of research.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Intermission

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

Intermission presents an interim exhibition at Catalyst Arts before their final show in May 2016. It offers a fascinating exploration of these emerging contemporary artists’ work in progress, creating an open dialogue across diverse disciplines including installation, video, photography, sculpture and painting.

Catalyst Arts is pleased to present the highly anticipated International Live Art Biennial FIX15.

FIX15 Artists: Cian Donnelly, Continuous Battle of Order, School Tour, Dave Sherry, Emer Lynch, Harun Morrison, Ting Tong Chang, Rhubaba Choir, Ali Matthews, GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, Kevin Burns, Patrick Coyle, with additional events happening across Belfast at Platform Arts, Array Studios, Pollen, The Bathhouse and QSS.

Opening Night: Thursday 3rd December 7-10.30pm

Festival Continues: 03.12.15 – 10.12.15

fix15biennial.wordpress.com

FIX is an internationally renowned and distinctly Belfast biennial, established by Catalyst Arts in 1994. For over twenty-two 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 over the last twenty-two years has been to create opportunities locally for emerging and established practitioners, providing work for artists, photographers, videographers, writers, curators and arts administrators.

The eleventh instalment of FIX will take place over eight days with events, performances, art, music, talks, screenings and a whole plethora of events in between. Thursday 3rd December (the opening night) will encompass various events and activities taking place around the cultural block that surrounds Catalyst. This celebratory evening emphasises the importance of collaboration in the arts community in Belfast, particularly the need to work together to achieve something great for everyone.

Catalyst Arts presents:

LONG DIVISION

Susan Boyle | Derek Sutherland

Opening night: 5th November 6-9pm

Exhibition Continues: 6th – 28th November 2015

Boyle and Sutherland will open the exhibition with an artist talk at 6pm on 5^th November

Catalyst Arts is very pleased to welcome Scottish artists Susan Boyle and Derek Sutherland to Belfast as part of the exhibition, Long Division. After discussion with Mirja Koponen/ Director of Interview Room 11, Sutherland and Boyle were selected to show at Catalyst Arts for their combined use of the theme disorder and division. This exchange opportunity will extend to benefit artists from Belfast showing in Edinburgh with Interview Room 11 in the new year. Interview Room 11 is a newly emerged space that has opened in Edinburgh within the last two years. In this short time they have already begun to carve out a fantastic reputation for showing cutting edge emerging artists in imaginative and experimental ways.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Composition of Here

Jacqueline Holt | Laura Reeves | James Michael George

Opening preview: 1st October 6-9pm
Exhibition continues: 2nd – 24th October

1st October 6pm : Reading by Laura Reeves

17th October 2pm : Artists’ Illustrated Lecture by Jacqueline Holt

Catalyst Arts has commissioned Jacqueline Holt, James Michael George and Laura Reeves to develop new work and revisit past work for Composition of Here.

MEMORY / SITE
SUBJECTIVE / OBJECTIVE

• unpacking
• deconstruction of an experience
• documentation of an experience – sounding / videoing / drawing / talking

Personal Memories – INTIMACY of sites and personal history
Personal Narratives

Intentionally composing memories – creating self-made experience

Site and how
.PROCESS BASED/MAKING….over a period of time, weeks, months, years eg. (James – started the project in August, Laura – 5 years ago, Jackie – over 10 years ago)

A form of / social / research that explores the researchers’ PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
and connects this / autobiographical / story to wider cultural, political and social meanings and understandings.

three conversations

Catalyst Arts presents:

SALOON

Catalyst Arts are pleased to announce an open-call for Saloon, a four(1) day long members shee-bang(2).

Like the inflated ego of a retired prison sponge we wish to overturn the idea of the old-fashion bourgeois saloon(3), made to amuse fur-trimmed women and respectably bearded men. We want(4) to see your most visionary, indecent, controversial, amazing and original(5) artwork, across our whole community of members(6). We want to fill(7) up the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the freshly unblocked toilet(8), the crevasses and cracks of this warehouses warped banshee spirit. Using the spleen and spew of your un-watered and malnourished careers, we will transform Catalyst Arts gallery into a huge wonderhammer.

Opening: 3rd September 6pm to 9pm
in conjunction with Belfast’s Late Night Art

Exhibition run: 3rd – 5th of September.

To be part of Saloon(9) all applicants must be a member(10) of Catalyst Arts.

(1) It’s really just three.
(2) Denotes anything that is ridiculously hot, eg. “Ruaidhri was so shee-banging in that install shot”.
(3) Hairlicious on Castle Street being an excellent example.
(4) Want maybe a tad extreme, forced by funders maybe more appropriate.
(5) You haven’t made anything original in years, why do you still lie to yourself?
(6) Two at our last time of counting, which is why we are doing this call-out.
(7) If the gallery is filled before you arrive, your work will be displayed around the city on this.
(8) To block it again so we can call out the hot plumber.
(9) For an Italian translation please see below.
(10) We are actually quite fond of all our members. They’re all beautiful, like a horse.

Artist – At – Sea

Alice Clark

August – September

8th October : Artist Talk, 6pm Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts, in partnership with the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute, are delighted to present Artist – At – Sea; an artist residency on board an oceanographic research vessel operating from the port of Belfast.

To highlight the significant research being carried out by AFBI, Belfast based artist Alice Clark will be onboard as artist-in-residence throughout August and September. Clark’s practice reflects her own ecological ethos and investigates the way we live and its impact on the natural environment. Making objects of nature subjects of culture is at the core of her practice and she wishes to challenge where the current condition of nature resides as a subject for artistic intervention and discourse. After a medical examination and sea survival course, Clark will set sail and take residence on two research cruises; observing the scientists, engaging with the crew and developing work within a site and context specifically tailored to her practice.

Catalyst Arts < = > O U T P O S T  |  Shared Residency

Paul Gwilliam  | Mike Harvey

9th July : Paul Gwilliam Artist Talk | Catalyst Arts 6 – 7 pm

30th July : Opening | Mike Harvey, O U T P O S T : 1/2 cut chromes

6th August : Paul Gwilliam Performance : Out for a Duck 6 – 7pm

Catalyst Arts is pleased to announce Paul Gwilliam and Mike Harvey as the selected artists to participate in this month’s upcoming shared residency between Catalyst Arts and O U T P O S T Gallery, Norwich.

This exchange is a unique four week programme for both organisations and has being developed over the course of a year to reflect both galleries distinct ideologies and current attitudes. The selected artists will be introduced to each cities energetic arts community through a series of artist talks, evening suppers and curator critiques. The artists will also meet with a number of peers for discourse on contemporary studio practice to further cultivate a durable and worthwhile dialogue between the two cities.

Catalyst Arts presents:

Under The Radar

Charlotte Bosanquet | Jane Butler | Paul McAree | Tonya McMullan | Andy Parker

 Jim Ricks | Amanda Rice

Exhibition runs: 11th – 27th June

Walk through with the curator: Michele Horrigan: 11th June 6pm

We are delighted to announce that this year’s edition of Catalyst Arts’ members show will be produced in collaboration with artist and curator Michele Horrigan of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Limerick. This collaboration has led to a selection of works which have been developed in response to particular aspects of the city and its situations.

Generate

Drydan Wilson: 8th – 15th May

eegb: 21st – 23rd May

Bring Your Own Beamer: 28th May 6-9pm

Exhibition runs: 7th – 28th May

Catalyst Arts is pleased to present Generate, an exciting temporary format to provide a platform for artists based currently in Belfast. Over the course of May several events will take place in order to shine light on the exciting developments in different areas of art in Belfast this spring.

Catalyst Arts presents:

99 Music Videos

James McCann

The Hatfield House | Ormeau Road | January 30th 5pm

Initiating the GARRINCHA programme for 2015, Catalyst Arts in collaboration with The Hatfield House presents Glasgow based artist James McCann’s ‘99 Music Videos’ on Friday 30th January 5pm.

James Mc Cann is a Cork/Glasgow based artist and Royal College of Art graduate, he is currently studying for a PhD at Glasgow School of Art. His work is usually Sculpture, Video, or Performance based. His most recent work 99 Music Videos, is an ambitious project containing 99 separate films.

“I am interested in the idea of the compulsive artist/maker as allegorical construct, and that as an artist I am endlessly re-incarnating and re-appropriating what is essentially one unknown object. 

Catalyst Arts presents:

NOISE FEST

Ericka Beckman | Vivienne Dick | Seamus Harahan (with Cashier No.9 and BEW) | Kim Gordon | Dan Graham | ‘No New York’ (1978)

Opening: 11th December

Exhibition Continues: 12th Dec – 16th January

‘No New York: Post-Punk Reflections’

An illustrated presentation by Phillip McCrilly in the gallery on January 15th from 6pm.

Vivienne Dick will be giving a short presentation on her work as part of ‘Noise Fest’ on January 7th at 1pm.

Considering the overlapping tensions inherent within music culture and contemporary art practice, ‘NOISE FEST’ brings together the work of Ericka Beckman, Vivienne Dick, and Seamus Harahan. Collectively harnessing a vocabulary and sensibility that oscillates and slips between clear categories of distinction, the works incorporate the disparate tropes of experimental filmmaking with the aesthetic rhetoric of pseudo music documentary and video.

Catalyst Arts presents:

VAGABOND

Charlotte Bosanquet | Mitch Conlon | Victoria J Dean | Rob Ireson | Katharine May | Maria Macias | Samantha McGahon,

Ciarán Ó Dochartaigh | Rima Otilia Qvale | Sarah Mac Keever

Sean Holywood Arts Centre, Newry

Opening night Thursday 9th January 7.30pm

Exhibition runs 10-26th January

Flowerfield Arts Centre, Coleraine

1st February – 22nd February

Alley Theatre, Strabane

3rd March – 28th March

Catalyst Arts Gallery, Belfast

3rd April – 24th April

Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick

1st May- 24th May

 VAGABOND is a group exhibition which will tour to selected regional art centres in Northern Ireland: (Sean Holywood Arts Centre, Newry; Flowerfield Arts Centre, Coleraine; The Alley Theatre, Strabane; Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick) and Catalyst Arts, Belfast.

A number of contemporary works have been selected that thematically or structurally respond to the concept ‘VAGABOND’. Artists have been selected through an open call process form Catalyst Arts members.