–Speechless Action will feature a collection of newly developed work by artists Sarah Boulton, Maïto Jobbé duval and Kate Murphy.  The exhibition is interested not just in the individual works, which span video, drawing, printed matter and writing, but in their layout, contextual sense and relationship to the viewer.  This attitude is shared by much of the work, where the context of an action or narrative or image holds as much attention as the actions, words and images do themselves. The works explore a development of meaning through juxtaposition, sequence and series, and an interest in how information, in the widest sense, relates.  They also share a relationship to the readymade: situations or narratives, actions, images and moving images that exist in the world already but are seen and transformed through a shift in their presentation or backdrop, whether through storytelling, poetry or editing.

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Sarah Boulton (b. 1989) is based in Mid Wales. She graduated from Slade School of Art in 2015 and has recently presented her work with Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, Camden Arts Centre, London, Caraboo Projects, Bristol, Rhubaba Gallery, Edinburgh, Cell Project Space, London, Patara Gallery, Tbilisi, Best British Poetry Anthology, Danarti Magazine and Tender Journal. Her first collection of poetic texts will be published near the end of 2019 by Care of Time. 

Maïto Jobbé duval (b. 1985) is an artist and theatre designer based in London. For this exhibition she presents extracts of a larger ongoing narrative based work drawing on the framework of the graphic novel. Past shows and performances include: It’s not the digging it’s the dirt, Dirt Space, London 2016, Transforming, Dyson Gallery, London 2015, Artists’ Realities, Claustro Sor Juana, Mexico DF 2015, Familiar Distances, The Little Gallery, Calgary Canada 2014. Maïto studied at Camberwell College of Arts and The Royal College of Art, both in London.

Kate Murphy was born in Belfast, 1989 and is based in Norwich. She studied Foundation Diploma in Art and Design at Ulster University 2007-2008 and BA Fine Art (Sculpture) at Norwich University College of the Arts 2008-2011, and did an Erasmus exchange at Akademie der Bildenden Kuenste Karlsruhe, Germany. Exhibitions of the work include VIDEO, PAINTINGS (with Russell Osborne) 13a, Norwich 2015, OUTPOST Members Show selected by Lynda Morris and Chris Rawcliffe, Norwich 2016, Soft Ramp, Gildengate House, Norwich 2016, Blumen, Unthank Artspace, Norwich 2017 and Index, Piper Keys, London 2019.

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

Catalyst Arts welcomes expressions of interest applications for new Co-Directors

Catalyst Arts has been one of the most important and innovative artist-led spaces for contemporary art in Belfast since it began in 1993. The driving force behind the organisation has always been the determined and enthusiastic committee of directors who have worked over the years to ensure the gallery remains at the forefront of the visual art scene in Northern Ireland – improving, producing and promoting art and culture and the advancement of education and training in the arts.

Catalyst Arts directorship programme has a local and international reputation of providing a unique training ground for artistic, curatorial and cultural production. Applicants who are seeking to advance their experience within an artist-led model of gallery programming and operations are encouraged, with successful candidates gaining valuable skills in installation, production, funding applications, commissioning, outreach, education, archiving and administration work. This is an exciting opportunity to join Catalyst Arts at the beginning of a new chapter as one of Northern Ireland’s leading contemporary art organisations.  

Although previous experience in all areas is not essential, interested candidates are encouraged to review and consider the director criteria when making their applications.

The role of co-director is a voluntary position carried out over two years, on a rolling basis.

For more information on the role at Catalyst follow link Catalyst Arts Job Description  application forms can be found at Catalyst Arts Director Application Form

Applications should be submitted by email to:

catalystarts@gmail.com

Deadline for applications: 23:59 Saturday July 13th 2019

If successful, candidates will be notified by Wednesday July 17th and interviews held on  Wednesday 24th July

Successful candidates would begin their induction in the Autumn 2019.

Eye Test is a group exhibition by the second-year sculpture lens students from Ulster University. The show presents an eclectic field of interests around historical and contemporary narratives of religion, memory, cultural practices, simulacra, the body and other bodies, public and private spaces. Contemplations of fragility, lost and false promises are explored through a diverse mix of practices involving installation, photography, video, sculpture and performance.

Exhibition Opening Thursday May 30th 7pm  and runs until June 6th 

Exhibiting Artists: Caitrín Mac Giolla Brídhe, Klara Burić ,Maria del Pilar Morales Caamano, Janice Cherry, Ruta Franskiaviciute, Caitíln Gallagher, Euan Gébler, Meg Jeanie, Katie McBride, Kate O’Neill, Merel van Erpers Roijaards, Claudia Rose, Nathan Turner, Matthew Wilson

In Orbit

Catalyst Arts Members Show

18th April – 9th May 2019

Opening: Tuesday 18th April 6–9pm

In a constant state of flux, let us see practice as process. In orbit we accentuate the transient, the never ending and the non-conclusive . Pushing towards a point of collapse we can capture the avenues of the inbetween. Now in its 26th year, Catalyst Arts is seeking works for our annual members’ exhibition to welcome this new era of making and creating.  

Catalyst members invited to show a piece of work in any medium.

To take part applicants must already be a member of Catalyst Arts through our original membership scheme or become a new Standard or Premium member through our Patreon page. 

Being a member is a great way to support Catalyst and have access to exclusive members opportunities throughout the year.

You can become a member through our Patreon page at www.patreon.com/catalystarts

Terms and Conditions:

Due to the large amount of submissions annually received applicants must consider the following specifications:

– Maximum dimensions for canvas and photographic prints are 2.50×2.50 meters.

– Sculptures and installations must be no larger than 3 meters cubed.

– If you wish to submit a video work all technical equipment must be provided.

– The submitted work must be delivered or posted to the gallery between 9am – 5pm on the 11th and 12th of April.  Please provide your name, title, medium and date included with your work. Work delivered after these dates will not be accepted for exhibition.

– Dates for collection of work are the 10th and 11th of May between 11am – 5pm. All work must be collected on these days.

We kindly ask that each artist keep their submission to one piece of work. Due to the high level of submissions each year we cannot facilitate a series or body of work.

Please note that all work submitted will be curated and installed by Catalyst Directors. They reserve the right to show the work as they believe fits best within the space and in correspondence to the exhibition as a whole. Each artwork will be handled and installed with the utmost respect and consideration for all participating artists and the space.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at catalystarts@gmail.com

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We would like to warmly invite all Catalyst Arts Members to our Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 10th April 2019 at 6pm at the gallery; 5 College Court, BT1 6BS.

Please find below an Agenda detailing the general nature of the business to be transacted.

We want to have the broadest range of opinions possible and so would greatly appreciate your attendance.

We would like to remind members that they are entitled to appoint another person as their proxy to exercise all or any of their rights to attend and to speak and vote at a meeting of the company under section 324 of the Companies Act (2006). If this is the case please notify us by email ahead of the AGM.

Please note – this is for Catalyst Arts Members only. 

To confirm your attendance, or for any questions, please contact us at catalystarts@gmail.com.

We look forward to seeing you there.

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Catalyst Arts Annual General Meeting 10/04/19

Agenda

Opening remarks/welcome

Apologies

Minutes of previous AGM

Matters arising from the minutes

Presentation of annual report (Chair)

Election of management committee/office bearers

Presentation of accounts (Treasurer)

Summary of previous programming

Summary of future programming

PR and Membership

Archive Report

Update on Premises

Any Other Business

Closing remarks

Light refreshments will be provided.

Opening – 27th March 2019, 6 until 9pm
Exhibition continues until 4th April 2019
Performance – 28th March to 3rd April 2019, 2pm daily

Catalyst Arts is proud to present Connecting Body: 7 Days of Practising Transformation and
Preservation in a White Cube, a solo exhibition of new work by Belfast-based Danish artist Lykke
Sønderkær from 28th March to 4th April 2019.

Connecting Body: 7 Days of Practising Transformation and Preservation in a White Cube takes the
form of a time-based exhibition crossing modes of representation between site-specific intervention,
live performance and archival art. Each day for a duration of seven consecutive days, Sønderkær
creates a performance as a ritual bridging the connections between human body and organic
materiality with spatial character of the gallery. Exploring the symbolic idea of Four Elements,
Sønderkær seeks to discover our sensual awareness of the physical world and beyond.

Daily performances are captured, recorded and displayed in the immediate environment alongside the
following ephemeral art to be unfolded in space. As the space accumulates performances and
nourishes a body of archive leading up to the Eighth and final day, the exhibition presents itself as a
state of oneness, preserving all directions of time and encompassing all interconnected frozen
moments and material resonance.

Lykke Sønderkær was born in 1993 in Copenhagen. Always having pursued art, she traveled to
Scotland in 2014 to study Art and Contemporary Practice and Philosophy at Dundee University. She
recently graduated from Ulster University in Fine Art where she was shortlisted for RDS Visual
Awards 2018 for her performance work. Recent shows include solo exhibition at Pollen Studios and
Gallery; group show at MART Gallery, Vaults Art Studio, RDS Dublin and Engine Room Gallery
Belfast.

Catalyst Arts would like to welcome new Co-Director Leah Corbett to the board

Leah Corbett is an artist from Tipperary, currently based in Belfast. In 2016 she graduated with a degree in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design and was subsequently awarded the CIT Arts Fest Prize and the Ciaran Langford Memorial Bursary. Since then she has continued to exhibit her work as well as participating in socially engaged projects including Public! (2017) and Common Ground (2018/19.) Most recently she was awarded the Tipperary Arts Office Residency Award 2018 and is working on a community based project to be presented in 2019. She has previously worked with arts organisations such as CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery and Tactic Cork before taking on her current role as co-director of Catalyst Arts.

28th March-4th April 2019 (Including Sundays and Mondays)

Opening – 27th March 2019, 6 until 9pm

This is an exhibition of daily performances which evolve throughout the course of the show.
New performances by the artist will occur every day at 2pm.

‘Connecting Body: 7 Days of Practising Transformation and Preservation in a White Cube’ takes the form of a time-based exhibition crossing modes of representation between site-specific intervention, live performance and archival art. Each day for a duration of seven consecutive days, Sønderkær
creates a performance as a ritual bridging the connections between human body and organic materiality with spatial character of the gallery. Exploring the symbolic idea of Four Elements, Sønderkær seeks to discover our sensual awareness of the physical world and beyond.

Daily performances are captured, recorded and displayed in the immediate environment alongside the following ephemeral art to be unfolded in space. As the space accumulates performances and nourishes a body of archive leading up to the Eighth and final day, the exhibition presents itself as a state of oneness, preserving all directions of time and encompassing all interconnected frozen moments and material resonance.

Lykke Sønderkær was born in 1993 in Copenhagen. Always having pursued art, she traveled to Scotland in 2014 to study Art and Contemporary Practice and Philosophy at Dundee University. She recently graduated from Ulster University in Fine Art where she was shortlisted for RDS Visual Awards 2018 for her performance work. Recent shows include solo exhibition at Pollen Studios and Gallery; group show at MART Gallery, Vaults Art Studio, RDS Dublin and Engine Room Gallery Belfast.

This exhibition is supported by Arts Council Northern Ireland and the Fenton Arts Trust. We would like to thank CCA Derry~Londonderry for their kind support.

Catalyst Arts welcomes expressions of interest applications for new Co-Directors

Catalyst Arts has been one of the most important and innovative artist-led spaces for contemporary art in Belfast since it began in 1993. The driving force behind the organisation has always been the determined and enthusiastic committee of directors who have worked over the years to ensure the gallery remains at the forefront of the visual art scene in Northern Ireland – improving, producing and promoting art and culture and the advancement of education and training in the arts.

Catalyst Arts directorship programme has a local and international reputation of providing a unique training ground for artistic, curatorial and cultural production. Applicants who are seeking to advance their experience within an artist-led model of gallery programming and operations are encouraged, with successful candidates gaining valuable skills in installation, production, funding applications, commissioning, outreach, education, archiving and administration work. Although previous experience in all areas is not essential, interested candidates are encouraged to review and consider the director criteria when making their applications.

The role of co-director is a voluntary position carried out over a two years, on a rolling basis.

To apply for this position please download the Co-Director Application Form and for further details on the role you can review the Co-Director Job Description.

Applications should be submitted by email to:

catalystarts@gmail.com

Deadline for applications: 23:59 Friday February 22nd 2019

If successful, candidates will be notified by the Wednesday 27th February to attend an interview on the 6th March.

Successful candidates would begin their induction April/May 2019.

The 7 Day Itch is a group exhibition of the current final year students within the Ulster University’s prestigious and long standing Masters Fine Art course.

Exhibition Opening 6pm Thursday the 10th and runs through to the 17th of January

Exhibiting Artists: Johanna Nulty, Ronan Smyth, Leila Ghandi, Aisling McGibbon, Caoimhe Diamond, Erin Healey, Petra Dominova, Nathan Walker, Tara McGinn, Stephen Conlon, Jennifer Mehigan, Saskia Lassmann

25 Years of Catalyst Arts

Artist-led Symposium

On the occasion of its 25th Anniversary, Catalyst Arts has invited current and past directors from leading independent spaces to share their experiences of artist-led activity.  The two Symposium sessions give the arts community in Belfast a chance to hear from individuals and projects from outside of Northern Ireland, aiming to question and inspire a varied and sensitive approach to developing artists and showing work.  Organisations represented include 126 Gallery (Galway), EMBASSY (Edinburgh), Basic Space (Dublin), Transmission (Glasgow) and Turf Projects (Croydon). The sessions will take place on 24th November at The MAC, and 1st December at The Black Box. These will feature presentations by invited speakers followed by discussions chaired by previous Catalyst Directors Eoin Dara and Edel O’Reilly.

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Saturday 24th November 3 – 5 PM | The MAC, Belfast

Rita McMahon (126 Gallery) | Rachael Simpson & Abigail Webster (EMBASSY)

Chaired by Eoin Dara
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Saturday 1st December 3 – 5 PM | The Black Box, Belfast

Daniel Bermingham (Basic Space) | Holly Graham (Turf Projects)

Katherine Ka Yi Liu & Thulani Rachia (Transmission)

Chaired by Edel O’Reilly

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Kindly supported by The Arts Council of Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council.

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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.

Catalyst Arts would like to welcome new Co-Director Anne Mager to the board. We look forward to working with her over the next two years.

Anne Mager works as a curator, arts manager, university lecturer and author. She organizes and realizes exhibitions, festivals and cultural events and holds a Master degree from the University of Münster, Germany in Communication Science, Art History and Cultural Studies as well as a Master in International Arts Management from the Art Academies in Cologne and Düsseldorf.
As a curator she focuses on site specific multimedia arts installations and the topics of borders and social change. She managed the interdivisional arts festival ‘new talents – biennale cologne’ from 2008 until 2017 and worked for a variety of other projects and institutions such as the exhibition program at Quartier am Hafen Cologne in 2013, Kunst-Station Sankt Peter, Fuhrwerkswerkswaage Kunstraum, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen and Kunsthaus NRW. In 2016 she moved to Ireland and initiated the ongoing interdisciplinary project series “the corridor“ in Belfast, Dundalk and Dublin.

Open Call

Student and Recent Graduate Show 2018

Catalyst Arts is welcoming applications for its annual Student and Recent Graduate Show 2018. Applications are open to all current undergraduate and postgraduate students, along with those graduated in 2017 or 2018. Applicant must be a member of Catalyst Arts. Being a member is a great way to support Catalyst and have access to exclusive members opportunities throughout the year. 

To find out more visit http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Applicant should return a completed Application Form (Student & Recent Graduate Exhibition Application Form 2018) along with five examples of work to catalystarts@gmail.com (We are more than happy to receive links to audio/moving image work. Images should not exceed  5MB each)

Deadline for Submissions: 23:59 Sunday 5th August

Selected participants will be notified by Tuesday 7th August.

Exhibition opens 28th August with a closing event for Late Night Art, 6th September.

MEMBERS OPPORTUNITY: 
CATALYST AUDIO TRACKS | DEADLINE JULY 19TH

Catalyst presents a new call out that focuses on the world of sound art. Whether your work is Drone, Noise, Ambient, Electroacoustic, Field Recording, Synthesis Exploration, or All/None-of-the-above. This is an opportunity to have your sounds presented and heard in new contexts and by new audiences.

Each successfully submitted work:
1) Will be programmed in an event (Aug 17th 7pm) that will take place in the Sonic Arts Research Centre’s Sonic Laboratory. The submitter will choose to diffuse or simply play their work on the 48-Channel system that the Sonic Laboratory offers.
2) Will be archived digitally on free streaming services such as Bandcamp and Soundcloud as part of the ‘Catalyst Audio Tracks’ series.
3) Will be stored on Catalyst USBs that will be given out at the programmed event and subsequent exhibitions in the gallery until all units are gone.

Terms and Conditions:
– The work must be no longer than 4 minutes
– The work must be sent in a stereo WAV file
– The submitter consents to a public performance free of charge of their work in the SARC concert and archiving of their audio on non-profit audio streaming services (e.g. Bandcamp, Soundcloud). The composer retains the copyright of his/her work and can request removal of such work.

Being a member is a great way to support Catalyst and have access to exclusive membership opportunities throughout the year. Join by donating to Catalyst on our website:
http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/members…/

Please Submit work to:
catalystarts@gmail.com

Between Us And is open at EMBASSY, Edinburgh until July 1st. Join us today at 2PM for presentations by featured artists Kate Fahey and Marianne Keating.

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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Above: Repetitive Strain, multi-channel video with stereo sound, Thinkpads. Kate Fahey, 2018

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

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

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.

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

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Program Your Retroactive Wish

Catalyst Arts 25th Year Members Show

2nd – 5th May 2018

Opening: Tuesday 1st May 6–9pm

    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.  

To take part applicants must be a members of Catalyst Arts.  Being a member is a great way to support Catalyst and have access to exclusive members opportunities throughout the year.

Click here to donate £20/£10 (unwaged) and become a member.  

To find out more about membership visit http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

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Terms and Conditions:

Due to the large amount of submissions annually received applicants must consider the following specifications:

– Maximum dimensions for canvas and photographic prints are 2.50×2.50 meters.

– Sculptures and installations must be no larger than 3 meters cubed.

– If you wish to submit a video work all technical equipment must be provided.

– The submitted work must be delivered or posted to the gallery between 9am – 5pm on the 27th and 28th of April.  Please provide your name, title, medium and date included with your work.

– Dates for collection of work are the 7th and 8th of May between 11am – 5pm. All work must be collected on these days.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact us at catalystarts@gmail.com

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.

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LUX Salon: Looking Aside 

Saturday 10th March 2018 | 3 – 5pm

LUX, Waterlow Park Centre, London

£5 / £3 (concession) | Book online

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.

For more details visit https://lux.org.uk/event/looking-aside-catalyst-arts

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.

Seamus Harahan grew up in London and East Tyrone and lives and works in Belfast. Harahan is an ex-director of Catalyst Arts, was an artist in residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2015), received a Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists (2009) and represented Northern Ireland in the 51st Venice Biennale (2005). Screenings and exhibitions include: Fact or Fiction, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival 2015; 52nd Ann Arbor Film Festival (Jury Award, 2014); Cold Open / Before Sunrise, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin (2014); Assembly, A survey of Recent Artists’ Films and Video in Britain 2008-13, Tate Britain, London (2013-2014); Nought to Sixty, ICA, London (2008). He is the winner of the Film London Jarman Award 2015.

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Image credit: Laura McMorrow, The Lost Acre, 2018.

Catalyst Arts would like to welcome new Co-Director Edy Fung to the board. We look forward to working with her over the next two years.

AGM 2018

All Catalyst Arts members are warmly invited to our Annual General Meeting on Wednesday 17th January 2018 at 6.30pm in the gallery.  

This is a chance for members to hear about our past year’s programme and developments since the last AGM, to meet new directors and get a first look at what’s planned for the coming year.  

We want to have the broadest range of opinions possible and so would greatly appreciate your attendance. Please note: This event is for Catalyst Arts members only.  

Agenda

Opening remarks/welcome

Apologies

Minutes of previous AGM

Matters arising from the minutes

Presentation of annual report (Chair)

Presentation of accounts (Treasurer)

Election of management committee/office bearers

Summary of last year’s programming

Summary of future programming

Progressions

Archive Report

Governance Progress

Any Other Business

Closing remarks

To confirm your attendance, or for any other information, email catalystarts@gmail.com.

There will be some refreshments provided.

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PUBLIC SCREENING

Adriana Monti | Redmond Entwistle

Friday 8th December | 6-7.30pm

Adriana Monti: Scuola Senza Fine, 1983

The 150 Hours Courses were an educational experiment implemented in Italy beginning in 1974, available to factory workers and farmers initially, and expanded to include women a couple of years later. The courses were non-vocational; they were not intended to improve one’s productivity at work, but rather to allow for personal and collective growth. The courses sought to help workers reflect not only upon their working conditions but also on their lives. A large part was devoted to the re-elaboration and reinterpretation of what was defined as the “lived experience” of those attending: their experiences with work, emigration, cultural and language discrimination, union struggles, etc. Scuola Senza Fine (literally School without end) shows how the experiment extended into the lives of women taking the course, most of whom were housewives. The film was produced in collaboration with these students as part of their studies for the class, turning the curriculum’s questions about the representation of women into questions about the representation of themselves.

Redmond Entwistle: Walk-Through, 2012

Walk-Through explores the site, design and philosophy of the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, as a starting point for posing wider questions about contemporary pedagogical models and their relationship to new forms of social, political and economic exchange that have emerged since the 1970s.

On one level we are presented with a tour of the CalArts campus, analysing the history of the building and the origins of its democratic ethos. A studied voiceover articulates the rhetoric of CalArts founding mission which, when read through the current moment, pinpoints an early form of cultural capital. Slowly the tour starts to shift to a second series of vignettes in which students gather in a classroom to attend a fictional recreation of Michael Ashers Post-Studio class. Whispered lines are fed to the principal speakers, and first person speech is interrupted with the reading of bureaucratic documents, detailing the literal financial and infrastructural underpinnings of the institution. As the discussion progresses we begin to understand that what is being staged is an exercise in assessing the parameters of the institutions legitimacy and the legitimacy of the class as a space within which to speak, as well as individual speech itself as a principal tool of democracy.

Adriana Monti is a film director, independent producer and screenwriter. She has been making independent feminist films since the late 1970s, in the context of a the feminist movement in that happened in Italy in the same years. Much of her filmmaking is collaborative. She began her career in the context of a larger feminist movement in Italy of the 1970. In 1983 she realized Scuola senza fine (School without End), where she film a group of amateur women involved in the education project 150 Hours. In 1986, Monti made a documentary called Filo a catena about the conditions of female textile workers. After moving to Canada in the late 90s, Monti worked as reporter and story producer at OMNI Television Rogers Media, and she started her own company A&Z Media Ltd. In 2012 she produced Ice Work and began development on Never too Late to Create. In the same year, Scuola Senza Fine was presented at the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.

Redmond Entwistle’s films strive to think recent history, its places and social issues through a documentary approach – replaying, rebuilding, reproducing materials into an abstract and archetypal reality. His film Walk-Through was the focus of solo exhibitions at Cubitt Gallery, Tramway Gallery and International Project Space. His previous film Monuments premiered in Rotterdam Film Festival’s Tigers Shorts Competition in 2010, and his film and sound work Paterson – Lodz won Best International Film at Images Festival in 2008. In 2013, short retrospectives of his work were presented at Hors Pistes, Centre Pompidou (Paris) and BAFICI (Buenos Aires Independent Film Festival). His work has been nominated for the Jarman Award 2014, and a solo exhibition of his films will be presented at MIT List Visual Arts Center in January 2015.

This screening is part our exhibition BLACK MOUNTAIN – to find out more visit our Facebook Event page or download the full public programme here.

Image credits: Walk-Trough, still + 150 Hours Course, photo documentation.

WORKSHOP 

Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti 

Thursday 30th November 5.30pm- 7.30pm

PUBLIC TALK / SCREENING PROGRAMME

Friday 1st December 5.30pm- 7.30pm

Tickets for both events are free, however space is limited – Book here.

The last two decades have seen the flourishing of reflections and projects related to forms of education alternative to the academia. The fast and apparently inescapable implementation of the Bologna Agreement fuelled the urgency to think about strategies for the survival of the production of knowledge under the conditions of its standardisation, corporatisation and general flattening on quantifiable standards. The context of contemporary art has been a privileged stage for reflection and experimentation of these processes – starting from the so-called “educational turn” to the recent and diffused fascination for Undercommons by Harney and Moten, and passing through an incredible number of schools and educational platforms founded by artists or cultural producers.

In which terms can it still be relevant to talk about alternative education in the arts? What are the most long-lived arguments and concepts emerged in recent years, and how can they be inhabited to evolve our strategic behaviour in the future?

Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti (b. 1990, Desenzano del Garda, IT)  is an independent curator and co-founder of the research-driven non-profit space CLOG, Torino. She will be the curator of the main project of Moscow Biennale for Young Art in 2018 and she completed the curatorial programme by De Appel, Amsterdam, in 2017. Starting from 2017/18 she will be the coordinator of the Young Curators Residency Programme by Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Torino. She previously worked as artistic advisor for Artissima, Torino, assistant curator for Tutttovero by Francesco Bonami, Castello di Rivoli and GAM, Torino and Shit and Die by Maurizio Cattelan, Myriam Ben Salah and Marta Papini; TOILETPAPER Magazine and Le Dictateur, Milano. Calabrò Visconti graduated in Visual Arts and Theatre at IUAV, Venice, attended the curatorial programme CAMPO12 at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, and pursued a curatorial internship at Artists Space, New York. She writes for contemporary art and culture journals and her latest projects include: Why Is Everybody Being So Nice?, De Appel, Amsterdam, Goodbye, See You After the Revolution!, UvA, Amsterdam, Dear Betty: Run Fast, Bite Hard, GAMeC, Bergamo.

This workshop is part our exhibition BLACK MOUNTAIN – to find out what other free events are happening visit our Facebook Event page or download the full public programme here.

Catalyst Arts would like to welcome new Co-Director Liam McCartan to the board. We look forward to working with him over the next two years.

Liam McCartan is currently a PhD student in the Sonic Arts Research Centre of Queen’s University Belfast. His research concerns the borders, bridges and practices of experimental electronic music. In regards to his practice, it consists of composition, sound art and design that explores the concepts of genre deconstruction and sonic history. This work has been presented in concert halls, clubs, galleries, specialist-acoustic spaces, theatres, fashion shows, and contemporary music festivals. Liam is also an Organiser, Resident, and Writer of the Belfast ’club-art hybrid’ event RESIST, which fuses avant-garde electronic music performances and immersive visual art of a digital aesthetic.

Catalyst Arts

Welcomes applications of expressions of interest for new Co-Directors

Catalyst Arts has been one of the most important and innovative artist-led spaces for contemporary art in Belfast since it began in 1993. The driving force behind the organisation has always been the determined and enthusiastic committee of directors who have worked over the years to ensure the gallery remains at the forefront of the visual art scene in Northern Ireland – improving, producing and promoting art and culture and the advancement of education and training in the arts.

Catalyst Arts directorship programme has a local and international reputation of providing a unique training ground for artistic, curatorial and cultural production. Applicants who are seeking to advance their experience within an artist-led model of gallery programming and operations are encouraged, with successful candidates gaining valuable skills in installation, production, funding applications, commissioning, outreach, education, archiving and administration work. Although previous experience in all areas is not essential, interested candidates are encouraged to review and consider the director criteria when making their applications.

The role of co-director is a voluntary position carried out over a two years, on a rolling basis.

To apply for this position please download the Co-Director Application Form (.doc or .pdf) and for further details on the role you can review the co-director Job Description. 

Applications should be submitted by email to

catalystarts@gmail.com

Deadline for applications: 5pm 18th December 2017

If successful, candidates will be notified by the 9th January to attend an interview on 30th January.

Successful candidates would be starting a trial period of one month between February and March 2018 .

Please feel free to email or call us with any queries at catalystarts@gmail.com, 02890313303 or call in to the office at 5 College Court, Belfast , BT1 6BS.

ARTIST TALK

Perhaps By Fate, Perhaps By Choice

Cecilia Borettaz

Friday 24th November | 6-7.30pm

Perhaps By Fate, Perhaps By Choice is an ongoing project that brings together photographs, family archive material, printmaking and drawing. During this talk, Cecilia will present her research about this body of work and its development during the last couple of years.

Hot infusion will be prepared for the participants. All welcome.

KIDS WORKSHOP

Dissolution of Abstraction

Saturday 25th November | 3-5pm

Reproducing the inverse process of printmaking through the dissolution of monochromes in water, the artist-in-residence Cecilia will experiment along with our little participants with different materials, pigments and colours.

The workshop is for children of all ages and parents are welcome to take part as well. Come to the gallery between 3 and 5pm and stay as long as you like.

Cecilia Borettaz is an artist based in Brussels. She works with painting, installation, printmaking and storytelling, combining an interest on her personal family archive with the fascination for the mountainous landscape of Valle d’Aosta – the artist‘s homeland.

Graduating in 2013 with BFA in Visual Art from IUAV University of Venice, she moved to Brussels obtaining a MA in Visual Art and Critical Tools to ERG School of Art in 2015.  Selected exhibitions include: Group exhibition Premio Bice Bugatti Segantini, Villa Manuolo, Milan 2017; Helicotrema Recorded Audio Festival, curated by Blauer Hase and Giulia Morucchio, Centrale Fies (Trento), Progetto Diogene (Turin), Palazzo Grassi/ Foundation François Pinault (Venice) 2016; That’s it!(+3 FREE minutes), by Joelle Tuerlinckx, Biennal Performatik, Kaaitheater, Brussels 2015; Sense of Community#1, Gallery Officina delle Zattere, Venice 2012; 95th Young Artists Group Exhibition, Fondation Bevilacqua La Masa, Venice 2011.

This workshop is part our exhibition BLACK MOUNTAIN – to find out what other free events are happening visit our Facebook Event page or download the full public programme here.

WORKSHOP

In which we prepare for…

Hamish MacPherson

Friday 17th November: 10-1PM, 2-5PM | Saturday 18th November: 10-1PM, 2-5PM

Tickets are free, however space is limited – Book here.

How do we prepare ourselves for an unknown future? How can we answer future questions with today’s answers?

What if we spend two days preparing for something that is unknown and that never comes? Preparing to prepare to prepare for what we don’t or can’t name.

In concrete terms there are four three-hour sessions. In each we will spend some time following preparations and then devising preparations for the next session. We will document each of these as we go in writing and photographs and make a manual. You can come for some or all of the sessions. The more you attend the more interesting I think it will be.

If you come to the first session you’ll be invited to bring an exercise of preparation. Preparation for what? Something mundane, something fun, something scary, something unlikely, something impossible. A dance class, a night out, a speech, a meal, a performance, a fight, a retirement, a birth, a metamorphosis, an exam, a death. As long as it’s something we can do at Catalyst in half an hour or less. Bring any essential materials. Just don’t tell us what is for and we won’t try to guess either.

Any questions about the workshop contact Hamish @ hamishmacpherson.x@gmail.com.

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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. Current projects include THIS MOVEMENT, using lots of different methods to look at how we (everyone) use our bodies to make politics and Configuration (Hard Care) looking at care as an aesthetic, choreographic and political practice.

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This workshop is part our exhibition BLACK MOUNTAIN – to find out what other free events are happening visit our Facebook Event page or download the full public programme here.

WORKSHOP

We build a Framework

Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch

Saturday 11th November | 1-6PM

We Build a Framework is a project which requires collaboration. The basic tasks necessary for the work are maintaining the fire and rebuilding the structure.

The workshop on Saturday the 11th will be part action and part discussion. Starting with a discussion and open critique of the work the participants will then decide on the new arrangement for the framework and work together to reassemble it.

For sustenance there will be warm vegetable broth and toast.

All welcome.

Andreas Kindler von Knobloch is a visual artist based in Dublin. He works solo and collaboratively with a focus on ideas of collectivity and participation through the creation of structures, objects and spaces that question our material and social relations.

Recent exhibitions include Now Wakes the Sea – Contemporary Art and the Ocean, The Glucksman University College Cork 2017.  Making Space, in collaboration with Will Moss and Laura O’Quin, Fort Mason, San Francisco, USA 2016. Living Practice, PNCA, Portland, USA 2016. Brute Clues, in collaboration with Tom Watt and Tanad WIlliams, curated by Tessa Giblin, Project Arts Centre, Dublin 2016. A Fair Land, Grizedale and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2016. In Support, a solo exhibition, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow 2016. Resort: A Popular Destination, Pallas Projects, Dublin 2014. Ultima Thule a solo exhibition in the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin 2012.

This workshop is part our exhibition BLACK MOUNTAIN – to find out what other free events are happening visit our Facebook Event page or download the full public programme here.

Catalyst Arts would like to welcome new Co-Director Peter Glasgow to the board. We look forward to working with him over the next two years.

Peter Glasgow (b. 1991) is a visual artist who lives and works in Belfast.  He studied at Wimbledon College of Art and the Royal College of Art where he completed his MA in 2015.  He was selected to be part of Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show “Very Good Waves Now” in 2016.  Recent exhibitions include “Laboratory of Dark Matters”, a group residency at Guest Projects London, and “It’s not the digging, it’s the dirt”, a programme of live work broadcast as part of Art Licks Weekend 2016.

Symbiosis

Catalyst Arts Student and Recent Graduate Show 2017

5th – 15th October 2017

6th October 6-9pm: Performance event at FIX17

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

Cara Roberts | Joy Stacey | Drydan Wilson

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Catalyst Arts is pleased to present its annual Student and Recent Graduate Show – entitled ‘Symbiosis’ – premiering 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 will be performing as part of the FIX17 programme on Friday 6th October from 6-9pm.  

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

FIX17 Performance Biennial

Thursday 5th – Sunday 8th October 2017

www.fix17.org

Catalyst Arts is pleased to present the highly anticipated International Live Art Biennial FIX17.

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

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Festival Programme:

Thursday 5th October | 6-9pm

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

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Friday 6th October | 6-9pm

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

Jasmin Märker | Cara Roberts | Branwen Kavanagh | Dryden Wilson

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Saturday 7th October | 6-9pm

Ciara Lenihan | Siân Hutchings | Robert Curgenven

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Sunday 8th October | 2-9pm

Francesca Steele | Sandra Johnston | Eleni Kolliopoulou

Cleveland Watkiss – 8pm Sonic Arts Research Centre

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For full details visit www.fix17.org.

AMINI 2017 Festival of Artist Moving Image

29 – 30 September 2017 / The MAC, Belfast

2 day pass: £20 (£10 concession)  Tickets here.

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For their first festival showcase of leading artist moving image work, Artist Moving Image Northern Ireland (AMINI) have asked Catalyst to curate a special screening on

Friday 29th September / 2.30 pm / The MAC

‘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 click here – we hope to see you there!

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

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

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

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

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10th Belfast Anarchist Bookfair

9th September 2017 1pm – 7pm

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Talks, workshops, discussions:

1.00pm Abolish Prisons;

“Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work.” Angela Davis. Panel with Joe Conlon, Joanne Donnelly (JFC2), Sean Dubh (Derry Anarchists, WSM, IWW) and Manchester No Prisons.

2.15pm The Worms Who Saved the World;

Kevin Doyle on his childrens book with a radical message. Based on the very real campaign for public access to the Old Head of Kinsale.

3.30pm The Spectres of Loyalty: History, Memory and the Moral Economy of Loyalty;

Dr. Christopher J. V. Loughlin Did the Ulster Unionist Party create a ‘monolithic regime’ in Northern Ireland? Were the ‘linen lords’ of Belfast bourgeois or aristocratic? And what impact did class politics, labour and antisectarianism have on the regime constructed in the province? Using the manuscript to be published by Palgrave MacMillan later in the year, this paper will discuss the ‘moral economy of loyalty’ in Northern Ireland, 1921-72, the history of loyalty on the islands and the contemporary spectres of loyalty.

4.45pm The Life and Ideas of Michael Bakunin;

Tony Zurbrugg Bakunin was a contemporary of Marx, propagator of Anarchist Socialism and an active promoter of the International Workers’ Association (IWA). Ultimately clashing with Marx and the authoritarian wing of the international Bakunin argued for International workers’ solidarity, change involving rural and industrial workers, and a Libertarian or Anarchist form of Socialism with federated accountable democratic organisations responsible to the grassroots. The editor of the recently published “Bakunin: Selected Texts 1868-1875” talks about the life and ideas of often, unjustly, maligned Mikhail Bakunin.

6.00pm Syndicalism in Ireland;

Capitalism is bringing the world to the brink of extinction while goverments everywhere, even “left” governments, prove time and again that they are the lackies of the bosses. Our panel looks at the anti- and non parliamentary alternative offered by syndicalism. Panel with Jason Brannigan (Organise!), Dek Keenan (IWW) and IWU.

Stalls:

AK Press

artbiaoife

Barricade Distribution

Empty Cages Collective

Haymarket Books

Just Books

Larne House Visitors Group

Live Deliciously – scrummy vegan deliciousness

Organise!

Pluto Press

Rally for Choice

Workers Solidarity Movement

IWW

Call for Submissions

Catalyst Arts is pleased to announce an open call for submissions to our Student and Recent Graduate Show, which will take place from the 5th to the 12th of October, in conjunction with the Fix 17 festival of performance art.

Students currently undertaking undergraduate/ postgraduate /PhD courses in Fine Art/Sonic Art/any art related subjects are eligible to apply, as well as former students who graduated up to one year ago.

The proposal from may be downloaded from this link: Student & Recent Graduate Exhibition 2017 Application. We welcome submissions in any art form, in particular artworks that have a relationship to performative practice. Please complete the form and submit it with your Artist CV, images of your work or links to video/documentation of performances/sculptures/installations etc to catalystarts@gmail.com by Saturday 9th September at 5pm.

Applications can be accepted from Catalyst Arts members only.

Apply for membership here: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Dancing on Borrowed Ground

Chloe Cooper  Dylan Miner  Contrapoints

Elizabeth Haines  William Raban

Belfast Anarchist (Bookfair 09.09.17)

19.08.17 – 16.09.17

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.

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

DBG digital Catalogue FINAL

PRESS PLAY 

Catalyst Arts Members’ Screening

6th August 2017 6pm – 9pm

We are excited to announce PRESS PLAY: Catalyst Arts Members’ Screening Night.

PRESS PLAY is an informal screening opportunity for our members. We invite submissions of artists’ moving image works for an evening of screening, sharing and feedback. If you have old work, new work, work-in-progress or anything that is ready for a public moment we would like to see it!

After the screening programme there will be an opportunity to discuss your work with other members and Catalyst Co-Directors.

Each member is eligible to submit one proposal in MP4 format. If your proposal meets the terms and conditions below it will be included in the event.

To be part of PRESS PLAY applicants must be a 2017 member of Catalyst Arts.

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Terms and Conditions

Files must be in MP4 format.

Works must be a maximum of 6 minutes long.

Please send works via WeTransfer to catalystarts@gmail.com with a subject-line PRESSPLAY, name of the artist, title and year of work. A short description of the work (max 150 words) could also be included.

Deadline for submissions: 5pm Friday 4th August 2017

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Apply for membership here

As part of our current exhibition Viewing Copy, Catalyst Arts is very excited to host a free workshop organised by The Radical Film Archive on 20^th July at 6:30pm.

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. These films alongside the full archive is available to browse, watch and download in our resource room for the duration of the exhibition. Don’t forget your hard-drive!

Conor Mullan (b. 1992 in Belfast) is an artist currently based in Belfast. His practise explores the use of new media drawing techniques as well as traditional printmaking and sculpture. He studied fine art at the University of Ulster and graduated in 2015, being awarded the award for outstanding graduate and has exhibited internationally. Since then he has volunteered in multiple arts organizations in Ireland.

Catalyst Arts
Welcomes applications of expressions of interest for new Co-Directors

Catalyst Arts has been one of the most important and innovative artist-led spaces for contemporary art in Belfast since it began in 1993. The driving force behind the organisation has always been the determined and enthusiastic committee of directors who have worked over the years to ensure the gallery remains at the forefront of the visual art scene in Northern Ireland – improving, producing and promoting art and culture and the advancement of education and training in the arts.

Catalyst Arts directorship programme has a local and international reputation of providing a unique training ground for artistic, curatorial and cultural production. Applicants who are seeking to advance their experience within an artist-led model of gallery programming and operations are encouraged, with successful candidates gaining valuable skills in installation, production, funding applications, commissioning, outreach, education, archiving and administration work. Although previous experience in all areas is not essential, interested candidates are encouraged to review and consider the director criteria when making their applications.

The role of co-director is a voluntary position carried out over a two years, on a rolling basis.

To apply for this position please download the Director Application Form and the Catalyst Arts Job Description for further details.

Applications should be submitted by email to catalystarts@gmail.com by 5pm 30th July 2017

If successful, candidates will be notified by the 2nd of August to attend an interview on 9th of August.

Successful candidates would be starting trial period of one month between the second half of August to the end of October.

Please feel free to email or call us with any queries at catalystarts@gmail.com, 02890313303 or meet us in the office at 5 College Court, Belfast , BT1 6BS.

VIEWING COPY

VIVIENNE DICK    EOGHAN RYAN   THE RADICAL FILM ARCHIVE   MAEVE CONNOLLY

7th July – 4th August 2017

Opening Preview: 6th July, 6-9pm with a performance by Eoghan Ryan @ 7:30pm

Catalyst Arts is delighted to present VIEWING COPY, 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.

Catalyst Arts will host a free workshop organised by The Radical Film Archive on 20th July and all are welcome.

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.                                         

Catalyst Commissions | Aideen Doran | Ryan Moffett

01- 08 June 2017

Preview: Thursday 01 June 6-9pm

Catalyst Arts is delighted to present ‘Catalyst Commissions’ which brings together two artists, Aideen Doran and Ryan Moffett, who have been 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.

TESTING

Opening: 4th May 2017 6pm – 9pm

Exhibition runs: 4th – 11th May

Catalyst Arts are excited to announce the open-call for it’s Members Show 2017, TESTING.

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.

Each member is eligible to submit one proposal of work in any medium that you feel tests and explores the boundaries of your practice.

To be part of TESTING applicants must be a members of Catalyst Arts.

For further information on membership  see: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Terms and Conditions:

Due to the large amount of submission annually received applicants must consider the following specifications:

Maximum dimensions for canvas and photographic prints are 2.50×2.50 meters.

Sculptures and installations must be no larger than 3 meters cubed.

If you wish to submit a video work all technical equipment must be provided.

The submitted work must be delivered or posted to the gallery on the 2nd and 3rd of May between 11am – 5pm. Dates for de-install and the collection of work are the 12th and 13th of May between 11am – 5pm. All work must be collected on these days.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact the gallery via email at catalystarts@gmail.com

Catalyst Arts is proud to present Re:Nouveau, the end of year exhibition by 2nd year Lens and Sculpture students of the Belfast School of Art.

The exhibition opens this Thursday the 27th of April from 6 to 9pm, and will be available to view from 11am to 5pm on Friday the 28th and Saturday the 29th.

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.

Refreshments will be provided on the night.

Catalyst Arts is pleased to announce the premiere of our Flatpack Film Festival commission, ‘The Mechanical Child’ by Aideen Doran. The premiere will take place at the film festival’s ‘On the Edge’ screening event this Friday the 7th of April 8.30pm – 9.30pm, at The Victoria, 48 John Bright St, Birmingham. The film was commissioned by Catalyst as part of the  recent Members Open Call opportunity, in partnership with Flatpack 2017.

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.

For more information about ‘On the Edge’ screening: http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/event/on-the-edge/

Flatpack Film Festival website : http://flatpackfestival.org.uk/

Aideen Doran’s website : http://adoran.co.uk/

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

by Chloe Cooper

Saturday 25th March 2017 at 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 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  | 10th-31st March 2017

Opening Preview: 9th March, 6-9pm

As the story was told

YURI ANCARANI  |  GERARD BYRNE  |  JAMIE CREWE  |  DIEGO MARCON

Catalyst Arts is pleased to present As the story was told, which commences on the 9th of March and runs for a period of three weeks.

The project 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.  

D O U B L E   P A R R H E S I A

KATHRYN ELKIN   ADAM LEWIS-JACOB   MARIA TOUMAZOU

3nd February – 21st February 2017

Opening Preview: 2nd February, 6-9pm

Catalyst Arts presents DOUBLE PARRHESIA, an exhibition of work by Kathryn Elkin, Adam Lewis-Jacob and Maria Toumazou which 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.

Dear Catalyst Arts member / associate

        That time of year has come around again where Catalyst Arts asks you to come and have your say at the Catalyst Arts Annual General Meeting.
We are pleased to invite you to Catalyst Arts AGM 2017, which will take place at Catalyst Arts, 5 College Court, Belfast on Wednesday 15th of February 2017 at 6.30pm.
We will give a breakdown of last year’s projects and future programming, and will discuss what has happened since our last AGM and the exciting things in store for Catalyst Arts.

In order to gain the broadest range of opinions on all matters under discussion, we would request and very much appreciate your attendance at this event. This event is for members only.

Agenda

Opening remarks/welcome

Apologies

Minutes of previous AGM

Matters arising from the minutes

Presentation of annual report

Presentation of accounts

Election of management committee/office bearers

Summary of last year’s programming

Summary of future programming

Progressions

Archive Report

Governance Progress

Any Other Business

Closing remarks

  To RSVP your attendance or for any additional information on the AGM arrangements please contact us at catalystarts@gmail.com. 

Refreshments will be provided.

Forms of Resistance

Jumana Manna and Sille Storihle  |  Francesco Nordio |  Vukasin Nedeljkovic

12th January – 24th January 2016. Catalyst Arts, Belfast

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.

Opening Thur 12th January 6 -9pm

Francesco Nordio – Artist Talk Friday 13th January 5pm
Vukasin Nedeljkovic – Artist Talk Saturday 21st January 5pm

Photographs by Jordan Hutchings

Trickster

1st Dec – 17 Dec. Catalyst Arts, Belfast 

Chloe Brenan | Alexandra Brunt 

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.

Photography by Jordan Hutchings

Mediating Environments

Matthew Bourree | Paula Deji | John Wild

Opens Thursday 3rd November 6-9pm. Exhibition continues until Wednesday 23 November

John Wild will be performing at 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?

Photographs by Jordan Hutchings

INDIGENOUS

22nd October- In conjunction with Belfast Open Studios

Opening: 21st 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 Walks

Performance – 3pm Saturday 15th October, meet at Catalyst Arts, 5 College Court (off College Street), BT1 6BS.

Call for Submissions 

Catalyst Arts is seeking proposals for its gallery programme to be exhibited from the 1st to the 17th of December 2016. This opportunity is open to artists, collectives and cultural producers to propose a project for the gallery space. Catalyst Arts will provide technical support and gallery resources and a modest budget to include an artist fee, £100 transportation costs and a materials stipends of £200 towards the entire project. Catalyst Arts will also cover publicity costs for the promotion of the project. There is no theme for this selection and experimental and alternative forms of contemporary art practice are encouraged, however we cannot accept submissions for solo shows through this call.

Proposals may be submitted in any of the following formats:

• Artist-organised Exhibition (with two or more participants per application)
• Collaborative Projects
• Site Specific Projects
• Inter-disciplinary Projects
• Sound / Live Art / Event-based Projects
• Individual artists may also submit work for consideration as a part of a group show

We encourage applicants to visit the gallery space to get a sense of what is possible and for those who are not able to travel to Belfast, our gallery specifications are available on our website at http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/the-gallery/

Exhibition dates in Belfast will be between 1st to 17th December 2016. Gallery opening hours are Tuesday to Saturday 11am – 5pm each week, invigilated by the committee. Applicants must submit and email to catalystarts@gmail.com by 5pm Wednesday 19th October 2016 with the following attachments:

1. Fully completed Application Form
2. Artist CV
3. Single PDF containing 5-8 high res images of current, recent or proposed work (10MB max)
4. Links to video, sound, durational or performance works (youtube, vimeo, soundcloud or artist website only). Please note: media files will not be downloaded so please do not forward dropbox, google drive, or wetransfer links.

Applications can be accepted from Catalyst Arts members only.

Apply for membership here: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Call for Submissions

Catalyst Arts is seeking proposals for a new artist moving image commission that will be launched as part of 11th Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham 2017. Experimental and ambitious projects as well as alternative visions about contemporary moving images are encouraged.

The final work should be a single-channel video of under 20 minutes in length, and must be completed by 1st March 2017. Artists should be able to demonstrate the commission can be delivered within the awarded budget of £650 and the fixed deadline.                                                                                        

Applicants must submit and email to catalystarts@gmail.com by 5pm Wednesday 19th October 2016 with the following attachments:

1. Fully completed Application Form
2. Artist CV
3. Single PDF containing 5-8 high res images of current, recent or proposed work (10MB max)
4. Links to video, sound, durational or performance works (youtube, vimeo, soundcloud or artist website only). Please note: media files will not be downloaded so please do not forward dropbox, google drive, or wetransfer links.

Flatpack premiere: April 2017

Flatpack is a film festival which takes over venues across Birmingham every spring. Since 2006, the festival has been exploring the territory where film bumps up against other artforms. This commission is the first collaboration between Catalyst Arts and Flatpack Projects.

All submissions by email to catalystarts@gmail.com

Applications can be accepted from Catalyst Arts members only.

Apply for membership here: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Call for Submissions 

Proposal (500 word max) | 5-8 Images of current or recent work | Artist Statement + Bio (300

Gallery Exhibition 

Catalyst Arts would like to invite all members to submit proposals of work for exhibition in the gallery. The exhibition will take place on 1st – 17th Dec

Each member is eligible to submit proposals of work in any medium/discipline for consideration.

Deadline for submissions: 19th October 5pm

Annual membership is £20 waged / £10 unwaged, and new members may pay this when submitting their work or through Paypal on our website www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk.

Membership allows submission to all our open call-outs throughout the year as well as guaranteeing you a place in our annual Members’ Show.  

All submissions by email to catalystarts@gmail.com as one PDF file (10MB max) by the deadline containing:

Proposal (500 word max) | 5-8 Images of current or recent work | Artist Statement + Bio (300 words max) | Artist CV | Technical Requirements (installation, lighting, a/v equipment, etc) | Budget

Applications can be accepted from Catalyst Arts members only.

Apply for membership here: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Proposal (500 word max) | 5-8 Images of current or recent work | Artist Statement + Bio (300 words max) | Artist CV | Technical Requirements (installation, lighting, a/v equipment, etc) | Budget

Artists Moving Image Commission

Catalyst Arts is looking for proposals for a new artist moving image commission that will be launched as part of 11th Flatpack Film Festival, Birmingham 2017.

Experimental and ambitious projects as well as alternative visions about contemporary moving images are encouraged.

The final work should be a single-channel video of under 20 minutes in length, and must be completed by 1st March 2017. Artists should be able to demonstrate the commission can be delivered within the awarded budget of £650 and the fixed deadline.  

Deadline for proposal submissions: 19th October 5pm

Flatpack premiere: April 2017

Flatpack is a film festival which takes over venues across Birmingham every spring. Since 2006, the festival has been exploring the territory where film bumps up against other artforms. This commission is the first collaboration between Catalyst Arts and Flatpack Projects.

Proposal (500 word max) | At least three examples of relevant works (only links to vimeo and youtube are accepted) | Artist CV + Bio (300 words max) | A detailed breakdown of the production budget and scheduled time-frame of the project. Please note that we will cover an additional £50 for travel/accommodation.

All submissions by email to catalystarts@gmail.com 

                                 Applications can be accepted from Catalyst Arts members only.                                  

Apply for membership here: http://www.oldcatalystarts.hilken.co.uk/membership/

Catalyst Arts welcomes expressions of interest for new Co-Directors

Deadline for applications: 6pm Friday 14th October 2016

Catalyst Arts has been one of the most important and innovative artist-led spaces for contemporary art in Belfast since it began in 1993. The driving force behind the organisation has always been the dedicated committee of directors who have worked tirelessly over the years to ensure the gallery remains at the forefront of the visual art scene in Northern Ireland.

Catalyst Arts directorship programme has a local and international reputation of providing a unique training ground for artistic, curatorial and cultural production. Applicants who are seeking to advance their experience within an artist-led model of gallery programming and operations are encouraged, with successful candidates gaining valuable skills in installation, production, funding applications, commissioning, outreach, education, archiving and administration work. Although previous experience in all areas is not essential, interested candidates are encouraged to review and consider the director criteria when making their applications.

The role of co-director is a part-time, voluntary position carried out over two years, on a rolling structure.

Flexible working hours, including evenings and weekend will be required.

To apply for this position please download and complete the

Co-Director Application Form and consult the Co-Director Job Description

for further details on the role.

Applications should be submitted by email to catalystarts@gmail.com by the deadline.

Please note we can only consider fully completed application forms in word or pdf format (.doc, .docx, .pdf), please contact us should you need any further advice on this.

Deadline for applications: 6pm Friday 14th October 2016

Directorships beginning between November 2016 – February 2017

If successful, candidates will be notified by the 18th October, to attend an interview on 24th October 2016

Please feel free to e-mail or call us with any queries at catalystarts@gmail.com, 028 90 313 303 or call in to the office at 5 College Court, Belfast, BT1 6BS

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.

Thursday 1st September 6:00 – 9:00pm – Late Night Art

In the Mouth of the Wolf is also open for Late Night Art and will feature new event based work by Clodagh Emoe and readings by Mike Harvey and Emmy Beber.

Wednesday 31st August 7:00 – 8:00pm – Subject to Authority

 Subject to Authority is a reading group initiated by Emmy Beber, Mike Harvey and Pil and Galia Kollectiv. It aims to look at the relationships between subjectivity and authoritarian politics in critical, theoretical and literary writing.

Faced with authority, subjectivity is at stake. Michel Foucault described subjectivity like the atom – the most basic form of matter we can access – as a three-tiered structure. Subjectivity that categorises, distributes and manipulates; subjectivity through which we have come to understand ourselves scientifically, and subjectivity that forms ourselves as meaning. The aim of the reading group is to look at structural, theoretic and poetic thinking around the appeal of authoritarianism and its mechanisms of disguise and deploy, and specifically its relationship to subjectivity and subjectivisation.

 This group is open to all interested and you can email catalystarts@gmail.com to attend. Reading material for wednesday sessions can be found below:

Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia; Reflections from Damaged Life. London: New Left Books, 1974. Print.

[Download Excerpts]

Ahmed, Sara. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004. Print.

[Download Excerpts]

Photographs by Jordan Hutchings

‘In the Mouth of the Wolf’

. 18th aug – 10 sept 2016. Catalyst Arts, Belfast

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

Opens 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.

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

www.clodaghemoe.com

www.anahitarazmi.de

www.facebook.com/missingstudies

http://www.xero-kline-coma.com/Events.html

Student and Recent Graduate Show 2016

15h July – 5th August
Opening: 14th July 6-9pm

Marian Balfe | Daniel Coleman | Cillian Finnerty

Peter Glasgow | Aine McBride | Andrew McSweeney | Cliodhna Timoney

Catalyst Arts is pleased to announce details of its eagerly anticipated annual student and recent graduate show, Very Good Waves Now, from 14th July to 5th August 2016.

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 WALKS

Daniel Jewesbury

Saturday 14^th of May | 4.00 – 6.00 pm

Front of Lanyon Building | Queen’s University Belfast | University Road, Belfast, BT7 1NN

In collaboration with the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (NIMHAFF) we invite you to join Catalyst Arts for a stress busting Saturday evening promenade. For this first instalment of a series of peripatetic performances we have invited Daniel Jewesbury to take us out and about in south Belfast.

For more information on the festival please see NIMHAFF or get in touch with us at catalystarts@gmail.com

Outside Line

Tanad Williams

Opening: Thursday 12^th May 2016, 6-9pm, Catalyst Arts

Catalyst Arts invites you to join us for the introduction to ‘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.

The Spillover Room

Ectoplasmic Materialism | James Moran | QUBe

Tivoli’s Barber Shop

6th of May | 8-9pm

Catalyst Arts presents ‘The Spillover Room’ as part of Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival featuring new works in script, sound and moving image by artists from Vienna, Copenhagen, Dublin and Belfast. Part video séance – part scratch comedy gig, the event features new works by duo Ectoplasmic Materialism and James Moran accompanied by a live score from a quartet of QUBe associates based in SARC. For the event, Catalyst Arts will occupy the back room of Tivolis Barbers on North Street. Come join us for some retina-rattling audio-visual experiences.

CATALYST WALKS

Daniel Jewesbury

Saturday 14^th of May | 4.00 – 6.00 pm

Front of Lanyon Building | Queen’s University Belfast | University Road, Belfast, BT7 1NN

The walk will start promptly at 4.00 pm

In collaboration with the Northern Ireland Mental Health Arts and Film Festival (NIMHAFF) we invite you to join Catalyst Arts for a stress busting Saturday evening promenade. For this first instalment of a series of peripatetic performances we have invited Daniel Jewesbury to take us out and about in south Belfast. The Catalyst Walks programme aims to offer the very best of contemporary art on the move, getting our audiences out in the open for a bit of fresh air and self-care. So, if you are feeling the worse for wear or just in need of some perambulatory entertainment, come along and experience a stimulating stroll.

For more information on the festival please see NIMHAFF or get in touch with us at catalystarts@gmail.com

21st April – 26th April

Opening event: 21st April, 6-9 pm

The 2nd Year Sculpture and Lens Course from the Belfast School of Art are presenting their end of year show.

Catalyst Arts is pleased to continue to provide opportunities for students, facilitating new and emerging artists and maintaining its relationship with Fine Arts universities.

Sephour is an anagram of Orpheus

Sephour is Orpheus transformed

Sephour is a homonym of Zephyr

Since our migration from the old Orpheus Building to our new purpose built art department we, the 2nd year Fine Art (Sculpture/Lens) students, have been negotiating and developing our relationship with our new space. We now welcome everyone to view an exhibition of our current work. This is the first group exhibition from the new Sculpture/Lens studios on the 6th floor.