The Exhibitionist | 14 | Jessie Ware Vs Art
News
Bit of controversy in the art world this week. It seems Jessie Ware’s new video for ‘Champagne Kisses’ is ripping off an artist’s work wholesale. The artist in question is New York-based photographer Asger Carlsen, and he took to twitter this week to demonstrate the striking similarity between Ware’s video and his 2010 series Wrong.
Carlsen’s black-and-white photo features a topless model whose lower half seems to have been replaced by very rudimentary wooden prosthetics. In the “Champagne Kisses” video, Ware appears in a very similar pose, wearing a canary yellow top and with an almost identical wooden accoutrement where her lower half should be.(via Hyperallergic)
It also seems that Carlsen is not the only artist referenced in the video. Among more obscure artists, Ware’s video references renowned performance artist Marina Abramovic and her piece with Ulay called Relation in Time (1977). In it the two artists hair is bound together and they face opposite directions, and it is repeatedly quoted in the image of Ware, dressed in an Abramovi?-esque onesie and bound to her double by long braids.
Of course it’s not the first time an artist’s work has been so heavily referenced in this way with Rihanna being held up as a prime example; her Rude Boy video paid homage to several artists including Andy Warhol and then there was the controversial S&M video referencing the work of David LaChapelle, a matter which ended up being settled in court.
I’ll round off this news with those very videos:
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Round-up
Shows opening this week
‘The Kingcat of Keshcorran’ | Group Exhibition at Roscommon Arts Centre
The Kingcat of Keshcorran
Exhibition extended until March 13th
Roscommon Arts Centre, Circular Road, Roscommon
An exhibition by Liam Byrne, Michael Holly and Sean Lynch.
Roscommon Arts Centre is delighted to present The Kingcat of Keshcorran. The entire ethos of the visual arts programme has been developed with a view to expanding the scope for participation in the arts centre’s activities while also initiating relationships with the local population, interest groups and specific communities. The resulting exhibition is a film by Sean Lynch and Michael Holly that will be presented alongside items of local historical and geographical interest from the ephemera collection of local history enthusiast, Liam Byrne. Collecting stories plays a huge role in Sean Lynch’s art practice while Liam is the collector of the objects, relics and ephemera that document these stories.
The exhibition begins in the pages of poet and mystic Ella Young’s book The Wonder-Smith and His Son, where the main character An Gubbaun Soar roams aimlessly through a stoney landscape. Suddenly, out of the sky, a bag of tools fell to the ground. He instantly became a master stonemason, and travelled to the nearest town, where he carved, upon a window the Kingcat of Keshcorran, “with insinuating grace and with infinite cunning, losing itself at the last in loops, and twists, and foliations and intricacies that spread and returned and established themselves in a mysterious, magical, spell-knotted forest of emblems.”
Sean Lynch came across the story when researching the carvings of James O’Shea in Oxford of 1859. Having been rebutted by Oxford authorities for his attempting monkey carvings on the new museum building, O’Shea carved a group of feline-like creatures onto a window at the museum. While the precise details are now lost, one could speculate that O’Shea remembered the story of the Gubbaun, an old folk tale told amongst stonecarvers, and asserted to bring forth evil monstrous cats to the facade of the museum? Liam’s collection features images from Roscommon history that might find a kinship with The Kingcat, while Michael Holly’s video of summer solstice activity around megalithic sites in the region reveal the belief systems around land and history.
In the gallery space, Liam presents a collection of material, underneath glass cases he salvaged from a Museum refurbishment some years back. One presentaion details the medieval sculpture of the Roscommon Abbey alongside early geological studies of the region and more recent magnetic gradiometry imagery, placed amongst other tangential material such as a piece of the Berlin Wall now in Roscommon. Another case sees county council annual agricultural reports mingle with a fossil Liam found in a carpark in Offaly and an illustration of the Cross of Cong.
For further information contact: [email protected]
Brian Hegarty at The Basement Gallery
I’ll be your Mirror (The Album Sleeve Project)
27 February – 4 April 2015
The Basement Gallery, An Tain Arts Centre, Dundalk, Co. Louth
Open: 10am – 4pm, Tuesday to Saturday
The vinyl record is more than just a by word for cultural nostalgia. It has the capacity to trigger memories and convey emotion in the most personal way.
It is weighted with symbolism, not just as a twentieth century artifact but also as a holder of many of life’s accumulated experiences. Love, loss, identity, ideology, all of life’s ingredients filtered through the treble and base of a turntable, an amplifier and speakers.
This exhibition from Drogheda-based artist Brian Hegarty, I’ll Be Your Mirror (The Album Sleeve Project), was first shown in the Cartridge Gallery in Lapua, Finland in October 2014.
William Hamilton and Diarmait Grogan at Dunamaise Arts Centre
Shanghai Ritual
19 February – 22 March | Opening: 28 February at 7pm
Dunamaise Arts Centre, Church St, Portlaoise, Co. Laois
Dunamaise Arts Centre are proud to host this exhibition by Irish artists William Hamilton and Diarmait Grogan.
This exhibition represents a year spent in Shanghai, culminating in a shared photographic portrayal of the city. Shanghai Ritual is an atmospheric study of place, displacement and exploration, set in the largest city proper in the world in 2013.
Tom Hunter at Green On Red Gallery
Tom Hunter
Axis Mundi & Bathing Places, Dublin Bay
20 February – March 28, 2015 | Opens Thursday, February 19, 6-8pm
Green On Red Gallery
The Green On Red Gallery is delighted to announce the opening of Tom Hunter’s fourth solo exhibition, Axis Mundi & Bathing Places, Dublin Bay, at the Spencer Dock gallery on Thursday, February 19, 6-8pm. The show consists of two separate bodies of work, one made in the last 2 years in the artist’s native England, the other made while on the Artist’s Residency Programme in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin in 2006.
The artist will give a talk on his work on March 6th, 1-2pm in the Green On Red Gallery in Spencer Dock. Free. Booking advisable. On March 12th Donal Curtin, Senior Partner, BCK Chartered Accountants and Chairman of the Board of Chambers Ireland will give a talk in the gallery on The Art of Collecting at 6pm. All welcome.
Green On Red Gallery, Park lane (rere of apartments), Spencer Dock, Dublin 1.
T: +353 (0) 1 6713414 or +353 87 245 4282
E: [email protected]
www.greenonredgallery.com
Livestock Presents ‘Bundles of Mysteries’ at MART
27 February 7pm MART
MART, 190a Rathmines Road Lower, Dublin, Ireland
“Man is always looking for an object ‘outside’ of himself and this object reflects the innerness of magnetism”
An intimate evening of new Performance and Live Art. Curated by Aine O’Hara and Tara Carroll
home: Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Open Submission Exhibition Opens at dlr LexIcon
Friday 13 February – 22 March
Admission is FREE.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council’s Open Submission exhibition, ‘home’, is now on view in the new Municipal Gallery at dlr LexIcon.
The exhibition opened on Friday 13 February as winners selected from the 358 artworks entered in the Open Submission were announced.
David Stephenson was chosen as the overall winner for his photographs of ‘Raymond’ and the two runners up were Judy Foley and Mark Granier.
Selected by Mark St. John Ellis of nag Gallery Dublin, the exhibition features fifty works by thirty seven artists. As selector, Ellis took a universal look at the interpretation of home and selected artworks that reflected the wide range of responses.
The Arts Office is also running a programme of drawing and painting workshops with professional artists to coincide with the exhibition. For further details see www.dlrcoco.ie/arts
Tara Moran-Woods at Eight Gallery
ESSOFREE/FORESEES
Preview Friday 20 February, 6 – 8pm.
21 Feb – 6 March.
Eight Gallery, 8 Dawson Street, Dublin 2
ESSOFREE/FORESEES – is based on the life of a visually impaired person. I have researched the condition through a family member who has gradually lost their sight over the past 20 years. Through mixed media and installation the exhibition will feature personal belongings and household items that have been adapted to adjust to everyday life and daily tasks.
Katherine Boucher Beug at Oliver Sears Gallery
Equations
26 February – 1 April
Oliver Sears Gallery, Molesworth St, Dublin 2
Opening hours: Monday – Friday, 10.00am-5.30pm
Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to announce the launch of Equations, an exhibition of new work by Cork based artist Katherine Boucher Beug. The exhibition falls into three parts. There are large canvases, subtle watercolours three dimensional works which showcase Boucher Beug’s exploration in using new materials. The artist has said that some of these works are difficult, but after a while they start to exert an influence, like gentle persuaders, revealing experience, opening up sideways ways of seeing the world. Some are also deceptively, and deliciously simple. This describes the assemblage Voyage perfectly. Taken together, the works reveal an individual and unique language. Built on the artist’s researches into colour theory, these works create a lively exchange that reaches out to the viewer. The pieces all interrelate as a collection but speak volumes as standalone pieces. As the artist puts it, there’s a cellist, a jazz pianist, a baroque harpsichord player, all inside, and all with a voice to be heard. The canvases with rough, forceful surfaces made from tin, paper, fabric and nails act as a preparatory sketch for the highly finished sculptural pieces.
Her works can be found in the Arts Council, Bank of Ireland and AIB Collections, Crawford Municipal Gallery and University College Cork.
Equations will be available in the Oliver Sears Gallery from February 26th – April 1st 2015.
Collaborations Festival Exhibition 2015 Exhibition at Smock Alley Theatre
19 February – 5 March | Opening: 19 February at 7pm
The Banquet Hall, Smock Alley Theatre, Exchange St. Lower, Dublin 8.
Opening hours: Weekdays 5.30pm – 10.30pm, Saturdays 1.30pm – 10.30pm, Sundays 2pm – 8pm, Mondays – closed
Collaborations Festival of Ideas is proud to present its 2015 exhibition. This group multidisciplinary show features both emerging and established artists and designers working across the mediums of paint, ink, interactive installation, sculpture, sound and textile design. The exhibition focuses on works that are the result of collaborative making, or which will evolve throughout the festival with participation from its audience.
The exhibition opens to the public at 7pm Thursday 19th, runs until Thursday March 5th and admission is free.
Event image by Aisling Smyth.
