This week YBA Tracey Emin has some big news with the move of her most famous work to Tate Britain. Interestingly it’s currently being displayed alongside two paintings by Francis Bacon, a painter well-known for also being a bit messy;
Tracey Emin’s best known work, her 1998 monument to the heartache of a relationship breakdown, My Bed, has gone on display at Tate Britain for the first time in 15 years.
The work, which Emin now describes as a portrait of a young woman, was bought last year by the German businessman and collector Count Christian Duerckheim, who has loaned the artwork to the Tate for at least the next 10 years.
Emin, 51, had expressed her wish for the piece to go to a museum and described the Tate as “the natural home” for the work. However, the gallery could not afford to bid at the Christie’s auction where My Bed eventually sold for £2.54m, more than twice the top pre-sale estimate.
The auction last July was the first time the artwork had gone on sale since it was bought by Charles Saatchi in 2000. The sale opened at £650,000, and, after frantic bidding, was bought minutes later by the YBA dealer and owner of the White Cube gallery Jay Jopling, on behalf of Duerckheim. “I always admired the honesty of Tracey, but I bought My Bed because it is a metaphor for life, where troubles begin and logics die,” Duerckheim later explained.
Tracey Emin My Bed(via The Guardian)
The piece was made by Emin in 1998 when she was living in a council flat in Waterloo. It shows her real bed at the time in all its embarrassing glory, with used condoms, dirty underwear and empty bottles of alcohol strewn across the crumpled stained sheets.
My Bed was first displayed at the Tate in 1999 when it was nominated for the Turner prize. The polarising work caused such a media frenzy that it pushed the gallery’s visitor numbers up to a record high. It was bought the following year for £150,000 by Charles Saatchi, an avid collector of YBA art. The piece then went on display at the Saatchi Gallery, then at County Hall London, and Saatchi is also said to have displayed the bed in his own dining room.(via The Guardian)
The Beholder’s Share at IMMA
Recommended exhibitions this week are ‘The Beholder’s Share’ Exhibition at Project Spaces, IMMA and BOM by Bea McMahon at CCA Derry.
The opening of The Beholder’s Share was opened by a performative lecture by Jane Locke and examines unrealised and existing projects from the IMMA Collection. The focus of the exhibition is the role which the viewer can play in imaginatively completing an unrealised work. Exploring the documentation, stories and latent potential of projects by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Christo, William Furlong and Sol LeWitt, the show will also include selected unrealisable proposals by 4th year students from IADT’s BA in Visual Arts Practice. The Beholder’s Share is curated by students on the Art and Research Collaboration (ARC) MA programme at IADT in collaboration with the IMMA National Programme and the exhibition continues until 26 April 2015.
Meanwhile CCA, Derry presents BOM, a new exhibition by Amsterdam-based Irish artist Bea McMahon. The exhibition features performance, video, sculpture, and drawing works, many of which are being presented for the first time.
The works in BOM have their beginnings in the artist’s recent experience of searching for wolves in the French mountains with a camera. Although wolves are not directly represented in the exhibition, both the experience of anticipating their encounter and the mythological history of these animals serve as structuring principles for the artworks. These works include a Super 8 film that repeatedly shows a reddened human ear that appears behind a veil of long hair, a sculpture that approximates a sheep, and a series of drawings that contain the letters that constitute the line ‘DOG LOVES PATRICK’.
Like the form of an ‘epistolary’ novel – similar in this sense to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the reader has to determine a phantom-being through a triangulation of voices, documents and correspondences – the works in BOM are held in a chorus of apprehension and fear. The wolf lurks at the edges of the exhibition, slipping between the frames of film reel and the utterances of language. It connects a range of references – from medieval folklore (the tale that if a wolf sees you first, you lose your ability to speak; if you see it first, it loses its animal power) – through to the Irish origins of the word ‘wolf’ (mac tíre) to denote ‘the son of the land’, reflecting its feral and territorial nature.
The exhibition opened on March 28 at 7pm, then continues until May 16. A public programme of related workshops, screenings and performances will accompany the exhibition. Contact [email protected] for further information.
24 March – 4 April
The Hyde Bridge Gallery, Yeats Memorial Building, Sligo
The Hyde Bridge Gallery Sligo will open a unique exhibition featuring the new work of Irish-born artist Bryan Gerard Duffy on March 24th, on view until April 4th.
Sharing its name with W.B. Yeats’ poem, The Fool by the Roadside is a compilation of works featuring drawings from the innards of an Israeli Army tank to a video dissecting the landscapes and harsh realities of two Palestinian communities in the West Bank.
In addition, the exhibition will be supported by a number of installation works, photography and line drawings investigating Irelands relationship with “The Holyland”.
Harnessing Creativity – Expanding Territories Exhibition at Leitrim Sculpture Centre
Friday 13th March – Friday 27th March
Leitrim Sulpture Centre, Manorhamilton, Co Leitrim.
Over 30 creatives from the North West will present innovative new products and services ranging from Architecture, Film, Fashion, Product Design, Fine Art, Leisure Activities, Music and much more.
Launch and wine reception: Friday 27 March at 6pm.
Exhibition runs until the 23rd of April.
Main St. Moneygall Village, 1km from M7, Junction 23.
Our next exhibition at Gallery Revival in Moneygall will feature contemporary abstract paintings by Mai Fanning and Irish Wildlife paintings by Sheila Burton, both artists are from Wexford.
Phaenomena
24 March – 14 April | Opening: 24 March at 7pm
Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne Library & Cultural Centre, Ashbourne, Co. Meath
Meath County Council Arts Office is delighted to present Phaenomena by Gabrielle Bishop in the Toradh Gallery, Ashbourne Library & Cultural Centre, Ashbourne, Co. Meath. The exhibition will be opened at 7pm on Tuesday 24th March 2015. All welcome.
Gabrielle Bishop graduated in History at the University of Sussex and completed her training in Stained Glass in London and Barcelona. She has worked in museums and stained glass studios in England and Spain. Now living in Westport, Gabrielle, since graduating with distinction in Fine Art from the GMIT 2013, has exhibited at the Linenhall, the Hyde Bridge Gallery, the Stronach Gallery, and the Claremorris Open 2014. She was awarded the Linenhall Medal and her work is in both public and private collections. Her paintings reflect her background in history and stained glass with time, materials and environment being key to her work, along with themes of colour, light and transformation. This is her first solo exhibition.
With reference to the ancients, the exhibition takes its name from Aratus’ poem describing constellations and weather lore, and connects with the megalithic builders of the Boyne Valley and beyond whose practice was to observe and register the solar and stellar movements of the celestial sphere.
Phaenomena runs until April 14th 2015.
RHA Artists at dlr LexIcon Municipal Gallery
Aitiuil
Friday 27 March – Saturday 9 May
Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin
Carey Clarke PPRHA, John Coyle RHA, Melanie le Brocquy HRHA, George Potter RHA & Imogen Stuart RHA
Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council is delighted to present Aitiuil, a group exhibition exploring the work of five eminent members of the Royal Hibernian Academy, all of whom have a connection with Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County. The artists, now all senior academicians in their seventies and eighties, include former RHA President Carey Clarke PPRHA; Professor of Painting John Coyle RHA; Professor of Sculpture Imogen Stuart RHA; George Potter RHA; and Honorary member Melanie le Brocquy HRHA.
The exhibition programme, in the Municipal Gallery, dlr LexIcon, will open on Friday 27 March and run until Saturday 9 May 2015 and is curated by Tara Murphy, Director of Solomon Fine Art, Dublin.
The Gallery Learning Programme will offer opportunities for visitors to explore and engage with the artworks on show, through a series of talks and workshops.
Aitiuil will present key early, mid-career and late works from each of the artists’ oeuvres, offering the audience unique and often intimate insights into the lives and creative minds of these five distinguished artists – all of whom have chosen Dun Laoghaire and its environs as a place to settle down and work in.
For further information or hi-res images please contact Ciara King, Assistant Arts Office-Arts Programme Development, dlr Arts Office, Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council.
‘The Beholder’s Share’ Exhibition at Project Spaces, IMMA
The Beholder’s Share
26 March – 26 April | Thursday 26 March, 6.00 – 8.00pm | The exhibition will be officially opened by Sarah Glennie, Director, IMMA.
Project Spaces, IMMA
The opening of The Beholder’s Share will include a performative lecture by Jane Locke at 7.00pm in the Project Spaces.
The Beholder’s Share examines unrealised and existing projects from the IMMA Collection. The focus of the exhibition is the role which the viewer can play in imaginatively completing an unrealised work. Exploring the documentation, stories and latent potential of projects by artists such as Joseph Beuys, Christo, William Furlong and Sol LeWitt, the show will also include selected unrealisable proposals by 4th year students from IADT’s BA in Visual Arts Practice. The Beholder’s Share is curated by students on the Art and Research Collaboration (ARC) MA programme at IADT in collaboration with the IMMA National Programme.
‘PORTFOLIO: Glass’ | Group Exhibition at Solomon Fine Art
PORTFOLIO: Glass
20 March – 16 May
Solomon Fine Art, Balfe Street, Dublin 2
From Friday 20 March to Saturday 16 May, Solomon Fine Art, in conjunction with the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland (DCCoI), Irish Design 2015 (ID2015) and The Doyle Collection, are pleased to host an exhibition of Glass by Ireland’s most renowned artists and makers. PORTFOLIO: Glass will be held in the stunning new 60m2 gallery space, located at the main entrance to the Westbury Hotel and Westbury Mall on Balfe Street, just a few steps from Solomon Fine Art’s existing gallery and a stone’s throw from Grafton Street. PORTFOLIO: Glass will present over 60 innovative artworks by twenty highly regarded glass artists, working in a centuries-old continuum.
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Scott Benefield, Emma Bourke, Edmond Byrne, Sean Campbell, Debbie Dawson, Róisín de Buitléar, Karen Donnellan, Alva Gallagher, Karl Harron, Catherine Keenan, Peadar Lamb, Alison Lowry, Michael Ray, Louise Rice, Killian Schurmann, Andrea Spencer, Paula Stokes, Catherine Wilcoxson / Danuna Glass and Peter Young.
SCENES FROM LIFE: Recent Sketchbooks, Paintings and Sculptures 20 March – 18 April
Solomon Fine Art, Balfe Street, Dublin 2
From 20 March to 18 April 2015 Solomon Fine Art is delighted to host a solo exhibition of new works by the Dublin-based Scottish artist JOHN SHORT. John joined the Solomon stable in 2011 and this is his first, and highly anticipated, solo exhibition with the gallery.
The show will include his iconic large-scale watercolours of the landmark Forty Foot bathing spot near James Joyce’s Martello Tower in Sandycove, as well as numerous paintings from his travels to Australia, China and Morocco. He is also exhibiting framed pages from his wonderful travel sketchbooks and a series of quirky 3D sculptures in cardboard and acrylic resin. As an artist who enjoys experimenting and exploring with non-traditional methods of image making, John Short’s paintings embrace the contemporary while showing great respect for traditional drawing skills. Essentially he works in watercolour, but likes to explore many different effects with other materials such as acrylic ink, salt (for texture) and photo transfer. He enjoys creating a tension between the sharp areas of focus, the realistic and semi-photographic image and the fluid, more intuitive and less defined areas. John contributes to the feeling of spontaneity and immediacy by carefully considering his composition and often taking an unusual or unexpected view of his subject.
‘The Macabre Gallery Show’ I Group Exhibition at GalleryX
The Macabre Gallery Show
27 March – 1 May | Opening: 26 March
GalleryX, 3 Herbert Street, Dublin 2
GalleryX was founded just last year with the promise to fill a void in the Irish gallery scene by showcasing art that challenges our ideas of beauty, of right and wrong, of appropriateness.
Its third show, organised in cooperation with international curators The Macabre Gallery, brings together a set of outstanding artists – most of whom are at their Irish debut – that are active in “dark fine art”. The exhibition opens on Friday 27th March, with a preview on the 26th and will be available for viewing until May 1st.
Dark or macabre art is art that speaks to our innermost side by evoking our most hidden feelings. Often mixing together sensual and religious imagery, or playing with the beauty of death, it creates a sense of unease as it simultaneously attracts and repulses the viewer.
The show opening at the end of March was co-organised with the Macabre Gallery, an online information source and gallery based in Spain.
Beneath That Darkness There Was Another
25 March – 11 April | Opening: 25 March at 6pm
Pallas Projects/Studios, 115–117 The Coombe, Dublin 8
Gallery times: Thursday–Saturday, 12–6pm
Beneath That Darkness There Was Another is a exhibition of painting, sculpture and laser-engraved panels. The exhibition continues the artist’s ongoing development of a personal abstract vocabulary while introducing new media and materials. The works have been developed through the layering and accumulation of simple forms into more complex constructions.
Drawing and the use of line is central to the exhibition which involves a flow back and forth between the two dimensional and three dimensional, the handmade and the digital. Ideas developed in one medium evolve into another.
The exhibition is the first time the artist will exhibit a collection of paintings. In this work paint has been used to develop the artist’s drawing practice adding new aspects of texture and depth. The paintings avoid colour to focus on tone, form, texture and layering. While the sculptures aspire to a sense of completeness through the use of systems and geometric forms. More recent paintings have allowed for a more expansive approach.
26 – 31 March 1 – 5.30pm | Opening 26 March 6pm
Under an Achill Sky
Sculptor and Photographer, Liam Kelly will showcase a selection of his Bogwood sculptures along with accompanying photographs in his first solo Dublin exhibition, curated by Tony Strickland. The opening speaker will be Sean Molloy, Achill Tourism Manager.
Eclipse
Tuesday 24 – 29 of March, 1pm to 6pm | Thursday 26 of March 18.30 to 20.30
INEX is a group of mainly Dublin based contemporary artists disciplined in various media, painting, drawing, sculpture, audio and video. Having exhibited both individually and within group shows in Ireland and abroad, INEX was formed to allow the participating artists to explore shared ideas. Curated by Lynda Phelan, artists include Paula Dunne, Mags O Dea, Bonnie Kavanagh, Serena Kitt, PilibmacanBháird, Marie Morrow, Deborah Hewson, Nick Bayne, Frances O’ Dwyer, Mette Roche, Ken Rooney and Gay Brabazon.
190a Rathmines Road Lower, Rathmines, Dublin 6 www.facebook.com/groups
Eat Your Children: Film by Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary
Sunday 22 March at 2pm
Screen Cinema, D’Olier Street, Dublin
Eat your children
A film about Ireland, austerity and daring to dissent
Premiering at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, Eat Your Children is nominated for a CineTalent Award. Made by Treasa O’Brien and Mary Jane O’Leary, the film is a road trip around Ireland trying to understand the crisis of the last few years and attitudes to protest and civil disobedience in Ireland. Finding more than a financial crisis; there is a crisis of identity and a crisis of governance. The film swerves away from the road trip into essay montage and delves into the history of protest in Ireland and tries to understand our present culture.
Screenings at:
Irish Film Institute, Dublin on 12 April
Limerick Spring Festival of Politics and Ideas on 17 April
Belfast Film Festival on 19 April
JEWELLED WASTELAND
Exhibition of works by Kathrine Geoghegan
Well-known & well-loved biologist, environmental consultant, radio/TV presenter and educator Eanna ni Lamhna will be opening the exhibition on Thursday 2nd April 2015, 7-9pm
Duration: Monday 30 March – Sunday 12 April 2015
Signal Arts Centre is delighted to be exhibiting works by talented artist Kathrine Geoghegan.
The importance of nature and habitat has informed Geoghegan’s newest body of work. She has developed a process using organic materials such as native grasses, foliage and plants working together with acrylic spray paint.
ECLIPSE – A Group Exhibition by INEX
Curated by Lynda Phelan
The MART Gallery, 190a Lower Rathmines Road, Dublin 6
24 – 29 March 2015 | 1 – 6:30pm
Opening: 26 March | 6 – 8:30pm
Paula Dunne, Mags O Dea, Bonnie Kavanagh, Serena Kitt, Pilib Mac An Bháird, Marie Morrow, Deborah Hewson, Nick Bayne, Frances O’ Dwyer, Mette Roche, Ken Rooney and Gay Brabazon
Two Exhibitions with Glasheen Art Studio Program at the Sirius Arts Centre
Generation & People-Tools-Cities
26 March – 26 April | Opening: 26 March at 7pm
Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork
Both shows open Thurs 26 March 7pm and run until Sun 26 April.
Generation is a public participation project with GASP (Glasheen Art Studio Program). The project invited people of varying ages to create works on the subject of age; the work of both children and older people will be presented together, portraying the curiosity and magic of childhood through to the experience of those in later years. The project provides opportunities for people from different generations to meet, interact and support each other’s creative process. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of activities and workshops that will focus on process and build on this interaction. Generation is in collaboration with St Luke’s nursing home in Cork and Cork Educate Together National School.
People-Tools-Cities is the work of three artists from GASP who have been working in Cork city; each artist focusing on a chosen subject. Yvonne Condon considers the portrait, inspired by the black and white photographs of August Sander shown at Sirius in 2014. Idé Ní Shúilleábháin focuses on tools, influenced by Konrad Klapheck paintings, while Rosaleen Moore explores the city, observing buildings and painting from memory. There will be a number of additional events associated with this project. See Sirius website for further details.
GASP is developed through the COPE Foundations’ Arts Programme and is directed by Hermann Marbe. GASP artists are currently taking part in the COPE Foundations’ Arts Programme.
Recent Paintings And Drawings
21 March – 25 April
McKenna Gallery, 31 Castle Street, Omagh, Co. Tyrone
After several years in theatre and television which still remains a strong influence, Menary undertook a visual art/multimedia course at Dartington college of Arts, Devon followed by a course in education at Exeter University.
In the 70s and early 80s his work was mostly assemblage involving a cross media approach.
In the mid 80s he started to experiment with paint and drawing tools. This has become in recent years his primary form of expression.
Ideas and concepts still remain his starting points, and not the traditional visual beginning. ‘Visual’ becomes the form of expression.
BOM
28 March – 16 May | Opening: 28 March at 7pm
Centre for Contemporary Art, 10-12 Artillery Street., Derry~Londonderry, BT48 6RG
CCA presents BOM, a new exhibition by Amsterdam-based Irish artist Bea McMahon. The exhibition features performance, video, sculpture, and drawing works, many of which are being presented for the first time.
The works in BOM have their beginnings in the artist’s recent experience of searching for wolves in the French mountains with a camera. Although wolves are not directly represented in the exhibition, both the experience of anticipating their encounter and the mythological history of these animals serve as structuring principles for the artworks. These works include a Super 8 film that repeatedly shows a reddened human ear that appears behind a veil of long hair, a sculpture that approximates a sheep, and a series of drawings that contain the letters that constitute the line ‘DOG LOVES PATRICK’.
Like the form of an ‘epistolary’ novel – similar in this sense to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, where the reader has to determine a phantom-being through a triangulation of voices, documents and correspondences – the works in BOM are held in a chorus of apprehension and fear. The wolf lurks at the edges of the exhibition, slipping between the frames of film reel and the utterances of language. It connects a range of references – from medieval folklore (the tale that if a wolf sees you first, you lose your ability to speak; if you see it first, it loses its animal power) – through to the Irish origins of the word ‘wolf’ (mac tíre) to denote ‘the son of the land’, reflecting its feral and territorial nature.
The exhibition opens on March 28 at 7pm, then continues until May 16. A public programme of related workshops, screenings and performances will accompany the exhibition. Please contact [email protected] for further information.
We are Them, They are Us
26 March – 15 May 2015
Golden Thread Gallery, 84-94 Great Patrick Street, Belfast BT1 2LU
Golden Thread Gallery is delighted to present Margaret Harrison’s first solo exhibition in Ireland, We are Them, They are Us. Harrison is widely regarded as one of the most important artists of her generation and was awarded the prestigious Northern Art Prize in 2013. This exhibition will present several seminal works created at various stages of her career alongside a number of more recent pieces.
Born in Wakefield in 1940, Harrison has spent her career creating artwork that addresses political and societal concerns. Many of the themes explored in her work, (such as protest, land rights and contested space), will resonate with audiences in Northern Ireland. Harrison investigates these issues by examining events such as the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and the colonisation of the Australian landscape.
In other works, Harrison questions issues of gender inequality and the objectification of women in popular culture. Hugh Hefner is reimagined as a Bunny Boy, posing provocatively in a corset, stockings and bunny ears. A man who has made millions through the objectification of women is, in turn, objectified.
As part of the exhibition, Margaret Harrison will join Prof Hilary Robinson, (Dean of the School of Art and Design, Middlesex University), in conversation at the gallery on Friday 27th March from 12.30 – 1.30 pm. All are welcome to attend. Admission is free and refreshments will be provided.
History Objects
23 March – 13 April | Opening: 25 March at 6pm
Framewerk Gallery, 10 Upper Newtownards Road, Belfast
Opening times 10.30am – 6pm Mon – Sat
History Objects presents Michael Sheppard’s ongoing work where he looks at the instability and transience of meaning within objects. Sheppard explores how objects have been repurposed over the course of their existence, of how time and slightest intervention changes the perception of such things. Using painting, photography and sculpture he investigates ways of re-viewing public monuments, advertising and ornamentation.
Paint is often applied to conceal information from appropriated or found sources as opposed to creating it, thus masking and abstracting from it’s original state. The history of the picture or object being changed though not fully erased.
Monuments are photographed as a record but also presented as banners for something else, that something is unknown and unspecified.
Enda O’Donoghue in Group Exhibition at Pantocrátor Gallery, Shanghai
16 March – 3 April
Pantocrator Gallery, Shanghai. China, M50. Moghanshan Rd. Bld. 4B 105. 200060
A group exhibition featuring the work of Enda O’Donoghue will open at the Pantocrátor Gallery in Shanghai on Saturday, March 21st. The exhibition will run from March 16th to April 3rd.
Featuring artists: Anastasia Coyto (Spain), Anne Wölk (Germany), Enda O’Donoghue (Ireland), Pablo Lerma (Spain), Roland Darjes (Germany)
Even
20 – 31 March 2015
S0MA Gallery, Liegnitzer Str. 34, 10999 Berlin
S0MA Gallery is pleased to announce the second solo exhibition by Berlin based Irish artist Nadine Stewart.
For this exhibition Nadine Stewart will present new works created during the residency at S0MA Gallery from November 2014 to March 2015 focusing on the intimacy of drawing and the art production process in a studio environment. The repetition of simple elements and a serialised use of the grid convey minimalist aesthetics and a disciplined structure in the creation of these new works.
Aoife Flynn is an artist, illustrator, maker, and twin. She is into all things visual and cultural and is wary of writing about herself in the third person, but if she doesn't do it, who will?
