Editorial

par Gabriel Gee & Sophie Orlando  

MFA Show Belfast & Void Gallery, Derry

par Gregory McCartney  

Here and There:

Artists Selected for Fort Dunree

par Gregory McCartney  

Bartlett Summer Show 2011

par Tom Clark  

St Martin’s MA Fine Art Degree Show

par Anne-Laure Franchette  

Camberwell College of Arts Degree Show

par Ana Martinez Fernandez  

Free Range Artists and the Hypermarket

par Sophie Le Filleul  

Goldsmiths Postgraduate Degree Show 2011:

A Labyrinth (No Minotaur)

par Daniel Rourke  

Northumbria University Degree show

par Innes Meek  

Newcastle University Degree show 2011

par Gabriel N. Gee  

Sheffield Steel

par Toby Juliff  

Contributors

par Sophie Orlando & Gabriel Gee  

 

 Here and There is the first in a yearly series of the pick of Irish graduate exhibitions organised by Declan Sheehan, Director of Artlink, a Donegal based arts organisation. Three artists are given the task of picking notable graduate pieces from the various Irish graduate exhibitions held throughout Ireland. They have to pick work within the context of the locale, that is, Dunree Fort, a former British then Irish military outpost in County Donegal, Republic of Ireland. For 2011 the selectors were artists Ursula Burke, Sam Keogh, and Jim Ricks, Irish based artists who exhibited at Fort Dunree for Artlink in 2010. It means picking work that can resonate with the political, historical, social and geographical topography of Dunree and Donegal. No easy task. In 1998 French curator/theorist Nicholas Bourriaud published a book entitled ‘Relational Aesthetics’, a term that sought to promote the idea that the artist was involved in creating a space in which relationships could be created between people and new conversations and ways of living started. He saw artists as facilitators rather than makers and regarded art to an extent as information exchanged between the artist and the viewers. It was a controversial point of view and had its supporters and critics. It could be developed however and this is what Artlink seeks to do in its Here and There show. In Here and There it’s all about ‘locational Aesthetics’. This is intended to imply creation of a debate as to how contemporary artwork can fit into the geographical, social, historical and political context of Fort Dunree. Fort Dunree is not a traditional ‘white-cube’ city-centre art space. Therefore to exhibit work that resonates with the specific site and setting of this Fort Dunree building is absolutely necessary. The art may not ‘speak’ directly about the context of this specific military fort or of rural Donegal landscapes but it starts new conversations on issues relevant to the site and setting of the Fort Dunree galleries.

The work on show is varied but well chosen to work in its locale. Marie Varley’s silkscreen print of blank stamp album graph paper is an oblique reference to symbols of national power and identity, in thi instance the postage stamp, overtaken by new technologies and structures of power and meaning. William Smith’s work combines the form of an urn, which echoes (ancient) history and beliefs, with symbolism of the ‘atomic age’ as decorative motif, an echo of the twentieth century’s history and beliefs. Tim Millen’s paintings refer to historical themes of Romanticism in landscape painting, contrast a historical romantic representation of nature as an un-colonised frontier, wild and terrifyingly beautiful; with the contemporary condition of nature as urbanized, regulated and over-exploited. Cainneach Lennon’s Prairie Grass is completely at home in a rural landscape though at the same time is somewhat unsettling and alien. Billie Jean Cullen connects to the landscape, specifically narratives of those who work within it, through her study of the Irish forestry industry. Alissa Kleist’s work makes reference to a cultivated rainforest which was constructed on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, as resource for the British military base there, a manipulation of the ‘natural’ within a strategic location from which to exert power. Lesley Cherry’s The Knitted Word Project also retells stories leaving them open-ended rather than closed and dead. Marie Dollard’s works here are a juxtaposition of the traditional form of embroidery and the visceral concerns and associations prevalent within much contemporary art. Iain McEllin explores how the systems and processes manipulated within making an artwork – here the mechanisms of printing – can test the limits of a viewer’s physical perception. Several other exhibiting artists give a new sense of purpose to old and discarded objects and create work from a concern with their form, surface and texture. The process of making these works of course continually creates new and chance occurrences, opening paths to the subconscious and to unexpected emotions and responses. Cathal McGinley uses found objects, which are often inherently fragile and ephemeral, ‘makes them feel good about themselves again’. Anne Marie Taggart works in a spontaneous manner with found objects creating new meaning through experimentation. Lucy Andrews creates unexpected scenarios and imagined narratives in her manipulation of everyday objects.  I’m a great believer in context and locale in curating. It helps to stops art becoming merely a commodity and art galleries the identikit supermarkets on which it is displayed.