Beyond the country
Perspectives of the land in historic and contemporary art

26 October - 3 February 2008

Curated by Matt Packer and René Zechlin

Beyond the country presents historic and contemporary artistic representations of the land. The sometimes contradictory depictions include perceptions of the sublime in landscape, as well as observations of narrative, mythical, environmental or social aspects of rural life. While the countryside is often described in opposition to the city, this exhibition challenges that division by presenting perspectives that dissolve any clear separation between the two.

Participating artists:
Bas Jan Ader, John Bock, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Hugh Charde, Adam Chodzko, David Claerbout, Clodagh Emoe, Patrick Feehan, Cyprian Gaillard, Marine Hugonnier, Paul Henry, James Ireland, Sven Johne, Joseph Malachy Kavanagh, William Magrath, Dara McGrath, Frank McKelvey, David Muirhead, William Mulready, Dermot O'Brien, Olaf Quantius, Rachel Reupke, Xavier Ribas, Daniel Roth, George Russell, Walter Westley Russell, Johan Thurfjell, Richard T Walker, Richard Wilson.

Gerhard Richter
Survey

3 July - 7 October 2007

Works selected by Gerhard Richter
Exhibition realised by ifa

Download the Exhibition Guide here

Gerhard Richter is the most internationally recognised German artist today, with his work spanning nearly fifty years. Gerhard Richter: Survey is a retrospective exhibition presented by ifa , the German Institute of Cultural Relations, continuing its series of exhibitions dedicated to individual contemporary artists, which began in 1989 with the artist Joseph Beuys. In this case ifa invited the artist to actively participate in the selection process. The resulting collection of twenty-seven works give an insight into all the phases of Richter's creative work – from the photo-paintings of the 1960s to the abstract paintings of the 1980s and 1990s. The title is taken from a work by Richter from 1998 in which he made a chart listing important artists, poets, philosophers, musicians and architects by date, without any evaluation or commentary. This process of noting the individual figure, or in this case, artwork, seeing it as a part of a historical sequence, is well suited to the current exhibition, which includes work exemplifying many of the motifs and ideas addressed by Richter in his work.

The fundamental theme of Gerhard Richter's artistic practice – underlying the various motifs, stylistic approaches and art historical references – is and remains the art of painting itself. Richter is credited with reviving painting as a medium during a period many artists preferred to work in performance and ready-made media. He saw the need to separate art from art history, and strove for new ways of painting, focusing on the image rather than the reference and the visual rather than the statement.

As a contrast to painting, Gerhard Richter uses its modern counterpart in the depiction of reality, photography. It was the year 1962 that he first took a photograph as the starting point for the act of painting. Since then, he has systematically collected photographs as patterns or 'first layers' for his paintings. Thus emerged an archive of private and public photos from 1945 up to today, consisting of newspaper photos, snapshots by amateurs, as well as his own photographs – all of which were exhibited for the first time in 1972 under the title 'Atlas'. From this storehouse of photographs, Gerhard Richter chooses his motifs, which he then enlarges or perhaps uses only a detail from. Through the precise reproduction of the original with all its lack of sharp definition, the picture points to the fact that it comes from the realm of photography, and to its origins in the banal world of pictures in mass media or amateur photography. The motive of the painting remains vague, as Richter reduces to tones of gray, in his translation of photography into painting. Thus he removes painting from the object, which, at the end of the 60s in the so-called 'Grey Pictures', completely disappears in the colour grey – for Richter, this is the colour of indifference, of nothing. The artist later returns to colour and finds his way to a complex method of painting in layers, producing the abstract paintings of the 1980s.

In association with

Overtake
The Reinterpretation of Modern Art

3 July - 7 October 2007

Curated by René Zechlin and Matt Packer

How can art continue to be made after the great examples in Modern Art? How can artistic ideas be developed further beyond duplication? The exhibition Overtake , curated by René Zechlin and Matt Packer, presents international contemporary artists that reconstruct and reinterpret existing artworks and practices of a former generation in order to produce and instruct new works.

Appropriation Art of the 1970s and 1980s and artists such as Sherrie Levine, Elaine Sturtevant or Richard Prince used means of duplication to raise questions on authorship and authenticity. Although often using comparable means, there are different interests at stake for a later generation of artists presented in Overtake. The featured artists use the visual and conceptual opportunities of recent art histories, employing strategies of appropriation in order to position themselves in relation to their artistic forebears. This ‘self-positioning' is often a subjective and yet critical reverence to the artwork in question.

The reinterpretation of art that features in Overtake is often founded on personal encounters with objects and the sites of important artistic actions. In other cases, it is artistic concepts, legacies and reputations that are under review, reconstituted toward a new set of attitudes and contexts. It is the search to locate the significance of specific artists and artworks that discloses a new position . In this sense Overtake is an artistic reconnaissance of Modern Art, presenting various artistic means of negotiating the over-whelming influence of art's histories.

The exhibition leads furthermore to questions of the construction and continuation of art history. The exhibits reject any idea of linear development in history and suggest a continuous re-working of past histories. The re-configuration of histories becomes relevant, especially against the background of the ever-increasing output of information available on the internet, or via the increasingly-busy traffic of monographs or written texts. The result, someway anticipated by cultural theorists such as Walter Benjamin in the early 20th century, is that images and their histories are more mobile and less-fixed to their original constructions. Art and history is not seen as a series of end-points or resolutions, but as something still active, that can be undermined, over-worked, reconstituted, or updated.

Overtake has been developed in response to a survey of works by Gerhard Richter, which will exhibited simultaneously at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. Richter has himself been associated with strategies of appropriation, but more typically approaching newspaper, archival and private sources. In this sense Overtake takes Richter's artistic practice as a starting point and links it with current trends in contemporary art practice. The two exhibitions will be presented in order to share and respond to one another, and to encourage a discourse on the way in which art continues to function in relation to itself, but also opening a vital and urgent question of the way in which art-making and history-making counteract.

Participating artists:

Bernd Behr, Andrea Büttner, Kerstin Cmelka , Annelise Coste, Tacita Dean, Carsten Fock, Iain Forsyth/Jane Pollard, Wade Guyton, Bertrand Lavier, Mark Leckey, Sean Lynch, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Jonathan Monk, Falke Pisano, Tilo Schulz, Mario Garcia Torres

The Year of the Golden Pig
Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection

13 March - 17 June 2007

From 13 March – 17 June 2007 , the Lewis Glucksman Gallery presents a major exhibition of contemporary Chinese Art, The Year of the Golden Pig: Contemporary Chinese Art from the Sigg Collection. The title refers to the fact that 2007 in Chinese astrology is The Year of the Golden Pig .

The Sigg Collection

The exhibition will be curated from the collection of Swiss businessman and diplomat Dr. Uli Sigg. The former Swiss ambassador to China , Dr. Sigg, has taken a keen interest in China and its culture since the late 1970s. Together with his wife Rita, he has been building a collection devoted exclusively to Chinese art since the mid-1990s, and can justly be regarded as a pioneer in this field. Having initially concentrated on the acquisition of new art, Dr. Sigg soon began to extend his collection to include historic works of Chinese avant-garde art from the 1980s and early 90s. All the leading positions and important trends are represented by major works, many of which have now achieved iconic status in the Chinese art world. The result of this systematic approach is a collection of contemporary Chinese art that is unparalleled in terms of its scope and quality.

Chinese Contemporary Art

Since the post-Mao reform era began in 1979, China has seen the emergence of an extremely diverse and dynamic art scene, a development that has taken place within a short space of time and in spite of the continuing difficulties faced by those involved in independent art production. In recent years, contemporary art from China has also been attracting great interest in the West with a number of high profile exhibitions in key art institutions around the world.

Chinese artists have quickly found their place in the international art scene, and skilfully employ media, techniques and forms of expression that were developed in the West. Nevertheless, their specifically Chinese roots – pre-modern tradition on the one hand, the requirements of the Socialist Realist style prescribed by the Communist Party until the late 1970s on the other – are evident in many of the artists' works; in comparison to Western art, for example, greater emphasis is placed on figurative painting.

Some of these artists consciously address the issue of their national identity by adopting the techniques and formal language of traditional Chinese art and placing them in a new context. Another significant trend is to parody or reflect upon the art and art history of the West from a Chinese perspective. Above all, however, Chinese avant-garde art has to be viewed in the light of the tremendous social and economic upheavals that have taken place in recent decades; a large number of works specifically reflect the tension between the socialist ideals which are still officially valid and the wave of consumerism that has swept the country as a result of the capitalist reforms.

Participating artists:

Ai Weiwei, Bai Yiluo, Chang Xugong, Fang Lijun, Fu Hong, Hai Bo, Hong Hao, Hong Lei, Huang Yan, Li Zhanyang, Lin Tianmiao, Lin Yilin, Liu Jianhua, Liu Rentao, Liu Wei, Liu Xiaodong, Lu Hao, Luo Brothers, Ou Ning/ Cao Fei, Qi Zhilong, Qiu Shihua, Shi Guorui, Shi Xinning, Song Yongping, Wang Guangyi, Wang Jianwei, Wang Jin, Wang Jinsong, Wang Ningde, Wang Xingwei, Wang Yin, Wei Guangqin, Weng Fen, Xiang Liqing, Yin Xiuzhen, Yu Youhan, Yue Min Jun, Zeng Han, Zhang Huan, Zhang Peili, Zhang Xiaogang, Zhao Bandi, Zhou Tiehai, Zhu Fadong , Zhu Jia, Zhuang Hui

Embodied Time
Art Video, 1970 - present

9 December 2006 - 25 February 2007

Embodied Time is curated by Dr. Sabine Kriebel and René Zechlin and has been developed with support by the Netherlands Media Arts Institute – Montevideo / Time Based Arts, Amsterdam.

The exhibition Embodied Time investigates the role that the human body has played in the time-based medium of video, from 1970 to the present moment. Unlike painting or sculpture, the medium of video records actions, events, or performances using technological means to incorporate duration into art making. Embodied Time investigates the interplay of artist, technical media, and viewer, presenting a range of works from the documentation of a performance to large-scale video installation works.

The representation of the human body was a central aspect in the development of video art from its beginnings in the 1960s and 70s. Video offered a more affordable alternative to film making, and allowed artists new possibilities to document time-specific artistic events, such as live performances and ‘happenings', – practices which were prominently and concurrently being developed from the 1960s onward. In these contexts, artists used their own bodies to subvert established and hegemonic representations, especially from feminist perspectives. The partnership of artists' bodies and video also coincided with the issue of ‘dematerialization', a term which coined artists' resistances to the commodification of art in both subject and object.

Video was used, not simply a documentation-tool, but also as a creative framework with its own set of aesthetic and material parameters. Video also reconfigured artists' relationships to audiences, allowing artists to perform solely in front of a camera as a way of interaction with the viewer. In other cases, such as in video installations, the viewer does not assume a fixed and passive position, but is required to interact and immerse themselves into the artwork, therefore becoming part of the work's activation.

Just as earlier developments in film enabled the body to appear in dimensions of time and space that were never before possible – video enabled artists to explore this further with renewed possibilities and interests. Throughout the exhibition, artistic examinations of the human body do not only include its physical aspects, as well as the body's pathological limits or vulnerabilities. The human body is also addressed in its spatial and social context.

Beside the time-based character of the medium, time comes to present in the works in various forms, such as history, memory, or transience. But time can also become a pact with the viewer, often demanding a specific length of engagement – from the start to the end of the tape. Video returns the viewer to the origin of the event, declaring its absolute, self-renewing presence, returning us to the performing body, in history, again and again in a suspended and endless present.

Participating Artists:
Marina Abramovic, Vito Acconci, Kevin Atherton, Lynda Benglis, Marinus Boezem, Peter Bogers, Valie Export, Dan Graham, Nan Hoover, Joan Jonas, Urs Lüthi, Franziska Megert, Nam June Paik, Gina Pane, Arnulf Rainer, Ulrike Rosenbach, Tony Sinden, Bill Spinhoven, Ulay

Cooling Out
on the paradox of feminism
1 September - 26 November 2006

Coproduction with Halle für Kunst, Lüneburg, Germany, and Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland

The exhibition Cooling out – on the paradox of feminism examines the situation of women and the role of feminism today through works by international contemporary female and male artists. Many of the original objectives of feminism such as the right to vote, legal equality, opportunities for education for women and criminalisation of male violence against women have been achieved within the western world. Although some of these developments are very recent, a younger generation of women often react negatively towards the term feminism. How can a political or social movement create so many positive changes, while simultaneously developing negative connotations? Such is the paradox of feminism.

It seems that the women's movement has become a victim of its own success to such an extent that many young women no longer feel that they are in any way disadvantaged. An overly sensitive reaction to the term 'feminism', to positive discrimination, to the declared promotion of women's interests and to quotas of women is often the cause of this.

But have all the aims of the women's movement been achieved? Is there a society of equal rights and possibilities for both genders? For example, why do male professors continue to outnumber female ones, even in faculties in which young women predominate as students? Why do many more women study art, while the proportion of internationally well-known artists tend to be predominantly male? Even a study by the MIT in 1998 suggests, "that gender discrimination in the 1990s is subtle but pervasive, and stems from unconscious ways of thinking that have been socialised into all of us, men and women alike." While the creation of family friendly work policies and laws are continuously changing and improving social structures, the depiction of gender roles in the media is often very much in contrast with these efforts.

Gender can be understood as a social identity, which constantly has to be analysed and reconstructed. But what are the factors that constitute this social identity? Cooling out examines the influences of media, education and existing social structures on female identity. The artistic works in the exhibition present the current attitudes of young women towards their role in society and their struggle to create their own identity.

The exhibition is a collaboration of the Kunsthaus Baselland in Muttenz/Basel, Switzerland, the Halle für Kunst in Lüneburg, Germany and the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and is curated by Sabine Schaschl-Cooper, Bettina Steinbrügge and René Zechlin and is presented in parallel at the three institutions.

Participating Artists:
3 Hamburger Frauen (DE), Shannon Bool (CA/DE), Cabello/Carceller (ES), Esra Ersen (TR), Dani Gal (IL/DE), Andrea Geyer/Sharon Hayes (DE/US), Jaki Irvine (IRL), Katrin Mayer (DE), Josephine Meckseper (DE/US), Michael a Meise (DE), Elodie Pong (CH), Aurora Reinhard (FIN), Una Quigley (IRL), Pernille Kapper Williams (DK/DE).

Gendering Irish Landscape
1 September - 26 November 2006

Gendering Irish Landscape looks at the representation of Ireland during the early years of the Free State in Ireland. The exhibition considers the gendering of the land as female and highlights the concerted effort made by more zealous nationalists of the 1920's and 1930's to assert masculinity as the essential characteristic of the Gael (the new Irishman). This Gaelic masculinity was portrayed as a type of hyper masculinity, to render it authentic however, it needed to be juxtaposed against a hyper-femininity. How this impacted on the construction of Irish female identity is seen in the many paintings of Sean Keating, Charles Lamb, Paul Henry and others. Excited about presenting images of a real Ireland that would be recognizably different from its former ruler Britain, these artists created numerous paintings of the rugged beauty in the West of Ireland. Many of their paintings portrayed women, set against a backdrop of a wild rural landscape, dressed in peasant costumes, working on the land or tending to their children. The rural dress worn by many of these women was the antithesis of contemporary fashions associated with England and elsewhere from that time, proclaiming the new Free State as an anti-urban entity.

Ireland, both geographically and politically had been allegorised as female for many years before the creation of the Free State. The representation of land as female asserted male domination at a political level, but also articulated the patriarchical belief that there is a symbiotic relationship between woman and nature. Irish women were therefore encouraged to be, first and foremost, mothers whose duty was to teach their children to love Gaelic traditions and freedom. This meant that a woman existed solely through her family and the domestic sphere. Excluded from politics and the work place, the 1937 Constitution made it clear that a woman's place was in the home. She was defined as the passive embodiment of nature. Images of the cottage, romanticized by so many paintings from that time became a metaphor for her banishment from the public arena and the site of power.

Although the new economic and cultural developments of the 1920's and 1930's opened up an opportunity to move beyond the gender hierarchy set up by colonial rule, Catholic conservatism prevailed, creating further polarities between the sexes. Women continued to be viewed and represented as meek and passive. During the 1930's however, this idea was further emphasized through the erection of many hundreds of statues of the Virgin, in open-air grottoes. Both Church and State celebrated her virtues. The Madonna had lived an entirely private life, devoting herself exclusively to the greater needs of her family. Often regarded as the Queen of Ireland, she provided the perfect exemplar for Irish women.

Although the subject of women and nature has featured in artworks all over the world for hundreds of years, this exhibition focuses specifically on the representation of Ireland and the construction of female identity. Much of the exhibition draws inspiration from and reflects upon the arguments of Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch, curator for Irish art in the National Gallery of Ireland in her essay Landscape, space and gender: their role in the construction of female identity in newly independent Ireland.

work [wз:k]
Aspects of work in art from 1970 to present
16 May - 20 August 2006

Gaeilge: obair French: travail
German: Arbeit Russian: trud, rabota
Chinese: laodong Croatian: posao, rad
Lingala: mosala Swedish: arbete
Danish: arbejde 

Panel Discussion with Curators: Thursday, 25 May 2006, 5pm

There will also be an extensive programme of events and lectures exploring issues arising from the exhibition running throughout June, July and August.

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery presents the exhibition work [wз:k] in collaboration with the Galerie im Taxispalais Innsbruck, Austria, curated by Dr. Silvia Eiblmayr, Verina Gfader and Tereza Kotyk.

The exhibition includes artistic work from the 1970 to the present day by more than 30 international artists. It examines different aspects of work such as globalisation, gender relations, migration, industrial action and working conditions. The theme of work and labour is a very relevant and topical issue in Ireland at the moment. As a country that has undergone many d rama tic changes, economically, environmentally, socially and culturally, Ireland is now known for its growing economy and employment opportunities. Numerous new identities from many parts of Europe, Asia and Africa are currently residing and working in Ireland . Many Iris h emigrants have returned home from the US, Australia and the UK, to take advantage of Ireland's much-improved financial position. In moving, many of these different groups have experienced a sense of displacement and dislocation, which consequently raises questions about the impact work has on identity and place.

Since the Industrial Revolution, the theme of work and labour has been an important focus of the visual arts. The exhibition work [wз:k] examines this theme over the past four decades referring to changing contexts from the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s to issues of globalisation that shape our current economic climate.

Most of the historical works within the exhibition reflect the political movements of the 1960s and 1970s from the perspectives of a left and feminist critique of ideology and society. Work as a social activity (André Gorz) is revealed to be a social construct and critically interpreted as such. Artists react to the changing working conditions taking place in this period. In the USA, for instance, Martha Rosler studies the dress rules for waitresses and Mierle Laderman Ukeles cleans the steps of the main entrance to a museum in Hartford, Connecticut. Conrad Atkinson addresses the theme of “garbage strikes” and Margaret Harrison fights for the interests of British homeworkers.

Globalisation and the concomitant phenomenon of migration have contributed to a development of blurring the social notion of work. Gainful employment has been devalued in the western industrial nations as a result of the outsourcing of entire industrial sectors in “low-wage countries”. It has been replaced by often precarious working conditions in the service sector with often much lower pay. Moreover, this development has led to new forms of work such as tele-work/homework, part-time work, etc. on the one hand and to “network societies” on the other, which result in a change of the understanding of work. “The flexible individual is often unable to draw a clear line between everyday life and work life”. (Richard Sennett)

Part-time work, tele/home work, sex work, women's work, “foreign workers” as well as unemployment and strikes are thus themes that have increasingly become the focus of artistic work since the 1980s. Paul Graham photographs crowded labour office s in England. Ursula Biemann follows the worldwide migration of women to the sex industry. Michael Blum makes an effort to visit one of the Indonesian factories where his world logo sneakers are being produced. Olga Chernysheva offers an image of the hierarchy in a Russian chocolate factory. Mladen Stilinovic comments in a melancholy and ironic way on the postcommunist situation in Croatia. Harun Farocki traces the motif of “workers leaving the factory” which has been documented in film since the Lumière brothers. Pia Lanzinger is furnishing a tele-home work place and Moira Zoitl offers a typical representation of thousands of Philippine maids in Hongkong.

An accompanying catalogue (German / English) is available:
Ed. Silvia Eiblmayr, Galerie im Taxispalais
Texts by Katy Deepwell, André Gorz, Barbara Hundegger, Karin Jaschke, Sylvia Riedmann, Saskia Sassen; introduction by Silvia Eiblmayr, Verina Gfader and Tereza Kotyk.
208 pp., b/w and full colour images.

The exhibition work [wз:k] features:

Robert Adrian X (CDN/A), Conrad Atkinson (UK), Ursula Biemann (CH), Berwick Street Film Collective (UK), Michael Blum (F/IL), Olga Chernysheva (RUS), Carole Condé / Karl Beveridge (CDN), Harun Farocki (D), Martin Gostner (A), Paul Graham (UK), Margaret Harrison (UK), Lulu Shur-Tzy Hou (Taiwan), Alexis Hunter (UK), -Innen plus (Korinna Knoll, Ellen Nonnenmacher, Susanne Ackers, Janine Sack and Cornelia Sollfrank) (D), Kirsten Justesen (DK), Margareta Klingberg (S), Richard Kriesche (A), Mierle Laderman Ukeles (USA), Pia Lanzinger (D), Marion von Osten/ Pauline Boudry (D), Adrian Paci (AL), Christine S. Prantauer (A), Martha Rosler (USA), Monica Ross with Shirley Cameron and Evelyn Silver (UK), Mladen Stilinovic (HR), Anne Tallentire (UK), Jeff Wall (CDN), Carey Young (UK), Moira Zoitl (A).

With kind support from the Austrian Embassy Dublin.

Ireland at Venice
An Exhibition marking Ireland's participation
at the 51st Venice Biennale
17 February – 30 April 2006

The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 and is probably the most important international exhibition of contemporary art. For the first time in the history of Ireland's participation at Venice, the artists selected for exhibition have the opportunity to present their work in an Irish context. Commissioner Sarah Glennie invited six artistic practices to represent Ireland at the 51st Biennale: Stephen Brandes, Mark Garry, Ronan McCrea, Isabel Nolan, Sarah Pierce and the collaborative artists Walker and Walker. These artists have reworked the site specific nature of their Venice installations at the Scuola di San Pasquale for the Lewis Glucksman Gallery.

Glennie's innovative curatorial approach re-evaluates the effects of identifying artists in relation to their nationality by selecting artists who look at the Venice Biennale and National Pavilion structure from a variety of perspectives, and who have each made considerable contributions to Ireland's cultural ecology. The seven artists represent an active contemporary art community that has made significant contributions to the Irish art scene over the past ten years. This exhibition extends the life of the Biennale into the Irish cultural arena and opens up the possibility of creating more fluid representations of national identity.

A full colour catalogue accompanies this exhibition with contributions by Sarah Glennie, Caoimhin MacGiolla Léith, Declan Long, Francis McKee and Mick Wilson. Order this book online from shop@glucksman.org.

As an additional project Visual Artists Ireland published a special “Biennale” issue of Printed Project, curated by Alan Phelan. This publication will be on sale in the Glucksman bookshop throughout the exhibition run.

Download gallery wall text here
Download information about the artists here
See www.irelandvenice.ie

The Art of Looking:
University College Cork Art Collection
8 February - 30 April 2006

The University College Cork has built up a significant collection of Irish art over the past twenty years. The Art of Looking celebrates the importance of this rich resource in raising awareness among students, the academic community and the public of the value of visual culture.

The exhibition also marks the publication of the Glucksman's first art pack, to be launched during the show, which features many of the artworks on display, bringing the UCC Collection to a wider audience. The Glucksman art pack is concerned with raising levels of visual sensitivity , particularly among younger visitors to the Glucksman. By offering diverse entry-points into the artworks on display, the art pack enables viewers to actively engage with contemporary art.

The art pack has been devised in consultation with many of the contributing artists, museum and gallery professionals nationally and internationally, staff and postgraduate students of the Education Department, UCC, practising teachers and the Glucksman's team of freelance art facilitators. Since the Glucksman opened in October 2004 over six thousand children have participated in the gallery's schools programme. The art pack will serve as a valuable tool in the delivery of the visual arts curriculum and it will reinforce the fundamental role of the art gallery in supplementing classroom-based education. The Bridging the Gap project, through which the University engages in a learning partnership with schools in Cork city, has generously part-funded the production of the pack.

The pack will be available to download as a PDF once it is published in mid-March.

Blake & Sons
Alternative lifestyles and mysticism in contemporary art
16 October 2005 – 29 January 2006

William Blake claimed a change. His poems have a clear relation to the times he lived in. In particular, the Prophecies demonstrate Blake's religious, mythological and political interests. In Blake & Sons: Alternative lifestyles and mysticism in contemporary art , curator René Zechlin brings together nine original prints by celebrated painter, engraver and poet, William Blake and relates them to current trends in contemporary art practice. On loan from Special Collections Department, Glasgow University Library, the selected prints include his 1794 The Ancient of Days, the famous frontispiece to Europe A Prophecy.

For Blake, outward events and circumstances were the expressions of states of mind, ideologies, mentalities; and not their causes. Blake always seeks to discover the source of social and private ills within man. Only a change of the ‘hearts and minds' of a nation can create a new society and less hideous cities. This idea was shared half a century later by a multiplicity of alternative lifestyle movements. These movements were concerned with a transformation of ways of living in the areas of life-style, nutrition, housing and healthcare in order to counteract the consequences of a misguided civilization.

The desire for change and the search for new social and political conditions are not just issues of the past. Indeed, in contemporary art an increased interest can be observed in both William Blake and historic alternative lifestyles. The exhibition Blake & Sons, curated by René Zechlin, presents international contemporary artists examining these two points of interest. In bringing the two strands together the exhibition proposes William Blake as a father figure of alternative thinking. The artists participating in the exhibition include David Altmejd, Markus Amm, Kenneth Anger, Sam Basu , Henning Bohl, Christopher Bucklow, Stephan Dillemuth, Simone Gilges , Sebastian Hammwöhner, Dani Jakob, David Thorpe, Gabriel Vormstein and Walker & Walker.

With support from the British Council and ifa

Passing Through :
Selected Students of the Crawford College of Art + Design 1975 - 2005
25 October 2005 - 29 January 2006

In association with the Crawford College of Art & Design, one of Ireland's leading art colleges, the Glucksman is delighted to present a major exhibition of the work of invited and selected artists who attended Cork's art college during the period 1975 - 2005. Curator, Patrick T. Murphy, Director of the RHA Gallery, Dublin, has put together an exhibition of artists working across a wide range of media indicating how in the past thirty years, the Crawford has contributed greatly to the quality of visual culture in Ireland. This exhibition is a unique opportunity to acknowledge the breadth and quality of the Crawford's graduate pool.

Passing Through includes work by George Bolster, Gemma Browne, Maud Cotter, Claire Curneen, Simon English, Megan Eustace, Billy Foley, Marie Foley, Joy Gerrard, Vivienne Griffin, Martin Healy, Alice Maher, Aissa Lopez, Yvonne McGuinness, Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Eilís O'Connell, Michael Quane, Linda Quinlan and Vivienne Roche.

Through the Looking Glass:
Childhood in Contemporary Photography
5 July - 28 September

'Who are you ?' said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, 'I - I hardly know, sir, just at present - at least I know who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland , Lewis Carroll

Alice , like most children, is changing. For the last century, we have attempted to fix these metamorphoses, using photography to preserve and generate childhood memories. Whether gravely looking out at the world or absorbed in a personal reverie, the children here are captured in concentrated moments of consciousness. These pensive portraits do not support the carefree vision of childhood widely disseminated in advertising media, nor do they entertain the menace of a hidden voyeur. Rather, the selected works communicate the actual experience of being a child, the gravity and isolation of growing up. But also the joy of discovery, burgeoning friendships and the curiosity that brought Alice down the rabbit hole in the first place.

Throughout her adventures in Wonderland, Alice is confronted with questions about identity and meaning. With a growing awareness of self, she earnestly contemplates the delicate balance between innocence and transgression, comedy and pathos, dream and reality. Likewise, the artists in Through the Looking Glass create pictures of childhood that explore ideas of representation and truth. Some of the images in this exhibition are straight photographs, others have been digitally manipulated. Many of the artists refer to great painters of the past – Botticelli, Holbein and Bronzino – reminding us that photographs are always constructed and often blur the boundaries between what is real and what is not. Increasingly, we rely on photographs to recall our own past experiences. Through the Looking Glass suggests that we may need more than smiling faces and holiday snaps to adequately reflect the complex realm of childhood.

Download exhibition posters here
This exhibition was supported as part of the official programme of Cork 2005.

Paula Rego:
Graphic Work from the Jane Eyre and Children's Crusade series
1 July - 28 September

According to writer Marina Warner "Girlhood and its appetites have inspired Paula Rego's picture making for over 30 years". Rego is a painter of stories, her characters enact a variety of roles and depict disquieting tensions below the surface. Her images often hint at the darker side of childhood and the imagination, making the exhibition a fascinating counterpoint to Through the Looking Glass.

Four Now:
A joint exhibition from the collections of the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
6 May - 2 October 2005

The collections of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon were both established with the aim of providing practical support for contemporary artists in the north and south of Ireland . This primary connection to artists has remained a defining feature of the two collections, and sets them apart from other public collections. The commitment to directly supporting artists' practice ensured that both collections were predominantly formed from a contemporary perspective rather than by retrospective decisions of quality made with the luxury of hindsight. Some of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland's most recent acquisitions were made directly from arts schools, which demonstrates a continuing bold institutional commitment to emergent talent. Consequently the strengths of these collections do not lie in their ability to present a linear survey of Irish twentieth-century art, but in the history they represent of contemporary responses to art production over the last 50 years.

Curator Sarah Glennie approached the exhibition through the framework offered by the distinct qualities of the collections, namely, a commitment to artists and an inherent relationship to contemporary art production. This led to an invitation to four artists living and working in Ireland to make individual selections from the collections that were informed by their positions as contributors to current visual culture in Ireland.

The artist selectors, Susan MacWilliam, Isabel Nolan, Dan Shipsides and Joe Walker were asked to consider the collections from a position of justified subjectivity and were not charged with responsibility to represent any themes or histories of Irish art. What has emerged from this process is a selection based upon a real engagement with the works themselves, rather than any intention to represent certain artists or art practices.

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Visual Practices across the University
13 April - 19 June 2005

A tremendous force of rhetoric has been brought to bear on the notion that ours is a predominantly visual culture. Theories concerning the visual nature of experience have been proposed in art history, cognitive psychology, anthropology, artificial intelligence, women’s studies, neurobiology, linguistics, and by various philosophers from Bishop Berkeley to Baudrillard.

Throughout the university, learning and research proceed with the use of images. Images can be passkeys to many disciplines, offering insight that cannot be as easily gained by studying texts or mathematics. Curated by Professor James Elkins (www.jameselkins.com), this exhibition samples the image-making protocols of the university as a whole. This visual arresting exhibition will foster interdisciplinary conversations and through extensive wall texts explain the relevant science, medicine and technology involved.

A major conference on Visual Literacy was held in conjunction with this exhibition from 13-15 May 2005 at University College Cork. For further information, see www.imagehistory.org

The Jospeh Beuys‘ sound-work Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee from 1968 consists of  the voice of Joseph Beuys who, for more than an hour, repeats the words, “ Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee ”. (Yes Yes Yes, No No No. “Nee” is colloquial for “Nein” in German). In the repetition Beuys changes the intonation of the words. Through the sole presence of the voice in the room and the uninterrupted repetition, after some time the piece attains a great intensity. It is not exaggerated to speak of a sound-space, a Beuysian sculpture.

The idea and realization of the speech performance arose in December 1968 at the time of the student revolt in Germany, which Beuys very much supported. Apart from the political connections of the piece, Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja, Nee Nee Nee Nee Nee , it must also be seen against the background of Joseph Beuys' participation in the Fluxus movement.

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An Leabhar Mor
The Great Book of Gaelic
1 February – 23 April 2005

That Ireland shares a mythology, a rich music tradition, three languages and some significant history with Scotland is a fact of which most people are only vaguely aware. A great deal of what has been an enduring connection, however, has been glossed over or deliberately obscured. Amidst the ebb and flow of history, the Book of Kells has become a fixed symbol of the complexity and sophistication of the shared culture that produced it.

The Great Book of Gaelic is an initiative of the Gaelic Arts Agency that brings together the work of more than 200 poets, visual artists and calligraphers from Scotland and Ireland to create a major contemporary artwork in the form of a visual anthology. The 100 Gaelic poems have been nominate by leading poets and writers such as Seamus Heaney, Hamish Henderson and Alistair Macleod. The selection features work from almost every century from the 6th to the 21st and includes the earliest Gaelic poetry in existence.

A 100 visual artists – 50 from each country – were commissioned to respond to the poetry in a variety of media. The artists include Brian Maguire, Anthony Haughey, John Byrne, Alan Davie, Frances Hegarty, Mick O’Kelly, Katherine Boucher Beug, Hughie O’Donoghue, Rita Duffy, Sean Hillen, Mary Kelly, Catherine Harper, Alanna O’Kelly, Oliver Comerford and Clare Langan.

40 Shades of Green
A Convergence of Irish Art and Craft
9 January - 20 March 2005
Gallery 2

It is fitting that one of the ballads seen to most capture the image of Ireland to people abroad was written by an American, Johnny Cash. This image of an Emerald Isle filled with meadows, moorlands, bogs and thatched cottages does not fully capture the entity that is contemporary Ireland. It may help Bord Fáilte in its marketing of Ireland as a destination but can sometimes hamper contemporary artists and craftspeople in presenting their work.

There is a difference between tradition and traditional. Knitting, weaving and basket-making are all traditional Irish crafts, but an artist working with these media draws on a tradition that may not be confined to one geographical location, creation does not always recognise national boundaries. Curated by Brian Kennedy in conjunction with the Crafts Council of Ireland, Forty Shades of Green presents the work of 40 artists and crafts people, discussing and analysing the tradition that they see themselves operating within. How do they move this tradition forward and what role does notion of craft play in their work? How do these notions and attitudes change between disciplines?

Featuring work in a variety of media including ceramics, glass, textiles, wood, stone, metal, painting, and print, Brian Kennedy’s selection of 40 artists and craftspeople comprises some of Ireland’s most distinguished fine art and craft practioners: Inga Reed, Celine Traynor, Paul Devlin, Sara Flynn, Maud Cotter, Helena Gorey, Christine Mackey, Remco de Fouw, Michael Boran, Eoin McNamee and Glenn Lucas.

Here & Elsewhere
by Kerry Tribe
9 January - 20 March 2005
John G. Sisk Galleries

Kerry Tribe’s (*1973, lives in Los Angeles) work in video, film, installation and other media explores relationships between subjectivity and representation, often by investigating the grey areas between the authentic and the scripted or the collective and the idiosyncratic.

In Here & Elsewhere (2002) two synchronized videos are projected side by side, creating a vertical seam where they meet. The installation “narrative” shows an interview between an older man who remains off the camera (British film critic Peter Wollen) and a thoughtful ten year old girl (his daughter Audrey). The questions the girl is asked trace a series of themes, each of which builds on the preceding dialogue. As the interview unfolds, their conversation touches on history, memory, intersubjectivity, temporality, epistemology, photography and desire.

Wollen’s questions are referring to an experimental video series by Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Miéville. The relationships that emerge between the images on either side of the central vertical seam serve as a structural score for ideas addressed in the interview, such that the continuity, friction, gaps and overlaps that result from their simultaneity underscore the girl’s desire to speak a coherent articulation of time, space, image and identity.

Modern American Painting
from the NYU Art Collection
15 October - 19 December 2004
Glucksman Gallery 2

For its inaugural show, the Lewis Glucksman Gallery is delighted to work with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University, to present a major exhibition of Modern American Painting. This is the first time these paintings have been shown in a European venue and offers a unique opportunity to encounter first hand some of the most significant artists of the 20th Century.

This exhibition looks at the development of American painting from the 1940s to the 1970s. It proposes a new understanding of the period of the New York School, by placing the work of artists generally associated with Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art among their peers who pursued figurative art or geometric abstractions. The early paintings in this show are rooted in European pre-war movements such as Cubism and Constructivism while later works point towards Conceptual Art and hint at the important shift in contemporary art practice to other media.

Abstract Expressionism, generally understood as referring to the first generation of post-war avant-garde American artists, and the New York School, identified as a loose confederation of second-generation painters working in and around New York City during the 1950s and 60s, are still potent terms in current discussions about art and painting, in particular. This exhibition suggests that this period was more diverse than we tend to believe; that a plurality of styles co-existed in post-war New York; and that the key figures of the period need not dominate our understanding of this well-documented moment in American art.

The selected body of work forms part of the New York University Art Collection, which has its home at the Grey Art Gallery. The Collection was initiated in 1958 so that NYU students would have direct, frequent and sustained contact with original works of art. This concept of a presence of modern art on campus was inspired by The Living Art Gallery, established by A.E. Gallatin in 1927 on the Grey Art Gallery’s current site. It was in this gallery that Gallatin, an artist as well as an art collector, housed his own personal collection of avant-garde art, making it the United States’ first gallery devoted exclusively to contemporary art.

The catalogue that accompanies this exhibition examines the history of the NYU Art Collection and considers in detail the issues raised by this grouping of artists. It also asks questions about the place of such an exhibition in a global, historical and Irish context. You may wish to keep some of these questions in mind as you view the works on display:

- Is the New York School fundamentally American?
- What are the different concerns of the paintings on show?
- How do you situate artists such as Rauschenberg and Frankenthaler between gestural and conceptual ways of painting?
- What does this exhibition tell us about the development of painting?

Fiona Kearney, Curator

This exhibition has been organised in conjunction with the Grey Art Gallery, New York University. All works are from the New York University Art Collection, which receives vital support from the Grey Art Gallery Collections Committee.

There is a full colour catalogue to accompany this exhibition on sale at the Glucksman shop. RRP EUR17.99 ISBN 0-9502440-1-5

You can download the introduction to the catalogue here

Dürer's Indecision
The North-South Dichotomy in the prints of Albrecht Dürer
15 October - 19 December 2004
Sisk Galleries

It has been recognised since the 19th century that Albrecht Dürer's art vacillated between his native German style and a more Italian manner. One of the 20th century's greatest art historians, Erwin Panofsky, wrote a book proposing that Dürer was caught on the horns of a dilemma, because he could never find a way to blend the techniques he acquired on his trips to Italy with the skills he had learned as a student in Germany. Panofsky thought that the choice was an “innate” division in Dürer's own mind, and that it produced a curiously divided art, never wholly at home either north or south of the Alps.

This division has also been taken as a characteristic of German art in general, which could then be said to have no character of its own, but to borrow, magpie-fashion, from the art of other countries. The question was widely debated among German scholars in the first half of the 20th century. It surfaced again in another form in Svetlana Alpers's work, beginning in the 1980s: Alpers proposes all of art history is built around the Italian model, making it difficult to really “see” art made north of the Alps.

This issue, sometimes called the North-South dichotomy, is of pressing interest not just to Dürer scholars, but to everyone interested in the history of art. Do some nations have their own style, while others are fundamentally divided among foreign influences? There is no solution to this problem, but it can be observed in its original form in Dürer's prints, as he struggles to reconcile the irreconcilable styles of North and South.

The questions in this exhibition are open-ended. They lead to large, unanswered questions:

- Are there nations that do not have styles of their own?
- Are there nations whose styles are collages of other nations' styles?
- What is a national style?

Questions like these are notoriously hard to talk about sensibly. And yet what could be more important, given the increasing ties among EU nations, and the globalisation of all of art?

James Elkins, Curator

This exhibition has been realised in conjunction with the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. All works are courtesy of the Trustees of the Chester Beatty Library.

Things of extraordinary beauty
The Honan Collection

15 October 2004 - 20 March 2005
John G. Sisk Galleries

The Honan chapel was created as a treasure–house of works from Ireland’s ‘golden age’ of modern craftsmanship, works that in 1916 sought to express the new Ireland. This selection of works only gives a sense of the 165 recorded objects in the Honan Collection.

Highlights from the UCC Art Collection
15 October 2004 - 20 January 2005
Glucksman Gallery 1

University College Cork has built up a significant collection of Irish art. These works of art are usually sited around campus in various college buildings while a number of external sculptures have become attractive features of the college grounds. This display offers the opportunity to see some of the highlights of the UCC Art Collection and includes work by Hughie O’Donoghue, Clare Langan, Basil Blackshaw, Barrie Cooke and Janet Mullarney.