Tue Greenfort

12 May - 16 June

Tue Greenfort presented a project at the recently refurbished Crawford Observatory at University College , Cork . The core of the project is the attempt to take photographs of the sun using one of the Observatory telescopes and a digital camera powered from a ‘potato battery'. Different stages of the project as well as other related work by the artist will be presented in the observatory. The project connects different sciences and research fields at UCC, pointing to the ecologic connections of natural growth and nutrition.

Tue Greenfort (born 1973 in Denmark , lives in Berlin ) works in the area of ecology and sustainability. His artistic work is characterised by an observation and investigation of interactions between nature and urbanity. He discovers ecological processes in city life, which often go unremarked. Greenfort deals with situations in everyday life and reveals the structures behind urbanity through small changes or mechanisms. With the help of artistic intervention, occurrences become visible and their existence questioned. Greenfort's work has been included in major international exhibitions, such as a solo exhibition at Witte de With (Rotterdam, 2006) or Momentum (Norway, 2006), Sharjah Biennale 2007 and will also feature at the forthcoming Sculpture Projects in M ü nster, Germany.

With support from ifa

Niamh Lawlor

Based on a True Story - A Seminar on Misinformation

10.00-16.30, Saturday 27 th January 2007
Room 3.03 O'Rahilly Building, University College Cork

Continuing the Lewis Glucksman Gallery's Investigations series of projects, artist Niamh Lawlor presents Based on a True Story , a project examining the implications of misinformation. The core of the project is a one-day seminar on misinformation that uniquely intersects the arts institution with the broader academic environment of University College Cork.

Is misinformation the opposite of information? If misinformation itself includes misunderstood and misleading information, could it therefore be wrong? Is not academic research sometimes based on initial misunderstandings or misinterpretations? What are the implications of misinformation on any development and progress in research and knowledge production?

Based on a True Story follows and examines these questions and highlights their complexity. Niamh Lawlor uses the format of the seminar in order to examine the processes of misinformation and to question the role of a specific presentation format in relation to knowledge production. Based on a True Story aims to open up the speaker-audience relationship using different forms of presentation, to unsettle the exchange of communication, and to activate the ambiguities of misinformation between speaker and audience, sender and receiver. 

The seminar features a diverse group of experienced speakers from local and national contexts, exploring the delicate line between fact and fiction, authoritative knowledge and constructed identities in the transmission and safeguard of knowledge.

Niamh Lawlor's project can be considered as a playful response to the University as the institution of research, information and the production of knowledge, allowing for a multitude of artistic and academic perspectives, but for the purpose of raising questions rather than confirming answers.

Please find further information also on www.based-on-a-true-story.com

Born in Dublin in 1972 and graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 1994, Niamh Lawlor has exhibited internationally, in England, Belgium, Holland , Germany , Colombia and China. Lawlor has received various – Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland and international residency – awards. Her active involvement with artist initiatives includes CRAIC (founder member in 2000), a London based artists' initiative, devising and Cork Artist Collective (studio member and director). Upcoming projects involve Tension at Cork Film Centre and an exhibition at Beijing IGC in September 2007. Her website is www.niamhlawlor.com

Patrizia KARDA

Mezzanine
November 2006- February 2007

The Swiss artist Patrizia Karda (born 1973, lives in Zurich ) has developed a new site-specific work entitled Mezzanine for the Glucksman project series Investigations . The artwork deals with a remarkable aspect of the architecture of the Glucksman, an architectural void in the centre of the first floor of the gallery, which connects the inside and outside of the building. The void, marked by windows on three sides, encloses a part of the exterior. It is possible to look through to the exterior of the gallery and back into the interior on the other side, meaning this void space is inside and outside at the same time.

Patrizia Karda visually extends this functionless space through the use of an image, which is the size of the side wall (3.30 x 8 m) of an attic interior. The photograph opens up the space and suggests a view into the inside of the building, a view, which is contrary to the modern impression of the gallery building. While the contemporary architecture of the gallery stands for the present, if not even for the future, the photograph by Patrizia Karda rather refers to the past. This is not only because of the obviously old and traditional building in the photograph, but also because of the widespread use of attics as places of final storage and later rediscovery. The impressive, but s till minimal intervention creates an interesting play between inside and outside, present and past and different perceptions of “real” and “virtual” spaces. Patrizia Karda, Mezzanine, 2006, C-print on perforated mesh, 3.30 x 8 m.

Patrizia Karda uses photography as spatial or even architectural intervention. The examination of the specifics of an exhibition or architectural space is the basis for her photographic installations. Karda juxtaposes the existing structure or atmosphere of a space with images of architectural details of other venues, interior views or landscapes. Through enlarging or projecting, Patrizia Karda generally fits the images exactly into the particular space and integrates them within the architectural setting. The chosen motifs extend the given room, further levels of space appear, and the image enters into a dialogue with the existing architecture. The images Karda selects are free from unnecessary details, and the minimal atmosphere of the reproduced image allows for a re-interpretation of the given architecture and creates new perceptions of an existing place.

With support from Pro Helvetica and the Arts Council

Tim Lloyd: Key Cutting

10 November – 8th December 2006

The Irish artist Tim Lloyd (born 1968, lives in Dublin) has developed a new site-specific work entitled Key Cutting for the Glucksman project series Investigations .

The artwork draws inspiration from the architecture of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and associations triggered by its appearance. Amongst other things the building has been perceived as a vessel, a tree house, a space ship and an interlocking puzzle. Responding to these observations, Lloyd has produced three site-specific video installations that are presented at locations throughout the gallery for the Investigation series . Filmed and displayed in situ these performance-based works, focus on manipulating and reassembling footage of the gallery, echoing the playful visual references it evokes.

Using special editing effects Lloyd transfers cuts images of the gallery and its surrounding environment into small puzzle type pieces. In the video, the pieces are reassembled like a jigsaw puzzle. In other words, sections of video footage are sawn and reassembled to create new images and shapes. Clues to the mechanics behind this trickery are left open to the viewer with the inclusion of the ad-hoc coloured structures and props used to produce these video pieces, still installed in the gallery. With these works, Lloyd humorously provokes a re-evaluation of location and space and through his physical investigations questions the many ways in which we understand the art institution and its architecture.

Over the last five years Tim Lloyd has been concerned with generating a sense of event, with performance based investigations at the forefront of his practice. Recent works have focused on spatial and visual tricks that reference time and location and include Shifting , 2005 which was part of the exhibition Press Play in the Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, curated by Georgina Jackson, Transit , 2004, which was part of the Dublin Fringe Festival Visual Arts Programme curated by Mark Garry and Ciara Healy and One Place Twice, 2003 curated by Declan Long and Brian Kennedy at the Golden Thread Gallery Belfast. Lloyd was an Artist in Residence at the National Training and Development Institute, Ballyfermot from 2003-2004. He studied at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology followed by an MA in Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. He is a board member of Visual Artist Ireland.

Rajesh Mehta: Sounding Building
8pm, 8 October 2005, Lewis Glucksman Gallery

In his work as a composer and musician, Rajesh Mehta is interested in exploring the relationship between architecture and music. For Mehta, music has the capacity to form an architecture whose existence is shaped by time. What distinguishes architecture from music is architecture's goal to achieve firmness and stability - to endure.

For this project, Rajesh Mehta will respond to the architecture of the recently built Lewis Glucksman Gallery and create a “ Sounding Building ” as a live event. Although Mehta has already devised a composition in response to MIT's Simmons Hall, designed by architect Steven Hall, he has not yet had the opportunity to perform his work in the actual space for which it was made. The project at the Glucksman is the first time his music will be created and performed in its architectural setting. The unique occasion will see local and international musicians and sound artists perform throughout the building.

Rajesh Mehta was born in Calcutta , India in 1964. He raised as American citizen in New Jersey and lives with his family in Berlin , Germany since 1998. He began trumpet and music studies at the age of 10 and works as a professional musician and composer based in Europe since 1991. Mehta graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (B.S. History of Ideas and Electrical Engineering, 1986), with studies at the University of California , Berkeley . He studied Composition with Anthony Braxton at Mills College Center for Contemporary Music, Oakland , California 1989-1990 and received the M.I.T. Eloranta Fellowship in 1986. Rajesh Mehta has invented an acoustic/electronic hybrid instrument called the “Meta Trumpet” which plays an important role within his experimental music and compositions.

For further information on Rajesh Mehta see www.rajeshmehta.de

Gabriel Lester: A, B, C Behind the Scenes
27 July – 28 September 2005, Lewis Glucksman Gallery

The project A, B, C Behind the Scenes by the artist Gabriel Lester (born 1972, lives and works in Groningen, NL, and Brussels) consists of different spatial installations around the entrance area of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery. For this project, Lester uses locations in and around the gallery which are not designed first and foremost for exhibitions and makes the side-character of the areas the subject of the installation. As the title suggests, Lester creates the sense of being backstage on a theatre or film set but the narrative connection between the three parts of the installation is enigmatic.

Large windows with a view onto the University's picturesque lower grounds, are a defining characteristic of the Glucksman's architecture. Gabriel Lester takes one of these views and uses it as a backdrop for a fictional image. At the entrance level of the gallery a wooden flat now blocks a view out of the window. Behind a stylised cut in the structure, appears the silhouette of an imaginary world that inserts itself between the flat and the greenery of the trees outside.

In A, B, C Behind the Scenes , the language of theatre and cinema encounters the spatiality of three-dimensional art. Elements and images of theatre and cinema are transferred into a spatial experience that highlights the space and its environment. Not only are the details in the stencilled silhouette reminiscent of cinema, the installation reverses the illusion of the performing arts. The theatre scenery moves to the foreground and becomes a sculpture itself, whereas the trees outside create the illusion of a moving image.

Like theatres and cinemas, galleries create fictions. Lester's view from behind the scenes points to the gallery as an aesthetic frame and addresses the creation of meaning within the institutional context. A, B, C Behind the Scenes opposes the defined exhibition spaces with its own fictional area and asks the viewer to review the conditions of the creation and presentation of art.

The moving image is central to Gabriel Lesters practice. In installations and films Lester examines the relation between narration and image and explores how images and signs contribute to the creation of illusion. Gabriel Lester is currently in residence at the ISCP in New York and will participate, amongst other exhibitions, at the Gothenburg Biennial and the Baltic Triennial this year.

For further information, please see www.gabriellester.com

Dirk Fleischmann: STOPSHOW
7pm, 1 June 2005, Aula Maxima, UCC

In STOPSHOW, Dirk Fleischmann uses the popular format of the game show to raise questions about society and established economic structures. STOPSHOW is a game show with easily comprehended rules: The player attempts to measure a certain time period (e.g. 10:00 seconds) as precisely as possible only by his/her own sense of time. Anyone can take part, play the game and compete for the prizes!

The show copies well-known models of the entertainment industry and, apart from questioning economical and societal structures STOPSHOW blurs and questions the lines between art and non-art projects.

Dirk Fleischmann investigates micro-economic structures through an evaluation of gaps in specific contexts of business, the service industry and production. His work can be described as a modest proposal to find out how and with what potential consequences capitalism functions successfully. During the project Kiosk for example, he sold kiosk products at the purchase price, but requested the buyers to make a personal supplement and thus created a surplus-value. He developed similar projects like a trailer rental, solar energy solutions or a free-range chicken egg production. By setting a foundation of unusual parameters, he creates an alternative perspective on concepts such as profitability and economy, which allows the laws of the free market economy to appear as an intentional distortion of the relationship between value and commodity.

Dirk Fleischmann was born in 1974, and lives in Frankfurt am Main. He studied and graduated at Staedelschule, Frankfurt am Main and participated amongst others at Manifesta 4, 2002.