Without a Future – Margaret O’Brien

The MART Gallery

Curated by Matthew Nevin

2 – 24 October 2015

Without a Future is an ongoing research work that develops live electrical current as sculptural form. Commissioning electrical current in this way is in keeping with Margaret O’Brien’s experimental approach to form and materials. Its precarious nature explores ideas of sculpture and art practice as mobile, unfixed and in flux, something fleeting and unsustainable. Originally sited as a temporary outdoor installation, It connects on a fundamental level to relationships between site and subject, context and environment, wherein the activity of the electrons is visibly vulnerable to the climatic conditions of its given space from one moment to the next. The conditions of its being waver from sympathetic to hostile with the smallest breeze, with a slight change in humidity, or a rise or drop in temperature, evidenced by the constant colour change ranging from dullest red to brightest orange.

Othering continues with this research through an inventive sculptural installation with kinetics and live sound. To ‘other’, or othering(verb), is a key concept in Continental philosophy, and opposes concepts of Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer to that which is other than the self, that which is different. Othering helps distinguish between internal and external, between home and away, the certain or uncertain, the physical and psychological. Using non-traditional materials, O’Brien’s Othering makes manifest intangible but critical aspects of the work including sound and visual elements from live electrical circuits.

About the Artist

Margaret O’Brien works primarily with installation and sculpture using a variety of materials such as electrical currents, live sound, light, and kinetics. Her work explores the nature of the in-between as psychological aspects of the everyday that can never be fully understood or articulated, and our individual negotiations of time and space within this. Using particular practices of repetition, non-linear concepts of time and space are presented in the work as past, present and future dimensions occur almost simultaneously through the consistency of the repeat. Here, repetition is used to undermine any fixed reading of the work, creating both movement and stoppage by continuously presenting the possibility of an alternative.

Instinct

Los Angeles and Dublin

July-September 2015

Curated by: Matthew Nevin

Dominic Thorpe, Liam O’Callaghan, Margaret O’Brien, Katherine Nolan, Terence Erraught, Eleanor Lawler, Francis Fay, Aidan Smyth, Olga Criado Monleon, Kayleigh Forsythe, Marie Farrington, Róisín de Buitléar, Gearoid O’Dea, Grainne Tynan, Ida Mitrani,Patricia Douglas, Karen Vaughan, Christina O’Donovan.

“Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No, it’s deep in our minds. It’s a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky, will be with us and our descendants for as long as the human race exists.”

Denis Dutton – A Darwinian theory of beauty – Nov 2010 – Ted Talk

Curator Matthew Nevin of the Irish Visual Arts organisation MART invited 18 emerging and established Irish visual artists and designers to take part in ‘Instinct’ – a cross disciplinary exhibition showcasing work in three Los Angeles galleries: Santa Monica Art Studios Gallery, The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and Hive Gallery, and one Irish: The MART Gallery.

“My recent curatorial research has brought my attention to artworks created through various creative processes. By engaging with artists that are responding to the idea of instinctual and personal artistic representation and production I wish to open up perhaps sometimes a confrontational visual argument with the viewer. I have collated a series of artworks that question the role of instinctual art production.  These artists strive to develop their ideas through experimentation and use of formal creative training. The exhibition focuses on the process of visual art making and design in order to achieve a collective approach in analysing the current formation of art; its patterns, imagery, performative practices and digital responses artists are making.” – Curator Matthew Nevin

The exhibition aimed to celebrate and build a greater international awareness and appreciation of Irish visual art and design excellence. By building the profiles internationally it began a foundation for future development, exposure and opportunities of Irish Designers & Artists working in California and the wider USA.

PQ Festival 2015

MART @ PQ 2015 – Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space The curators of MART; Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan are delighted to be curating Ireland in this year’s PQ Festival in Prague.

On the themes of weather and technology, Matthew Nevin and Ciara Scanlan (MART) have curated a sensory, participatory environment working alongside Composer: Tom Lane | Visual Artists: Brian Duggan and Stephanie Golden | Critic/Historian: Siobhan O’Gorman and Producer: Noelia Ruiz.

Ireland at PQ 2015 : Activating Affective Atmospheres

June 18-28th 2015

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An augmented space. A monument to madness.

On the themes of weather and technology, Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan (MART), have curated a participatory environment working alongside Visual Artists: Brian Duggan and Stephanie Golden | Composer: Tom Lane |Critic/Historian: Siobhan O’Gorman and Producer: Noelia Ruiz.

Human consciousness has transformed the world it occupies more than it has humanity itself. The power to observe our own mortality is fraught with anxiety, leading to urgency concerning making one’s mark. But, this has also stirred us to become makers / creators of new ‘things.’ The opposable thumb began our evolution towards a refined mind that can craft and mould structures and objects that aid our existence. As we gradually turned away from biomimicry and moved towards the Industrial Revolution, we made a potent choice: to use rather than adapt to nature. Our intimate connection with our environment has for centuries been a source of inspiration, but to what extent does our performance as makers require disruption, disturbance and even destruction?

In this installation the curators have created a construct to observe and produce the audience as ‘activators’ who directly affect the atmosphere. The installation consists of a simple mechanism that graphs the pressure exerted by the room’s atmosphere, as well as the temperament of a sound composition below; this awaits activation from the participants within the room. By triggering this paper-rolling mechanism, the audience begin their own short-term documentation of the atmospheric changes within the space during their visit. This captures the hydrostatic pressure caused by the weight of a marker, activating a temporal movement and recording, while calculating a specific vibration range and length of time.

Through such encounters, we prompt questions regarding the role of technology in the shared affective atmospheres central to both weather and scenography. Two large projections, in conjunction with the central structure and a soundscape, use a range of technologies to synthesize sensory experiences of weather, which are co-created by participants and atmospheric elements. As such, the installation aims to probe the interrelationships of weather, technology, atmosphere and collective affect. Placing the visitor as a performer, it features elements of the weather and of its disruption/disturbance. The project aims to examine the audience’s shared experiences through changes in atmosphere and one’s place in space.

In addition to engaging with the public, this work incorporates multiple disciplines in order to facilitate our audiences’ inhabitations, interactions and performances within an in-door, technologized sensory environment. While some visitors may become responsible for the analysis of our ‘weather’, others may respond viscerally to its disturbance. As such, we wish to promote shared sensory experiences that are both distinctive and transient, created anew each time through the diverse actions of our participants. Although the collective experience is central to our work, convergent and divergent activities / emotions point also to the agency of individual participants and their active roles in engaging with, responding to and shaping the atmosphere. We hope to stimulate consideration of how human behaviour and technologies influence space and weather, reassessing what it is to hold power over weather. – Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan.

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Contributors:

Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan are co-directors of the Irish-based visual arts organisation MART. As a curatorial partnership, they have curated over 50 exhibitions nationally and internationally. As artists and cultural producers, they are advocates for the arts, facilitating the collaboration and creation of sustainable opportunities for artists from different disciplines. www.mart.ie | www.ciarascanlan.com | www.matthewnevin.com

Brian Duggan is a visual artist who lives and works in Dublin. He trained in sculpture, and his work utilises installation, text, video, sound, print and publishing, and stone and glass sculptures. He is represented by balzer projects in Basel. – www.brianduggan.net

Stephanie Golden is a Visual Artist based in Dublin. Her work is installation based, incorporating elements of animation, sculpture, sound and light. www.stephaniegolden.org

Tom Lane is a composer and sound designer based in Dublin. www.tom-lane.com

Siobhán O’Gorman is a scenography theorist, theatre critic and performance historian. She is currently Irish Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow (2013-2015) at Samuel Beckett Centre, Trinity College Dublin. www.tcd.ie/Drama/staff/ | www.facebook.com/PerformingSpace

Noelia Ruiz is a Producer & Social Media Manager with Pan Pan Theatre. She is also a theatre-maker & academic researcher (PhD) www.panpantheatre.com | www.facebook.com/PerformingSpace

 

Glitch Festival 2015

RUA RED and MART

May to June 2015

Curated by Ciara Scanlan + Matthew Nevin of MART.

Artists: Adam Gibney, Square in the Circle , David Stalling, Steven Maybury, Anne Cleary & Denis Connolly , Marie Farrington, Brian Duggan, Louise Brady, Cecily Brennan, Jonathan Mayhew, Mark Clare, Bonnie Begusch, Stephanie Golden & Moya Clarken, Katherine Nolan, Sam Jury, and Homebeat 

This year RUA RED have invited Ciara Scanlan + Matthew Nevin of MART to collaborate on the annual digital arts festival /Glitch. This years /Glitch Festival investigates notions of moveable space from an augmented point of view. The curators presented the question “How can technology activate a more visceral connectivity from a virtual standpoint?” to a series of established and emerging Irish and international artists. The artists were encouraged to sample / experiment with both old and new technologies to investigate the influence of technology within space, reassessing what it is to be both local and yet hold an inter/national spatial autonomy.

 /Glitch 2015 is housed both in RUA RED & MART Galleries will feature interactive visual & sound artworks that will encourage the audience to engage and experiment with altered technologies. The curators have reconstructed a representational frame of The MART old fire station within RUA RED’s Gallery 1. Altering the traditional white cube to become host to a foreign venue, additionally some work will be displaced and part projected in both venues.

/Glitch is supported by South Dublin County Council and The Arts Council of Ireland