Ulster UniversityBelfast School of Art

presents

Artist’sTALKSon the Belfast campus, York Street

ulster.ac.uk/daro/artsandculture

GRACE WEIRTHURSDAY 2 FEBRUARY AT 1PM CONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Working primarily in the moving image and installation, Grace Weir is concerned with aligning a lived experience of the world with conceptual knowledge and theory. Interested in the moment of definition or resolution, her work explores the dynamic of practice and representation at the levels where issues of identity and temporality coincide.

One particular area of Weir’s work is her unique approach to research, based on a series of conversations and experiments with scientists, philosophers and practitioners from other disciplines. Focusing on the slippages between the conceptual and experiential in different fields of enquiry, Weir probes the nature of a fixed identity and these questions are underpinned by the theories under her scrutiny, whether it is relativity, intentionality, the duality of light or philosophies of time, film and the history of art.

Creating a dialogue between the conceptual nature of her ideas and the ways in which thinking is material, the works frequently refer to the act of making and the mediums in which they are made, including where time itself forms the work. The resulting work ranges from structural cinematic works and installations to experimental videos, lecture-performances and web projects.

Grace Weir represented Ireland at the 49th International Venice Biennale and has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. She was recently Artist-in-Residence in the School Of Physics, Trinity College Dublin and showed in a solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2015-2016.

DAN SHIPSIDESTHURSDAY 9 FEBRUARY AT 1PM CONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Expressing a different, ‘modern’ relationship with the landscape geographer Stephen Daniels describes the pioneer climbing in places like North Wales and the Peak District in England throughout the 20th Century as containing the spirit of the Avant Garde. It is in this framing of climbing as a creative endeavour, rather than a sport, that it is possible to get to grips with the experimental art of Dan Shipsides and also his ongoing collaborations with Neal Beggs.

As both artists and climbers Shipsides and Beggs have been collaborating since 2004 as Shipsides and Beggs Projects. Through this their artwork (painting, drawing, video, installation, sculpture, performance, sound and music) embraces wide sets of interests and activities, across art, music, mountains, magic and madness.

Dan Shipsides (based Belfast) and Neal Beggs (based near Nantes) exhibit nationally and internationally including; Bel Ordinarie, Pau, France (No more shooting in this area), L’Orangerie, Bastogne, Belgium (Still Not Out Of The Woods), Chateau Gontier, France (Gothic Cinema), ACCA, Melbourne (Desire Lines), CIAC.

Dan Shipsides is former co-director at Catalyst Arts, Belfast and is based in Orchid Studios. Awards include the ACNI Major Artist Award, Nissan Art Award IMMA, Dublin (Bamboo Support) and the Perspective Award (The Stone Bridge), OBG, Belfast. Dan is a lecturer at the Belfast School of Art.

PADRAIC E. MOORETHURSDAY 16 FEBRUARY AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Pádraic E. Moore (b. 1982) is a writer, curator, and art historian. He holds a BA in History of Art and English Literature from University College Dublin (2004), an MA in Visual Art Practices from IADT, Dublin (2007), and completed CuratorLab, the postgraduate programme at Konstfack University, Stockholm (2010). Moore’s practice is shaped by the belief that visual art enables alternative modes of interaction in a world increasingly led by techno logical rationality.

Moore’s research interests focus on the influence of esoteric philosophies upon the literary and visual arts. Recent study considers how occult organisations, such as the Theosophical Society, offered a vital catalyst for change in late 19th and early 20th century art. Moore’s projects often explore how contemporary culture has embraced aesthetics and ideals informed by such esoteric traditions. Recent projects include: Ectoplasm, 1646 Gallery, The Hague, Music for Chameleons, a project for EVA International: Still (the) Barbarians, Limerick, (2016); Now is forever lasting constant in the mind, a project for Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, (2016); Ψ (Psi), a project for Fokidos Gallery, Athens (2015) and Hot on the Heels of Love, a project for The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2015). Moore is currently contributing to Spritualised, an exhibition opening at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in March 2017.

MOIRA MCIVERTHURSDAY 23 FEBRUARY AT 1PM CONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Moira McIver’s previous artworks have been photographic and video art projects based on historical events from a contemporary female perspective. Projects have included subject matter such as: The Second World War, female sailors in the 18th and 19th century, Irish female heroines in the 1798 rebellion in Co.Down, N.Ireland. Research into these historical events included first-hand interviews with war veterans and explorations of popular local myth. Her work often focuses on the interplay and tension between social history and the individual and how our sense of the physical body remains central to this discourse.

McIver uses historical photographic techniques such as wet plate collodion as part of her research into social, political and gendered perspectives on early Irish photography. Wet plate collodion photography, is an historical process invented by Frederic Scott Archer in 1851. The process often produces unexpected results which challenge contemporary expectations of the photographic image.

Recent Exhibitions include: Shadow Catcher: Explorations in Historical Photography, Solo Exhibition, Ards Arts Centre, November 2016; Vanishing Futures: Collective Histories of N.Irish Art, Group Exhibition, GT Gallery, Belfast, 2015; ‘To Camera..’ Group Exhibition, GT Gallery, Belfast Photo Festival, 2015.

HYEYOUNG MAENGTHURSDAY 2 MARCH AT 1PM CONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Hyeyoung was born in South Korea, and is currently a PhD candidate in Contemporary Art at Lancaster University. Her PhD research investigates the boundaries between painting and film, and explores the potentiality of digital documentation of the process of Korean Bunche painting as an independent fine art piece from the final stage of the painting. This practice also re-invent French philosopher Gilles Deleuze’s theory of art as Transcendental Realism.

Hyeyoung earned a BFA and an MFA in Korean painting at Kyung Hee University, South Korea. After 10 years working experience as a practicing artist, she came to San Francisco in 2010 to study contemporary art at the San Francisco Art Institute. This trans-cultural experience led her to develop a new way of seeing everyday life, not through fixed identity and pre-existing categories, but rather infused with the notion of differentiation, and in search of truths as a process.

RAMON KASSAMTHURSDAY 9 MARCH AT 1PM CONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Ramon Kassam is an artist from Limerick City in Ireland, painting forms the basis of his practice. Kassam’s recent work re-connects with the concept of the artist as creative subject, combining the thematic of the artist’s workspace (canvas, studio, gallery and urban environment) with formal and conceptual references to the autonomous reality of modernist abstraction. Ramon has been exhibiting regularly since 2010. Recent exhibitions include; The Green on Red Gallery - Dublin (Solo), The Lewis Glucksman Gallery - Cork, and The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in Michigan (US), Limerick City Gallery of Art (2015 Solo), EVA International - Ireland’s Biennale, Limerick (2014). Pallas Projects, Dublin, (solo 2013),

He has received a number of awards and residencies. These include The 16 x 16: Next Generation Bursary Award, a special initiative of the Arts Council and the Ireland 2016 Centenary Programme, in recognition of the role of artists in the events of 1916. Residencies include The Embassy of Ireland in Addis Ababa - Project Residency, The RHA Tony O’ Malley Residency Award and Irish Museum of Modern Art. In addition to his practice Kassam founded and was a Director of both Wickham Street Studios, an artist studio complex and Occupy Space, a visual arts exhibition space in Limerick City from 2009-2011.

MARTIN KRENNTHURSDAY 16 MARCH AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Martin Krenn is an artist, curator and lecturer at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. His work examines and discusses sociopolitical topics. He uses various media such as photography, video and web-based tools to develop projects realized in exhibitions, public space and on the internet.

Krenn has had numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows in Graz (Neue Galerie), Vienna (Kunsthalle Exnergasse and Passagegalerie Künstlerhaus), Salzburg (Salzburger Kunstverein and Galerie 5020), Brest (Centre d’art Passerelle), Lüneburg (Kunstraum Lüneburg), München (Kunstraum München), Ljubljana (Mala galerija Cankarjev Dom), Celje (Center for Contemporary Art) and Bucharest (Centre for Visual Introspection).

He was awarded a PhD by Ulster University in 2016. From 2006 to 2009 he served as chairperson of the Austrian Artists Association (IG Bildende Kunst). His work is represented by Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz.

DUNCAN ROSSTHURSDAY 23 MARCH AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Duncan Ross contributed illustrations to The Vacuum newspaper in Belfast from 2002 to 2014. He has been involved in various forms of practice that can be described as public art, from co-directing a film screening organisation called Cinilingus, to working on ACNI Re-imaging Communities projects, to teaching an illustration course for Queen’s Open Learning programme. Duncan recently co-published a comic book called The Selfish Dream and currently runs a participatory drawing programme called The Tuesday Drawing Studio. He’s completing a practice-led PhD at the Belfast School of Art with a thesis on illustrative drawing within grassroots and communitarian forms of public art.

The artist aimnín wrote a sometimes regular column for The Vacuum called ‘Polite Fictions’. He had previously commissioned Duncan to design a header image for the column consisting of a pelvis and crossbones. For Beckenkopf, Duncan was invited by aimnín to repaint the logo on the artist’s head in front of a live audience.

ROBERT ARMSTRONGTHURSDAY 30 MARCH AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

In these paintings of the last decade, Armstrong has been fascinated not merely by the sea and by water, but also by floods, ark and rain, a sense of the world either at its end or its beginning, or indeed painting itself as both under threat and re-asserting itself. The sea, of course, allows for a fluidity of statement, but also, because of the ways in which the sea and, indeed, rain and clouds and fire have been previously painted and given significance by artists, they are part of the process in which, as Heidegger would have it, ‘the world becomes picture.’

One of the hallmarks of Armstrong’s talent is his tact. While his work depends for some of its strength on his reading of the work of painters from the past, and his thinking about the history and process of painting, it also depends on a sort of controlled spontaneity, a sense of free gesture, quick mark, brave addition. There is something distinctly anti-heroic in how he approaches the making of an image. Thus he will take a small section of an earlier painting rather than its entire import; he will almost playfully extract a colour or an image, and then see what will happen as he lets this merge with his own concern with making new images which are open-ended and suggestive, which come from the mind and from dreams, or which come from some set of imaginative resources which lie at the heart of his talent, a talent which is both considered and ready, as he paints, to surprise us and himself.

Colm Toibin, 2015. Robert Armstrong (born Wexford 1953) is an artist founder member of Temple Bar Gallery & Studios and is Head of Painting at NCAD.

MICHAEL HANNATHURSDAY 6 APRIL AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

In Vanishing Futures: Collective Histories of Northern Irish Art

Typical of Hanna’s art is the impulse to generate new practices of experience within familiar states, unsettling the semantic relationships between the verbal and the visual, the perceptual and the conceptual, and invoking an awareness of those processes that operate under the level of our consciousness. This is what philosopher Brian Massumi calls an ‘artwork as event’, because the synaesthetic experience of the films constitutes a type of action in itself, whereby ‘what we abstractly see when we directly and immediately see an object is lived relation – a life dynamic.’ ‘With every sight we see imperceptible qualities, we abstractly see potential, we implicitly see a life dynamic, we virtually live relation. It’s just a kind of shorthand to call it an object. It’s an event’.

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Extract from essay by Catherine Gander

DOUGAL MCKENZIETHURSDAY 27 APRIL AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

This talk will look at the formation of a new body of work for an exhibition at The MAC, Belfast, in June 2017. The title of the talk is taken from a chapter in Alan Massie’s book ‘The Ragged Lion’- his partly fictional, partly factual account of Sir Walter Scott’s life. Having been interested in the idea of new approaches to history painting for some time, it felt right to deal with some histories closer to home for this exhibition.’

Dougal McKenzie was born in Edinburgh in 1968 and studied Painting and Drawing at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen, before coming to Belfast in 1990 to undertake the MA in Fine Art.

He served on the first Catalyst Arts committee from 1994-96, before leaving to lecture at Limerick School of Art and Design for 7 years.

He has exhibited twice at the John Moores Painting Prize in Liverpool, and was selected for the first MAC International in Belfast in 2014. His forthcoming exhibition ‘A Dream and an Argument’ takes place at The MAC in June 2017.

He has been a lecturer in painting at Belfast School of Art since 2011.

SEAN O’REILLYTHURSDAY 4 MAY AT 1PMCONOR LECTURE THEATRE

Sean O’Reilly is an artist and curator. He is the director of the Leitrim Sculpture Centre Located in the market town of Manorhamilton, North County Leitrim.

The Leitrim Sculpture Centre is a major resource for the advancement of skills and knowledge in traditional, contemporary and experimental visual arts.

LSC supports the material practices of artists and furthers creative engagement with the wider contexts of place and community.

At Leitrim Sculpture Centre, the programme evolves around a number of key activities including national and international artist-in-residencies, and exhibitions, masterclasses and workshops and community based activities.

All Artist’sTALKS are free but spaces are limited.For further information please contact: T: +44 (0) 28 9536 7285 E: k.gordon@ulster.ac.uk

The Artist’sTalks series is supported by DARO, Arts & Culture

Artist’sTALKS ulster.ac.uk/daro/artsandculture