16 Jul 2011

Naheed Raza at Lismore Castle Arts




16 July to 14 August


Lismore Castle Arts in collaboration with 126 Gallery presents: Naheed Raza - Sand


Lismore Castle Arts: St Carthage Hall, Chapel Street, Lismore, Co. Waterford
Exhibition runs: 16 July to 14 August 2011, open Saturdays and Sundays 2 - 5pm
Launch: Saturday 16 July at 2pm


Lismore Castle Arts: St Carthage Hall is a new offsite project space in a former Victorian church hall. For 2011 Lismore Castle Arts has invited several artists and artist-led projects to curate an exhibition to coincide with the Still Life exhibition at the main gallery. Naheed Raza - Sand, curated by 126 Gallery, was recorded at the edge of The Empty Quarter in the United Arab Emirates, and is a meditation on the strange, silent power of the desert.  The transience, mobility and immersive quality of the shifting sand acts as a metaphor not only for time but also relates to thresholds of seeing, thinking and being.


Naheed Raza  (b. 1980, UK) is  an artist whose practice explores the tension between appearance and reality, and the elusive, often ambiguous nature of experience. Recent films have been exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, Edinburgh Film Festival, Bloomberg SPACE and the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Naheed is currently living and working in Edinburgh and holds a MA Fine Art from Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.


126 Gallery is Galway's and the west of Ireland’s first artist-led exhibition space. 126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway. In the last ten years a diverse and internationally significant visual arts scene has emerged in Ireland. It is in this development that 126 plays an important role as the only permanent space in Galway that allows artists to experiment and take risks with their practice. Locating to a white-cube space, 126 invited local artists to form a Board based on the successful democratic style of Catalyst (Belfast) and Transmission (Glasgow). In 2009, 126 relocated to a larger, more prominent space on Queen Street in the city centre. 


Lismore Castle Arts, a not-for-profit initiative, was founded in 2005 with the aim of presenting and promoting internationally significant contemporary art to audiences in Ireland and beyond. The main gallery hosts one exhibition, of work by leading international artists, per year. Lismore Castle Arts: St Carthage Hall, a new venture for 2011, is sited in the town of Lismore and will be open every weekend from April to September.

12 Jul 2011

14 - 5 = 126, Galway Arts Festival




14 - 5 = 126

Alwyn Revill, Joe Nix, Alan Butler, Louise Manifold, David Beattie, Jonathan Sammon, Stefan Johansson, Karolin Reichardt and Maurits van Putten.

In association with the Galway Arts Festival

11 July - 24 July 2011


14 - 5 = 126 is an experimental artist led project that will take place in 126 Gallery, Queen Street, Galway. Over the course of nine days, coinciding with the Galway Arts Festival, nine artists - local, national and international, will work consecutively in the space from 6pm in the evening, until opening time, 1pm in the afternoon of the following day. As part of this progressive collective installation the artist will use the gallery to his or her maximum ability and may extend from floor, wall and ceiling.
The following evening the next artist will enter the space at 6pm and continue the process. The pattern is methodically repeated and the next chosen artist will work in the gallery also from closing time to opening time. Each artist will follow the steps made by the first artist. They may erase parts or the whole work, critique it, enhance it, react to the work or decide not to react at all. This cyclical process will develop discourses, open the gallery up like a sketchbook, challenge and question methods of working singularly and as a collective. Artists will work under a certain time constraint and within strict spatial limitations. The results cannot be planned. Questions of system, structures, hierarchy and the decision making process will be analyzed by this experimentally led nine day project.
This process will be repeated until the nine chosen artists have worked for nine consecutive days as part of 126 programme for the Galway Arts festival. Every day between 1pm and 6pm the result of each days work will be shown to the public. Webcams will also be in place throughout the project so the public can view the work as it unfolds in real time.
At the end of 14 - 5 = 126 there will be a reception held of the closing ‘opening’. It will be the culmination of the nine artists work. A documentary video projection will reflect the process throughout the nine days.

Opening reception: Monday 11th July, 7pm (Experimental minimalist set by Shane Burke)

Closing reception: Thursday 21st July, 7pm

Check out our Facebook page for more info and a live webcam feed of the project throughout the Galway Arts Festival.