Gregory Sholette - The Imaginary Archive
4th November - 20th November, 2011Opening reception: Saturday 5th November, 6pm
126, Artist run gallery in association with Tulca 2011 is delighted to present new work by artist and writer Gregory Sholette for “After the Fall”. A critical international figure in the area of collectivity and artist-led activity and politics, Sholette has been collaborating with the 126 Gallery and its membership over the last number of months to re-visit the concept of the Imaginary Archive.
Synopsis:
Imagine yourself uncovering a cache of materials and documents that record a past whose future never arrived? Imaginary Archive Galway (IAG) is just such a repository: printed materials, objects, and narratives that imagine an alternative history, which nevertheless sheds a surprisingly strong light on concrete realities. New York based artist Gregory Sholette invited participants from Galway, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States to produce this “what if” collection of archival materials addressing topics from forgotten Irish inventors and fantastic nation-branding campaigns, to uncharted offshore islands and mysterious pirate radio broadcasts. On display at 126 Gallery, IAG consists of under-represented, unknown, invisible, or merely hoped-for "historical" materials that point to multiple ways of interpreting the past, the present, and the future. For more information click here.
Biography:
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of the artists’ collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University of California, San Diego (MFA 1995), and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in Critical Theory, his publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011); Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (with Blake Stimson for University of Minnesota, 2007); and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (with Nato Thompson for MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008), as well as a special issue of the journal Third Text co-edited with theorist Gene Ray on the theme “Whither Tactical Media.” Sholette recent exhibitions include Imaginary Archive (for the Tulca Festival in Galway, Ireland 2011, and for Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand 2010); a contribution to Temporary Services Market Place for Creative Time’s Living as Form (2011); a two-person exhibition at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico (2011), and the installation “Mole Light: God is Truth, Light his Shadow” for Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, New York (2010). Sholette is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), has taught classes at Harvard, The Cooper Union, New York University, and Colgate University, and teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.
www.gregorysholette.com
www.darkmatterarchives.net
Participating artists:
Niall Moore (Galway), Dave Callan (Galway), Simon Fleming (Galway), Roger O'Shea (Galway), Ben Geoghegan (Galway), Austin Ivers (Galway), Tiarnán McDonough (Galway), Paul Maye (Galway), Àine Phillips (Clare), Allan Hugues (Belfast), John Hulsey, Brian Hand (Dublin), Jeffrey Skoller (NY), Matthew F. Greco (NYC), Todd Ayoung (NY), Aaron Burr Society (NY), Yevgeniy Fiks (NYC), Maureen Connor (NYC), Johan Lundh and Danna Vajda (NYC/Sweden), Trust Art (NYC), Ellen Rothenberg (Chicago), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Markus Wetzel (Berlin), Murray Hewitt (NZ), Jeremy Booth (NZ), Grant Corbishley (NZ), Dara Greenwald & Josh McPhee (NYC), Bryce Galloway (NZ), Lee Harrop (Australia), Malcom Doidge (NZ) and White Fungus (Taiwan) working in collaboration with Imaginary Archivists Olga Kopenkina and Gregory Sholette (NYC).
Dark Matter: Art, Politics, and Imagination under Crisis Capitalism
Talk by Gregory Sholette on Saturday 5th Nov at 12:00pm in Galway City Museum, Spanish Parade. For more information click here.
Contemporary Artists’ Collectives: Tactics, Models, and Imaginative Possibilities
Workshop by Gregory Sholette on Monday 7th Nov from 10:30am - 4:30 pm,
Ground Floor Aras Na Gael, Dominic Street, Galway.
Places are extremely limited and booking is essential. For more information click here.