126 presents:
THE MACHISMO PROJECT
Gary Dempsey & Conall Cary
curated by Gerald Heffernan
August 10th -31st 2013
Preview | Friday 9th August 2013 | 7pm
THE MACHISMO PROJECT
Gary Dempsey & Conall Cary
curated by Gerald Heffernan
August 10th - August 31st 2013
Preview | Friday 9th August 2013 | 7pm
'THE
ROUGHLY HEWN NARRATIVES OF ‘MACHISMO’ AND THE COMPLEX PRESSURES OF
TRADITIONAL GENDER CONSTRUCTS ARE EXPOUNDED THROUGH A FORM OF
SELF-REFLEXIVE HUMOUR; A HUMOUR WHICH ACTS AS A FRONT PARADOXICALLY
REVEALING THE WEIGHT OF THE SUBJECT MATTER ENTAILED'
There is a
deficit of work in current contemporary art practice which confronts
masculinity directly as its subject matter. The Machismo Project was
conceived as a means by which this neglected area of research could be
examined and explored. Through an exhibition and symposium a dialogue
will be opened up where the complex pressures of traditional gender
constructs can be unpacked and discussed. This project does not hope to
provide answers to the issues it raises but rather to begin to subvert
and question the roughly hewn narratives of machismo and its
intersection with society.
Within the exhibition curated by
Gerald Heffernan (Tactic @ Sample-Studios) the topic of male identity
will be explored through the work of artists Conall Cary and Gary
Dempsey in their use of printed imagery and innovative construction
methods. The work will consist of large scale prints on cast concrete
and cut steel, utilising the inherent masculinity of the materials size,
strength and toughness juxtaposed against the surface imagery.
Gary
Dempsey is a visual artist and printmaker currently working as a member
of Backwater Artists Group and Cork Printmakers. He graduated from the
Limerick School of Art & Design with a degree in Fine Art
Printmaking and has been involved as a member of the Francisian Church
and Limerick Printmakers, showing work in a variety of group
exhibitions both nationally and internationally. In 2011 he was awarded
the Bursary Award from Cork Printmakers and he continues to work and
teach there. Dempsey's work draws on his experiences of relationships
and human interactions and imposed sexual expectations placed on men
today. In his work men and women are replaced by curious, animal like
creatures that are used to explore the ways in which men are encouraged
to reduce themselves to a series of primal urges.
Conall
Cary is a visual artist and printmaker currrently working as a member
of Backwater Artists Group and Cork Printmakers. After his studies at
the University of Oregon, he went on to study Printmaking at GMIT and
graduated with a first class honours degree in 2010. As
artist-in-residence at the Highland Print Studio in Inverness, Scotland
he worked with mental health patients facilitating workshops using
printmaking methods. With recent residencies at the Sirius Art Centre,
Cork Printmakers and Ratamo Centre for Printmaking & Photography in
Finland, Cary has continued a direction of work that is concerned with
the modern male identity, in particular the issues facing men living in
rural isolated environments.
Gerald
Heffernan graduated from the Crawford College of Art & Design in
2010 with a bachelors degree in Fine Art. Having previously founded and
programmed the Patrick St. Gallery in Cork from 2006-2009 he became
involved with the creation of Sample-Studios in Cork City. He currently
acts as Director and Chairperson while also being the co-curator and
programmer for TACTIC project space in Sample-Studios. Heffernan has
curated several exhibitions both in TACTIC and elsewhere, most notable
being NLAIII at IMOCA in Dublin in 2012. He is currently involved in
on-going curatorial projects such as The Machismo Project.
http://www.machismo.ie/M-A-C-H-I-S-M-O
http://www.conallcary.com/
http://www.rockthefuckoutjr.com/
www.facebook.com/TACTICart
126 presents:
Artist Talk 7 | Laura Gannon in conversation with Katherine Waugh
Saturday 10th August 2013 | 5pm
Followed by prosecco reception
Free event open to all
126 Artist Talk 7 | Laura Gannon in conversation with Katherine Waugh
Saturday 10th August 2013 | 5pm
126
presents the seventh in a series of Artists talks that aim to encourage
critical conversations about contemporary art practice in Ireland.
Artist Laura Gannon will discuss the development of her artistic
practice along with a presentation of a selection of her works in film,
drawing and performance.
Laura
Gannon was born in Galway and grew up in Mayo and is now a London based
visual artist working predominantly in 16mm and digital film and
drawing. She completed the Artist Associate Programme at Lux, London,
2009 and graduated from Goldsmiths College, London, with an M.A( Fine
Art) in 2003. Her 16mm film StopGap was the first moving image work purchased by the Irish Arts Council and has recently been included in the touring Into the Light exhibition, and her film A House in Cap-Martin set in Eileen Gray's landmark Modernist house E1027 (2006) has shown internationally to much acclaim.
Gannon recently completed a commission to produce a performance piece based on Elizabeth Bowen's The Heat of the Day as part of the David Roberts Art Foundation's programme A House of Leaves,
which investigated further her preoccupation with the relationship
between architecture, literature, non-dominant narratives and the body.
Her work will be included in a forthcoming group show Folly: Art after Architecture in the Glucksman Gallery.
She
has exhibited widely in numerous group exhibitions in Ireland, the UK,
Germany, and the USA, in addition to solo exhibitions in the Dublin City
Gallery, The Hugh Lane; Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, The Context
Gallery, Derry, Sketch Gallery London and Whitechapel Projects London.
She has received many awards and scholarships, including the Macauley
Fellowship from the Irish Arts Council and the Thomas Damann Memorial
Fellowship.
Laura Gannon:
"My work
is an ongoing process of exploring ways to convey fragility, the female body
within architecture and non-dominant
narratives which emerge in geographical margins. This interest stems from a
childhood growing up in
the West of Ireland where language was nuanced and loaded with unspoken
meaning. I have an ongoing
engagement with literature, which explores architecture, storytelling and
memory. I have worked with texts from
Elizabeth Bowen, Maeve Brennan and Jean Rhys. Most recently I have used Bowen’s
novel‘The Heat of the Day’ as a starting
point for creating a performance for four actors. By taking sections of text and collaging it
to create a new structure, the work explored place as narrative.
I am now adding
layers to this ongoing research and exploration incorporating performance and
the
fantastical
coinciding with the domestic containing the voice and actions of older women.
The current
work-in-development
The Cat Jumps (title from an Elizabeth Bowen short story) will allow me
explore
collaged
narrative in film as well as live performance. By including non-actors in their
seventies,
there is room in their filmed performance for an intimate
space to be created and portray the texture
that is part of old age. The use of a
house as location for filming will provide an existing ‘stage set’ for
the
action to take place.
My films
question the placement of an individual body in socio-cultural environments,
specifically within sites of particular architectural or historical
interest. These might be fraught with an uncertain future, troubled by conflict or lie languishing and derelict.
I am also concerned with the alignment of power and the effect of recent histories impacting earlier
histories.
I explore the
appearance of human presence as a form of ritual and staging within both
architectural
and the natural
environments. I am concerned with the notion of performance, staging, existing
histories and the slippage between the dominant history and a story that
is under the skin of that history.
Voice,
storytelling, architectural histories in literature, the edge of the margins:
culturally and geographically, glamour, luxury, fragility, creating
identities through dress, the inconsistent narrator, the construction of domestic environments into a place of
performance and ritual. The secrets of old women. (which really means
remembering outside the dominant cultural and political narrative). Humour and
pleasure in the uncanny and the
slippage of life. Powerful women who
occupy my mind include: Grace O’Malley, Eileen Gray,
Nora Barnacle, Elizabeth Bowen and Margaret Burke-Sheridan".
