Archive for September, 2009

Filmmaker Mark Romanek is the 2009 Darklight Guest Of Honour. Mark will be joining us for a Screen Training Ireland workshop and a Public Interview on Saturday, October 10th. The Public Interview event will include a screening of Mark’s music video work, including this Jay-Z classic:

More details on Mark Romanek @ Darklight HERE and HERE.

Running at Dublin’s Light House concurrently with this year’s Darklight Festival…

Taming Light is a group exhibition of new work from Irish and international artists paying tribute to Stanley Kubrick, ten years on from his death. The exhibition comprises 25 paintings, photographs and illustrations inspired by Kubrick and his films and shows at the Light House cinema, Smithfield. Participating artists include: Chris Judge, Joby Hickey, Kiersten Essenpreis, Francis Matthews, Mark Wickham, Geraldine Doherty, Fergal Brennan, Annie Atkins and graffiti artist Maser. Curated by Sunday Business Post film critic John Maguire, the exhibition opens Thursday October 1st and runs for the month of October.

More info HERE.

NB: Image: Overlook Hotel/Francis Matthews/oil on canvas

While we’re at it…

Straylight Performance Art Weekender
@ Darklight 2009
8th October – 11 October
Mill Street Studios

Straylight Performance Art Festival
8th October – 11 October
The Dublin Art Mill

The Straylight Performance Art Festival presents a weekend of live performance art. Bringing together the work of 25 different artists, from established and internationally recognised practicioners in the field of live performance work, to exciting new emerging artists.The festival will take place over 4 days at the Dublin Art Mill. Straylight is the Darklight Film Festival’s visual arts strand and is curated by Niamh Murphy.

On Darklight’s launch night – Thursday 8th October, at 8.30pm – Niamh Murphy and Meabh Redmond will be showing their group performance Something Specials on Smithfield Plaza. This performance event will see 20 women standing in formation voicing their frustration with attitude. This is a substantial new piece of work from emerging artists Murphy and Redmond. The piece has been developed in collaboration with the twenty performers, a mixture of actors and non actors and is the result of a unique process of call and return.

On Friday 9th October Straylight’s Performance Festival takes up residence in the Dublin Art Mill. Friday’s program will focus on emerging artists, culminating with a live performance open to the public from 6-8pm. The artists are Linda Conroy, Michelle O Shea, Sinead Corcaran, Aoife Casey, Mia Mularky, Ciara Mc Keon, Roisin Bierne, Mags Geaney, Pearl Henegan, Anna Maria Healy and Niamh Creely.

Saturday 10th October, from 6-8pm will see a series of live performances shown in sequence. Each performance will be approximately 15 minutes in duration, and will be intersected by performances from Noel Molloy, Harold Offeh and Sandra Minchin. Roscommon native Molloy has a substantial international reputation and will be making an actionist piece with various objects including a clown mask and some mixing cement. Offeh is a London based artist: his work challenges gender and racial identity with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek. Cork based Minchin will be addressing ideas on censorship in the contemporary world. Mags Geaney, Deirdre McPhilips, Pamela Myers and Lisa Walsh will be performing time-based sequential work throughout the evening.

Sunday 11th October, from 5pm – 8pm will be a living installation performance. This event will present durational performances as a group presentation. All of the artists will perform for three hours: this form of performance presentation is of particular fascination for the curator and strongly informs her examination of contemporary performance practice. We are very excited to include the practice of Aine Philips who, together with Jim Ricks, has devised the piece The Doctor Is In. Dominic Thorpe will be making 900 clocks while Tom Campbell will be sculpting a head from clay. Francis Fay will be Keeping Face, as Lisa Marie Johnson crushes fruit while singing Your Country. Other artists participating are Alex Conway, Victoria McCormack and Elaine Mackey.

All of these performance events are free to the public. Contact us at straylightlive(at)gmail.com to book your audience tickets.

Places are limited so booking is strongly advised.

Performance is omnipresent in contemporary art practice, and internationally it is in the throes of its second wave. Straylight will bring attention to this explosion of the live in the visual arts, highlighting indigenous artists alongside international practicioners. Straylight will capitalise on this abundance of homegrown talent to produce the first Irish performance art festival.

Straylight’s performance art festival is co-curated by the artists Niamh Murphy and Amanda Coogan.

Contact: straylightlive(at)gmail.com

More on Mill Street Studio HERE.

Watch Amanda Coogan at the Manchester International Festival HERE.

The Details!

• Event: Darklight Schedule of Eventsin Three Potential Endings by Willie Doherty
• Date: Thursday, October 8th 2009
• Time: 8:00pm
• Venue: Smithfield Plaza
• Admission: Free
• Notes:
  Runs daily during festival.

Three Potential Endings was shot on location in Dublin during the summer of 2008.

The work presents a male figure besieged with the possibility of failure and uncertainty, and was conceived as a response to the shifting architectural landscape of contemporary Dublin. It does not provide any explanation or rationale but rather places the man in direct confrontation with the architectural spaces where he finds himself. The three sequences are simultaneously fragmented and connected by a fourth sequence that shows the man pacing around a small, confined space. It is unclear whether he is lost in thought and deep in concentration or whether he is confused and oblivious to his surroundings. Three Potential Endings extends the Willie Doherty’s concerns with exploring the dynamics of specific urban spaces through the medium of video.

Three Potential Endings screens daily from Thursday 8th – Saturday 10th October.

About Willie Doherty:

Born in Derry in 1959, Willie Doherty’s work has, since he began exhibiting in the early 1980’s, consistently addressed problems of representation, territoriality and surveillance, and the politics and rhetoric of identity, especially in his native Northern Ireland. Much of his early photographic work incorporated text and since the mid-90’s he has increasingly worked in film and video installation. Doherty has had solo exhibitions at venues across the globe, represented Ireland at the 1993 Venice Biennale and won the 1995 Irish Museum of Modern Art/Glen Dimplex Artists Award. He was also nominated for the Turner Prize in 1994 and 2003.

Darklight is delighted to present the Irish premiere of Willie Doherty’s new work Three Potential Endings as a site-specific screening in Smithfield Plaza: in addition, the artist will participate in a Public Interview and screening event, chaired by writer and critic Caoimhin MacGiollaleith, in Light House on Saturday, October 10th at 3pm.