LCGA Exhibitions

OPEN e v+ a at Former LIT/LSAD Building Georges Quay

25 May 2009
Limerick School of Art and Design, Georges Quay, Limerick

 

Of the 36 artists selected by the Curators Angelika Nollert & Yilmaz Dziewior, 11 artists exhibit their work in Former LIT/LSAD Building Georges Quay, ranging from drawing, filmworks, sculptural installations, photographs and artist books.

Andreas BUNTE
(1970, Germany)
Die Letzten Tage der Gegenwart
Video Installation 6:40, 2006
Ben Kaufmann Gallery, Franz Brugner, Marcus Nickel
The thematic background of the installation Die letzten Tage der Gegenwart consists of two films and several collages documenting German terrorism from the 60s and 70s. One film documents the interior of a high-rise apartment in a sequence of carefully arranged still lives. The other film depicts politically connected buildings from the outside. In the collages Bunte has layered texts and drawings on magazines from the 1960s and 70s. The fragmented quotes by G. DeBord, R.D. Brinkmann, H. Marcuse and A. Freud have become unrecognizable through repeated rewriting.
 
Lynda DEVENNEY
(1974, Ireland)
Architectonics of Time
Video Installation 03:25, 2008
Architectonics of Time depicts a rundown bus station, a space of flux and transition. As an example of 1960s Brutalist architecture, now threatened with demolition, it also demonstrates how a building can embody ideals that make it a physical expression of an era .

Jan FREUCHEN
(1979, Norway)
Twenty-six Gasoline Stations
Photographic Series, 2008
Nordea Norway Art Collection, Galleri Erik Steen
These twenty-six different images of gasoline stations are collected from the internet. All of the gas stations have been tilted by extreme weather. Much like Ed Ruscha’s 1963 piece by the same name, many of the pictures have been taken through a rolled-down window in a car – but here by disaster tourists, or people fleeing from their homes. The T-structure of the gasoline stations represents an archetypical modernist invention. This is in contrast to the primitive shelter it forms when knocked over. The images reveal a feedback loop: the damaging winds are partially fuelled by the product the buildings were built to sell.
 
Garvan GALLAGHER
(1974, Ireland)
Wearing Purple
Photographic Series, 2008
This is a story about growing old. It is a story of a small village in Co. Donegal, in the North West of Ireland. It is mostly a narrative of some of the inhabitants of this village, people who happen to be adults from my childhood. It presents their perfectly normal lives photographed in their perfectly normal homes. The subjects range form 65 to 98 years of age – the eldest in my hometown. Each subject stares into the camera under an artificial light holding the cable release that runs back to the camera.  Each is in control of their own portrait.

Diango HERNANDEZ
(1970, Cuba/Germany)
Singles
2009

Daniel KNORR
(1968, Romania/Germany)
Leabhar Ealaíontóir
Artist Books edition of 200, DVD Documentation, 2009
Daniel Knorr spent a number of weeks on residency in Limerick, working on the production of his artist’s book, Leabhar Ealaíontóir. The book was published in 200 unique-copies, signed and numbered by the artist. Inserted and pressed inside the pages of the book each copy contains different garbage pieces found and collected by the artist from a public space. Knorr also visited Belfast and Dublin to collect material. The book contains a DVD with a 32’ film documenting the whole production process, showing the different stages and the artist’s involvement. His contribution for ev+a 2009 is part of a bigger publication project that has already included other versions in Romania and China.
 
Nicky LARKIN
(1983, Ireland)
Pripyat
Video Installation 16:00, 2008
Pripyat is a single-channel video piece exploring the empty city of Pripyat. The city of Pripyat was once considered the finest place to live in the whole of the Soviet Union.  A thoroughly modern city, it was built in 1970 to house the workers of the new Chernobyl nuclear power plant and their families, and was once home to 50,000 people.  In the aftermath of the accident in April 1986, the residents were instructed to pack one suitcase and told they would be returning in three days. One thousand buses were drafted in from all across the Soviet Union to take the residents of Pripyat out of their now highly contaminated home. They never returned. Twenty one years later Pripyat stands empty, a ghost town deep within the exclusion zone, the last remaining Soviet city. This experimental film takes you inside Pripyat to examine the relationship between time, nature and culture, in a city that will never be lived in again.

Seamus NOLAN
(1978, Ireland)
Hotel Ballymun
Video Installation, 2007
Ballymun is a socially disadvantaged area on the outskirts of Dublin. Seamus Nolan transformed into a “hotel” empty apartments in a high rise building named Clark Tower, which was due for demolition during summer 2007. Guests at Hotel Ballymun were able to appreciate the spectacular views over Dublin, just weeks before these views became inaccessible. The rooms were furnished with one-off pieces, customised and remodelled from existing furniture. These were designed and made by people from the Ballymun area during a two month series of workshops with Irish design duo Sticks and recent RCA graduate Jonathan Legge. A diverse programme of cultural and social events took place in the Hotel. During the day there was also a chance for the general public to take the lift up to view Hotel Ballymun.

Eamon O'KANE
(1974, Ireland)
Eames Studio Limerick
Interactive Research Studio, 2009
Charles Eames’ grandfather Henry Eames embarked from County Limerick for America in the mid 1700s. The Eames Studio Limerick takes this as a starting point. This scale model of the Eames Studio and House contains a resource archive about the development of architecture and design from the 20th century to the present day. These disciplines have the potential to mould society and human desire, for better and for worse.The model of the Eames studio is an accessible workspace for children where many toys, shapes and drawing tools are available for them to play with. Charles Eames and Frank Lloyd Wright were both educated using the Froebel method of teaching, which involved using blocks and essential shapes as early learning tools.

Alan PHELAN
(1968, Ireland)
Irish Guards
Enlarged Newspaper Prints 2006
This image is from The Daily Telegraph, 12 June 2006 accompanying an article written by UK Attorney General Lord Goldsmith titled, Where there is a credible allegation of serious wrongdoing, the rule of law must apply. In the article he defends the military justice system that has prosecuted British troops fighting in Iraq. The caption for the image reads “Guardsmen Joseph McCleary, left and Martin McGing after they were found not guilty of manslaughter of a 15-year-old Iraqi”.

Marjetica POTRČ
(1953, Slovenia)
The Struggle for Social Justice
Wall Drawings, Framed Drawings, 2005-2007
Max Protech Gallery New York
In her project Struggle for Social Justice Marjetica Potrč combines two big wall drawings referring to Belgrade and Prishtina with nine framed drawings. On the top of the drawings are sentences from the speech from Winston Churchill’s address to the House of Commons on June 4, 1940, “We Will Never Surrender”.  Potrč’s artworks aim to translate into the gallery space her view of contemporary architectural practices and their relationship to issues of energy, water use and communication. They illustrate how communities negotiate issues of space, security and communications, bringing to the fore the uneasy coexistence of different communities in 21st-century societies. The artist has observed, "There are two urban forms in the global city that I consider to be most successful - after all, they are growing the fastest - namely, gated communities and shantytowns."


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