As part of Eigse Carlow Arts Festival 2008, We Don’t Need Nobody Else brings together the work of artists from Ireland, the UK and further afield. Located in St Patrick’s College, the historical and educational heart of Carlow town and county, the show attempts to engage with this setting, touching on notions of the visible and the part- or un-seen, the individual and the mutual, and the search for connection with another.
The starting point for the show is some of the fixations of art, namely the capturing of reality, myth and fiction, reverie and nightmare. These preoccupations are not the subject, theme or byline for the exhibition; instead they give grounding for individual artist enquiry. The works use, and endeavour to connect with, what appears to be immediate, and everyday, close, recognisable and within grasp. They consider surroundings, things, places, people, the past. The familiarity, though, falls awkwardly on the eye and the memory. The works ask for an altered gaze, a shift in stance or even of beliefs. They may require a different, harder, unflinching sense, or instead a renewed innocence or regression. They may tug at the comfort of the habitual look, pull at what is known and identifiable, and usher towards something unnerving, broken, or incomplete.
The shift makes for solitary viewing; and yet, surely an intention for art is reassurance, a shared way of looking.
We Don’t Need Nobody Else reflects on the self-dependence of the individual and the need for the communal, and explores the unsettling nature of attempting to recognise another’s imparted view.
The exhibition includes work by the following artists: Steven Aylin, Paul Becker, Anna Bjerger, Gordon Cheung, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Erica Eyres, Andrzej Jackowski, and Justin Mortimer. It has been curated by Rob Lowe.
Talks: Justin Mortimer discusses his paintings and working practice. Sunday 8 June, 4pm
Vanessa Donoso Lopez in conversation with Mark St. John Ellis, curator of the Ashford Gallery, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. Saturday 14 June, 4pm
EIGSE, Carlow Arts Festival 2008 Eigse Carlow Arts Festival 2008 runs from June 7 to June 15 when Carlow town explodes with cultural verve, cutting edge performance and a dynamic programme of visual arts, music, theatre, dance, children’s events and street spectacle. Eigse was hugely acclaimed for artistic collaboration, innovative programming and the celebration of Carlow Town as a festival platform last year. Eigse 08 presents a radically diverse and challenging programme this June when Carlow will be transformed into a live performance venue. The Eigse 2008 Visual Arts Programme promises a diversity of styles and forms, embracing the old and new. Visiting curator Rob Lowe has brought together artists from Europe, UK and Ireland, for the exhibition We Don’t Need Nobody Else, which features Steven Aylin, Paul Becker, Anna Bjerger, Gordon Cheung, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Erica Eyres, Andrzej Jackowski and Justin Mortimer. Acclaimed Chinese artist Hock Aun Teh brings his large-scale abstract expressionist paintings to Ireland for the first time. His paintings show a marrying of the spontaneity and expressive freedom found in the most highly prized of T’ang calligraphic Master’s to the colours of high-tech materials of Modern Western art. Visualise Carlow, in association with the RHA Gallagher Gallery presents: Singing the Real a large scale exhibition of contemporary Irish artists as part of Eigse 08. Visualise is a temporary series of public art projects leading up to the opening of VISUAL – the National Centre for Contemporary Art due to open its doors in Carlow in Spring 2009. Patrick T. Murphy, Director RHA and the exhibition’s curator explains. “Singing the Real is a multi-media, cross generational and gender diverse exhibition that explores the combination of scientific method and art practice that is an evident and strong strain in Irish art today. Observing, recording, describing, hypothesizing and analyzing are the empirical dynamics that underscore the artwork in this exhibition.” The artists are Barrie Cooke, Dorothy Cross, Grace Weir, Susan Tiger, Cecily Brennan, Nick Miller, Neva Elliott, John Gerrard, Gary Phelan and Martin Healy. Multi-award winning Clare born artist Mick O’Dea undertook a residency with eighteen Carlow based artists in March. Paintings from Life is an exhibition of the fruits of this residency. The exhibition focuses on landscape and figurative painting encouraging both confidence and new creative work practices.
Grainne O’ Donnell Arts & Entertainment Public Relations katscottpress at gmail.com 00353 87 783 1960†
