Watch this space. The art machine that is The Avant is underway again, scheduled this year for July 9th – 18th. The credit crunch has done untold damage to the already meagre Irish arts infrastructure (by European standards), but drops in rent charges, and a new interest in certain governmental quarters (Limerick being the shining example) in the DIY cultural revitalisation of disused spaces, has brought about some interesting changes in the urban artistic climate. Small city-centre, artist-run spaces are mushrooming this year, Cork City seeing the very welcome appearance of Cork Contemporary Projects’ ‘The Space’ on the South Mall, and the Basement Project Space on Pope’s Quay, to name but two. Avant diplomats, trained for seven years at Sciences Po, will soon be fanning out across the city to meet with these sturdy pioneers. In addition, lecturer at Limerick College of Art David Brancaleone has initiated a project with students under the title ‘Art in the Making’ that, in association with the Crawford Art College, and the ubiquitous Dobz, should manifest itself as part of this year’s Avant events. With plans for SoundEye XIV being put into action (the board joined this year by Default publications’ Jimmy Cummins and Rachel Warriner), and Sonic Vigil again in the offing, things are shaping up for a busy summer.
July 4, 2009
Avant Responses
Now that we’re underway I thought that I might use the site to publish responses to the events as they happen. I’m going to exercise a certain amount of editorial discretion, but will try to include almost everything offered, either as a post to the blog, on a separate Responses page, or in the form of a comment. First off, some photos from last night at the Couch Gallery. If I’m infringing anyone’s copyrights please inform me . . .
From Joe Nix’s ‘Brain washed in a good way’ (Couch Gallery 3/7)
Loiterers among Joe Nix’s found film advertisements and drawings
Remnants of the cow puppet used at Joe Nix’s SoundEye Cabaret performance last year – recycled as sculptural piece.
Russell Crowe is surrounded threateningly by Joe Nix’s drawings
July 3, 2009
Credit crunched . . .
Victims of major budget constrictions Circa magazine have been forced to withdraw their sponsorship for the launch event on Saturday night. But thanks to Edel and Liam of Contemporary Art Projects the Avant has found a way through the financial turmoil, so
you’re all invited to
July 3, 2009
24/7 Update
Where and When?
River Room, Lewis Glucksman Gallery,Thursday 9th July, 3.00 – 4.30pm
Who and What?
Chris Clarke (Curator of Education and Collections, Lewis Glucksman Gallery): ‘Online Aesthetics’
Claire Feeley (Glucksman Fellow in Curatorial Practice): ‘Talk Radio’
Dr. David Brancaleone (Critical and Contextual Studies, Limerick School of Art and Design): ‘Art and Numbers’
Rachel Warriner and Jimmy Cummins (Artists based in Cork): ‘The Life and Times of Nathaniel Turner’
Ciara Moore (Artist based in Dublin): ‘Alexander’s Dark Band’
Dr. Ed Krčma (History of Art, UCC): ‘Diagramming Value’
More Info…
Chris Clarke: Online Aesthetics
Chris Clarke will present a series of computer screen-grabs while discussing notions of instantaneity and accessibility and their relation to the standard interface format. This talk will also look at how such layouts present a (false) sense of freedom and omniscience in the online user.
Claire Feeley: Talk Radio
A mile-a minute fly-by of early representation of radio focusing on the aspirations ascribed to it as a part of the public sphere. Talk radio and sports broadcasting are taken as paradigmatic of two opposing forms of sociality suggested by the advent of mass radio.
David Brancaleone: Art and Numbers
You might suppose there can’t be much of a relation between art and number, and if there was, you wouldn’t want to know about it. The artistic mind would seem to be at loggerheads with maths – until you think of the geometrization of the human body in Egyptian sculpture, the mathematization of space in the Renaissance, the mythical, more than real, notion of an ideal proportion, referred to as the Golden Section, and twentieth century artists toying around with the Fibonacci sequence. But there are other ways of thinking about the relation between number and art. Sequence, repetition, subtraction, multiplicity, totality, singularity are key terms I shall be relating to specific philosophies (Badiou’s, Deleuze’s) and specific art works, and of course I extend that term to include film, photography, print and more besides.
Rachel Warriner and Jimmy Cummins: The Life & Times of Nathaniel Turner
The day that Nathaniel Turner stepped out of his house to deliver one of the most influential speeches ever given will forever be a defining moment in history. Our talk focuses on that speech, and its vast ranging repercussions.
Ciara Moore: Alexander’s Dark Band
Ed Krčma: Diagramming Value
A very brief explanation of a very speculative diagram I drew a few months ago in which I was attempting to bring together some varied claims for value in modern and contemporary art. One axis describes an ‘attitude’ or ‘comportment’ (affirmative or negative) and another concerns ‘direction’ (reflexive or extensive). And then there are all the positions in between…
July 2, 2009
Saturday 4th & Friday 10th: The Black Mariah
ALEX CONWAY / WOULD FOR THE TWEE [ CLOSING PERFORMANCE ]
12 / 6 – 4 / 7 09
An installation of selected works spanning three years by Dublin based performance artist Alex Conway.
Conway is interested in capturing and utilizing what resonates from temporal oppositions or confrontations between observer, performer, and object and the spaces or situations which they cohabit. His performative actions (incorporating sound and live sculptural interventions) serve to work as platforms upon which he highlights, fuses and materializes latent anxieties from concerned perspectives.
“Like a doped up duplicitous crone, Conway shimmys, while hovering over the lost sailor in all of us.”
- Frank Wanke (KFDS)
[ SATURDAY JULY 4 / 7PM ]
TOM FITZGERALD / GAZAPARADISO [ CURATED BY SEAN LYNCH ]
11 / 7 – 8 / 8 09
An exhibition of new and recent work by Limerick based artist Tom Fitzgerald.
GAZAPARADISO includes new work by Fitzgerald, as Sandro Botticelli’s illustrations for Dante’s Paradiso
(1490-5) are juxtaposed with journalist’s accounts of early 2009’s bombing of Gaza by Israel. Fitzgerald presents fragments of drawings and texts upon fragments of material; both the drawings and texts are inscribed in sections of plastic collected on a beach in County Clare where Fitzgerald takes his holidays. Fitzgerald notes that ‘the installation is an attempt to highlight the disparity between man’s aspirations and the reality of his actions.’
“I always enjoy Fitzgerald’s impulses, curiosity and generosity towards the understanding of his subject matterand sculptural material… By creating these kinds of in-betweens, jarringly beautiful transitions have constantly been evoked by Fitzgerald over the decades in his sculptures, and more recently, in his drawings.”
- Sean Lynch
[ OPENING FRIDAY JULY 10 / 7.30PM ]
June 28, 2009
Less than a week to go . . .
News will be arriving shortly regarding the venue and time for Circa Salon on the night of Saturday 4th, and The Other Place is now confirmed for SoundEye’s Cabaret on the following Thursday: two social vortices in The Avant’s semiotic tide. Find below this year’s SoundEye poster. The image of snaking rail and steps is from a photograph by Trevor Joyce taken near St. Mary’s, Pope’s Quay.
June 18, 2009
7 fo’r 24/7
Signed up so far for a quick-fire communication of ideas:
Rachel Warriner and Jimmy Cummins (performance / Default magazine), Chris Clarke (curator / writer), Claire Feeley (curator), Dobz O’Brien (artist / curator), Ciara Moore (artist), David Brancaleone (scholar / teacher), and art historian / event initiator Ed Krcma.
Image: Lombardi World Finance Corporation and Associates, ca 1970-1984, 1999 (Mark Lombardi)
