Rising from the Hill: Local Systems in Global Contexts
The NCAD Gallery is pleased to present, 'Rising from the Hill: Local Systems in Global Contexts' curated by Francis Halsall & Kelley O’Brien
Thursday, 7th December - Friday, 8th December 2017
The NCAD Gallery is delighted to host the exhibition, Rising From the Hill. Rising From the Hill takes the form of a process-based exhibition stemming from a six week long residency at Cow House Studios and collaboration with Art in the Contemporary World Masters Program in which artists were asked to explore and respond to the local environment and beyond. The artists in residence present their process, sketches and responses to a sense of place and connections to the environment of County Wexford, Ireland. Through on-going research, readings, material explorations, site visits and conversations with local residents of County Wexford the artists have focused on how society and human existence have shaped and defined the landscape.
The exhibition, curated by Francis Halsall and Kelley O’Brien will showcase the works of Artists in Residence, Angela Jeradi, Rowan Lear, Charlotte Lagro, and Martina O’Brien located in the NCAD Gallery, Dublin, open to the public Thursday 7 and Friday 8 December 2017 from 10am - 8pm. All welcome, please join us for a reception at the NCAD gallery Friday December 8 from 4 - 8pm.
Image courtesy of the exhibition artist Charlotte Lagro.
------------------------------ Exhibition Announcement 01/08/2017 ----------------------------------
The NCAD Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition, Rising from the Hill: Local Systems in Global Contexts curated by Francis Halsall & Kelley O’Brien, featuring artists, writers and curators: Angela Jerardi, Charlotte Lagro, Rowan Lear, and Martina O’Brien. The exhibition is the culmination of work produced during a studio residency at Cow House Studios, led by and conceived in the spirit of meaningful exchange between practice and theory, and as an outcome of on-going collaborative projects between the exhibition curators Halsall and O’Brien.
Halsall and O’Brien collaborations investigate social relations through the lens of systems. This means to uncouple systems from individual humans and think of them, instead, as complex interactions of people, architecture, things, communications, and environments. In other words, individuals are not separate from their environments, but rather, an integral part of them.
The Rising from the Hill: Local Systems in Global Contexts six-week long studio residency invited visual artists, performance artists, filmmakers, writers, architects, designers, thinkers via an open call process, to engage in a variety of aesthetic practices accompanied by a series of discussions and dinners led by Halsall and O'Brien as well as many visiting artists, curators, and academics.
The selected individuals will reside at Cow House Studios from October 30, through December 10, 2017, to explore and develop methods of giving aesthetic forms to real-life, situations. In particular, participants respond to the local environment of Cow House Studios, in the rural Irish countryside of Wexford. Encouraged to use ideas, strategies, and metaphors of “systems” to consider the complex relationships between this local context and larger global systems such as economics, telecommunications, meteorology and so on.
Rising from the Hill: Local Systems in Global Contexts is a co-hosted exhibition presentation in conjunction with the Masters Programme Art in the Contemporary World (ACW), NCAD. Through structured conversations, readings, and site explorations participant residents articulate different methods for aesthetically “mapping” the historical and contemporary context of Irish relations with global and social systems of power. With the generous support of Wexford County Council & the National College of Art & Design, Dublin, residency participants are invited to develop a proposed project to be presented as both a visual record of research and development through a collaborative exhibition at the NCAD Gallery, National College of Art & Design, Dublin (NCAD) in December 2017.
Please find curator and artist information further below on this page. For more information about ACW link here. For more information about Cow House Studios link here.
Curator Biographies
Dr. Francis Halsall is an art writer and academic who lectures in the history/ theory of modern and contemporary art at National College of Art & Design, Dublin where he is Director (with Declan Long) of Masters Programs: Art in the Contemporary World. Please find more information about Francis Halsall on his website here.
Kelley O'Brien is an artist based in the USA, her practice takes the form of site-specific works, to provide alternative contexts by which to understand lived environments. In her artist statement, she describes her work: I produce interruptions that act to reveal the affective dimensions of architectural and social systems. My practice takes the form of site-specific works, to provide alternative contexts by which to understand lived environments. Through the creation of aesthetic interventions such as: radio broadcasts, historical landmarkers, personal interviews, and literal maps I aim to locate myself, individuals, and communities within the intangible context of their social relations. These works are the physical manifestation of the way individuals use and define kinetic architecture and are not merely metaphors or expressions of the present environment. My research draws on history, geography, and current politics. This allows for a basic understanding of individual communities as being simultaneously past and present, individual and communal, formal and informal.
Please find more information about Kelley O'Brien on her website here.
Exhibitors Information
Angela Jerardi is an independent curator and writer currently living in Amsterdam. Her work aims to materialize and rehearse radical imagination and possible models of cohabitation with artists and thinkers of all stripes. Recurring concerns and desires include: experimenting with means for complex publics to gather, the privileging of divergent ways of knowing and collective models of working, and the exploration of play and humor as exhibition-making methodologies. Through this labour, she hopes to enact care and hospitality, encourage nuance, and ask how we can fail more openly and honestly. Please find more information about Angela Jerardi on her website here.
Charlotte Lagro is an artist based in Maastricht, Netherlands. Using video or photography as a starting point, she makes multimedia installations in which various works have a reciprocal relationship. Please find more information about Charlotte Lagro on her website here.
Rowan Lear is an artist, writer and organiser. Utilising materials of old and new media, found images and objects, and language itself, culminating in texts, installations and performative gestures. Lear is interested in learning the ways that systems operate, how social structures are formed, and what strategies and spaces can reimagine ideologies of the present. She is critically engaged with contemporary art, theories of technology and visual culture: writing essays, presenting papers and publishing playful texts in zines, catalogues and photobooks. Please find more information about Rowan Lear on his website here.
Martina O’Brien holds an MA in Visual Art Practice from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dun Laoghaire, and works with various media including drawing, painting, moving image and installation in investigating anthropogenic themes in relation to climate and physical and social geographies. Please find more information about Martina O’Brien on her website here.
Anne Kelly Programme Curator NCAD Gallery contact: gallery@staff.ncad.ie
National College of Art & Design, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin, D08 K521, Ireland.
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