NEWS
Form Follows Function, Uphold (by Household) at La Roche House
My new series of Aquatint Etchings 'Ulster Cycles' are available to buy on the Uphold website here
Form Follows Function explores the domestic as an anticipatory, affective space. The exhibition title is derived from the core principle of modernist design; that the shape of a building or object should primarily relate to its intended function or purpose. The exhibition extends and reclaims this definition by proposing that the home’s purpose is not just to organise the everyday functional practicalities of living but also to provide a speculative place that can house the possibilities of dreaming and imagining new, ‘softer’ futures.
Form Follows Function is held in La Roche House, a 1960s building off the Malone Road in south Belfast, where the works will be installed amongst the furniture of the building’s owners. Works in the exhibition explores interior spaces of play, creativity, invention and dreaming, and the domestic as a site of labour and action, and are all part of UPHOLD, Household’s not for profit platform for promoting and selling the work of Northern Ireland based artists.
Form Follows Function is part of The Living House, Household’s new programme of activities that explores the domestic as a radical site of production and imagining. The artworks have all been commissioned through our UPHOLD programme and are available to buy.
'An Dún', Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, IMMA, Dublin
IMMA presents a major museum wide exhibition, Self-Determination: A Global Perspective, one of the largest exhibitions in the Museum’s history. The culmination of a three-year research project, this exhibition focuses on the nation-states that emerged in the wake of the First World War, exploring the role of art and artists in relation to the expression of national identities, nation-building, and statecraft.
An Dún* is a new multi-narrative environment by Array Collective. Across immersive spaces a complicated and messy understanding of statehood and citizenship is unearthed. Ideological, topographical and political plans are fashioned and accumulated inside a site of destruction and construction.
Resting outside of time, we hear echoes of our past, present and future in ever-changing failed experiments of hope. The ‘good room’ deep within a cave, stages rituals of citizenship. Behind the scenes, plans are cooked up and mistakes are made, amidst the labour of daily life.
As An Dún shifts and repositions, occupying unsteady space between reality and fiction, care and compromise endeavour to make a shared existence livable
*dún1, m. (gs. dúin, pl. ~ta). 1. Fort; fortress. 2. Place of refuge, haven. ~ long, haven for ships. 3. (Secure) residence, house. ~ Dé, Heaven. Sa ~ seo, in this house (of security). 4. Promontory fort; bluff. (Var:gs. & pl. ~a)
The Turner Prize
Array Collective
Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Sinead Bhreathnach-Cashell, Jane Butler, Emma Campbell, Alessia Cargnelli, Mitch Conlon, Clodagh Lavelle, Grace McMurray, Stephen Millar, Laura O'Connor, and Thomas Wells
Herbert Museum, Coventry
29 SEPTEMBER 2021 – 12 JANUARY 2022
This is the first time a Turner Prize jury has selected a shortlist consisting entirely of artist collectives. All the nominees work closely and continuously with communities across the breadth of the UK and Ireland to inspire social change through art. The collaborative practices selected for this year’s shortlist also reflect the solidarity and community demonstrated in response to the pandemic.
The announcement of the winner is on 1 December 2021.
The shortlisted artists are:
• Array Collective
• Black Obsidian Sound System
• Cooking Sections
• Gentle/Radical
• Project Art Works
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The Occasional Man
Artist Duo 'Duncan'
Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell and Richard Martin
Belfast Film Festival
November 2020
‘The Occasional Man’ is an immersive film installation following the protagonist ‘Duncan’, a recently retired Glaswegian embarking on a failed attempt to become an actor. The audience will be guided through scenes from his disillusioned life, across several rooms of the former UTV Studios at Havelock House.
The project has been made in partnership with Flax Art Studios and Northern Ireland Screen Digital Film Archive.
Location: Flax Art Studios, Havelock House, Belfast, BT7 1EB
As Others See Us
'Collaborate!', Jerwood Arts, London
October - December 2019
A major new group exhibition presenting commissions by early-career artists working in collaborative and collective practices based across the UK.The selected artist collectives are: Array, Keiken + George Jasper Stone, Languid Hands and Shy Bairns.
Array is a collective based in Belfast which creates collaborative actions in response to socio-political issues affecting Northern Ireland. The group comprises of artists: Sighle Bhreatnach-Cashell, Sinéad Bhreatnach-Cashell, Alessia Cargnelli, Emma Campbell, Mitch Conlon, Clodagh Lavelle, Laura O’Connor, Grace McMurray, Stephen Millar and Thomas Wells.
'As Others See Us', is centred on three fictional characters drawn from the pre-Christian myths and folklore of ancient Ireland: ‘The Sacred Cow’, ‘The Long Shadow’ and ‘The Morrigan’. These characters have shape-shifted through crowds at Belfast Pride and the banks of the River Thames in London and have been documented through film, performance, sculpture and textiles. In December Array hosted a symposium at Jerwood Arts, opening the discussion around activist work in Northern Ireland to like-minded artists and activists from different generations to directly respond to the issues raised in the work, exploring tensions and possible resolutions.