ARTISTS
Artists Sarah Browne, Miriam O'Connor, Anne Tallentire and art & research collaborators Vagabond Reviews were invited to make newly commissioned art works for the NWCI Legacy Project. In keeping with their own ways of working, each of the artists developed their own appraoch to the commissions' core thematics of representations of women and work. Meetings with the project curator, Valerie Connor and the NWCI as commissioner, opened up new contacts and connections across the membership, among the staff and with project supporters. Work on the commissions began with artists working on site in the NWCI offices, in film and architectural archives, and in conversation with specific potential partners, participants and collaborators.
Anne Tallentire
Anne Tallentire is originally from Co. Armagh and has lived and worked in London since 1984. Her practice involves dismantling and re-assembling materials and systems in order to investigate conditions relating to place and daily life, primarily in relation to specific cultural, social, and architectural contexts. www.annetallentire.info
A major retrospective of her work, This And Other Things 1999 – 2010, was held at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2010 and in 1999 she was the sole representative for Ireland at the Venice Biennale with Instances. Other significant solo shows are Drift, a 22 part video work at Hollybush Gardens in London, (2012) and at Void, Derry (2005), Telling it and other works, Picture This, Bristol (2011) Pursuit of Happiness Douglas Hyde Gallery's 'Gallery 3' programme in Dublin (2007), Arena Industriale, Storie Urbane, Palazzo Pratonieri, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2006) and Dispersal, Orchard Gallery in Derry, with John Seth as work seth/tallentire (2001).
Recent group exhibitions, projects and screenings include Winter Garden, Flat Time House London, (2015), Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain, Tate Liverpool, At-your-service, Technicki Muzej, Zagreb, Croatia (2014), Vexed Endings, Green and Red, Dublin, (2012), Le Monde Physique, La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre, Noisy-Le-Sec, Paris (2011) and I’m Spartacus, Gracelands, Leitrim, (2010). She has also shown at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Galerie im Taxipalais, Innsbruck, Austria, Bloomberg Space, London and (with John Seth) South London Gallery, PS1, New York, ENSBA, Paris and Fri-art, Switzerland and Project, Dublin.
Anne is Professor Emerita, Fine Art, Central Saint Martin's University of the Arts, London and is an editor with Copy Press. Since the early 90s she has worked collaboratively as work-seth/tallentire on a number of projects and is, with Graham Ellard, the co-founder of Double Agents, an artists’ research group based at CSM.
At the beginning of the project she said: My first thoughts quickly turned to the production a series of analytic ‘plans’ based on selected buildings that reflect the gendering of architectural space and how spaces are structured by relations of power and authority as hierarchical organisations - organisations that often raise issues of compliance and exclusion. At present, the prospect of working with image and text prints makes sense. Using a process of chance, I will select a number of spaces that will be put under scrutiny to find ways in which urban architecture reflects the gendering of the workspace. These spaces will range from the home, office, prison, school, street, and factory etc. – wherever the method determines. Already things have found a momentum and my research pathways are changing as I read and go about my research into reports, archives...
Image: 'Arena Industriale', c-type print, 2006. Courtesy of the artist © Anne Tallentire.
A major retrospective of her work, This And Other Things 1999 – 2010, was held at The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 2010 and in 1999 she was the sole representative for Ireland at the Venice Biennale with Instances. Other significant solo shows are Drift, a 22 part video work at Hollybush Gardens in London, (2012) and at Void, Derry (2005), Telling it and other works, Picture This, Bristol (2011) Pursuit of Happiness Douglas Hyde Gallery's 'Gallery 3' programme in Dublin (2007), Arena Industriale, Storie Urbane, Palazzo Pratonieri, Reggio Emilia, Italy (2006) and Dispersal, Orchard Gallery in Derry, with John Seth as work seth/tallentire (2001).
Recent group exhibitions, projects and screenings include Winter Garden, Flat Time House London, (2015), Keywords: Art, Culture and Society in 1980s Britain, Tate Liverpool, At-your-service, Technicki Muzej, Zagreb, Croatia (2014), Vexed Endings, Green and Red, Dublin, (2012), Le Monde Physique, La Galerie, Contemporary Art Centre, Noisy-Le-Sec, Paris (2011) and I’m Spartacus, Gracelands, Leitrim, (2010). She has also shown at Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt, Galerie im Taxipalais, Innsbruck, Austria, Bloomberg Space, London and (with John Seth) South London Gallery, PS1, New York, ENSBA, Paris and Fri-art, Switzerland and Project, Dublin.
Anne is Professor Emerita, Fine Art, Central Saint Martin's University of the Arts, London and is an editor with Copy Press. Since the early 90s she has worked collaboratively as work-seth/tallentire on a number of projects and is, with Graham Ellard, the co-founder of Double Agents, an artists’ research group based at CSM.
At the beginning of the project she said: My first thoughts quickly turned to the production a series of analytic ‘plans’ based on selected buildings that reflect the gendering of architectural space and how spaces are structured by relations of power and authority as hierarchical organisations - organisations that often raise issues of compliance and exclusion. At present, the prospect of working with image and text prints makes sense. Using a process of chance, I will select a number of spaces that will be put under scrutiny to find ways in which urban architecture reflects the gendering of the workspace. These spaces will range from the home, office, prison, school, street, and factory etc. – wherever the method determines. Already things have found a momentum and my research pathways are changing as I read and go about my research into reports, archives...
Image: 'Arena Industriale', c-type print, 2006. Courtesy of the artist © Anne Tallentire.
Sarah Browne
Sarah Browne is an artist based in Ireland. Her research-driven practice investigates the labour and materiality of how we communicate and create meaning through exchange and transaction. www.sarahbrowne.info
Collaboration is fundamental to how the work is developed, whether with practitioners from other disciplines (anthropology, dance, amateur radio) or certain individuals whose experience become key to the narrative of a given project. These include the overlooked and the deceased (artists Charlotte Posenenske and Cynthia Moran; architect Eileen Gray) as well as the living, in an attempt to forge an unexpected series of correspondences.
Recent solo exhibitions include Hand to Mouth, CCA Derry~Londonderry and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and The Invisible Limb, basis, Frankfurt (all 2014). In 2009 she co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and their collaborative practice, Kennedy Browne. She is currently working with Jesse Jones on a major collaborative commission for Create, Ireland and Artangel, UK, investigating the role of the female body in the construction of the Nation State. Other forthcoming projects include a residency at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt and a commission for Manual Labours, London, exploring the condition of the complaining body in contemporary working environments.
At the beginning of the project she said: A starting point for this commission has involved research into representations of labour and industry in Ireland around the time of the establishment of the NWCI forty years ago, as an initial point of comparison and consideration. A body of educational and promotional films produced around that time, between the mid 1960s and early 1970s, promote a tone of optimism for a new wave of economic development. One such film from 1963, Tide on the Turn, credits Sean Lemass with selling Ireland abroad, describing how the companies in the Shannon Industrial Estate ‘will pay no tax on profits until 1983’, and describes the attraction of Ireland’s workforce in terms of its labour relations – ‘fewer days lost in disputes than almost any other country in Europe’. A title from 1970, The Little People, explicitly notes that although Ireland ‘missed’ the first Industrial Revolution, there are opportunities to halt outward emigration, attract foreign investment and create a new culture of design and innovation.
Image: 'Carpet for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Art', 2009. Still from 16mm film on DVD, b/w. silent 18mins. Courtesy of the artist © Sarah Browne.
Collaboration is fundamental to how the work is developed, whether with practitioners from other disciplines (anthropology, dance, amateur radio) or certain individuals whose experience become key to the narrative of a given project. These include the overlooked and the deceased (artists Charlotte Posenenske and Cynthia Moran; architect Eileen Gray) as well as the living, in an attempt to forge an unexpected series of correspondences.
Recent solo exhibitions include Hand to Mouth, CCA Derry~Londonderry and Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, and The Invisible Limb, basis, Frankfurt (all 2014). In 2009 she co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale with Gareth Kennedy and their collaborative practice, Kennedy Browne. She is currently working with Jesse Jones on a major collaborative commission for Create, Ireland and Artangel, UK, investigating the role of the female body in the construction of the Nation State. Other forthcoming projects include a residency at the Weltkulturen Museum, Frankfurt and a commission for Manual Labours, London, exploring the condition of the complaining body in contemporary working environments.
At the beginning of the project she said: A starting point for this commission has involved research into representations of labour and industry in Ireland around the time of the establishment of the NWCI forty years ago, as an initial point of comparison and consideration. A body of educational and promotional films produced around that time, between the mid 1960s and early 1970s, promote a tone of optimism for a new wave of economic development. One such film from 1963, Tide on the Turn, credits Sean Lemass with selling Ireland abroad, describing how the companies in the Shannon Industrial Estate ‘will pay no tax on profits until 1983’, and describes the attraction of Ireland’s workforce in terms of its labour relations – ‘fewer days lost in disputes than almost any other country in Europe’. A title from 1970, The Little People, explicitly notes that although Ireland ‘missed’ the first Industrial Revolution, there are opportunities to halt outward emigration, attract foreign investment and create a new culture of design and innovation.
Image: 'Carpet for the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Art', 2009. Still from 16mm film on DVD, b/w. silent 18mins. Courtesy of the artist © Sarah Browne.
Miriam O'Connor
Miriam O’Connor lives and works in Cork. In her practice she draws inspiration from the language, sights and sounds of the everyday, and is concerned with the subtleties of looking and seeing, the relationship between camera and viewer, and the special ambiguity of still images. www.miriamoconnor.com
Her work has been featured in a wide range of photography publications and she has exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland and internationally. She was nominated for the 2013 Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Photography Awards and her first photo book Attention Seekers was published by PogoBooks, Berlin and Galleri Image, Denmark in 2012.
Attention Seekers was subsequently featured in Camera Austria 122, exhibited in New Irish Works, PhotoIreland 2013, at ‘Photo Collect’, Copenhagen, 2014, and selected for Greetings from Ireland, 2014. She received the Alliance Française Photography Award 2012, for her project The Misbehaving Camera, including a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. This series of photographs was also exhibited at the 2013 Pingyao International Photography Festival, China, featured in ‘About Photography’ at Kaunas Photo in Lithuania, and as part of ‘Project 30: Emerging Views of Ireland’, curated by Tansy Cowley and Trish Lambe at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. Miriam has had solo shows at Galleri Image, Denmark, the Third Space Gallery, Belfast, and in ‘THERE THERE’, Cork, curated by Stag and Deer. In conjunction with Galleri Image, Denmark, Miriam has recently produced new work for FRESH EYES - International artists rethink Aarhus, which will be exhibited during Aarhus Capital of Culture, 2017.
Miriam studied photography at the Dublin Institute of Technology and completed her Master of Arts Degree at the Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire. In addition to her art practice, she teaches various courses on practical and creative approaches to photography. Her work is held in public and private collections in Denmark, the U.K. and Ireland.
At the beginning of the project she said: Throughout the commission, I am keenly interested to elicit discussion and stimulate conversations around the nature and function of ‘how’ photography is utilized in reaching out to the public in raising awareness about the concerns and issues informing the work of the NWCI and its associated members. I hope that such dialogue ‘about’ photography will function as a pedagogical framework, one in which to contemplate and consider attitudes towards photography that are socially and culturally ingrained or made somehow to appear natural. The over all concern for this direction is a desire to mull over what might be happening outside of the frame, while at the same time, to further consider what are readily accepted representations within the frame.
Image from the series, 'Attention Seekers', dimensions variable, 2012. Courtesy of the artist © Miriam O'Connor
Her work has been featured in a wide range of photography publications and she has exhibited in solo and group shows in Ireland and internationally. She was nominated for the 2013 Leopold Godowsky, Jr. Photography Awards and her first photo book Attention Seekers was published by PogoBooks, Berlin and Galleri Image, Denmark in 2012.
Attention Seekers was subsequently featured in Camera Austria 122, exhibited in New Irish Works, PhotoIreland 2013, at ‘Photo Collect’, Copenhagen, 2014, and selected for Greetings from Ireland, 2014. She received the Alliance Française Photography Award 2012, for her project The Misbehaving Camera, including a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris. This series of photographs was also exhibited at the 2013 Pingyao International Photography Festival, China, featured in ‘About Photography’ at Kaunas Photo in Lithuania, and as part of ‘Project 30: Emerging Views of Ireland’, curated by Tansy Cowley and Trish Lambe at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin. Miriam has had solo shows at Galleri Image, Denmark, the Third Space Gallery, Belfast, and in ‘THERE THERE’, Cork, curated by Stag and Deer. In conjunction with Galleri Image, Denmark, Miriam has recently produced new work for FRESH EYES - International artists rethink Aarhus, which will be exhibited during Aarhus Capital of Culture, 2017.
Miriam studied photography at the Dublin Institute of Technology and completed her Master of Arts Degree at the Institute of Art, Design & Technology, Dun Laoghaire. In addition to her art practice, she teaches various courses on practical and creative approaches to photography. Her work is held in public and private collections in Denmark, the U.K. and Ireland.
At the beginning of the project she said: Throughout the commission, I am keenly interested to elicit discussion and stimulate conversations around the nature and function of ‘how’ photography is utilized in reaching out to the public in raising awareness about the concerns and issues informing the work of the NWCI and its associated members. I hope that such dialogue ‘about’ photography will function as a pedagogical framework, one in which to contemplate and consider attitudes towards photography that are socially and culturally ingrained or made somehow to appear natural. The over all concern for this direction is a desire to mull over what might be happening outside of the frame, while at the same time, to further consider what are readily accepted representations within the frame.
Image from the series, 'Attention Seekers', dimensions variable, 2012. Courtesy of the artist © Miriam O'Connor
Vagabond Reviews / Ailbhe Murphy & Ciaran Smyth
Vagabond Reviews was co-founded by Ailbhe Murphy and Ciaran Smyth as an interdisciplinary platform combining socially engaged art and research practice. As artists and researchers we are interested in engaging broader publics in alternative forms of cultural participation and knowledge production. www.vagabondreviews.org
Projects include Scientia Civitatis: Missing Titles (2015) an installation presenting an interdisciplinary reading of the city, as part of the Phoenix Rising, Art and the Civic Imagination exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery curated by Logan Sisley.
The Arcade Project is an ongoing arts-based inquiry with the Rialto Youth Project exploring organisational values and pedagogical principles in arts-based youth work. The Sliabh Bán Art House (2011-2012) was a participatory public art project commissioned by Galway City Council’s Arts Office, which explored concepts of home, displacement and embodied local identities in a new and culturally diverse Galway neighbourhood. The Cultural Archaeology (2009 – 2010) took the form of an arts-based research initiative in collaboration with the community development project Fatima Groups United, Rialto.
Upcoming projects include Temporary Institute for the Study of Contemporary Systemic Violence at Workhouse Union in Callan Co. Kilkenny curated by Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch and a research residency at the Hyde Park Art Centre in Chicago. Ailbhe Murphy is also Director of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts in Ireland.
At the beginning of the project they said: A history of the present moment calls for the difficult task of gaining some degree of observership on the present, while maintaining a critical relation to what has gone before. We are interested in engaging with different strands of the membership of the NWCI with a view to taking readings on those contemporary experiences of women that somehow remain beneath the threshold of visibility. What are the invisible practices of organising, of labour, of kindness, and of belonging that together form a rich counterpoint to their institutionally validated forms? In 2013, what forms of knowledge and experience remain locked out of both historical and contemporary representations of resistance in Ireland? We are setting out with a strong sense of discovery, anticipating that the Legacy Project will suggest new themes and new seams of visibility.
Image: 'Cultural Archaeology', Fatima Groups United, NCAD Gallery, Dublin, 2009. Courtesy of Vagabond Reviews.
Projects include Scientia Civitatis: Missing Titles (2015) an installation presenting an interdisciplinary reading of the city, as part of the Phoenix Rising, Art and the Civic Imagination exhibition at the Hugh Lane Gallery curated by Logan Sisley.
The Arcade Project is an ongoing arts-based inquiry with the Rialto Youth Project exploring organisational values and pedagogical principles in arts-based youth work. The Sliabh Bán Art House (2011-2012) was a participatory public art project commissioned by Galway City Council’s Arts Office, which explored concepts of home, displacement and embodied local identities in a new and culturally diverse Galway neighbourhood. The Cultural Archaeology (2009 – 2010) took the form of an arts-based research initiative in collaboration with the community development project Fatima Groups United, Rialto.
Upcoming projects include Temporary Institute for the Study of Contemporary Systemic Violence at Workhouse Union in Callan Co. Kilkenny curated by Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch and a research residency at the Hyde Park Art Centre in Chicago. Ailbhe Murphy is also Director of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts in Ireland.
At the beginning of the project they said: A history of the present moment calls for the difficult task of gaining some degree of observership on the present, while maintaining a critical relation to what has gone before. We are interested in engaging with different strands of the membership of the NWCI with a view to taking readings on those contemporary experiences of women that somehow remain beneath the threshold of visibility. What are the invisible practices of organising, of labour, of kindness, and of belonging that together form a rich counterpoint to their institutionally validated forms? In 2013, what forms of knowledge and experience remain locked out of both historical and contemporary representations of resistance in Ireland? We are setting out with a strong sense of discovery, anticipating that the Legacy Project will suggest new themes and new seams of visibility.
Image: 'Cultural Archaeology', Fatima Groups United, NCAD Gallery, Dublin, 2009. Courtesy of Vagabond Reviews.
