In View
10th December 2010 – 29th January 2011
Opening 6pm – 8pm
In View is an exhibition that establishes a context from which to explore the tensions and dialogues concerned with the physical act of looking. The gaze holds multiple interpretations, such as the voyeuristic, scopophilic, erotic; and is as much dependant upon the viewer, as that which is being viewed. Each artist challenges us to consider our role as a viewer of the works on display, calling into question our gender, the gender of the artist, and our preconceived understanding of the subject, therefore highlighting the tensions that exist within the topic of the gaze.
In Vito Acconci’s video work Pryings (1971), his violent attempts to force open the eyes of his subject are difficult to watch, as is the challenging gaze of Laura O’Connor in her video work Dull, Limp, Lifeless (2010). Like O’Connor, Katherine Nolan encourages the viewer to watch her, and yet reprimands them for doing so. Her work, You Are a Very Naughty Boy! (2009), obscures our view of her at intervals, as if in punishment for gazing upon her scantily dressed body. The photographic works of Shaleen Temple take a slightly different approach, commenting on the level of control held by the gaze of the subject, the artist, and ourselves, the viewer. The exhibition also includes work from Phil Collins, Common Culture, Sara Greavu, Magaret Harrison, Noemi Lakmaier, ORLAN, and Aine Phillips.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
About the Artists
Vito Acconci was born in the Bronx New York on 24.01.1940. He received a B.A. in literature from Holy Cross College and an M.F.A. in literature and poetry from the University of Iowa. Until 1968 his work was in a context of writing and poetry. Acconci was interested in the space of the page, a structure within which the reader and writer could move through. He made his first visual artworks by combining photographs with texts to document task-oriented activities. These works announced the dialogue between camera and body that would become an essential aspect of Acconci's subsequent art work, particularly the series of super-8 films and videos. Between 1969 and 1974 he started to perform himself what he would otherwise have written and developed over 200 conceptually structured and radical body-related pieces that were extremely simple in formal terms, but highly intricate psychologically. These performances and installations were extremely controversial because they were a direct confrontation with the viewer. Acconci's artworks are now considered classical examples of what we now call conceptual art and have earned him international
recognition.
Phil Collins belongs to a generation of artists whose engagement with people, place and community is central to their work. In the last few years he has lived, worked and exhibited in numerous locations, including Belfast, Belgrade, Baghdad, Bogotá and Brighton. He is currently based in Berlin. In all the different strands of his practice Collins investigates the perils of representation and the emotional core of such seemingly transparent media as video and photography. Instinctively distrustful of the camera and its effects, yet responsive to its potential as an instigator of relationships, his works often revolve around a convocation of individuals. Complicating both the myth of aesthetic autonomy and the fantasy of art as in itself political, Collins films, photographs, installations and live events appropriate the documentary tradition and elements of popular culture, such as pop-music and dance, to establish an immediate and humorous connection with the participant and viewer.
Common Culture is a collaborative artists’ group consisting of David Campbell, Mark Durden and Ian Brown. They exhibit internationally, with previous solo shows in New York, Athens, Porto, London, Manchester, Belfast and Derry and have participated in numerous international group exhibitions including Manifesta 8, 2010, the 6th Shanghai Biennale 2006, and Shopping – A Century of Art and Consumer Culture, The Tate Gallery Liverpool, 2002. Through their work Common Culture explore how social identity is constructed through rituals of commodity consumption within popular culture. Often collaborating with workers from the entertainment industry, they engineer strategic collisions between the elitist assumptions attached to Art and its institutions, and the perceived commonplace and vulgar aspects of popular culture. . Previous work has addressed the issue of alienation and exploitation of workers as the logical, but culturally invisible, consequence of commodity consumption.
Margaret Harrison studied at the Carlisle College of Art, England (1957-61), Royal Academy Schools, London (1961-64), and the Academy of Art in Perugia, Italy (1965). Until recently, she was a Professor at Manchester Metropolitan University and The Summer Arts Institute of California, held at U.C. Davis. In 1970, she was one of the founders of the first London Women’s Liberation Art Group. Harrison developed artist during the years of pop, minimal and conceptual work. She has produced bodies of work dealing with homeworkers, rape, domestic abuse, the impact of war upon women, fame and celebrity status, and beauty as depicted by the cosmetics industry. She has been an Artist in Residence at the New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York and a Fellow at the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University.
Noëmi Lakmaier was born in Vienna and studied for both her BA (2003) and her MA (2004) in Fine Art at Winchester School of Art. She has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally including We Are For You Because We Are Against Them, The LAB, Dublin 2009, Essence, Beldam Gallery, Brunel University, London 2008, The Works of Others, Whitechapel Gallery Project Space, London 2006, Redundancy, Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth 2005. In 2008 she was artist in Residency at Camden Arts Centre, London and from 2008 – 2009 she held a studio residency at the Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin. Lakmaier recently showed her piece We / Them / Other as part of Belfast Festival at Queens 2010. She has won awards and bursaries including NAN New Collaborations, the Adam Reynolds Bursary, a Fire Station Studio Award and an Arts Council England Grant For The Arts. Lakmaier has guest lectured at the University of Brighton, Brighton, the University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield and NCAD, Dublin.
Katherine Nolan is a video and performance artist, currently completing a practice-led PhD entitled Seducing the Machine: Narcissism and Performance in Contemporary Feminist Practice. Her work is concerned with the erotic female body as spectacle, in particular provoking questions around narcissism and exhibitionism as seemingly incongruous with critical agency. This is currently explicated through an invested relationship with the machines and spaces that produce and frame the body in performance. Recent projects include Surface Attention, bodily interventions in re-used spaces such as SHUNT London and Stattbad, Berlin, in association with MART collective. She also co-curates Visual Deflections a video art platform for emerging artists, and is a sessional Lecturer at the University for the Creative Arts and the London College of Fashion.
Laura O’Connor is currently in the 2nd year of a Masters in Fine Art in the University of Ulster, with a degree in Sculpture and Combined Media from Limerick School of Art and Design. O’ Connor has shown work, sculptural & media based, in group shows throughout Ireland. As well as curating exhibitions and most recently completeing a public art commission, Dancing at the Crossroads Project, for Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann in Cavan. Her work deals with images of women portrayed in media, advertising and film. Looking at theorists such as Laura Mulvey and directors such as Hitchcock, she combines the gloss look of advertising and cinema with an interest in “normal” women; the effects these images have on them and the notion of beauty in contemporary culture. She aims to cross the boundary between public and private space, using the camera as a mirror (Dull, Limp, Lifeless). www.lauraoconnorart.blogspot.com
ORLAN born May 30th 1947 in Saint-Etienne, France. Lives and works between Paris, New York and Los Angeles. ORLAN is a permanent teacher at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris-Cergy. She is regularly invited by universities and institutions to give lectures and master-classes. She explores different techniques such as photography, video, sculpture, installation, performance, biotechnologies etc.
Aine Phillips has been exhibiting multi-media performance works in Ireland and internationally since the late 80's. She has created work for diverse contexts; public art commissions, the street, club events and gallery exhibitions including Stanley Picker Gallery London, Judith Wright Centre for Art, Brisbane Australia, Tanzquartier Vienna, Moving Image Gallery and The Kitchen New York, National Review of Live Art Glasgow, Mozovia Art Centre Warsaw Poland. In Ireland at the Irish Film Centre, Arthouse, EV+A Limerick, Galway Arts Centre and the Hugh Lane Gallery Dublin. Her work has been shown at Museums of Art in Stockholm, Liechtenstein and Cleveland USA. She is founder and co-curator of artist led initiative Live@No.8 in Galway, a monthly screening of live and video art and she curated Tulca Live 2005-2007, festival of live and video art in Galway. Head of Sculpture at the Burren College of Art, she completed her practice based PhD at the National College of Art and Design Dublin in January 2009 entitled Live Autobiography. www.ainephillips.com
Born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1987, Shaleen Temple moved to Northern Ireland at the age of thirteen with her mother and siblings. She received a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of Ulster in 2010, and through her work explores themes surrounding South African lifestyle. In the Boys and Girls series, Temple photographs black South African maids and gardeners in their white employers’ homes, examining the changes South Africa has undergone since the end of the Apartheid, specifically the relationship between the workers and their white employers, a relationship which Temple herself experienced as a child.
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About the Gallery.
Golden Thread Gallery – local, international, contemporary
The Golden Thread Gallery is the premier contemporary visual arts organisation in the Northern Ireland, working across the international arena – based in and informed by the local.
Golden Thread Gallery is committed to enhancing the cultural experience for those living, working and visiting the region and is driven by two key aims: widening and increasing public access and participation in contemporary visual arts activities and supporting the development of contemporary visual arts professionals.
In order to achieve its aims Golden Thread Gallery delivers a coherent and multi-faceted program of visual arts activities: high quality exhibitions; publications; participatory in-house educational opportunities; artist representation and support; national and international profiling projects; and ambitious off-site outreach projects and collaborations.
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We pride ourselves on offering a friendly, open space where everyone is welcome. We are located on Great Patrick Street between the Belfast’s Cultural Cathedral Quarter and the historic Sailor Town areas of the city. For further information about our program and projects visit www.goldenthreadgallery.co.uk or email us at info@gtgallery.co.uk or join us on Facebook or twitter.
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Golden Thread Gallery, 84-94 Great Patrick Street, Belfast BT1 2LU
Opening Hours: Tuesday – Friday 10.30am - 5.30.pm & Saturday 10.30am – 4.00pm
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