VAI Visual Artists’ News Sheet: Mediating Signals, Flax Art Studios
Mediating Signals Curated by Edy Fung, ‘MEDIATING SIGNALS’ took place in two phases at Flax Art Studios, Havelock House, Belfast. The first, ‘Tracing Algo-rhythm’ (29 June – 3 July) presented the work of Julie Louise Bacon, Helena Hamilton and Una Walker; the second, ‘Assigning Ambiguity’ (6 – 10 July) exhibited works by Martin Boyle,…
Circa review: Aimée Nelson, Belfast School of Art BFA Degree Show
Extrospection is a word, but feels funny in our mouths and on a keyboard. Non-introspective is mechanical, perceptive, woolly. This presentation of work is – I think – both introspective and perceptive: the journey to all-knowledge starts with self-knowledge? I don’t really know, if I’m honest. I immediately shied away from the references to…
Bake-ini Body: Cake Daddy Review
Ross Anderson-Doherty Belfast Book Festival, The Crescent Arts Centre, 8 June 2019 Commissioned by Disability Arts Online The Northern Irish word ‘quare’ doesn’t translate well across the English-speaking globe. The Urban Dictionary (hive mind of obscure sexual terms which could also have been invented for our regional vernacular) defines it thus: ‘noticeable, exceptional, strange…
VAI Visual Artists’ News Letter: University of Atypical (organisational profile)
University of Atypical JANE MORROW DISCUSSES THE 25-YEAR EVOLUTION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ATYPICAL, BELFAST Most organisations would throw a big, indulgent party for their 25thbirthday. It’s not that the former Arts & Disability Forum don’t love a party – they do – but they elected instead to mark this key anniversary by asking…
Circa review: Travis Somerville, Golden Thread Gallery
Travis Somerville: Homeland Insecurity Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, 4 August – 22 September 2018 In Fourth year English Literature, we had to read A History of the World in 10½ Chapters. One tends to try to forget these things quickly, and with the exception of this book and a (perhaps rash) aversion to Shakespeare,…
Circa review: Belfast School of Art MFA Fine Arts Degree Show – Cathy Cannon and Joey O’Gorman
It starts with a fly. That too-warm room in a relatively-new-but-potentially-already-sick-building, a buzz (both literal and figurative) coming and going, untraceable amongst the always already information heavy degree show experience. But then there is a fly – a painted one, which disrupts in a more focused way. It’s rendered perfectly amidst a fruit bowl…
Circa review: Miguel Martin, Millenium Court Arts Centre
Miguel Martin: Let the Dead Leaves Fall Millennium Court Arts Centre 2 December 2017 – 24 January 2018 This time of year does something to people, and worse – we’re all in on it. From every TV screen, Instagram post, billboard and glance in the mirror we are reminded of our untapped potential.…
Circa review – Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Golden Thread Gallery
Vanessa Donoso Lopez: Quotidian Tensions between the Domestic and the Unexpected Golden Thread Gallery 11 January – 17 February 2018 The Babel fish in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a universal translator renowned for its instantaneous language translation capabilities. Because of its extraordinary evolution, it is argued in the book that the…
Loft Collective podcast
I was recently coerced into participating in a podcast by artist called Brian Kielt for Loft Collective, of which he is a founding member. You can listen to it here. Loft Collective draws together a diverse group of creative practitioners seeking to establish a multi-disciplinary forum for the exchange of ideas in contemporary visual culture.…
Research interests
I thought that it might be helpful (both for you: the reader, and me: the writer) to focus less on my jobs and professional interests, and more on my almost (hesitantly) artistic interests* *I have not made work as an artist for a very long time, but I will again, at some stage. Dammit. These recurrently all…