Arts & Business NI blog post: Cultivate the studio sector to enrich the arts ecology
With so much going on, and having produced so many pieces of writing recently, I forgot to add this blog post that I wrote for Arts & Business NI in November 2021. If you want to read it on the A&BNI site, you can do so here. Trustees’ Week Series 2021| Cultivate the…
VAI Visual Artists’ News Sheet: Interview with Jennifer Trouton: One of Many
The March/April 2022 painting special issue of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet is out now, click here to view. VAN’s March/April themed issue hinges upon the extraordinary insights of painters, including my interview with Jennifer Trouton, below. This bumper edition (48 pages) features 42 articles, 94 images, and 35,000 words. Well done Joanne! One of…
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…