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Recent Posts
- Fiona Ní Mhaoilir: What-Ifs
- Islands & Myths, Belfast Exposed, 29 June – 18 August 2018
- Marilyn Arsem at Transactions, Belfast, 3 May, 2018.
- Brian Wallace, Pieces, June 2018, Engine Room Gallery, Belfast
- Mark Francis Fenning, Polaroid Boys, Ards Art Centre, until 30 June 2018
- Sarah Wren Wilson, A Meddlesome Meeting, The Sunburst Gallery Newtownards, June 2018
- End of Year Degree Shows, Ulster University, Belfast, 2018 :Karl Hagan
- End of the Year Shows, Ulster University, Belfast, 2018, part 2: Szabo and Canning
- End of Year Shows, UU, Belfast, 2018 June 8 for a week
- After an Act. Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, 26th May – 14th July 2018
- Pat Harris, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, 24 May – 23 June 2018
- David Moore, Lisa and John, Belfast Exposed, May 4 – June 16 2018
- Clare Gallagher, Verges, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, May 3 – June 30 2018
- Charlie Scott, What Fell From the Mountain, The Georgian Gallery, Newtownards, 19 April – 24 May 2018
- Elizabeth Magill, Headland, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 11 May – 23 September, 2018
- The Fragmented Mind, MAC, Belfast, 4 May -29 July 2018
- HELEN G BLAKE, New Paintings, Fenderesky Gallery Belfast, 26 April – 18 May 2018
- Helena Hamilton, Semblance and Event, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, 7April -23 May 2018
- Listening Wall at QSS, Belfast
- Ashley B Holmes
Slavka Sverakova
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Category Archives: essay
Fiona Ní Mhaoilir: What-Ifs
Originally posted on Slavka Sverakova:
Fiona Ní Mhaoilir: entrance to What-Ifs; courtesy the artist The physicist David Deutsch (The Beginning of Infinity, 2011) commented that we do not know yet how to ask exploratory questions. And the one question we…
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Islands & Myths, Belfast Exposed, 29 June – 18 August 2018
MESSAGE TO MY FOLLOWERS: NOT ENOUGH SPACE on this blog, WordPress says. I have now published this post on my ‘Part 2’ site, here, and a slightly different version on https://slavkasverakova.blogspot.com My main blog site continues at slavkasverakovapart2 • Please be sure to … Continue reading
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Marilyn Arsem at Transactions, Belfast, 3 May, 2018.
Sitting on a bench in front of the Castle Court shopping centre in Belfast, Arsem did some hand sewing. At her feet two bags – one with bodies and heads of soft toys she bought whole but dismembered, the other … Continue reading
Brian Wallace, Pieces, June 2018, Engine Room Gallery, Belfast
This kind of playful courage to reminisce on gestural abstract expressionism belongs to this painter’s youth and memory of it. The broken world of strong hues without attachment to a story or an object is naturally suitable to express a … Continue reading
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Mark Francis Fenning, Polaroid Boys, Ards Art Centre, until 30 June 2018
During a passive contemplation it all looked like polaroids: white framed, round frame, no frame, and assemblage. As if multitude of sameness were exercised to include differences. As images of male persons, faces or torsos, they tell of identities. Until … Continue reading
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Tagged assemblage, Giclee Polaroid Prints on Hahnemuehle paper, images of men, Polaroid
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Sarah Wren Wilson, A Meddlesome Meeting, The Sunburst Gallery Newtownards, June 2018
Two of the eighteen exhibits blur the distinction between ” an object” and ” a process”, that defines the whole exhibition. Made of plaster and pigment the horizontal floor assembly (below) differs from the curvilinear “blobs” installed in the … Continue reading
End of Year Degree Shows, Ulster University, Belfast, 2018 :Karl Hagan
This reproduction subtracts, distorts the dynamics of Hagan’s brush marks, they are like solid coat of paint, whereas the surface in real viewing is a gossamer of vapours. Even where it is divided by breaking line, the hue flirts with … Continue reading
End of the Year Shows, Ulster University, Belfast, 2018, part 2: Szabo and Canning
Attila Szabo mines the rich vein of power of play, imagination and science: ” I enjoy combining art with electronics. Art that comes alive using the magic of technology and technology that brings people together instead of replacing them.” … Continue reading
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End of Year Shows, UU, Belfast, 2018 June 8 for a week
I have managed to see painting and sculpture only. The tenor of the exhibited work was to make visual thoughts accessible in some familiar material that should move the viewer to relinquish the fear of the new. Sufficiently different from the … Continue reading
After an Act. Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, 26th May – 14th July 2018
I just read that Boo Saville sands back painted layers until the canvas gleams. (https://frieze.com/article/damien-hirst-spotlights-emerging-talent-his-newport-street-gallery-show) Vanishing of brushstrokes and tones until the canvas shines vanishes also a painting canon like the albertian window, gesture paintings etc. Reminds me of Hans Magnus … Continue reading
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Tagged Brian Fay, Deb Covell, drawing, I Kant, installation, Isamu Noguchi, Italo Calvino, Jo McGonigal, painting, sculpture, Susan Connolly, Tamara Kostianowsky
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Pat Harris, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, 24 May – 23 June 2018
Compared to Pat Harris’s recent paintings of flowers the marks above are not only heavily saturated but in the process of metamorphosis – a man’s body with arms stretched apart took orders from Ovidius Naso, marking the vase and the … Continue reading
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Tagged Anxiety, Co Mayo, flower paintings, Ovidius Naso, Ralph Waldo Emerson, seascapes
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David Moore, Lisa and John, Belfast Exposed, May 4 – June 16 2018
The eighteen photographs Pictures from the Real World are displayed in a rumbling visual essay of small formats that accentuates the feeling of gentle trespassing into private lives, this time with the enthusiastic agreement of the participating family. If the … Continue reading
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Tagged Derby, documentary photography, Extreme RAY 2018, Format 17, maquettes, photography, projects, video
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Clare Gallagher, Verges, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, May 3 – June 30 2018
Clare Gallagher does not name each image in the set of Verges, instead, she gives the viewer the choice to attend closely and directly to the subject her photography, weeds: ” They defy preoccupations with property and boundaries, growing wherever suits … Continue reading
Charlie Scott, What Fell From the Mountain, The Georgian Gallery, Newtownards, 19 April – 24 May 2018
“Growing surrounded by the silent bogs, lakes and halted railway line in Co Donegal, I am interested in nature…” would have been enough of an introduction to Scott’s peaty paintings. Nevertheless the young painter feels the pressure to propose an … Continue reading
Elizabeth Magill, Headland, Ulster Museum, Belfast, 11 May – 23 September, 2018
In a sight rooted practice the similarities and differences between these two images have defining power. They define even those images that are on their own. These landscapes are a modern equivalent of Plato’s answer to Timaeus asking how … Continue reading
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Tagged A Warhol, C Monet, Giordano Bruno, Grunewald, Italo Calvino, John O'Donoghue, oil painting, P Cezanne, screenprint
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The Fragmented Mind, MAC, Belfast, 4 May -29 July 2018
It is an exhibition and several events that include: Friday Lunchtime Recitals (horn, cello, orchestra, harp), poetry reading on a Saturday, screenings a films on Tuesdays, lectures on Thursday and nine workshops offered by artists Sharon Kelly, Ursula Burke and Tonya McMullan. … Continue reading
HELEN G BLAKE, New Paintings, Fenderesky Gallery Belfast, 26 April – 18 May 2018
Fourteen images each in one of three sizes favoured by Blake for years now – are beautifully displayed in a gentle embrace of pristine white walls. They are reminiscent of abstract paintings rewarded in 2006 by the Turner Price … Continue reading
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Helena Hamilton, Semblance and Event, Millennium Court Arts Centre, Portadown, 7April -23 May 2018
Light. Invitation to unthink the familiarity of the tube lights, the inevitability of a particular use. Standing near it, watching, looking, walking around, near and away, reminded me of Keyezua’s recent comment on her photographies: “After finishing at the Royal … Continue reading
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Tagged drawings, Eva Hesse, Light tubes, performance, photography, video
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Dan Shipsides / Shipsides and Beggs Projects, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast, 22 March -20 April, 2018
Armscliff; Great Western Oil on Canvas, Dan Shipsides,1994 To meet the word on its own terms, to meet the world on its own terms is an art immensely rewarding yet immensely difficult. The title of this painting has a letter R … Continue reading
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Tagged assemblage, climbing, collage, drawings, embroidery, etching, painting, photography. found objects, watercolour, weaving
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Eanna Mac Cana: Och Ochon, Crescent Arts Centre Gallery, Belfast, March 19th – 31st 2018
Multitude of caps of tea. Disposable plastic. Ocean full of plastic and dying whales may not have been in this artist’s intended context – but they are, as the erosion of the anthropocentric model of life progresses through our consciousness. … Continue reading
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Ausrine Suratkeviciute at Household Belfast , 2018
By a chance this appeared in my inbox: “Being: New Photography 2018,” the latest exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art’s ongoing for up-and-coming photographers. “Being” is a gripping survey of how photographers today are dealing head-on with the knotty things that … Continue reading
Mark Shields, at F E McWilliam Gallery, Banbridge, March 1 – May 19, 2018
I sense that Shields’s process dominates the image by piercing intention with invention and chance. Reminiscent of John Cage. By “herding “creation, principle and belief together. Shields named this exhibition The Inaccessible Land … quoting Georg Buechner’s ” beyond the endless searching” … Continue reading
‘Four Northern Women’, Engine Room, Belfst , February 1 -24, 2018
Art objects by Anya Waterworth, Sarah Falloon, Joanne Jamison and Leanne McClean benefited from the daylight in the smaller rooms of the gallery. The windows were never far away from the surface of the small formats luxuriating in an imagined … Continue reading
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Tagged assemblage, collage, Engine Room Gallery, mixed media, paintings, sculpture
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THERE and NOT THERE. GTG Belfast. 01.03.- 21.04. 2018
Curated by Sarah McAvera, in a thoughtful display, the small gallery room elegantly housed four large images ( The Illusion of Purpose II., IV, V, X. all 110 x 110cm, 2017 All in edition of 5) by Victoria J Dean … Continue reading
DAVID GODBOLD:Nightfall – amplissium terrarum tractum , Golden thread Gallery, Belfast, 3 Feb – 10 March 2018
An unexpected move to use Latin as a title of an exhibition these days… the words are written in neon tubes above the painting titled Three little words, (2010, neon, acrylic on canvas, 80 x 115 cm, sorry my mobile … Continue reading
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Tagged A Camus, A Duerer, C Bell, C. Greenberg, D Judd, drawing, E Neizvestny, Kuks, M Braun, M Buber, M Shapiro, Malingue Gallery Shanghai, painting, Ravenna, Ulrich Heltoft, Voynich Botanical Studies, W Blake
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The Quiet Club in Florida, 2016
They were artists in residence with the Rauschenberg Foundation in Captiva, Florida, in January 2016. Published the album in 2017. Playing every day at 2pm in a shed on Jungle Road they created this work. The sound work is organised into … Continue reading
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Tagged Rauschenberg's Foundation, sound art, The Quiet Club, www.farpointrecordings.com
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Listening to DANNY McCARTHY: Rauschenberg Scores
I have a memory (drowned in the decades of forgetting) of an summer evening open air piano concert at the Maeght Foundation near Saint-Paul de Vence: the pianist played the same score marks vertically, horizontally, clockwise, anti-clockwise, on a diagonal…. … Continue reading
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Tagged Captiva Florida, CD, Danny McCarthy, prints, Rauschenberg's Foundation
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Ronnie Hughes,Strange Attractors, The Model, Sligo, 16 April – 22 June 2017, catalogue, 71pp
I have not seen this exhibition. I have seen some of his earlier paintings at Fenderesky Gallery. This essay exists because Ronnie Hughes generously sent me the handsome catalogue published by The Model in 2017. It contains two essays, CV … Continue reading
Bob Raymond, this moment:missives from another world, 2015
“This book came about because we felt compelled to share Bob Raymond‘s work with a wider audience after he died unexpectedly in 2012″ – so Jed Speare starts his Preface to the volume of 192 pages printed on square 25 … Continue reading
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Tagged Boston USA, Jed Speare, Jeffery Byrd, Julie Rochlin, Marilyn Arsem, Mobius artists, On Kawara, Performance Art, Victor Shklovsky
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Alastair MacLennan,Lie to Lay, 2017
Published on the occasion of the exhibition Air A Lair,organised by Summerhall, Edinburgh ( 2nd August -24 September 2017) the catalogue contains brief tributes by Richard Demarco, Dominic Thorpe, Paula Blair, Roddy Hunter and Brian Patterson. and a substantial, insightful, erudite … Continue reading
Anka Lesniak, Invisible inVisible, 2017
With a subtitle “Women disconnected from the history” the paperback was published by Stowarzyszenie Sztuka i Dokumentacja (ISBN 978-83-931176-6-6). I have added ISBN so that you may identify the book, missing little signs and accents in writing Polish names on this … Continue reading
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Tagged alternative history, Anka Lesniak, Art in Poland, art., found objects, installations, Performance Art, site specific art, texts
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Colin McGookin: The Joy of Eastern Compositions, October – November 2017, EastSide Gallery, Belfast
Curated by ArtisAnn commercial gallery 18 acrylic paintings on either paper, board, fabric, or linen and one oil painting on board, in a style McGookin has preferred since his wife taught him to paint on silk, formed The Joy of … Continue reading
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Tagged Anselm Kiefer, AR Penck, banners, H.Bosch, idiom, J Derrida, Oliver Sachs, panel paintings
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Charlie Scott – From the Water, from the Bog, 2017
It was a part of the group exhibition Process Extended, at Goose lane Gallery, opened on November 2nd 2017. Artists exhibiting in the backroom of the Tivoli Barbers were Hannah Clegg, Hannah Johnston and Megan Kerr and Charlie Scott.
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Tagged bog, bottle with liquid, Diptych, figures, oil painting, tree
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Shonky:The Aesthetics of Awkwardness, MAC, Belfast, 20 October 2017 – 14 January 2018
The exhibition aims to explore the nature of visual awkwardness through the work of artists and architects Arakawa and Gins; Cosima von Bonin; Niki de Saint Phalle; Benedict Drew; Justin Favela; Duggie Fields; Louise Fishman; Friedensreich Hundertwasser; Kate Lepper; Andrew … Continue reading
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Tagged aesthetics, awkwardness, Hayward Touring Curatorial Open Painting, installation, performance, sculpture, shonky, sound installation, video
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Willie Heron: Sculptures and works on paper, Fenderesky Gallery Belfast, 12 October- 10 November 2017
They exceed a size of hand, of handheld art like Books of Hours, whose investment in private thought is difficult to surpass. Yet, the need to protect freedom of thought is as great and urgent as in the 20th C … Continue reading
Hughie O’Donoghue: The Tempest, Carlisle Memorial Church, Belfast, 10 – 28 October, 2017
The slowly self-destructing 19th C neo- gothic building has offered genuinely enhancing milieu to view the tarpaulin sized paintings. The Steady Drummer and Night Visitor are both 12x18ft and Cargo measures 12x24ft. With the smaller paintings the installation has evoked … Continue reading
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OLGA DZIUBAK: “large array of negative feelings”, Array Studios, Belfast, 5th – 8th October 2017
The title and some sentences from texts by Valerie Solanas and Ulrike Meinhof introduce the viewer to Dziubak’s installation of lens based art made during her residency at the Array Studios. ”permanent state of emergency to make violence unnecessary men … Continue reading
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Tagged abstraction, Colour Purple, freedom fighter, history. installation., performance to a camera, terror, video
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Art of the print….
The Art of the print. The title of my musing about print borrows the name from the first of the two exhibitions celebrating 40 years of Belfast Print Workshop. Installed by Fenderesky Gallery ( Aug 3rd – … Continue reading
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Graham Gingles: Boxes and Drawings, Fenderesky Gallery Belfast, 7th Sept – 7th October 2017
Boxes in the upstairs gallery – and few impressive drawings. I like reading drawings – they tell what a final work of art hides. Note – I do not think of it as finished, just as of final version stopped … Continue reading
Helen Blake, David Crone, Tony Hill: Works on paper, Fenderesky Gallery I, Belfast, Sept 7 – Oct 7, 2017
Works on paper – what does it mean to you? It is a specific art speak born out of undisciplined open ended dionysian intoxication with multitude of materials an artist can use to make visual art on the ubiquitous paper. … Continue reading
ALISTAIR WILSON: Signs and ciphers, GTG Belfast, 3 August – 19th September 2017
I open up with a paraphrase of recent research: Like so many artworks, the brain is largely an object of mystery. One secret yet to be discovered is how the fragile folds of matter locked inside our skulls can not … Continue reading
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Unafraid Yellow (August 4 -31) and Unafraid Blue (September 8-28) at QSS, Belfast, 2017
A variant of these toy was soldiers exhibited, not so lushly yellow, spiralled around a column supporting the gallery ceiling could have been easily overlooked. In a spirit of Barnett Newman’s aesthetic discourse my first image here represents both the … Continue reading
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CAPTURED: Rich, Rugged and Fresh, Goose Lane Gallery, Belfast, 7th – 23rd September 2017
My first visit to this small gallery behind the Tivoli Barber’s shop in North Street happened courtesy the painter Gary Shaw. Until this encounter, I failed to register an art group Belfast Bankers, a name inspired by the group … Continue reading
Part 6 Cumulator 7 – just the rest of images taken by Jordan Hutchings – 7/7/2016
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Dougal McKenzie: A Dream and an Argument, 30 June – 8 October, 2017, the MAC, Belfast
Whatever subject, motif, intention, McKenzie leans towards being a history painter born in Scotland, a root which he intensely identifies with as if it were palpably one living organism akin to a family. With few exceptions, McKenzie frames and … Continue reading
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Tagged Edinburgh, M. Chagall, Mit Jai Inn, Sainte-Beauve, Vasari, Walter Scott
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Bill Saunders: Side Steps These Ferried Measures Rise, 30 June – 24 September 2017, MAC, Belfast
Bill Saunders named the sculptural assemblage on the floor “…pool (floor and counting). From this angle it looks like a headless protective clothing of an explorer placed here by a tide that got muddled in arranging the other end. … Continue reading
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Tagged Arte Povera, David Smith, drawings, Graz Kunsthaus Museum, installation, Modernism, rubbings, sculpture, W. Benjamin
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Fine Art at 2017 Annual Degree shows, University of Ulster Belfast, 2 – 10 June
Fiftysix pages of a newsprint 36 x 29 cm ( a size of not the smallest of canvas) carries the basic administrative information about courses and a campus map. BUT not the layout of the placement. Each cohort of students … Continue reading
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Tagged A.Kiefer, Charlie Scott, Gruenewald, Jan Dibbets, painting, photography, porcelain, R Long, Sam Welsh, Wabi-Sabi, Zara Lyness
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Diarmuid Delargy, Monotypes, 15 June- 28 July, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast
The cubist painter Andre Lhote (1885 -1962) jealously chastised Emil Filla (1882 – 1953) for being “plus Picassian que Picasso lui même” – a memory of which surfaced when I saw one particularly superb monotype at the current … Continue reading
Slavka Sverakova 