George Vasey responds to the work of Manchester-based artist Pat Flynn in the second of our series of texts on artists participating in PIVOT, an inaugural artist development programme in the North West of England. PIVOT is delivered in partnership with Bluecoat, Liverpool and Castlefield Gallery, Manchester.
The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
December 2020 saw the opening of ‘the engine’, Yuri Pattison’s new exhibition in Dublin’s Douglas Hyde Gallery. This was six months later than originally planned due to the closure of cultural institutions in Ireland during the pandemic. Pattison's ‘the engine' features a new body of work highlighting the vast systems that create and shape the realities of modern existence. The elongated timeframe and continuing impact of the pandemic has resulted in two distinct conversations, which will be published as two distinct texts. Below is a transcript from the second of these phone interviews from 23 December 2020. Interview by Aidan Kelly Murphy
Bbeyond, online
Bbeyond is dedicated to performance art in all its variety. Established in 2001, the Belfast organisation chooses to complement its regional support of Northern Irish artists with a commitment to fostering dialogue between international communities. Its newest exhibition is ‘Recorded Action Web’ or ‘R-A-W’, which celebrates the organisation’s 20th anniversary. Curated by Sandra Breathnach Corrigan, this online series of performance works continues the organisation’s tradition of international collegiality, featuring artists from a wide variety of countries, including the Ukraine, Spain, Belgium, Germany, and, of course, Ireland. Review by Tom Lordan
The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Spring 2020 was due to see the opening of ‘the engine’, Yuri Pattison’s new exhibition in Dublin’s Douglas Hyde Gallery and his first solo show in a major institution in Ireland. However, lockdown saw the exhibition delayed and Pattison presented a cross-section of the proposed work via the online screening, ‘sunset provision’ - a work that sees the artist rendered a seascape in real-time via a game engine. The elongated timeframe and continuing impact of the global pandemic has resulted in two distinct conversations, which will be published as two distinct texts. Interviews by Aidan Kelly Murphy
PM/AM, 50 Golborne Road, London W10 5PR
‘06’ is a both an online and physical exhibition, envisioned by the gallery PM/AM, as “a collective status check, a unique opportunity for self-assessment” that came together after the gallery set up a discussion between several artists, offering a form of exchange to collectively examine how the pandemic was impacting their daily lives. But rather than positioning the exhibition as a response to Covid-19, the discussions became a mediation on this new collective moment of re-evaluation.
HEISTart.com
‘HEIST’ is one of a kind: a show about ‘stolen’ artworks presented in a hacker chatroom. The exhibition adopted the conventions of a face-to-face exhibition via a live browser-based chatroom, giving the audience the opportunity to mingle and chat with the artists. This sense of connectivity, of participation, was further conveyed by the disruption (through deletion and addition) of text as participants variously joined or left the virtual event. But then again, glitches are part of the game. Review by Dan Commons and Rina Arya
Online
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We are going through a time when our movement is limited and the notion of hospitality has a very different meaning; our bodies are playing host to a virus, while we are unable to host or be hosted in domestic spaces. Experiencing a virtual hotel that hosts artworks and artists as its guests does something powerful. I realise I haven’t thought about these temporary homes in a long time. And ‘Hotel Happiness’ provides this hospitable space—despite the limitations of the digital sphere. Review by Deniz Kırkalı
Online
The Plicnik Space Initiative, a new artistic venture founded by Amelie Mckee and Melle Nieling, hosts its inaugural exhibition aboard the D02.2, a fictional spacecraft of massive proportions, with a mission to explore the boundary between physical and virtual space. As museums and galleries across the globe face uncertain futures in the wake of the pandemic, the show interrogates the parameters of digital curation, inviting imaginative responses to a range of pressing questions concerning art and the environment, technology, and commerce. Review by Rowland Bagnall
Camden Art Centre, Arkwright Rd, London NW3 6DG
‘The Botanical Mind: Art, Mysticism and The Cosmic Tree’ was originally intended to be an in-house group exhibition at Camden Art Centre. Instead, the spread of COVID-19 and the closure of public gallery spaces saw the show move to the digital realm and become ‘The Botanical Mind Online’. The exhibition is hosted at botanicalmind.online, which serves as both the main space to read about the themes and topics of the show, and the central repository for a number of digital offerings, from videos, sound recordings, and podcasts to texts. Review by Aidan Kelly Murphy
John Hansard Gallery, 142-144 Above Bar St, Southampton SO14 7DU
The current Covid-19 pandemic has thrown the art world into a fight for relevancy that, as galleries and museums have had to close their doors, reveals the limits of their techie expertise. Many face new challenges, but the technophilic, literate, and adept are of course out there. David Blandy is one such case, and two new video works by Blandy, commissioned by John Hansard Gallery, reflect on the current crisis. Review by Stan Portus
Keep Showing Club, Neopangea, Budapest, Hungary
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It’s the year 3000 in the great southern forest of Neopangea, where animal-machine-human hybrids form a graceful community. The earth’s population is now at approx. 1 billion, due to multiple waves of pandemics starting in the 2020s. Sonja Teszler responds to an innovative virtual exhibition that takes place in a forest setting in Budapest.
FACT, 88 Wood St, Liverpool, L1 4DQ
‘you feel me_’ opened on 31st October 2019―a fitting day on which to interrogate all things systemic and speculative. For one thing it was Halloween, and for another, it was the day on which the UK had been billed to leave the European Union. The press material for FACT’s new group show knowingly invites its viewers to “feel the future and imagine a world without division”, and interrogate power structures both literal and more abstract. Review by Lucy Holt
Pool of Plenty, Galerie de l’UQAM Judith-Jasmin Pavilion, Room J-R120 1400 Berri Street, Montréal
Pool of Plenty is an exhibition that brings together photographic work that transcends the decorative and ornamental language of advertising in a détournement that makes use of touch and smell to surpass mere visual spectacle. In this solo show, the artist engages with a rediscovery of objects, materials, food items and plants that make our environment.
Bonington Building, Nottingham Trent University, Dryden St, Nottingham NG1 4GG, UK
One Room Living presents a series of works and interactions that reference the wide variety of spatial uses that directly surround Bonington Gallery – analysing not only the gallery’s site and situation, but also how the wider institution’s function is represented across a multitude of spaces.
