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UPCOMING EVENTS

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Opening: JESSE JONES - SYLLABUS
Friday January 24 2020, 20:00

On January 24, Kunsthal Gent opens with a new installation by Irish artist Jesse Jones, entitled Syllabus.

A monumental, 17m high semi-transparent curtain featuring the arm and hand of the feminist scholar Silvia Federici creates a new space in Kunsthal Gent. This space creates room for local (activist) initiatives and for reading a syllabus, in which Silvia Federici and Jesse Jones bring together texts by different authors. The exhibition is a translation of a contract between Kunsthal Gent and the artist about the use of the work and will remain visible as long as the conditions of the contract are respected.

SYLLABUS builds on the earlier work 'NO MORE FUN AND GAMES - Feminist Parasite Institution', realized in the Hugh Lane gallery in Dublin in 2016.

Jesse Jones is a Dublin-based artist and teaches visual arts at the CIT Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork. Her practice crosses the media of film, performance and installation. She often works in collaborative structures and investigates how historical examples of shared culture can play a role in our current social and political experiences. Recent exhibitions and projects include the important new work In the Shadow of the State, commissioned by Artangel (UK) and Create with financial support from Ireland 2016, and created in collaboration with artist Sarah Browne. Jesse Jones represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2017. Until March 2020 the Guggenheim in Bilboa (ES) presents her solo show 'Temblad Temblad'.

 

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao MEET THE ARTIST
October 31, 6:30 pm

Jesse Jones and exhibition curator Manuel Cirauqui will talk about the artist’s creative process and her work Tremble Tremble, on view in the Film & Video gallery

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JESSE JONES: TREMBLE TREMBLE

 

October 31, 2019 - March 1, 2020

 

The Film & Video exhibitions program at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao is permanently committed to artistic practices associated with the moving image, and explores the critical relationship between visual arts, film-based installation, and contemporary culture at large.

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With a practice that weaves the dramatic presentation of film together with sculpture and performance, Jesse Jones (b. 1978, Dublin) examines the materialisations of collective memory and the ways in which gestures, objects, and language provide a stage for artistic experimentation. Tremble Tremble was originally produced in 2017 for the Irish Pavilion of the 57th Venice Biennale, and has subsequently undergone site-specific adaptations for galleries and institutions in Europe and Asia. The installation, technically and conceptually ambitious, appropriates the historical figure of the witch as a powerful symbol in modern Western history, and a carrier of poetic and political potentiality.

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While made under conditions of heated abortion-related debate in Ireland, and referencing also the Italian feminist protests during the 1970s—in which crowds of women sang the motto “tremble, tremble, the witches are back!”—the work functions as a portrait of a timeless archetype beyond national or ethnic identification. The powerful witch in Tremble Tremble may in fact be perceived as an incarnation of magical thinking, a figure of radical transformation of the real and a trigger of cosmic chaos. This incredibly charismatic personage is interpreted by the acclaimed Irish actress Olwen Fouéré, who delivers a haunting performance while, beyond the screen, the exhibition space undergoes simultaneous ritual activity. Every few minutes a circle is loudly inscribed by an invigilator on a black wall, and a moving curtain slides to split up the space with the transparency of a gigantic, ghostly hand. The verticality of self-standing, landscape-shaped video screens opposed to one another, could also be another sign of the transformation of values operated by the witch. In the entrance space of the gallery, several objects displayed in vitrines account for key references to Jones’s project as well as the artist’s ongoing research on ritual practices and mythologies associated with witchcraft. In fact, the history of the Basque Country, where brutal witch hunts and heretic purges were carried out by the Inquisition during the 16th and 17th centuries, offers a relevant background for the specific presentation of the work in Bilbao. A selection of domestic objects of ritual practice and witchcraft-related belief, original from Gipuzkoa and Navarra, is thus put in dialogue with other pieces used by the artist in her investigation as well as her studio practice.

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Performer and Artistic Collaborator, Olwen Fouéré; Sound Design and Composition, Susan Stenger; Production Manager & AV Programmer, Aaron Kelly. Originally commissioned by Tessa Giblin, Director of Talbot Rice Gallery, University of Edinburgh for the Pavilion of Ireland at the 57th Venice Biennale, an initiative of Culture Ireland in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland, supported by Dublin Port Company, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore and produced by Project Arts Centre

 

Elliptical Affinities: Irish Women Artists and the Politics of the Body from the 1980s to the present

 

Aideen Barry, Sarah Browne, Amanda Coogan, Dorothy Cross, Pauline Cummins, Rachel Fallon, Patricia Hurl, Jesse Jones, Breda Lynch, Alice Maher, Alanna O’Kelly, Kathy Prendergast, Louise Walsh

 

Since the mid 1980s an important tendency in art by Irish women has been to situate itself clearly in relation to the significant changes in the politics of the body in Ireland that began to take place during that decade, culminating in the recent upsurge of both activism and artwork in relation to the Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. The revitalisation of feminism during the 1980s in response to the repressive attitudes of church and state also resulted in the emergence of a new generation of Irish women artists whose work was explicitly focused around the politics of the Irish female body.

 

An exhibition that explicitly focuses on tracking this ongoing conjunction of art and feminism in Ireland is long overdue, and in this sense Elliptical Affinities builds on and acknowledges precedents such as But Still Like Dust I’ll Rise curated by Vivienne Dick at Galway Arts Centre (2018) and the enmeshing of women’s history, temporality, embodiment and affect in Jesse Jones’ Tremble Tremble. Rather than a straightforward linear chronology Elliptical Affinities proposes something closer to the ‘elliptical traverse’ of Catherine de Zegher’s influential feminist exhibition Inside the Visible, exploring new genealogies of Irish women’s art indexed to the political. Central to this is the notion of femmage to investigate temporal relationships of affinity and influence across generations of women artists, as in Amanda Coogan’s performance Snails: after Alice Maher (2010) which will be restaged in its entirety at the opening at Highlanes Gallery.

 

Elliptical Affinities opens at Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda Saturday 16th November 2019 until 25th January 2020. There will be a closing symposium in Drogheda on Saturday 18th January 2020. The exhibition will tour to Limerick City Gallery of Art opening on Thursday 6th February 2020 and continuing until 22nd March.

 

Elliptical Affinities is curated by Dr Fionna Barber and Aoife Ruane.

A full colour publication accompanies the exhibition with contributions from Gill Perry, Sarah Kelleher, Fionna Barber, and Ailbhe Smyth, and designed by Neil Gordon.

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The exhibition is produced by Aoife Ruane and Stephen Hodgins.

 

16 November 2019 – 25 January 2020, Highlanes Gallery

6 February – 22 March 2020, Limerick City Gallery of Art 

 

Highlanes Gallery, Laurence Street, Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland

 

 

Gaia Has a Thousand Names, collateral events of the 16th edition of the Istanbul Biennial ‘The Seventh Continent’ curated by Tara Londi

 

14 Sep 2019 – 12 Oct 2019

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Elgiz Museum hosts the exhibition curated by Tara Londi, “Gaia Has a Thousand Names”, which is included in the program of collateral events of the 16th edition of the Istanbul Biennial ‘The Seventh Continent’. The exhibition, that is realized in collaboration with the Italian Cultural Institute, can be visited at the Elgiz Museum between dates of 14 September-12 October 2019.

Through the works of 10 international artists, including a selection from the prestigious Elgiz Collection, the exhibition traces the evolution of planet earth’s association with a female goddess from prehistoric times to this day, and the  implications of women’s identification with nature as the powerful binary association of men and culture. It explores how the feminization of nature and the naturalization of women, persisted throughout culture saturating our perceptions of both.

Artists:

Domingo Milella, Elsa Sahal, Gözde İlkin, Jesse Jones, Marion Verboom, Nan Goldin, Nazlı Gürlek, Romana Londi, Sarah Morris, Tracey Emin.

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RESIDENCIES

 

JESSE JONES – ARTIST AND RECIPIENT OF THE INAUGURAL CREATIVE RESIDENCY

 

The Honorable Society of King’s Inns together with DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL CULTURE COMPANY are pleased to announce visual artist Jesse Jones as the recipient of the inaugural Creative Residency Award. 

The 6 month Creative Residency which will commence on 1st September 2019 will support Jones to explore her practice and the theme of art and law, and to develop a new work, with reference to King’s Inns and the extraordinary and historic environment of Henrietta Street, where both organisations are based. 

“This residency is a unique opportunity for us to help develop and strengthen the city’s cultural impact through collaboration, by providing essential resources and support directly to artists working in Dublin.”

ISEULT BYRNE, CEO, DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL CULTURE COMPANY

 

Jones’ work has a strong connection to law and activism, perhaps most noticeably seen in Tremble Tremble, her representation for Ireland at the 2017 Venice Biennale. In continuation of this interest for the Creative Residency she plans to collaborate with legal advisors, key workers and activists to create a new work.“The law has always been an important touchstone in my practice from a feminist perspective in relation to justice and our collective values as a society. I hope this residency will allow me to explore this further in my practice, it is a unique opportunity to access to the inner workings of the King’s Inns as a site of learning, archiving of the law and also a community context in and of itself; that is richly connected to the history and practice of the law in Ireland.”

The residency will provide unprecedented access to King’s Inns venue and resources, including the library, park, staff and students as well as offering accommodation, living expenses and and opportunity to share practice and avail of peer learning opportunities. The work developed as part of the residency will be hosted by King’s Inns for public presentation.

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“This represents a new adventure for King’s Inns, our members have always made valuable contributions to many aspects of society and we feel it is timely and appropriate to explore how the arts and legal communities can complement each other.”

MARY GRIFFIN – UNDER TREASURER / CEO, THE HONORABLE SOCIETY OF KING’S INNS

 

Jones will be supported by an Advisory Group comprising Mary Griffin, Under Treasurer / CEO and Renate Ní Uigín of The Honorable Society of King’s Inns; Michael Cush, Barrister; Iseult Byrne, CEO, Tracy Geraghty, Project Manager and Aalia Kamal, Head of Engagement Dublin City Council Culture Company and David Bolger, Coiscéim Dance Company, in the development and realisation of this new creative work. 

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The Creative Residency joint initiative from The Honorable Society of King’s Inns together with Dublin City Council Culture Company.

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ELLIPTICAL AFFINITIES: IRISH WOMEN ARTISTS AND THE POLITICS OF THE BODY, 1984 TO THE PRESENT
16 Nov 2019 - 21 Jan 2020

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Venue: Highlanes Gallery
Sponsor: Louth County Council / Arts Council
Admission: FREE

Aideen Barry, Sarah Browne, Amanda Coogan, Dorothy Cross, Pauline Cummins, Rachel Fallon, Patricia Hurl, Jesse Jones, Breda Lynch, Alice Maher, Alanna O’Kelly, Kathy Prendergast, Louise Walsh
 

Since the mid 1980s an important tendency in art by Irish women has been to situate itself clearly in relation to the significant changes in the politics of the body in Ireland that began to take place during that decade, culminating in the recent upsurge of both activism and artwork in relation to the Campaign to Repeal the Eighth Amendment. The revitalisation of feminism during the 1980s in response to the repressive attitudes of church and state also resulted in the emergence of a new generation of Irish women artists whose work was explicitly focused around the politics of the Irish female body.

An exhibition that explicitly focuses on tracking this ongoing conjunction of art and feminism in Ireland is long overdue, and in this sense Elliptical Affinities builds on and acknowledges precedents such as But Still Like Dust I’ll Rise curated by Vivienne Dick at Galway Arts Centre (2018) and the enmeshing of women’s history, temporality, embodiment and affect in Jesse Jones’ Tremble Tremble. 

Rather than a straightforward linear chronology Elliptical Affinities proposes something closer to the ‘elliptical traverse’ of Catherine de Zegher’s influential feminist exhibition Inside the Visible, exploring new genealogies of Irish women’s art indexed to the political. 

Central to this is the notion of femmage to investigate temporal relationships of affinity and influence across generations of women artists, as in Amanda Coogan’s performance Snails: after Alice Maher (2010) which will be restaged in its entirety at the opening at Highlanes Gallery.

The exhibition will consist of loans from both public and private collections, and artist’s studios, including Pauline Cummins’s Inis t’Óirr, Alice Maher’s The Expulsion, Chant Down Greenham by Alanna O’Kelly, and Mr & Mrs. Holy Joe by Dorothy Cross; works remade especially for the exhibition like Louise Walsh Outlaws / Inlaws (first shown at In a State, Kilmainham Gaol, 1991), and more recent work by Breda Lynch, Sarah Browne and Rachel Fallon amongst others.

Elliptical Affinities opens at Highlanes Gallery in Drogheda Saturday 16th November 2019 until 25th January 2020. There will be a closing Symposium in Drogheda on Friday 17th January at Droichead Arts Centre. 6Skin by Aideen Barry and Alice Maher will be screened during the exhibition in the Arc Cinema Drogheda The exhibition is presented with Limerick City Gallery Of Art where it will tour to, opening on Thursday 6th February, continuing until 22nd March, 2020

Elliptical Affinities is curated by Dr Fionna Barber and Aoife Ruane.

A full colour publication accompanies the exhibition with contributions from Gill Perry, Sarah Kelleher, Fionna Barber, and Ailbhe Smyth, and designed by Neil Gordon, 256Media

 

The exhibition is produced by Aoife Ruane and Stephen Hodgins.
The Exhibition is funded by Arts Council Ireland and Manchester Metropolitian University

16 November 2019 – 25 January 2020, Highlanes Gallery
6 February – 22 March 2020, Limerick City Gallery of Art 

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