DIY Media and Object Hacking Workshop with Cliona Harmey & Saoirse Higgins

DIY media and object hacking workshop FEB 24th and 25th (1.5 day session) in partnership with VAI  Professional Development Training 

This hands-on workshop session will explore a range of DIY & hardware & object hacking approaches to media art practice. It will discuss the ethos and history of hacking devices, media and objects. Using a mixture of everyday cheap electronics, opensource tools (arduino) and found materials participants will create and work with sensors/switches in order to control motors/lights/media (sound & video clips). The workshop will be accompanied by a basic resource site with links to additional resources (books, websites, suppliers etc).

Biographies:

Cliona Harmey is an artist and lecturer. She is particularly interested in the histories & artifacts of communication technologies (flags, semaphores, computers, camera etc). Recent work often combines sculpture with newer technologies (networked live data/ cctv camera feeds etc). She studied sculpture at NCAD, Hdip Computer Science at UCD and has a MA in Visual Practices from DLIADT. She is based in Dublin and works at the Media Dept at NCAD. Recent projects include “Quantified Self” at The Lab Dublin, Unbuilding, eMobilart International Media Residency.

Saoirse Higgins is an artist from Dublin, Ireland. Saoirse is interested in revealing some of the connections between our visions of the world we live in, our expectations for the future and the technology we use to help us with this. She explores the contested spaces of public-private, man-machine, man-nature. Her work is process-driven and has a scientifically influenced, playful approach. Saoirse shown her work at festivals and galleries such as Montreal Film and New media festival, Transmediale, Siggraph, Exit Art and Location One gallery, New York. She has held residences at e-Mobilart Lab, Disonancias in Spain, Location1 gallery in New York and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She is also a member of the international artist group The Grafting Parlour.

Both Cliona and Saoirse are artists who have worked together before and are generous in their interatctions and collaborations with others.  Both work in academic and other learning settings. Cliona has been part of Blackletter artists collective which provide information and other services to artists peers.

Here are further links to work by Cliona and Saoirse.
http://www.blackletter.ie/
http://ie.linkedin.com/in/clionaharmey

http://portraitofspace.wordpress.com/participants/saoirse-higgins/
http://www.thegraftingparlour.org/gfp_bio.html

Both Cliona and Saoirse have recently produced new work for the exhibition Quantified Self, below, at The LAB Gallery, Dublin City Council
http://www.dublincity.ie/RecreationandCulture/ArtsOffice/TheLAB/Documents/QUANTIFIED_SELF_book.pdf

The History of North Clare in 100 Objects

THE HISTORY OF NORTH CLARE IN 100 OBJECTS

Wednesday February 15^th  at 8pm in the Gallery

The history of North Clare is encapsulated in all kinds of objects from the High Crosses

 at Kilfenora to the lowly creamery can left abandoned at Lismorahan.


So far in the series we have had a wonderful cross-section of historical times through a

 presentation of stone age axe heads – traditional bilingual stories – school roll books

 – a wheel barrow an old brehon law text – fishing nets – needle work and craft objects

An interesting feature has emerged of how important local ballads are in recording and 

transmitting local history of events and characters.

This meeting will have a particular emphasis on letter writing 

and the importance of communication and the post in our story.

History is lying and dying all around us

“if only the walls could speak”

All welcome

Re/Imagining Birth

Re/Imagining Birth

 An exhibition by

 Martina Hynan                                   

in the Red Couch Space

                                   

FEB 17 – MARCH 15, 2012

Official opening: Feb 18^th at 4pm

This work imagines how birth was seen through the eyes of women in Ireland before medical intervention became the norm.  It engages with the empowering possibilities associated with early birth traditions and weaves renewed connections across cultures.   Re/Imagining Birth is part of my on-going work on the visual culture of birth in Ireland that I began in 2008 with Keeping Mum, Community Art Project and am pursuing through my PhD research at UCD.
The viewer is invited to gaze upon ancient traditional birth spaces taken from Sheela-na-gig imagery and the Mandorla tradition.  A Mandorla is made up of two separate circles coming together to form an almond-shaped symbol of birth.  The word mandorla is taken from the Latin for almond.  This balanced sacred space has provided women with a powerful way of visualizing birth.  My work seeks to continue this ancient tradition into the future.
Martina Hynan

HOT SUN - COLD MOON

HOT SUN – COLD MOON

An exhibition of photography by Carol Kennedy and Ilsa Thielan

FEB 18 – MARCH 15^TH

Official opening : Saturday February 18^th at 4 pm by Marie Connole, artist

Two artists, Carol Kennedy and Ilsa Thielan, join forces in a stunning exhibition of

photography in the Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, from Saturday the 18^th of February

to Thursday, the 15^th of March 2012. Both follow their intuition to capture the essence

of moments precious to them.

Ilsa Thielan’s exhibited work is a homage to the people of the Sahara, who she met when travelling to the Festival au Desert about 65 kilometers beyond the legendary town of Timbuktu way out in the vastness of the Sahara. Under a scorching hot sun she camped with them capturing unforgettable moments of desert life and friendship. With her camera she works in a gentle way as if part of her body, her tool, her paint brush. Her portraits radiate a vibrant, passionate energy as well as a lovely spirit. Ilsa’s desert scenes have a mystical remoteness like her camel rider “He came from afar” or her camp “at the edge of the night” where a lone tree reaches out to tents and camels in haunting twilight. Poetry she wrote in the desert accompanies the exhibition.

And there are Carol Kennedy’s nocturnal moonscapes creating an amazing contrast to the colourful Saharan scenes. Though Carol’s fascinating photographs are taken in Ireland, the  same cold moon is moving through the night sky in the Sahara. Carol captures the essence

of the ephemeral moment one has to respond instantly to or loose it, her camera merely acting

as an extension of herself. There are the fine branches of a tree touching a full white moon as if  gently stroking a gem stone, or the moon is mysteriously partly hidden in the dark of a landscape. Carol captures glimpses of nature at night in her photographs weaving through the exhibition like another kind of poetry.

The exhibition is opened by artist Marie Connole on Saturday, 18^th of February, 4 p.m. Everybody welcome! It runs until 15^th of March 2012 in the Courthouse Gallery, Parliament Street,  Ennistymon, Co. Clare. Opening Hours: Tuesdays to Saturdays 12 - 4 p.m.  

Cyclops - New work by Ben Reilly

An exhibition of Sculptures and Prints  

Cyclops

New work by Ben Reilly
 

JAN 14 – FEB 9, 2012, OPENING Saturday 14^TH January at 2pm

Cyclopes:
One eyed monstrous creatures in Greek mythology that stumbled around eating humans and generally causing a lot of disturbance.  “Recently I found myself in a similar situation in terms of the stumbling around and with only one eye bit after being diagnosed with Glaucoma. Some of the work in this exhibition especially the more recent pieces are influenced by this latest development”. Ben Reilly

Terrascope, an exhibition of paintings, drawings and ceramics by Jackie Maurer and Fiona Woods

Terrascope, an exhibition of paintings, drawings and ceramics

New work by Jackie Maurer and Fiona Woods

 in The Red Couch Space at the Courthouse Gallery

JAN 14 – FEB 9, 2012, OPENING Saturday 14^TH January at 2pm

The title of the exhibition is made up of two words, terra and scope, chosen to mark out the common ground that exists between the work of these very different artists. Terra refers to the physical substance of earth, but also to the planet as a political and geographical entity. Scope is associated with a particular kind of looking that weighs up and assesses, but it also suggests a broad, sweeping gaze. 

Terrascope:   
Jackie Maurer works with porcelain, an earthly substance which she transforms into fine and delicate forms. A skilled ceramicist, she has developed a way of incorporating colour and pattern into the clay itself, so that it does not sit on the surface but is integral to the form. She pushes the forms that she makes to the very limit, playing with curves and edges in a way that invites close scrutiny.

Fiona Woods is showing her first body of paintings and drawings for over ten years. Drawing on references both historical and contemporary, Woods has constructed a set of small and playful works, multi-layered images that respond to the world as a socio-geographical unfolding (or enfolding), in which a colonial and post-colonial history is still playing out.  

Christmas celebration at the Courthouse Gallery

We would like to thank everybody who supported us here in the Courthouse Gallery during the year and we would like to wish you all a  Happy and Peaceful Christmas & a C r e a t i v e New Year 2012.

Kathryn, Daire, Crissie, Trudi

Story Of A Life, Noirin Mooney

 

    Story Of A Life

     Batik paintings

  

 

 

 

       Noirin  Mooney

                                     

         Dec 3^rd – Jan 7^th

STORY OF A LIFE

 

Exhibition 

of Batik paintings

by

Noirin Mooney 

 

 Dec 3 - Jan 7

 

 

 

 

 

with accompanying book Launch

and you are warmly invited to the opening

on Saturday Dec 3^rd  at 4pm

The exhibition will be opened by

Denis Crosby     

Nollaig Shona Dhuit

Better known as a painter in oils, Noirin Williams Mooney was drawn to painting in batik when she came to live in the Burren in Co.Clare in the late 1960's. The colour and crackle of the landscape seemed to lend itself to the medium. It enabled her to explore the imaginative and mythological rather than purely landscape aspects of the Burren.

For the past thirty years she has been exhibiting extensively in her first love, oils. Prior to the death of her youngest son, Brecan, in November, 2009, she had already been drawn back to painting in batik and had begun to work on a Life of Jesus. Brecan’s death gave the work a new impetus. The fourteen pieces in ‘STORY OF A LIFE’ cover some of the main events, parables and miracles in Christ's life. Noirin has created this series of batiks during a time of deep reflection. They have taken some two years to complete.

”Illustrated depictions of birth life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ are often overly somber. I think the ‘good news’ should lend itself to a more joyous expression using the medium of Batik painting.  In ‘STORY OF A LIFE’ I use the medium of Batik painting which lends itself to a richness of colour and hopefully the accompanying quotations in the book will give a meditative quality to the exhibition as a whole.”

Trasna II

Trasna II  

 an exhibition of postcard-sized works by national and international artists.

December 2^nd  - January 7^th 2012

Trasna II opens Fri 2^nd at  7pm

To encourage you to share in this event there will be a wine reception and a humorous auction on the opening night Friday 2^nd at 7pm. Members of the public are invited to come early and place bids on their favourite pieces before the auction begins at 8pm.

The pieces will be auctioned by Chris Wallis and Sarah Fuller

There is a reserve price of €40 on each work.

This is a silent auction, meaning artists are anonymous until after works are purchased.

 This is a wonderful opportunity to purchase original artworks as gifts for loved ones in the upcoming festive season.

Trasna II  will run in conjunction with our Christmas show –

 Story Of A Life

 Batic paintings by Noirin Mooney