A Different Republic Exhibition and Seminar
- Audio Description
- ISL Interpreted
- Speech to Text
- Loop System
A Different Republic, an exhibition by Aideen Barry, Amanda Coogan, Corban Walker and Suzanne Walsh.
‘sharp-as-a-knife survey of different experiences of Irish citizenship’
– Gemma Tipton, Frieze.com
A Different Republic explored universal human rights in a year of commemorations, being both the centenary of 1916 and the 20 year anniversary of the Irish government’s landmark report of the Commission on the Status of People with Disabilities ‘A Strategy for Equality’. A Different Republic was co-curated by Arts & Disability Ireland and Fire Station Artists’ Studios in partnership with the LAB Gallery.
18th November 2016 – 5th February 2017 at the LAB Gallery, Foley Street, Dublin 1.
A Different Republic Seminar
Using contemporary arts practice and exhibition as a starting point for discussing universal human rights in a year of commemorations, the A Different Republic seminar at the LAB asked the following questions: How has A Different Republic served as an alternative entry point to the issues of inclusion and exclusion in a year of commemorations? Is exhibition an appropriate vehicle for creating visibility and discourse in 2017?
The seminar was chaired by broadcaster, playwright and poet Vincent Woods, whose extensive knowledge of audiences, artists and discourse guided us through the afternoon.
1st February 2017 at the LAB Gallery, Foley Street, Dublin 1.
Additional Events
Dublin Gallery Weekend, 26th November, performances by Suzanne Walsh, Amanda Coogan and Dublin Theatre for the Deaf at the LAB Gallery.
Access
Audio description, speech to text and Irish Sign Language were available at the preview. Audio description and additional audio information were available throughout the exhibition using Discovery Pens. This service is useful for audiences with visual impairments.
Listen to visitor information and audio description
Loop system, Irish Sign Language and speech to text were available at the seminar.
Listen to the full seminar here
Reviews
Read reviews and audience reaction to A Different Republic Exhibition and Seminar
Aideen Barry is a visual artist with a national and international profile, whose means of expression are interchangeable, incorporating performance, sculpture, film and lens based media. In A Different Republic she addresses the regulation and control of women’s bodies through drawings and looped animations set within museum cabinets. Referencing Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ a parable about women’s lives in a patriarchal society, Aideen gives us an insight into this story as it relates to contemporary life for women in Ireland.
Since her initial thoughts on her work for this exhibition Amanda Coogan has always wanted an Irish flag in the installation – she has made this from a green pram with white wheels and filled with oranges. These prams, while associated with the domestic and the female, are also used daily down the road from the gallery, by women street traders. Amanda is one of the most exciting contemporary visual artists practicing in the arena of Performance Art. She is at the forefront of some of the most exciting and prolific durational performances to date.
Corban Walker is internationally recognised for his installations, sculptures, and drawings that relate to perceptions of scale and architectural constructs. The work that Corban Walker is making for A Different Republic stems from thoughts about a floor plan excavated from the floor in the room of the floor plan. The triangulated work is site specific in the sense it maps three sites in one space; The Lab, the GPO and the house his mother grew up in on Mountjoy Square. The work is presented in photographic studies, installed in the gallery to heighten an awareness of history, built structure and diversity.
Suzanne Walsh’s work is a set of concrete poetry made from fragments of lines from the poems of both Thomas McDonagh and Francis Ledwidge as well as comments collected from online Irish Facebook groups that discuss – housing, environmental issues and wildlife identification. Linking these is the sound of the bittern, extinct presently in Ireland, due to its connection to McDonagh and Ledwidge. McDonagh translated the poem ‘The Yellow Bittern’ (Cathal Bui Mac Giolla Ghunna) from Irish to English. After his execution his friend Francis Ledwidge wrote a poem ‘Lament for Thomas McDonagh’ that begins ‘He shall not hear the bittern cry’. The poems question exclusion, identity and existence in today’s Ireland. Suzanne is an audio/visual artist and writer from Wexford currently based in Dublin.
A Different Republic is the culmination of Arts & Disability Ireland and Fire Station Artists’ Studios working in partnership for eight years towards supporting visual artists with disabilities. Four residencies, four publications, seven mentored visual artists, one seminar called ‘Pathways to Practice’ and years of embedding access and disability related capacity has led this partnership to commission four established visual artists to respond to the centenary of 1916 and the 20 year anniversary of ‘A Strategy for Equality’.
This exhibition marks the final exhibition in the LAB Gallery’s programme for 2016 which saw a series of new commissions responding to ideas of commemoration developed for the gallery by artists Bridget O’Gorman, John Beattie, Sabina MacMahon, John Byrne, Chad Keveny and Jane Locke in collaboration with research partners including the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art, the National Gallery of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland and MA Art and Research Collaboration IADT.
A Different Republic – an essay by Nathan O’Donnell, Co-editor of Paper Visual Art Journal
Corban Walker, A floor plan excavated from floor in the room of the floor plan 2016. Photo Louis Haugh
Aideen Barry, A Smouldering Flock, 2016. Photo Louis Haugh
Watch: A Different Republic, meet the curators and the artists, Aideen Barry, Amanda Coogan, Corban Walker and Suzanne Walsh. This video is audio described and captioned.
To watch this video without audio description, click here
Amanda Coogan, Can you see it, can you feel it, it’s all in the air, 2016. Photo Louis Haugh
Watch: A Different Republic Seminar – Part 1
To watch A Different Republic Seminar – Part 2 Click here
Suzanne Walsh, The Land Where Nothing Is, 2016 Image by Louis Haugh
Artist Biographies
Aideen Barry is visual artist with a national and international profile, whose means of expression are interchangeable, incorporating performance, sculpture, film and lens based media. Barry recently showed a survey solo show at Royal Hibernian Academy entitled Brittlefield and will show at Project Spaces at the Irish Museum of Modern Art later this month. She is currently Artist in Residence at IMMA until the end of the year. She will present solo in 2017 in Block 336 in London and in 2018 at MARFA Contemporary Texas. She recently won the prestigious 2017 Lexicon Commission Award and Modern Ireland in 100 artworks by the Royal Irish Academy. The artist's works are in permanent collections at the Arts Council of Ireland, Art Omi Collection ( New York), NUIG Collection, Galway, Mayo & Dublin Council collections, the OPW and at the Centre de Art Contemporary, Malaga ESP. Barry lectures at Limerick School of Art and Design, and lives in the west of Ireland.
She has experience collaborating with fellow artists with learning, intellectual or mental health disabilities: 2008: Collaboration with Carrowbeg Theatre Company, Westport, on the "Word's are my Prisoner" project 2009: Collaboration with Bee Hive and Scannan Technologies on the moving image project "Happiness". 2012: Collaboration with the Away With Words Collective, on the Jessica Casey & Other Works printed publication and video project.
More information can be found at www.aideenbarry.com
Amanda Coogan is one of the most exciting contemporary Visual Artists practicing in the arena of Performance Art. She is at the forefront of some of the most exciting and prolific durational performances to date. Her extraordinary work is challenging, provocative and always visually stimulating. Her recent exhibition in the Dublin's Royal Hibernian Academy was described by Artforum as 'performance art at its best'.
Her extraordinary work is challenging, provocative and always visually stimulating. Using gesture and context she makes allegorical and poetic works that are multi-faceted, and challenge expected contexts. Her works encompass a multitude of media; Objects, Text, Moving and Still Image but all circulate around her live performances. Her expertise lies in her ability to condense an idea to its very essence and communicate it through her body. Time is a key material in Coogan's live performances. The long durational aspect of her live presentations invites elements of chaos with the unknown and unpredicted erupting dynamically through her live artworks. Her work often begins with her own body presenting both solo works and group performances.
She was awarded the Allied Irish Bank’s Art prize in 2004. She has performed and exhibited her work extensively including; The Venice Biennale, Liverpool Biennial, PS1, New York, Galeria Safia, Barcelona, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and the Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin. Coogan completed her doctoral thesis on live durational performance art in 2013 at the University of Ulster. She has just completed a major commission for the British Council's Shakespeare Lives programme; Run to the Rock.
More information can be found at www.amandacoogan.com
Corban Walker (b. 1967, Dublin, Ireland) gained recognition for his installations, sculptures, and drawings that relate to perceptions of scale and architectural constructs. His local, cultural, and specific philosophies of scale are fundamental to how he defines and develops his work, creating new means for viewers to interact and navigate their surroundings.
Walker graduated from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, with a degree in Fine Art Sculpture in 1992. His first solo show was held at the City Arts Centre in Dublin, Ireland in 1994. Since then, he has mounted solo exhibitions internationally and has realized eight important public commissions worldwide. Walker’s work is part of numerous public and private collections around the world, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Irish Museum of Art, Dublin. Since 2008, he was attended several international residency programs including Casa Wabi in Oaxaca, Mexico and Atelier Calder in Saché, France in 2015.
Walker represented Ireland at the 54th Venice International Art Biennale in 2011. He received the Pollock Krasner Award in 2015
Corban Walker has been based in New York since 2004.
More information can be found at www.corbanwalker.com
Suzanne Walsh, received an Arts and Disability Connect Mentoring award in 2020.
Suzanne is an audio/visual artist and writer from Wexford currently based in Dublin. She uses performative lectures, audio performances, and text to explore various themes, often around the relationships between animal/humans, ecology and evolution as well as querying the borders of the self. She also collaborates with filmmakers, musicians and other artists frequently, drawing on previous acting and musical experience. Recent performances in Eight Gallery, IMMA and DLR Lexicon (with Hissen sound group), New Lacanian School Congress, The International Literature Festival, and Art and Ethics Symposium at the Burren College of Art. She also recently completed a writing commission for Resort Revelations residency for Fingal County Council and a residency at Fire Station Artists' Studios.
Through a Mentoring award in 2020 Suzanne will work with writer Christodoulos Makris while she focuses on her poetry practice and explores publication possibilities.
Located in north east inner city Dublin, the Fire Station Artists’ Studios was established in 1993 to provide support for professional visual artists.
Fire Station provides subsidised combined living and working studios for Irish and international artists, large scale sculpture workshop facilities and training opportunities for artists. The Fire Station training programme has expanded to include digital and film training and we continue to host technical training and master classes which incorporate critical reflection.
A key policy of the Fire Station is to contribute to the debate on collaborative and socially engaged arts practice, through a commissioning process that incorporates critique.