Launching tonight ... Earliest Memories Through a Pinhole Camera - 7 April 2011
April 7, 2011
Come along for tea and buns tonight at 7pm as we launch our gorgeous exhibition 'Earliest Memories Through a Pinhole Camera', 7pm, First Floor Gallery ... Read more on Garvan's Blog Here ... http://garvangallagher.wordpress.com/2011/03/25/earliest-memories-through-a-pinhole-camera/
Draíocht’s programming strives to provide opportunities of engagement with a wide variety of high quality, enjoyable, challenging and meaningful arts experiences for the community. Our Visual Arts and Youth Arts Programmes endeavour to support and encourage visual artists through our residency scheme, gallery exhibitions, facilitated projects and lectures. Earliest memories through a Pinhole camera is not only a beautiful exhibition of work, it also represents an effort to fulfil these commitments and demonstrates our dedication to developing innovative and socially relevant projects by building collaborative relationships with excellent visual artists and members of our immediate community.
This exhibition has its roots in the development of a 15 month residency scheme for Draíocht’s artist studio. As part of this residency, the artist would facilitate a community project to culminate in an exhibition shown during Spréacha – Fingal’s International Arts Festival for Children. By ensuring a quality of experience, twinned with a policy of access at its heart, Spréacha has, in its short life become a bench mark for Irish children’s festivals. By combining theatre performances with family days, workshops and specifically programmed exhibitions, the festival is about a whole arts experience. This year’s exhibition takes access quite literally by programming work not only for people in the community, but also by people in the community.
For the success of this project, it was important that the facilitating artist had a willingness to share their expertise and knowledge and an inherent interest and commitment to community involvement that mirrored our own. Garvan Gallagher was such an artist. His engaging photographic work looking at the invisibility of older people mixed with our history and experience of working with younger people made his suggestion of an Intergenerational project an exciting concept. As intergenerational suggests the project was made up of young and not so young participants. They gathered in Draíocht for weekly workshops, dark room sessions, discussions and tea breaks, along with walks and museum visits. The culminating exhibition Earliest memories through a Pinhole camera clearly reflects the great creativity, effort and energy on behalf of Garvan and the thirteen participants. Behind this exhibition lie two of Draíocht’s core values; the on-going support of professional artists and the continued nurturing of our relationships in the community, which allowed schools and parents to entrust their students to us and gave older people the confidence to take part in this project.
In a contemporary world, outside the family, there are not many opportunities for younger and older people to work together. This project created a space for these different groups to come together in a way that may not have been otherwise possible. By promoting such interaction between mixed audiences, we encourage new and shared experiences. These experiences work to promote the acceptance of differences, to overcome prejudice and stereotypes. This element is powerfully seen in the decided subject matter of the participants. Rather then focusing and identifying their differences the project explores a shared experience. One that we all share regardless of age, gender or background - that of an early memory. This project has also allowed members of the community to become cultural producers themselves; part of an artistic process that puts them at the very centre of Draíocht’s programming and projects.
Draíocht would like to thank and congratulate Garvan and all the artists involved. While the outcome is manifested in a wonderful exhibition of art work, we also hope that the process and experience of the project is something that lasts as a positive, new memory that will stay with each participant well into the future.
Sarah Beirne
Children and Youth Arts Co-ordinator
Niamh Ryan
Visual Arts Administrator
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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts
Sarah O’Brien’s Artist Talk Postponed
March 14, 2011
Due to unforeseen circumstances Sarah O'Brien's Artist Talk, scheduled to take place this
Saturday Mar 19th in Draíocht's First Floor Gallery had been postponed.
A new date will be announced shortly.
Apologies for any inconvenience caused.
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By Draíocht. Tags: Artist Interview, Arts in Ireland, Exhibitions, Visual Arts
Make Art Not Rubbish on YouTube
July 22, 2010
We've made a short video to summarise this great project which took place from January to April 2010.
Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLr_6jB3jD8&feature=channel
Make Art Not Rubbish ... A Secondary School art project o-ordinated and facilitated by Draíocht, sponsored by Vodafone Ireland, January to April 2010.
Well known artist and sculptor Cris Neumann facilitated the creation of 3D works by Coolmine and Hartstown Community School students in a project that was a fun reflection of Vodafone Ireland's Green Agenda Policy. This educational and environmentally innovative visual arts project explored the concepts of communication, mobility and technology and how these concepts can work in the reduction and recycling of waste.
The art works resulting from the project generated zero waste by being produced from Vodafone Ireland's recycled materials. This process worked to educate students about the importance of environmental awareness, while giving them an opportunity to improve their arts skills.
The project culminated in an exhibition in Draíocht's First Floor Gallery before travelling to Vodafone Ireland's HQ during their Recycling Awareness Week.
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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts, Youth Arts
Do older people abandon fashion, or does fashion abandon older people?
July 21, 2010
Hi, my name is Garvan Gallagher and I'm an artist currently working with Draíocht Arts Centre in Blanchardstown until next year, and I'm looking for participants who are retired and up for a bit of adventure.
The project I'm undertaking is a photographic one and has a serious message. It's to do with the idea of invisibility that retired people commonly talk about. I made a previous photographic project with retired people in my hometown in Donegal, and the subject was raised by most of them. City life would probably be no different. Some felt that since they are over 65 and retired, their status in society had been downgraded as such. Some of them commented on younger people not acknowledging them, often looking right past them.
My 15-month residency with Draíocht offers me the chance to extend that research and make a new body of work that looks at this idea of invisibility within the older generation in Ireland. For this project, my research begins at an important source of our collective obsession with youth – the fashion-advertising image. The advertising industry makes money from promoting youth. Historically, it has been in their interest to promote ageing as something ugly and avoidable. That may be something that will soon be confined to history, as our older population is increasing all the time as we live longer and healthier lives. The advertising industry predominately targets a younger audience with younger skinner beautiful models, with fashion also geared to that genre.
The question my project will ask therefore is, ‘do older people abandon fashion, or does fashion abandon older people?’. Are older people invisible also to the fashion industry? I want to use the idea of printed media, the glossy magazine, the Vogue's and various other fashion shoots celebrating youth and promoting glamour, as the inspiration for giving older people a stage to look as beautiful and glamorous as their youthful counterparts. I will attempt to re-create fashion shots with older people as opposed to what society would normally expect to see – that of a younger body.
The process would be a slow one; a person could get photographed many times in the space of a year, allowing them time to get used to the process and to me, and hopefully have a really good time doing it. I would like the result to be a very strong comment on what we as a society perceive to be 'beautiful'. The work will be exhibited in an exhibition at Draíocht in September 2011.
Please get in touch if you feel like getting involved. You can email me: <ggATSIGNgarvangallagher.com>, or just call into Draíocht and say hi, we'll have a cup of coffee and I'll answer any questions you have. Bring your friends and get them all involved. The more the merrier!
In the meantime, I've created a questionnaire for anyone over 50 to help me with my research:
Questionnaire: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WYPF7YM
If you are interested in taking part, please call in to Draíocht and we'll arrange a time for you to meet with Garvan, or phone us on 8852622.
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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts
Amharc Fhine Gall VII
July 8, 2010
Draíocht and Fingal County Council are currently seeking submissions from Fingal visual art graduates for an exciting exhibition opportunity in 2010. This opportunity is being developed to recognise, nurture and showcase the range of talent of an emerging artist(s) from Fingal, working in any medium, seeking an exhibition in a recognised Irish gallery. This opportunity may take the form of a solo exhibition or participation in a group exhibition as part of Fingal County Council’s annual Amharc Fhine Gall (View of Fingal) exhibition to be held in Draíocht from November 2010 – January 2011. This year we will appoint an emerging, independent curator to select and present your work, a full colour catalogue will accompany the show.
Applicants must:
- Be born, resident or be working from in the Fingal County area.
- Have graduated between 2002 and 2010 from a recognised third level art college with a Diploma, BA or MFA. PhD applicants will also be considered as long as they fill the emerging artist criteria.
- Be able to exhibit work from November – January 2011.
- Be able to supply an up-to-date CV, artist’s statement and images before the closing date.
How to Apply:
Applicants should provide a typed covering letter along with an artist’s statement, and up-to-date CV. Artists should also supply at least 10 good quality images in the form of hard copy, slides or CD/ DVD which should be all clearly marked with the name, description, date, dimensions etc. Any other relevant supporting material can also be included.
Applications should be sent to:
Caroline Cowley, Public Arts Co-ordinator, The Arts Office, Fingal County Council, Swords, Co Dublin
T: 01 8708449
E: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Deadline: 5 pm, 5 August 2010
Michelle Hall Boat Paper, wood, plasticine and string 146 x 125 x 25.5cm 2009. Part of The Happy Valley Project. From Amharc Fhine Gall 2009
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By Draíocht. Tags: Exhibitions, Visual Arts
