Members
Brian Connolly is a multi-media artist who’s works often relate to ‘place’ or context. He employs a wide range of artistic processes, including Installation Art, Performance, Public Sculpture, and collaborative projects.
Many former Installation works have dealt with issues of power and dualism through the use of multi-media/Video technology, and a range of optical devices, as well as other found and manufactured objects and materials.
He currently employs two distinct Performance strategies: The first, is geared to entice a non ‘art’ audience and takes the form of Market Stall intervention. Surreal humor is employed to question aspects of consumerism and global political and social ethics.
His other live works are often durational and are made more for an informed art audience. These Performance works, generically entitled “Install-actions”, are often visually elaborate and contain both political and spiritual metaphors.
He has exhibited in diverse contexts throughout Europe, Canada & Mexico.
He has also created a number of public Sculptures in Ireland and Italy, and has worked in combinations of bronze, ceramic - mosaic, stone, concrete, fiber-optics etc. He has experience of working as an artist on design teams and was an Artistic Advisor and has instigated a range of national and international artist projects and opportunities. He is currently an Associate Lecturer in Sculpture at the University of Ulster at Belfast.
Leo Devlin, born 1983, Omagh, N. Ireland
Selected performances art festivals and events include; International Multimedia Art Festival- MAN Gallery (Odazi), VIP Gallery (Novi Sad), The Students Cultural Center (Belgrad, Serbia), ARES International performance art exchange (N.I), Queen Street Studios Gallery (N.I.). La Bas Dynamical, (Helsinki, Finland), Live Art Falmouth 08 (U.K.), Cavan Fringe Festival 08 (Rep.of Ireland). Forthcoming works in 2008 include a series of performances in Chile (South America) and Proximity Effect, Plymoth Arts Center (U.K.).
In 2007 he was joint winner of IMPACT 07, Bergheim, (Germany) Devlin received a B.A. honors from the Universuty of Ulster (2006), he was a Co-Director of Catalyst Arts gallery (2006-2008) and is currently a director of Flaxart Studos and Gallery Officer of the Northern Irish Arts & Disability Fourm. His work has been supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Arts and Disability Forum.
He lives and works in Belfast.
September 2008.
Colm Clarke develops his praxis as a tactile strategy focusing on the body and the relationship between the individual and the environment. His research focuses on the physical/conceptual dimensions of phenomena such as vibration and resonance in considering the mechanisms of entanglement and aesthetics of power.
I am influenced by political, social and cultural ideologies and the development of the discourse between these environments. I use a wide base as the underpinning within my practice and then develop cohesive layers from the arenas of science, music and literature to enhance processes and exchange. The use of the term social sculpture is given to my practice to realise the importance of its engagement between concept and audience, but not as a definitive term as often this can be misleading, as I like to be nomadic in my approach to every engaging intervention/action and its individual appropriate art genre.
Sandra Johnston a visual artist living in Northern Ireland, has been making site-responsive actions and installations since 1994. Currently a Lecturer in Time-Based Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast, and previously (2002/2005) she held an Arts Humanities & Research Council Fellowship post, which involved researching the concept of “Trauma of Place”-exploring how artists can make creative interventions within spaces associated in public memory with violent events. This research was instigated in the post cease-fire political climate in Northern Ireland, and then extensively explored in many different international contexts.
Recent projects continue to generate possibilities, for responding directly to the functions and sensitivities of a wide range of public locations. Each action is unique to the resources and incidents of the place it is derived from, based on periods of intensive observation, a collage of absorbed behaviour develops. Or often as a reaction to hospitality offered to the artist from strangers, these works unfolding as subtle collaborations based on trust.
Alastair MacLennan is one of Britain's major practitioners in live art. Since 1975 he has been based in Belfast and was a founder member of Belfast's Art and Research Exchange. He is also a member of the European Performance Group called 'Black Market International.'
During the 1970's and 1980's he made long durational performances in Britain and America, of up to 144 hours each, non-stop, usually neither eating nor sleeping throughout. Subject matter dealt with political, social and cultural malfunction.
He currently travels extensively in Eastern and Western Europe, also America and Canada, presenting 'Actuations' (his term for Performance/Installations).
Hugh O’Donnell’s work is Performance/Drawing and Installation.
It starts with an object, any object; it could be a toilet or a tin can.
I then see an image or a shape that becomes a drawing or at least the start of one.
The object is appropriated into my artistic thinking and then something happens…I think of the room that I could be in or a space outdoors. I begin to draw and within my studio this drawing takes the format of being on the wall or the floor or in the notebook that is small enough to fit into my pocket. The intuitive way of drawing and planning of the performance happens so quickly that it changes rapidly, not always representing the performance in question.
Materials always seem to fuel an action, or the amount of material used decides on how long the performance will be. Thinking and thinking and thinking, then drawing and doodling and thinking again after seeing that nice wig in the shop near the Albert clock.
Sounds and noises are interesting. Shush, bucket barking, sawing into a table, hammering the table, the echoes that are made from a performance that happened in an underground space where trains pass over head. The sound of a chair being scraped and dragged across a concrete floor. The sound of a red toilet smashing of the side of a skip on College Street in Belfast.
How many times do I have to tell myself that what I do is o.k.?
How many times do I expose my thoughts to the outside of my body?
Our positioning within the cultural map of time is the result of humanity’s constant search for identity and meaning. My working practice is concerned with the poetics of being in relation to place (the present/environment) and intellectually how we have arrived here (through our past/histories), and the potentially to navigate our future/s.
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My specific interest in art has evolved into the metaphysical aspects of being and the dualism that arises, between our transient ephemeral realms and different natures of our physical bodies in relation to being constant spiritual embodiments. The relationship between being and the world we experience around us, informs the world/s we live in, from the private to the community.
Art through its creative process is an integrated and alchemical transformation of the self and consciousness. It has a vital role for the well being of the individual in todays’ society. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you want to see in the world”.
Where does the authority of society begin and how can individual expression co-exist with social control?
My work is generated by a direct response to and observations from my surroundings and their social contexts. My strange seemingly out of place activities, awkward objects and vessels disrupt the surface and merge with the habitual traffic of the environment from which they have been appropriated. Taking play as my means of articulation transforms the world into an adventure playground and everything in it including myself into potential playthings. This turns a chaotic disposable culture into a consumable, complex, sustainable and cooperative environment of loose parts. Jeff Ferrell stated that the policing of public space spawns a parallel policing of perceptions therefore can playing with public space likewise play with perceptions? Experience shapes the brain and changes in the physical world have a dynamic relationship with changes in perception. Disrupting perceptions in a playful way can reveal attitudes to alternate kinds of behaviour which can be potentially contentious. By re-appropriating spaces and objects in the public domain for playful interventions I hope to reveal existing social architecture through focusing on particular aspects of its material landscape such as waste. The people who inhabit these spaces are invited to partake in absurd activities and share their wealth of experience, skills and knowledge. These diverse vicarious and people-centred activities all create the potential for self awareness through play. The final destination is undetermined and undefined but the mindful journey has purpose.
Based in Belfast, born in Denmark 1969.
The foundation for Birgit Salling Hansen's work is presently texts which she transforms into performance..utilising her own or other voice(s), paint, writing/drawing materials and often playing with clothes, light and darkness.
Born 1948 Mecklenburg, Germany
Member of NI Workshop of the Free International University at Documenta 6, Kassel, Germany,1977
Founder Member of Art and Research Exchange, Belfast
Coordinator Media Workshop, Belfast, 1979
Invited to represent NI Workshop at Beuys Exhibition, New York, 1979
Community Worker, Centre for Neighbourhood Development, Belfast 1982
Voluntary and Community Sector Trainer, Belfast 1986
Deputy Director for organisational development, NICVA, Belfast, 1996
Founder member, Bbeyond, Belfast 2000
Director Face Inclusion Matters (youth work agency) 2002 - present
My art comments on belief systems, societal events, political developments, absurd ideas and conventions of communication and human interaction. Performance / live art allows me to use process to illustrate how our world changes while we are not looking, and how we then misinterpret what we have not seen but think we know intimately.
Sinead O'Donnell
Encountering a place's territoriality, frequently referencing Ireland, Sinead O'Donnell has been creating performance/installation/site/
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