VISUAL Carlow announces an ambitious and exciting Spring season
VISUAL brings four ambitious and boundary-breaking exhibitions to Carlow this Spring.
i see Earth presents a large-scale installation of sculptural work by one of Ireland’s foremost architects, Tom dePaor.
The Irish premiere of One Hundred Steps by Bárbara Wagner and Benjamin de Burca unfolds when visitors to aristocratic museums reveal themselves to be performers.
A new body of work by Christopher Steenson, Soft Rains Will Come takes the form of a surround-sound installation-come-live radio broadcast.
A Space for Making Good Decisions About Place by Helena Fitzgerald proposes a way of thinking about the future of the places where we live.
The Season Launch is on Saturday February 26 at 3pm and the exhibitions will run until May 22. All are welcome.
Breaking down conventions and disciplinary boundaries, these interplays allow for multiple interpretations. Beyond a
retrospective, i see Earth reconfigures Tom dePaor’s work as an imaginative world of possibilities and invites visitors to step inside.
The centrepiece of the exhibition is an epic installation comprised of 2km of 6mm round bar steel which brings to life the familiar Willow Pattern – a house, a fence, a bridge, a hut, a boat and island with birds in flight – reconstituted as a 3D drawing of some of dePaor’s iconic works previously exhibited at the Venice Biennale and elsewhere.
In addition to the main sculptural installation, the exhibition premieres a new documentary film by Peter Maybury, a long-term collaborator of dePaor’s, who has gathered and conserved notebooks, drawings, photos and films of the practice over 30 years.
Curated and commissioned by Nathalie Weadick and including new documentary work by Peter Maybury, i see Earth is produced by VISUAL Carlow and the Irish Architecture Foundation. This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland.
The film is the duo’s first transnational project.
‘One Hundred Steps’ unfolds when visitors to aristocratic museums reveal themselves to be performers. Their music acts as ephemeral occupations of these loaded settings, denying a simplification of 'European' and 'Other', pivoting the power relations of who is doing the telling and who must listen.
One Hundred Steps was co-commissioned by Manifesta 13 Marseille and VISUAL. It was first exhibited at Manifesta 13 in Marseille in late 2020. This is the launch of a national tour, travelling to Sligo (The Model), Wexford (The Wexford Arts Centre) and Cobh (Sirius Arts Centre) over the next 18 months.
Like the weather itself, the sound installation exists as an entropic system, emerging as an uncertain, disorderly set of forces that constructs and recombines itself endlessly. Past and present fragments of sound are perpetually rearranged, to make predictions of an anxious future.
In the Lobby Gallery, A Space for Making Good Decisions About Place by Helen Fitzgerald proposes a way of thinking about the future of the places where we live. People who enter the space are asked to consider three questions in sequence, and to think about who should participate in the decision making process. A round table in the centre of the room invites collaboration.
Alongside the exhibitions, there will be a busy programme of events including artist talks, family events and school tours.
Throughout this season bookings are available for primary and secondary schools for workshops and tours. Tours and workshops responding to Tom De Paor and Christopher Steenson’s exhibitions, will include drawing, 3D construction and
experimentation with audio. Themes of the exhibition consider architecture, our built environments and the climate crisis.
Workshops can be tailored to any age group and can be booked by contacting [email protected]
For more information see www.visualcarlow.ie