nsfdispatches2013
DESCRIPTION
Annual round up of our exciting events from the National Sculpture Factory Cork Ireland.TRANSCRIPT
NATIONAL SCULPTURE FACTORYDISPATCHES
DESIGN: [email protected]
Cover image: Anna Barden
[email protected] www.nationalsculpturefactory.com + 353 (0)21 431 43 53
2013 has been a challenging year for most individuals and organizations in Ireland. Challenging, as we individ-ually and collectively try to find anchorage and imagine new ways of doing things in a time of great social and economic uncertainty. Yet despite this, we see moments of great community spirit, community action and positive acts of giving. Individuals and organizations are collabo-rating and new ways of working are emerging. The arts sector appears to be vibrant and active and we repeatedly hear how important the arts are to Ireland’s image, that the arts are a major factor in attracting visi-tors to Ireland, as well as being significant for Ireland’s international reputation. Yet government budgets for the arts have been cut so severely that the arts sector is at a tipping point. It is important to note that the sec-tor appears to be surviving because of the people who work in it. Artists and arts managers are resourceful and resilient but that resilience needs public support, funding and nurturing to prevent years of careful policy development and investment unravelling completely.Arts and cultural organisations have an important role to play in providing spaces for people to make connec-tions, to feel connected and to anchor themselves. The National Sculpture Factory has had an active year and again we have witnessed the extraordinary re-sourcefulness of the individual artists we work with. You will get a sense of our work within this edition of Dispatches.The artists we work with make thoughtful, considered, creative and challenging work. Like small business units, on a daily basis they strive to make work and to make it work.Founded by four artists in 1989, we are entering our twenty fith year and remain committed to the individual artist and to enabling the public to have meaningful points of engagement and interaction with the process-es of art-making through public projects, open days, talks and seminars as well as workshops. We will remain committed to producing new art works and to support-
ing artists to bring these works into the public domain. We have aspirations for expansion, to make it possible for us to create more opportunities for artists to present their work.We remain thankful to the Arts Council and Cork City Council for their support, without this public support none of our work would be possible. We are also grateful to the many arts organisations and educational institu-tions in Cork, Ireland and beyond that we lean on for support. Similarly, we are appreciative of the Depart-ment of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the De-partment of Social Protection for their support of our various programmes.Most of all we thank the large number of artists who remain loyal and continue to use us and to challenge us; it is these artists who ensure we stay relevant.Thanks to the ever creative and very committed staff, Donal, Dobz, Elma, Pat, Grainne, John, Sarah, Fiona, Frankie and Shay.And last but not least, we are governed by a committed and hard-working board of Directors made up of artists, architects, business people, politicians and educators. They help us get perspective and help advocate on our behalf.We give sincere thanks to one of our founder members, Danny McCarthy, and Conor Doyle our chairman who both stepped down from our Board this autumn after both serving the organization for many years. We wel-come Oisín Creagh, architect, into the role of chairman.Board: Oisín Creagh (Chair), Cllr Catherine Clancy, Trish Brennan, Sean Taylor, Aideen Barry, Cllr Kieran McCarthy and Anne O’Leary
Mary Mc Carthy, Director
Organized by the National Sculpture Factory, the Dreams of Freedom?
conference took place at the Crawford Gallery in March. It was an element
of the United States of Europe exhibition which had previously been staged
in a number of European cities including Helsinki, Paris and Dresden. The
United States of Europe project was a travelling exhibition which explored
issues around European identity and the current European organization.
The conference was a forum for debate around issues provoked by the
exhibition; the subtitle of the conference being Conversations on Aesthetics,
Ethics & European Democracies. The speakers included artists, academics,
journalists and a political scientist. A theme running through a number of the
contributions was the dilemma of negotiating a position from which to work
as an artist; different models of working outside the main cultural centres
and frameworks were proposed. There was an acceptance that there is an
inherent tension within the art field where the artists’ intentions around their
work can often come into conflict with the way this work must be described
in order to gain funding. Artists’ practice can also be instrumentalized
in ways over which they have no control. There was recognition of the
uncomfortable position of having to depend financially on the very institutions
being critiqued. The session, Artists’ use value in the age of social and
political unrest presented a convergence among the panel of artists in how
they viewed art as being an area where alternative narratives could be
explored and articulated. Reinigungsgesellschaft, an art duo from Germany,
described how they felt art could not help to solve structural problems but
it could highlight them. Anna Konik (Poland) explained how she saw the
gallery as a space where she could ‘shout out’, a space which had both an
aesthetic and political component. Dr. Agnes Czajka, a sociologist, gave an
interesting talk entitled Notes on the Arab Spring: Enacting Citizenship and
Staging Democracy, where she used Derrida’s concept of the autoimmunity
of democracy to explain how Europe misunderstands how it is constituted. It
misidentifies elements as being foreign to it, attempts to expel them and in
so doing ends up weakening and undermining its own democracy. Augustine
Zenakos, a Greek journalist and former co-director of the Athens Biennial, in
his talk Uncommon Grounds: Art in a Borderline Democracy, gave
DREA
MS O
F FREEDO
M?
concrete examples of this weakening of European Democracy. He showed a
video of interviews with emigrants who had been attacked by far right groups
and young men who had been beaten by the police. He held the economic
policies dictated by the Troika directly responsible for the disintegration
of civic society and the rise of fascism in Greece. He was unconvinced
that the art field offered any potential for resistance, viewing it as a willing
cheerleader of neo-liberal expansion during the last two decades, with the
Biennial circuit being particularly complicit. His talk acted as a negative centre
of gravity for the conference, putting stress on the talks which followed. As
a forum for public debate, the conference worked as a form of self-reflexive
institutional critique, which posited prescient questions about the political
territory in which art making happens today.
Catherine Harty
image: architect’s plan and installation view USE by Francis Shier
The National Sculpture Factory is committed
to supporting artists in the creation
and delivery of ambitious new projects
in the public domain. As such, the NSF
as an organization is comfortable and
experienced across various roles – both as
commissioner and producer of challenging,
thought-provoking, large-scale projects
and events. Since our inception, we have
built a reputation as a significant national
commissioning and producing organization,
working with artists across the visual
arts and performance as well as forging
innovative collaborations with various
cultural and community organizations.
The quality and critical success of the
resulting works means that many NSF
commissioned projects have gone on to
have a life outside of their initial iteration
–Mark Garry’s Drift (2012), for example,
commissioned in collaboration with the Cork
Midsummer Festival, and Martin Healy’s
Last Man (2011) commissioned by the
NSF as part of Terminal Convention, both
travelled to the Galeria Civica di Modena
in Italy this year as part of Island, an
exhibition of contemporary Irish art curated
by Fiona Kearney of the Glucksman Gallery.
Similarly, the NSF is always eager to
respond to artists’ proposals. Partnering
with artists, often at a formative point in
their careers is an important part of our
remit, to support and enable them in the
production of ambitious projects in a cost
effective way. This year Ruth Lyons was
invited by the NSF to make a large-scale
project for Cork’s Midsummer Festival.
Swimming with the E.S.B. is set to be
an elaborate architectural construction
inspired by the history of the flooding of
the Lee Valley and its relationship to the
E.S.B.’s beginnings. Lyons plans for the
piece to take the form of a large-scale
temporary installation and the artist,
along with the NSF, aims for the work to be
realised by mid-2014.
COM
MIS
SIO
NIN
G
h: approx. 10m
artworks: Ruth Lyons
image: Maud Cotter SPA
CE IN
TH
E N
SF:
an a
rtis
t’s p
ersp
ecti
ve
image: The Cut, Cork–Dublin road, Joe Neeson 2012
The significance of having a body of air
measuring some 12m (minus my height),
high x 13m wide x 50m long overhead when
working cannot be underestimated. This is a
formative condition in which to engage with
space. Ideas naturally flex into this expanse
of air, and extend themselves willingly.
What I am about at the moment is
forming that inner illusive centre
that hangs like a ghost within what
can be conjured as a piece. This
holding of a portion of the void at
bay fulfills a much more intangible
purpose – it opens a new space for
the presence of the work. Attempt-
ing to tame the void as entity is best
done in a large breathing volume
like the NSF.
As I worked there over the last year
I had a feeling of being suspended
by the process – of working in a
drawing. Landing the work with a
joint exhibition with Karl Burke titled
the Air They Capture is Different at
the MAC, Belfast, and a solo exhibi-
tion titled a solution is in the room at
CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork,
completed the process.
Maud Cotter
image: An tSlí Feasa,limestone and bronze,
Christian Brothers College, Cork
Mick Wilkins 2013
image: The Cut, Cork–Dublin road, Joe Neeson 2012
image: Alex Pentek, design for Unfurl, perforated bronze, to be sited in Ashton School, Cork.
PUBLIC ART
Taking place each Wednesday in August, the Frequencies
series of lunchtime talks gives the NSF an opportunity
to open its doors to the public in order to foster an
exchange of ideas between our local community and some
of Ireland’s leading artists, architects and researchers.
This year’s theme was Eternal Returns: Renewal, Revival
and Re-enactment and responding to it were Dominic
Stevens (architect), Alice Maher (artist), Seamus Nolan
(artist) and Dr. Eve Olney (media practitioner and
experimental ethnographer).
Nietzsche’s theory of the Eternal Return suggests that
we should imagine our lives not ending at our deaths but
being repeated over and over again for all eternity, each
moment recurring in exactly the same way, without end.
However, the four practitioners that we invited to respond
to the theme are less involved in the dry recycling of
forms and strategies in art and culture, than they are
engaged in a far more generative and ultimately optimistic
dialogue with historical moments or modes of making. The
eclecticism of the line-up is integral to the beauty of the
Frequencies series; each speaker, through their approach
and through their diverse practices, illuminates a different
facet of the topic while each different session builds on
the ideas raised in the last.
Sarah Kelleher
FREQ
UEN
CIES
I was offered the position of architect in resi-
dence at the National Sculpture Factory in No-
vember 2012. This appointment was for one
year and had a dual aim – to create links and to
find a new space for architecture [the architect]
and its position in the broader cultural land-
scape, and to develop my practice in a creative
way in the environment of the NSF. I have had the
opportunity as an architect to explore, research
and develop what the practice of architecture
can be if it sits between architecture and the
arts. Through my practice I wish to explore and
question the position, role and process of the
contemporary architect.
With support from the NSF I was involved in
curating and positioning of architecture in the
city, highlighting the cultural contribution and
relevance of architecture as a creative prac-
tice. I have been involved in various steering
groups, and I collaborated and worked with the
NSF on the delivery and design of the space for
the Dreams of Freedom symposium, as part of
United States of Europe exhibition at the Craw-
ford Art Gallery.
Using the facilities of the NSF I had the opportu-
nity to explore and develop a knowledge of ma-
terials, and have been exposed to techniques in
traditional making and manual fabrication, such
as metal fabrication, casting, form-making and
working with wood. I have begun to embark on a
method of working not typical of the traditional
architectural practice in Ireland.
With the position of architect in residence I have
been able to direct my own course as a practic-
ing architect – using competitions as a method
of testing and probing ideas, finally culminating
in a percent for art commission due to be com-
pleted in 2014.
I would like to thank all at the NSF for the won-
derful experience and opportunities they have
afforded me. The year I have had will no doubt
have an impact on my practice for a long time
to come.
Francis Shier
ARCH
ITECT in RESIDEN
CEimage: Francis Shier
This year’s Culture Night saw Ireland’s representation at the 13th International Archi-
tecture Exhibition – la Biennale de Venezia, exhibited in the National Sculpture Factory.
The piece, entitled Shifting Ground by heneghen peng architects was commissioned by
Elizabeth Francis and curated by John McLaugh-
lin. The National Sculpture Factory was
delighted to host this large project
and to provide Cork based audi-
ences with the opportunity to
physically interact with this
work.
As Ireland is one of the
most globalized countries in
the world, this exhibit looks
at architecture’s relation to
networked flows of products, data,
and knowledge. It asks how could a global
architecture be grounded culturally, philosophically and spatially? How can it situate
itself outside of shared national reference points?
The work is composed of a series of wall drawings and a bench for resting. The 12
metre long bench is constructed of 6 interlinked sections, 6 rotation-only fulcrums and
5 translation pivots. The bench, when at a resting balanced equilibrium is horizontal but
members of the public are invited to sit on the bench setting it in motion.
THE VITRINES PROJECT
image: ChunMan Tang courtesy of Arup
CULTURE NIGHTSHIFTING GROUND
Three vitrines were set up in the Mezzanine (used
as an exhibition space during Culture Night) and
artists that were currently working on the factory
floor were given an open invitation to place objects/
things/pieces of work into this display. Accustomed
to mainly working with large-scale artworks, the
artists were only restricted by the dimensions of the
vitrines themselves and were free to move both their
own and others’ objects around in the three days
leading up to the doors opening to the public. There
was a deliberate attempt at a lack of curatorship as
the end result could not be anticipated prior to the
deadline of completion - one o’clock on the Friday
of Culture Night. The final arrangements within the
vitrines overlooked the segregated work spaces the
artists occupied on the factory floor. It was not clear
which artist authored which object/arrangement
so the observer was reliant on reading the work
through the juxtaposition of the objects in relation to
each other as well as to their extended relationship
with the sculptural works-in-progress visible through
the Mezzanine windows. Three posters mirrored
the displays in the vitrines offering one method of
interpreting the work through quotes collected from
the artists during their participation in the project.
Eve Olney
image: Eve Olney
THE VITRINES PROJECT
CULTU
RE NIG
HT
I spent six and a half weeks in Cork working at the National Sculpture Factory and enjoying the
friendly, down to earth ambience of the city. I felt the people were a highlight of my experience;
I quickly felt at home, enjoying the conversation and sense of humour. The music was an add-
ed bonus, for a music
obsessive like myself,
with many nights spent
at The Cornerhouse,
Sin E and many more
venues.
When I carry out an
overseas residency
I prefer to produce
a work and leave it
behind. To engage with
a new place is always
exciting and interest-
ing – in the first
few days I try to “read” the place, get a feel for it. Walking to the National Sculpture Factory
during the week I saw a site along the river which I liked, opposite Dunnes department store.
There were a number of trees in a row in a recently developed area. I felt this space could be
enlivened with some sculptural pieces. I believe site is important to placing sculpture, but that
a literal approach should not be taken. My solution for the site was three sets of tree guards,
two with forms influenced by the great Celtic tradition and one with forms that come out of the
Australian landscape. The figurative forms have a protective feel to them, and having a con-
nection with both Ireland and Australia they also mark my visit to Cork. The title for this work is
Monument To The Keepers Of Place. While I do not classify myself as an environmental artist,
I am at this point in time extremely alarmed at the state of our world-wide environment. The
title pays tribute to those cultures and individuals who understand that we have no choice but
to live with place in a sustainable way. The piece also challenges the notion of the traditional
monument.
I have missed the interaction with the working sculptors and staff at the National Sculpture
Factory since my return – hopefully some links can be made between the N.S.F. and the
Palmer Sculpture Biennial held on my property in South Australia and the relationship can
continue and develop.
Greg Johns
GRE
G J
OH
NS:
persp
ectiv
e of
a v
isitin
g Au
stra
lian
artis
t
images: Greg Johns, Tree Guards 2013
Each year the National Sculpture Factory gives out a major Graduate Award
Bursary to one outstanding artist from the CIT Crawford College of Art &
Design Degree show. The artist chosen in 2012 was Rory Mullen. With Rory
Mullen’s: Hours of Idleness, held in an unoccupied retail unit of the Winthrop
Arcade, Rory presented a new body of work completed during his six-month
graduate residency at the National Sculpture Factory. Comprised of drawings,
video and small-scale sculpture, this exhibition evidenced a move away from
the immersive cardboard installations stemming from his degree show,
which garnered him critical acclaim. Conceptually however, he continued to
investigate ideas of the everyday and the useless, filtered through the lens
of his own particularly anarchic humour and a defiantly ‘anti-slick’ aesthetic.
Delicately intricate line drawings of isolated objects, adrift on the page, are
described by the artist as ‘field notes from something that never happened’,
while deliberately precarious architectural models made of soap and glue sit
alongside complex drawings of churches, a motif chosen by Rory because the
purpose they were built for ‘is now largely irrelevant.’ Rory Mullen’s: Hours of
Idleness took place in May.
RORY MULLENimages: Rory Mullen
To mark the anniversary of the infamous 1913 Dublin Lockout, the
NSF, as part of the Cork Film Festival, presented STRIKE! Curated
by artist Anthony Haughey, STRIKE! explored a wide range of film
responses to industrial unrest and workers’ resistance move-
ments internationally. Main features on the big screen were Sergei
Eisenstein’s, The Strike (1925) and Allan Sekula’s The Forgotten
Space (2010). In addition, the Mezzanine played host to Demo-
cratic Cinema – Cinéma Liberté, a mini-cinema programme where
the audience selected the screened programme from our STRIKE!
library also curated by Anthony Haughey.
ANTHONY HAUGHEYSTRIKE! image: Jedzrej Niezgoda
The films selected for this screening programme explored national and international
industrial disputes and workers’ attempts to challenge the dehumanising effects of
globalisation and increasingly deregulated work practices. Most of the films were
documentary in style, others are participatory films made by the workers themselves,
including, The Globalisation Tapes (2012) and there were two films directed by art-
ists. There are also a number of dramas based on real events, with direct input and
performances from the workers.
The films span a period of more than a hundred years from 1895 to 2012. There
were two films from Ireland, including 161 Days (2012), a film documenting the
industrial dispute at the Vita Cortex factory in Cork where the workers staged an epic
sit-in. Their resistance captured the attention and support of numerous international
scholars, activists and celebrities, including Noam Chomsky who championed their
cause.
In 1895 film flickered into life at the gates of the Lumière Brothers Factory. The
film depicting the workers leaving the factory was probably produced more out of
convenience rather than a celebration of the workers themselves. But nonethe-
less, this group of workers were immortalized in the first ever public screening of
a film in Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris On March 19, 1895. A darker reading
put forward by Harun Farocki suggests that this short film clip could be considered
a precursor to panoptic surveillance. His observation finds resonance with Jeremy
Bentham’s architectural surveillance structure the Panopticon, conceived of as a way
of controlling prisoners and large workforces.
The Lumière Brothers’ film is explored further in Harun Farocki’s evocative installa-
tion, Workers Leaving the Factory (1995). A single channel version of Faroki’s film
was included in this film-screening programme as an apt starting point for excavating
a history of films depicting labour disputes and workers’ struggles.
This film programme was dedicated to the life of artist and writer, Allan Sekula who
passed away on August 10, 2013. His work has influenced a generation of artists.
Anthony Haughey
Eve Olney is an academic and media practitioner whose practice involves exploring cultural themes
through the employment of sound, photography and video as both investigative tools of inquiry and
modes of representation. Her current field of interest lies in exploring specific cultural sites as a means
of reconceptualizing the idea of the archive and what might constitute archival knowledge within a media-
practice-led (experimental) ethnographic approach. She is currently conducting an ethnographic study
of The National Sculpture Factory as a ‘living archive’.
The project is based upon a methodological approach formulated during my doctoral project (CTMP,
DIT 2012) which involved an ethnographic study of a private music collection and its collector where
conceptual classificatory systems were identified through the collector’s ‘performance’ within the archival
space of his collection as a method of ‘reading’ the space. A short ‘archival and ethnographic’ film was
produced as part of this project.
This methodology is now being developed within a broader and public context as I conduct an
ethnographic study of the National Sculpture Factory as a ‘living’ archive. The project thinks beyond
conventional archival practices and instead responds to the type of ‘creative’ experience that artistic/
cultural sites such as the Factory are offering. This work expands upon Stuart Hall’s notion of a ‘living
archive’ in tandem with Andrew Moutu’s theory of ‘collection as a way of being’ in relation to how the
NSF can be conceptualised as an archival site; the intention being to produce a more inclusive archival
reading which acknowledges the everyday sensory experience of the organization – the type of practices
and social relations that are lost within conventional classificatory systems usually found in archives.
My working method is to identify/classify various groups as already defined within the NSF (artists,
administrative members, tools, work spaces etc) and consider how these ‘collections’ work both
internally as well as how they inter-relate with different groups and other exterior agencies. Throughout
the ethnographic component of the research I will be determining disruptions/transgressions to these
identified systems of taxonomy as they are being performed on an everyday basis whilst documenting
these exchanges through auditory and visual media. Cultural meaning is therefore revealed through an
‘axis of social relations’ (Moutu 2012) and offers a closer representation of the everyday experience
of the NSF. The existing archival material held within the library of the NSF is also incorporated into this
reading of the site.
The work will result in an experimental ethnographic film – archival in nature – that contains within it a
sustainable ongoing archival program that continues the idea of the NSF as a living archive. The project
addresses how public arts/cultural organizations might rethink their ongoing archival practices in a
digital age in relation to how they classify and present that material to the public.
Eve Olney
images: Eve Olney
LIVING ARCHIVE
image: The Artificial Infinite, HD Video still, 2013 Amanda Rice
image: Peter McGlinchey
images: 99 Music Videos, 2012-ongoing, digital video stills James McCann 2013
STU
DIO
WO
RKS
image: Landscape 1832º Fahrenheit, Nedyalka Panova, porcelain, kiln props 2013
image: Vanity Fair 2013 Angela Fulcher. Mixed media installation, 12.3m x 1.7m. Installation view, Vanity Fair, Triskel Christchurch, Cork, 2013
The National Sculpture Factory provides a dynamic flexible environment for artists to work on projects or to acquire new skills.
Situated in an old tramway depot adjacent to the city centre and all materials suppliers the NSF is ideally positioned for ease of access.
The NSF provides facilities for working on installation, ceramics, glass, stone, metalwork and woodwork. Studio spaces are flexible and
can accommodate work of diverse scales. Studio rental includes: technical assistance; use of all Factory floor equipment; canteen
facilities; meeting room with wireless internet access, scanning, printing and photocopying
facilities; use of reference library and NSF archive; loan service of audio-visual equipment; full administrative support if
required.
For all details on equipment, facilities, membership and studio rates check
www.nationalsculpturefactory.com
image: Anna Barden
FACILITY