2019-06-20—2019-07-06
Becks Butler, Andrej Getman, Jordan Hearns, Ciarán O’Keeffe, Day Magee, Maïa Nunes, Lu Saborío, Jack Scollard, Hannah Tiernan
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Exhibition preview: 6-8pm Thursday 20th June 2019
Exhibition continues: Friday 21st June 2019 – Saturday 6th July 2019
Gallery open: 12-6pm Thursday – Saturday
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Associated Events: Aoife along with the artists will host a number of events throughout the run of the exhibition, such as live performances, collective readings and workshops. Full list of these events including detailed information can be found here.
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Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present The Queeratorial curated by Aoife Banks the fifth exhibition of our 2019 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.
The Queeratorial posits an inquiry into contemporary queer expression, embodiment and desire in Ireland. Presenting work from emerging artists working in a diverse range of mediums such as photography, performance, sculpture and textiles, this group exhibition addresses pressing issues surrounding gender, sexuality and race in Irish culture. Through spatial queering and a series of performances, workshops and reading groups, The Queeratorial transforms the gallery space into a queerscape of dialogue, relation, affectivity and reorientation in which we may explore what it means to be queer in Ireland and the effects and affects of our cultural and spatial surroundings on identity and desire.
Through playful spatial deviation and architectural disruption, the curational queering of the gallery space and the work that sits within it brings to question how the space we inhabit may orient or disorient us. As Sara Ahmed writes in Queer Phenomenology, orientations shape not only how we inhabit space, but how we apprehend this world of shared inhabitance. How do we reorient, or disrupt space? The spatiality of heteronormative and cisnormative hegemonies orient the LGBTQ+ body so as to make it queer, or “other”. Queer bodies are not only shaped by the orientations they have but the orientations that bodies have toward others shape the contours of space by affecting relations of proximity and distance between bodies. The feel of space or the impression of space upon a body constitutes the relations that occur between corporeal matter and architecture thus forming a queer spatiality. How may a queered space orientate, or disorientate, the queer subject? Within a queerscape how may queer bodies exist in relation to objective and subjective spatiality?
The Queeratorial aims to provide a communal space of relation, reflection and inquiry into the conditions of the Irish LGBTQ+ community such as the phenomenology of queer bodies in space, activism, disruption, desire, spatial queering, trans eroticism, coming out, fear, pleasure, shame, postcolonialism and queerness, visibility, dissent, affectivity, sociopolitical touch and trauma, gender expression and identity, postmemory of our LGBTQ+ history, invisibility, orientation and reorientation, the intersections between race, sexuality and gender and more.
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Biographies:
Aoife Banks is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator based in Dublin. Working in sculptural, relational and curatorial queeration and disruption, Aoife’s practice explores queer theory, affective relations and dissent against oppressive sociopolitical structures and hegemonies. She received her joint BA in Fine Art and Visual Culture from the National College of Art and Design in 2018. She is currently studying her MA in Visual Culture, Art in the Contemporary World, at the National College of Art and Design.
Becks Butler is a recent graduate of the MA Art and Research Collaboration, IADT. Her work explores subject, human behaviours and origins. She exhibited her solo show Pushing Boundaries at illuminations in 2017 and has presented work recently in group shows including Torch at A4 Sounds and meatspace at the RIA. Her collections have been purchased by the Royal Irish Academy and private collectors. She has most recently been awarded the 2019 Wexford County Council Percent for Art Commission with her collaborators Astrid Newman and Ciara Roche.
Andrej Getman is a Lithuanian born artist based in Dublin 8. Working primarily in paint, Andrej's practice is influenced by his experience of being raised in a post-Soviet era of oppressive ideologies surrounding homosexuality. Andrej graduated from NCAD with a BA (Hons) degree in Fine Art in 2018 and is currently undertaking his Master of Fine Art, specialising in paint, at the National College of Art and Design.
Jordan Hearns is a lens-based artist studying Photography in TU Dublin. His work focuses on themes associated with time such as memory and ephemerality, particularly in the context of club culture and queer culture. His current practice takes its point of departure through inquiry into what it means to assert desires and practices that have historically always operated outside the narrow heteronormative prism of respectability in the context of current assimilationist politics.
Ciarán O’Keeffe draws on theatre and alt-cabaret, his live art practice explores the uncertainty of a mis-remembered, sometimes invented past and how this colours the present. He has previously performed at IMMA, RHA, Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar Gallery, MART, Electric Picnic, Glitterhole, Spicebag, Pantibar and the toilets at Market Studios. In 2009 he was crowned Alternative Miss Ireland and still sometimes performs as Smilin’ Kanker when he wants a break from all this heavier stuff.
Day Magee is a visual and performance artist based between Limerick and Dublin. His work historically explores the developmental role of shame-based trauma in the relationships of the queer sick body, operating via stylised rituals in the form of performance-centered multimedia installations. These hinge upon the process of transubstantiation, the artist interacting with totemic media in space in ritualistic format, charged by the witness of the audience.
Maïa Nunes is an emerging performance artist of Irish-Trinidadian descent. Her performative practice explores ambiguity as the site of transformative potential, ritual as healing for the afro-diaspora, and song as liberation practice. This work so far includes three major performance projects: her performance series WISH, work in development INCANTATION, and her newest piece to be presented as part of Queeratorial - WAYS TO LOVE ME.
Lu Saborío is a trans nonbinary Honduran artist based in Dublin. Their work focuses on exploring the diaspora, gender and the body. These themes are explored through analog photography, video and prose. Recent exhibitions include; Trans Live Art Salon for Fringe Festival (2017), Body Battleground in A4 Sounds (2018) and a live artist response to Amanda Dunsmore’s “Becoming Christine” at the Royal Hibernian Academy (2018).
Jack Scollard is a printmaking and critical cultures student at the National College of Art and Design. His practice is concerned with identity, memory and the politics of space; with particular interest in queer cruising spots around Dublin city.
Hannah Tiernan is a visual artist, researcher and writer with a background in photography and sculpture. Her photographic project, EQUAL, won the 2016 Inspirational Arts Award. She is currently studying for an MFA in Art in the Contemporary World through NCAD. Her ongoing work focuses on expanding LGBTQ narratives; working through documented histories and personal accounts.
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Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 10 x 3-week exhibitions taking place between March and November 2019, in the context of a gallery space with a dedicated tradition towards the professional development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.
Artist-Initiated Projects aims to act as an incubator for early careers, and support artists' practices at crucial stages, providing a platform for artists to produce and exhibit challenging work across all art forms. The model of short-run exhibitions with a relatively short turnaround time of 3–6 months is an alternative to the normal institutional model, where the process of studio visit to exhibition can take several years. Shorter lead-in times allow the programme to be quick and responsive, reflect what artists are currently making, and encourage experimentation and risk-taking.
Pallas Projects/Studios Artist-Initiated Projects is funded by The Arts Council.
Photography: Vera Ryklova ©2019
