Luxus
Selection of images
from Luxus exhibition
© Victor Sloan
Opening Night Reception
Wednesday 24 January 2007, 7:30 - 9:00 pm
Artists’ Talk
Thursday 15 February 2007, 7:00 - 8:00 pm
Artists’ available for interviews.
MCAC
is delighted to host the exhibition and book launch of ‘Luxus: A
Visual and Verbal Collaboration by Victor Sloan and Glenn
Patterson’. It is the first exhibition in a two-part series of new
work entitled ‘Interrogating Contested Spaces’ involving the
collaboration of major Northern Irish visual and verbal artists.
The aim is to create dialogue and inform discourse between rural and
urban disputed places, between creator and participant/viewer,
between the urban regenerator and the general public and finally
between the visual and verbal interpretations or creations.
All of the artists’ work — through the visual and
verbal interpretation of an exhibition and book — will explore these
issues. They will do so through engaging memory or memories linked
by history, visual landscapes in a local, national and international
context, through the use of various materials and processes, with
different sources of inspiration and intellectual investigation. The
final product is a hard-bound book, highlighting the collaborative
examination by the two artists and their processes, as well as an
exhibition, a book launch and reading.
While primarily looking at Berlin, and tangentially
Portadown, the first project ‘Luxus’, by Victor Sloan and Glenn
Patterson, engages with the notion of The City in urban renewal.
These urban spaces share notions of ‘locality’ in relation to common
post-conflict spaces. Issues regarding territory and power
structures pervade our psyche and the book/exhibition project aims
to verbalise and visualise this change in social process and
transition.
Taking Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood as the
background the artists examine the process of what is luxus
(luxury).
For this project internationally known photographer
Sloan and acclaimed Northern Irish writer Patterson were
commissioned to create new images and text, which become the visual
and verbal manifestations of this interrogation. The images are
primarily from the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood, much of which is
being turned into new luxury apartments. Located in this area is a
strange little bar called ‘Luxus’, an establishment that emits many
sentiments but none of them reflect luxury.
In this new work, digital manipulation supersedes the
physical mark making of Sloan’s earlier artworks. Instead of the
intentional self-made scratches, marks and blemishes for which Sloan
is so well known, these new images contain more discreet and subtle
changes that would only become obvious to the a viewer who has seen
the original photograph. Additionally, the images are blown up to a
large scale for the exhibition, producing noise and grain on the
surface. The end result lends itself to Sloan’s well-known style,
but this time the marks are created digitally rather than by hand.
There is an immediacy and spontaneity that capture an impression and
feeling of a single moment in a certain time and place. Sloan’s
approach to subject matter has not necessarily changed but the
process has moved from a physical to digital landscape with work
that still very much harnesses the haunted and anxious moods of the
artist’s own visual landscape. Sloan has also produced a video
piece that can be placed within the context of the redevelopment
East Berlin and how specific urban spaces remain authentic and
original (or not) with within the contemporary urban development.
For this project Patterson’s observant writing style
complements the exhibition’s artwork and concept. Patterson is
known for his critical analysis of social interaction within
different communities and his poignant and witty commentaries. The
text looks at the city of Berlin, the
Prenzlauer
Berg neighborhood,
the Luxus bar and the people that frequent it. Like a social voyeur
Patterson offers the reader an offbeat tour along a less travelled
path through one of Europe’s most engaging and remarkable cities,
observing the remnants of the DDR, The Second World War and the
fascinating characters that exist within this ‘altered state’.
There are not many opportunities for artists to have
a visual or verbal ‘white box’ in which they can create. MCAC prides
itself on the ability to encourage the idea of ‘anything goes and
anything is possible’ in creating artwork. This project has been
made possible by the fact that the Arts Council of Northern Ireland
continues to support the commissioning of new work supporting
high-quality, well-known artists and writers processes in their
investigation and artistic production. MCAC and the artists are
indebted to their support. Additionally, the Craigavon Borough
Council also supported the project through partnership funding.
MCAC has long been interested in the creation of new bodies of work
that engages not only with the gallery space specifically but also
the notion of ‘place’ of Craigavon. This project, and the artwork
created, certainly does so.
The
exhibition is accompanied by an Artists’ Book entitled ‘Luxus’. It
is available to the press upon request and to the public for £10.00
each.
As part
of the exhibition there will be a series of auxiliary activities,
which include:
-
In-reach/Outreach project: For 12-16 year olds focusing on the
techniques and themes examined in the exhibition.
-
Video
Editing: An opportunity to learn about this fascinating and
important process. 8 February 6:30 - 8:30pm (4 weeks)
-
Image
Manipulation: Using local locations you will learn the skills
required to recreate unique images in the style employed by Sloan.
10 February 10:00 am -12:00pm (4 weeks)
-
Film:
‘Wings of Desire’, this German Modern Classic by renowned director
Wim Wenders, follows the activities of angels living in a divided,
war-scarred Berlin as they try to comfort the mortals that dwell
there. (Not to be missed). Saturday 3 February 3:00pm.
The
Artists:
Victor
Sloan
was born in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone in Northern
Ireland. He lives and works in Portadown, Co. Armagh. He studied
Painting at Belfast and Leeds Colleges of Art. Victor Sloan is an
influential artist and educator. As one of Ireland's major visual
artists, he has developed an international reputation for creating
powerful images, which display his prodigious versatility and
inventiveness. Sloan is known for his works commenting on various
political, social and cultural aspects of Northern Ireland. As well
as working with the medium of photography, he also uses video,
etching and screen-printing. The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast
initiated a retrospective exhibition in 2001. In 2002 Victor Sloan
was awarded an MBE. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a
Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and an academician of the
Royal Ulster Academy. He has won many awards including the Academy’s
Conor Prize in 1988 and the Gold Medal in 1995. Victor Sloan has
exhibited widely throughout Europe, North America, South America and
Asia. His work is to be found in numerous private and public
collections worldwide.
Glenn
Patterson
was born in Belfast in 1961 and studied on the
Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia taught by
Malcolm Bradbury. He returned to Northern Ireland in 1988 and was
Writer in the Community for Lisburn and Craigavon under a scheme
administered by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. He is the
author of five novels including Burning Your Own (1988),
Fat Lad (1992), Black Night at Big Thunder Mountain
(1995), The International (1999), and Number 5 (2003),
all of which received critical acclaim and awards. His most recent
novel, That Which Was (2004), is also set in Belfast and
explores the interaction between memory, history and society. Glenn
Patterson has been Writer in Residence at the Universities of East
Anglia, Cork and Queen's University, Belfast, and was one of two
writers (with poet Bernardine Evaristo) selected by the British
Council and the Arts Council to attend the 'Literaturexpress Europa
2000' international literature tour.
Millennium Court Arts Centre
William Street, Portadown, Co. Armagh, Northern
Ireland
www.millenniumcourt.org
Email:
info@millenniumcourt.org
Tel:
028 (ROI 048) 38394415 Fax: 028 (ROI 048) 38394483
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