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PhotoIreland Festival 2017

PhotoIreland Festival 2017


Ireland’s International Festival of Photography & Image Culture.

@PhotoIrelandFST /PhotoIrelandFST @PhotoIrelandFST

Celebrating its 8th edition in 2017, PhotoIreland Festival brings to Dublin another exciting edition packed with free exhibitions, workshops, photobook launches, and talks. This year, the festival explores how Photography is used to share accounts of personal experiences related to conflict: The Recount of Conflict.

The festival is divided in three sections: Main Exhibitions, the shows produced and curated by the festival; Featured Exhibitions, selected relevant exhibitions that are produced and curated by other organisations; and the Open Programme, all the fringe exhibitions presented by individuals and organisations that add with their spontaneity to the festival flair.

The two Main Exhibitions this year are hosted at The Tara Building, a recently renovated space that now offers studio and shared co-working spaces. These are the first exhibitions to be held at The Tara Building since their launch.

On the ground floor gallery, visitors will enjoy for the first time in Ireland Clear of People, a project by Michal Iwanowski retracing his relative’s escape route from Soviet captivity, crossing over 2000 kilometres on their fugitive journey home in 1945. Michal Iwanowski will launch his photobook Clear of People at the opening of the exhibition. The book was designed by Tom Mrazauskas, and published by Brave Books.

Meanwhile, in the basement gallery, Steven Nestor presents Bellum et Pax, a new installation that gathers images from before, during, and after World War II purchased online, and attempts to rebuild their personal narratives to tell us more about how war and hate is taught and constructed during peaceful times.

The Recount of Conflict will present the works by artists focused on the disruption of the everyday life of individuals, families, communities, organisations, countries, etc. Whether dealing with ‘race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status’, established and emerging artists are brought together in this group show at Pallas Projects.

New Irish Works will bring to The Library Project in Temple Bar the works of Robert Mc Cormack & David Thomas Smith, 2 of the 20 selected artists selected for this ongoing project. Robert’s work looks at the information hidden in plain sight in some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods of London in Facade, while David Thomas follows up on his project Anthropocene with a reflection on satellite imagery and what it says about humanity in Arecibo.

PhotoIreland Festival and Cow House Studios present the second edition of How to Flatten a Mountain, a unique 12 days residency where artists are encouraged to develop a new project that will be exhibited during the festival at Rathfarnham Castle. The 12 artists that will participate in 2017 are Benedetta Casagrande, Kate Petley, Lauren Roeder, Mike Callaghan, Nathan Harris, Patricia Howard, Roisin White, Ruth Connolly, Val Patterson, Valéry Pelletier, Yinon Avior, and Zhao Qian. This promises to be an exciting exhibition!

The Marsh’s Library will host a PhotoIreland Festival exhibition for the first time this year. Tucked away behind St. Patrick’s Cathedral, this hidden jewel will showcase the works from Jens Sundheim – Of Ants and Star Polyhedrons, selected from our open call. Artists were invited to find out more about the Marsh’s Library, appreciate and engage with this specific space, and tease out associated themes like history, archives, libraries, literature, authorship, re-contextualisation and researched-based projects. Sundheim’s work really suited the call, and it is in itself a great project for our audience to discover.

Regarding the Hispanic World is a group exhibition presented in cooperation with the Instituto Cervantes Dublin, with works by 22 photographers: Allyson Klein, Anita McGarry, Basil Al Rawi, Deirdre Brennan, Dick Keely, George Voronov, Gerry Blake, Helena Gouveia Monteiro, Itziar Telletxea, James Forde, Jeanette Lowe, Maurice Gunning, Michael Cassidy, Neil Hutchinson, Oisin Prendiville, Rocío López Martínez, Ryan T. Lee, Sarah Fitzgerald, Shay Farrelly, Stephen Farrell, Tárlis Schneider, and Wojciech Ryzinski. The selected works aim to represent diverse aspects of social, political and cultural elements and themes linked to the Hispanic world in Ireland and abroad.

In 2016, we decided to stop offering standard portfolio reviews, instead, we privately tested out a new structure to replace the traditional meetings with a better format that would avoid many of its shortcomings. This year, PhotoIreland Festival is excited to present a brand new and important addition – Critical Practice Reviews. These will take place 5-6th May

Other events programmed will include the launch of Junior magazine’s second issue, entitled The Freedom Issue, and the launch of Blow Photo magazine issue 15, dedicated to abstract photography.

List of Exhibitions and Events

Exhibitions

The Recount of Conflict,  Anna Ehrenstein, Demetris Koilalous, Jasper Bastian, Marcus Haydock, Mark McGuinness, Martin von den Driesch, and Sascha Richter, 4-14 May
Michal Iwanowski, Clear of People, 5-31 May
Steven Nestor, Bellum et Pax, 5-31 May
New Irish Works: Robert McCormack & David Thomas Smith, 5-21 May
Jens Sundheim, Of Ants and Star Polyhedrons, 3-31 May
Regarding the Hispanic World, : Allyson Klein, Anita McGarry, Basil Al Rawi, Deirdre Brennan, Dick Keely, George Voronov, Gerry Blake, Helena Gouveia Monteiro, Itziar Telletxea, James Forde, Jeanette Lowe, Maurice Gunning, Michael Cassidy, Neil Hutcheson, Oisin Prendiville, Rocío López Martínez, Ryan T. Lee, Sarah Fitzgerald, Shay Farrelly, Stephen Farrell, Tárlis Schneider, and Wojciech Ryzinski. 4 May-29 Jun
How to Flatten a Mountain, : Benedetta Casagrande, Kate Petley, Lauren Roeder, Mike Callaghan, Nathan Harris, Patricia Howard, Roisin White, Ruth Connolly, Val Patterson, Valéry Pelletier, Yinon Avior, and Zhao Qian. 6-31 May
Patrick Willocq, The Art of Survival, 8-31 May
Dara McGrath, Project Cleansweep, 14 Apr-25 May
Shot. Patricio Cassinoni, Diarmait Grogan, Joby Hickey, John Minihan , Hugh O’Conor, Jill Quigley, David Stephenson,  Dominic Turner, 5-25 May
Theresa Nanigian, Trying to Behave, 6 Apr-4 Jun
Justyna Kielbowicz, Dr.Nadia Kelbova, 12-21 May
Novice Exhibition, Dublin Camera Club, 9-27 May

Workshops

Critical Practice Reviews, Christiane Monarchi, Jenny Lindhe,  Ken Grant, Marc PrüstMonika Chmielarz, Moritz NeumüllerOrla Fitzpatrick, Rodrigo Orrantia, Vivienne Gamble, Bob Gray, Ciara Cantwell, David Wall, Eamonn Hall, Laura Mcgovern, Oonagh Young, 5-6 May.
Business Bootcamp for Photographers — Marc Prüst, 3 and 4 May

Talks

Critical Practice Reviews, 5 and 6 of May
Os días Afogados (The Drowned days), César Souto and Luis Avilés, 5 May

PhotoIreland Festival 2017 Highlights

Michal Iwanowski,
Clear of People.

Launch 6pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

“This is not an unusual story. There are no heroes in it, and there is nothing glorious about the events. We have seen it happen before. And we will see it happen again.”

Launch 7pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

Michal Iwanowski’s grandfather Tolek, and great uncle Wiktor, escaped from Soviet captivity and crossed over 2000 kilometres on their fugitive journey home in 1945.

70 years later, Iwanowski followed his grandfather’s footsteps and retraced the original journey for personal reasons. He Hoped that if he walked long enough, he might find him. To tell him it mattered. Hoping that the landscape might connect him to a time and people long gone.

What had started as a quiet tribute soon turned into a meditation on the strength of the human spirit. How do you carry on when your body gives up? What hope drives you blindly forward when your life is so obviously disposable?

Iwanowski has no interest in judging history, nor is he interested in glorifying his relatives. Instead he asks what happens to all those people who one day wake up to a war? Who mourns the lost ones? In his project he reveals a landscape crowded with ghosts, on their fugitive way home. East. West. North. South. There is no room in history books to fit all those people, though they find their place in Iwanowski’s.

Michal Iwanowski will launch his photobook Clear of People at the opening of the exhibition. The book was designed by Tom Mrazauskas, and published by Brave Books.

Steven Nestor, Bellum et Pax

Steven Nestor,
Bellum et Pax.

Launch 6pm 4 May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at The Tara Building

Having formally studied History, German and Photography, Steven Nestor was discovering new visions of a time he thought had been fully debated and photographed. Yet here were images on sale as ‘Nachlass’, or estate: that what is literally left behind after death. They are what an individual had to say, and not what was said for them in their lifetime, and have in turn become a final testimony. However, clearly for these images, there was no immediate listener. Steven Nestor first started to come across these images while researching some years ago and was struck by the amount and quality of images for sale. What were once the preserve of the family album, are now global hacksilver, the descendants having lost interest. The witnesses’ visions are ours for as little as €2.00

What these images offer is a glimpse into fragments of life, under a totalitarian state at war and a nation under defeat and amnesia. They present us with a parallel narrative, a humanised history; a more nuanced and three-dimensional everyday vision removed from the state, the occupier and the artistry of the professional photographer. Enfranchised, we are offered a more relatable and even participatory role in a new proximity. Far removed from sanctioned visual narratives, cakes were baked, pets treasured, amorous jealousies forged and men in brown shirts dozed on trains. What did they dream about? After total defeat, the camera slowly returned to document everything and nothing.

Bellum et Pax is an attempt at universalising these recorded experiences, making them relatable and alive, away from plans for super races or economic wonders. They have been brought back out of the ether of web commoditisation for a re-existence as a new testimony.

This project was presented in book format to the Fotobookfestival Dummy Award 2015 in Kassel, Germany, being shortlisted by a jury that included Martin Parr, Markus Schaden, Katja Stuke and Erik Kessels amongst others. The dummy book will be available during the exhibition.

Robert McCormack & David Thomas Smith.

Robert Mc Cormack
& David Thomas Smith.

 

New Irish Works
Launch 6pm 6th May
Presentation runs 5-21 May
at The Library Project

This research based photographic project takes place in some of the wealthiest neighbourhoods surrounding Hyde Park, in the centre of London. These areas – Kensington, Mayfair, Belgravia, Chelsea, Holland Park and Notting Hill have the highest price tags for residential properties in the United Kingdom. In these spaces, financial elites who buy homes, are buying and inheriting a history and heritage that has been preserved. For some, this heritage meets the need to salvage an essential sense of self from the debris of modern estrangement.
In London today, there is a new class in which the financial constellation is dominant and which ultimately traces the roots of its new wealth to the deregulation of the financial markets. These new financial elites are the true heirs to the long held imperial legacy connected with London; their power has grown to a dimension that is truly imperial in the modern world. London is now the destination of choice for the world’s multi billionaires, it is virtually a tax haven, and a large proportion of these new residents now live in the areas McCormack chooses to photograph for Facade.
The images taken for this project, give a perception of the city as a site of mystery, they seek to reveal and construct a conceptual portrait of this wealthy portion of society. In doing so, they look at how space is formed and organised around them, as social identity is defined and asserted through difference.
Walter Benjamin’s writings throw up numerous metaphors for the ways we make sense of the city, he likened these to the work of digging and collecting. The city is understood as a material form that imbeds or encodes meaning; it surrenders these meanings in the form of fragments, clues, hints and echoes.
Utilising a form of psychogeography to overcome the processes of banalisation in the city, where experience of our surroundings becomes one drab monotony. This project aim, is to seek out spatial inequalities, using the spaces photographed as a vehicle to create a dialogue around social stratification and the complexities contained in urban life.

Residency: How to Flatten a Mountain 2017.

 

Starts 24 April at Cow House Studios
Launch 6pm 5th May
Exhibition runs 5-31 May
at Rathfarnham Castle

The 12 artists that will participate in How to Flatten a Mountain in 2017 are: Benedetta Casagrande, Kate Petley, Lauren Roeder, Mike Callaghan, Nathan Harris, Patricia Howard, Roisin White, Ruth Connolly, Val Patterson, Valéry Pelletier, Yinon Avior, and Zhao Qian.


Launch 5th May
Presentation runs 5-31 May
at Rathfarnham Castle

How to Flatten a Mountain is an exciting 12 days residency opportunity presented by PhotoIreland & Cow House Studios, and with the support of OPW, open to emerging and mid-career visual artists whose artistic practice in whole or part, makes use of digital and/or analogue photographic processes. The workshop facilitators in this edition will be Kim HaughtonAisling McCoy, and Matthew Thompson, and the colophon of the residency is an exhibition of the works produced, presented during the PhotoIreland Festival at Rathfarnham Castle.

The aim of this residency is for participating artists to explore possibilities outside their core practice, work collaboratively and produce a cohesive exhibition of work to be presented at PhotoIreland Festival 2017. During the residency, participants will take an active part in a series of workshops led by guest facilitators and as a group will be sharing ideas, making work, processing, printing, editing, as needed, always working in collaboration. As an integral part of the residency, three artists based in Ireland will facilitate day-long workshops to provoke and animate different avenues for thought. Each facilitator brings to the residency new perspectives, challenges and opportunities for participants.

This twelve-day programme is comprised of three component parts; workshop facilitation, open studio time and the installation and opening of an exhibition in Dublin for PhotoIreland Festival 2017. The first five days of the programme will be comprised of a carefully selected series of workshops, readings and presentations designed to stimulate the creative process, facilitate collaboration, familiarise participants with the people and places of the locality and tease out shared curiosities and thematics. The following five days provide the necessary time and space to create new work. Following on from our initial workshops, the open studio time allows for participants to re-visit sites of interest, research, print and finalise work for presentation. The final two days will be spent in Dublin installing the exhibition, culminating in an opening on the final evening of the programme.

This residency opportunity is sure to result in the production of new work, introduce participants to a network of practitioners from a diversity of locations, provide a fantastic exhibition opportunity and open up new possibilities within each participant practice.

Junior, The Freedom Issue.

Launch 6pm 25 May
Exhibition runs 22-28 May
at The Library Project

Junior Magazine is a photographic journal providing a platform to emerging talent in Irish photography. They ‘seek to foster a new photographic community and shine a spotlight on outstanding work that is too often overlooked’. As with issue 1, the new issue will be launched at The Library Project under the title The Freedom Issue.

Within these pages, Junior dissects and discusses the many notions of freedom. From its definition to its antithesis, from the macro to the micro, and from the past into the future. Junior features projects from some of Ireland’s most promising photographers including Matt Glover, Therese Rafter, Andrew Rankin and Holly Foskett. A new feature will allow photographs to collide with the written word, as some of Ireland’s emerging literary talent responds to images from Clare Lyons, Daragh Soden and more. This new issue will be designed by Junior’s new team member Joshua Fanning.

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