Occupy Space Limerick

2012-02-20T17:30:00.000Z

Welcome to occupyspace.com

Please click on a link on the archive list below to look through past exhibitions, or find out more about Occupy Space with the tabs above.
You can click on any of the images to enlarge them or for better quality.

Occupy Space will be hosting its inaugural Open Submission Show in March. For details click here.

Occupy Space will be closed for refurbishment until March 8th, 2012.

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Past Exhibitions

2012

Location - Curated by Ruth Hogan

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2011

C A V E S - Anthony Murphy

UBIETY - Alan Crowley

Ludic/Ludo/Ludos - Wickham Street Studios Member's Exhibition
Your Video Here Screening 2011
Occupy Space Graduate Residency Award 2011 - Rachel Healy and Ronan McGeough
Our Lives as Things - Alan Magee
Distance 344
Epiphenomena - Adrian Duncan
in_flux
Oops Apocalypse
Live @ Occupy
Millipede
We are nowhere and it's now
The State of the Union
Trompe Le Monde - 6 Memos Project Curated by Mary Conlon
Make. Believe. - Emmet Kierans / Compulsory Touching - Erica Eyres

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2010
Dweller - Sheena Geoghegan
Measured Fall - Julie Merriman
3 Solo Exhibitions:
***Paint Things - Ramon Kassam
***Cinema Impero - Mark O' Kelly
***Boundries - Laura McMorrow
Show Me - Curated by Nora O Murchu & Anna Crudge
Occupy Space Annual Residency Award 2010 - Eoin Francis MacCormack and Brian O' Shea
NOW - Daghdha
Certain things are hidden in order to be shown - Patrick Keaveny / Adam Fearon
Island - Mary Noonan and Damien O’Connell
Symbiosis - Wickham Street Studios Member's Exhibition
Surplus Value - Curated by Michele Horrigan
The C;Inside Selection
A Poem of Friendship
Paperplane - Curated by Mary Conlon
I Always Find Art Galleries Hungry Work

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2009
PREOCCUPIED

2012-02-06T18:05:00.001Z

Location

Preview Thursday 12^th January 2012

12 January – 4 February 2012

Exhibiting Artists:

Lisa Flynn, Michele Horrigan, Elaine Reynolds, Jonathan Sammon.

Curated by Ruth Hogan

Sites, places, locations: everyone has a place of origin, a locus from where all things begin. Spaces where we interact, live and thrive. Yet what role does this space play in determining a sense of self and how does one negotiate a sense of identity in an unfamiliar environment?

The phenomenon of 'psycho-geography' as defined by the Situationists has been used to describe the practice of spatial engagement within natural and urban landscapes. The environment as a reflection of the self, it's influences on perception and how it comes to effect and characterise emotional and mental states becomes the narrative for this exhibition.

'People can see nothing around them that is not their own image; everything speaks to them of themselves. Their very landscape is animated.'

Guy Debord -

'On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a A Rather Brief Unity of Time',1959

This exhibition strives to present different interpretations of psycho-geographical engagement as an artistic practice, through the works of four selected artists; Lisa Flynn, Michele Horrigan, Elaine Reynolds and Jonathan Sammon.

Lisa Flynn is a London based Irish artist whose practice specialises in video and performance. A recent graduate from Central St. Martins, she has exhibited in group shows at Galway Arts Centre (Ireland), Monstertruck gallery (Dublin), Elevator gallery (London) and Vegas gallery (London). She has also recently completed the 'Samkura' Artist Residency in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2010. She will present three video works, 'Drawing Breath' (2007), 'Hello Stranger' (2007) and 'Untitled Breath' (2007) as part of a multi-channel installation. Her work is a mediation on the body as a site; an analogy of isolated space. She uses aspects of her own body within her films, using it as an instrument to explore the surreal physicality of human anatomy. Influenced by the theatre and the performing arts, she employs different devices to present a detached view of the body as an abstract form.

Lisa Flynn, 'Drawing Breath', film still, 2007.

Michele Horrigan has produced a new body of work especially for this exhibition. 'Purgatory' is a new film work and 'Dante's Rock Phase' is a series of photographs based on the rock formations and landscape of the town of Les Baux-de-Provence. The town's unusual geography was fabled to be the inspiration for Dante's 'Purgatorio' from the epic poem 'The Divine Comedy'. Horrigan explores the relationship between the poem and the mountainous terrain of the town, through moving and still imagery. Her research and practice is always site-specific, dealing with the historical context of a location and reconciling it with it's contemporary other. She has had several international solo shows such as Heaven's Full Project, London, Galway Arts Centre, Galway, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt-am-Main (2010) and SIM, Reykjavik (2009). She is also the founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, a project, which annually hosts a residency programme in County Limerick, called Welcome to the Neighbourhood, established in 2006.

Michele Horrigan, 'Dante's Rock Phase',photographic print, 2011.

Elaine Reynolds’ work takes form in the public sphere and responds to social phenomena within specific contexts. Recent undertakings address the economy and the architectures of cause and effect that occur within it. Existing systems are identified, appropriated and perhaps set to a new purpose - performative/live elements have evolved as significant mechanisms in this process. History, economics, hearsay and folklore are amongst a multitude of subjects that are referenced in her on-going enquiries. 'On/Off States' (2010) is a film work produced from a live performance, that documents the empty shell of a house on a 'ghost estate'. Through the artist's intervention, the shell is illuminated at intervals that replicate the S.O.S pattern in morse code. She is currently studying an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths University, London, UK and has previously studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She has participated in residencies and exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Reynolds is a founding member of the artist led initiative The Good Hatchery in Co. Offaly, Ireland.

Elaine Reynolds, 'On/Off States', film still, 2010.

The work of Jonathan Sammon is an exploration into ideas of physical and emotional containment. Sammon will present several drawings and a video work 'A Merry Peal of Celebration' (2010). He develops narratives through drawing, video, sculpture and sound, which often draw upon the language of Science Fiction and Gothic literature to present states of emotional detachment, physical decay and spiritual corruption.

He has exhibited in group and solo shows, including 'A Route Obscure and Lonely', Triskel Art Centre, Cork (2010) and 'Rusted Satellites Gather and Sing' Camden Place, Cork (2010) and recently graduated from the Masters in Visual Arts Practice at Dun Laoighre institute of Technology, Dublin (2010).

Jonathan Sammon, 'A Merry Peal of Celebration', film still, 2010.

C A V E S - Anthony Murphy

2011-12-22T17:25:00.012Z

Opening 7pm Thursday 1st Dec

Exhibition 2nd - 22nd Dec 2011

Plato's allegory of the cave describes prisoners, inhabiting the cave since
childhood, immobile, facing an interior wall. A large ﬁre burns behind the prisoners,
and as people pass this ﬁre their shadows are cast upon the cave's wall, and these
shadows of the activity being played out behind the prisoner become the only
version of reality that the prisoner knows.

C A V E S is an exhibition of three large scale works, each designed to immerse
the viewer, and then to confront the audience with a question regarding how far
they, as privileged viewers of the shadows and reﬂections being played out upon
the walls, are willing to allow themselves to believe what they know to be a false
reality.

The works are based on explorations of simple 2D shapes; regular polygons are
exploded to create fractured pattern, or layered upon one another until intricate
forms emerge, upon which the projections can begin to draw out a third dimension.

http://cargocollective.com/anthonymurphy

Ubeity - Alan Crowley

2011-10-09T12:20:00.019+01:00

U B I E T Y

Alan Crowley

Opening 7pm Friday 14 October

Exhibition Runs 15 Oct - 12 Nov 2011

Using film, traditional print and sculpture Ubiety brings together ideas inspired by the philosophy of the Irish metaphysician George Berkeley. His theories concerning the nature of existence and the senses, the function of the mind and role of God are reiterated in a visual language for present day audiences.

This show comprises six framed copper plate etchings with photographic elements. Each print represents one of the many functions of the mind, for example, how we judge distance and shape, and our taste preferences. The centerpiece of the show is a wooden polyhedron structure, which is a culmination of the ideas explored in this research. Also on display is a short film entitled Three in One. It is a conversation piece between two characters Herbert and Philip, and it aims to iterate Berkeley’s ideas in an inclusive format.

In the process of seeing the images we receive through our eyes are originally upside down. Our brain instantly processes this information into our visual perception of the world. This is one of the many tasks the mind performs in our seemingly trivial daily perceptions. This research project aims to highlight these unconscious processes of the mind that we overlook. Accept for the moment, that the only type of information we can obtain from our eyes concerns light and colour. No other details are provided by the sense of sight. Identification and naming is the responsibility of the mind. Unaware of this as we are, we jump to the conclusion that our eyes tell us everything about the visual world. It is rather the case that reason and judgment connects like things with like. How we knows what attributes goes with what is because of a habitual relationship. The mind has learned to associate certain patterns with physical existence. For example seen from different vantage points, a penny presents an elliptical appearance. Yet the mind disregards this elliptical appearance and a generalised notion of a penny is that its shape is round.

The purpose of focusing on this hidden connection making process is to bring to our attention that which we are prone to dismiss as ordinary mundane occurrence. This dismissal understates the complexity of the everyday sensory exchanges we participate in and fails to appreciate the functioning of the mind. The operation of mind is a crucial part of sense-based experience. Without it we could not comprehend the information received by sight, hearing, touch, smell or taste. Our experience of the world would be disorderly and unfamiliar. While philosophy is deemed to be the exclusive discipline of the scholar the purpose of this research project is to show how philosophy relates to our everyday experience. Through this artistic
interpretation and presentation of Berkeley’s theories of cognition an audience will be able to appreciate their personal relevance.

Ubiety forms part of Crowley’s M.A. Degree in Contemporary Visual Arts

and Media by Research at Limerick School of Art & Design.

Click images to enlarge

A Mighty Framework

Still from 'Three in One'

One Sense to Another

Varied Dimensions

Know the Data but not the Sense

See and Judge

Taste the Ambiguity

You in the Apple

Ludic/Ludo/Ludos

2011-09-19T04:37:00.020+01:00

Wickham Street Studios

Members' Exhibition

22nd Sept- 9th Oct 2011

Ludic/Ludo/Ludos is a group exhibition of artists currently working in Wickham Street Studios, Limerick. The show intends to open out to the viewer a succession of art practices. By taking members artworks and concepts less than 200m from the studio to the gallery, we are gazing into a point that underscores the reality that a good deal of 'play'/ experimentation and working things out is involved in the creative process. 'Ludic' is used in philosophy to describe play as an 'act of self definition' which may be close to what individual artists are doing when they're making work. It could also be what defines a group. Artists have access to each others ideas, concepts and processes in Wickam st. It has 12 spaces for 12 artists, each space essentially a playground in itself. abstaining from any attempt to categorize any relationships between practices within the group. The viewer is invited to make what may be their own playful or even absurd connections between the works and the artists, and even create new meanings.

W.S.S was set up in April 2009 to provide affordable studio spaces for artists, and an outlet for its members to be part of a wider artistic community. It has become one of Limerick’s key arts organisations and it’s members were responsible for the establishment of Occupy Space. The current members are:
Ramon Kassam, OrlaithTreacy, Paul Rhatigan, Emmet Kierans, Noelle Collins, Paraic Leahy, Gillian Kenny, Rory Prout, Tom Prendergast, Sean Guinan, Kevin O' Keeffe and Gerry Davis.

Ludic/Ludo/Ludos was selected by Ramon Kassam, Kevin 'O Keefe and Noelle Collins with advice and input from Marian Lovett, Curatorial Advisor with Limerick City Gallery of Art .

Occupy Space will be open until 10pm on Friday 23rd September as part of Limerick Culture Night, Wickham, Street Studios will also 23open up the studios on culture night between 5 & 10 pm. It will provide the public with the opportunity to meet the members, and engage with some of the ideas and processes being undertaken by them.

Click on Images to Enlarge

Paraic Leahy - Bird Flu

Paraic Leahy - Snared

Paul Rhatigan - Till Our End

Paul Rhatigan - Detached Combination

Ramon Kassam - No Title

Rory Prout - Untitled

Rory Prout

Emmet Kierans - Untitled

Gillian Kenny - Salthill

Sean Guinan -
The Essential Nature of Everything
Tempest
Substance
Weatherproof
Tapping

Gerry Davis - 404

Noelle Collins - Cake

Noelle Collins - House

Orlaith Treacy - Here I

Orlaith Treacy - Here II

Tom Prendergast - The Pilgrim - Forty Years On

Tom Prendergast - A Home

Kevin O' Keeffe - Landscapes Painting

Kevin O' Keeffe - Landscapes Painting (detail)

Kevin O' Keeffe - Landscapes Painting (detail)

ev+a catologues were available without charge at Ludic/Ludo/Ludos

Your Video Here

2011-09-04T23:07:00.006+01:00

Your Video Here Screening 2011

Thursday 8th September 2011 at 7pm.

You are invited to the screening of Your Video Here Screening in Occupy Space Limerick City centre on Thursday 8th September 2011 at 7pm.

The short screening will be followed by a discussion and conversation between the selected artists, audience and selection panel.

You are also invited to attend the free Creative Commons workshop on the Friday 9th of September at 2pm in Occupy Space. This is a short introduction on how to attribute a Creative Commons license to your work. The workshop is open to discussion on Copyright and Creative Commons.

Your Video Here explores ‘Remix’ culture and the control and authorship of online and digital work. Remix culture utilizes the Internets ability to appropriate, share and edit content from multiple online and digital sources.

Traditional copyright laws protect authorship, yet it restricts many of the creative acts we use to communicate online today: downloading, sharing and editing digital files. YVH explores alternative copyright laws and their relevance to the modern digital age.

YVH brings together six artists to remix each other's submitted works online. YVH intends to create a dialogue about the ownership of creative works, and to initiate a conversation about Copyright and Creative Commons law.

Featured Artists: Stephanie Hough - Russell Chartier - Peter Maloney - Amanda Waseilewski - Richard Forrest - Kari Stewart

Selection Panel: Jo Hopkins (Co-Ordinator) - Caroline Campbell - Ciarda Tobin

www.yourvideohere.com

Unless where otherwise noted, this exhibition and its works are attributed with a Creative Commons by Share Alike license.

Your Video Here Exhibition is supported by:

Limerick City Arts Office

2011-08-09T14:41:00.029+01:00

Occupy Space

Graduate Residency Award 2011
9th Aug - 3rd Sep

Rachel Healy & Ronan McGeough

Exhibition of Work 7pm, Thursday 1st September

The Occupy Space Graduate Residency Award is a one month residency offered to two recent graduates of LSAD. The emphasis is on the working process, where the artists can explore their practice in the significant space and location of Occupy Space. Occupy Space works with the artists to facilitate their projects and negotiate appropriate events for engaging with the audience.

Rachel Healy

“The simultaneous unmaking of one work and the creation of another“

Robert Rauschenberg.

My work serves as a commentary on image making and is rooted in the idea of storytelling and of the work of art as a metaphor for the artist’s voice and willingness to mediate meanings through their work. Animation pieces coexist alongside the drawings used to create them and become an unique history of the movement of their coming-into-being and immediate erasure, the removal of one subject allowing for the appearance of another.

http://nothoughtforfurniture.blog.com/

Ronan McGeough

I observe the knotty system of the urban environment that in some cases can engulf the human condition. Expressing the decline of the city landscape in the midst of urbanisation, I use a collagist method of composition to record our cultures spiritual wounds. Using collage offers a retreat from logic, reason, transforming the familiar into the strange and imaginary. It enables me to disrupt the literal methods by which our world is mapped, and design new imagined landscapes. The notion of a territorial border breaks down and is reconceived, the previously unthought becomes possible. I combine my photographs of my surroundings with newspapers and magazines as my main source material. Combing all of these elements together to create a new environment of experimentation, wonder and unease. I play with numbers, arrows, symbols to convince the viewer to observe and better discover the reality of the city scapes around us, the contrasts and diversity and contradictions in modern society. I aim to illustrate what happens when the urban landscape is abandoned for the suburbs and the remnants of a vibrant neighbourhood are gone.

http://www.behance.net/ronanmcgeough

Images:

Rachel Healy - 'She is Us' (animation)

Rachel Healy - 'Process Room'

Ronan McGeough - 'The Cow'

Ronan McGeough - Residency Studio in O.S.

Alan Magee - Our Lives as Things

2011-07-14T19:33:00.011+01:00

22 July - 6 August 2011
Preview 7pm 21 July

Occupy Space is proud to present Our Lives as Things, an exhibition of new work by Alan Magee. Bringing together sculpture, drawing and installation, this body of work is the result of a one-year residency programme of the Florence Trust, London. Magee implicates both himself and the audience in an examination of self-improvement and locus of control.

www.alan-magee.com

I think I can

Give me the boy till 7, and I'll give you the man

Choice enabled (series)

(Untitled) Handbag

(Untitled) Flag

Responsibilty machine

A new ending

Hockey-stick holder cleverly fashioned from hockey-sticks, or why Shane doesn't write

Veneered off-cuts

Wood drawing series #1

Wood drawing series #2

(Untitled) Sander piece

Distance 344

2011-07-01T00:18:00.000+01:00

1^st - 16^th July 2011

Gemma Dardis - Pamela Dunne
Patrick Keaveney - Kevin O’ Keeffe

Gillian Kenny - Des MacMahon
Derek O’ Sullivan - Fiona Quill

Occupy Space is proud to present Distance 344, the second exhibition of works by 8 Limerick based artists.

In May 2011 Platform Gallery (Belfast) hosted the exhibition Distance 172 (miles) which explored the strong artistic ties between the cities of Limerick and Belfast. These artists were selected as a cross-section representation of current contemporary art practice in Limerick City. Occupy Space welcomes these multidisciplinary works back to Limerick for examination by the home audience.

The examination of “normal” life is central to a lot of the work in this exhibition. What people often refer to as the mundane is actually the most important part of our lives. It is the conversation, the laughs, the drinking, the making and the connecting that make everything work. The big events are far and few between and in the end are only a product of the mundane. This exhibition contains a diverse and varied range of work, themes and media, which will interrogate the distance, and the similarities, between place and people.

Derek O' Sullivan

Des MacMahon

Kevin O' Keeffe

Gillian Kenny

Gemma Dardis

Patrick Keaveney

Fiona Quill

Pamela Dunne

2011-06-07T14:29:00.006+01:00

Epiphenomena

Adrian Duncan

10th – 25th June, 2011.

Preview Thursday 9 June, 7 - 9pm.

Screening of Part II on Saturday 18 June, 3pm.

This is the first part of a three-part narrative project based on a large, fictional T-shaped building.

The building has three wings and is located in the countryside, alongside a disused canal. This work refers, specifically, to the North Wing of this T-shaped building, this wing is called: Epiphenomena.

Epiphenomena's purpose it is to house and service a Cloud Room. The Client has employed an Engineer to design the building and the clouds within. However, the Engineer's tools of counting, measurement and empiricism are crude; they are not wholly applicable to this enterprise and ultimately show themselves to be ineffectual.

The work, which will be shown in Occupy Space from the 9^th to the 23^rd of June, relays the Engineer’s efforts and is comprised of video, sculpture, photography, and drawing.

On Saturday the 18^th at 3.00pm there will be a screening of a short video piece relating to Part II of this three-part project. Also, ten posters relaying the whole narrative will be available, free of charge.

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Adrian Duncan studied and worked as a structural engineer in the UK and Ireland for over a decade before returning to study fine art and contemporary art theory at IADT and NCAD. He has exhibited at Trans Colonia, Queen Street Studios, Pallas Contemporary Projects, The Joinery, Catalyst and The Lewis Glucksman, UCC. He is a guest lecturer at UCD School of Architecture and is assistant editor of Paper Visual Art Journal to which he also contributes.

Oops Apocalypse

2011-05-09T17:18:00.008+01:00

Preview Thursday 12th May

Show runs until Saturday 4th June

Open Wed to Sat 1 – 5pm

Occupy Space, Thomas St. Limerick

Beagles and Ramsay, Baldvin Ringsted, Sam Darga, Alan Mongey. Curated by Emmet Kierans

The apocalypse, in the public consciousness, is the end of the world, a catastrophic event that ends life as we know it. We imagine it’s brought about by war, famine, drought, we’re informed it’s a matter of time before an asteroid wipes us out. It’s our greatest fear.

But the word itself comes from the Greek meaning "lifting of the veil" or "revelation". The bible depicts it as the coming together of Earth, Heaven and Hell. It’s the source for innumerable works of fiction, we love to imagine it, to think about how it could happen and what would follow.

Perhaps we have reached the moment Walter Benjamin warned us of, when humankinds 'self-alienation' reaches 'such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order’. Or is it the promise of a new beginning that makes the notion of the apocalypse both frightening and strangely appealing.

Four artists, Beagles and Ramsay, Baldvin Ringsted, Sam Dargan and Alan Mongey respond in very different ways to our fixation with the apocalypse.

Beagles and Ramsay have worked together collaboratively since 1996. Based in Glasgow they have exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Migros Museum, Zurich, PS1 MoMA, New York, the ICA, London, Tramway, Glasgow and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. In 2003 Beagles & Ramsay were selected to take part in Zenomap, Scotland’s first presentation at the Venice Biennale. Their work has been presented in numerous publications including Scotland and Venice 2003 – 2007, Divided Selves - The Self-Portrait in Scottish Art 17th Century to the present, Beagles & Ramsay, Tramway publication, 2006 and When Humour Becomes Painful, 2005.

www.beaglesandramsay.co.uk

Baldvin Ringsted was born in Akureyri, Iceland in 1974. He graduated from Akureyri School of Art in 2004 prior to which he studied jazz theory at the F.I.H. School of music in Reykjavik, Iceland. Ringsted has also worked as a rock and experimental musician. Currently he lives and works in Glasgow where he recently graduated from the Masters course at The Glasgow School of Art in 2007. He has exhibited widely both nationally and internationally including exhibitions in the The Glucksman Gallery, Cork and solo exhibitions in Martos Gallery, New York and at SWGS as part of Glasgow International 2010.

Sam Dargan paints the doomed world of jobsworth’s whose lives of monotony and abjection are grey and dismal. Battling against the forces of nature and the urban streets alike the artist’s figures are somehow forlorn, the depicted adventures fragmentary, futile and incomplete. Despite the apathy and self-loathing there is humour beyond the desperate situations and forlorn stances.

He has recently had solo exhibitions in Theodore:Art, New York and Notting Hill Arts Club, London. He is represented by Rokeby, London.

Alan Mongey is a Dublin-based artist who graduated with a BA in Fine Art from D.L.I.A.D.T, Dublin in 2003. His work deals primarily with the alleviation of fears, making light of heavy subject matters. The key elements of his work are interactivity and playfulness – he wants it to be appealing to the broader public.

His last Solo exhibition: “No Fighting in the War Room” was held in Dublin in 2007 was extremely well recieved, he is currently producing work for his next solo exhibition to be shown in 2012. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Mongey’s work has been described as very well executed, original and contemporary.

www.alanmongey.com

Beagles and Ramsay, Glitter Desert, C-type print, 2007

Beagles and Ramsay, Untitled, Black matter sculpture, 2011

Beagles and Ramsay

Baldwin Ringsted, The Sun.....or Moon 1 and 2, ink on paper, 2011

Baldwin Ringsted, The End (continuum), reel to reel tape recorder, tape, metal pins, found sound recordings, 3.33min, 2011

Sam Dargan, Dictato Bastardo, oil on board, 2009

Sam Dargan, International Man of Misery, oil on canvas, 2008

Sam Dargan

Alan Mongey, Thoseevildoers, mixed media, life size figure, 2004

Alan Mongey, There’s a Bullet With Your Name on it, engraved aluminium, fisshing line, 2007

Alan Mongey, Inevitable Convertible, back form plastic and mixed media, 2011

Live@ Occupy

2011-05-05T22:40:00.000+01:00

Thurs 5th May 2011, 8pm

Live @ 8 is a multi-disciplinary Live Art event that has been running every two months at Bar 8, The Docks in Galway city since April 2008. Since then, the organisers; Áine Phillips, Vivienne dick and Maeve Mulrennan, have hosted hundreds of artists works in Bar 8, Galway. It also has an open policy for working with other curators, and invites a guest curator for most events.

Now Live @ 8 is going on tour and will present an exciting programme of Live art, video and installation in Limerick's successful Occupy Space.

The theme of the night is presenting Galway to Limerick and will feature new work from a plethora of Galway-based or Galway-associated Visual Artists and film makers. Live @ Occupy is the kick-off venue in a tour which will also include events in The guesthouse, Cork and The Trades Club, Sligo later this year.

The event is free, and viewers should expect the unexpected: Live Performance throughout the evening, a film and artist’s video programme and music by Galway based artist Dave Callan. The night will conclude with a performance by a special guest, based in Limerick, who has been asked to respond to Live @ 8's objective to support a Live Art audience in alternative spaces.

The event will include video work from Galway based emerging film maker Michael Ryan, new performances by knee-jerk (who people may know from their last performance in Limerick: a giant pass-the-parcel along Catherine St), Ann Maria Healy and Victoria McCormack. Audiences will also be treated to the premiere of a new film installation work by Vivienne Dick and Áine Phillips, inspired by Phillips' performance 'Redress' and the research of film maker Edwaerd Muybridge. Watch out for posters and updates on Occupy's website for the full listing of amazing artists.

MILLIPEDE

2011-04-09T22:42:00.042+01:00

Anastasia Artemeva, Deviant,Helena Doyle,Joan Healy,Sophie Iremonger, Claire Keating,James Leahy, Isabella Oberlander, Nora O'Murchú, Hilary Williams.

Curated by Jessica Kelly.

8pm, Friday 1 April 2011.

Photography by Robin Parmar.

2011-04-07T16:42:00.004+01:00

We are nowhere and it's now

Khaled Barakeh, Elisa Caldana, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt,

Barbara Hlali, Sara Rajaei, Dan Starling, Marko Tadić

Curated by Didem Yazıcı and Patrick Keaveney

Preview: 7^th April at 7pm

8^th – 23^rd April 2011

We are nowhere and its now brings together works by Khaled Barakeh, Elisa Caldana, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, Barbara Hlali, Sara Rajaei, Dan Starling, and Marko Tadić. The exhibition seeks to map out in a series of works tenuous links and differing ideas of the displaced.

The cities and forests and beings were also without identity,

they were shadows, they exerted neither pull nor goad

. . . His being was without axis or contour, its center
everywhere and periphery nowhere... (Samuel Beckett)

The notion of displacement can take many forms and guises. It can be traced in many issues of social antagonism within different generations, social groups, medias, and geographies. Marc Auge's description of the non-place can be said to be an idea that exists within the negative: it is a term that is identified against a background of that which it's not. Where place is defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity's non-places are seen to be the negation of these aspects. Paradoxically however as much as this term seems to create a tone of nostalgia with a sense of loss for 'place', it is precisely through the articulation of this loss that 'place' has emerged again with a renewed vigor within the bandwidth of theoretical study. The works in this show resonate differently within the idea of this paradoxical threshold, of that which emerges as being lost. Whether it be the desire for a return to the 'political', a sense of longing for the place called home, or even a nostalgia for the era of science fictions; each artist traces out in their own method what is missing and in doing so how it can be found again. It could be a rope, a bench, a postcard; or an urban landscape or the story of a kidnapping; We are nowhere and its now is an attempt to map onto the issues of form within an artwork the questıon; how far can a social issue which is inscribed into aesthetics relate to the disparity and displacement of a given social situation.

Photograph: Elisa Caldana, A monument with no name, photographic documentation, 2010.

The State of the Union

2011-03-11T14:34:00.003Z

Preview: Wed 16^th March at 7pm

18^th March - 1^st April 2011

Simon Bayliss, Becky Coffey, Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Mary Galvin, Emily Kaelin, Laura O'Connor, Nuala O’Sullivan, Beka Peralta, Jenna Whelan, Francis Wasser.

The State of the Union brings together work by MFA Students from Burren College of Art, Crawford College of Art, Limerick School of Art, National College of Art and University of Ulster.

This work has been selected by Basement Project Space Cork, Exchange Dublin, Platform Arts Belfast and Occupy Space Limerick. This exhibition is collaborative curatorial project between four artist-led spaces.

The State of the Union aims to present a moment in Irish visual art culture in which artist-led spaces are helping to shape the dialogue of current practice. The ten emergent artists selected present a diverse range of works representative of their specific research practices.

The exhibition title The State of the Union refers both to a state of evaluation and the awareness of critical context within a national forum. The premise of the exhibition is to address not only the discourse created by artist-led spaces but to simultaneously recognise the importance of research in developing critically aware visual art communities.

Young practitioners are pivotal in shaping the condition of current and future visual culture nationally and internationally. This project exhibit-ion seeks to acknowledge the potential inherent in this collaborative energy.

Burren College of Art: Simon Bayliss, Emily Kaelin, Beka Peralta: Occupy Space

Crawford College of Art: Mary Galvin, Jenna Whelan: Basement Project Space Cork

Limerick School of Art: Nuala O’Sullivan: Occupy Space

National College of Art: Joseph Noonan-Ganley, Francis Wasser: Exchange Dublin

University of Ulster: Becky Coffey, Laura O'Connor: Platform Arts Belfast

Occupy Space exhibition programme is supported by Arts Council of Ireland

Trompe Le Monde

2011-02-03T23:07:00.000Z

Trompe Le Monde

Preview 7 - 9pm Thursday 3rd February
Show runs until 4th March
Open 1 - 5pm Wed.- Sat.

The exhibition features work by Juan Fontanive, Dana Gentile, Helen Horgan, James Merrigan and Michael Murphy. This is the third installment of the Six Memos project, curated by Shinnors Scholar, Mary Conlon. LCGA’s Acting Director/Curator, Marian Lovett, will open the exhibition.

“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combinatoria of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every conceivable way.” Italo Calvino, Multiplicity, Six Memos of the Next Millennium (1993)

In 1985, Italian writer, Italo Calvino devised a series of lectures for the Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry, through which he sought an overall ‘definition’ of his practice. Reviewing the history of literature, he identified writers and works exemplifying a set of values from the past to be upheld in the future: Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, Visibility, Multiplicity and Consistency. The resulting publication entitled Six Memos for the Next Millennium is the core text for exegesis in the curatorial project Six Memos. Expanding on the literary specificity of the lectures, Six Memos seeks through empirical and theoretical research to define a model of practice based on values, flexible within shifting intellectual and cultural contexts.

For his penultimate lecture on Multiplicity, Calvino creates a complex structure, moving fluently through the works of philosophers, fiction writers, theorists, researchers, commentators and their diverse literary modes and techniques. An authentic image of the world, he proposes, is not stylistically homogenous but should incorporate the radiating web of connections between people, objects and events, “a style capable of grasping and expressing the epistemological multiplicity of the world” (Italo Calvino, The Challenge to the Labyrinth). To emphasise his point, he exploits the semantic potential of the lecture’s title considering the nuances of mathematical, scientific, legal and philosophical usage; he selects writers who become tangled in the infinite multiplications of time and space, defeated by unrealizable ambitions; he chooses writers who construct entire worlds and parallel lives in the space of a few short pages, as well as those who incorporate encyclopedic knowledge or epic intention in their work.

“Trompe Le Monde” is a polyphonic response to Calvino’s Multiplicity lecture featuring five artists with distinct artistic practices: Juan Fontanive, Dana Gentile, Helen Horgan, James Merrigan and Michael Murphy. Their re-evaluation of the lecture from the historical vantage point of this millennium is the starting point for the exhibition. Each artist interprets the lecture differently and while they share recurring motifs, the works reveal the lecture to be more than a formula for aesthetics. Connections are made philosophically and conceptually, offering the exhibition as a method of knowledge in itself. Just one manifestation of a myriad of potential outcomes, “Trompe Le Monde” unspools Ariadne’s thread through the labyrinthine complexities of our time – through the artists’ aspirations to weave a vision of the world. “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth” (Mikhail Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination). In the exhibition, stylistic variety and analytical consistency compose the counterpoint to Calvino’s lecture on the combinatorics of contemporary experience.

An information point with further details about the artists, the individual works and Calvino’s lecture will be available from Occupy Space. A series of artists’ talks and events will be scheduled throughout the course of the exhibition.

Juan Fontanive studied English and Textual Studies at Syracuse University, New York and Animation at The Royal College of Art, London. He has presented two solo exhibitions Paper Films (2006) and Tin Tan (2008) at Riflemaker Gallery, London and group exhibitions include For the Sake of the Image (2010), Jerwood Gallery, London; Obsession: contemporary art from the Lodeveans Collection (2009), Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery, Leeds; Indica (2008), Nyehaus Gallery, New York and Ingenuity (2007), The Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. He won the Louise Wetherbee Phelps Award for Writing (1999) and the Desmond Preston Prize for Drawing (2004). He lives and works in Brooklyn.

Dana Gentile splits her time between Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley, NY. She graduated with a BFA from SUNY Purchase College in 2003. Her work has been exhibited at Capricious Space, Pocket Utopia, +Kris Graves Projects and Humble Arts Foundation. She was interviewed for the Italian Publication PIG Magazine and has been invited to participate in the curated publications Ruby Mag, Versal, and Color & Color. In 2010, Dana Gentile was awarded the Carole Eisner Award for Sculpture for her installation Plate Tectonics.

Helen Horgan studied at Letterkenny RTC (Design Graphics) and IADT where she received a BA in Visual Arts Practice and the Award for Academic Excellence in 2009. Her work has been shown widely in Ireland and most recently in No Soul For Sale at Tate Modern in London where she exhibited work alongside Thisisnotashop and The Writing Workshop. Horgan is currently enrolled in a Masters in Contemporary European Philosophy at University College Dublin researching form and meaning in the work of Derrida and Wittgenstein. She is a member of The Writing Workshop and is co-founder of The Legs Foundation for the Translation of Things (LFTT) with writer and artist Danyel M. Ferrari (NY).

James Merrigan is a mixed-media and video installation artist based in Dublin. He was awarded the Irish Residential Studio Award at Red Stables for 2011. He received a BA in Fine Art at IADT (2004), and an MFA at NCAD (2008); and was awarded the NCAD Graduate Award (2008). He has exhibited throughout Ireland and is a published writer on art. Most recently selected by the Director of the RHA, Patrick T. Murphy, for a solo show at Roscommon Arts Centre, March 2011. Current projects include the creation of an online art criticism journal called +BILLION-. In 2012 he will have a solo show at the LAB, Dublin.

Michael Murphy received a BA in Fine Art from IADT in 2006 and a MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art in 2008. He has exhibited widely in Ireland and abroad most notably: and the panopticon, as well (2010), curated by Jason Wait for the 4th Biennial of Young Artists in Bucharest; Fairyland (2010) at FIVE YEARS Gallery, London; Magic Carpet (2009) at The Crypt Gallery, London; Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women, The Bear, London; Closer to Paradise (2008) at 126 Gallery, Galway and Open Systems (2007) at Green on Red Gallery, Dublin. He lives and works in London.

“Trompe Le Monde” is part of the Six Memos project curated by Shinnors Scholar, Mary Conlon, under the auspices of the Limerick City Gallery of Art Off-site Programme and kindly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland Visual Project Award 2010.

Emmet Kierans / Erica Eyres

2011-01-06T19:29:00.004Z

Occupy Space are proud to present two concurrent solo exhibitions by Emmet Kierans and Erica Eyres.

Preview Thursday 13th January 7 – 9 pm

Show runs until 29th January

Gallery open 1 - 5 pm Wednesday to Saturday

Emmet Kierans - Make. Believe.

Using a fictional suburban setting Kierans’ paintings seek to explore the peculiar and sometimes absurd conventions and ideologies inherent in our everyday lives. Middle class housing estates with perfect lawns and blue skies, retail outlets and places of worship form the backdrop of his Technicolor world. By reducing the images to simple colours and shapes an emphasis is put on the ‘virtual’ reality of the space, glossing over undesirable aspects. This fabricated environment is in conflict with the emotionally turbulent individuals that inhabit it. These individuals, in their attempt to accept the contrived as natural, have become detached from their surroundings. They exist in a state of constant flux, accepting and rejecting the reality they are presented with.

www.emmetkierans.com

Erica Eyres - Compulsory Touching

Through videos and bodies of drawings, Eyres uses humour and narrative to examine the psychology behind disturbing human behaviours. Employing satire, she seeks to extract an awkward laughter from the viewer and to explore the tensions between what is funny and what is stark and confrontational.

In her videos, she creates characters that interact with one and another and reveal the absurdity of their lives (despite their frequently banal situations). Often television formats such as documentary, reality television, family sitcoms, or commercials are mimicked. Although creating surreal story lines, each persona is built with a sense of the uncanny so that the viewer will recognize aspects of themselves or others, thereby adding to their discomfort.

www.ericaeyres.com

2010-12-06T15:57:00.002Z

Occupy Space and Faber Studios present "The Artisan Christmas Ball"

Saturday 4th December at the Shannon Rowing Club

Drinks and Canape reception at 8:30 followed by band and DJ till late

Formal attire essential

Tickets €10 available from Occupy Space and Faber Studios

2010-12-06T15:53:00.002Z

Dweller
New work by Sheenagh Geoghegan
Preview Thursday 2^nd December 7-9pm
Show runs until 18^th December
Occupy Space Thomas St. Limerick

Geoghegans work layers materials and ideas, creating a kind of literal and physical history, resulting in a depth of texture and emotionality. Through the layering of linear edifices grid-like structures are created that eventually become recessed through the continuous layering of formal information. The final layers are applied like veils over the unifying grid. The initial edifice becomes archaeological. With each new layer the painting operates on a different, more complex plane. This process is reiterated through a series of works, bringing her consideration to metaphor in relation to the formal language that is used. Words such as concealment, obscurity, connection, transmission, endurance, extension and exhaustion become visual. Throughout this process the embodiment or manifestation of residual history transcends all the works.

The paper works in this show meditate on the daily rituals that occupy our daily lives. Unlike the paintings, which are built up using oils, the paper works utilize possibilities within drawing and encompass a wide range of materials and processes from colouring pencils to collage and assemblage. These works operate as signifiers and offer loose directions to the empirical path of the paintings. All the titles for the works come from reverberations, be they personal conversations or cultural discourse, and so combine current social jargon with anachronisms. The title of the show, Dweller, comes from a consideration of the dual meaning of the term. "Dweller" can mean occupying a space but can also conjure notions of lingering on a particular circumstance or occurrence.

Sheenagh Geoghegan was born in 1981, she graduated from Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork with a first class honours degree in painting. At her degree show she was awarded the Student of the Year Award and The HETAC Award. Since graduating she has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and this will be her sixth solo exhibition. In 2008,`her work was featured in the bookRepresenting Art in Ireland. In 2009, she received the Visual Artist Award from South Tipperary County Council. She is currently taking part in a group exhibition in Italy at the prestigious art gallery “Sala Pinacoteca” in Assisi.

Measured Fall - Julie Merriman

2010-11-29T15:06:00.004Z

Current Exhibitions

Occupy Space is pleased to present Measured Fall, a solo exhibition by artist Julie Merriman.

In this exhibition Merriman explores her interest in naval architecture and engineering through the medium of drawing. As a new body of work Measured Fall is a direct continuation of previous research and drawing explorations which explored harbour architecture and its relationship with the shifting motion of the sea. At times the surface detail and delicacy of Merriman’s drawings could belie the range of complex issues being addressed including the history of Irish harbours, ports and piers and their social, political and psychological links to emigration.

In discussing the starting point for Measured Fall Merriman recalls:
‘While watching the demolition of St. Michael’s Estate, Inchicore in 2004 (Building to be Demolished, drawing series 2002-2006), I photographed a small picture still attached to a section of interior wall; it was an image of a ship in full sail. I photographed the sequence of the picture falling from the tenth floor and this formed the beginnings of an idea that lead to an investigations into what might happen to a ship as it sinks, as it goes beneath the surface of the water. In 2009, as part of Carlisle Pier Project (2006-2010) I became interested in the area of naval architecture and engineering. The drawings in Measured Fall, for the most part, derive from these two sources.’

On Thursday 11th November at 12:45 artist Julie Merriman will be in conversation with curator Annette Moloney. This event will aim to discuss Measured Fall as a new body of work; the artist’s concentration on drawing in her practice; her broader research interests and previous projects including her long-term residency with Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council which resulted in the Carlisle Pier Project (2006-2010).

Julie Merriman lives and works in Dublin. She studied Fine Art in Falmouth School of Art and recently completed an MA in Visual Arts Practices at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art Design and Technology. She has exhibited in Ireland and England, including solo shows at the Pavilion Theatre, Dun Laoghaire (2008) and West Cork Arts Centre (2006). Group shows include Inscape, Galway Arts Centre (2010); Public Gesture, The LAB (2009); 178th Exhibition RHA, and 127th Exhibition, RUA (2008); Let'go, Monster Truck (2008); As Built - Drawings, Wicklow County Council (2008); Eigse, Carlow (2008/ 2006); Eurojet Futures, The Anthology (2005) and Eurojet Futures RHA (2004); and EV+A, Limerick (winning an Open Award in (2003).