MART Gallery & Studios – Providing Creative Platforms
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JULY 8TH – AUGUST 5TH
Location: Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica Art Studios, 3026 Airport Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90405
Artists: Margaret O’Brien, James L Hayes, Steven Maybury, Katherine Nolan, Terence Erraught.
Featuring new work from leading Irish contemporary visual artists, including live performances on the night by Cindy Rehm, Terence Erraught, Katherine Nolan, Thinh Nguyen, Meital Yaniv.
For the third exhibition in the Activating Pangea series Destroy These Walls, curators Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan of The MART Gallery Dublin Ireland, have curated a selection of artists to work under the parameters of risk, political agitation and ephemerality. Highlighting this impermanence any of the artworks which are not sold during the exhibition will be destroyed after closing. By encouraging participating artists to explore and reinvent material, technologies and methodologies, the curators have pushed for work that can provoke the limitations of the gallery environment, producing powerful, informative and experimental new work.
The curators encouraged the artists to be reactionary and politically engaged in their approach to their practice and tease out new radical ways of viewing and perceiving their art works. “There is something real in the illusion, more real than in the reality behind it” – Slavoj Žižek. This illusion acts as the power of the artist to present a world through an altered focus, to show the viewer aspects of the world that are warped and exposed. The artist – often working as the mirror for society – creates new dialogues that challenge conventional views on politics and culture, pushing for examination on our preconceived expectations of what contemporary art is and what relevance it has for the society we live in.
James L Hayes draws upon the material residues and traces of history, with interest in sites that possess a specific or significant history. Katherine Nolan explores tensions between the experiential and spectacular body. Margaret O’Brien’s work inhabits critical spaces of failure, malfunction, and slippage, and is explored through relationships between artist’s research, practice and outcome. Steven Maybury appropriates found and sourced materials to be re-contextualised, and looks to defuse our obsession with archiving, security, permanency and preservation. Terence Erraught’s practice encompasses predominantly digital video, video installation and performative events with areas of exploration which include humour, everyday absurdities, site specific engagement and the incorporation of domestic objects.
‘Activating Pangea’ is three year series of exhibitions curated by MART {Dublin}, who will work with Los Angeles based galleries and art fairs to strategically promote leading Irish Contemporary Visual Artists.
Kindly Supported by Culture Ireland and The Arts Council of Ireland. Special Thank You to Arena 1 Gallery & Santa Monica Art Studios.
