126, Artist-run Gallery

“People can’t touch. I can’t touch you. The idea of us touching enrages… To communicate, we resort to technologies. Analogue signals sent to tubes translate an idea from me to you. To do otherwise would be fatal. Such is this, our year 1981.”

In his new one person show, “On The Beach”, Austin D. H. Ivers continues his crippling fascination with imagined pasts and murky futures. Set in the early eighties, a series of interrogations are conducted, via CCTV. We cannot know what they are about or where they are taking place. There can be no meaning to this.

Austin is an artist and teacher based in Galway. He has shown and toured, most recently with Live8 and Tulca. This is only his third solo exhibition, the previous ones having in Cork and Tralee. Austin, along with Ben Geoghegan, co-founded 126, Artist run gallery.

126 is Galway’s first artist-led exhibition space. 126 was established in 2005 by local artists in response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway. 126 has developed a reputation as an organisation, which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non-profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic rather than an economic basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric.

126 is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council and its membership.

Gregory Sholette - The Imaginary Archive

126, Artist run gallery in association with Tulca 2011 is delighted to present new work by artist and writer Gregory Sholette for “After the Fall”. A critical international figure in the area of collectivity and artist-led activity and politics, Sholette has been collaborating with the 126 Gallery and its membership over the last number of months to re-visit the concept of the Imaginary Archive.

Synopsis: Imagine yourself uncovering a cache of materials and documents that record a past whose future never arrived? Imaginary Archive Galway (IAG) is just such a repository: printed materials, objects, and narratives that imagine an alternative history, which nevertheless sheds a surprisingly strong light on concrete realities. New York based artist Gregory Sholette invited participants from Galway, New Zealand, Europe, and the United States to produce this “what if” collection of archival materials addressing topics from forgotten Irish inventors and fantastic nation-branding campaigns, to uncharted offshore islands and mysterious pirate radio broadcasts. On display at 126 Gallery, IAG consists of under-represented, unknown, invisible, or merely hoped-for "historical" materials that point to multiple ways of interpreting the past, the present, and the future. For more information click here.

Biography:
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, and founding member of the artists’ collectives Political Art Documentation/Distribution (PAD/D: 1980-1988), and REPOhistory (1989-2000). A graduate of The Cooper Union (BFA 1979), The University of California, San Diego (MFA 1995), and the Whitney Independent Studies Program in Critical Theory, his publications include Dark Matter: Art and Politics in an Age of Enterprise Culture (Pluto Press, 2011); Collectivism After Modernism: The Art of Social Imagination after 1945 (with Blake Stimson for University of Minnesota, 2007); and The Interventionists: A Users Manual for the Creative Disruption of Everyday Life (with Nato Thompson for MassMoCA/MIT Press, 2004, 2006, 2008), as well as a special issue of the journal Third Text co-edited with theorist Gene Ray on the theme “Whither Tactical Media.” Sholette recent exhibitions include Imaginary Archive (for the Tulca Festival in Galway, Ireland 2011, and for Enjoy Public Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand 2010); a contribution to Temporary Services Market Place for Creative Time’s Living as Form (2011); a two-person exhibition at the Santa Fe Art Institute in New Mexico (2011), and the installation “Mole Light: God is Truth, Light his Shadow” for Plato’s Cave, Brooklyn, New York (2010). Sholette is an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Queens College: City University of New York (CUNY), has taught classes at Harvard, The Cooper Union, New York University, and Colgate University, and teaches an annual seminar in theory and social practice for the CCC post-graduate research program at Geneva University of Art and Design.

Participating artists: Niall Moore (Galway), Dave Callan (Galway), Simon Fleming (Galway), Roger O'Shea (Galway), Ben Geoghegan (Galway), Austin Ivers (Galway), Tiarnán McDonough (Galway), Paul Maye (Galway), Àine Phillips (Clare), Allan Hugues (Belfast), John Hulsey, Brian Hand (Dublin), Jeffrey Skoller (NY), Matthew F. Greco (NYC), Todd Ayoung (NY), Aaron Burr Society (NY), Yevgeniy Fiks (NYC), Maureen Connor (NYC), Johan Lundh and Danna Vajda (NYC/Sweden), Trust Art (NYC), Ellen Rothenberg (Chicago), Oliver Ressler (Austria), Markus Wetzel (Berlin), Murray Hewitt (NZ), Jeremy Booth (NZ), Grant Corbishley (NZ), Dara Greenwald & Josh McPhee (NYC), Bryce Galloway (NZ), Lee Harrop (Australia), Malcom Doidge (NZ) and White Fungus (Taiwan) working in collaboration with Imaginary Archivists Olga Kopenkina and Gregory Sholette (NYC).

Dark Matter: Art, Politics, and Imagination under Crisis Capitalism
Talk by Gregory Sholette on Saturday 5th Nov at 12:00pm in Galway City Museum, Spanish Parade.
For more information click here.

Contemporary Artists’ Collectives: Tactics, Models, and Imaginative Possibilities
Workshop by Gregory Sholette on Monday 7th Nov from 10:30am - 4:30 pm,
Ground Floor Aras Na Gael, Dominic Street, Galway.
Places are extremely limited and booking is essential:
For more information click here.

Naheed Raza

For her exhibition at 126, Naheed Raza will be showing recent film and photographic works arising from her micro-residency at the Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop between April-May 2011, which hint at the way sculptural ‘gestures’ might permeate culture, mediating many aspects of our experience. By considering activities involving highly physical, rapid and automatic gestures in the first instance and complex, painstaking ones on the other, the exhibition isolates moments of transformation and malleability in both art and the everyday.

Naheed Raza's background is in both Art and Science, having initially studied Medicine at Oxford University before switching to Fine Art, first at Chelsea College of Art and then at the Slade. Much of her practice, which spans sculpture, installation and film, explores the limits of knowledge and ideas relating to haptic and tacit awareness – a corporeal intelligence, which lures and locks the viewer into a complex relationship between eye, mind and material. The themes of weaving, spinning and drawing recur in her work with outcomes often heavily influenced by process.

Her recent works have been exhibited at the Centre for Contemporary Art Glasgow, the Edinburgh Film Festival, Bloomberg SPACE and the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Naheed is currently living and working in Edinburgh.

126 is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council and its membership.

Sensory Threshold

126 Annual Graduate Exhibition

126 presents 'Sensory Threshold', an exhibition of new work by three recent graduates from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology and Limerick School of Art and Design. The title refers to the level of strength a stimulus must reach to be detected. This is comparable to the way that these emerging young artists have provided a powerful enough stimulus, in the form of their own work, to be detected and afforded this opportunity to make themselves apparent to a wider audience. Threshold can also refer to the point at which these artists find themselves in their artistic careers. The work, responding to themes of the abject and liminal spaces include sculptural work, painting, ceramic work and embroidery. Considering their recent transition this exhibition provides a platform for new processes, dialogue and interaction. The artists are at the beginning of their professional careers, and their personal visual language is tentatively starting to emerge and take form.

Suzanne Dolan

'An animal is defined as any living organism characterized by voluntary movement.’

In her work, Suzanne Dolan aims to use this broad definition to highlight our own skewed perception of animals and what we find acceptable to eat. She looks at the idea that it is more ethical to eat certain animals than others, as hypocritical and seeks to challenge the view that an animal and a piece of meat are two separate things. In her work, the hunter becomes the hunted. Suzanne graduated from LSAD this year with a degree in ceramics. She lives and works in Galway.

Marie Dollard

Marie Dollard exploits the decorative and accessible qualities of traditional embroidery and pairs them with the more grotesque, visceral experiences of the body. The resulting works deal with themes of attraction / repulsion and of feminine identity and aim to subvert the viewers’ expectations.
Marie Dollard was born in 1985 in Laois. She moved to Galway in 2007 to study painting in GMIT, receiving her BFA in 2011. Marie is currently working as a visual artist and divides her time between Laois and Galway.

Tina Hopp

'In Crisis'.

What happens in states of crisis, being confronted with the unexpected, with events that create high levels of uncertainty?

Tina Hopp’s current work explores notions of crisis and related phenomena such as fragility, failure, transformation and liminality. Liminal events refer to in-between situations and conditions that are characterized by the dislocation of established structures, the reversal of hierarchies, and uncertainty regarding the continuity of tradition and future outcomes.In playful and subtle ways, periods of scrutiny are invoked. Central values and axioms are questioned which lead to an instance where normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behaviour are undone. In such situations, the very structure of society is temporarily suspended and reality or our perception of it is called into question.
Born in Germany in 1977 Tina Hopp is a visual artist based in the West of Ireland. She holds a BA Honours Degree in Painting from GMIT Galway. An interdisciplinary artist, Tina’s work includes painting, drawing, installation, sound, video, objects and performance. She is a member of the Kitchen Table Collective and is currently based in the Rosa Parks Studios, Galway.

126 is Galway’s first artist-led exhibition space. A non- profit organisation, 126 was established in 2005 by local Artists in response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway. 126 has developed a reputation as an organization, which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non-profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic rather than an economic basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric. 126 is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council and its membership.

“228 Lashes” ...A new exhibition by Padraig Robinson ...

228 Lashes is a project that uses the friction between text and object, language and identity, function and autonomy to trigger counteractive thinking. A major aspect of the project comprises of a theoretical essay Two Hundred and Twenty Eight Lashes in a once off print edition of 228, the edition number referring to a particular punishment. The whole edition will be displayed as a sculptural object where the individual essay booklets will be free to the viewers, initiating for the project a type of internal critique. The text approaches concepts relating to ideological ownership and surface politics, taking its starting point from implosive debates surrounding the implied identity category of two teenagers publicly executed in Iran in 2005. The appropriation of real, forgotten and unstable identity is a strategy that runs through the artist’s previous practice, a feature that in 228 Lashes confuses the space between poetic exploitation and cultural engagement. The two objects accompanying the text, the circular light-box sculpture Safe Semiotic and the gallery light alteration Monument to Aesthetic Justice / Justification, necessarily become mere emblems of ideas contained in the text, potentially creating an uneasy tension between the art object and the information it is intended to contain. The Two Hundred and Twenty Eight Lashes essay will only exist in printed form, as all digital traces will be deleted, removing the information from instantly reproducible electronic formats. While the project explores issues relating to communication and identification in the context of cybernetically affected culture, the production process seeks to create questions suggested by current trends in contemporary art production, in particular the contrasting of symbolic, abstracted and informative modes of communication.

Berlin based artist Padraig Robinson (1985) is a 2008 Fine Art Sculpture and Combined Media graduate from Limerick School of Art and Design. In 2011 Robinson will begin postgraduate research at the Dutch Art Institute (NL), funded by the Irish Arts Council. 228 Lashes is a project funded by Kildare County Council 2011, previous awards include an Irish Arts Council Bursary 2009, and a Horwath Bastow Charleton Graduate Travel Bursary 2008. In July 2011 the solo exhibition IDEOLECT was presented at the Centre For Endless Progress, Berlin, previous group and solo projects have been exhibited in Germany, Turkey, Ireland and the USA.

Alwyn Revill, Joe Nix, Alan Butler, Louise Manifold, David Beattie, Jonathan Sammon, Stefan Johansson, Karolin Reichardt and Maurits van Putten.

Opening reception: Monday 11th July, 7pm (Experimental minimalist set by Shane Burke)

14 - 5 = 126 is an experimental artist led project that will take place in 126 Gallery, Queen Street, Galway. Over the course of nine days, coinciding with the Galway Arts Festival, nine artists - local, national and international, will work consecutively in the space from 6pm in the evening, until opening time, 1pm in the afternoon of the following day. As part of this progressive collective installation the artist will use the gallery to his or her maximum ability and may extend from floor, wall and ceiling.

The following evening the next artist will enter the space at 6pm and continue the process. The pattern is methodically repeated and the next chosen artist will work in the gallery also from closing time to opening time. Each artist will follow the steps made by the first artist. They may erase parts or the whole work, critique it, enhance it, react to the work or decide not to react at all. This cyclical process will develop discourses, open the gallery up like a sketchbook, challenge and question methods of working singularly and as a collective. Artists will work under a certain time constraint and within strict spatial limitations. The results cannot be planned. Questions of system, structures, hierarchy and the decision making process will be analyzed by this experimentally led nine day project.

This process will be repeated until the nine chosen artists have worked for nine consecutive days as part of 126 programme for the Galway Arts festival. Every day between 1pm and 6pm the result of each days work will be shown to the public. Webcams will also be in place throughout the project so the public can view the work as it unfolds in real time.

At the end of 14 - 5 = 126 there will be a reception held of the closing ‘opening’. It will be the culmination of the nine artists work. A documentary video projection will reflect the process throughout the nine days.

Participating artists are: Alwyn Revill, Joe Nix, Alan Butler, Louise Manifold, David Beattie, Jonathan Sammon, Stefan Johansson, Karolin Reichardt and Maurits van Putten.

Check out our Facebook page for more info and a live webcam feed of the project throughout the Galway Arts Festival.

An experimental collaborative project of work by NCAD MA students, Art in Contemporary World and UCD MA Architecture students.

This collaborative process began with a series of discussion between UCD and NCAD students at Newman House opposite St. Stephens’ Green, Dublin. Over a period of weeks people worked in groups to develop an experimental collaborative process between visual arts, literature, sound, video, and architectural working methodologies. There was no set remit; it was open ended, debatable, and constructive as a work in progress.

NCAD and UCD became a mini collective in their approach to this project which manifested itself naturally through conversation, random dialogue, research, presentations and now finally at 126.This collaborative working group now have the opportunity to develop this project within the artist led experimental space. Contemporary Art offers the platform to represent this plurality through visual art, writing and architecture. Here collaborative strategies such as psycho geography, social play, appropriation, literature, music, intervention are employed to critique our sense of the public park, our sense of what a public space is. Visual artists often use this space in their practice while architects design and plan it. Through this embrace of common collaborative strategies can the combination of art and architecture find a new voice or discover the opportunity for a new world within our modern living?

The series Beyond Guilt addresses the undermining power relationship between the photographer and the photographed, men and women, the public domain and the private sphere, object and subject. As the film’s directors Sela and Amir take an active part in the event. They seduce the interviewees on the one hand, and turn the camera over to them on the other as part of the relationship between the photographer and subject.

The choice of pick-up bar services or hotel rooms as shooting locations strives to represent an underworld with its own language and signifiers. The quick encounter before the camera calls to mind the ephemeral nature of intimate relations, but above all the works allude to the influence of the occupation, terror and army as constitutors of an Israeli identity in the most private moments. The sexual identity and the military-political identity seem inseparably intertwined.

Through dealing with radical dispositions Sela and Amir observe the boundaries of the individual’s autonomy within the arrangement of forces and interests that surrounds them. Through the engagement with video they experiment with the construction of situations. They create environments. Their work juxtaposes the documentary idiom with fictitious interventions while interjecting areas of violence, aggression, submission and blind ideological obedience.

Ruti Sela and Maayan Amir have shown their works internationally including the Sydney Biennale(2006), the Istanbul Biennial(2009), the Berlin Biennial and Manifesta 8(2010). In 2009 Amir and Sela developed the ‘Exteriority Project’. They received the UNESCO young artist award(2009).

126 is Galway’s first artist-led exhibition space. A non- profit organisation, 126 was established in 2005 by local Artists in response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway. 126 has developed a reputation as an organisation, which supports traditionally unrepresented artistic projects. Because 126 is a non-profit, publicly funded gallery space, it is able to make decisions on an artistic rather than an economic basis. As such, 126 is gaining recognition and support as a place of cultural innovation in Ireland and is becoming an integral part of Galway’s cultural fabric. 126 is generously supported by the Arts Council of Ireland, Galway City Council and its membership.

‘We represent nothing and as such have the latent potential to become anything'’

‘In every respect, Nonceptuality is a transgression. It puts law into question, it denounces its nominal or general character in favour of a more profound and more artistic reality’.

Darren Barrett presents Artlessness: The Cultural Logic of Nonceptuality, an exhibition which strives to transmit something of the playful vitality of the artistic collective known as the Nonceptualists. The exhibition is comprised of a series of two and three dimensional works attributed to this clandestine group.

The Nonceptualist collective itself is composed of a geographically decentralised network of artists and theorists from a multitude of different nationalities. It has been in existence in one form or another for well over twenty years. During this span of time, it has produced a complex and expansive body of work and critical writings, deliberately eschewing the prevalent stylistic conventions dominant within the contemporary visual arts. The group has chosen to preserve its anonymity in order for its members to retain as much creative autonomy in their practices as possible and to prevent the transgressive spirit of the collective from becoming assimilated into the economic hegemony currently driving the art world.

Rejecting the lethargy and ennui of the mainstream artworld, precipitated by its rampant commercialisation, the central objective of Nonceptuality is to create an alternative environment where a proliferation of different styles and working methodologies can breath and cohabit, allowing visual and theoretical sources to be twisted, distorted and manipulated in a continuous process of aesthetic evolution and overcoming.

Darren Barrett is an artist currently based in Dublin. He graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2007 with a BA in Fine Art (specialising in painting). He has had solo exhibitions in the Joy Gallery in Dublin (2009) and Basement Project Space in Cork (2011) and has also participated in numerous group shows throughout the country. His practice examines the issue of how we apprehend and evaluate the visual arts within the present age. His work operates within a metaphysical crevice situated somewhere between theory and practice The contemporary of a plethora of confident young emerging Irish artists, Barrett characterises his own artistic and intellectual position as that of a diverging artist and is currently living through what he describes ‘as the intermittently glorious years of onanistic solitude’.

The opening night of Community Skratch Games 2011 sees the launch of Deviant & Naive Ted's "Send In The Hounds" 12", with performances from Deviant, Sebi C and improvised performance from the Community Skratch Players, including DJs Jimmy Penguin, Mikey Fingers and Tweek, alongside Galway musicians Tony Higgins, Andrew Madec and Simon Kenny.

"Send In The Hounds" is an Irish folk based record, created from a box of dusty old records, performed, compiled and arranged by hand with minimal digital manipulation. The first 50 12"s will come with individual inserts illustrated by designer JP Hartnett, a selection of whose work for Community Skratch will also be exhibited during the event.

This concert movie, released in 2004, is renowned among skratch music practitioners as a defining moment in the development of turntable manipulation. It was a culmination of the musical possibilities hinted at by the so-called second wave of skratching, that of "turntablism". The concept of the "DJ band", first popularised by the Invisibl Skratch Picklz a decade before, had finally come to realisation.

The headline performance consists of seminal DJ crew the Beat Junkies performing tracks from the album "Phantazmagorea" by DJ D-Styles.

Community Skratch artwork, designs and photography will also be exhibited over the two days. On show will be a retrospective of Alis Klaar's retro themed posters for Community Skratch events, photography from past events by Niall O Brien and original ink paintings by Dan MacEoin in collaboration with music producer Jimmy Penguin.

Community Skratch is a not-for-profit collective of DJs, producers and artists promoting turntable manipulation and sample culture since 2007. For more information on Community Skratch please visit www.nozlrecordings.com

After the great success of the first ‘Let’s see what happens’ week, 126, Artist run gallery is again transforming its Queen Street gallery space into a hub of events for another week this April. Hosting a range of educational, unusual, fun and informative events the board aims to move away from its usual pattern of consecutive exhibitions and open up the space to different kinds of happenings. 126 is looking to explore new possibilities for the gallery and step beyond it's usual comfort zone to 'see what happens' as a result. All are welcome and events are free unless otherwise stated.

126 and artist led initiative Angry Hammers present the TerriBAD Movie Night a double feature of infamous films so bad they're good. The evening kicks off with James Nguyen's Birdemic: Shock & Terror, a romantic thriller in which a small town comes mysteriously under attack from eagles and vultures, but who will survive Birdemic? From Wikipedia: "Birdemic has been noted for its po...or quality."

The main feature for the evening is a screening of notorious cult film The Room variously described as "so very bad that it becomes riveting" and "the Citizen Kane of bad movies". Written, directed, produced and starring auteur Tommy Wiseau, this film has to be seen to be believed. Don't forget your spoons.

Proceeds from the evening go towards Angry Hammer's inaugural exhibition In The Asphalt City, a group exhibition of Galway based talent practicing in the field of contemporary visual art coming this July.

It Was All A Bit Black & White are a post rock, experimental instrumental band. By using loop stations, effects pedals, and synthesizers, they look to create a rich, textured atmospheric sound and move away from more conventional ideas of what a rock band should sound like. Their performance in 126, entitled ‘Birds’, will be made in conjunction with visual artists Steven McGovern and Matthew Sutton, as the group create a one-off, improvisational audio visual collage in the Queen Street gallery space.

An artist led reading group, steered by board member Victoria Smith, will meet to discuss What is the point of Art Centres Anyway? 126 members, artists from Engage studios, Arts Space studios and directors various of art spaces in and around Galway will be among the participants. The talk is also open to all members of the public, to take part in or observe. Please email contact@126.ie to indicate your interest in participating in this reading group to receive the text in advance of the reading group, all members welcome. The text is also here

The fall of the Soviet Communist party and the unconcealed rule of capitalist-democratic state on a planetary scale have cleared the field of the two main ideological obstacles hindering the resumption of a political philosophy worthy of our time: Stalinism on one side, and progressivism and the constitutional state on the other. Thought thus finds itself, for the first time, facing its own task without any illusion and without any possible alibi. (Giorgio Agamben, 'Notes on Politics' in Means without Ends, University of Minnesota Press, 2000 p109)

The art centres, museums and galleries have usually simply been the vessels within which this [Art] activity is housed. Occasionally however, the places where art happens have also been the creative engines for a rethinking of the categories of visual art and the role of artists; of how visual culture can alter personal consciousness, and even change the world. Charles Esche What's the Point of Art Centres Anyway? – Possibility, Art and Democratic Deviance. [Text]

Adapt Galway presents: “What are you thinking?” An evening of art and events in alternative spaces

126 hosts an evening talks and discussion concerning Adapt Galway and the potential use of slack spaces by the creative sector in Galway city. Joining us to provide their insight and experience of working with similar projects around the country, will be representatives from other artist led initiatives including Occupy Space in Limerick, Exchange Dublin Collective Arts Centre. Dr Patrick Collins of NUIG and the Western Development Commission will also be speaking along with Lise Ann Sheahan, formerly the driving force behind the Creative Limerick initiative.

Coinciding with the talks and discussions, a collaborative exhibition will be held in the Niland Galley, Merchants Road, curated by Austin Ivers, lecturer in GMIT, comprising of artists from the various Adapt coalition members. The Niland Gallery is an Engage Art Studios project and is made possible by the generous support of the Niland family.

Eight Bar and Restaraunt will be launching Transforming Ireland, an exhibition this by Carol Anne Connolly.

Adapt Galway is a coalition of visual arts organisations. These groups are working together to create a united vision for the visual arts in Galway. Adapt Galway is comprised of representatives from and supported by Engage Art Studios, Knee Jerk, 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Ground Works Studios, Lorg Printmakers, Artspace and A-Merge, and has been endorsed by Tulca Season of Visual Art, Average Arts, MART, Féach Steering Committee, Live@EIGHT, and welcomes the support of other interested organization involved with visual arts in Galway. Adapt Galway has to date identified and supports the following key campaigns:

1. The use of appropriate vacant spaces in the city centre for creative purposes.

2. The development of a temporary Centre for Contemporary Art (Féach) in the docklands in the next 2 years. With the aim of creating a permanent Centre in the same area.

3. The re-purposing of the Connaught Laundry as a working arts facility to house Lorg, Groundworks, a sculpture centre, residential studios, meeting rooms, offices, exhibition space and more. This can be achieved in a phased development and would facilitate the sharing of resources and information in the visual arts.

4. The creation of a festival of independent practice that for a month freely associates groups of artist-led projects.

Micheál Conlon – 'Parking Area Strategy Development (Undergoing Steady Modernisation)'

From 2001 to 2005 a young ambitious male worked a regular nine to five, forty-hour shift from Monday to Friday. He did not work weekends as the premises was closed and during the week received all legal daily lunch breaks in accordance with the national employment rights authority. He was paid the minimum wage and availed of his four working weeks paid annual leave for his holidays. This company had an irritating problem with public commuters benefiting from the spacious car-park on their premises and so hired this employee to deter motorists from taking advantage of their facilities. His solution was to deny entry to the public by holding a twenty-foot rope across the entrance from his work cabin, which obstructed the motorists and only allowed access to those of his discretion. Upon receiving his minimum amount of notice before his dismissal, he was commended and praised on both his work ethic and inventiveness by the company.

Mitch Conlon presents satirical and absurd socio-political anthropological investigations into the delusions that our society place their certainty in. The misconception of the community that their alternative at puzzle-solving is a legitimate auxiliary option can contribute to a collapse. By searching to dismantle the flux and folly of these systems, Conlon’s work is presented in flippant deadpan performative interventions that highlight this sense of isolation and confusion.

SpeakERR is a new performance by Galway based visual artist Ann Maria Healy about how perspective can fuel isolation. It explores an inability to communicate, fears of saying the wrong thing, the futility of waiting until you know you're right.

Ann Maria Healy is a visual artist based in Galway, Ireland. Graduating from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology in 2009 with a first class honours in fine art, sculpture, her practice includes live performance, installation and photography. Her work explores the bodies’ relationship to space and time, in particular focusing on cycles, how they affect and shape our lives. She has shown both nationally and internationally, recent work includes Amanda Coogan’s, Yellow – Re-performed as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Right Here Right Now - Irish Performance Art at Kilmainham Gaol and a residency at the Live Art Development Agency in London

The performance 'Loop' uses intense physical activity and spoken text to create a dense layering of experience in a relatively short space of time. Byrne’s interest in the practice of stillness, life modelling and the examination of movement have produced this work which uses, as sound accompaniment, ‘I am sitting in a room’ by Alvin Lucier and found text from 19th century medical documentation of Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of human and animal locomotion.

What can be learnt from another person’s hand? How much do we take for granted in our own way of drawing? How close can we get to seeing with another person’s eyes?

The session will commence with a physical warm up to loosen the body before people begin to work on drawing. Please wear loose fitting clothes in which you can move. Physical work will not be too strenuous but a willingness to participate is essential. 20 places available Fee: €5 To take part, contact: contact@126.ie 126

To round off the week, 126 will be hosting an evening of fun, frolics and bad singing! Come along and have a go belting out some of your favourite hits on the 126 jukebox with our evening of karaoke. Or for those less keen on displaying their singing talents (or lack thereof!) have a go on the X-Box Kinect game which uses a camera and fancy new motion sensing technology to put YOU in to the actual game!

For more information on any of these events, email contact@126.ie or check our Facebook page

126, Artist run gallery is pleased to announce that local artist Marie Hannon will be undertaking a unique new residency in 126’s Queen Street gallery space during March and April. For this time the space will be treated as an artists studio in which the artist will create new work. The project will culminate in the exhibition of this new work during the final week. The space will be open to the public during normal gallery hours for the duration of the project, and we would encourage members of the public to visit, to observe and converse with the artist at work. We hope that this will foster an environment where the public can engage with and gain a greater insight in to the contemporary creative process.

Marie Hannon graduated from G.M.I.T in 2010 with a First Class honors degree in sculpture. Her practice is primarily concerned with the environment that defines who we are as a society. Themes of the domestic, displacement, confinement, struggle and the damage of silence are frequent in her work. Marie works mainly in object manipulation, drawing and photography.

126, Artist run gallery is transforming its Queen Street gallery space into a hub of events for four days this March. Hosting a range of educational, unusual, fun and informative events the board aims to move away from it's usual pattern of consecutive exhibitions and open up the space to different kinds of happenings. 126 is looking to explore new possibilities for the gallery and step beyond it's usual comfort zone to 'see what happens' as a result. All are welcome and events are free.

'Feed Me Weird Things Live Show Bonanza Mega Cast' Flirt FM presents Feed Me Weird Things Live Show Bonanza Mega Cast, a live radio transmission of electronic music, mind-bending visuals and cutting edge performances from Jimmy Penguin, Destitute and Stem Cell Sally. Live broadcast in 126 Gallery: 8pm – 10pm (followed by Feed me Weird Things dj–set)

Micheal Conlon's 'Queen Street C.R.P (Crime Reduction Programme) Workshop' This is a interactive workshop that aims to question the absurd potentialities of feng-shui for a community, how this small community can create their own social transformation and to promote the communication of information as a creative process. Suitable for all ages!

2pm 'SCULPTURE 3 VIDEOS' A selection of high quality video art from 3rd year sculpture students studing at Cluain Mhuire GMIT 7pm

Oral Presentation by Niall Moore 'Dark Matter' 'By outlining a materialist perspective this presentation will consider the generative capacities of sound. In proposing alternative readings of specific sonic encounters and giving concrete examples the intersections between visual culture, science and theory will be mapped out.'

3pm – 4pm Contemporary Dance Solo ‘The Melody of Thinking’ Choreography: Angie Smalis, Dance: Katarína Mojžišová Music Composition: Dorota Konczewska A conceptual, improvised dance piece for one, inspired by the nature and parameters of controversies, which explores the dancer's personal movement vocabulary in a given space, referring to procedural knowledge and observation.

6pm Poetry Swap Shop 'Poetry Swap Shop' aims to give people a new perspective on poetry, including the poets themselves. Local Poet Laurie Leech will bring together a mixture of poets from different schools and all across the board of styles to exchange poems randomly. Men reading poetry written by women and vice versa, the results will be hilarious and touching by turns. 7pm

126 Fundraiser Party Extravaganza! 126 will host an evening of Music and Mayham with some of Galways finest and Funnest DJ's providing the soundtrack for the evening! Mr Kablamo Dj Donnacha Kid Kongo Eibhlin Heard Byron €5 on the door and Free to 126 Members. BYOB 8pm - 12am

WISHFUL THINKING, curated by Matt Packer from The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, is a travelling programme of selected 16mm film by contemporary international artists: Luke Fowler, Jaki Irvine, Ursula Mayer, Rosalind Nashashibi, Roman Ondak, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Deborah Stratman, and Moira Tierney.

Borrowing it...s title from the common phrase to describe an optimistic and ever hopeful outlook, Wishful Thinking presents artist’s films that look beyond the surfaces and circumstances of the world as we find it. Whether by casting into the future, back to the past, or by re-approaching things that are all too familiar, the selected artists employ the particular characteristics of 16mm film to reshape our experiences of time through moving images.

Matt Packer is Curator of Exhibitions & Projects at Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, where he has curated exhibitions including 'School Days: the look of learning' (2010-11), 'Grin & Bear It: cruel humour in art & life' (2009), 'Getting Even: oppositions & dialogues in contemporary art' (2008). He studied on the Curatorial programme at Goldsmiths College, London, and is a current member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art.

The Lewis Glucksman Gallery is a cultural and educational institution that promotes the research, creation and exploration of the visual arts. Wishful Thinking has been developed by the Glucksman to enable wider access to contemporary artists’ film and curatorial models of programming.

The exhibition utilises high and low cultural sources from– cinema, theatre, music and television as departure points to produce a series of works in - drawing, video, print and audio. The work explores the performance-based nature of the source material, through employing processes which forefront ideas concerning time, duration and visibility, along with an audience’s relationship to Art production.

Staged and Screened in part, attempts to spotlight an audience’s role within an auditorium or public space: where to sit or stand, the etiquette of appreciation and participation- with reference to Bertolt Brecht’s writings on the subject, along with the more recent analysis within Nicolas Bourriaud’s publication Relational aesthetics. Brooks’ interventions attempt to reaffirm the viewer’s physical position in time and space as an important component, akin to Walter Benjamin’s ideas on the importance of a physical encounter with a work of art.

All the pieces in the exhibition operate with a strong sense of internal logic in relation to the source material. These ‘slight to laborious’ interventions of altering the aesthetics of the specific information are an attempt to forefront a particular aspect or observation- from the whimsical to the austere. One part of the exhibition presents a series of 31 audience seating layout drawings of New York City theatres- Seating plans of 24 ‘On’ Broadway theatres and Seating plans of 7 ‘Off ’ Broadway theatres. By presenting the crowd or audience as the artwork, Brooks is attempting to question the 20th century convention of cultural consumption by playing with an intentional disorientating inversion. Continuing the analysis of an ‘active’ or ‘passive’ engagement of an audience, the audio work- Absent friends edits out the narrative and visual content of a generic episode of the American TV series- Friends, leaving just the sporadic punctuation of canned audience laughter for its duration, which is synthetically utilised in the show’s production as a device for keeping the tempo of the sitcom. Furthermore, Brooks’ video piece- Reversed Performance appropriates the 1970’s Film – Performance, starring Mick Jagger, then at the height of his fame, in a semi-acting/ real life role. By re-filming the rewinding visuals of the thriller from the reverse of a domestic television, the narrative content of the film is lost and thus becomes an abstract light presentation, akin to music concert lighting projecting out into the audience from a stage position.

Furthermore, geographically the location of 126 in Galway is conceptually of interest to this body of work. The gallery- in turn exhibition, on the West coast of Ireland is across the Atlantic from the United States of America and more specifically New York City. Thus, this addresses on a larger cultural and geographical scale the notion of who is the symbolic ‘actor’ and who is the ‘audience’ in this particular exhibition scenario.

James Brooks was born in Devon, England in 1974. He completed his MA in Fine Art at Chelsea college of Art, London and his BA in Fine Art with 1st class honours at the University of Plymouth. To date, he has shown in International spaces in: Paris, Frankfurt, Norway and New York, along with shows in London at: Tate Britain, Seventeen, Domobaal, Arcade, Monica Bobinska gallery, Trinity Contemporary, and Riflemaker. Furthermore, he has curated a number of Arts Council funded groups shows on drawing in London and Paris, along with delivering a paper on the future of Contemporary Drawing at the National gallery in London. He lives and works in London.

The 4th Annual 126 Members' Show
OUT OF A BOX

Opening reception: January 6th, 7 - 9pm.
Runs until January the 29th.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present its forth annual members' show, to be held this year for the first time in our Queen Street premises. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The members were asked to respond to the theme 'Out of a Box'.

The term 'out of the box' is said to derive from a famous puzzle created by early 20th century British mathematician Henry Ernest Dudeney, in which someone is asked to interconnect nine dots in a three-by-three grid by using four straight lines drawn without the pencil leaving the paper. In order to be successful, the puzzle solver has to realize that the boundries of the dot array are psychological. The only way to solve the puzzle is to extend the lines beyond the artificial boundary created by the nine dots.

We have curated a range of work that reflects our diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines and media, painting, video, sculpture, installation and photography. The way the artists have responded to the theme conceptually has been equally diverse, ranging from the academic and aesthetic, to the critical, to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

The artists showing are; TU ME TUES, Niamh Ó Beirne, Austin Ivers, Timothy Emlyn Jones, Sarah Lundy, Jim Ricks, Micheál Conlon, Eileen Hutton, Christopher Banahan, Lorraine Neeson and Nina Amazing.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our membership page for more information.

IntheBedroom OMIGOD SUBSCRIBE!!! KTHXBAI XXX
A solo exhibition by Alan Butler

126 presents IntheBedroom OMIGOD SUBSCRIBE!!! KTHXBAI XXX a solo exhibition by Irish artist, Alan Butler. The exhibition is a new selection of mixed media works, which use the proliferation of culture as their subject or starting points. Through drawing, video, print and installation, Butler has produced a series of works, which abstractly examine the life-cycle of musical artifacts and paraphernalia that have been reproduced as ‘tributes’ to well known works.

The research for the works in this exhibition is based on new modes of production which challenge the 20th Century’s producer/consumer model of transmission for film and music. In recent years, consumers have become both producers of and audience for the multitude of entertainment and cultural artifacts available online. Butler has collected and appropriated 20 versions of a pop song from 1974 (performed and uploaded YouTube.com users) and synchronised these to create an absurd, and at moments unpleasant, virtual choir from the song’s re-interpretations. The original videos in raw format are testament to the genuine passion and love people have for culture. The mash-up, which presents us with the aimlessness of this kind of activity, highlights the very human need to produce our own culture and share it with like-minded individuals, regardless of its collective uncouthness. It presents to us a network of people from many different age, ethnic, gender and geographical backgrounds who are connected by one song and asks the question ‘who owns culture outside of commerce and copyright (with its ever-dwindling relevance)?’ Are these performers, singing to an unknown audience, the unknowing authors of a new folk art?

A new series of 2D works use appropriated content from online fan sites to present hidden spectacles which sometimes go unnoticed due to the abundance of information online. These works are made from collections of album bootlegs re-arranged by colour and presented as colourful matrices. Also exhibited are drawings combining logos of teeny pop-stars and grindcore/death-metal acts which contrast the very definite methods of visually presenting or branding music.

The exhibition will also feature an ‘offsite’ online work which can be accessed after visiting the gallery. Much of the content from this show is created in a similar manner to its subjects, rather than needing a studio it could have been produced in a garage or a bedroom and uploaded to share with anyone interested.

Alan Butler was born in Dublin in 1981. He completed his BA of Fine Art (specialising in new media) in NCAD in 2004 and has complimented his prolific studio practice with various curatorial, art-community and art management projects. Some of these include work for the Dublin Fringe Festival, Dublin Art Fair ’08, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Blackletter.ie (Irish online art-community) and the Dublin Arts and Technology Association (DATA). Since his MAFA at LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore (2008-09) Butler’s art work has featured in projects and exhibitions at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore, Hatje Cantz Con prefazione di Angela Vettese, Venice and École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris. Most recently, he has had solo exhibitions at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios and Cake Contemporary Arts, Kildare, and a collaborative exhibition at the Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray. He currently occupies a project studio at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios where he listens to Gwar.

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

For Tulca 2010, 126 presents The View From Here, an exhibition of Brady’s new video works exploring the everyday spaces we inhabit from radical and fantastical perspectives, varying from conspiracy theory, gaming culture to virtual landscapes. The works themselves address notions of place, using narrative devices, voiceover and soundtracking elements with which to re-imagine these spaces such as the city, the suburban park and computer gaming landscapes. The exhibition seeks to revise and destabilise the ways in which we perceive these familiar sites.

Jennifer Brady’s practice involves video and sound installation. Her video works fuse documentary and fictive modes of production, with particular emphasis given to the element of storytelling within them. The stories she tells through her video works are based on research into both real and fictive events. This material is often used to construct narratives which in turn explore such notions of reality and fiction.

She is currently completing a M.A in Visual Arts Practice (IADT). Selected recent exhibitions include Public Gesture: Pirate Capital, The Lab, Dublin 2010; Flicks: The Cinematic in Art curated by Cliodhna Shaffrey, Drogheda (2009), Sounds Like Art curated by Carissa Farrell, Draíocht (2009) and the Claremorris Open Exhibition (2007) where she was a prizewinner. She was commissioned to produce new video work for multi media event Snakes and Ladders (Dublin, Wexford and New York), curated by composer Daniel Figgis (2009). Her work has also been purchased for the Bank of Ireland Art Collection.

Opening reception: Thursday October 7th, 7-9pm.
Artist talk: Thursday October 7th, 6:30pm.

Bulk is a body of video, photography and sculptural work resulting from the artist’s investigation into the logistics of consumerism and capitalism. During April and May 2010, the artist embarked on a 24 day transatlantic voyage on a freighter ship from Buenos Aires to London. Stopping at six different commercial ports in Latin America, Africa and Europe, she observed with great detail the routine processes and bulk operations that define modern industry and commodity culture today.

In a time of economic uncertainty, the cyclical process of cargo shipping is still a constant. Steel containers provide anonymity and conceal the items inside. Identical containers pack the docks and vessels with goods that are constantly hidden from view. Bulk explores the homogenized, anonymous steel domain that is the working port and invokes the idea of the double to portray the sense of overwhelming and sublime that one is met with when a system of commodity culture is revealed.

Niamh Heery b. 1983 is a multimedia artist from Dublin, Ireland. She graduated from IT Tallaght in 2004 with a Higher Diploma in Audio Visual Media. In the following years she went on to work in the area of contemporary music and media production and had films screened at festivals around Europe. In 2009 she graduated with a BA in Visual Arts Practice at IADT, Dun Laoghaire, specializing in multimedia installation. She spent the following year completing work in Toronto and Buenos Aires. Niamh is currently enrolled as an MA student in the Huston School of Film, NUI Galway. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland, France, Canada and the USA.

Who dares this pair of boots displace?
Steve Maher, Fiona Hession,Tadhg McCullagh, Anne O’Byrne, Aidan Kelleher and Brendan Hoare.

126 Presents Who dares this pair of boots displace? a show by six recent graduates from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology and Limerick School of Art and Design. The new works, responding to the theme displaced, include drawing, sculpture and video. Considering their recent transition this exhibition provides a platform for new processes, dialogue and interaction.

Steve Maher is a graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design and is a member of the artist partnership ”Like Studio” in Limerick city. His work is based around performance, sculpture and drawing. Maher considers that within the enculturation endured through the formative years of life, there exists a duality in how individuals are taught to interpret their immediate environment.

Fiona Hession, a GMIT graduate, is a Galway Based Visual Artist. Her work to date has focused on the various face of “Home” in modern society and what this term means on a personal level. Hession uses a variety of disciplines such as sculpture, print and textiles to inform her work. In this new work she has endeavoured to look beyond the traditional concept of her own home and try to understand the emotional trauma of being displaced on a much larger level.

Tadhg McCullagh studied painting at Limerick School of Art and Design. Who me? Yes you. Not me! Couldn’t be! Then who? presents moments where the instrumental attitudes that are dominant in our society can be, at least momentarily, set aside. The cogs are given a chance to turn alternatively allowing an opportunity for reflection on the system as a whole to take place. Tadhg’s practice is informed mainly by sociological studies and how these issues can be represented through art.

Anne O’Byrne studied at the Limerick College of Art and most recently at GMIT. O’Byrne’s work focuses on the engagement and observation of the mundane and the banal. Things we see in front of us every day, things we work with and places we live in are all subjects of her analysis. Working with her deep interest in all things aeronautical with conceptual ideas of construction, O’Byrne toys with the physical entity of a ‘Displaced Threshold’. The body of work consists of 4 works on paper, 3 works on gessoed board, a video piece approx. 9 mins, and a constructional piece.

Aidan Kelleher received a B.A in Fine Art Printmaking from Limerick School of Art and Design and is a member of Limerick Printmakers. Aidan’s practice studies the use of devices with which a viewer can interact. For 126 Aidan created a machine designed to evoke an emotional response. “Fear”was conceived by first researching an accurate definition of what fear meant and researching different ways that people could be agitated by the presence of danger. To create the feeling of and the image of this fear, two electrodes were attached to the controllers which are set to randomly administer an electric shock. A sense of danger and tension is generated.

Brendan Hoare, completed a degree in Fine Art in GMIT, Galway. In the work created for this show, Hoare suggests we are programmed to perceive identity in ourselves. This identity is a mask which allows us to interact and function socially. We are in fact a collection of perceptions which succeed each other with great rapidity and are in perpetual movement. Memory, which is basis of identity, is constituted of a collection of these disjointed fragmentary episodes. The unified, continuous self is an illusion. The inner life is too subtle and transient to be known to itself.

Opening: Friday 27 August 2010, 7.00pm until 10.00pm
E:ventGallery, 96 Teesdale Street, London E2 6PU

126 presents Outside Relations, a collection of artworks from 3 generations of the one family: June Lally, her father William Elmes and her son Colm Lally. The works included in the show date from about 1950 to present. Considering the changes that have taken place in the history of art as well as the social history of Ireland during this period the idea of the show is to examine what traces of these histories are embodied in the materials used and processes of making undertaken.

The work in Outside Relations explores, through the lens of a rural Galway family of artists, how major paradigm shifts such as 'modernism' manifest themselves outside the discourses of 'insider' urban groupings and institutions. How important are the artists situated outside the main urban centres in terms of their articulation or their negotiation between tradition and contemporary art? Taking place in a gallery situated by Galway Harbour, on the threshold of Europe, Outside Relations attempts to disrupt the traditional Eurocentric narrative found in art history. As one stands in front of the works collected for this show perhaps the question is less about the embodiment of art history but rather the disembodiment of art history.

Colm Lally was born in Galway in 1973. He is currently living and working in London. In 2003 Lally founded artist-run space, E:ventGallery, and continues to work as there as creative director. His mother June Lally was born in Dublin in 1936. After an early exposure to and subsequent life long appreciation and interest in art she eventually pursued this passion graduating with a diploma in art and Design from GMIT in 1997. A well traveled artist and founder member of the collective Solas Art she currently lives and works in Galway. Her father William (1910-1882) lived in Dublin all his life. Although trained as a Merchant seaman, he was a keen draftsman and meticulous object and model maker, taking much of his inspiraion from the boats he worked on and sailed in.

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

126 is proud to present Holding Pattern, recent works by Canadian artist Jon Sasaki. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Ireland and Europe. Through performative video, found objects and installation pieces the work addresses stasis, irresolution, expectations both dashed and pending, and the unsustainability of indecision.

Holding Pattern highlights the tension between humour and discomfort. Acknowledging the absurdity inherent in life, the work is often both Sisyphean and slapstick, there is equal measures of pathos and dry humour. The main focus of the exhibition is an inflatable “flyguy” wired up in front of a motion sensor. Sasaki presents the viewer a tragicomic installation, in which the “flyguy” writhes on the ground, convulsing in front of the motion sensor. If he were to stop for a moment, the power would shut off and he would fall still forever. Using video and found objects, the other works included in Holding Pattern present conceits which are unresolved, such as an obsoleteY2K mascot contemplating his future prospects, and moments unrequited, such as in the vintage unfulfilled dance cards, which have languished for decades having never served their sole function. Although the work might appear cynical on the surface, it is an earnest celebration of tasks undertaken with the foreknowledge of probable failure, but carried out with perseverance and unabashed optimism.

Working in the vein of “romantic conceptualism,” Jon Sasaki utilizes primarily performance-for-video, objects, installations and interventions in work that mixes humor and pathos, often with gently antagonistic results. His work has been presented in recent solo exhibitions at Centre Clark (Montreal), Latitude 53 (Edmonton) and The Doris McCarthy Gallery, (University of Toronto at Scarborough, a touring exhibition for which there will be a forthcoming catalogue.) He has participated in recent group exhibitions at VOX (Montreal), The Vancouver Art Gallery, the Owens Art Gallery (Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB), Simon Fraser University Gallery (Burnaby, BC), as well as the 2006 and 2008 editions of Toronto’s Nuit Blanche. Jon was an active member of the Instant Coffee art collective between 2002 and 2007. He is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects (Toronto).

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

Dock Discourse
A series of events in and around the Galway Docks, curated by Aoife Considine.

Opening reception Friday June 11th 6pm with guest speaker Michael D Higgins, TD.

Dock Discourse June 2010 is a four-week exhibition, installation and discussion event project, around the changing nature of the Galway Docks. Initiated and curated by local architect Aoife Considine, Dock Discourse is a multi disciplinary project engaging with artists, thinkers and the general public to comment and question the nature of change taking place in and around the Galway Docks. The works are concerned with ideas of environmental change, development processes, the role of the artist in the changing city along with reconsidering the spaces, structures and habits of this part of the city on the waterfront.

Artists involved in the exhibition are Aideen Barry, Cian Mc Conn, Roisin Coyle, Cecelia Dannell and Jennifer Cunningham with Jim Ricks, Jennie Moran and Michelle Browne carrying out on site installation projects in the middle pier of the docks on the 17th of June. The artists taking part in the project come from a range of backgrounds but a common theme in their work ties them to the project either through the location or interest.

The artists explore both the territory of the real and the imagined, the past and the proposed future brings the debate of how to record and think about elements of this part of the city and the role of utopian visions for the future. The play on the role of utopian constructions is used as a way of not only as a way to propose an alternative future but as a protest of the present. This theme will also be explored through the discussion event with an invited panel of artists, architects, urban thinkers and activists to be held on the 24th of June at 6pm.

The project is kindly supported by Galway City Council, Galway Harbour Company, The Galway Independent, Bar 8 and 126 Gallery.

126 Gallery is Galway's and the west of Ireland’s first artist-led exhibition space. 126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

redress state - questions imagined
A new durational performance artwork by Dominic Thorpe

Dates for the performance:
1pm - 6pm Wed 12th May through Sat 15th May inclusive.
1pm - 6pm Wed 19th May through Sat 22nd May inclusive.
2pm - 7pm Wed 26th May.

From 27th May - 5th June the residue of the performance will be presented in the gallery as an installation.

End of performance reception in the gallery, 7pm Wed 26th May with guest speakers Margaretta D’Arcy and Olive Wilson.

For Dominic Thorpe the action of creating and showing work is an ongoing process of experiencing, communicating and responding, of not remaining silent - of not adding to silence - of not being complicit in silence. This work explores the boundaries of mark-making/drawing and the development of image over time through an intensive durational performance.

redress state - questions imagined questions the nature of the silence and secrecy around the Residential Institutions Redress Board hearings (see www.rirb.ie for more information on the Redress Board). In a performance that will take place for five hours a day for a total of nine days the artist will repeatedly write questions of a confrontational and often detailed nature that he feels would be asked during adversarial hearings like those of the Redress Board hearings.

Any individual accepting a financial settlement at the Redress Board must sign a confidentiality agreement meaning that if they discuss their case or the award they received they face a large fine and a jail sentence. The artist notes: ‘as is clear from the Ryan and Murphy reports, where power, vulnerability, and silence converge - Abuse Happens.’

Dominic Thorpe graduated with an MA from NCAD in 2006 having previously received a first class honours degree in sculpture from GMIT. He has exhibited widely and completed commissions for and worked with a number of organisations and bodies including Wicklow County Council, Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council, Community Action on Suicide Clondalkin, Finglas Suicide Network, and The Irish Youth Justice Services. He has received bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland and the Kildare County Council as well as Travel and training awards from the Arts Council and a research grant from CREATE. Based in Dublin he is currently a member of the Kildare County Art in Health steering group and member of the Dublin based Performance Collective.

126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

126 is pleased to present Spilth, an exhibition of new work by Christine Clemmesen and Caoimhe Kilfeather – two artists who share an interest in sculptural practice and the relationship between image and form. Through different artistic approaches both artists are drawn to a type of practice that shows evidence of its own making – a sort of honesty where the working methodologies are embraced as an important part of the finished work. For each artist, sculpture’s processes offer the opportunity to adjust the relationship between what something looks like and what it does. Drawing, collage and the use of images is equally important – specifically how these behave in relation to sculpture and how they potentially (re)orientate the viewer to the work.

Spilth provides an opportunity for the work of both artists to be explored through an understated overlap between each practice; where aspects of each other’s work provide a relevant context for the experience of both.

Christine Clemmesen’s (b. Copenhagen 1979) production is based on activating the relationships between materiality, space and meaning. Her work consists of sculpture, installation, photography, prints and collages, which exist in her practice as equal components.

The configuration of works in this show is essentially about looking at time-based and relational acts. The new series of prints are primarily made from found newspaper images, and are a way of including a more distant, yet always regenerated and dense image world. The works combine abstract form with the representational, and thus convey the possibility of discovery and new meaning.

Caoimhe Kilfeather (b. Dublin, 1979) often uses existing systems, objects or images as catalysts to generate alternative narratives and forms. This enquiry stems from an interest in the ostensible normality of the world and the possibilities for its transformation. Working across a wide variety of media – the use of specific materials is regularly associated with the conceptual development of the work – as is a link between these materials and the processes and methods used to manipulate them.

The work in Spilth reflects two approaches in her practice; one, an intuitive investigation of the translation of drawing or image into sculptural form and how material is implicated through this transformation. The other stems from an interest in the act of prolonged looking (or familiarity) and the seeming intuitive understanding of objects which results.

126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that promotes challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts council, the Galway city council and our membership.

126 presents:

Package from China
New works by Ben Sloat

March 19th through April 10th, 2010.

Opening reception: Friday March 19th 7pm.

126 is pleased to present new works by U.S. artist Ben Sloat. Package From China examines the economic and cultural relationship with China through the exchange of their manufactured products on the global market. Infused with themes of consumerism, material, and value, Sloat looks back to the origins of China’s contemporary boom: Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour of China in 1992, opening the region to expanded economic trade. Package From China is the Boston based artist’s first solo show in Europe.

Deng’s famous adage “To Get Rich Is Glorious” is constructed into a large text piece, made from cheaply made materials found at a 99 cent store across from the artist’s studio. Propaganda posters of Deng from that era are repainted in duplicate and triplicate in different Chinese painting factories, commodifying Deng’s iconography in a situation of his own creation. Each of these paintings is signed by the once anonymous factory painter, allowing the illumination of their perspective on the situation to emerge.

Those, and other works, serve to highlight the nuances and complexities of China’s evolving presence as a location for the production of desire and ideal, including its own.

Born in New York City in 1977, Ben Sloat received a B.A. from UC Berkeley (‘99), and an MFA from Tufts/Museum School (‘05). Recent solo shows include those at Safe-T Gallery in Brooklyn, OH+T Gallery in Boston, Laconia Gallery in Boston, Front Gallery in Oakland, CA and the ACC in Taipei Taiwan. His work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Boston Herald, Boston Globe, Taipei Times, and Oakland Tribune. In 2009, Sloat was a faculty Fulbright Scholar to Taiwan.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre. 126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that is known for promoting challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

126 presents:

It means...
A new solo show by James Merrigan.

February 11th through March 6th, 2010.
Opening reception: February 11th 7 – 9pm.

126 is proud to present a new solo show from Wicklow based artist, James Merrigan. it means... is a mixed-media installation that plays with language and image to announce a set of truths through proclaimed “misconceptions.”

Through a series of grammatical clichés and signifiers, Merrigan situates politics, capitalism, and potential horror in a set of fabricated arenas. These "arenas" reference the morning TV news/ chat show; the blue-collar small town; the city-convenience store; the generic - filmic motel room and the political stage.

James Merrigan's current work positions itself at a distance from his source, America. He presents a certain skewed displacement in works that use fictitious elements, cinema, movies (horror film), popular culture, American vernacular, science-fiction, in a DIY, low-tech style aesthetic, that has an uncanny sensibility. Something uncomfortable (that can become humorous,) resides in the work. In his work, America is presented as the great subject, gradually being disseminated through language games and broken narratives. The audience is left with crudely cut fractions of a bigger happening that centre around ideas of crisis, horror, ritual, and the fear of banality.

James Merrigan is an artist living and working in Wicklow. He completed a BA in Fine Art at Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art & Design in 2004 and is a 2008 Graduate from the MFA program at NCAD. Awarded NCAD Graduate Studentship (2008), he has had previous solo exhibitions at Queen Street Gallery & Studios, Belfast and thisisnotashop, Dublin and has been selected for various group shows including; the Emerging Irish Artist Group Show, “It Goes On,” at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin; PROJECTOR at FOUR Gallery, Dublin (2009); and most recently in the 126 3rd annual members’ show at the Royal Hibernian Academy, Jan - Feb 2010.

126 with the RHA presents:

The 3rd Annual 126 Members' Show
VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR

Part of the Artist Curates series at the RHA.

Opening reception January 14th 6 - 8pm, runs until February 27th.

As part of our continued commitment to support our membership, 126 is proud to present it's third annual members' show hosted this year by the Royal Hibernian Academy. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its members and each year offers this special opportunity to exhibit their work.

The membership was asked to respond to the theme 'Video Killed The Radio Star' and 126, artist-run gallery has curated a range of work which reflects the diverse membership, from emerging artists to those more established, working in a variety of disciplines, including: painting, video, works on paper, sculpture, installation and photography. The works speak of and to society at a time of perceived change with responses that range from the critical and cynical to those with a more playful and humorous tone.

Artists showing are: Paul Murnaghan, Dominic Thorpe, Angela Darby, Fiona Chambers, Jim Ricks, David Finn, Padraig Robinson, Kevin Mooney, Austin Ivers, Nina Amazing, Timothy Acheson & Jennifer Cunningham, Kathryn Maguire, James Merrigan and Breda Lynch.

Membership is open to all who support the aims and ethos of 126. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member.

This project has been made possible by the RHA.

Il y a quotidian - There is everyday is the first solo exhibition by Galway based artist Eimear Twomey. The exhibition featuring, video sound and text explores society's tendency toward the spectacle. Television and the media brings together lives and identities which were formerly secret or discrete. Influenced by the hyperreality of mass culture, the parameters of the represented and the roles of the actor and the spectator do not clearly begin or end.

Eimear Twomey graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Galway and Mayo Institute of Technology in 2009. She is part of the Knee-Jerk collective and recently exhibited at Rosa Parks Gallery.

November 6th - 28th, 2009
Opening reception: Friday, November 6th, 6 to 8pm (in conjunction with the TULCA opening at the Fairgreen, 6-8pm)
After-party at Bar No. 8

Open everyday of Tulca, 1 to 6pm
Regular gallery hours: Thursday - Saturday, 1 to 6pm

126, supported by TULCA Visual Arts Festival 2009, is pleased to present new work by Ken Fandell. This is his first solo project in Ireland and in Europe. Fandell often approaches site-specific pieces for sites that he is removed from. Between Me and Galway Bay is a varied investigation of contemporary mythologising, commodifying and romanticising of Ireland, done from a distance of more than 3,500 miles.

The creation of this site-specific body of work continues Fandell's engagement with the effects of considering the quotidian alongside the romantic grandeur of time and space. Fandell was asked to create a small body of new work to respond to the Galway region, an area he has visited many times. As the focus of this exhibition Fandell 'stitches' together photographs into a long scroll that dominates the length of the gallery. Other works include video and sound-based pieces. Fandell's tongue-in-cheek approach uses points of reference such as Frank A. Fahey's song Galway Bay , Robert J. Flaherty's film Man of Aran and a Chicago pub called 'Galway Bay' near Fandell's residence. Through this installation Fandell scrutinises issues of distance, repetition, commodification and absurdity through an oscillation between the poetic and the crass, the romantic and the banal.

Ken Fandell (USA, b. 1971) has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Defining Moments in Photography, 1967-2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, (Chicago, IL); In Words: The Art of Language at The University of Delaware (Newark, DE); Antennae at the Houston Center for Photography (Houston, TX). His work is included in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and the Museum of Modern Art, New York and is currently hanging in the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He has received awards from Artadia and The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation. He lives and works in Chicago.

October 15th – 31st 2009
Opening reception Thursday October 15th 7 – 9 p.m.

“Space is always an open space, we are those who close it.” - Giancarlo Toniutti

form-reform-transform is the first solo exhibition of works by Irish artist Sarah Dunne. With a background in music, Sarah’s practice has been continuously questioning the relationship of sound to the object and the spatial experience of sound. While art and music have closely coincided for centuries, the boundaries between these fields are becoming increasingly ambiguous. In exploring the architectonic possibilities of sound in space, Sarah’s installations and drawings give voice to an acoustic presence, challenging sculptural, architectural and perceptual definitions of space.

Sarah Dunne is a visual artist and musician based in Dublin. She completed her BA at Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork in 2006 and her MA at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton in 2007. She is currently undertaking a PhD in the sculpture department at the National College of Art and Design and is a researcher with the Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (GradCam).

126 is Galway’s and the west of Ireland’s first artist-led exhibition space. 126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the urgent need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located in the city centre.

CONSIDER YOURSELF LUCKY I'M NOT COMPLETELY NAKED
A group exhibition of recent undergraduates from Galway and Limerick

As part of a curatorial exchange for the month of October, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios with 126, Galway's artist-run gallery, are proud to present a selection of young artists from GMIT Cluain Mhuire and Limerick School of Art and Design's 2009 undergraduates. This exhibition is a chance to showcase emerging talent from art colleges in the west and an opportunity to sample their Degree shows in Dublin. The artists deal with a variety of distinctive themes through a range of media, demonstrating an aptitude to their practice that is individual and assured. Works Include: installation, sculpture, works on paper, video, painting and photography. The artists featured are: Alan Bulfin, Mary Trait, Grainne McHale, Niamh O'Beirne, Grainne Kelly, Emma Grice.

This show is part of a curatorial exchange between 126 and Monster Truck. Both are artist-run organisations who share similar goals that encourage experimentation in their approach to producing exhibitions and aim to provide emerging artists with a platform. To coincide with this event Sharon Phelan (one of Monster Truck’s 7 curators) will be working with the artist Sarah Dunne who will be exhibiting at 126 from the 15th to the 31st of October.

Show runs til October 10th.
Will be open til 9pm on Culture Night, Friday, September 25th.

The exhibition features video, photography and mechanical sculpture, including a new kinetic installation consisting of two mobilised record players both playing the same record. As the record players move around the gallery encountering various obstacles including the gallery walls, each other, and the legs of anyone attending, they create a constantly refreshing cut-up soundwork sourced from their needles skipping across the vinyl and composed by their choreographer, chance. It is fitting that amongst the collection of records that will be playing simultaneously on different days for the duration of the exhibition is an interview with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, collaborators and pioneers in their engagements with chance in choreography and music respectively.

O'Kennedy is a Dublin-based artist who's work to date predominantly sets up or records combinations of movement and chance. In Skip Roll Bump Scratch O'Kennedy continues his grappling with tensions resulting from struggle, striving and purposefulness in the face of a seemingly absurd and random world.

Peter O'Kennedy graduated with a Masters in Visual Arts Practice from IADT, Dublin, in 2008. His most recent solo exhibitions include Situation at Pallas Contemporary Projects, February 2009, and Tracking Beacon NY 12508, at 92, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin, in 2008. He exhibited Lost Luggage, a kinetic installation for Fringe Festival, Georges Dock, Dublin, Ireland, 2007 and Jonny Axelsson performing Akrodha, a performance and video screening at The Baroque Chapel, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, Dublin, Ireland, 2006.

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

www.pallasprojects.org

MYTHOLOGIES
The work of 7 emerging contemporary San Francisco Bay area artists.

126, Galway's artist-run gallery, is proud to present seven San Francisco Bay area artists for this exchange exhibition with Blankspace Gallery (Oakland, CA). Each exhibiting artist created works that deal with personal, historical and modern mythologies, some which are quintessentially American, others more universal. Works include video, installation, sculpture, works on paper, painting and ceramics. The artists featured are: Gina Tuzzi, Samara Halperin, Brian Caraway, Lena Reynoso, Crystal Morey, Sam Lopes and Renée Gertler

126 is proud to present a group exhibition curated by Blankspace in Galway Ireland. Blankspace has worked with 126 for over a year to produce exchange opportunities for local artists from both regions. After an all Ireland call for work responding to the theme of 'How Do You Know?' the artist-run gallery 126 curated a diverse range of works and practices currently on show in the Bay Area. Both galleries share similar missions and goals when it comes to producing exhibitions; 126 and Blankspace are both artist-run exhibition spaces that promote strong conceptual approaches and experimentation in art making.

Similarly to Ireland, over the last 5-7 years a diverse and internationally significant visual arts scene has emerged in Oakland, CA. It is in this development that 126 and Blankspace play significant roles in the development of visual arts in their respective cities. Blankspace is an artist-run contemporary art gallery in Oakland, California with a focus on exhibiting emerging artists in a wide range of media. Blankspace seeks to foster solid relationships with artists, collectors, curators, non-profit spaces and other contemporary art galleries to expand the Bay Area arts community.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located in the city-centre.

www.126.ie

Image: Gina Tuzzi

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126 with Blankspace Gallery (Oakland, California) present:

After an all Ireland call for work responding to the theme of 'How Do You Know?' the artist-run gallery 126 curated a diverse range of works and practices to be highlighted in the Bay Area.

Approaches range from the medical and methodical to those of chance and humour. The show features a range of media from painting and collage to video and installation. Artists showing are: Vera Klute, Paul Murnaghan, Padraig Robinson, Christopher Banahan, Jackie Nickerson, Emma Houlihan, Adelle Hickey, Bernie Masterson, Emmet Kierans, Fiona Chambers, John Jones, Theresa Nanigian, Paul Hickey, Helena O’Connor, Tanya O’Keefe and James Hayes.

Blankspace is proud to present a group exhibition curated by 126 in Galway Ireland. Blankspace has worked with 126 for over a year to produce exchange opportunities for local artists from both regions. Bay Area artists will be exhibiting work in Galway, Ireland opening August 19th. Both galleries share similar missions and goals when it comes to producing exhibitions; 126 and Blankspace are both artist-run exhibition spaces that promote strong conceptual approaches and experimentation in art making.

Similarly to Oakland, over the last 5-7 years a diverse and internationally significant visual arts scene has emerged in Ireland. It is in this development that 126 and Blankspace play significant roles in the development of visual arts in their respective cities.

126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located in the city-centre.

www.126.ie
126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and its membership.

Blankspace is an artist-run contemporary art gallery in Oakland, California with a focus on exhibiting emerging artists in a wide range of media. Blankspace seeks to foster solid relationships with artists, collectors, curators, non-profit spaces and other contemporary art galleries to expand the Bay Area arts community.

www.blankspacegallery.com

blankspace
6608 san pablo ave
oakland, ca 94608
510-547-6608

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126 presents:

IT’S ABOUT TIME
Works by HANK WILLIS THOMAS

July 15th through August 15th, 2009
Opening reception: Wednesday July 15th, 7pm.

126 is pleased to present It’s About Time, Hank Willis Thomas’s first solo exhibition in Europe. The exhibition follows his solo show at Jack Shainman Gallery (New York) this spring and the publication of his first monograph Pitch Blackness by The Aperture Foundation last fall. Employing visual language and materials commonly used in mass-media Thomas presents a range of works from the last eight years in this mini-retrospective. Works range from vinyl and cardboard cutouts to video and manipulated photo-based works. Together they trace African-American history through visual culture in an attempt to dissect, reinterpret, and re-imagine iconic moments from the “black past” and to investigate the complexity of race in the United States in the 21st century. Thomas appropriates imagery and language from a variety of sources including posters announcing slaves for sale, as well as books, magazines, and advertisements. GI Joe, Air Jordan and Johnny Walker are points of reference that appear in the work. The show features an installation inspired by the portrayal of African-American women in advertising and large-scale reproductions of contemporary ads juxtaposed with strikingly similar examples from the past, both of which explore expressions of cultural exploitation by media. Also included are the collaborative videos Winter in America made with Kambui Olujimi about a tragic murder in Philadelphia, and Along the Way a video mosaic about the city of Oakland created by the public arts group Cause Collective of which Thomas is a member.

Hank Willis Thomas has exhibited his work at venues such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA. He was included in the recent exhibition, “After 1968: Contemporary Artists and the Civil Rights Legacy”, at the High Museum, Atlanta, GA; in Frequency at The Studio Museum in Harlem in 2005; and in the 2006 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art. His work is featured in several public collections including the Studio Museum in Harlem, the International Center of Photography in New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas. His photographs have been published in numerous books and publications including: Reflections in Black: A History of African American Photographers (W.W. Norton 2000), 25 under 25: American Photographers (Power House Books 2003) and Black: A celebration of a Culture (Hylas Publishing 2004).

hankwillisthomas.com

126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that promotes challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions. 126 is supported by the Arts council, the Galway city council and our membership.

Gallery hours: Wed-Sat 1-6 or by appointment.

TWILIGHT AVENGER
Video works by KELLY RICHARDSON

July 7th through July 12th, 2009

Opening reception: Wednesday July 8th, 8pm
There will be a one-on-one artist talk between Richardson and Galway based director and writer Katherine Waugh, Wednesday July 8th at 126 from 7-8pm

Kelly Richardson will be showing two video works, Twilight Avenger and Wagons Roll, in a dual screen installation at 126’s new city centre gallery.

Kelly Richardson’s primary interest is in exploring simultaneity, affect and the use of cinematic language to create part real /part imagined landscapes, offering visual metaphors for modern ‘reality’, a wavering hybrid of fact and fiction. With an interest in creating contemplative spaces loaded with double meanings, the work explores notions of simultaneity as a way of summating feelings associate with the hugely complicated world we have created for ourselves; magnificent and equally dreadful. Richardson questions our place in the world, with allusions to political, cultural, societal and environmental issues and points to something greater than ourselves.

Kelly Richardson was born in Burlington, Ontario, Canada in 1972. She studied fine art at the Ontario College of Art & Design (AOCAD with honours) and media studies at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (MFA studies). Her works have been exhibited internationally at various venues including the Sundance Film Festival, USA (2009), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Quebec (2009), Busan Biennale, Korea (2008), Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, USA (2008), Le Mois de la Photo a Montreal, Canada (2007), Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, UK (2005), Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2004), Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2002-2003) and Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2002). Her work was recently acquired by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery (Buffalo, New York), Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal (Montréal, Canada) and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden (Washington DC, USA). She was long listed for Canada’s pre-eminent prize for contemporary art, the Sobeys Art Award two years running (2008 and 2009) and will be the featured artist for this years Americans for the Arts National Arts Award held in New York City. She lives and works in the United Kingdom.

www.kellyrichardson.net

"Sports Bar is a place of leisure.
A place where you can relax and hang out with your friends.
Some time ago they tried to close it down.
Soon they lost interest and probably forgot about it.
Now we are just waiting for the next wave."

Sports Bar is the first solo show in Ireland of Dutch artist Frank Koolen. Additional to the show at 126, films by Frank Koolen will be on show at the Volvo Ocean Race village across the street from 126. You are very welcome to come over to the sports bar to see some ambitious sportsmen working out and to have a drink with the peculiar guests.

The work of Frank Koolen can be described as an ongoing search for the ideal combination between the beauty of discovery and the happiness of recognition. A moment in which the everyday and the magical seem to collide, creating unexpected logic.

Frank Koolen is based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After finishing a studies in Fine Arts at the Utrech School of Arts he attended de Ateliers in Amsterdam. At the moment he is a resident at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Solo shows by Frank Koolen are: The Tropical Years at W139, Amsterdam (2009), Tourist Trophy at Ruang Mes 56 Gallery, Yogyakarta (2007), and The Story of The and The at Stadsgalerij, Heerlen. Some of the group shows he participated in are: Locations at Museum de Paviljoens in Almere (2008), Drawing Typologies at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2007), and Curacion Geometrica at the Reliance Gallery in London (2007).

Maaike Gouwenberg is an independent curator based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that promotes challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions.

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and our membership.

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For our grand re-opening 126 presents:

Dog Skipping Pegasus
by Fergus Byrne

7-9pm Saturday May 9th, 2009
To be opened by Galway City Arts Officer James C. Harold
The show runs to May 23rd, 2009

This is a show of recent work by Fergus Byrne. The opening will be marked by a performance, Dog Skipping Pegasus, a spoken word piece while skipping. This repetitive action aims to have a hypnotic effect. The combination of this and a spoken text sees the artist layering previous performance activities to create an intensity of action. The text was written by the artist and has been learned by heart. Words thus become physical shapes, part of a larger structure of sounds rhythmically linked, their vocal shapes and extension of the body’s physical action.

The text is rhythmically descriptive of obligation to endure and the aspiration to transcend this, resulting in the notion of a winged dog. The gesture of the skipping produces drawings, which will be shown in the gallery.

Additionally, this is 126's grand re-opening at our new city centre location. Opening reception from 7-9pm. An after-party will held at Bar No. 8 on the docks.

126 is a voluntarily led, artist-run gallery that promotes challenging and experimental works that would not be seen in commercial galleries or conventional institutions.

126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and our membership.

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126 with Pallas Contemporary Projects present a joint collaboration project:

Unsolicited Fabrications: Shareware Sculptures
Stephanie Syjuco

Opening reception: 6pm – 8pm Friday, 1st May 2009
Exhibition continues: 2nd – 30th May

Pallas Contemporary Projects is proud to present Unsolicited Fabrications: Shareware Sculptures, a unique installation by Stephanie Syjuco. Her first solo exhibition in Ireland displays a collection of strange hybrid of forms via many different authors, a unique opportunity to encounter artworks that were never meant to be physically realized.

Syjuco’s installation of hand-made sculptures is based on a shared database of “artworks” created by users of SketchUp, a 3-D modelling software made by Google. Designed as a simple and easy-to-use free version of CAD software, SketchUp has garnered a growing following of amateur designers who use it to model virtually everything from common household items to fantasy architectural designs. These digital designs can be uploaded to a freely accessible database to share with other SketchUp users in their own projects, many of which are created by non-artists. Based on these models, Syjuco produces a physical representation and in essence become the “unsolicited” fabricator of the sculpture. (While the original designer of the work will be attributed, their permission will not be requested to execute the work, since the design was in essence considered shareware). Issues of authorship, collaboration and production brings into question who the real “artist” is in the equation. Is this work a collaboration, a knock-off, or perhaps even a fabricated favor, and does the shared platform for this content give permission to make it really happen?

Stephanie Syjuco is a visual artist whose recent work uses the tactics of bootlegging, reappropriation, and fictional fabrications to address issues of cultural biography, labour, and economic globalization. Working primarily in sculpture and installation, her objects mistranslate and misappropriate iconic symbols, creating frictions between high ideals and everyday materials. This has included re-creating several 1950s Modernist furniture pieces by French designer Charlotte Perriand using cast-off material and rubbish in Beijing, China; starting a global collaborative project with crochet crafters to counterfeit high-end consumer goods; photographing models of Stonehenge made from cheap Asian imported food products; and searching for fragments of the Berlin Wall in her immediate surroundings in an attempt to revisit the historical moment of “the end of History.”

Born in the Philippines, Syjuco received her MFA from Stanford University and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Her work has been included in exhibitions at PS1, the Whitney Museum of American Art, The New Museum, SFMOMA, The Contemporary Museum Honolulu, The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art, and the California Biennial. In 2007 she led counterfeiting workshops at art spaces in Istanbul, Beijing, and Manila, and in December 2008 had a solo exhibition at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, that explored the legacy of Modernism and the Third World. She has taught at Stanford University, The California College of the Arts, and Carnegie Mellon University. She lives and works in San Francisco.

This exhibition is a joint collaboration project with 126 Galway. 126 is Galway's and the west of Ireland’s first artist-led exhibition space. As a unique development PCP will be bringing Peter O’Kennedy to exhibit in 126 in 2009.

http://www.stephaniesyjuco.com
http://www.stephaniesyjuco.wordpress.com

Pallas Contemporary Projects
111 Grangegorman Road Lower, Dublin 7, Ireland
Opening Hours: Thurs - Sat, 12 - 6 pm

http://www.pallasprojects.org/

Pallas is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.
126 is supported by the Arts Council, the Galway City Council and our membership.

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126 for Live@8 presents

Let Us Play

Featuring the work of: Cory Arcangel and Paper Rad, Sam Fuller, Tom Dale, César Velasco Broca, Carmen Hasselbusch, Tim Smith, Wholphin, Jon Sasaki, Advanced Beauty Sound Sculpture Collection, Tom Scholefield, Robert Hodgin, Fernando Sarmienta, Kutiman, Paul Robertson and the Crawford College Performance Society.

Curated by Dave Callan.

8pm Wednesday March 25th Bar No. 8, The Docks, Galway.

Live@8 is a regularly programmed free evening of screenings, live art and music.

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126 Presents:

The Catalyst Members' Show
Our 2nd Annual Members' Show swap with the Belfast artist-run gallery, Catalyst Arts

February 5th — 28th

Opening reception: Thursday, February 5th at 7pm.

A selection of works from Allotments , the Catalyst Arts Members' Show.

126 was set up on the model of Catalyst Arts. The galleries have a shared ethos of providing space and opportunities for artists at various stages of their careers, experimentation and a strong commitment to their membership bases. These Annual Members Shows provide a prime opportunity for early career artists to exhibit alongside more established artists. The richness and diversity of practice in the membership is best reflected in the open submission policy. The exhibitions this year will run simultaneously in both galleries.

Features the work of: Cian Donnelly, Jane O' Sullivan, Martin Carter, Neal Johnson, Zoë Murdoch, Aileen Lambert, Fionnuala Doran, Jaromir Svozilik, Caragh O'Donnell, Piia Rossi, Peter Richards, Ben Craig, Sinéad Bhreatthnach-Cashell, Lucas Dillon, Hannah Casey, Miguel Martin, Hannah Casey, Sisley, Sinead Ferry, Paddy Gould, Cathrine Devlin, James Hepburn, Andy Brown, Mic Fortune, Amy Russell, and Sally Houston.

www.catalystarts.org.uk

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126 Presents:

The 2nd Annual 126 Members' Show

As part of our commitment to encouraging and supporting the greater Galway visual arts community, 126 is proud to host its second annual members' show. 126 is grateful for the financial and moral support of its membership, so once a year we open the gallery to them as a sign of thanks.

By taking this unique democratic approach, this show highlights the diverse strengths and approaches of 126's membership, which varies from students, to unrepresented emerging and local artists to those established at an international level.

We have an open membership available to anyone who supports our aims and ethos. Please visit our website www.126.ie for more information on becoming a member today.

The show runs through January 29th and will travel to Catalyst Arts in Belfast for February.

New work by Cian McConn
Featuring collaborations with Vivienne Griffin and Kay Merryweather.
Curated by Mary Nally

November 27th – December 13th , 2008
Thurs – Sat, 12-5pm or by appointment.
Opening reception: Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 7pm

"We inhabit a universe with which we are out of key, man is
bewildered, troubled and obscurely threatened…"

McConn has spent two years living and working in New York City. This exhibition is a commentary on his experiences of America in uncertain times. His inspirations come from the environment which surrounds him, whether that is working in an office or a restaurant. His work addresses his own struggle to find not just a job but a place to be, a place to call home even if its just for a while.

By using combined media – video, collage, photography, performance – an assemblage of ideas is created. The work embraces a low-tech approach and creates simple, poetic pieces, in an attempt to communicate how vulnerable we are to the ploys of a fickle world.

Using humour, elements of romanticism and borrowing from schools of thought such as the Theater of the Absurd and The Situationist International, Cian McConn to comes to terms with an urban environment in which everyone is seemingly vying for attention through fashion, the media and desire.

I've Become a Magpie also opens up the creative process to involve other artists in a collaborative role. For this exhibition McConn will show a piece from a series of photographs he is currently working on with New York based Irish artist Vivienne Griffin and work from an ongoing video series with free lance musician and performer Kay Merryweather.

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126 for the Tulca season of visual art presents:

Blackflash

New work by Mark Cullen

Nov 1st - 22nd
Opening reception: Thursday, Nov 6th, 7pm.
After party @ Bar No. 8 with DJ Whitelightning, 9:30 til close.

Blackflash: A disorientating condition when an occurrence from a fictional past intercedes in the mind of the present, perceived as a real event, or as a continuum of happening.

An instance of remembering an experience that may or may not have happened when one has 'blacked out', lost consciousness, or when one has disconnected from ones own subjectivity, through the result of an immersive experience in an alternate reality, an hallucination, or such as a through a 'letting go' engagement with fiction, with music or with ones daydreams.

An uncomfortable 'snap back' effect may be experienced as one returns to a pre-blackflash state.

Mark Cullen explores cosmologies, playfully engaging our senses, he jolts our position in relation to our surroundings and our imagination. Making use of cinematic and theatrical devices, Cullen directs installations that draw on conventions of the carnivale to engage the viewer in a participatory encounter. He is interested in implicating the viewer within arts ability to stretch logic, time, material and experiential possibilities, and to entice the viewer into a consideration of a cosmological experience.

The stars, the heavens, the planet, atomic material; how they are represented in popular science and science fiction, and how in turn it is subjectivised in our imaginations is a launch pad for this work. Questions of humankind's evolution interpenetrates science fictive subjectivities.

Mark Cullen was born in Dublin in 1972. Works include MAIM XI for Irish Museum Modern Art, Temporary Portable Reservoirs at The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin and Siege House, London, Cosmic Annihilator, an installation at Pallas Heights and Open EV+A (curated by Dan Cameron 2005) Limerick City Gallery. Recent works include STAR P*WER at Flicker, The Burren College Gallery, Star Gazing at 52° North at Synaesthesia Sat, Workhouse Birr Arts Festival. In 2005 he completed a Masters in Visual Arts Practices at DLIADT and was an award winner at EV+A 2005. In 2007 he attended a residency at El Levante in Rosario, Argentina. Cullen was curator of Darklight Digital Film Festival from 1999-2004.

In 1995 with Brian Duggan he was the co-founding partner of Pallas Studios, Dublin. Pallas through their various guises and programmes have been key exponents of experimental art practice in Dublin. He is also a director of Pallas Contemporary Projects a new space for experimental art in Dublin.

Opening reception 7pm October 2nd, 2008
with a sound based performance by Pseudo Nippon at 8pm

Artisit? is a creative project that began in 2006 with the aim of creating a platform for artists emerging from college to display their work that would in turn help to bridge the gap that often exists between art education and professional practice. Through a series of art events, exhibitions and parties, Artisit? will showcase the work of these artists from around the world with various locations and venues around Galway city playing host to a range of site specific artwork, installations, video, photography, drawing, print, performance and interventions from cutting edge graduates of the finest national and international art schools.

Performances by Dan Monks, Sinead McCann and Naomi Sex
Opening reception – 7pm Saturday September 27th 2008

For this collaborative weeklong project, the artists will use the behaviour traits of feral pigeons, bowerbirds and washing machines as reference points to explore our relationship with the urban system of governed spaces and the power structures that exist within them. Working in a similar manner as Thursday’s workshop, the artists’ week long investigation will consist of the development of micro-performances, the continuous structural modification of the gallery (so as to delineate performance areas and viewing points; this will entail the building of walls, corridors, and platforms), and the collection of audio recordings. Additionally, the entire process will operate under an open doors policy and will culminate in a performance on 7pm, Saturday September 27th 2008.

ALL AFTERNOON – Thursday September 25th 2008. Opening reception at 7pm. Limited spaces, please RSVP: contactg126@gmail.com

Dan Monks, Sinead McCann and Naomi Sex have been invited by 126 to use the gallery space as a centre for performance workshops. The artists will provide a one-off professional training workshop, as well as develop a series of micro-performances with third-level students at GMIT and the Burren College of Art. Envisioned as a collaboration, this project will explore themes of family structure, home, and power structures.

The two-day workshop will begin through simple exercises designed to stimulate the audience, regardless of prior experiences with performance. Various performative strategies will be delivered through participatory manoeuvres. Imaginative prop construction will be encouraged. A series of small-micro performances will be developed, culminating in an exhibition that evening at 7pm, Thursday September 25th 2008.

Some days you're the pigeon, some days you're the statue
A performance and temporary installation by Dan Monks

126 is pleased to make possible an unique evening of performance and temporary installation. Glasgow-based performance artist Dan Monks will intervene on the streets of Galway. He will be using only the streets, the company of pigeons, a shopping trolley and a lot of cardboard.

Dan Monks will be traversing Galway with a shopping trolley, gathering cardboard from the outside of shops, from the backstreets, from bins, etc. Dan and his makeshift materials will converge with audience members at Spanish Arch from 7-11pm and over the course of the night the cardboard will be built into a miniature 'city'.

Additionally, Dan will be feeding the local birds in and around the 'city' and supplying sound-based excursions for the enjoyment of the passers-by, the birds, and himself.

Dan Monks was borne in 1981 in Dublin and raised in the suburbs. In 2005 he moved to Glasgow to attend the Master of Fine Art program at the Glasgow School of Art. Negotiation, collaboration and utterance are three words he keeps returning to in relation to his work. He lives and operates, most often, in Glasgow.

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G126 presents:

Accumulations is an exhibition of sculpture and drawing that have been produced through the labour intensive accumulation of simple elements. The sense of growth of the work over a period of time is essential

The sculptures use pre-processed materials; the artist is interested in their transformative potential. Central to the sculpture are the relationships that are formed between the found material, the processes of construction, and the resulting forms. The sculptures are essentially abstract but are intended to be suggestive of various structures such as cells, fungi, landscapes or cityscapes, and standing figures. Large drawings are composed of simple, geometric elements; Freehand drawings lead to a distortion, away from the geometric towards the organic.

Niall de Buitléar was born in Dublin in 1983 where he currently lives. After graduating from D.I.T. with a BA in fine art in 2006 he was awarded the year-long graduate residency at Flaxart Studios in Belfast. His work has recently been shown at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, the Lab in Dublin, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Queen Street Studios in Belfast, and at the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius. This summer he undertook residencies at Ard Bia Berlin and Limerick City Gallery of Art.

DADALENIN

by Rainer Ganahl

July 14th – August 16th 2008
Opening Reception: 7pm Thursday July 17th

Rainer Ganahl is a Swiss artist based in New York. His work encompasses grand narratives and Google searches, EBAY and embroidery, explores how the incidental and banal are inextricable from the political. He has recently shown at the Istanbul, Venice and Moscow Biennials. G126 is delighted to make possible his first appearance in Ireland.

DADALENIN is an ongoing project that asserts that V. I. Lenin was a founding member of the Dadaist movement; That Lenin was a regular at the Cabaret Voltaire when in Zurich in 1916; That he operated in disguise and most other Dadaists weren't aware of it; That Lenin even wrote poems for Tristan Tzara, had a secret relationship with him and participated in a diverse range of early Dadaist advances. In the latest Irish installment of this project Ganahl has included James Joyce as a collaborator. Joyce was also present in Zurich at the same time as Lenin and the Dadaists. Ganahl uses DADALENIN to prove these assertions by connecting historical events, artifacts, images, readings, internet searches, even other artworks and historical figures. Making serious points through a comedic methodology, DADALENIN addresses the lost causes of the 20th century's problematic history.

G126 is a democratically run, artist-led gallery and project space in Galway, which promotes experimental artworks that wouldn't be shown in conventional institutions such as commercial galleries.

Open everyday of the Arts Festival 12- 5.
Regular gallery hours are Thursday to Saturday 12-5

Closer to Paradise features new installation work by Hannah Doyle and Michael Murphy. Both are members of Moxie Dublin, an art collective that was founded in 2006 which serves as a platform for emerging artists.

Michael Murphy's work is characterised by a transformation of everyday materials into sculptural works through a laborious process of fabrication. Moxie co-founder Hannah Doyle creates fantasy worlds in miniature, combining multi-layered islands of vibrant colour with children's toys and grandma's kitsch.

Hannah Doyle and Michael Murphy have worked together on a number of collaborative installations including Open Systems, as part of a group show in the Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, and Better on the shelf than in the wrong cupboard for The Lab, Dublin

G126 is the only democratically run artist-led gallery in the west of Ireland. A not-for-profit organization, G126 offers an alternative to museums and commercial galleries.

FEATURES: Nawapol, Santipab Inkong namg, Nontawa, Suchada Sirithanawuddhi, Nitipong Thinthubthai, Jakrawal, Sathit Satarasart, Suthirat Supaparinya, Patomporn Tesprateep, Olarn Netrangsri, Chulayarnnon Siriphol, Olarn Netrangsri, Shane Bunnak, Kraisak Chunahawan.

Head or Tail was first exhibited in Dublin in Pallas Contemporary Projects in 2007, organised by PCP and Project 304. This the second exclusive screening of the exhibition in Ireland of new video by young Thai artists, and a new exciting linking between Pallas [Dublin] and G126 [Galway] and Project 304 [Bangkok].

"Head or Tail" or "Hua rua Goy" is the term that Thais use to describe the uncertainty of the situation or simply to gambling with the future. Of course, one will be a winner and one will walk away a loser. With the South East Asian political style, one never know the future from the past or past from the present. Lives go on no matter who or what will be declaring the "Leader" of this exotic Oriental paradise.

This collection of media and video works has been created by generation that has been immune by the changes both subtle and dramatic. The new technologies are their friends and information is their "teachers" those flashing on the monitors or on the dials of their mobile phones. There is a great deal the yearning for the past and their definition of the "past" ranges from a few hours ago to yesterday those to them, sounded like a fairy tales.

G126, Ballybane Ind Est, Tuam Rd, Galway, Ireland
Gallery hours: Thursday - Saturday, 12 - 5 pm

Gregory Sholette - The Imaginary Archive

Naheed Raza

Sensory Threshold 126 Annual Graduate Exhibition

“228 Lashes” ...A new exhibition by Padraig Robinson ...

Sensory Threshold

126 Annual Graduate Exhibition