2011-05-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Forthcoming_
The 3rd VAWF will be hosted by The Glucksman in Cork - www.glucksman.org - further details will be announced over the coming months...

2011-03-19T03:06:00.001-07:00

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Wednesday April 20, 2011, 10.30am – 5.30pm

Project Arts Centre, 39 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Visual Arts Workers Forum and Project Arts Centre presented Work it. - part two in a series of networking forums organised by, and for, all of us working to evolve the Visual Arts in Ireland.

A day of sharp presentations and debate, developed to encourage vital communication and networking among visual arts workers.

For more images see www.facebook.com/visualarts.workersforum

Work it. was a day-long event organised around the following sessions: What's new Pussycat? on challenge and innovation; What do we want and how are we going to get there? on lobbying and action; Ethical Attitudes on what do arts workers today find important to fight for - for artists, for stakeholders, or for themselves?

Speakers included Tania Banotti (Theatre Forum), Isabel Nolan (Artist), Vaari Claffey (Freelance curator), Valerie Connor (Freelance), Tessa Giblin (Project Arts Centre, Dublin), Sarah Glennie (Director, Irish Film Institute, Dublin), Dylan Haskins (Founder, Exchange Dublin), Michele Horrigan (Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Limerick), Finola Jones (Director, mother's tankstation, Dublin), Rosie Lynch (Independent Curator), Mary McCarthy (National Sculpture Factory, Cork), Ruairí Ó Cuív (Public Art Manager, Dublin City Council), Clíodhna Shaffrey (Board member, TBG&S, Dublin), Isobel Harbison (curator and critic, London) and Mick Wilson (Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin).

Programme for the day

10.30 - 11.00 Morning Glory (coffee and greetings)
11.00 Welcome everyone!

11.10 - 12.15 What’s new Pussycat?

12.15 - 1.00 Chow & Chat (lunch)

1.00 – 2.15 What do we want and how are we going to get there?

2.15 – 2.30 Give me a Break (15 minutes recess)

2.30 - 3.45 Ethical Attitudes

3.45 - 5.00 Open discussion

5.00 – 6.00 Have we met? (drinks and nibbles)

Session 1 – What’s new Pussycat?

Challenge and innovation: more than ever, visual arts workers are facing the need to change, to adapt to new operating systems, budgets and policies, and to find creative solutions to formidable problems. Often reluctant to accept change, institutions are also undergoing self-inflicted surgery to try to grow artistically while shrinking economically, and to constantly step away from the coal face to consider communications, audiences, and the potential reach of contemporary art. This session aims to bring to light the most prominent problems facing four Visual Arts Workers, and the most creative, inventive, commonsensical or absurd ways forward that might help to inspire all of us working in the sector. Challenge and innovation – sometimes real innovation is born through adversity.

Chair: Tessa Giblin (Curator, Project Arts Centre, Dublin)
Speakers: Michele Horrigan (Curator, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Limerick), Isobel Harbison (curator and critic, London), Vaari Claffey (Freelance curator), Clíodhna Shaffrey (Board member, TBG&S, Dublin)
Format: four 10 minute presentations

Session 2 – What do we want and how are we going to get there?

Action and unity: The National Campaign for the Arts kick started in 2010 amidst fear and worry about the financial future of the arts in Ireland. The campaign is lobbying to ensure the arts are on local and national government agendas and recognised as a vital part of contemporary Irish life. How can visual arts workers respond positively to the challenges facing the arts? Do we need to unite with other lobbying groups or fight our own corner? This session proposes to highlight key questions through debate.

Chair: Sarah Glennie (Director, Irish Film Institute, Dublin)
Speakers: Isabel Nolan (Artist), Tania Banotti (Chief Executive, Theatre Forum, Dublin), Dylan Haskins (Founder, Exchange Dublin), Mary McCarthy (National Sculpture Factory, Cork)
Format: panel debate / interview

Session 3 – Ethical Attitudes

Contemporary art constitutes a vast, unregulated sector, and although Ireland’s market is still at an early stage in development, the institutional, freelance and self employed arts workers of Ireland have little in the way of codes of best practice or even acceptable limits to guide them in our best to do business fairly. This session aims to prise apart attitudes to fiscal transparency, the use and advantages of contracts, the relationship of the visual arts in Ireland to the international art market, and the problems and pitfalls of working within an unregulated system. If your ethical attitude within the visual arts is of your own making, what do workers today find important to fight for – for artists, for stakeholders, and for themselves?

Chair: Ruairí Ó Cuív (Public Art Manager, Dublin City Council)
Speakers: Valerie Connor (Freelance), Finola Jones (Director, mother's tankstation, Dublin), Rosie Lynch (Independent Curator), Mick Wilson (Dean, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media, Dublin)
Format: four 10 minute presentations

Looking for more information?

vawforum[at]gmail.com

Work it. was developed by Tessa Giblin (Project Arts Centre, Dublin), Rachael Gilbourne (Artist/Assistant Curator, Project Arts Centre, Dublin), Anne Lynott (Curatorial Fellow, MAVIS, Dublin), Emma Lucy O'Brien (VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow) and Ruairí Ó Cuív (Dublin City Council). Check out them smiles!

Work it. was the 2^nd meeting of Visual Arts Workers Forum, initiated at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, by Carissa Farrell and Emma Lucy O’Brien.

2011-03-01T15:58:00.000-08:00

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Art Centres, Visual Arts and the Public

Wednesday November 3, 2010, 10.30am - 5.30pm
VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre, Carlow

How have Ireland’s visual arts centres evolved over the last fifteen years? What ways should visual arts programming, for publics both national and international, be developed for the future? And what is the role of the curator within these institutions?

Within the remit of visual art, this day long discussion considered developments and related challenges associated with curating visual art in Ireland’s public and private art centres. With over seventy funded, whether privately or publicly, visual arts facilities in the country, this address hoped to position the recent development and expansion of the sector in relation to some of the key debates that surround the programming of visual art and the audiences it hopes for, whoever they might be. With these questions and issues in mind this seminar sought to establish the need for the sector and its facilitators to engage in a discussion on the position of Ireland’s visual art centres within contemporary curatorial practices.

It is also hoped that this event might consider the potential for a continued forum and research network, one which might; act as a support for those involved in the sector, promote new ideas, exchange expertise and keep its members up to date on what’s going on nationally and internationally.

Taking place at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art and George Bernard Shaw Theatre, this seminar coincided with the exhibition, Michael Warren, UNBROKEN LINE, New Work and Retrospective. Perfomance artists Fergus Byrne and Rosalyn Murray responded to this work as part of the seminars schedule.

Developed, organised and hosted by Carissa Farrell, Director VISUAL Carlow with Emma-Lucy O' Brien, independent curator.

With many thanks to the attending audience, artists and participants, including Brian Hand (artist and lecturer Carlow IT), Ruairí Ó Cuív, (Public Art Manager, Dublin City Council), Aoife Ruane (Highlanes), Ann Davoren (West Cork Arts Centre), Belinda Quirke (Solstice), Mary Conlon (Shinnors Scholar, LCG), Catherine Bowe (Wexford), Tessa Giblin (Project Arts Centre), Mike Fitzpatrick, Eamonn Maxwell, Caoimhín Corrigan, Sarah Glennie, Matt Packer and Valerie Connor.