Portrait of a Nation: Art, Politics and the Anglo-Irish Treaty

Images Are All We Have traces the thematic development of the photographic discipline and contextualises the historical background, bringing together the diverse and socially engaged set of contemporary art practices that define Contemporary Irish Photography today. Showing works from The Edge of Europe borrowed from the Crawford Collection and the video installation Manifesto borrowed from the Arts Council Collection

In Our Own Image: The Politics of Place

The third chapter of the Gallery’s year-long In Our Own Image exhibition programme, The Politics of Place is a landmark survey exhibition that undertakes a critical reframing of the way Irish life has been represented through photography. It addresses how photographers have engaged with one of the defining obsessions of our national identity – the notion of place.

For a people so often uprooted and dispossessed, the identification of Irishness with place, with home and the ownership of land, even with the state itself, carries incredible weight. The photographers in this exhibition use place as a way of speaking to and about national identity, the spaces and the landscapes we share, the ground that we hold in common and the boundaries that divide us.

By mapping these contested territories, they consider how the relationship between place and Irishness, broadly defined, has been transformed, addressing the profound changes that have reshaped Irish society over the last four decades, from the decline of the church to the impact of globalisation, through to ongoing crises around housing, migration, and the environment.

Moving away from traditional documentary towards more socially-engaged and inclusive ways of thinking about the medium, the selected works by emerging and established artists featured in The Politics of Place touch on the most pressing issues around Irish identity and history, coming to terms with the legacies of the past and facing the challenges of the future.

Gallery of Photography Ireland is delighted to present this exhibition introducing the National Photography Collection. Featuring a selection of specially commissioned prints by established and emerging Irish artists, it provides a context for an open discussion on the development of the Collection over the coming years.

We want to work with artists to support them in archiving their artistic practice across the span of their careers, preserving their creative legacies for the future. Our vision for the Collection is to define the scope of modern and contemporary Irish photography, honouring past generations and recognising the achievements of contemporary Irish photographic artists.

WE ARE HERE at Highlanes Gallery

Exploring themes of marginality and its representation, community, storytelling, world-building and critically reframing histories, these linked exhibitions present films from SONGS OF A FORGOTTEN PAST, one of five artists’ film programmes curated by Tendai John Mutambu for the British Council, the UK’s international organisation for cultural relations and educational opportunities, and LUX, an international arts agency that supports and promotes artists’ moving image practices. Including work from a range of media including moving image, sculpture, painting and photography and will include the work of artists Ayo Akingbade, Ursula Burke, Duncan Campbell, Tom Fitzgerald, Luke Fowler, Cliona Harmey, Anthony Haughey, Susan Hiller, Samson Kambalu, Brian Maguire, Colin Martin, Mairead O’hEocha, and Daphne Wright.

At 1 pm on Sunday, the 5th of December 2021 artist Anthony Haughey and the Inishowen community gathered at Fort Dunree to produce an artist intervention, the first part of an ambitious social sculpture that will involve hundreds of participants. Anthem is the outcome of my 2021 Artlink residency co-created with residents living near Fort Dunree, Buncrana, and Drumfries. This event marks the centenary of the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on the 6th of December 1921

Artist-in-residence Anthony Haughey in conversation with the Director of the National Museum of Ireland, Lynn Scarff. The residency is part of the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023. Anthony will look at the significance of this project for the Museum and for him as an artist. More information here

I will be working on an artist residency with Artlink Fort Dunree over the summer months to produce a collaborative art intervention to mark the centenary of the Anglo Irish Treaty signing on 6 December 1921. Artlink

May 2021 – Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media Catherine Martin T.D. has announced 5 selected artists-in-residence under the Decade of Centenaries 2012-2023 Programme. The Department scheme underpinning the selection is a partnership with the National Museum of Ireland (NMI), the National Library of Ireland (NLI), the National Archives, the Military Archives and Beyond 2022|Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury project. Visit the NMI website for more information

The 5 artists are: Anthony Haughey (NMI ), Julie Morrissy (NLI ), John Beattie (National Archives ), Studio 9 (Military Archives ) and Mairéad McClean (Beyond 2022 ).

Filmmaking is an inherently collaborative endeavour, yet authorship is firmly situated with the director. In filmmaking processes with community participants, where content is generated together, questions of authorship are more fluid. How do artists negotiate the ethical question of representation while managing aesthetic considerations within a collective process? This intimate workshop (maximum 10 attendees), delivered by artist Anthony Haughey, will examine questions of authorship and representation in community based filmmaking, facilitating group-wide discussion and sharing of the topics covered. Participants should have a project (in any art form) in mind to enable full participation. Access to the internet is required. This workshop is delivered in partnership with Sligo County Council Arts Service (Invitation to Collaboration Scheme).

How to apply

Submit a statement of interest as to why you wish to participate, including projects you wish to share (200 words max) plus a biography (200 words max) to vance@create-ireland.ie with the subject line “Authorship and Representation workshop application”.  The deadline for applications is 12th November, 12 noon. Successful applicants will be informed on the 16th November.

CAN YOU HEAR US NOW? 

THIS IS WHAT WE CALL PROGRESS

WAITING FOR TOMORROW

This trilogy of short films reflects on the impact of global migration from the point of view of young people in County Fingal with a particular focus on Balbriggan. This public art commission explores ideas of how cultural identities are formed and represented in the public realm. 

In this socially engaged production young migrant youth have collaborated and negotiated every aspect of filmmaking from script writing to film treatment and choice of location. At the end of this process the same young people assumed the role of non-professional actors as they claim ownership of the narrative. Each sequence and film follows a durational socially engaged method taking four months or more to complete. 

The films explore the concerns expressed by young multi-ethnic youth growing up in a time of rapid change in Ireland and internationally. The research for each film refers to historical antecedents from Civil Rights in the ‘60s to the most recent Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Throughout this discursive process and dialogical encounters new discoveries are made and incorporated into each script. For example, in the short film Can You Hear Us Now? A group of school students generate a claim for equality within the context of xenophobic Europe. In this sequence the language and narratives of African slave, Frederick Douglas who traveled to Ireland in 1845 and performed many public speeches on emancipation and freedom were carefully and sensitively appropriated and reworked. The resulting displaced conversation between three young women from Lusk Community School evokes Brecht’s alienation effect to ‘make the familiar strange’ in order to provoke a social-critical audience response.

The second film is set in the drawing room of 18^th Century Newbridge House in Donabate, once owned by Frances Power Cobbe who was an Irish writer, social reformer, anti-vivisection activist and a leading women’s suffrage campaigner. In this sequence a group of young women who call themselves My Sisters Keeper reclaim their own place in history surrounded by oil paintings of colonial masters.

In the final short a group of young men engage in a conversation about what is at stake for their generation as they reflect on the historical speeches and claims for civil rights and equality espoused by Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and many others. The film is also a homage to Samuel Beckett’s seminal play Waiting for Godot. Waiting is akin to a ‘permanent state of crisis’ where waiting for change to come is testing the patience of many generations of young people, especially in light of recent events and the Black Lives Matter global protests. 

The films are currently in post-production and will be completed and assembled together with a commissioned animated credits sequence to honour the 75 people who contributed to this experimental trilogy. There will also be a 48 sheet billboard film poster campaign. Each of the three films will be represented by a specially designed film poster by Detail Design.

The artistic in the documentary is selected from DZ Bank’s permanent collection. The exhibition extends across photographic works of art from various visual subjects, such as the urban landscape, portrait and interiors. At the same time, the selection goes far beyond documentary images. Works by Roger Ballen, Gabriele Basilico, Sibylle Bergemann, Laurenz Berges, Claus Bury, Pietro Donzelli, Arno Fischer, André Gelpke, Mario Giacomelli, Anthony Haughey, Helen Levitt, Will McBride, Simone Nieweg, Robert Rauschenberg, Timm Rautert, among others, are shown Evelyn Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Boris Savelev, Shirana Shahbazi, Dennis Stock, Wolfgang Volz and Ulrich Wüst. More information about the exhibition here. Download the exhibition brochure here

I am showing work from the Disputed Territory series in a exhibition called, Go Down Moses a catalogue of the exhibition is available from MOCP. The exhibition includes luminaries such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Andy Warhol and Robert Adams.

Go Down Moses presents a reinterpretation of the MoCP’s permanent collection that can be understood as a visual tone poem of contemporary America, exploring elemental themes of movement, chaos, freedom, and hope. In doing so, Cole uses the photographic archive to interweave the past and present, suggesting an aesthetic approach to understanding the current psyche.

He writes: Questions of liberation tend to interleave the present and the past. What is happening now is instinctively assessed with the help of what happened before, and both despair and hope are tutored by memory. The old Negro spiritual “Go Down Moses,” beloved by Harriet Tubman and generations since, sought to link the black American freedom quest with the story of ancient Israel’s struggle to be free of Pharaoh’s bondage.

Through an intuitive sequence of photographs, in images soft and loud, this exhibition proposes a redefinition: that hope has nothing to do with mood or objective facts, but is rather a form of hospitality offered by those who are tired to those who are exhausted. More information available here

A new exhibition at Donegal’s Glebe Gallery tells the story of 21st century Ireland via a series of acclaimed artworks by a number of major contemporary Irish artists. 

Curated by critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach, 21st Century Ireland In 21 Artworks includes paintings, photographs, video works, sculptures, performances, and installations informed by themes of home, money, bodies, risk, mental health, society, politics and more. Including internationally important artists such as Willie Doherty, Amanda Coogan, Corban Walker, Mick O’Dea, Dorothy Cross, and Aideen Barry and Anthony Haughey.

Further information here

My Home series was collected by the CRP almost thirty-years ago. I was still a student in Farnham at the time (now called the University of Creative Arts), when I was invited to make my first exhibition in La Maison Pour Tous de Calais. Ten photographs from Home were acquired for the collection. Rediscovered in the CRP collection by independent Curator Beatrice Andrieux. More information in the CRP website here

Press release pdf

Photographs from the Home series (1992) will feature in this years Les Rencontres d’Arles. The catalogue for Isabelle Bonnet’s ‘Home Sweet Home’ exhibition will be available to accompany the show, which opens 1st July 2019 at Les Rencontres Internationale de la Photographie in Arles France. Work by the following photographers will be included:  Ed Alcock (1974), Dana Ariel (1983), Keith Arnatt (1930-2008), Laura Blight (1985), Juno Calypso (1989), Natasha Caruana (1983), Mark Cawson (1959-2018), Edmund Clark (1963), John Paul Evans (1965), Anna Fox (1961), Ken Grant (1967), Anthony Haughey (1963), Tom Hunter (1965), Sarah Jones (1959), Peter Kennard (1949), Neil Kenlock (1950), Karen Knorr (1954), Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen (1948), Chris Leslie (1974), Stephen McCoy (1956), Iain McKell (1957), Michael McMillan (1962), Daniel Meadows (1952), David Moore (1961), John Myers (1944), Martin Parr (1952), Magda Segal (1959), Andy Sewell (1978), David Spero (1963), Eva Stenram (1976), Clare Strand (1973), Colin Thomas (1950), Gee Vaucher (1945), Gillian Wearing (1963).

Introduction

This paper explores contemporary responses to crisis in Ireland as refracted through visual arts practice. The key question that will be pursued is not the primarily philosophical one of “what is the nature of crisis?” but the situational one of “how might a sense of crisis manifest itself through the practice of a visual artist?” In attempting to answer this question it is hoped some light can be shed on other questions that appear to have gained greater urgency since the pivotal moment in 2008 when the economic ground shifted under the Irish people. Do artists have an obligation to engage with politics? Can some of the underpinning rationales for artist engagement, particularly in the field of relational aesthetics, empower artists to meet expectations that their work can, or should, be capable of decisive interventions at historical moments of crisis? A related objective is to ground a theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis in the evolution of an artist’s work, to gain some sense of its temporal manifestation in the life-long, everyday practice of making art.

The two artists I have engaged with to examine these questions, Deirdre O’Mahony and Anthony Haughey, were selected with a clear understanding that any number of other artists might just as equally have suited. The reason for the choice is that the author is familiar with the work of both over time and understands both, in variable ways, to be committed to exploring the interaction of political and aesthetic values in their practice.

Full article here

Field Notes from the Border presents new work by contemporary artists working along the border in Ireland. A series of cross border exhibitions and engagement programmes curated by Gallery of Photography respond to the anxiety raised by the prospect of the imposition of a hard border and the unfolding events brought about by Brexit. Field Notes from the Border #1 opens to the public in Gallery of Photography on Thursday 7 March at 2pm. The official launch and engagement programme will take place on Thursday 21 March. Exhibition continues until 7 April.

Anthony Haughey’s exhibition and film installations respond to the perceived imminent threat of Brexit to peace and stability in Ireland. New video works, photographs and texts reflect on Ireland’s ‘seamless’ border and consider how function, meaning, and effect are often in a state of flux. As WT Mitchell observes, it is ‘a process of human interventions, intersubjective relations and ideologies that determines our understanding of the landscape.’

Looking at the Border from both sides now review The Irish Times

Fieldnotes from the Border – how Brexit inspired a new art show RTE online

Field Notes from the Border # 2 RCC Letterkenny more information

Field Notes from the Border # 3 Nerve Centre Derry, more information

Announcement – Infrastructure Public Art Programme 2018 – 2021 Awards 9 new Commissions for Fingal

Press Release

Monday 25 June 2018

Fingal County Council’s Public Art Programme 2018-2021 announces 9 major commissions to line up of artists. Five of the nine commissions awarded under Infrastructure – Fingal’s Public Art Programme 2018-2012 were given to artists from Fingal.

The art programme which is predominantly funded through the Government’s Per Cent for Art scheme is valued at €400,000 and is co-curated by Fingal County Council’s Public Art Co-ordinator, Caroline Cowley and Independent Curator, Aisling Prior. In 2017, they conducted a countywide consultation to deliver the most appropriate creative brief for emerging artists to respond to which resulted in nine being awarded nationally.

There were almost 300 submissions to the open call and three selection phases have been conducted for the Infrastructure commissions. The selection processes featured  the expertise of curators, Aisling Prior and Caroline Cowley, academics, Declan Long and Valerie Connor, local public representatives and a range of specialist staff drawn from Fingal County Council’s Community, Heritage, Cultural and Planning departments. The selection processes resulted in nine commissions being awarded to some of Ireland’s most exciting and respected emerging and established artists, all of whom demonstrate an inspiring energy and unique imagination as to how they will make innovative and challenging artworks over the coming three years.

The nine commissions will unfold throughout the county under two categories: “Public Art Awards” and “Co-Productions”.

The “Public Art Awards” projects demonstrate a high level of artistic excellence, innovation and ambition for Fingal. The “Co-Productions” category includes artists who work collaboratively with specific Fingal community groups or a new community of interest.

A third aspect of the Infrastructure commissioning programme sees artists making artworks for and in the built environment. Internationally acclaimed artist Corban Walker will be making a sculptural installation for the landscaped areas in the new housing development at Hamilton Park in Dublin 15.

Artists selected under the “Public Art Awards” are John Byrne, Sarah Browne and Adam Gibney (Fingal) and under the “Co- Productions” category we selected, Declan Gorman (Fingal), Anthony Haughey and the Migrant Collective (Balbriggan), Michelle Hall (Blanchardstown ), Gareth Kennedy, Yvonne McGuinness (Malahide) and Aoife Dunne (Blanchardstown).

The commissions are across many contemporary artforms including theatre, film, virtual reality and digital art, performance, engaged and expanded practice and literature. Each of the art commissions will align with local communities in new and meaningful ways and will engage with current issues from across the county, to deliver a rich profile of Fingal as it is now.

Mayor of Fingal, Cllr Anthony Lavin said: “I’m delighted to see five talented artists from Fingal being included in the selection process for the Infrastructure Art Programme. It is a testament to the value of the supports developed and that have been put in place by the Fingal County Council’s Arts Office over the past number of years.”

Chief Executive of Fingal County Council, Paul Reid said: “Arts are an extremely important part to Fingal’s culture and identity. This programme is an investment into the talent and creativity that exists across our county and I am delighted to see it being supported and developed.”

For more details on Infrastructure and for our updates visit www.fingalarts.ie/infrastructure

For further information, please contact press@fingal.ie or Caroline Cowley, Fingal County Council Public Art Co-Ordinator;  01 870 8449  or   087 120 1924 Caroline.cowley@fingal.ie

Reframing the Border curated by Gallery of Photography Ireland
for Remote Photo Festival

Disputed Territory Anthony Haughey

Remote Photo is a festival dedicated to photographers creating work in a remote or rural context. The theme for this year’s festival is ‘Reframing the Border’. The border in Ireland is one of the most important issues affecting the island of Ireland. As we approach the centenary of partition the possible imposition of a hard border has prompted intense speculation and debate. The ‘Reframing the Border’ exhibition at the Regional Cultural Centre presents work by established and emerging Irish-based photographers who explore the diverse physical, social, psychological and imagined spaces of the borderlands in Ireland at this critical point in time. Exhibition continues until 19 May 2018. Remote Photo Festival have invited leading artists, broadcasters  creatives, curators, entrepreneurs, historians, politicians and writers to come together for a series of discussions and events to explore issues affecting the borderlands: past, present and future.

Weekend of exhibitions, talks and events on 11th, 12th & 13th May in the Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Donegal.
For full programme details please click here

Forum is part of a cultural diversity research project commissioned by Rua Red and Civic Theatre. Its objective is to explore the cultural richness of migrant communities living throughout South Dublin County. Envisaged as a stepping stone towards a long-term process of connection, collaboration and engagement, Forum invites community leaders and arts sector providers to engage in a series of transcultural dialogues to learn from each other in mutual exchange. Forum aims to identify barriers to access and provision that may exist or inhibit ethnic groups from originating or participating in art and cultural activities in South Dublin County arts venues. Central to this event is an understanding of cultural diversity as a plurality of identities, described in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on cultural diversity as ‘an adaptive process [with] a capacity for expression, creation and innovation’.

Forum, Transcultural Dialogues programme

Artists

Samuel Laurence Cunnane, Stephanie Deady, Willie Doherty, Vanessa Donoso Lopez, Anthony Haughey, Dragana Jurisic, Ronan McCrea, Isabel Nolan, Mairead O’hEocha, Kathy Prendergast, Tamsin Snow & Sarah Tynan.

Inspired by a quote by Jacques Derrida, this exhibition curated by Linda Shevlin and Aoife Ruane seeks to present works that respond to themes of hospitality, identity, friendship and the multitude of journeys and conflicts encountered to attain them. In response to ongoing and globally transformational international events, Bealtaine, the national May-time festival celebrating creativity as we age has adopted the theme of hospitality, hosting and welcome as a broad and multi-layered festival theme. The deeper undertones to the principle of hospitality are underlined by historical interpretations of the concept, including Jacques Derrida’s philosophical work on the Ethics of Hospitality.

More information

Irish Times Review

Review newsprint

Crisis and the Visual Arts in Ireland

This paper explores contemporary responses to crisis in Ireland as refracted through visual arts practice. The key question that will be pursued is not the primarily philosophical one of “what is the nature of crisis?” but the situational one of “how might a sense of crisis manifest itself through the practice of a visual artist?” In attempting to answer this question it is hoped some light can be shed on other questions that appear to have gained greater urgency since the pivotal moment in 2008 when the economic ground shifted under the Irish people. Do artists have an obligation to engage with politics? Can some of the underpinning rationales for artist engagement, particularly in the field of relational aesthetics, empower artists to meet expectations that their work can, or should, be capable of decisive interventions at historical moments of crisis? A related objective is to ground a theoretical understanding of the nature of crisis in the evolution of an artist’s work, to gain some sense of its temporal manifestation in the life-long, everyday practice of making art.

The two artists I have engaged with to examine these questions, Deirdre O’Mahony and Anthony Haughey, were selected with a clear understanding that any number of other artists might just as equally have suited. The reason for the choice is that the author is familiar with the work of both over time and understands both, in variable ways, to be committed to exploring the interaction of political and aesthetic values in their practice.

In a new series of articles, critic and broadcaster Cristín Leach selects 21 artworks for RTÉ Culture that define Modern Ireland.

Number Five: Anthony Haughey – Settlement (2011)

Anthony Haughey’s photographs of half-finished houses and abandoned residential building-sites have a near-supernatural, spiritual glow about them. Shot in low sun, as part of a series entitled Settlement in 2011, these images capture empty homes sitting like unconsummated promises at the end of overgrown tracks edged by mounds of earth and rubble, cleared aside but never levelled.  A flare of light hits a window or gable end, suggesting a kind of poignant beauty, but what is really on offer is a bleak reminder of the physical and emotional residue of the Celtic Tiger building boom and bust. Ghost estates continue to haunt the nation’s notion of home. Haughey’s Settlement photos are images of hope and loss, what was done and left undone.

Anthony Haughey’s photographs of half-finished houses and abandoned residential building-sites have a near-supernatural quality.

Collaborative Arts, Interculturalism and Human Rights seminar, April 6, 2017

This seminar set out to encourage discussion about the vital role the arts, and in particular collaborative arts, can play in promoting interculturalism and human rights. The contributors and speakers for Collaborative Arts, Interculturalism and Human Rights seminar included: Bisi Adigun, Katherine Atkinson, Clodagh Emoe, Warsame Ali Garare, Anthony Haughey, Sinisa Koncic, Laragh Pittman, Annet Mphahlele, Marie Claire Mundi Njong, Nor Nasib and Jijo Sebastian.

Keynote presentation, Anthony Haughey and Warsame Ali Garare. Watch here

“INHABITING THE BAGEION: architecture as critique” comes from a collective that emerged from a developing relationship between Irish and Athenian-based artists, architects, urban thinkers and urban activists. We come from multiple fields in the arts but all share an interest in exploring alternative models of teaching, practice, and processes within architecture through exhibition and workshops involving a wider public. The project offers a response to current socio-political issues through architecture – and at the same time – explores the practice of critique itself. This spatial critique argues for alternative modes of knowledge and knowing (embodied, sensory, instinctual, gestural and performative) to enter into the field of critical and sensory discourse, and help shape a more responsive understanding of interpreting experience within a new mode of architectural critique.

The exhibition presents architecture as being part of a social and cultural collective process through a series of curated spaces over four storeys of the defunct hotel: Firstspace present’s alternative models of teaching architectural practice as a mechanism of social inclusion and new forms of social engagement. Secondspace presents a series of visual art films by prominent Irish and International artists (Anthony Haughey; Mark Curran; Lina Selander; Harun Farocki; Megs Morley and Tom Flanagan) where architecture appears to carry the burden of historic events in the absence of any human accountability. Thirdspace presents an ongoing ethnographic research project by Eve Olney that focuses on the agency of the architect within a participatory architectural process. The work centres on the relationship between an Activist/Architecture group, Urban React and the original inhabitants of a 1930s refugee housing block in Athens as a means of exploring the cultural value of habitation. Fourthspace is an open creative space of workshops and events led by Irish artist Seamus Nolan collaborating with Irish, Greek and Swiss squatters/activists/ artists/ architects/ musicians that explores Squatting/Occupation as a means of cultural and social production. During the two-week exhibition Nolan and his team will design and produce items of furniture from ‘Lists’ of requested items from occupations and squats around Athens and attempt to initiate ongoing programmes.

This exhibition is in collaboration with the Athens Biennale.

Exhibition Duration: 14th – 26th October, 2017 | 12:00 – 20:00
Fourthspace Workshops: 15th – 24th October, 2017 | 12:00 – 18:00
Venue: Bageion Hotel | 18 Omonoia Square, Athens

For more information please visit exhibition’s facebook page here.

Post Picturesque: Photographing Ireland, Rochester Arts Centre, Minnesota 29 June – 10 September 2017

Ireland beckons tourists with its near-mythic rural beauty, even in post-Celtic Tiger, previous economically robust times. To many outside the island, Ireland’s identity continues to be entrenched in the romantic vision of idyllic, rustic people and places. Tourists are fed photos of bucolic green fields, stone walls, ruins, grazing beasts and cottages that perpetuate practices of the picturesque, which pushes the real, contemporary experience of Irish life out of view. Defying the inherent natural beauty of Ireland, Irish photographers embrace the challenge of representing a new, emboldened Irish identity through quizzical, charming, daring and truthful photography.

This exhibition presents exciting new work by cutting-edge Irish artists, created with critical intelligence, a keen sense of history, compositional vigor, and lively humor still deeply embedded in place.  Each artist grapples with the challenge of visually defining a landscape that retains many features of Ireland’s agrarian past, even its sectarian conflict, as well as more modern concerns of turbulent economic forces, farming methods, European Union regulations, real estate development, and lifestyle choices which effect Ireland’s rural experience and urban challenges.

Playing between the lines of picturesque and practical, Jill Quigley’s Rural Fluorescent series actively engages the abandoned, overlooked and unexciting, caught in the drama of the unexpected. Questioning the notions of beauty associated with representing landscape, Miriam O’Connor intercedes through whimsical display of the domestic, while David Farrell disrupts through digging into the dark history contained in the land. Paul Gaffney descends deep into the dark forest, entry to a hidden current of a Gothic underworld, mysterious and myopic, both beautiful and dangerous. Similarly, plunged into Paul Coyle’s painterly Lovely Water series, the viewer bounces on the waves, there in the same spot, Dublin’s famous Forty Foot cove, witness to change in light and form.  Anthony Haughey and Martin Cregg explore the sublime and beautiful potential of abandoned relics of Celtic Tiger overdevelopment. Two more photographers consider the living and working potential of everday alternatives created by women running farms in Anna Rackard’s Farmers and by new age, utopian seeking commune in the West of Ireland in Ruby Wallis’ Unfixed Landscape. The Irish picturesque, under the postcolonial critique, is associated with domination and control by outsiders. By  contrast, this exhibition celebrates Irish artists’ experience of their own land and their inventive approaches to picturing place.

On the tenth year anniversary of the photographies journal, the editors, David Bate and Liz Wells, take part in an in-conversation on the contribution of the journal to critical debates and international issues for contemporary photography today. With special guest speakers, including Louise Wolthers (Hasselblad Foundation, Sweden) and Anthony Haughey (photographer and tutor at Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland).

The event is supported by Routlege, Plymouth University and University of Westminster.
The ten year anniversary conference takes place in London on Thursday 18 May & Friday 19 May 2017.

The Politics of Images – FIF_BH 2017 – International Festival of Photography of BH

UNresolved video installation

Anthony Haughey Artist talk video during the festival 

The importance of understanding the role of images in political constructions is directly related to the possibility of criticizing and re-creating them. The emergence of more balanced symbolic systems depends on political and power relations, both ethical and plural. The Moving Images Program intents to reflect about the many creative possibilities presented by artists working with the nonstatic state of the image, in the intersection between photography, video, animation, animated GIF, cinema and new technologies. 
These works will be shown at the FIF-BH Main Exhibition 2017.