It’s the first day of orientation here at UCD — the autumn semester is upon us! I’ve just updated all of the arts jobs listings, and will post a fall preview (looking ahead to events in the coming weeks) on the blog very soon 🙂
A special welcome to all of our undergraduates in art history, and postgraduates in art history and cultural policy this year!
Dragana Jurisic, Jessie, 2016
I’m very pleased to share details of an exhibition I’ve curated and just opened at Lismore Castle Arts, at St Carthage Hall, in Lismore Co. Waterford
The Museum of August Destiny (17 July – 4 September) features six artists born or working in Ireland and explores the resonance of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, a century after it was written. The participating artists are Aideen Barry, Mark Clare, Amanda Coogan, Anthony Haughey, Dragana Jurisic and Sarah Pierce.
The exhibition proposes an alternative means of making 1916 again manifest, by creating a ‘capsule’ museum responding to the final line of the 1916 Proclamation:
In this supreme hour the Irish nation must by its valour and discipline and by the readiness of its children to sacrifice themselves for the common good, prove itself worth of the august destiny to which it is called.
The Museum of August Destiny has commissioned each artist to respond to one of six ‘visions’ of Irish destiny set out in the Proclamation: (1) sovereignty and ‘unfettered control of Irish destinies’; (2) religious and civil liberty; (3) equal rights and opportunities for citizens; (4) the pursuit of happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and all of its parts; (5) cherishing the children of the nation; and (6) oblivion of the differences ‘which have divided a minority from the majority in the past’.
Housed within museum cases on loan from the Pearse Museum at St. Enda’s, Rathfarnham, the six artworks present individual meditations (utilizing sounds/objects/images) on the realization or retreat from our ‘august destiny’. A seventh case will host rotating contributions from the residents of Lismore and its surrounds: making visible a range of political, personal, conceptual, utopian, critical, and condemnatory responses.
The essay accompanying the exhibition can be downloaded here.
Lismore Castle Arts
General opening: Monday – Sunday, 10.30 – 5.30
St Carthage Hall opening hours: Friday – Sunday, 1-6 pm
Running: 17 July-4 September
Admission to St Carthage Hall is free
Just a wee note about a conference I’m co-organising next week (14-16 March), hosted by Maynooth University and organised/funded as part of the NWO-funded International Network of Irish Famine Studies (of which I’m a core member).
Registration is free! If you’ve an interest in Famine studies, visual/material culture, or historical memory, please feel free to register and come along.
We’ve a fantastic programme that includes seven panels of top-notch papers, five keynote speakers (including me, speaking on Evidencing Eviction: the Visibility of Irish Poverty, 1870-90 on Weds.), and a range of special events, including:
All details (including travel, accommodation, and full schedule) are on the conference website.
UCD Artist in Residence Dominic Thorpe, working with students from UCD’s Visual Arts Society (Drawsoc), Spring 2015
As many of you know I’ve been working for the past year as part of the NCAD + UCD Strategic Alliance project. I’m delighted to share today that we’ve received the green light from UCD to officially establish the UCD & NCAD Centre for Creative Arts & Critical Cultures, of which I will be Co-Director (along with Prof. Jessica Hemmings, Visual Culture, NCAD).
This is the first research centre at UCD to be formally co-hosted with another higher education institution. Its aim is to promote, initiate and coordinate cross-institutional academic activity in the domain of creative arts and critical cultures, across NCAD and UCD’s schools, colleges and disciplines. Here are a few more details of our ambitions:
The Centre for Creative Arts & Critical Cultures supports a cross-institutional, creative academic community whose work bears an affinity of interest in the arts, culture and critical studies — amplifying the impact and reach of this work across both institutions, and beyond to wider society. It will achieve these aims by developing new teaching and research initiatives, promoting and supporting the activities of its affiliated members, and facilitating collaborations between the two institutions.
Our population includes undergraduate and postgraduate students, postdoctoral scholars, academic faculty and staff, and associated artists, critics/writers, designers, architects, and cultural producers. From music to theatre, visual arts to literature, to architecture and design — researchers at NCAD and UCD are nationally and internationally recognized as experts and innovators in the creative arts. However, the Centre’s mission is not constrained to any single discipline, or limited to the arts and humanities. What connects our community is a spirit of intellectual openness and the belief that imaginative thinking and approaches can transform scientific, social scientific, and humanistic enquiry.
By creating this community of scholars we seek to explore alternatives to traditional disciplinary canons; collectively propose new theoretical frameworks; and inspire in each other new forms of artistic and intellectual practice. The Centre will promote cross-disciplinarity and the scholarly ambitions of the community at its core, by:
- Hosting symposia, conferences, exhibitions and joint events
- Supporting joint publications and creative dissemination of research
- Encouraging and sharing information about funding and training opportunities (national, international, European), with the aim of developing joint applications
- Developing opportunities for staff exchange, mentorship and career development (postgraduate and staff)
- Developing ‘research clusters’ that will bring together groups of researchers working across both institutions on related themes
- Promoting the co-supervision of PhDs and funding applications to support them
- Informing the development of UCD and NCAD’s strategic research objectives
- Promoting the vision of an interlinked creative campus which welcomes and supports cultural activity, and innovative, cross-disciplinary thinking
The Centre will be discussed further at the NCAD Academic Council meeting on 17 June. We’re looking forward developing a full programme and formal launch event for the autumn semester (lots more details to come) — and announcing the outcome of our recent €30,000 seed funding call — but for now, I’m really excited about this new challenge ahead, and the possibilities it will create for students and staff!
More details are also available here: http://ncad-ucd.ie/project-strands/creative-arts-critical-cultures/
We are delighted to publish the newest issue of the Irish Journal of Arts Management & Cultural Policy. Contents include new research on artist-led temporary spaces; intangible heritage; artists’ emotional experiences and curating; and reviews of recently published books on cultural policy.This internationally peer-reviewed journal is open-access and free to read online! Please share with colleagues, friends & students…
A call for submissions for issue 3 will follow shortly.
