Friday June 28, 2013 – Friday June 28, 2013

National College of Art & Design

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Description:

Visual Artists Ireland: Get Together 2013 – Friday 28th June 2013

A day of engaged sharing, networking and information provision.

Visual Artists Ireland is pleased to announce that the Get Together 2013 will take place on Friday, June 28th at the National College of Art & Design, Dublin.

The Get Together gives practicing artists and those involved in the contemporary art world the opportunity to hear from and engage in discussion with invited international and local speakers about a number of key concerns and opportunities.

This day-long event comprises four strands that will run simultaneously: Short Information Briefings, Art Writing, Current Trends in Academia and Cultural Corridors. The Common Room Cafe will provide a social space through out the day for taking time out, networking and gaining information. A Speed Curating event will also take place, where artists and curators will meet in quick-fire sessions. During lunch, our keynote speaker (TBA) will deliver a talk, and the day will culminate with a wine reception where discussions from the day can be continued in an informal way.

There will also be a prize draw, where the winner will receive an original work by Nathalie du Pasquier entitled Sligo (5). Your paid registration will entitle you to a ticket as well as entry on the day.

Is it for me?

The key question that we are asked by artists and those working in the visual arts is…  Is this day for me?  Will I get anything from it? Who will be there?

Our answer is clear. Yes, this is for you. If you are an artist working in the broad ranging realm of practices that encompass the catch all term Visual Arts, then clearly the day is designed with you in mind. This is your national day of gathering with like minded people from around the country.

What will I get out of it?

The day is designed so that a wide range of interests and topics will be opened up for discussion. You may wish to find out about protecting yourself legally or wish to know how to get your work seen… or you want to know more about talking or writing about your work… you may be more interested in how art and the community works… you may find that you are looking for advice or information on support services… or, you may want to find how you can be supported in your career choice and professional life… You will find all of that and more during the day.

Who will be there?

It’s simple, the day will see artists and art workers from all over the island of Ireland. We will bring curators and experts from Ireland, England, The Netherlands, Switzerland, to name just a few, to join us and to give us some insight into their own experience. Visual artists are the largest of the creative sectors and this is the day when we will all gather together.

What will the day be like?

The day is broken up into a series of briefings, conversations, debates, and interaction that will allow even the most shy and reticent of artists to come and join with fellow artists and discover more about the world in which we live and work. As well as formal discussion, there will be presentations on topics of interest, and also plenty of opportunity to simply perch and talk to friends and colleagues in a friendly and open environment

Exactly what is happening on the day?

There’s lots, so take your time and check out the day… You’ll see that there is something for everyone. AND! don’t forget to book soon!

The Programme

Info & Briefings

Empty Spaces
Eoin Dara & Kim McAleese (Satis House/Household, Belfast) | Noelle Collins & Orlaith Treacy (Occupy Space, Limerick) | Vanessa Fielding & Annemarie Kilshaw (The Complex, Dublin)

This session will consider a range of projects and organisations  in Ireland currently utilising slack urban space, or transforming other functioning spaces within cities into sites for the presentation of contemporary art. We will look at the challenges involved in engaging audiences in meaningful ways within environments beyond established arts spaces, and discuss how this type of activity can contribute to the growth and development of a broader arts infrastructure in Ireland. We will also be discussing how making use of vacant properties contributes to the regeneration of communities, particularly those in marginalised areas.

Stuff That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Do But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered
Mary Conlon
A practical guide to setting challenges, failing spectacularly and presenting the work you want to do instead of the work you think is wanted of you.

Outside the Box
Jason E Bowman

This session reflects on how opportunities in the private sector can cupport the development of individual and collective practices. We will look at some ideas around new routes to managing your practice and suggest tools and methods to manage project and build sustainability.

Thinking about abroad: Do they not know who I am!
ArtQuest Nicholas Kaplony

In this session Nick Kaplony, Artquest’s Senior-Programme Coordinator will be considering the motivations, benefits and challenges that artists might face when working abroad. The session will also consider some of the strategies and tools that might help an artist make the most of an opportunity overseas.

European Cultural Contact Point – The Arts Council’s perspective

This session will address preparing for making applications for European funding. It will provide examples of best practice and discuss projects that have suceeded in obtaining funding from EU sources.

Dynamic Communities
Lisa Fingleton, Linda Shevlin

Linda Shevlin and Lisa Fingleton are artist/filmmakers working in Roscommon and Kerry respectively. Both artists are active agents in their own rural communities collaborating with local communities, developing artist networks as well as working on their own individual practice. This dynamic and interactive presentation will explore some of the challenges facing artists who live in remote rural locations and how these two artists are integrating their lives and practice within their local communities.In this session Linda will speak about her experiences working within the collective as well as her wider practice that often engages collaborative methodologies. Lisa will discuss the three key principles, which help her maintain a sustainable practice: participation, partnership and process. She will share her learning as filmmaker in residence with Kerry County Council and her collaborative, interdisciplinary film and art projects including ‘Come Walk in my Wellies’, and ‘Memory Through Media’

Internships – The Aspiration and the Reality
Bernadette Beecher
Panel includes: Claire Power, TBG&S; Gina O’Kelly, Irish Museums Association; Jim Ricks, Artist; Áine Macken, Artist; Bernadette Beecher, Visual Artists Ireland

A taskforce reviewing the place of interns in the cultural sector was set up last year.  This taskforce includes representatives from institutions as well as artists who have been placed in internships. These representatives will be present at the short briefing on a panel that will review its findings so far and discuss how to move forward by placing the information obtained in an open forum for discussion with the Get Together 2013 audience.

ASK! Has The Artist Been Paid & The Artists’ Charter
Noel Kelly – CEO Visual Artists Ireland

This session will review progress made to date on research into establishing standards for artists’ payments for the wide range of services that artists provide to publically funded institutions. The session will review findings of the recent survey, and look at best practices around the world, with suggestions of a potential model for Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Protecting yourself, protecting your work
Alex Davis (IVARO)

Insurance Info Session
Claire Dumbrell (O’Driscoll O’Neill)

General guide to Insurance for Artists, Breaking down all the official terms to make insurance simple.

Editioning and Fine Art Printing – a practical guide
Leszek Wolnik

The talk will cover the essentials of making editioned prints from paintings, illustrations, drawings and digital originals, achieving the highest standards of quality & conservation. Topics covered will include: The practicalities and techniques of making editioned and fine art prints both from original artworks and as original prints from computer generated images and photography. The unique relationship between the artist and the Master Printer working collaboratively to achieve the artist’s vision through the craft and expertise of the printer; edition sizing and pricing and how to derive new income strands from existing artwork; marketing and selling fine art and editioned prints; the conventions of what comprises a limited edition and what is an artist’s proof in the modern print atelier. The talk will include a question and answer session and is intended as an introduction to a one day workshop with VAI later in the year.

Arts Audiences
Arts Audiences is a partnership initiative of the Arts Council and Temple Bar Cultural Trust. We encourage and support arts organisations to adopt audience-focussed practices and to set targets. Arts Audiences will update on the expanding Here and Now initiative in visual arts, which aims to provide a picture of audiences for the visual arts in Ireland, and how to make the most of information about audiences.

Entering and Re-entering Practice
Speaker to be announced

Aimed at recent graduates but also artists returning to their practice after a period of time. This talk will involve observations from an artist and a curator on: how artists build and maintain their networks; develop and recognise their own art-world. It will also address the ‘DNA of Opportunties’ i.e. the conversations, connections and affinities that sit behind exhibitions and projects.

It will also discuss the importance of researching venues, curators, opportunities and contexts that are of interest to you, looking at the need to be relevant and informed about current concerns in the art and social world.  From both an artistic and curatorial perspective it will look at the importance of showing your work; maintaining an up to date web presence and staying active and visible in ‘your art world’.

CREATE Debate

The Artist and Civic Life, collaborating with the Socio- Political + Environmental.

As part of Visual Arts Ireland’s annual GET TOGETHER, Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, has curated a series of contributions focussing on artists whose collaborations have inspired them, through the artistic process, to engage in environmental and socio- political arenas.

We are asking the presented artists to reflect on the motivations behind their work, to elaborate on the processes they undertake and to consider their work and its role in relation to broader discussions around art and society and the role of the artist in civic life.

Presentation + In Conversation with Katherine Atkinson Create

The sessions will involve a 20-30 minute presentation of work followed by a question and answers session facilitated by Katherine Atkinson from Create.

Socio-Political context- Seamus Nolan –  10th President by Irish artist Seamus Nolan.

“As a way of honouring the survivors of institutional abuse in Ireland and of recognising those who died in institutional and state care, Seamus Nolan has invited President Michael D Higgins to hand over, for the period of one day, the Presidency of Ireland posthumously to Willie Delaney, a child who died whilst under the care of the state. William Delaney, 13 when he died had spent the preceding three years in St Joseph’s industrial school Letterfrack. His name has been put forward as a representative of the children who have suffered abuse, neglect and fatal injury throughout the history of the state.”

Environmental context: Sean Taylor-as part of Softday (Mikael Fernstrom & Sean Taylor) Amhrán na mBeach

Amhrán na mBeach (Song of the Bees) is the result of a project by the Limerick-based art/science collaboration Softday (Sean Taylor and Mikael Fernström). The project aims to connect the life of honeybees and the threats to their wellbeing from diseases, and raise public awareness about this sensitive part of our ecosystem.

Softday have collaborated with beekeepers and scientists in Ireland and abroad, gathering scientific data and field recordings of the acoustic ecology of bee habitats, and converting this research into music. As part of the project, the duo have worked with the monks of Glenstal Abbey in Murroe, Co. Limerick, who are beekeepers, running a number of workshops there for beekeepers on how to record and play sounds from their own habitats.

Research & Questioning

Out of Line (OoL) Lab for Art and Political Theory
Una Henry

Out of Line (OoL) Lab for Art and Political Theoryis an Amsterdam based (inter)national, interdisciplinary investigative platform that aims to examine what, how and who exists in the archives of cultural history while exploring the links between contemporary art practices, education, cinema, tactile media and political activism. OoL is working collaboratively with local and international partners in the development of a participative online evolving archive of commons publications, texts, images and videos on creative practice and cultural developments that occurred (locally and internationally) and accessible to everyone.

Out of Line raises fundamental questions about how history can be written at this precise moment when there are unlimited and complex social, cultural, economic, political, religious and class constructs at play. How do we begin to share the story of our contemporary moment? How does one deal with differences among local conditions? How might one impart a piece of knowledge, an experience to someone else, of making something that is not common, common to all? How are we connected and does this interconnectivity reveal a peculiar historic moment. How do we come to terms with and appreciate the vast complexity of global and local influences? Art is no longer the primary influence for culture and because of this its position is precarious to the steady state of mediated two-dimensional cultural production.  Art offers a way of thinking about a different world, and has the potential to redress the balance between culture, politics and economy. Out of Line follows the principle of aggregation that configures the forms of participation in a political community.

The project concept is initiated and developed by Una Henry who is an Amsterdam based cultural producer, concurrently undertaking a DPhil reading Fine Arts at the University of Oxford, UK.

“Cultural Diversity in Arts Participation – exploring and engaging in partnerships”
Dr. Alvina Grosu, Cultural Diversity Adviser Arts Council of Ireland

Arts Council developed the Policy and Strategy for Cultural  Diversity in the Arts in order to inform its work over the coming years and to support the wider arts sector in developing its thinking and practice. Cultural Diversity in the contexts of Arts Participation  is emphasizing collaborative practices and development of partnerships between artists and culturally & ethnically diverse communities. This workshop will offer information and some examples of good practice.

Enemies of Good Art
Martina Mullaney

Martina Mullaney is an Irish born London based artist. After the birth of her daughter in 2009 she started the movement Enemies of Good Art, which began as a series of public meetings at the Whitechapel Gallery. She received a Masters Degree in Photography from the Royal College of Art in 2004. www.enemiesofgoodart.org

For her contribution to Get Together 13, Martina Mullaney will present the project Enemies of Good Art from its beginnings in 2009 in London to today. A short presentation will be followed by an open discussion on the subject of creativity and family commitments, and the taboo that still surrounds artists with children in the art world. Children are welcome at this event.

Visual Arts Sector & Academic Research Programme
– CLOSED FORUM – to join contact niamh@visualartists.ie

Visual Artists Ireland has initiated a programme to look at the potential for a central record of research being currently undertaken in post-graduate programmes across Ireland. The programme also looks at the potential for influencing stands of research that could be on benefit to the sector, and how this can be realised in the realities of the sectoral needs and academia’s methods of working. This will be a second meeting of the heads of academic research. Heads of academic research who have not taken part in the initial discussions are welcome to apply to participate. The session will look at ideas put forward by members of the initial consultation and seek to create a road map for the project.

Visual Arts Writing – Publicise, Interrogate, Record – in partnership with AICA Ireland

Art Writing Strand GET TOGETHER 2013

‘Publicise, Interrogate, Record’ the art-writing stand of VAI’s Get Together 2013 brings together speakers from the worlds of academia, art-history and media coverage of the visual arts (print, broadcast, online) to consider the multiple meanings, functions and potential of ‘art-writing’ in Ireland, with a focus on the role of criticism and addressing broader audiences.

Artists Writing / Art Writing / Academia
Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes. Head of Research Graduate School and Reader in History and Theory of Art at University of Ulster

This presentation offers an overview of a wide spectrum writings about art and the attendant issues and questions they raise. The subjects considered will include: countering the dearth of critical writing in Ireland, the desire to theorize and contextualize practice, by artists themselves and others; art-writing as a hybrid area of artistic engagement; academic agendas and issues, such as artists writing PhDs, and the status of the practice of artists who teach at third level as ‘research’.

Arts Criticism: Necessary or Arbitrary?
Marianne O’Kane Boal. Freelance Art & Architecture Critic – Irish Arts Review, Perspective, Living Design, Visual Artists Newsletter and Architecture Ireland

This presentation examines the historical evolution of criticism, as well as considering the fundamental questions about how and why the experience of viewing art should be mediated by critics / curators / writers? Associated issues will include – why is there a demand for an intervention between art and audience? Is it constructive for a critic to champion an individual artist?  What legacy does arts criticism have? What is criticisms its relevance to contemporary art practice and production?

Publicise, Interrogate, Record: The Panel Discussion
Chair: Declan Long – Course Director (­with Francis Halsall), of the MA Art in the Contemporary World at NCAD. Reviewer for Artforum, Source Photography & Arena (RTE). He is a member of the judging panel for the 2013 Turner Prize.

Panellists:

Cristín Leach Hughes (Art Critic for The Sunday Times Ireland, Freelance TV and radio contributor, RTÉ’s The Works).

Fionola Meredith (Belfast based freelance writer &broadcaster, Belfast. The Irish Times, The Belfast Telegraph. The Guardian, BBC NI )

Sarah Ryder (Assistant Commissioning Editor, RTE Factual, with responsibility for Arts)

Prof.Dr. Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes (Art Historian, curator, writer and Professor of Iconology, Belfast School of Art and former Head of Research Graduate School of the Faculty of Art, Design and the Built Environment, University of Ulster)

This discussion has been devised as a constructive response to the frequent complaint from with the visual arts sector, that there is a lack of serious media coverage in Ireland of contemporary art, which is in turn frustrating attempts to reach, develop and maintain audiences.

By bringing media experts together, this discussion will explore visual arts sector relationship with the media. The scope of discussion will include editorial policies – current and aspirational; what specific hooks and angles make the visual arts ‘news worthy’; and broad discussion about the role of arts focussed journalism as a form of socio / cultural barometer. We also hope there will be a mutual exchange – prompting greater media appreciation and understanding of the depth and vitality of the visual arts sector in Ireland.

The Common Room Café

The Common Room Café will form the central hub for the day. As well as a permanent tea and coffee supply, the Café will have information tables from a variety of organisations who work with visual artists.

Confirmed so far for the day are: The Arts Council of Ireland, The Arts Council of Northern Ireland, The Crafts Council, The Arts Council CCP, Visual Artists Ireland Help & Advice Desk, Visual Artists Ireland’ Advocacy Information Desk, Visual Artists Ireland’s Membership Services, Visual Artists Ireland’s Professional Development Programme; Visual Artists Ireland’s Artists Book Sale; IVARO, Digital Arts Studios, Artquest, CREATE, Block T, FIRE, Monster Truck, Louth Craft Mark, La Cathedra, D2Communications, Firestation Artists Studios, The Market Studios, Occupy Paper, Maurice Ward Shipping, Dublin Painting and Sketching Society, Catalyst Arts, ArtClash, Byrne Curtin Kelly Accountants, National Campaign for the Arts

Also in attendance on the day: Golden Thread Gallery, Baltic Mills, Man & Eve Gallery, Migros Museum, West Cork Art Centre, The Lab, Crawford Gallery, The MAC, Rubicon, RHA, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Cross Gallery/ NAG, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, and many others…

We are currently developing even more content which we will publicise as it is confirmed.

Tickets:

Current Members of VAI and AICA Ireland: €25
Non-Members of VAI: €50

Payments may be made by Credit Card, Cheque, Paypal, Debit Card or Cash. Cheques should be made payable to Visual Artists Ireland.

We are grateful to the Arts Council, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Dublin City Council, CREATE, and AICA Ireland for their support with this event. Inaddition to our sponsors shown at the bottom of this page, we are also grateful to Ireland’s EU Presidency 2013 for additional funding for our event. We are particularly grateful to NCAD for hosting the day and to Declan McGonagle for his support in creating what we believe will be a memorable event.

The Arts Council participation in the Cultural Programme to mark Ireland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union is supported by the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht/ Tá rannpháirtíocht na Comhairle Ealaíon sa Chlár Cultúrtha chun comóradh a dhéanamh ar Uachtaránacht na hÉireann ar Chomhairle an Aontais Eorpaigh á tacú ag an Roinn Ealaíon, Oidhreachta agus Gaeltachta.

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