The Potential of Vacancy  Live 8 January edition

 

 

 

    

 

 

Live@8 is an event in Bar 8, Galway, every two months. Each event is curated by an invited guest and festures screening, performances, installation, sound and improvised music. It is organised by Vivienne Dick, Áine Phillips and Maeve Mulrennan. The aim of live@8 is for people to engage with art in an informal atmosphere, where there is room for dialogue and experimentation.

 

This edition is curated by Jennifer Cunningham and Sinead Mc Cann. They will show a selection of video work and performance art by artists from all over Ireland, Britain and Sweden. Jennifer Cunningham and Sinead Mc Cann studied together on the Masters in Fine art programme in NCAD from 2006- 2008. They both took an interest in each others work.

 

In May 2010 Sinead was awarded a residency for 5 weeks in a vacant shop on the main street in Dunlaoghaire as part of the The Creative Policies for Creative Networks at GRADCAM. As part of this residency she curated two events. During this time Jennifer and Sinead discussed the possibilities of co curating a show together in Galway. The result is the Live 8 themed  “The Potential of Vacancy” 

 

 

Artists have responded in a number of different ways from comments on Irelands property boom, to work dealing with the more psychological aspects of the theme to Vincent Sheridan's work mapping the flight of flocks of birds, He is concerned with the social behaviour, flight dynamics and subliminal 'brushstroke' patterns of birds in flight.

 

 Liminal space is also a common tangent, for example the liminal space of vacant lots, Windtubines in an open landscape, or the liminal space that can be found in Ciara Mc Mahon’s work on transplant patients. Her piece deals with the malleable space between the embodied same and other, a subjective hybridity where one has a physical element of another inside one.