VISUAL is pleased to present a day of talks and a curator-led tour to mark the closing of our summer exhibition, Dreamtime Ireland. We look forward to welcoming you to VISUAL for an afternoon of reflection and celebration of this acclaimed and wide-ranging exhibition. .Admission is free and all are welcome, but booking is required through the link above.

2pm Curator-led tour of Dreamtime Ireland - Sean Lynch and Benjamin Stafford

Sean Lynch and Benjamin Stafford will lead a walk through of Dreamtime Ireland, looking in-depth at a selection of artworks that provoke us to think in new ways about art and its role in shaping how we experience the world.

Exhibition guide here.

3pm An introduction to NIVAL - Ruth Hallinan

Ruth Hallinan presents an introduction to the work of the National Irish Visual Arts Library, and a great opportunity for artists to engage with the process of archiving and preserving their practice. NIVAL collect, store and make accessible for research an unparalleled collection of documentation about Irish art, and was a valuable resource in the development of Dreamtime Ireland. In this talk, Ruth gives an overview of the work of NIVAL, the tools they provide to support artists in archiving and creating a public resource of their work, and looks at creative and unexpected examples of archiving and artist books.

https://www.nival.ie/

4pm Report from Los Angeles - Aurora Tang

Informed by Dreamtime Ireland’s curatorial inquiry into art in the public sphere in Ireland, Aurora Tang shares a report from Los Angeles. Focusing on a selection of public artworks from the late 1980s to 2000s, Aurora will present how each was interpreted by mainstream media at the time of unveiling, along with their present-day existence, considering what happens to these works of public art, and the places in which they are set, in the decades after they are installed.

auroratang.net

-

Please contact the VISUAL Box Office for further information or with any queries.

Contributor Biographies

Sean Lynch lives and works in Askeaton, County Limerick, Ireland. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Prominent solo exhibitions include Edinburgh Art Festival (2021); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Rose Art Museum, Boston (2016) and Modern Art Oxford (2014). He has held fellowships and been a visiting professor at universities and colleges in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, and is a graduate of the Stadelschule, Frankfurt. His work is represented by Ronchini, London and Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin. Alongside Michele Horrigan, he works at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led residency, commissioning and publication initiative situated in the west of Ireland since 2006.

Benjamin Stafford is Curator of Visual Arts at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art since 2021. He works closely with artists to realise exhibitions, performances and publications in Ireland and elsewhere.

Aurora Tang is a curator and researcher based in Los Angeles. She has worked with the Center for Land Use Interpretation since 2009, and currently serves as its program director. As an independent curator Tang has organized recent exhibitions at the MAK Center for Art and Architecture, MOCA Tucson, and Armory Center for the Arts.

The National Irish Visual Arts Library (NIVAL) is an initiative of NCAD in partnership with the Arts Council of Ireland. Since 1997, NIVAL has become the foremost centre for the documentation of contemporary art and design in Ireland. This institution holds thousands of files relating to art and artists in Ireland, as well as holding arguably the largest public-access artist book collection in the country. Assistant Manager, Ruth Hallinan, previously spent fifteen years working in Irish publishing and continues to work directly with artists at NIVAL with a focus on collecting their documentation for long-term preservation and public access. She was a member of Damn Fine Print for ten years and was named as one of the 150 most influential people in publishing by The Bookseller in 2021 and 2022.

Tickets are free but must be booked. They can be booked online, in person or over the phone at Box Office. Wheelchair users and any group over 8 persons should book tickets directly through Box Office. If you book a ticket and cannot attend, please let us know at your earliest convenience so someone else can avail of the ticket. Further Terms and Conditions can be found atvisualcarlow.ie/visit/booking-information.