! FINAL WEEKEND: Saturday the 25th and Sunday the 26th of August !

For the last weekend of Everything can be done, in principle, a programme of events has been scheduled to consider this work, and mark the last day of skating at VISUAL.

See details of FINAL WEEKEND of EVENTS Saturday 25th and 26th of August. For information on film screenings, discussions, skating and live music see here

The summer season at VISUAL’s Galleries sees a collaboration between VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow Local Authorities Arts Office and The Éigse Carlow Arts Festival. This partnership makes possible the ambitious vision of artist Brian Duggan and curator Helen Carey

Everything can be done, in principle brings to visitors at VISUAL an installation of spectacle and scale. This timely collaboration marks a watershed moment for Irish arts and the cooperative potential that communities hold as a vital resource.

In an invitation to inhabit a story, and its cinematic interpretation, from 122 years ago, Brian Duggan’s work Everything can be done, in principle transports the public into a timber and canvas barn at America’s mid western frontier, at the time of the Johnson County War in Wyoming.

Duggan asks participants to roller skate in costume, to imagine the joyfulness of community, against the backdrop of dirt and corruption, in this portal in VISUAL’s extraordinary Galleries, just as the communities did in Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (1980).

Within this new commission, Duggan recognises the resilient human spirit in powerless communities and its standoffs with official power.

Cimino's film Heaven’s Gate is a film which broke the rules and supported true art through an often ruthless pursuit of authenticity, even to the extent of challenging the prevailing powerful studio system. Often seen as the beginning of money men era, Heaven’s Gate marked a changing moment for maverick auteur film directing and the role of the producer. It also branded the Western in clear class-struggle, selected social agenda terms.

Artist Brian Duggan (b.1971) lives and works in Dublin. His practice examines the prevailing conditions of when things go wrong, and sites of stress and breakage. Citing well known historical events as well as the overlooked small dramas of the everyday, he brings physical challenges into the gallery to ask questions, to exert pressure and to push boundaries.

http://www.everythingcanbedone.com

A publication has been produced in association with this exhibition with texts by Fiona Fullam, Rod Stoneman and Helen Carey. This can be purchased from box office or by contacting galleries@visualcarlow.ie

This unique catalogue was designed by PureDesigns, each essay is a limited edition newspaper, which all fold into each other, contained within a specially designed folder.
published by Visual Carlow, 2012 ISBN978-1-907537-07-3