126’s Restless show will be continuing until the 27th. It contains work by 13 Artists, ranging from the performance, sculpture and unconventional painting that I’ve mentioned to photography, video, installation and decomposing pork gelatine.
I’m usually not into performance pieces, if I had casually come across Kerry Guinan’s work in a gallery, instead of being next to it for a couple of hours a day, I don’t think it would have had the same effect on me. I think Guinan’s piece (and her work by large) is very strong, important actively civic stuff. To have this kind of piece which is not visual entertainment, next to a piece like Inguna Gremzde’s Small Worlds, which is easy to access because of it classical skill and playfulness, makes the show so strong as a whole. It’s Irish and international, it’s disgusting and beautiful, it’s accessible and intellectual.
The public
Every one like Small worlds, every one inquired about Bacon and Cabbage (mistaking it for frozen urine was common in the beginning), most people requested permission to handle Gallagher’s Untitled. Younger fashionable types liked Call of duty, most smiled when they discovered Holly’s Remembering Game made sound and moved, many stood and watched Hotel Penn. More attention was paid to the production quality of the photographs than discourses possibley posed by content. Several visiters thought the 126 show was the best they had seen during the Arts Festival.
The work on show in the Absolute gallery is established art, art with a capital A. it is presented as cultural capital. Questioning the validity of it undermines your culture competence, whereas the 126 show is more inclusive. The one of the aims of 126 is to investigate the relationship between contemporary art and the public. 126, unlike the Absolute gallery, does not hold that iconographic religious feel. The Galway International Arts Festival is obviously great. But this is art as spectacle. Small concentrated doses of established art does not constitute an active art community, the work of 126, the only non-profit art venue in Galway city, facilitates art discourse as a part of everyday life.
I’m usually not into performance pieces, if I had casually come across Kerry Guinan’s work in a gallery, instead of being next to it for a couple of hours a day, I don’t think it would have had the same effect on me. I think Guinan’s piece (and her work by large) is very strong, important actively civic stuff. To have this kind of piece which is not visual entertainment, next to a piece like Inguna Gremzde’s Small Worlds, which is easy to access because of it classical skill and playfulness, makes the show so strong as a whole. It’s Irish and international, it’s disgusting and beautiful, it’s accessible and intellectual.
The public
Every one like Small worlds, every one inquired about Bacon and Cabbage (mistaking it for frozen urine was common in the beginning), most people requested permission to handle Gallagher’s Untitled. Younger fashionable types liked Call of duty, most smiled when they discovered Holly’s Remembering Game made sound and moved, many stood and watched Hotel Penn. More attention was paid to the production quality of the photographs than discourses possibley posed by content. Several visiters thought the 126 show was the best they had seen during the Arts Festival.
The work on show in the Absolute gallery is established art, art with a capital A. it is presented as cultural capital. Questioning the validity of it undermines your culture competence, whereas the 126 show is more inclusive. The one of the aims of 126 is to investigate the relationship between contemporary art and the public. 126, unlike the Absolute gallery, does not hold that iconographic religious feel. The Galway International Arts Festival is obviously great. But this is art as spectacle. Small concentrated doses of established art does not constitute an active art community, the work of 126, the only non-profit art venue in Galway city, facilitates art discourse as a part of everyday life.