Activating Pangea: Acts to Objects

The exhibition is the final in a three year programme titled “Activating Pangea”, a series focused on the promotion of Irish Contemporary Art in Los Angeles curated by MART’s Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan. Acts to Objects brings together artists from Ireland and LA that span a number of generations, in order to explore the role of spectacle in feminist practice today.

Art and cultural practice often seeks to challenge the primacy of the visual in Western culture, as dominated by a “pervasive masculinised privileged gaze” (Irigaray). To affect change women artists too have sought ways to refute, undermine and evade this primacy of the visual in art practice in order to find a “visual language and a voice that can be heard” (Mary Kelly).

So too, have artists harnessed and heightened the spectacle of the visual as means to staking a claim to the authorship of cultural practice, and thereby a form of subjectivity. It is in the tradition of these ‘attention grabbers’ that the artists in this show employ strategies that arrest and twist the gaze, that clamber for visibility. The artworks play with and investigate the idea of art as spectacle, whether refracting and manipulating light, playing on expectations of material form and colour, or performing acts that intervene in social space and norms.

As a set of work disparate in form, from sculpture to performance, together they speak to ideas of spectacle. The artworks shun the lingering forces that continue to undermine women’s right to cultural authorship, unapologetic in staking their claim to visibility. The philosophical terms that frame westernised art practices assert ‘calling attention to’ as a critical strategy: these artworks glisten, tousle and shout.

The exhibition is staged in Los Angeles, the locus of production of the Hollywood spectacle, that much early feminist discourse critiqued for its dominant gendered narratives that constantly position women as passive objects to the active masculine look, that continues to persist in new forms. Bringing together artists from Los Angeles and Ireland that span a number of generations, in order to explore the role of spectacle in feminist practice today.

‘Activating Pangea’ is three year series of exhibitions curated by MART {Dublin}, who will work with Los Angeles based galleries and art fairs to strategically promote leading Irish Contemporary Visual Artists.

The Curators: Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan.

Since 2008, Dublin based curators Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan have sought to create opportunities by conceiving creative platforms to support artists from all stages of their careers to test new ground. As a curatorial partnership they have curated over 100 artists through several international exhibitions across Ireland, UK, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Greece, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Japan, Jackson Mississippi, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles. In 2013 the curators launched The MART Gallery & Studios {Dublin, Ireland}; housing two large galleries in a renovated old fire station and have expanded their studio network to host over 120 members in seven7 studio buildings across Dublin.