2MOVE: Ireland, Exhibition at Belfast Exposed

Saturday 03 May 2008

Monday 02 June 2008

1.00pm

3.00pm

Belfast Exposed Gallery & Solstice Arts Centre

entrance is free

Event

2MOVE: Ireland presents an exciting range of video work exploring the connections between video, mobility, migratory culture and our contemporary world. This exhibition is part of a wider international touring project 2move curated by Mieke Bal and Miguel Hernández-Navarro. Opening Saturday 3rd May until 2nd June, 2008.

Northern Ireland and Ireland have seen dramatic changes in recent years and a reversal of the direction of modern migration - from emigration to immigration. We celebrate our diaspora and continue to consider and respond to the complex social issues it can involve. As a cross-border society we now have a newer phenomenon to make sense of: our increasing cultural, ethnic, racial and religious diversity. This exhibition demonstrates that the contexts, histories and consequences of ongoing social migrations are now necessarily apparent in the themes and media of art from many places around the globe.

The exhibition is divided between two venues and brings together a number of significant artworks by artists of world renown who explore connections between video and cultures of migration.

The artists at Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast, Northern Ireland are:
The Atlas Group (Walid Raad), Mieke Bal, Ursula Biemann, Cinema Suitcase (Michelle Williams), Conce Codina, Keren Cytter, Mona Hatoum, Farhad Kalantary, William Kentridge, Zen Marie, Michael McLoughlin, Melvin Moti, Pedro Ortuno, Jesús Segura, Gary Ward.

The artists at Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Co Meath, Ireland are:
Gonzalo Ballester, Ursula Biemann, Célio Braga, Cinema Suitcase (Mieke Bal/Gary Ward), Cinema Suitcase (Michelle Williams), Anne Cleary and Denis Connolly, Conce Codina, Keren Cytter, Wojtek Doroszuk, Mona Hatoum, Anthony Haughey, Samira Jamouchi, Liza Johnson, William Kentridge, Daniel Lupión, Zen Marie, Melvin Moti, Pedro Ortuno, Javier Pividal, Thomas Sykora, Roos Theuws.

This exhibition captures contemporary multiple senses of movement through the media of video and the art it makes. These artists reflect on social movements and the cultural ‘looks’ and realities these transitions bring with them. They present migration as voluntary, forced, intimate, large-scale, fleeting and inescapable. They explore senses of accessibility, experiment, novelty, and community at a time of great migratory change. We hope 2MOVE: Ireland will make a contribution to our changing self-understanding in Northern Ireland and Ireland, and add to a wider awareness of the breadth of artistic possibility within a never-ending exchange between people, places and art.

- Niamh Ann Kelly and Siún Hanrahan, Curators, 2MOVE: Ireland.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Department of Social Development, Esmée Fairbairn, Belfast City Council, Navan Town Council, Meath County Council, Limerick City Gallery of Art, Eidotech, DV4 and Margreet Vermeulen.
2move is co-produced by Zuiderzeemuseum and Murcia Cultural (Murcia Cultural S.A. and Consejería de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes), and has been exhibited in Murcia Cultural in Murcia, Spain; Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen, The Netherlands; and Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway. Website: www.doublemovement.org.