Helena Tobin

Periodical Review #3

Terence Birch, Martina Galvin, Gemma Gore, Ramon Kassam, Paraic Leahy, Maggie Madden, Eoin McHugh, Paul McKinley, Bea McMahon, Dennis McNulty, Yvette Monahan, Laura Ni Fhlaibhin, Alan Phelan, Alex Rose, Padraig Spillane, Jason Thompson, Helena Tobin, Kathy Tynan, Maria Vedder, Freek Wambacq

An artwork, like a book is not made up of individual words on a page (or images on a screen), each of which with a meaning, but is instead ‘caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences’.*

Pallas Projects/Studios presents the third Periodical Reviewat their studios and project space in Dublin’s historic area of The Coombe. This unique, yearly survey of Irish contemporary art practices, looks at commercial gallery shows, museum exhibitions, artist-led and independent projects and curatorial practices.

Periodical Review is not a group exhibition per se, it is a discursive action, with the gallery as a magazine-like layout of images that speak (the field talking to itself). An exhibition as resource, in which we invite agents within the field to engage with what were for them significant moments, practices, works, activity, objects: nodes within the network.

Each year PP/S invite two peers – artists, writers, educators, curators – to review and subsequently nominate a number of art practices, which will be selected via an editorial meeting. Such a review-type exhibition within Irish art practice acts to revisit, be a reminder, a critical appraisal and consolidation of ideas and knowledge within the field of contemporary Irish art. Additionally, the exhibition has a fundraising element, with all commission on sales going towards the PP/S curated programme.

The exhibition is intended to act as a critical account of current contemporary practice; to facilitate and encourage collaboration, crossover and debate within the field of Irish contemporary art (through the invited co-curators, the aims of its selection, and discussion around it); to act as an accessible survey of contemporary art, expanding parameters to art practices around the country.

* Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge

Curators:

Michele Horrigan is an artist and curator. She studied fine art at the Stadelschule, Frankfurt and the University of Ulster. Since 2006, she is founder and curatorial director of Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Through an annual residency and production programme, the organisation has commissioned over forty artists projects in direct relationship to the town of Askeaton, County Limerick.

Matt Packer is a curator based in Cork. From 2008 to 2013, he was Curator of Exhibitions & Projects at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork. In 2013, he curated and directed a season of exhibitions at Treignac Projet, France. Matt is a graduate of the curatorial programme at Goldsmiths College, London, and a member of IKT: The International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.

“Helena Tobin’s A site of knowing:unknowing was part of Public Gesture, a series of exhibitions organised by students on the MA in Visual Arts Pracitces (MAVIS) programme, at IADT. Presented at The Lab in April, the installation addressed the history of Bridget Cleary, who in 1895 was burnt to death by her husband believing she had been abducted by fairies with a changeling left in her place. Tobin’s work explored the inner turmoil experienced by Michael Cleary, who retreated to a fairy fort on local hill afterwards to try to find within himself an answer to his wife’s afflictions. Along with using video, Tobin extracted soil for the hill in Tipperary, and transposed it to Dublin for the show. The resulting artwork is a poignant in its revelations of the stark reality of that era and how it stays with us today.” 

Michele Horrigan, curator, Periodical Review #3, Pallas Projects/Studios.