LABOUR
a live exhibition of performances by
Northern & Southern Irish female artists February and March 2012
PRESS RELEASE
Anne Quail - Elvira Santamaria Torres - Amanda Coogan -
Pauline Cummins - Ann Maria Healy - Chrissie Cadman -Frances Mezzeti - Áine O’Dwyer -
Áine Phillips - Helena Walsh - Michelle Browne
LABOUR is a touring exhibition of Live Art, featuring eleven leading female artists who are resident within, or native to, Northern and Southern Ireland. LABOUR offers audiences unprecedented access to a huge body of live performance work by some of the most radical and exciting women artists emerging from an Irish cultural context.
LABOUR will launch in London, on the 9th and 10th of February, then tour to Derry/Londonderry (Feb 24th and 25th). The final exhibition and surrounding events will take place in Dublin on March 9th and 10th to coincide with International Women’s Day 2012.
LABOUR interrogates the gendered representational frameworks prevalent within an Irish cultural context, that produce, limit and devalue, various forms of female labour. In each durational exhibition participating artists will perform simultaneously for eight consecutive hours, reflecting the duration of an average working day. Set within the shadows of Ireland’s notorious Magdalene Laundries, LABOUR explores current shifts in the political and economic climate within an Irish cultural context.
LABOUR aims to develop critical and creative dialogues around the female body in an Irish cultural context and its broader geo-political significance. The live events will be accompanied by a programme of scheduled conversations with the artists (London & Derry/Londonderry), a symposium (Dublin) and the exhibition of materials and documents from Brutal Silences: Live Art and Irish Culture - a Study Room Guide comissioned by the Live Art Development Agency and authored by participating artists Ann Maria Healy and Helena Walsh (London).
‘LABOUR promises to be of great historical significance. Issues of labour and gender are particularly critical within an Irish context, and at the same time Irish women artists or women artists based in Ireland are creating some of the most exciting and challenging performance based work of our times.’
- Lois Keidan - the Live Art Development Agency
Event Dates & Times
All Artists talks and the Dublin symposium are free to attend, but booking is essential. To secure your booking at any of these events, please contact the LABOUR Team at: labourliveart@gmail.com
- All performances are free to attend and audiences may come & go as they please over the course of the 8 hour duration.
Link to our Facebook events page Here
London:
Thursday 9th Feb: Live performance from 1pm-9pm ]performance s p a c e [
Unit 6 Hamlet Industrial Estate, White Post Lane, Hackney Wick E95 EN.
9th to 16th of Feb: Materials and documents from Brutal Silences: Live Art and Irish Culture will be accessible to audiences in ]performance s p a c e [ from 9th to 16th of February.
Friday 10th of Feb: Post–show dialogue, 6.30-9pm, The Pinter Studio, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
Derry / Londonderry:
Friday 24th Feb: Artist talk, 6.30-9pm,Void Gallery, Patrick Street BT48 7EL
Saturday 25th Feb: Live Performance 11-7pm Void Gallery,
Dublin:
Friday 9th March: Symposium 12-5pm, The Lab, Foley Street, Dublin
Saturday 10th: Live performance 9.30am-5.30pm, The Lab.
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LABOUR is curated by: Chrissie Cadman, Amanda Coogan and Helena Walsh.
The project has been produced by Benjamin Sebastian of ]performance s p a c e [
Supported by the Live Art Development Agency, Sheena Barrett of the Lab, Dublin, Maoliosa Boyle of Void Gallery, Derry / Londonderry, The Drama Department of Queen Mary University of London, The Graduate School of Creative Arts and Media (Gradcam), Dublin and The University of Ulster, Belfast, The Arts Council of Ireland.
Image Credits (from left to right):
- Helena Walsh: Invisible Stains at Right, Here, Right Now, Kilmainham Gaol, 2010. (Photo: Joseph Carr)
- Amanda Coogan: Yellow, Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, 2008 (Photo: John Roch Simon)
- Chrissie Cadman: liquidation, NIPAF (Nippon International Performance Art Festival) Proto Theatre, Tokyo. Japan. 2008 (photo: NIPAF 2008) - Amanda Coogan: Yellow, Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin, 2008 (Photo: John Roch Simon)
