Belfast Exposed Photography hosts 2MOVE: Ireland

Written by Claudia Hepburn Monday, 29 November 2010 21:38

Belfast, Ireland - 2MOVE: Ireland presents an exciting range of video work by international artists exploring the connections between video, mobility, migratory culture and our contemporary world. 2MOVE: Ireland is part of a wider international touring project 2MOVE curated by internationally renowned cultural theorist and critic Mieke Bal and art historian Miguel Hernández-Navarro. On exhibition 3 May - 2 June, 2008.

2MOVE: Ireland will be exhibited across two venues in Ireland (North and South): Belfast Exposed in Belfast, Northern Ireland and the Solstice Arts Centre in Navan, Co. Meath, Republic of Ireland.

WHY
Ireland has seen dramatic changes in the last decade, unprecedented economic growth and a reversal of the direction of migration – from emigration to immigration.  We celebrate our diaspora and have begun to make sense of and respond to the complex social issues it can involve. As a society we now have a new phenomenon to make sense of, our increasing diversity. The international touring exhibition 2MOVE is timely in this regard and has the potential to make an important contribution to our changing self-understanding as a nation.

  Across Ireland, North and South, cities, towns and villages have become more heterogeneous. For example, music, cinema and news media have been enriched through variety. Meanwhile, migrants also change. Their double relationship to host and home country produces an aesthetic, which, in turn, further contributes to changes in the host countries and their cultural expressions.

HOW
This exhibition captures this contemporary multiple sense of movement – in the media and the art it makes, and in the social movement and the cultural ‘look’ it brings with it. Taking video to be inherently connected to the migratory, the exhibition brings together a number of significant international video works. Connections between video and the culture of migration are explored – the sense of accessibility, experiment, novelty, and community.

As Ireland and Northern Ireland are newly experiencing significant levels of inward migration, we hope the outcome of this exciting exhibition will be multi-layered. We hope that as well as enriching the Irish art scene, 2MOVE: Ireland will generate discussions within and beyond the art world about the significance of the cultural changes and opportunities our new experience of migration has to offer, and the kinds of response that it demands.

WHAT
The exhibition consists of 29 video works, the core of which is curated by Mieke Bal and Miguel Hernández-Navarro. Most of these works are previously unseen in Ireland and explore a contemporary multiple sense of movement, both through the use of the moving image and the exploration of impacts of social movement and migration.  We have included 3 works by Irish artists working on these subjects for the 2MOVE: Ireland exhibition.

Critically, a series of events – gallery talks, workshops and documentary film screenings on migration – will take place alongside the exhibition. This will facilitate greater understanding of migration and the significance of Ireland’s new experience of cultural change and the kinds of responses that it demands.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS :

2MOVE: Ireland is curated by Niamh Ann Kelly and Siún Hanrahan 2MOVE: Ireland is supported by 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 and Limerick City Gallery of Art.

2Move has been exhibited in Murcia Cultural in Murcia, Spain; Zuiderzeemuseum in Enkhuizen, the Netherlands and Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway.  Website: www.doublemovement.org. 2Move is co-produced by Zuiderzeemuseum and Murcia Cultural (Murcia Cultural S.A. and Consejería de Cultura, Juventud y Deportes).

FURTHER INFORMATION
_Sarah Thorn or Karen Downey at Belfast Exposed Photography – info-at-belfastexposed.org, t. +44 02890 230965
_Aine Kiernan, Solstice Arts Centre, Navan - Aine.Kiernan-at-solsticeartscentre.ie,  t. +353 046 9092300

Belfast Exposed Photography - The Exchange Place | 23 Donegall Street | BELFAST | BT1 2FF -  www.belfastexposed.org

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