Women and friends of the Family Resource Centre, St. Michael's Estate, Inchicore: Quilt, 1996, handpainted silk, 140 x 219 cm; from Once is too Much; courtesy Irish Museum of Modern Art

Once is too Much, at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny, is an opportunity to see an empowering and crucial exhibition first shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 1997. This exhibition was for both the women who participated, and the audience who now engage with it, to explore the issues around violence against women. These works were produced during and developed independently after workshops with international artists, by Women from St Michael's Estate, Inchicore, over a two-year duration. Originally shown alongside the work of Kiki Smith and the Andy Warhol retrospective at IMMA, this exhibition at the Butler Gallery presents us now with an opportunity to see the work in its own light. The exhibition runs from the 30 November to the 26 January.

Nan Goldin: At the bar - C, Toon and So, Second Tip, Bangkok, 1992; from Devil's Playground; courtesy Castello Rivoli

There is an opportunity for those of us who are fortunate to be able to travel to see Nan Goldin's Devil's Playground at the Castello di Rivoli. The show runs until January 12th. Goldin began taking photographs at the age of sixteen and had her first solo exhibition three years later, where she used realistic images to capture moments in the everyday lives of friends or people living at the fringes, such as the transvestites in her Drag Queens series. Goldin is considered one of the most influential photographers for recent generations of artists.

Lorraine Neeson: untitled, lamda print, from Crawford Open 3; courtesy Crawford Municipal Gallery

aboveleft: Barbara Ash: from Crawford Open 3; courtesy Crawford Municipal Gallery above right: Ian Charlesworth: from Crawford Open 3; courtesy Crawford Municipal Gallery

The third annual exhibition of contemporary art, Crawford Open 3, opens at the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork on 13 December. This year's theme, Beauty & Corruption, is explored by over thirty artists and presents a distinct and remarkable line-up from Ireland and abroad. Through various mediums including video, sound installation, painting and photography the work featured interprets Beauty & Corruption from a number of inquisitive and interesting standpoints. In Susan MacWilliam's video After Image, illusion and the paranormal are explored; Eleanor Phillips uses the body as a site for reconstruction and conformity; whilst Andrew Folan's work Susanna and the Elders confronts the 'male gaze'.

Crawford Open 3 artists: Barbara Ash, Maria Blake, Gemma Browne, Conor Caffrey, Ian Charlesworth, Paul Connell, Frances Donnelly, Clodagh Emoe, Andrew Folan, Paul Hegarty and John Younge, Séverine Hubbard, Wendy Judge, Juneau Projects, Anthony Noel Kelly, Seán Lynch, Susan MacWilliam, Lisa Malone, Melissa McDonnell and Brendan Earley, Aoife McGovern, Lorraine O'Reilly, Katie Owens, Alan Phelan with Jim Dingilian, Eleanor Phillips, Una Quigley, Linda Quinlan, Declan Rooney, Rosemary Shirley, Brigid Teehan, Alex Walsh and Cian McConn, and Hugh Watt.

above left: Helen Sharpe: from proposal submitted to Stars at Noon; courtesy Triskel Arts Centre above right: Ursula Burke: from proposal submitted to Stars at Noon; courtesy Triskel Arts Centre

From 16 January, in the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork, there will be an opportunity to see five young Belfast- and Cork-based artists. The show, Stars at Noon, will present disparate works, brought together to examine beyond received notions of what art should be in this gallery context. The exhibition will give us the opportunity to see new work from the Belfast-based artist Ursula Burke. These compelling works mark a turn 'left of centre' for Burke, who explores, through the medium of video, notions of genealogy and lineage. Additionally it is a chance again for Cork to see the work of Clive Murphy, also presenting new work. This work looks at cultural identity, reduced to a low common denominator and presented as a wall-painted, mural based on Chinese lanterns. This piece will be approximately fifteen foot in scale, and should have, by all accounts, an overwhelming impact on the visual senses. Artists involved in Stars at Noon are: Clive Murphy, Ursula Burke, Helen Sharpe, Michael O'Boyle and Deirdre McKenna.

Alastair MacLennan: Words Sword (Utska Omagh), performance/installation, 1998; courtesy Ormeau Baths Galler

The Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast will hold an important retrospective of the prominent performance artist Alastair MacLennan, opening on the 23rd of January. The exhibition will present work which spans almost four decades, alongside a new performance piece which will run for the duration of the exhibition. The varying factors of duration, location and the nature of MacLennan's performance, and possibly performance in general, produce a central problem with regard to the process of presentation for any gallery. This retrospective not only offers an engaging and fascinating overview of Alastair MacLennan's work in a gallery context, but it will also highlight the Ormeau Baths Gallery's commitment to addressing the crucial issues of presenting work that, by its very character, cannot easily be shown.

The Belltable Arts Centre, Limerick, will see a refreshing and imaginative transformation from a formal gallery space into an inventive installation site from January to February. Emma Louise Johnson is the Limerick-based artist who will be transforming the gallery in terms of color and novelty elements. Johnson will also be exhibiting small drawings, some of which are figurative, alongside photographs in this site-specific installation. This exhibition is part of the Unfringed festival.

Annie Harrison: Orla; from Portrayal; courtesy Model Arts and Niland Gallery

Portraits are often used to convey status, wealth, power, intellect, or piety according to the attributes appearing in the portraits and according to the desire of the sitter. In the case of the artists in the exhibition Portrayal, it is the artist who steers the underlying current. This is an exhibition of contemporary portraits, featuring the work of five artists whose work expands the vehicle of portraiture beyond its capacity to reveal appearance and personality. The exhibition opens on the 17th of January at the Model Art Centre, Sligo, and the artists involved include Rineke Marsman, Holland; Tom Molloy, Annie Harrison and John Gerrard, Ireland; Martin Wedge, Northern Ireland.

Extopia is a gallery exhibition and a series of talks and screenings, to be held at Catalyst Arts in Belfast this March. Extopia promises to be an outlet for maverick and heretical cultural practitioners. Although there is an initial counter-cultural frisson to its agenda, it suggests a staunch particularity of view and of action, rather than proposing an alternative which is forever reacting to common culture. Extopia will be a rare opportunity to see work in Ireland from Susie Bright, the writer of Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex Guide, and Susie Bright's Sexual Reality. Participating also are: Genesis P-Orridge and Stewart Home. The writers'-talks element of the Extopian project will include James Havoc and Peter Sotos.

Phil Collins: from series Enduring freedom; courtesy Ormeau Baths Gallery

At the Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast, from the 13 March is an opportunity to see the first major solo exhibition of the work of Phil Collins. Through photography and film, Collins' work has excelled with extraordinary innovation, energy and visual sensitivity. Collins' work apprehends poignant moments at the centre of contemporary life. The subjects are of disparate origin, yet all could be identified as living in areas of division, political restriction and social upheaval.

Winner of the Citigroup Private Bank Photography Prize, Shirana Shahbazi, the acclaimed Iranian artist, can be seen in the Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin, this February. Shahbazi's color photographs of contemporary Iran encompass cityscapes, landscapes and images of people, of different professions and ages, taken indoors and outdoors. Shahbazi's work runs against the grain of the photography and film from Iran that tends to present an exoticised view of the culture there. Instead, Shahbazi presents us with a wide range of images of everyday life in Tehran - an office block going up, a woman in a chador doing up her son's shoe-laces, a bride, a young soldier in uniform, a man in a comfortable livingroom pointing the remote at a TV out of frame, and so on - images remarkable for their banality.

These images belong to an ongoing series entitled Goftare Nik ('good words') which she presents in mosaic formations using whole gallery walls. What goes on between the photographs is as significant as the individual images themselves. The photographs are sometimes interspersed with a painting, based on one of Shahbazi's photographs, made by commercial painters in Tehran who are more used to painting cinema or political subjects. The exhibition opens on February 6th.

Alice Maher: Mnemosyne, 2002, 1830 x 1045 x 880 cm, stainless steel, copper piping, condensing unit, corian, refrigerant gas R404A; installation shot, Locws International, Swansea (the work is seen here reflected in a glass case beside the Victorian painting The death of Sarah Dillwyn; this painting is hung permanently in Swansea Museum and shows the death scene of a ten-year-old local girl); courtesy the artist]

Alice Maher will be presenting new work, called Mnemosyne, in an exhibition titled the same and organised by the Green on Red Gallery in Dublin this coming April. The sculpture, made in collaboration with a refrigeration engineer, takes the form of a bed which will consume the senses while absorbing the moisture in the room. Maher is also exhibiting Paradise [12] at the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, in April 2003, as part of the Paradise Series there.

Also participating in this series is Michael Warren, in an inspiring exhibition entitled Paradise [11], subtitled Amor Fati. The intention of this exhibition will be to blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and it will endeavor to go beyond our traditional understanding of an installation. It will be quite large in scale and for those who are familiar with the gallery, it will take up most of the Gallery Two space. The exhibition opens on 7 February 2003.

Barbara Hepworth was one of a small group of pioneering sculptors committed to exploring abstraction. She had her first solo exhibition in 1928 and by the early 1930s had developed her mature style: a sensuous kind of organic abstraction, sometimes incorporating strings, wires, colored paint, or holes piercing the sculpted form. Tate St Ives' will celebrate Hepworth as one of the foremost British artists of the 20th century from the 24th of May 2003. This exhibition will focus on specific themes - Single Form, Maternal Forms, Landscape Sculpture, Scented Guarea, Coloured Stones, Interrelated Masses and Public Commissions.

Article reproduced from CIRCA 102, Winter 2003, pp.23 - 27.

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