NEWSBITS

CIRCA goes Wild on the Web

Thanks to a recent grant from the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon, CIRCA's website is undergoing a major overhaul and redesign.  The existing site will remain up and running while these changes take place - until the new site emerges from its chrysalis: slicker and thicker, longer and stronger, with art projects, news, searchable databases, discussion forums, online articles…

It will be virtually unstoppable, so watch this (cyber)space.

As part of our interactive developments, look out for the logos throughout the (printed) magazine. They indicate links on our website which will take you to relevant sites related to the article in question. So click and surf!

Degrees of Exposure

DegreeShow.com is the new project run by Candid Arts Trust in London, which will provide every graduating artist and designer from UK Degree courses, and the courses themselves, with their own free web page.
Redesigned and relaunched on the web is the Gallery Channel, the online guide to UK art exhibitions.  Calling themselves the "original white tube gallery," the site provides free listings for all exhibitions in the UK, illustrated press releases, virtual 'walk-thrus', comment, criticism and reviews, and a weekly art news service both on the site and by e-mail subscription.

Agus ar an idirlíon chomh maith…

Cúrsaí Ealaíne's Tadhg MacDhonnagáin, now - among many other guises - a writer for Foinse, will be providing us with occasional art-related articles which he has written for that newspaper. Bád Sí Nissan ar an sáile faoi dheireadh, mar shampla.  Find them here...

Discount Designers and Art on Show

Work is set to begin in September at Gilford, Co. Down, on the vast Gilford Mill project which will include, alongside retail outlet units (selling designer gear at discount prices) and restaurants, an art centre with a contemporary art gallery, installation gallery, photographic gallery and a commercial gallery space.  The arts centre is being made available rent-free by Gilford Mill Ltd., with support from Banbridge District Council.  Gilford Mill will also house the F.E. McWilliam Sculpture Centre and Park.  F.E. McWilliam, who was a native of Banbridge, left his London studio to Banbridge District Council, where it has been in storage awaiting a suitable site for reconstruction.
In Newry, a new  retail art gallery and exhibition space is set to open.  The Canal Gallery will offer young and lesser known artists the opportunity to exhibit and sell their work.  Further information from Myles McCorry on +(0)1762 348627.

Places and Spaces

Dundee Contemporary Art, the new centre for the arts in Scotland, launched its brand new building in March.  The space includes exhibition areas, a print studio with classes and courses, two cinemas, a Visual Research Centre with CAD, 3-D modelling and multi-media facilities, as well as a café bar and craft shop.  CIRCA's editor went to the party…

Making Life Easier

…for everyone north of the border that is…is the UK Arts Board Agency, who will completely free of charge transform ideas for local arts funding into written proposals.  Get in touch at +(0)1232 241 843 or 
e-mail c.evans@ukaba.demon.co.uk.  You'll have nobody but them to blame.

Making Good

The recipients of this year's P.S.1 studio awards from Northern Ireland and the Republic are Susan MacWilliam and David Godbold respectively.  The P.S.1 residencies go to artists from around the world, making the studio area of the huge P.S.1 complex in Queens a little like the United Nations, but without the peace-keeping requirements.  Ireland's residencies are co-sponsored by the Arts Councils and the Irish American Cultural Foundation in New Jersey.
The 1999 Belfast Arts Award in the visual arts, from Belfast City Council, went to the Ormeau Baths Gallery for its 1998/99 programme.  Presenting the award, Councillor Stephen McBride said that the arts were a barometer of the health of a city, and that it was obvious that the pressure was rising.  Ormeau Baths Gallery audiences were reported to be up 35% over the year.  So who says you can't put a price on success?
The CAP Foundation Studio Scholarship Awards (made to NCAD graduates each year) go to Saralene Tapley and Ruth Rogers. 

And Making Money

Not content with making a fortune selling art to movie stars, Irish artist Graham Knuttel is now set to be in a movie, playing alongside Robert De Niro as a taxi-driver in John Herzfeld's new film Fifteen Minutes.  Knuttel is currently painting a portrait of De Niro which gets slashed in the film (by baddies, not the critics).
Also painting for the big screen is Julian Schnabel, for Bono's latest project The Million Dollar Hotel.  In his last celluloid adventure, Basquiat, Schnabel had himself played by Gary Oldman.  Not since Kirk Douglas played Van Gogh (or was it Gauguin?) has there been so much glamour attached to being an artist.

Meanwhile in a Portlaoise Prison…

The Dunmaise Theatre and Centre for the Arts, housed in a former 18th-century jail, offers a purpose-built theatre, exhibition space, workshops, restaurant, bar and cyber cafe.  The centre is being run by former Druid Theatre Company manager Louise Donlon.
With so many new spaces opening up, the only question remains: will there be enough new art to fill them?  They'll be fighting over the artists yet…

About Time we had some more Committees

This June's local elections in the Republic will see the resurrection of the SPCs - Strategic Policy Committees.  Each SPC is to be made up of at least nine representatives, one third of which will be local sectoral representatives.  The SPCs were originally set up following government guidelines in 1997, but not much happened in the intervening time, and a fresh start is promised with the summer's elections. 

The purpose of the SPCs is to help in shaping local authority policy.  The arts are listed within the area of Environment/Conservation/Culture, so it is important that people actively involve themselves, or organise into groups to ensure their needs are represented.
Exactly how this works is not instantly transparent, although according to Gary McMahon of Macnas, the system is working well in Galway.  According to the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon's published literature, the local authority will identify the organisations which represent the sectors, but will not be responsible for the sectors' selection of the nominee.  The chairs of the SPCs within the authorities will then go on to form the Corporate Policy Group - the CPG… So now you know.  Contact your local authority for details.
Also just published is the An Chomhairle Ealaíon's report on local authority spending on the arts in the Republic.  The situation does not look too rosy.  While highlighting increases in administrative costs over artistic expenditure, the report also notes a slow growth when compared to international trends, and a high proportion of expenditure going on a few large municipal facilities.  Limerick Corporation comes off best with a IR£3.94 spend per capita, with Dublin Corporation in second place (IR£3.18), followed by Sligo County Council at IR£2.25.  Leitrim and Carlow County Councils bring up the rear with IR£0.13 and IR£0.10 respectively, so roll on those SPCs…

Letter: Littoral

In CIRCA 86, Winter 1998, Gavin Murphy and Daniel Jewesbury reported on the Littoral in Ireland conference.  In this letter to CIRCA, Ian Hunter offers a slightly different take...

Dear CIRCA,
I would agree with most of the criticisms of the recent Littoral in Ireland conference, as reviewed by Gavin Murphy and Daniel Jewesbury.  Although the conference did go some way towards initiating a dialogue about the issue of social engagement through art, it did not deal sufficiently with some of the deeper underlying problems and inconsistencies within this area of practice.  Nor would I argue with Gavin Murphy's assertion that the Littoral programme, and socially engaged art practice in general, need to adopt a much more rigorous critique of the underlying assumptions and rhetoric. 
That is mainly why the Littoral conferences are held every two or three years, as a means of generating a wider critical debate and a more rigorous self-critical approach on the part of the participating groups and artists.  Conferences are organised in different countries by independent groups of artists who agree to collaborate for the duration of the conference project.  In this sense Littoral has no institutional base, fixed ideology or permanent home, and relies on an open exchange of ideas, a generosity of spirit, and a lot of unpaid and very hard work on the part of the organisers. 
However, this is not an excuse for sloppy programming and fuzzy intellectual debate, and Littoral in Ireland had its fair share of these.  My point is that the success of each Littoral conference and programme relies to large extent upon the level of energy, commitment and critical input from the host community and artists.  I know that the Critical Access team (Jackie Malcolm and Martin McCabe) worked very hard to ensure that artists and the art community in Ireland were not only aware of the conference, but that they were also welcome to contribute ideas for the programming.
In addition to the ads and news items carried in CIRCA the SSI Bulletin, and in Artists Newsletter, we also distributed over 500 posters to museums, art centres, art schools and galleries in Ireland, and over 200 direct mailouts were sent to individual artists and artist-run projects.  Two open public meetings were held: at Arthouse in Dublin in November 1997, and again at Catalyst Arts in Belfast in March.  Martin McCabe, Eilís O'Baoill and Mick Wilson also responded promptly to the views and concerns expressed by artists in the North and in the Republic, and the conference programme was revised in August to make more space for local agendas and speakers.
In this context, I don't think it is fair to criticise the Littoral in Ireland conference as failing to address "a local context" or to say that somehow the Littoral conference dismissed the gallery system and artist-run spaces as legitimate avenues for political and social engagement through art.  The point is that there are problems with both approaches (i.e. , gallery-based and so-called socially engaged art practice).  Surely the Littoral conference in Ireland would have been all the richer had our colleagues in the artist-run spaces and gallery community made more of an effort to contribute to the conference programme and critical debate.
Yours sincerely
Ian Hunter

P.S. There are now about three Littoral in Ireland collaborative projects under development in the North.  I sent Gavin details of these before Christmas.  At least one of these, a two year collaborative project with the bus drivers in the North on developing a programme of anti-sectarian projects in the workplace will now go forward as a bid to the NI Lottery Arts fund.  The next Littoral conference is being proposed for Durban, South Africa, for 2001.  And, Grant Kester (Arizona State University) and Bruce Barber (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design) are now working on the edited transcripts from the Dublin conference.

We welcome letters.  Where the letter is a response to an article, the article's author(s) are given the option to respond.

(News round-up compiled by Gemma Tipton)

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