Gerard Byrne

Lismore Castle Arts is delighted to announce its new exhibition, Gerard Byrne, which opens on April 24th and continues until September 30th 2010, at Lismore Castle Arts, Lismore, Co Waterford, Ireland.

Byrne's works are primarily lens based, in film, video and photography, often presented as ambitious site related installations. Through his practice he explores the ambiguities in the historical legacy of cultural forms. He references a range of sources in his work from popular magazines of the recent past to the work of playwrights like Beckett and Brecht. Recently he has worked on a number of projects with actors and sets, which develop his conceptual interest in acting and the theatre, and which test the tensions between sculpture and set design, acting and non acting, spectacle and spectator.

For the exhibition, Lismore Castle Arts has co-commissioned (with the 2010 Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art and The Renaissance Society at The University of Chicago, in collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven) an ambitious new work by Byrne. A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not is manifested as four separate films about Minimalism, shown parallel to one another. Through a night-time journey on the New Jersey turnpike, a radio interview between three artists, a re-enactment in a New York theatre and the documentation of a museum installation, this work explores the historical locations of these moments and the enclosed spaces in which they are presented.

At Lismore Castle Arts' new off-site project space, Byrne will present the work Untitled Acting Exercise (in the third person), which records the efforts of two actors and a director attempting to understand a script through dramatisation. This work was commissioned for 2008 Sydney Biennale and will be shown as a single projection in a 19th century former church hall.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a limited edition publication, which will feature a newly commissioned text by Dr Penelope Curtis. Events accompanying the show include a seminar on Re-Imagining Minimalism, a Director's tour of the exhibition, a lecture exploring the synergy between Gerard Byrne and playwright Samuel Beckett and an artists' talk.

Gerard Byrne is acclaimed as amongst the most critically important artists of his generation. He represented Ireland at the 52nd Venice Biennale and recent solo shows include ICA Boston, Statens Museum for Kunst Copenhagen, Galerie Nordenhake Stockholm, and Kunstverein Dusseldorf. His work is represented in many collections, including the Tate Museum, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Hirshhorn, the Kroller Mueller Museumand Museion, Bolzano.

Mike Fitzpatrick is an academic, curator and artist. Currently he is the Head of the Limerick School of Art & Design. From 2000-2009 he was the Director of the Limerick City Art Gallery. He was the commissioner of the Irish Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale. He is a member of IKT and a committee member of ev+a. He has curated exhibitions with international artists including Simon Starling, Lindsay Seers and Tom Molloy.

Lismore Castle Arts, a not-for-profit initiative, was founded in 2005 with the aim of presenting and promoting internationally significant contemporary art to audiences in Ireland and beyond. The gallery hosts one major exhibition per year and has shown artists such as Matthew Barney, Roger Hiorns, Richard Long, Jason Rhoades, Gregor Schneider and Ai Weiwei. Lismore Castle Arts is situated in the historic gardens of Lismore Castle, and visitors are encouraged to stroll through the gardens and enjoy the contemporary sculptures on display. In September 2010, Lismore Castle Arts will open a new off-site project space, Mochuda Projects, which will feature a programme of exhibitions and events by international emerging artists.

Gerard Byrne
Curator: Mike Fitzpatrick