The Complex Ground Floor Gallery presents a programme of Site Specific Exhibitions in the markets area of Dublin City Centre.
The Complex's Ground Floor Gallery’s visual art programme for 2022 is funded by the Arts Council and commissions ten Irish and International artists to create site specific works in 6 exhibitions throughout the year.
The curatorial objectives of the exhibitions include the creation of a physical place, one of active enquiry and experimentation, both through the installation process and a series of events and engagements during the exhibition run.
With the architectural material of the gallery space creating the foundation for each exhibition, The Complex aims to place artists or works together who have not previously shared an exhibition space; juxtaposing concepts and media as a means of activation. Exhibitions have a long lead-in time, and a short run time.
A series of open and sporadic conversations between exhibiting artists and curator progress over 4-6 months during the lead-in time. Always unprescribed, these discussions, online and in person, form a framework from which the exhibition evolves, and work to create a comfortable environment during the exhibition installation, usually a week-long collaborative build between artists, technicians and curator.
Event programmes are generally devised in response to a set of concepts determined by an exhibition. The Complex presents an open curatorial approach, accepting proposals from artists throughout the year, offering a community engagement programme of talks and workshops, and publishing a series of preparatory work and archive material online for each exhibition.
The programme for 2022 features an exciting range of contemporary artists including Ella Bertilsson, Clare Breen, Kerry Guinan, Joe Hanly, Jaki Irvine, Andreas Kindler Von Knobloch, Eleanor Mccaughey, Locky Morris, Blaine O'Donnell and Lucy Sheridan.
JOE HANLY
26 MARCH - 8 APRIL
OPENING RECEPTION: 25 MARCH
TAP is the title of an exhibition of paintings by Joe Hanly. The paintings featured are essentially abstract but employ within their framework a hybrid mix of representational and nonrepresentational devices derived from the fragmented and aleatory experiences of being in the world today. “I like to think of my works in terms of propositions as if to say to the viewer “Consider this and see where it takes you or indeed where you take it” in an endeavor to transcend the prevailing state of affairs and TAP into possibilities that may lie beyond.” These works are not intended to be prescriptive or didactic in any sense but do however seek to be informed by encounters with an audience.
KERRY GUINAN
04 MAY - 10 MAY
OPENING RECEPTION: 04 MAY
‘The Red Thread’ is a monumental performance installation produced by artist Kerry Guinan with an international team of collaborators. The installation comprises sewing machines that are operated remotely – and in real time - by workers in a clothes factory in India. Staged against the context of globalised capitalism, The Red Thread overcomes colossal distances to facilitate a live encounter between people at opposite ends of supply chains. The artistic feat is achieved with original networked technology, which connects the clothes factory in Bangalore to ‘The Art Factory’ in the Complex, Dublin. Framed by the industrial setting of the Complex Gallery, The Red Thread engages with the history of textile production in Ireland, restoring a sense of affinity with its contemporary outsourced labour relations. Attendees are invited to fulfil their role as agents in these relationships.
This is a unique live event, never to be restaged. Please take note of the special gallery opening hours, which are congruous with the working hours of the participating factory workers.
ELLA BERTILSSON
21 MAY - 03 JUNE
OPENING RECEPTION: 20 MAY
Ella Bertilsson will stage a site-specific exhibition that plays with external reality and internal fantasy through the fabrication of a symbolic landscape that combines elements of sculpture, video, and sound. The work will examine obsolete brain-junk and mental cluttering to communicate a single but complex and multifaceted image.
ANDREAS KINDLER VON KNOBLOCH / BLAINE O'DONNELL
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT: CLARE BREEN
16 - 29 JULY
OPENING RECEPTION: 15 JULY
This exhibition will be visceral, paired back to fully expose the works within the architecture of the space, whilst responding to the natural texture, colour, and form of the gallery. Its aim is to provide a sensory experience for the viewer, and an overall unity between the artworks and the space, cultivating a stillness to allow the works to develop their own visual language; a visual flow, where the eye can wander unhindered. Unlike the other exhibitions within the programme, this exhibition uses installation to enhance the original texture of the space as opposed to disrupting it, revealing it as happened upon rather than curated.
JAKI IRVINE / LOCKY MORRIS
29 OCTOBER - 11 NOVEMBER
OPENING RECEPTION: 28 OCTOBER
After Jaki, Locky, and Complex curator Mark O’Gorman sat down for their first in person meeting, oddly enough, they had all come with the same point of departure for the exhibition, Anne Tallentire. This collaborative exhibition brings together the visual arts practices of Jaki Irvine and Locky Morris. In the process of building a conceptual framework for the exhibition, both artists will begin to develop work in response to a specific piece of work by their dear friend Anne Tallentire, Setting Out 3 (2021).
“Setting Out 3 (2021) transposes what is conventionally on a horizontal plane to the vertical plane of the wall. String used in the construction industry, to transfer architectural drawings onto the ground, forms a line drawing whose composition references floor plans of a generic Belfast terrace, similar to the type once found in Hector Street near the MAC. Paper markers on the string demarcate lengths corresponding to the circumference and architectural characteristics of each room, such as the placement of doors, indexing the spatial logic of these properties.” - (https://annetallentire.info/works/setting-out-3/)
ELEANOR MCCAUGHEY / LUCY SHERIDAN
03 DECEMBER - 16 DECEMBER
OPENING RECEPTION: 2 DECEMBER
Both artists are in the process of creating an exhibition of paintings, ceramics, installation and sound that deals with themes of displacement, escapism, and mental health. For this exhibition, their individual work will take on the aesthetics of OZ (Return to Oz, 1985) where they will create an installation that contemplates the ‘Green Room’ with obvious links to theatricality and film. Both artists are interested in the idea of elevating the status of selected everyday objects through various modes of display, lending new meaning to a facade of importance, through its mode of representation.
Proudly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.
