Supported by the Arts Council, The Complex presents a programme of exhibitions in The Gallery with artists' research, development &
collaboration ongoing throughout the year.
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The Complex visual art programme for 2024 invites 12 progressive contemporary artists to create site-responsive works in 6 exhibitions throughout the year.
The Complex visual art programme is different from most in Ireland because it is based on a particular grouping of artists rather than a concept. The curatorial approach is process-based, with a prolonged conversation between artists and curator shaping the exhibition concept in a collaborative way for up to 12 months. With the concept of hospitality as a foundation, the approach aims to avoid hierarchy and prescriptive traditions in exhibition-making, hosting artists and publics in ways that supports open discourse and inclusivity. The programme emphasises building a community with each exhibition, encouraging experimentation and risk, and responding to the context of the building and locality of Dublin 7.
The programme features a vast range of contemporary artists including Osaro Amanda Azams, Mark Buckeridge, Vivienne Dick, Aideen Farrell, Kat Lalor, Conor McFeely, Bea McMahon, Eden Munroe, Ger O’Brien, Claire O’Hagan , Eoghan Ryan, and Naomi Sex.
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EOGHAN RYAN CURATED BY MARYSIA WIECKIEWICZ - CARROLL
13 - 27 APRIL
OPENING RECEPTION 12 APRIL
Eoghan Ryan (b. Dublin, IE, lives and works between Brussels and Amsterdam) works with moving images, installation, performance, puppetry and collage. The work looks at collective and personal trauma, power and anarchy, voluntary and involuntary behaviour, acting and reacting. Ryan’s process involves careful and tactile editing, spending durational amounts of time documenting his own relationships with a specific person, place, object or song. He often deliberately limits his field of reference to an ongoing archive of images collated from newspaper clippings. The works deal with the disintegration of language in relation to urgent states of identity. These range from states of being and nation-states to the cultivation of provisional culture in art, as much as bacteria, and perverse relationships to institutions as sites of formative significance.
Eoghan graduated from NCAD in 2010, and received his MFA from Goldsmiths, London in 2013 and completed a residency at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in 2021. In addition to solo exhibitions such as Against the Day (Edith Russ Haus, 2024) Cut it off at the Trunk (Rowing, London, 2017) and Oh Wicked Flesh! (South London Gallery, London, 2013), his works have been part of numerous group exhibitions, performances, film festivals and screening programs such as Centrale Fies, Italy; Busan Biennale 2022; IFFR, Rotterdam; Kunstervein Freiburg; Visio, Italy; the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin; 427, Riga; Spike, Berlin; Serralves Museum, Porto; IFI, Dublin; Kem, Warsaw; Cubitt, London; CAC, Vilnius; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; FACT, Liverpool amongst others. Eoghan’s moving image work is distributed by LIMA, Amsterdam and he has received support from Arts Council Ireland, Culture Ireland and Mondriaan Fonds. He received the 2023 Stiftung Niedersachsen Grant for Media Art 2023.
Marysia Więckiewicz-Carroll (b. Poland, lives and works in Dublin) is an independent curator and art writer. She has curated numerous exhibitions and projects in Ireland and abroad. She worked as Assistant Curator at Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), and was one of the co-editors of Paper Visual Art Journal. Marysia was the founding director of Berlin Opticians Gallery – a contemporary art gallery that operated both online and in physical spaces. Together with Nathan O'Donnell and Clare Bell she co-edits Numbered Editions - a new imprint for artists’ writing across forms. She has received awards from the Arts Council of Ireland and Culture Ireland.
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MARK BUCKERIDGE & VIVIENNE DICK
18 - 31 MAY
OPENING RECEPTION 17 MAY
Mark Buckeridge is an artist working in performance, sculpture, video and sound. He holds an MFA from Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam and is the co-founder of artist-run organisation Muine Bheag Arts.
Past exhibitions and projects include: performances at Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019) andFylkingen, Stockholm (2023); solo shows at CCA, Derry (2022); PS², Belfast, (2022), Oude Kerk, Amsterdam (2019); Rietveld Pavilion, Amsterdam (2019); Pallas Projects, Dublin (2016) and group shows at Outpost, Norwich (2019); Rongwrong, Amsterdam (2019) and Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2016). Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, (2017); Catalyst Arts, Belfast, (2016); and the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, (2016)
Vivienne Dick (b.1950 Donegal) makes single and multiscreen works which combine elements of documentary, performance and fiction. Her films are concerned with gender politics, social issues, ecology and possible futures. Her early films are associated with the Super 8 No Wave film movement of the late seventies in New York. Recent retrospectives/surveys include Queer Porto (2023), Jeu de Paume, Paris (2021), and IMMA (2017). Amongst recent group shows Women in Revolt, Tate Britain (2024), Light Years Ahead, Brighton (2023) ‘Who are you staring at, Pompidou (2023) and The Wayward Eye, Temple Bar Gallery (2021) Her feature documentary New York Our Time, received the Dublin Film Critics Award at DIFF in 2020. Her work is distributed by Lux UK.
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NAOMI SEX
04 - 18 OCTOBER
OPENING RECEPTION 03 OCTOBER
Naomi Sex will present a new solo exhibition in The Complex entitled SPEAK BACK. Naomi is a Dublin-based visual artist, her practice operates in “the grey zone”, defined by theorist Claire Bishop as the space between the black box theatre and the white cube gallery. Her work has been exhibited widely, nationally and internationally in both solo and group exhibitions. The work is included in state collections and has been awarded The Arts Council Visual Arts Project Award, The Visual Arts Touring Award and most recently The Visual Arts Bursary Award, The Covid Crisis Response Award and The Agility Award. SPEAK BACK is a multi-screen, video installation that comprises a suite of scripted, micro-performances that are performed by actors. This work is informed by classical “performative speech act” theory, examples of speech acts are classified as follows; a proposal, a dare, a bequest etc (J.L. Austin). Contemporary theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgewick complicates these classifications using her key term “peri-performative”, which she argues can produce an alternate, open space of potential in ‘the neighborhood’ of speech acts as they are exemplified above. She asks what is at stake if a marriage proposal is declined? Or a dare is not accepted? Or a bequest can not be bequeathed? This topsy-turvy, cross-section of thinking and questioning framed the script-writing process for this body of work. It acted as a spring-board to draw out, destablise, disrupt, pause or suspend the conventions of how speech acts linguistically initiate agency, commitment and control. The micro-performance attempts to distil and concentrate time with scripted dialogue in playful and absurd ways.The show features actors Susan, Sean and Venus. They do not have defined characters and the scripts do not follow a conventional narrative. Costume choices, installation devices and scenography aim to imbue the work with themes of personal taste, value attachment and ownership. In this regard, the show modestly attempts to connect to broader themes of power and asymmetries of value.
Black Box, White Cube, Gray Zone: Dance Exhibitions and Audience Attention. Bishop, Claire, 2018
Austin, J.L., “How to do things with Words”, 1962 J.L. / Kososky Sedgewick, Eve, “Touching Feeling”, 2002
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GRADUATE EXHIBITION: MA FINE ART, TU DUBLIN
26 OCTOBER - 02 NOVEMBER
OPENING RECEPTION 25 OCTOBER
Aideen Farrell is a Dublin-based artist. She works with found materials, clay, drawing and photography. She gathers materials and detritus while following routes of canals and disused railways. She focuses on these site's relation to time, extraction, transformation and processes of decay.
Aideen graduated from her BA in NCAD in 2017. Recent exhibitions include solo shows; Brittle to Look Back at Custom House Gallery (2023), A Weight of Windows at Pallas Projects/Studios in 2019 and Showroom Linenhall Arts Centre in 2018, and group shows; Gaffer Tape, Phizzfest 2023, The Stars are in the Earth at A4 Sounds in 2022, and Halfway to Falling at the Lord Mayor's Pavilion in 2021. She was awarded the Fingal County Council Artist Support Scheme 2018-22, the Arts Council’s Agility Award 2021, and Visual Arts Bursary 2021 and 2023. She was awarded the Fire Station Artists’ Studio 2021 Sculpture Award and was awarded a DCC artist residency in 2018.
Kat Lalor makes performative films concerned with the multiple facets of Queer intelligibility and through drag and fiction explores navigating the world as other. They are interested in moments of tension and slippage that draw from subjective experience laced with threads of Queer temporal theory.
Lalor graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from TU Dublin in 2022, and was a recipient of the Fire Station Artists’ Studios Digital Media Graduate Award (2022), and Arts Council Agility Award (2022). Their work has been since exhibited in the RDS Visual Arts Award (2022), and The RHA Annual (2023).
Eden Munroe is a visual artist based in Dublin. She makes work that is concerned with excavating unthought-of pasts and crafting speculative futures, through a queer archaeological lens. Her work employs the stone artefacts of prehistoric Ireland as queer tools for sense-making, utilising speculative fictioning to collapse binaries across space and time.
Munroe graduated from TU Dublin with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art in 2022. Her work Plasma and Ore was exhibited as part of the RDS Visual Art Awards (2022), and she was also a recipient of the Agility Award (2022). Her work was shortlisted for the Making and Momentum Young Artist Prize (2022). Munroe’s work was featured in the group exhibition Gaffer Tape (2023), in Phibsborough Shopping Centre.
Ger O’Brien is an artist working in drawing, video making and performance. His work is embedded in natural history, ideas of the posthuman, the ‘other’ and deep ecology. A graduate of Zoology at Trinity College he went on to study and practice landscape architecture for over twenty years. These studies and endeavours inform and interplay in his artistic work. An empathy for what might be called the environment/s plays out in the work he presents whether that in landscape practice or artistic endeavour or in a liminal space between these things.
Previously Ger has been involved for a number of years with the socially engaged project – Dundee Artists in Residence (D-AiR), undergoing a number of performance and walking art projects. In 2023 he performed and exhibited at GAFFER TAPE as part of Phizz-fest.
Claire O’Hagan is a visual artist working through oil painting to explore embodied experiences of the erotic and hormonal activity. Her work is concerned with queer eco-feminism, the body, and bio-politics, and their intersection with sexual subjectivity. Claire received the Arts Council Agility Award 2023.
TU Dublin Course Advisors: Naomi Sex, Mark Garry, Barbara Knežević, Donal Lally, Ronan McCrea, Mick O'Hara, and Aija Freimane.
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OSARO AMANDA AZAMS
30 NOVEMBER - 05 DECEMBER
OPENING RECEPTION 29 NOVEMBER
Osaro Amanda Azams is a Dublin-based multidisciplinary project coordinator and artist with a diverse range of talents. Her art practice spans spoken word, performance workshops, music, and dance, and she has gained recognition for her work in these fields. She is the founder of the Fried Plantains Collective (FPC), an organization that focuses on fostering social inclusion through arts and culture. Osaro has been instrumental in creating events for a live audience that celebrate the experiences of people of colour in Ireland. For example, her spoken word event, "Black Rhymes Matter," showcased the talents of artists from different cultural backgrounds living in Ireland.
Osaro has also collaborated with Poetry Ireland on several projects, including "Spooky Night," a dramatic storytelling and music evening for Culture Night. Her work has been published in Poetry Ireland's Trumpet Issue 9 in 2021, where she wrote about "Poetry and Activism." Osaro has worked with various organizations to curate events that showcase the dynamic artistry of locals living in Dublin's Inner City. She has also worked with schools to deliver poetry workshops and Nigerian folklore performances. As an artist working in a theatre context, Osaro has performed in plays that explore the experiences of LGBT immigrants living in Direct Provision in Ireland. She has also collaborated with film directors on projects commissioned by the Museum of Literature Ireland.
In 2023, Osaro will be commissioned as a residency poet for Brigit: Dublin City Celebrating Women Festival’s Imbolc Fair, where she will invite local audiences to share their stories in return for a personalised poem. Osaro's dedication to her craft and her commitment to fostering social inclusion through the arts make her a valuable asset to the artistic community in Ireland.
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CONOR MCFEELY & BEA MCMAHON
16 DECEMBER - 17 JANUARY
OPENING RECEPTION 13 DECEMBER
Conor McFeely lives and works in Derry N. Ireland. He has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. His work incorporates a wide range of processes, from the ready–made to sculpture and installation, as well as photography, video and audio. A fracturing and manipulation of ‘material’ in the service of finding new relationships is a chief characteristic of his practice. Often conceived as multi-layered in terms of their reading, many works have been driven by a consideration of the nature of individual free will, choice and autonomy. Contexts and source material reflect interests in a history of counter-culture, literature and social contexts. The work is cyclical in nature and his recent projects which include Electric Citizen, an Art Arcadia Residency Derry 2022, The Mariner series (ongoing), Pioneers and The Weatherman Projects point to historical episodes of exploration, invention, experimentation, altered states and interruptions of consciousness.
Bea McMahon lives and works in Amsterdam. Bea McMahon uses many different media including sculpture, performance, song, dance, moving image and installation, often working in collaboration with others. Trained in mathematics and mathematical physics, she navigates through conceptions of reality and their corresponding appearances in the outside world.
In her work, she plots out scenarios whereby a range of behaviours, movements and intentions
are delineated and then played out to their logical conclusion in a given media. Objects or
motifs - like popcorn or the letter R, usually precipitate during this process that emblematizes
shifts in realizations that happen while making the work. She makes these objects into
sculptures that are exhibited alongside the finished work. In doing this, she wants to make work that sees what we can make happen and if we can tell the difference between that and what happens to us.
Recent collaborations include Another Shot at Love, a romantic comedy commissioned for the
40th EVA biennale in Limerick 2023, live performance with her lip-synching pop group Dina from
Egypt in I’ll be your Mirror, Hugh Lane Gallery 2023 and pop video launch at Framerframed,
Amsterdam 2024. Recent exhibitions include a two person show Sequins, at Shimmer, Rotterdam 2023; Floppy Forest at Treignac Projet, France 2021; and group shows Ad Ampio Respira, Artopia Gallery, Milan 2022; Under Bat Hill at W139, Amsterdam 2021. Upcoming Animal Farm, Museum Rijswijk, the Hague, Netherlands 2024.
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Image credits:
1. Handycam Gifts, installation view, HD Video with audio, 17′ 36”, PS² Belfast, Mark Buckeridge, 2022
2. It’s A Potato, Written and Directed By Naomi Sex. Still, 4K Video, (2024). Director of Photography: Jenny Brady
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The Complex is proudly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland & Dublin City Council
For further information contact Mark O’Gorman, Curator / Producer, Visual Arts @ The Complex.