WE KNOW MORE THAN WE CAN TELL

The newly renovated Context Gallery will be opened by Nóirín 
McKinney, Director of Arts Development at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland

Wednesday, May 6th 2009, at 6:45pm
The reception for We Know More Than We can Tell… follows at 7:30pm

We Know More Than We Can Tell
Haraldur Jónsson
Jesper Just
Susan MacWilliam

  
Curated by Theo Sims

May 6th – 20th June, 2009
Opening Reception: Wednesday 6th May, 7.30pm
Refreshments provided by Corona

Haraldur Jónsson
Crumpled Darkness
2005-09, paper, dimensions variable
photo friðrik örn hjaltested © Haraldur Jonsson 
   
Jesper Just
A Vicious Undertow
2007, 10:00 min
Black and white
Super 16mm
Courtesy Galleri Christina Wilson <http://www.jesperjust.com/www.christinawilson.net> , Copenhagen
© Jesper Just 2007



Susan MacWilliam
Explaining Magic to Mercer
2005,
 Video, Colour, Stereo
10mins40secs
© Susan MacWilliam


www.this.is/comet
www.jesperjust.com
www.susanmacwilliam.com 

The exhibition examines the different ways that the exploration of emotion and language can be articulated, sometimes without words. Visual art has an extraordinary capacity to extend its reach beyond words, and the work of these artists’ explores this rich and intangible territory.  The traditional rules of language and narrative are subverted in the video work of Jesper Just, and a poetic response to language itself constructed within the sculptural/audio work of Haraldur Jonsson. Aspects of the imperceptible are negotiated between generations, in the video installation presented by Susan MacWilliam.

Haraldur Jónsson presents an audio work of a recording of a young Icelandic boy, reading out the names of fifty emotions in English, (a language unfamiliar to the boy). He slowly and delicately stumbles through the letters making up written words such as exuberant, passionate, defeated, cheated and jubilant. Jónsson will also present a sculpture/installation piece called Crumpled Darkness that delicately articulates the complexities of the experience of darkness, something profoundly resonant in Iceland.

Jesper Just’s short film, A Vicious Undertow masterly uses lush scenery, glossy production, and entrancing audio in order to reveal a complex and nuanced narrative. Just refuses to allow any articulation of a traditional story line, in spite of the films narrative, drawn out with a beautiful score of whistling and stares that offer up no end or resolution. A Vicious Undertow is scored and arranged with versions of Nights In White Satin by the Moody Blues, Rebel Waltz by the Clash and Gift of Redby Dorit Chrysler.

Susan MacWilliam presents Explaining Magic To Mercer; a short video that captures the openness of a young mind to accept and discuss intangible concepts such as telepathy, parapsychology and magic. The video features MacWilliam discussing with her five year old nephew Mercer, the bizarre and extraordinary phenomena attributed to the historical figures that have featured in her other works such as Kuda Bux, Madame Duplessis and Rosa Kuleshova. Susan MacWilliam will represent Northern Ireland in the Venice Biennale, 2009.

 


WE THE PEOPLE

The Board of Directors of the Context Gallery welcome you to the newly renovated gallery for the launch of the exhibition:


SHARON HAYES

curated by Gregory McCartney

opening Friday 17th April @ 7:30pm
17th April - 1st May 2009

Context Gallery is proud to host the work of Sharon Hayes as the fourth show in the series We The People... curated by Gregory McCartney. The exhibition consists of an audio installation, based on recordings from a multi-part performance performed in New York.

I March In The Parade Of Liberty But As Long A I Love You I'm Not Free, was a eight-part performance that took palce between December 2007 and January 2008, where Hayes walked from the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York to sites of public speech such as Union Square, Tompkins Square, Confucius Square in Chinatown, and Christoper Street Park.

"In this work, I stood on the street with a bullhorn in New York City and spoke a love letter to an anonymous 'you'. I look like I'm doing 'public speech' but I'm speaking to a lover who I've been separated from some reason that the texts don't quite explain. While I'm talking about love and desire, I am also bringing the war and the way in which the war interrupts and doesn't interrupt our daily lives, our activities, our desire, our love. For me, this work attempts to speak about certain intersections between love and politics that aren't so often talked about." (Hayes)

Continuing the artist's interrogation of the infinitesimal distance that separates the public from the private, this work is a reflection on the difference between speaking and listening - a kind of confession combining the idiom of politics, the transmission of secrets, and the language of love.

The subsequent audio installation is comprised of a PA system, speaker, and a single framed spray-painted work on paper.

Sharon Hayes is represented by Tanya Leighton Gallery, Berlin
www.tanyaleighton.com
www.shaze.info