Gerard Byrne

In 2010, Lismore Castle Arts presents a new exhibition by artist Gerard Byrne.

Gerard 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 consistently 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 Lismore Castle Arts, an ambitious new work has been 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) by Byrne. A Thing is a Hole in a Thing it is Not was 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, the work explored the historical locations of these moments and the enclosed spaces in which they were presented.

At Lismore Castle Arts off-site project space, St Carthage Hall, Byrne presents 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 is shown as a single projection.

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited edition publication, designed by the Peter Maybury Studio, and including a commissioned text by Dr Penelope Curtis. Events accompanying the show include: a seminar on Re-Imagining Minimalism; a tour of the exhibition by Eamonn Maxwell, Director, Lismore Castle Arts; a lecture exploring the synergy between Gerard Byrne and legendary Irish playwright Samuel Beckett; and a talk between Gerard Byrne and Mike Fitzpatrick.