Mandy O’Niell, Untitled, Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA 

“The Center for Emerging Visual Artists (CFEVA), in cooperation with Culture Ireland, The PhotoIreland Festival, and Broadstone Studios, presents an international exchange of exhibitions – Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland, and Adapt: Contemporary Photography & Video by CFEVA Fellows from the US. This exchange was created to enhance the artistic dialogue between Philadelphia and Dublin and to promote collaboration between local and international artists. The exhibition in Philadelphia, Interchange: Contemporary Photography and Video from Ireland, was curated by Angela Duignan and features works by Michelle Browne, Padraig Cunningham & Linda Shevlin, Angela Duignan, Michael Fortune, Niamh O’Connor, Mandy O’Neill, and David J. Pierce. It is an exhibition of contemporary artists from Ireland, which explores the narrative mode through the mediums of video, audio, and photography. The works exhibited encapsulate and reflect aspects of identity, heritage, story telling, ritual, and social change. They present a view of a contemporary Ireland – its culture and heritage – while drawing parallels to a wider global context.”

Mandy O’Niell, Untitled, Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA

Philadelphia artist Amy Stevens stayed in Roscommon with Angela Duignan and her two daughters while on an artist exchange to Ireland.  The fellow artists became fast friends and concocted a scheme to bring photography and video from Ireland to Philadelpha and vice versa.  Amy is going back to Ireland this summer with the CFEVA contingent featuring Noah Addis, Joelle Jensen, Allison Kaufman, Michael Mergen, Tim Portlock, Jeffrey Stockbridge, and Kimberly Witham curating the exhibit for The PhotoIreland Festival, a month long photography festival.  Angela Duignan told DoN, “It’s an exhange between Ireland and the States.  Amy came over for a three week artist residency and stayed with me while she was there and out of that friendship we’ve created an exchange show.  It’s taken two years for it to come together, find the spaces and all.”  Amy said, “Since I went through the CFEVA program I thought it would be a good fit.  It’s a nice exchange, it’s a good way to do it.”

In Angela Duignan‘s address to the audience gathered in the gallery she said, “First I’d like to thank Amy and CFEVA for taking this on and the huge generosity of bringing this show over from Ireland.  I’d particularly like to thank Amy Stevens for her incredible work hanging the show and organizing it.  Her show will be brought over to Ireland in July as a part of The PhotoIreland Festival.”

 “We’ll start off with Mic (Michael) Fortune’s work, he’s from Wexford, east coast of Ireland, he works in video, photography and audio.  This particular piece is three video pieces, for three years, each year, he photographed and videoed his mother who dressed up on Halloween.  And she goes next door to her mother’s house to try and play with her head.  There’s actually six years of video footage.  He’s also working on a documentary on folklore and heritage and his background is an educator and he’s presented at 120 shows in the last year all over the world in film festivals as well as gallery spaces.”

Niamh O’Connor, Mary Ellen’s Cottage, Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA

“In the video projection is Michelle Browne’s video piece…Linda Shevlin, shot in Belfast… and the third is David J. Pierce, shot in Dublin.”  The gallery was dark for the video and projections; the photographs are displayed in the anti-chamber and hall. In the corner of the darkened gallery is a strange chair, a semi-circular red chair with high sides and headphones.  Angie explained, “It’s a ten minute audio of my daughter telling her version of The Princess and the Pea story.  It is connected to the large print outside of the girl on a stack of mattresses.  The base of that piece is how memory changes as the story is told over time, the story is remembered and changed, on and on.”  Angie Duignan explained to DoN that she was in a shop with a stack of mattresses, she put her daughter up top and took some shots.  But decided to dress up her little girl and bring her back for a more refined photographic narrative.

Angela Duignan, How Does That Story Go Again?, Lambda photographic print, laminated onto MDF, Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA

IIn the hall is a group of portraits of boxers, photographer Mandy O’Neill said, “My work is about particular groups of people or individuals through an instinctual desire to get closer to another part of the world.  The images I’m presenting in the show were taken between 2007 and 2009 in a boxing hall called Saint Xavier’s in the inner city of Dublin.  They’ve been exhibited nationally and internationally, most notably in the European Month of Photography in Berlin and Gallery of Photography in Dublin.  Around 2007 when the work began Ireland was in the grips of the so-called Celtic Tiger, everything seemed to be going really fast, excessive consumerism was the order of the day.  This is something I never felt part of; I felt a longing for something more authentic and simple.

The image of the lone figure of the boxer, there’s a romanticism attached to this that I think resonates around the world.  Norman Mailer stated, “Boxing is a metaphor for life…’, I saw the boxer as an embodiment of this idea and a pared down more authentic existence.  I also like the idea of being able to come back into our own bodies rather than buying all this stuff required to make us happy.  The particular club I chose to shoot at turned out to be a great place, the camaraderie, care and support for the young kids around the area was amazing and they would make you feel at home just by not making you feel you were in the way.  I was in their training area in a corner with my camera and lights while they were skipping and jumping around.  The smells and sound of the place became familiar to me and the bell rings every three minutes and is followed by a one-minute break.  The subjects were all filmed within this one-minute break in an attempt to capture this heightened physical excitement.  My assistant would run and grab somebody and then we had thirty seconds to grab the shot before they went back.  The title Exhale comes from this pair of struggle then respite and always trying to move slightly forward.  I saw it as a general metaphor for life.”

Niamh O’Connor, Desert Island Rain, Termon Road, Taum Triangle Row, Marrion & Maggies, giclee photographic prints,  Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA.

Mic Fortune, Instagram still from three screen video installation, Interchange: Contemporary Photography & Video from Ireland @ CFEVA

The Center for Emerging Visual Artists, 237 South 18th Street, The Barclay Building, Philadelphia through May 18, 2012.

Written and photographed by DoN Brewer.