Noel Kelly
Since 2003
Works in Castleknock Ireland

BIO
Noel Kelly is a Partner in The Art Projects Network, Curator with Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, a member of the Irish branch of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and Board Member of The Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. He has worked independently as a curator as well as advising institutions on visual arts programming both in Ireland and internationally. Amongst his recent writing projects he is editor of the newly released "Art & Politics: The Imagination of Opposition in Europe".

The Art Projects Network is an independent network of professionals, specialising in exhibits of both contemporary and emerging artists. Our professionals also advise on collections management for private and corporate collections, with specialist project management services for artists.

Discussions (9) Opportunities (4) Events (11) Jobs (0)
DISCUSSION

Call for Applications for the position of Director, Butler Gallery


The Butler Gallery is a contemporary art gallery with a history that dates back to 1943 and a passionate interest in bringing contemporary art into contact with the public. It is currently located in Kilkenny Castle.

OUR PROGRAMME
Over the years the Butler Gallery has been instrumental in creating a base for the visual arts to flourish in the Southeast. We have provided a space for hundreds of artists to exhibit, for thousands of people to enjoy and for many community groups to participate in. We have also cultivated an internationally recognised collection of over 500 art works.

The next step for the Butler Gallery is to locate in an architecturally spectacular public gallery space in Kilkenny where we can show our permanent collection, programme exciting national and international exhibitions and provide a focal point for educational programmes that bring art to all of the people of Kilkenny and the Southeast.

GROUNDBREAKING EXHIBITIONS
Our exhibitions are an innovative, influential and challenging mix of established and emerging international, national and local artists. Each exhibition is selected as a means of illustrating what’s happening now in the art world. On average 165,000 people visit the Butler Gallery every year. Our mission is to excite, educate and astound.

The Butler Gallery is now advertising for the Position of Director

Reporting to the Chairperson of the Board, the Director plans and directs a comprehensive program, including annual operations, exhibitions, and other special projects. The position oversees management of the Gallery’s staff. The Director is responsible for the strategic advancement of the Gallery's development efforts, participating directly in major capital development projects, and institutional policymaking and delivery.

Further details about the position and applications procedure can be found on the gallery website @ http://www.butlergallery.com

DISCUSSION

Catalogue Essay for "Gordon Bennett" an exhibition of new work by Alan Phelan


“No intimation: Total representation”

“Gordon Bennett”, by Alan Phelan, is a reflection and action on the propaganda of mass communications. The multiple narratives that run through this exhibition explore ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further an individual’s cause, to damage an opposing cause; as well as the public actions having such effects.

To our minds, the concept of propaganda is seen within the context of political powers. The manipulation of the media by political propagandists brought the role of mass media to a new level during the lifetime of Josef Goebbels. However it is not the sole remit of the politicos. Mass media is its own originator and perpetrator that continues its work even today. However, we need to ask if it is all-bad The exaggeratedly serious self-promotion of the great egotists can also be seen for their comedic value. This is not an area of subtle intimation. It is total representation. This is at the centre of the theme chosen by Phelan for “Gordon Bennett”, moulded in a mixture of styles, metaphors, and coverts that give the viewer the opportunity to avoid literal representation and to indulge the intimations provided by Phelan.

James Gordon Bennett, scion of the great 19th and early 20th century media age is not a unique character. Inheriting the New York Herald, Bennett continued on his path of playboy, daredevil, and philanthropist. But why then do we place him with the great propagandists? In a non-Freudian sense Bennett was the great uber-ego. The New York Herald became the carnival mirror to this ego, and through shameless self-promotion Gordon Bennett entered the lingua viva that has survived intact even today. Bennett’s great monuments to his cult of personality are known to us: Stanley’s search for Livingston, the ill fated Jeanette expedition to the artic, and the first international motor race still commemorated in Ireland today. However, the great ego can grow to believe its own infallibility. In this Bennett was to be no exception, and from there we take the first steps into Phelan’s exploration.

Ardscull, The Hill of Shouts, a Motte and Bailey, a 12th/13th century site lofty above the plains of Kildare, proclaims itself to the landscape. What better place could Bennett have found to begin this international motor race. The great self-publicist occupied this territory with cars coming from across the world to pay homage to his foresight. Accidents of circumstance placed this road race in the narrow roads of Ireland. Lax restrictions gave Bennett the loophole that he required to run a race at speeds otherwise prohibited in the British Isles. Crowds flocked to the spectacle; lining the hedgerows and overpowering the grandstand view provided by a giant bridge-like seating construction placed across the route.

The ruins of this are now long gone. A simple stone plinth and bronze plaque are all that occupy the place now. Commemoration races hold little of the original excitement. However we do see a human need for continuation, for spectacle, for a realisation that we are alive and different. The superficial artifice of spectacle, of “boys with toys” continues the Bennett theme to modern day. The term “Boy Racer” once seen as derogatory now defines the identity of a sub-section of young male adults. Customised bodywork, pumped up stereo systems, pseudo “performance parts” manufactured in fragile fibreglass provide a new plumage in the mating ritual of the adolescent. A new vocabulary is being included in everyday language, and yet there is the question of brevity of existence. The solidity of this veneer of modernity by its very nature is impermanent and yet the underlying need is at the core of human nature.

The Great Bennett is dead and gone and yet his legacy lingers on. We see in a re-constructed fireplace the fecundity of crude manners and churlish ways. The solidity of great episodes in the life of the great self-publicist pulled apart and remade for each new generation. We are made to question the essence of this solidity. The camouflage of the benign covers an intricate web of complex concealment. It is not new that we cannot trust our key senses. We are made to understand that transparency is not a given right, instead it is a constant challenge that we must undertake to understand.

There is an archaeological and theatrical feel to the work but these disciplines do not inform the work directly. The cue instead is from the museum in general, the museum in ruins, from history that maybe never happened, from a history that is always up for grabs, to be constantly re-interpreted and misunderstood. Phelan’s work is post-production. This is the social art of derailed thoughts and endless digressions. Phelan claims to remove his individuality from the work, and yet we must ask if this is really possible. In this darkened mirror we see ourselves, our absurdities, our fears, and our hopes reflected. It is a post-action post-consumerist questioning that is directed specifically to the ‘id’, the source of instinctual impulses and demands for immediate satisfaction of primitive needs. Nothing is new here, there is nothing to see, and yet we are held accountable only to ourselves by the very provision of what is very much with each of us.

Noel Kelly - The Art Projects Network

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Alan Phelan was born in Dublin 1968 where he lives and works. He graduated from DCU, Dublin, 1989 and RIT, New York, 1994. Solo exhibitions include a Tulca Visual Arts Festival, Galway Arts Centre, 2003-04; 'Three Stories', South Dublin County Council, 'In Context' public art project 2001; Limerick City Gallery and Triskel, Cork, 2000; Arthouse, Dublin, with Jim Dingilian, 1998. Recent group shows include 'Country', Equrna Gallery, Ljubjana, Slovenia and 'EV+A Imagine Limerick', Limerick City Gallery, 2004; 'Appendiks 1', Thiemers magasin, Copenhagen; 'Affinity Archive', The Metropolitan Complex, Dublin, and 'Permaculture', Project, Dublin, 2003; 'Crawford Open 3', Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork, 'Perspective 2002', Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; 'Fabulations of Form', Arthouse, Dublin. He co-curated with Jane Speller ‘No Respect’ public art project, 2004; with Tom Keogh 'Stand Fast Dick and Jane', Project, Dublin, 2001; and 'Things We Do', 2000, Arthouse, Dublin. He has also writes regularly for SSI publications and Circa magazine. Forthcoming projects include a Broadband commission for the Department of Communications, Marine, and Natural Resources.

EVENT

Invitation: "Gordon Bennett" an exhibition of new work by Alan Phelan


Dates:
Sun Aug 08, 2004 00:00 - Sat Jul 31, 2004

Alan Phelan - “Gordon Bennett”

The Art Projects Network

invites you to the opening of the

"Gordon Bennett"
a new work by Alan Phelan

Sunday, 8th August 2004
Grennan Mill, Thomastown
Co. Kilkenny

The exhibition runs from
Friday 6th August - Sunday 15 August 2004

We all know the expression, but do we know the origins? Gordon Bennett was a notorious playboy and newspaper tycoon from the late 19th century. The works in this exhibition take several historical references and connections and then reshape them into a new dynamic across a range of objects, images, and situations. The various elements explore ideas surrounding myth and celebrity routed through language.

Phelan’s practice is concerned with relational aspects of photography, sculpture, installation and social interaction.

This new body of work consists of several sculptures, photographs, and drawings. They explore aspects of representation and media manipulation, connected across a biographical narrative.

A display of modified cars, commonly known as ‘boy racers’, is included in the exhibition. These young contemporary car enthusiasts will take the place of the original twelve drivers from the 1903 Gordon Bennett Race.

The Gordon Bennett exhibition is part of the Kilkenny Arts Festival 2004 and is part funded by The Arts Council of Ireland

The Art Projects Network
Studio 7, The Fire Station Artists' Studios
9 - 11 Lower Buckingham Street
Dublin 1, Ireland
http://www.artprojectsnetwork.net


EVENT

Pierre Mertens in Dublin 2004


Dates:
Thu Jun 24, 2004 00:00 - Wed Jun 16, 2004

Thursday, 24th June 2004 @ 4pm
Loose End Studio, Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Dublin, Ireland
Belgian Artist Pierre Mertens will present his views on Contemporary Arts Culture. The discussion on the role of new media, and its assistance in the realisation of the possible, impossible, improbable, and the ideal seeks to explore where the limits lie - and importantly who sets these limits.

Pierre Mertens "Ruins of the Future" is a featured website in the Fused Visual Arts Program - http://www.artprojectsnetwork.net/DublinSouth/


EVENT

X�VER Visual Arts @ Fused 2004, Dublin, Ireland


Dates:
Sun Jun 20, 2004 00:00 - Wed Jun 16, 2004

XØVER Visual Arts @ Fused 2004
curated by The Art Projects Network
21st June - 20th July 2004
South Dublin Libraries:
Tallaght, Castletymon, Lucan, Ballyroan, Clondalkin, and County Hall
Multimedia Center KIBLA, Maribor, Slovenia

FUSED:XØVER is a curated website exhibition. This website is made available to the online community both locally and internationally, as well as being available free of charge within the 5 local libraries in the area. Within thiss website are 12 featured artists working in the area of new media that is either realised or supported by Internet-based Art Works. Also contained within the website are links to chosen artists' notebooks, web logs (blogs), on-line diaries, and other sites that enhance the understanding of new media and contemporary visual art. The exhibition space also provides for a discussion area so that all viewers can enter into dialogue about their experiences, and opinions.

Featured artists: Lionello Borean & Chiara Grandesso, Geoffrey Thomas, Heath Bunting, Reynald Drouhin, Joseph & Donna McElroy, Lasse Rae, Young Hae Chang Heavy Industries, Pierre Mertens, Vuk Cosic, and Shirin Kouladjie.

On June 24th @ 4pm, in the Loose End Studio, Civic Theatre, Tallaght, Pierre Mertens will provide an opportunity for dialogue. This discussion on the role of new media, and its assistance in the realisation of the possible, the impossible, the improbable, and the ideal seeks to explore where the limits lie, and more importantly who sets these limits.

This exhibition will simultaneously open in Multimedia Center KIBLA, Maribor, Slovenia.

http://www.artprojectsnetwork.net/DublinSouth/