Screening

Memory Theatre by Helen Kirwan - Screening, talk and Q&A

6 Jun 2018

Event times

7-10pm

Cost of entry

Admission: £5.83
For tickets, please go to: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/film-screening-and-talk-memory-theatre-tickets-46028148431?aff=efbeventtix

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Close-Up Cinema

London
England, United Kingdom

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Helen Kirwan will present a screening of Memory Theatre (2017) at the Close-Up Cinema, London on Wednesday 6 June 2018. This will be followed by a short talk and Q&A with the artist, and drinks at the Close-Up bar. The Q&A will be led by the artist and filmmaker Dr. Jane Madsen.

About

Helen Kirwan will present a screening of Memory Theatre (2017) at the Close-Up Cinema, London on Wednesday 6 June 2018. This will be followed by a short talk and Q&A with the artist, and drinks at the Close-Up bar. Kirwan will discuss her practice as a performance artist and filmmaker, as well as her research into mourning, memorial, fragment and trace. Over many years, this line of enquiry has taken the artist on long journeys across Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. The Q&A will be led by the artist and filmmaker Dr. Jane Madsen.

Memory Theatre began as a series of outdoor performances by the artist Helen Kirwan in Kent, Morocco and the west of Ireland. Filmed live, the video footage was subsequently edited into a two-channel video.  Dressed as a widow, in black, the artist endlessly undertakes futile and absurd tasks such as measuring the sea with buckets at Joss Bay and counting stones on the vast shingle beach at Dungeness, Kent. In the desert of Merzouga, Morocco, she documents the passing of time by pouring grains of sand into the dunes. These endless repetitions express ‘the physical traces of mourning, which manifest themselves through absurd and futile activity,’ says Kirwan. The artist is informed by the concept of the philosophical fragment as posited by the Early German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schlegel: a dynamic practice which aims at fragmentation for its own sake. The essential incompletion of Kirwan’s futile reiterations is itself the mode of fulfilment. A sound piece by the award-winning Dublin-based composer Tom Lane was commissioned for the video and is the product of a long-standing collaboration between the artist and musician.

The elements of earth, fire, wind and water are at play in the outdoor sites of Memory Theatre: Morocco’s hot desert sand dunes, Kent’s beaches, and the ancient bog in Connemara, Ireland. Kirwan’s performances involving contact between the body and environment are intensely haptic. They serve as a metaphor for a system of mapping and  attempted navigation through what she calls the wilderness  and ‘fog’ of bereavement.  Repetition and journeying are part of the endless searching and yearning which some psychologists identify as intrinsic to the bereavement process. The artist’s intuitive connection with the soil, stone and sea, conjure up the intensity of grief and, as she awaits her own death, she marks with infinite futility, the finitude of human existence. There is also a personal significance that stems from the landscapes of Kent, where the artist has lived for 30 years, and Ireland, where she is from.

Memory Theatre was first unveiled as a video installation at the ‘Personal Structures - Crossing Borders’ exhibition at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017) and presented at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne. Recently, Kirwan has combined this video project with a series of live performances in the sea. The first two took place on the Sunny Sands Beach in Folkestone,  scheduled according to the tide tables, as part of the Folkestone Triennial Fringe. Memory Theatre was also performed this year at The Space Arts Centre, London. Here, multiple projections (seven) were combined with live performances by Kirwan and the composer Tom Lane.  Using lumps of charcoal, Kirwan endlessly made repetitive marks on large boards whilst Lane performed simultaneous, improvised sound

About Helen Kirwan
Helen Kirwan is a British - Irish conceptual artist. Born in Ireland where she lived for many years, she now divides her time between the UK and Brussels. She practised law as a barrister in Dublin and London for nearly twenty years before becoming an artist full time. She took a B.A. (First Class Hons.) in Fine Art at the University for the Creative Arts Canterbury in 2000 followed by an M.F.A. in Fine Art Practice from the University of Middlesex, London in 2002 and in 2004, and an M.A. in Aesthetics and Art Theory (Merit) at Kingston University, London. Kirwan’s recent exhibitions include the ’Personal Structures’ 2013, Palazzo Bembo, 54th Venice Biennale; Folkestone Triennial Fringe, 2014, Folkstone; ‘Image of the Road’, 2014, James Hockey Gallery, Surrey, University for the Creative Arts (UCA); ’Personal Structures - Crossing Borders,’ Palazzo Bembo, 56th Venice Biennale, Bodrum Biennial 2015; Bodrum; International Festival of Projections 2016, Kent; Fonlad Festival 2016, Coimbra, Portugal; Rapid Pulse Festival 2016, Chicago; ‘East Sussex Open’, 2016, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; ‘October 15 Ceremony’, 2016, Gallery Çenkaya, Ankara; Camaguëy International Video Art Festival 2017, Camaguëy; ‘Personal Structures - Opens Borders,’ Palazzo Mora, 57th Venice Biennale 2017; ’Thread of Light,’ 2017, P-21, London; ‘Sussex Open’, 2017, Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne.

About Tom Lane
Tom Lane is a composer, sound designer and multi-instrumentalist living in Dublin, Ireland. Born in Bristol in 1984, he studied music at Balliol College Oxford, composition at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and composition and experimental music theatre at the Berlin University of the Arts. Recent work includes composition for Annie Ryan's new production of The White Devil at Shakespeare's Globe, London, music and sound design for a new production of Giselle at Project Arts Centre, Dublin,  and sound design for The Corn Exchange's production of The Seagull at the Dublin Theatre Festival. In 2015 he composed music for Romeo and Juliet at the Gate Theatre and Oedipus at the Abbey Theatre as part of the 2015 Dublin Theatre Festival (nominated for best sound design by the Irish Times Theatre Awards). In 2015 Tom also worked with Rob Moloney to create a new score for Ballet Ireland's acclaimed production of Coppélia choreographed and directed by Morgann Runacre-Temple. His new opera, Front Of House is  a  site-specific commission which opens at the Cork Opera House, Ireland in June. His work was recently described by the Independent as ‘Crafting something steeped in tradition while sounding fresh and contemporary…practically flawless.’

http://www.tom-lane.com/

About Jane Madsen
Jane Madsen is a filmmaker and artist. Her practice and written research concerns uncertainty and experimentation and questions our relationship to place and space. Her films and video installations have been shown in galleries, festivals and cinemas in the UK, EU and Australia. Jane Madsen has written and published on architecture, film and art. She has a practice-based PhD from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL.

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Helen Kirwan

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