Radical Arcadia

About

Radical Arcadia
Exhibition and Special Events
3 October - 13 October 2019

Radical Arcadia is an interdisciplinary and off-site project of Catalyst Arts, that investigates and questions the idea of Arcadia as the poetic shaped space of harmonious living between human and nature. It aims to spark dialogue that falls into topics in art, science, anthropology and architecture, rethinking about our ecological relationships with our spatial environment. The project consists of a new cross-art form commission by artists Paddy Bloomer and Jasmin Marker, a participatory exhibition through an open call and audio session featuring David Shrigley’s Goat Music.

Cross-Art Forms Exhibition
Paddy Bloomer & Jasmin Marker

Launch: Thursday 3 October 2019, 7-10pm
Artist Talk by Jasmin Marker: Saturday 5 October 2019, 5:30pm

'Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space,' as Robert Venturi wrote. This cross-art forms exhibition explores the material and structural awareness of the tension between the need for human habitation against catastrophic natural forces, and the protection of nature's ecological mechanism. Radical Arcadia reflects on the contradiction between our pastoral visions and morals, and the rationality in actualising these ideals.

Special: Works on Paper
Isabel English, Michael Hanna & Hayley Gault

Launch: Thursday 3 October 2019, 7-10pm

This special exhibition contemplates what Arcadia means today, as opposed to 100 years ago in Ireland; and what types of space hold this imagery. As a point of reference, artists draw on ideas that respond, reflect, or contrast to the artist Paul Henry who painted the pastoral values of rural Ireland. Visitors are encouraged to make use of ideas from these works to approach a holistic interpretation of other exhibits in the gallery space.

Associated Events

Curator Tour by Edy Fung & Leah Corbett
Saturday 5 October 2019, 5pm

Catalyst Arts Co-Directors Edy and Leah guide you through the exhibitions, providing first-hand information and interesting insights into the process of developing and interpreting the underlying themes with artists, and how research thinking has formed curatorial concepts behind the exhibition.

Audio Session - David Shrigley: Goat Music
Saturday 5 October 2019, 6:30pm

Catalyst Arts is proud to present Goat Music from David Shrigley’s studio as an associated programme of Radical Arcadia. Goat Music includes recordings of the goats in the film as well as the soundtrack Shrigley composed to accompany the opening performance in Hydra. Shrigley's project for DESTE's renovated former slaughterhouse was a funny film shown in a historically unfunny place. Shrigley noted that although he also filmed goats in Malta, the goats in Scotland seem to be much happier and thus funnier because they are not used for meat production.

Artists

Paddy Bloomer is a Belfast-based artist and inventor who works with building typologies, structures and components which are drawn from everyday values as a process to understand and subvert permacultural principles. This includes exploiting unusual power sources, waste disposal, Health and Safety legislation and public infrastructures. In response to Lisbon Architecture Triennale: Taking the Country's Side, Paddy revisits ideas from his previous innovative structural projects 'Barn' and ­'Deployable Crannog'.

Jasmin Marker is a Belfast-based, German-born interdisciplinary artist working at cross-sections of bio-art, installation and [mostly non-human] performance. She often collaborates with members of the microbial kingdoms, exploring holistic approaches to sustainability. In this exhibition at Zaratan Arte Contemporânea, Jasmin uses Algae as a case study to investigate the concept 'Homo Economicus'. Her work encourages viewing human and non-human existence and relations with equal footing, speculating a world that neutralises our resistance to 'natural threats' and cohabitation with 'invasive species'.

Isabel English is an Irish artist currently based in Belfast. Her work revisits and extends on the theories of the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, a precursor of utopian city. She deconstructs architectonic elements from the ideal space and objects, natural or constructed, to envisage a contemporary arcadia where space can be indefinite, spontaneous or moveable.

Michael Hanna is a Belfast-based artist and co-founder of the artist-run organisation AMINI (Artists' Moving Image Northern Ireland). His photography reads beyond the surface of Lagan Weir, the main river in Belfast, and focuses on how the function and symbolism of the river is shaped and co-created by man-made system and activities in time.

Hayley Gault is a freelance curator, rural practitioner and farmer who lives and works between Belfast and Magheramorne. Her aim is to form a sustainable practice which expands concepts of artist, curator, researcher, producer, farmer, writer, and one which centres around environment, its ideologies, its futures, its realities and its practicalities, tracing contemporary modes of production of art, culture and food.

Radical Arcadia opens on the same weekend as the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Kindly supported by British Council NI and Culture Ireland.