As part of the Arts Council's Critical Voices 3 programme, acclaimed writer Iain Sinclair, theatre director Lisa Goldman, sound artist and theatre maker Graeme Miller and photographer/film maker Andrew Cross will discuss how their work is informed by the changing urban landscapes of Europe and the US. Critical Voices is the Arts Council's biennial programme of public debate about art, culture and ideas. This year's programme turns the spotlight onto the artist and society, and reflects current international intellectual debate.
Chaired by journalist and critic Gemma Tipton, Suburbs and Cities will explore how artists respond to and engage with the specifics of place including the intangible qualities of location history, desire and identity.
The panel of invited artists will show examples of their work, sharing insights into their specific practice and drawing connections between art disciplines. Suburbs and Cities will shed light on how artists can be effective voices of dissent and collective celebration.
The event will take place Wednesday 06 September 2006 @ 4.00pm, Draíocht, Blanchardstown. A bus will be available from Nassau St, Dublin (beside the Nassau St entrance to Trinity College) at 3pm to take audiences to the event. A recent work by Andrew Cross will be shown en route. The event, which will include a session for questions from the audience, will be followed by a wine reception.
Suburbs and Cities is kindly supported by Draíocht. For tickets for the event (and places on the bus if required) please contact CREATE on email: info@create-ireland.ie or tel: 01 4736600.
Iain Sinclair lives in and writes about Hackney, East London. His novels include Downriver (Winner of the James Tait Black Prize & the Encore Prize for the Year's Best Second Novel) and, most recently, Dining on Stones (which was shortlisted for the Ondaatje prize). Non-fiction books, exploring the myth and matter of London, include Lights Out for the Territory, London Orbital and Edge of the Orison. He has also written and presented a number of films for BBC2's Late Show and has co-directed four documentaries with Chris Petit for Channel 4; one of which, Asylum, won the short film prize at the Montreal Festival.
Writer and director Lisa Goldman is Artistic Director of Soho Theatre, London. Her recent work includes directing The Bogus Woman (Scotsman Fringe First Award, Manchester Evening News Best Actress); directing short films; curating Going Public (a performed debate); and setting up Artists Against the War in 2001. In 2005 she wrote and directed a groundbreaking walkabout performance Hoxton Story which The Guardian described as having ³absolutely no manners, and is all the better for it. In weaving stories, it reveals truths: the divisions between art and life blur, in a show that is rooted in the community and probes the very nature of community itself.
Graeme Miller is a theatre maker, composer and artist. With the idea of being "a composer of many things that may include music", he has made theatre, dance, installations and interventions which often share a sense that they are structures made from fragments of actuality, composed into resonant landscapes. If there is an underlying narrative to all his work, it concerns the struggle to make sense of the world and the building of new half-sacred, half-profane worlds from the fragments of the real one.
Andrew Cross began working as an artist in 2000, initially in photography and more recently video, following a successful career as a curator. Alongside two major publications of his photography (Some Trains In America and Along Some American Highways) his work has been exhibited internationally to critical acclaim. In 2004 he completed An English Journey, commissioned by Film & Video Umbrella. He is currently developing a film project about the geographical centre of North America.
Gemma Tipton is an independent writer and critic of contemporary art and architecture. Based in Dublin, she contributes regularly to art and architectural publications, panel discussions, lectures, radio and television programmes in Ireland and internationally. She is the editor of Space: Architecture for Art, an investigation of the architecture of contemporary art galleries; and author of Home, a study of contemporary memorials. In 2001 she was awarded the Arts Council's Critic's Bursary in Contemporary Architecture Writing. She also writes catalogue essays, has had a series of exhibitions of her own work, and has worked as an independent curator.