For centuries, the Congo has repeatedly compelled and defied the Western imagination. ‘Infra’ by Richard Mosse at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York offers a radical rethinking of how to depict a conflict as complex/intractable as that of the ongoing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Mosse photographs both the rich topography and rebel groups at war with the Congolese national army (itself a patchwork of recently integrated warlords. Mosse used a discontinued aerial surveillance film for this project, a type of color infrared film called Kodak Aerochrome. Richard Mosse, Jack Shainman Gallery, New Work: until 23 December
Sarah Browne at Ikon
‘How to Use Fool’s Gold’ is the enigmatic title of Dublin-based artist Sarah Browne’s first solo exhibition in the UK, at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. Browne’s practice involves working with small groups to create and document diverse forms of non-market exchange such as gift economies, subsistence, subsidies and poaching. Using processes such as sculpture, filmmaking and publishing, she ‘seeks out the potential for a radical kind of resourcefulness as a creative form of opposition’. The exhibition runs parallel with the development of a new work, Scarcity Radio, with the Ikon Youth Programme and Slow Boat. Sarah Browne, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham: 15 February – 22 April
Sonia Shiel in Paris
Sonia Shiel’s installations, often composed of paintings, sculptures and videos, ‘explore the propensity of art to be effective in the real world, while pitching mankind’s most earnest endeavours against their odds’. Shiel is currently the artist in residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais where she will open a solo presentation of work made in Paris. Her work is also currently included in 'Monkey Wrench', a group show at Ormston House Gallery, Limerick. Sonia Shiel, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris: 7 December
Irish Artists at the Lyon Biennale
The title of the Biennale de Lyon – ‘A Terrible Beauty Is Born’ – is after the poem Easter 1916 written by W B Yeats. This major international event will gather together the work of around sixty artists and includes Irish artists Sarah Pierce and Garrett Phelan. Yeats’ poem shifts uneasily between affirmation, question and negation, the curators explain. ‘As such, the title is more a methodological tool than a theme per se. It enables the project to explore the force of paradox and contradiction, tension and ambivalence, and to address the state of urgency in the world and in the arts today.’ Articulated through a series of narratives, the exhibition aims to ‘address the density of the present as well as the power of the imaginary, the visionary and the hallucinatory’.
Sarah Pierce and Garrett Phelan, Biennale de Lyon: until 31 December
Death & Sensuality
Modern Irish art is light years away from jaded traditionalist notions of thatched cottages and comely colleens. Witness ‘Death & Sensuality’, a group exhibition of contemporary Irish artists at Mina Dresden Gallery, San Francisco, California. Part of Imagine Ireland, the project takes an explicit look at the politics of sex and violence. Notions of the taboo, undercurrents of violence and abuse as well as the erotic are investigated via installation, collage, video, painting and drawing. The works are informed from an Irish and ostensibly post-colonial perspective. But they don’t relate exclusively to Ireland: ‘A dark and intrepid gaze at sex and its connection to violence begins via well-known tangled Irish pasts with the Catholic church, the Troubles and British colonialism, but also quickly opens up to faith, resistance and subjugation generally. Artists include Nina Amazing, Roisin Byrne, Alan Butler, Benjamin de Burca, Breda Lynch, James McCann, Leo McCann, Tom Molloy, Not Abel and Alan Phelan. Contemporary
Irish artists, Mina Dresden Gallery, San Francisco: until 3 December
