In 2022/23 investment in the arts in Northern Ireland sat at £5.44 per person, per year, in comparison to £25.90 per person, per year, in the Republic of Ireland.
What does this gap in funding do to artists’ work?
On Thursday 12th October, from 2-4:30pm, feminist researcher and organiser, Gráinne Donohue, invites you to join in a workshop at Void Art Centre to collectively explore, discuss and inquire about art-workers’ labour struggles, histories and rights today.
This workshop aims to have an honest and open discussion around worries on past, present and future work and build collective local knowledge to break the isolation of working and thinking alone. This workshop will be participatory and welcomes discussion throughout. All workers are welcome.
This is a free workshop but spaces are limited. Tickets for this workshop will be released on Monday 25th September. Keep your eyes peeled as they will disappear fast!
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Gráinne Donohue is a feminist researcher and organiser based in Marseille. Gráinne’s writing and organising centres ending: deportations, detention centres and borders, fighting: precarity and corporate profit and building: renters and workers’ rights, transnational organising and political education.
Join us at Void Art Centre on Thursday 5th October from 7-8:30pm for an interactive seminar with Professor Colin Harvey exploring the topic of: is there a future for human rights?
The aim of this interactive seminar is to offer a critical examination of the role and impact of human rights. We inhabit a world filled with the language of rights and a range of legal standards exist. Yet the struggle to realise rights in practice remains as challenging as ever, in the context, for example, of a climate emergency that raises existential questions. This has prompted much agonised reflection on the status of human rights. What more might be done to ensure effective implementation and enforcement? Are there limitations within the discourse that simply cannot be overcome? How might we reimagine the practice of rights to deliver on the promise of a better future?
This is an open invitation to a conversation about the future of human rights. Everyone is welcome. RSVP is required.
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Colin Harvey is Professor of Human Rights Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre in the School of Law at Queen’s University Belfast. He is a Fellow of the Senator George J Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice, and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Irish Studies. He has served as Head of the Law School at Queen’s. Before returning to Queen’s in 2005 he was Professor of Constitutional and Human Rights Law at the University of Leeds. Professor Harvey has held visiting positions at the University of Michigan, Fordham University, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has taught on the George Washington University – Oxford University Summer School in International Human Rights Law, and on the international human rights programme at the University of Oxford. He served two terms as a Commissioner on the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission (2005-2011) and, in 2023, was appointed to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. He is the General Editor of Human Rights Law in Perspective (Hart-Bloomsbury) and is on the editorial boards of Human Rights Law Review and European Human Rights Law Review. He has written and taught extensively on human rights and constitutional law.
Further information available here: https://go.qub.ac.uk/charvey
The Human Rights Centre at Queen’s University, Belfast was established in 1990 to provide a focus for research and education on human rights. The Centre, based in the School of Law, supports the promotion and protection of human rights in the local and global community. The Centre is privileged to draw on the work of a strong team of academics and postgraduate scholars who are nationally and internationally recognised for their work on human rights. Key areas of research interest and expertise include civil liberties, migration, gender and sexual violence, international criminal law, transitional justice, amnesty laws, reparations, victims and ex-combatants, health and human rights, business and human rights and climate change and environmental justice amongst others. Members of the Centre are active in many different areas – leading and contributing to national and international research projects, publishing academic works, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in the School of Law, and engaging in knowledge transfer activities, including undertaking responses and consultations for civil society, governmental and international organisations. The Centre also organises a lively seminar series bringing internationally respected academics and practitioners to Queen’s throughout the year.
Silver Tongued Deviance is an open mic platform event hosted by spoken word artist Frank Rafferty at Void Art Centre in partnership with Gasyard Development Trust (Bluebell Arts).
During these sessions, spoken word performers/singers/(acoustic) musicians are invited to come along and perform; they may choose any pieces of work from their repertoire, they can create something new which connects to themes in Void’s current exhibition, or they can perform something else entirely which simply resonates with them.
The viewing public are invited to simply attend and enjoy! There is no requirement to perform at these events.
Refreshments are also provided; visitors are invited to enjoy a glass of wine, a beer, or some tea or coffee.
Void is wheelchair accessible.
Silver Tongued Deviance is a collaboration with Gasyard Development Trust (Bluebell Arts).
Join artist Cara Donaghey and model Mel Bradley for an exploratory life drawing session using Banu Cennetoğlu’s exhibition right? as a backdrop on Thursday 7th September, 7-8:30pm.
No prior experience required – just come along and give it a try!
£8 per participant.
Materials and refreshments will be provided.
Acknowledgements
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
Join us for our new ‘Meet The Artist’ series here at Void Art Centre!
As part of our new ‘meet the artist’ series, join artist Banu Cennetoğlu on Tuesday 29th August from 7-8pm for an artist talk and Q&A session around her wider artistic practice.
Banu will be talking about her artistic practice, journey and inspiration in Void’s Engage Space – people are encouraged to attend the talk in person, although viewing the talk online is also an option. Please specify your preferred method of attendance in the Eventbrite sign up form.
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Banu Cennetoğlu is an Istanbul-based artist engaged in a wide range of cross-disciplinary practices. Her practice incorporates methods of archiving in order to question and challenge the politics of memory, as well as the production, distribution and consumption of information.
Cennetoğlu has had solo exhibitions at institutions including K21 Ständehaus, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; Sculpture Center, New York; Chisenhale Gallery, London; Bonner Kunstverein; Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest; Kunsthalle Basel. She has participated in the Berlin, Istanbul, Liverpool, Gwangju, Athens and Venice Bienniale, as well as Manifesta 8 and documenta14. She is the founder of BAS, an artist-run space in Istanbul dedicated to artists’ books and printed matter. Banu Cennetoğlu is currently an advisor at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam.
Join artist Cara Donaghey and model Mel Bradley for an exploratory life drawing session using Shezad Dawood’s exhibition, Leviathan, as a backdrop on Thursday 6th July, 7-8:30pm.
No prior experience required – just come along and give it a try!
£8 per participant.
Materials and refreshments will be provided.
Booking can be made via our website at www.derryvoid.com.
Acknowledgements
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
Silver Tongued Deviance is an open mic platform event hosted by spoken word artist Frank Rafferty at Void Gallery in partnership with Gasyard Development Trust (Bluebell Arts).
During these sessions, spoken word performers/singers/(acoustic) musicians are invited to come along and perform; they may choose any pieces of work from their repertoire, they can create something new which connects to themes in Void’s current exhibition, or they can perform something else entirely which simply resonates with them.
The viewing public are invited to simply attend and enjoy! There is no requirement to perform at these events.
Refreshments are also provided; visitors are invited to enjoy a glass of wine, a beer, or some tea or coffee.
Void is wheelchair accessible.
RSVP via the link below.
Acknowledgements
Silver Tongued Deviance is a collaboration with Gasyard Development Trust (Bluebell Arts).
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
Print + Protein is a peer-led philosophy reading group organised by Aphra Hill responding to Void’s exhibition programme, using diverse theory to expand alternative understandings of contemporary art. It takes its name from the essay Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers by Katherine Hayles which explores immaterial media and the affinity between books and bodies.
The next session will take place on Thursday 27 July from 6-8pm. During this session, the group will discuss Vampyroteuthis Infernalis by philosopher Vilém Flusser and biologist Louis Bec. Describing the distinct biology of the vampire squid, the text is an experimental fable which generates a new, creaturely perspective on the human. Attendees will have the opportunity to read the text in advance, with readings also taking place on the day.
Print + Protein is free to attend and open to the public but booking via Eventbrite is required. A copy of the text will be provided to attendees in advance of the event. Readings will also take place on the day, so participants are not required to have their thoughts pre-prepared. Participants of any background or level of experience are welcome to join. Refreshments are provided.
Aphra Hill is a writer, researcher and recent graduate of Visual Culture at NCAD.
Acknowledgements
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
A talk and community nature walk and sea dip with marine social scientist and award winning surfer Easkey Britton.
Join marine social scientist and award winning surfer, Easkey Britton, on Saturday 1st July, for a day of learning, well-being and connection in response to Void’s current exhibition by Shezad Dawood, Leviathan: We go elsewhere!
Throughout the day you will learn about the power we gain by connecting to water, how we can restore our relationship with the world’s different bodies of water, and by doing so, restore both the water and ourselves.
The day will begin at 11:30am at Void with an interactive talk by Easkey around her research and its connections to Shezad Dawood’s work. A light lunch will then be provided in the gallery before people are invited to make their way to the RNLI Lifeboat Station at Ned’s Point in Buncrana, to regroup again for a guided nature walk and optional sea dip at 2:45pm. As we walk from Ned’s Point to the sea, Easkey will invite the group to join her in simple breathing and visualisation exercises to restore calm, reduce stress and soothe anxiety.
The emphasis of this event is as much on the benefit to water as it is to the individual, and on creating a culture of reciprocity and care. By regaining this lost connection with water, we learn to develop an empathic connection with the force of all life and in the process restore our own hearts and minds. Void staff will be on hand to welcome everybody, whether you are on your own or in a group!
Dr Easkey Britton is a surfer, writer, artist, filmmaker, coach and marine social scientist, with a PHD in Environment and Society. A life-long surfer, she was taught to surf at the age of four and she now channels her passion for the sea and surfing into social change. Her promotion of female surfing in Iran is explored in her TEDx talk ‘Just Add Surf’ and the award-winning documentary Into the Sea. She is the author of several books, including Ebb and Flow published by Watkins, 2023.
Talk, lunch and guided nature walk and sea dip – £8 per person
Aimed at ages 16+.
Please note: There is no pressure to attend the nature walk and sea dip – it is simply an open invitation. Only do what you feel comfortable doing as you are responsible for your own health and safety when attending this event. Attendees are also required to make their own return travel arrangements between Void and Ned’s point. Void can provide advice on this.
Please bring swimming gear and wear comfortable clothing and footwear if attending the nature walk and sea dip.
Acknowledgements
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
Artlink is researching the possibility of an Inishowen Art Festival. To support Artlink in this, curator Keith Whittle has created an inspiring programme of talks, mainly online, by some of the most renowned artists and curators working internationally to create art festivals celebrating unique places and voices.
As part of this programme, artist, curator and writer Leah Gordon will be giving a talk about the Ghetto Biennale, Haiti, originally conceived to expose social, racial, class and geographical immobility, on Tuesday 27 June, from 6-8pm. Leah will be presenting her talk via zoom but the call will be screened in Void Gallery, Derry. People are encouraged to attend the talk in person at Void to promote active discussion after Leah’s presentation, although joining online is also an option. Please state which in the eventbrite sign up form.
In December 2009, Atis Rezistans, the Sculptors of Grand Rue, hosted their first Ghetto Biennale. They invited fine artists, film-makers, academics, photographers, musicians, architects and writers to come to the Grand Rue area of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to make or witness work that was made or happened in their neighbourhood. The Biennale aimed to be a “third space … an event or moment created through the collaboration between artists from radically different backgrounds”.
During this talk, Gordon will discuss one of the original strap lines of the first Ghetto Biennale: “What happens when first world art rubs up against third world art? Does it bleed?” The line is a transmutation of a quote from a book about the maquiladoras in Juárez, Mexico. The original quote, by Gloria Anzaldúa, states, “The U.S.- Mexican border es una herida abierta (is an open wound) where the Third World grates against the First and bleeds.” (Anzaldúa 1987, 3). She will explore what new practices, processes and relationships could emerge from these, often uncomfortable, entanglements.
The 2nd Biennale was held in December 2011. Yet while the Ghetto Biennale was conceived to expose social, racial, class and geographical immobility, it seemed to have upheld these class inertias within its structural core. In this presentation Gordon addresses the contradictions and challenges posed by the event, and how subsequent Ghetto Biennales sought to confront them.
Leah Gordon will also mention the current political crisis and insecurity in Haiti and how the Ghetto Biennale has responded to the situation. Gordon will conclude by reflecting how the Ghetto Biennale produces meaningful discussion about sameness and difference in an allegedly de-centred art world, and transcend different models of ghettoization?
Leah Gordon Biography
Leah Gordon (born Ellesmere Port, UK) is an artist, curator, and writer. Her work explores the ‘intervolved’ and intersectional histories of the Caribbean plantation system, the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, the Enclosure Acts and the creation of the British working-class. In the 1980s she wrote lyrics, sang, and played for a feminist folk punk band. Gordon’s film and photographic work has been exhibited internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney; the Dak’art Biennale; the National Portrait Gallery, UK and the Norton Museum of Art, Florida. She is the co-director of the Ghetto Biennale in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; was a curator for the Haitian Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale; was the co-curator of Kafou: Haiti, History & Art at Nottingham Contemporary, UK; and was the co-curator of PÒTOPRENS: The Urban Artists of Port-au-Prince at Pioneer Works, NYC in 2018 and MOCA, Miami in 2019. In 2015 Leah Gordon was the recipient of the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. In 2022, her award-winning feature-length documentary Kanaval: A People’s History of Haiti in Six Chapters was broadcast in selected cinemas and on BBC 4’s Arena. In 2022, Gordon also exhibited in and curated the Atis Rezistans | Ghetto Biennale exhibition at St Kunigundis Church at documenta fifteen, Kassel; her work showed at MOCA North, Miami; Power Plant Gallery, Duke University, NC, USA, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany. In 2023 the Atis Rezistans | Ghetto Biennale exhibition at St Kunigundis Church at documenta fifteen was awarded ‘exhibition of the year’ by AICA Germany.
Acknowledgements
Screening of the Arcade Fire film Planet Earth at the 2nd Ghetto Biennale 2011, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
Previous speakers in this programme include: David Teevan, creative producer, arts consultant and researcher, former director of the Clonmel Junction festival; Lewis Biggs, Chairman of the Institute for Public Art and Founding Director of the Liverpool Biennale (2000 – 2011); Shubigi Rao artist and curator of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India; and Fram Kitagawa, Director of the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan.
This research is being funded by The Arts Council of Ireland Capacity Building Fund.
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
On April 27, arpilleristas Pilar López and Manoli Garcia Conzalez, from Fundació Ateneu Sant Roc group, Catalonia, facilitated a workshop in Void as part of their wider visit to Northern Ireland in association with the Mujeres Disruptivas exhibition to share their expertise in arpilleras.
Local Derry attendees were joined by participants who journeyed from London, Dublin and Donegal. The workshop brief was to make an arpillera doll themed on the ‘Mujeres Disruptivas’ exhibition which would contribute to a collective arpillera to show solidarity with refugees who have had their lives disrupted. It started with a short walk to the Tower Museum, led by Conflict Textiles curator Roberta Bacic, to view the exhibits displayed as part of Mujeres Disruptivas / Disruptive Women: Exhibition trail.
Once back in the workshop space, under the guidance of Pilar and Manoli – and with translation provided by Roberta – participants created arpillera dolls from scraps of material. There was conversation, concentration and space to reflect as the dolls themed on disruption took shape. Conflict Textiles Fabric Artist Deborah Stockdale, who also took part in the workshop, stitched the completed dolls on a hessian backing.
To mark Refugee Week 2023 (19-25 June), we will be unveiling the final artwork which was created during the session, Mujeres Disruptivas collective arpillera, to the public on Tuesday 20th June at 2pm in Void’s Education Space. Everyone is welcome. Refreshments will be provided. A number of pieces from the Conflict Textiles collection will also be exhibited as part of this event.
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
Join artist Shezad Dawood and curator Mary Cremin on Saturday 17 June at 5:30pm for a special in conversation about Dawood’s exhibition at Void, Leviathan: We go elsewhere, which will open to the public directly after the talk, from 6-8pm.
Shezad Dawood’s Leviathan film series is an episodic exploration of the current challenges we face in the intersection between climate change, migration, and mental health. The film series envisages a future eerily like our present, whose inhabitants are the survivors of a cataclysmic solar event. Each film is written from the point of view of an individual character, providing insight into their trauma and pathological traits and giving each episode its own personality, visual language and rhythm. At Void Gallery we are premiering Episode 8 of the series that elucidates the indigenous perspective on the impact of climate change and the nature of the universe according to their culture. The film looks at the interconnections between nature and the indigenous community. In ways, proposing we move from an anthropocentric view to the era of the Symbioscience, an epoch that highlights the interconnection between nature and humans, living together for mutual benefit and moving towards an ecological philosophy.
Dawood’s suite of paintings, Labanof Cycle, are based on research with the Laboratory of Anthropological Forensics (Labanof) at the University of Milan – an institute that conducts research on personal effects lost by migrants during sea crossings to Lampedusa, in order to help families identify missing relatives. A series of artefacts and objects from the Labanof archive provide the visual references for the textile works. These were developed in dialogue with the renowned textile manufacturer Fortuny, and incorporate their handmade fabrics. These works are a poignant reminder of the ongoing migrant crisis that continues to develop throughout the world – most recently with the war in Sudan.
The film and textile pieces create this symbiotic relationship to the crisis in terms of the climate emergency and migration. The humanitarian echoes the wider ecological crisis through the loss of species throughout the world. Migration is exacerbated through climate events and the collapse of crops, from monoculture farming to the resource-rich countries that are subject to wars both external and internal. The capitalist pursuit of extraction and greed drive these interconnected crises we are faced with continually; at which point does it turn? Dawood interweaves these narratives from disparate regions to create an awareness and a means to have a more holistic view of how the future might be shaped.
Shezad Dawood Biography
Shezad Dawood is a multidisciplinary artist who interweaves stories, realities and symbolism to create richly layered artworks, spanning painting, textiles, sculpture, film and digital media. Fascinated by ecologies and architecture, his work takes a philosophical approach, asking questions and exploring alternative futures through what Dawood describes as ‘world-building’ and ‘imagineering’. His practice is animated by research, working with multiple audiences and communities to delve into narrative, history and embodiment.
His fascination with the esoteric, otherness, the environment and architectures both material and virtual, can be seen across numerous projects, most recently at Night in the Garden of Love: Inspired by & featuring Yusef Lateef; WIELS, Brussels (2023); Sea of Redemption, Shezad Dawood x Zien; Integrations, Barakat Contemporary, Seoul (2023); HMS Alice Liddell, St Pancras Wires commission, London (2022) and previously at institutions as varied as Tate Britain, MoMA, MOCA Toronto and the MORI Art Museum, Tokyo. His film works have been screened internationally, including at the ICA, London; MoMA and Guggenheim, New York.
Mary Cremin Biography
Mary Cremin is Head of Programming at IMMA, Ireland. Prior to this, she was the Director of Void Gallery, where she has supported artists to produce and present ground-breaking new works, including commissioning the artist Helen Cammock’s Turner Prize winning film The Long Note. Cremin was the Commissioner and Curator of the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale with artist Eva Rothchild in 2019. Working with organisations such as the Afghan Visual Arts & History Collective and Beirut Art Residency, her program focusses on revealing new narratives and histories that address and challenge the disparities that exist within Western culture, her program acts as a curatorial corrective. Her areas of research are embedded in ecology, ethics and is informed by politically and socially engaged practice. She is a co-founder of the North South Visual Art network, an advocacy group for the visual arts sector encompassing both North and South of Ireland. She is currently chair of Ormston House, Limerick.
Acknowledgements
Image credit: Bart Sienkiewicz, 2017
Void Gallery is supported using public funding from Arts Council Northern Ireland, Arts Council National Lottery Fund, All Island Fund, Austin and Hope Pilkington Foundation, Arnold Clarke Foundation, Bank of Ireland Begin Together Arts Fund, Community Foundation Ireland, Derry City and Strabane District Council, Enkalon Foundation, National Lottery Community Fund, The Ireland Funds, Ragdoll Foundation.
