THE ONE WHO WAS STANDING APART FROM ME
MART GALLERY DUBLIN, 2018
Commissioned by LIVESTOCK PERFORMANCE ART PLATFORM, curated by Francis Fay
A drawing performance by Irish artist Kiera O'Toole and Scottish artist Grieg Burgoyne
“drawing draws its mark in the act of withdrawing…
Forming a place …to go from nothing to something” Jean Luc-Nancy
A drawing performance by Irish artist Kiera O'Toole and Scottish artist Grieg Burgoyne, 30 mins. Charcoal on 99 red balloons.
Jean Luc-Nancy notes in his text titled The pleasure in drawing, that drawing has an 'ability to effect and be effected (by the) force from the outside or more precisely the force of sharing and opening, between an inside and outside which refer to one another”. Wrestling with this context, contemporary artists Greig Burgoyne and Kiera O'Toole propose a dynamic drawing performance that engages the notion of the phenomenological of site, as a reorienting dialogue with bodily space and drawings sense of endless becoming. The result is to present two drawing performances one by O’Toole another by Burgoyne that begin as performing space while concluding with a residual sense of place. Through two striking and contrasting practices, Burgoyne and O'Toole share a rich immersion and teasing of how we constitute place, bringing the absurd alongside the experience of time, as they evolve a further third space akin to host and ghost; Both Burgoyne and O'Toole’s practice and research contribute a series of dialogic responses that embrace drawing in its widest sense, from the performative to the trace element. From the traditional to the ubiquitous, the role of materials will play a key factor in that dialogue. For Burgoyne, this is to source it from the locality in an act of contingency, where an absurd logic will flourish as materials, repetition, and endurance meet with site and bring about a newly configured sense of space. For O’Toole, the changing and temporal of site is a starting point to embrace the aesthetic potential and the experience that will result in gestural makes on paper.
Greig Burgoyne, https://www.greigburgoyne.com
This drawing performance formed part of Livestock who teamed up with MART to present a year long residency in 2018.
Livestock was established in 2010 at The Market Studios in Dublin by Joan Healy, Louise Ward and Francis Fay. Livestock continues today with Francis Fay & Eleanor Lawler as co-curators.
Livestock is an artist-led initiative set up to support, encourage and promote performance, the artists and their work. The bi-monthly event is an opportunity for performers to show new or evolving work.
Central to their ethos is the creation of a positive and welcoming environment where artists can perform their live work to an appreciative audience. We believe performance facilitates a relationship between artist and audience, creating an intimacy and a space for dialogue between both parties.
Livestock has been part of Dublin Live Art Festival since 2012, exposing Irish performance artists’ work to International artists taking part in the Festival.