Maynooth University Department of English

Seminars for Spring 2018 will be announced shortly.
 
All seminars take place in the Iontas Building, North Campus, Maynooth University
 
 

Illuminations is delighted to host
Sam Keogh    |    Videos
 
Illuminations  - Maynooth University   29 November 2018 to 28 January 2019
 
For his show at Illuminations Gallery, Sam Keogh presents a selection of videos which have come out of his performances and installations to date. Each video is formally specific to the installation or performance that produced it. On the opening night of ‘Videos’ Keogh will deliver a new performance entitled ‘Knotweed’. Using collage, text and audio visual elements, ‘Knotweed’ is conceived as a performance as root system, rhizomatically binding together several strands of research on invasive species; landlord revenge; worker sabotage and foraged food trends. A video produced by this performance will be presented on one of the screens in Illuminations Gallery after the opening night.
 
In some instances the video was made to provide a non-objective document of the performance which happened on the opening night. ‘Four Fold’ was filmed live with a GoPro camera strapped to the artists chest. The slight fish-eye effect suggests the decapitated point-of-view of the ‘Old Croghan Man’, an image of which covered the floor of the space in the video. A similar strategy is used in ‘Integrated Mystery House’ where the lone inhabitant(played by Keogh) of a dilapidated interstellar ship appears in front of the camera. He is filming himself rehearse a frenetic presentation about his alterations to a huge defunct control panel. Through his discordant presentation to a hallucinated audience, disparate narratives and anecdotes are soldered together into a prototype for a new kind of integrated circuit. Both videos were made as formally considered meta-documents of the performances to be projected back into the installation for the duration of the exhibition.
 
Other videos are closer to stand alone works. ‘Taken Out of/Put into Oscar’s Bin’ (2013) for instance see’s Keogh deliver a patchy monologue to a disinterested audience outside a gallery opening. The monologue describes Oscar the Grouch through a constellation of fragments. His aspects are moulded through a series of tangential anecdotes, descriptions and lists, each unconnected to the last but forming a body through a description of its constituent parts. These various threads are matted together to present a textural impression of his form, tangled in the senses of the viewer.
 
Keogh’s work spans installation, sculpture, performance, drawing and collage. His installations often facilitate a performance which morphs sculpture into props and collage into mnemonic devices or surfaces to be read as visual scripts. These scripts take the form of dramatised, rambling monologues, densely packed with references to popular culture, politics, history, anecdotes and descriptions of physical and chemical processes.
 
Sam Keogh Born 1985, lives and works in Amsterdam/London/Co.Wicklow.
Selected Solo Exhibitions; Orbital Debris, 1646 Project Space, Den Haag, Netherlands, July 2018; Kapton Cadaverine, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, January 2018; Eurocopter EC135, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany, June 2016; Four Fold, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, May 2015 ; Mop, Kerlin Gallery, Dublin, September 2013; Terrestris, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, July 2012; BABEL, Artlink Gallery, Buncrana, Co.Donegal,  2010. Selected Two/Three Person Exhibitions; The Mindful Intervention, Yin-Ju Chen, Tamás Kaszás, Sam Keogh, Kunstfort, Vijfhuizen, Netherlands, July 2018; Something III be Scared of, Sam Keogh, Linda Stupart, Joseph Noonan Ganley, no.w.here, London, February, 2018; Something II be Scared of, Sam Keogh, Linda Stupart, Joseph Noonan Ganley, Syndicate Gallery, Cologne, April 2017
samkeogh.net

Visit the Illuminations web page here.

Women and the Decade of Commemorations: An All Island Perspective
Maynooth University
https://allislandcommemorationnetworkireland.wordpress.com
 
Three notable aspects of the ‘Decade of Commemorations’ thus far have been the lack of an all-island commemorative strategy; the underrepresentation or outright exclusion of women scholars/ artists/ writers/ activists / stakeholders from major events (the RIA’s ‘Global Perspectives on the Rising’ series and the Abbey Theatre’s ‘Waking the Rising’ programme are two high profile examples); and its domination by historical discourse and by historians. These public talks and roundtable events, taking place at Maynooth University, aim to diversify approaches to the ‘decade of commemoration’. They focus intentionally on ‘women and the decade of commemorations’ as a corrective to the current national conversation, seeking to showcase the scholarly and creative work of women working in an Irish cultural context, as well as to initiate discussion about women of the period of a century ago. Finally, they aim to consider the ways in which the ‘decade of commemoration’ has in fact limited discussion and debate about commemorations perceived to lie outside of its remit (such as the 20th anniversary of the closing of the last Magdalene laundry). 
 
Tuesday January 19th
Roundtable discussions with talks by:
Dr Mary McCauliffe, Women’s Studies, University College Dublin;
Dr Roísin Higgins, Department of History, Teeside University;
Dr Sinéad Kennedy, Department of English, Maynooth University;
Dr Emilie Pine, School of English and Drama, University College Dublin.

Listen to podcasts of this event by clicking on these links:

 
 
Friday February 19th
Dr Diane Urquhart, Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool,
‘Unity of unionism? Gender, covenant and commemoration'.
11am, An Foras Feasa Seminar Room, Iontas Building
Tea and coffee from 10.30
All welcome
 
Wednesday April 6th
Roundtable discussions with talks by:
Catriona Crowe, National Archives (TBC);
Martina Devlin, Writer, Journalist and Broadcaster;
Professor Gerardine Meaney, Director of Global Irish Studies, University College Dublin;
Professor Margaret Ward, Department of History, Queen’s University Belfast.
 
This event is open to the public and free of charge. Registration is required as places are limited. Please contact Dr Oona Frawley (oona.frawley@nuim.ie) for further information and to register to attend.
 
May Keynote (date to be confirmed)
Liz Gillis, Women of the Irish Revolution
 
September 8/ 9
After the Rising, After the Somme: Reflections on Commemoration in 2016
Invited Keynotes:Dr Marie Coleman, School of History, QUB
Professor Senia Paseta, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Roundtables with contributions by (among others):Dr Dominic Bryan, Director, Institute of Irish Studies, QUB
Dr Lindsey Earner Byrne, Department of History, UCD
Dr Emily Mark-Fitzgerald, Department of Art History, UCD
 
This event is open to the public and free of charge. Registration is required as places are limited. Please contact Dr Oona Frawley (oona.frawley@nuim.ie) for further information and to register to attend.
 
October keynotes (dates to be confirmed):
Professor Lucy McDiarmid, Department of English, Montclair State University 
Professor Marianne Hirsch, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

↵The Great Famine of 1840s Ireland left a profound impact on Irish culture, as recent groundbreaking historical and literary research has revealed. Less well documented and explored, however, is the relationship of the Famine and its related experiences (migration, eviction, poverty, institutionalization and urbanization) to the visual and material cultures of Ireland. This conference, which was hosted by Maynooth University and organised as part of the NWO-funded International Network of Irish Famine Studies, aimed to consider broadly how the material and visual cultures of Ireland and its diaspora (including painting, sculpture, photography, drama, architecture, film, dance, ritual, musealisation, heritage, archaeology) intersect with the multiple impacts and experiences of the Famine.

Taking a broad approach to the impact of the Famine on visual and material cultures, the conference bought together scholars from various fields to promote new, cross-disciplinary dialogues to deepen our understanding of the Famine’s cultural history.

Plenary speakers:

Professor Fintan Cullen, University of Nottingham

Dr Jason King, NUI Galway
Dr Emily Mark-FitzGerald, University College Dublin
Professor Chris Morash, Trinity College Dublin
Professor Niamh O’Sullivan, Curator, Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, Quinnipiac University

https://visualmaterialfamine.wordpress.com