On 24th March, the British School at Rome presents the event “Catriona Gallagher in conversation with Léna Lewis-King and Luca Peretti: a dialogue and screening on experimental analogue filmmaking and eco-developing with plants” hosted by Fondazione Giuliani and curated by On Site.

Intertwining different areas of visual culture, from film to video, from photography to illustration, the relationship between analogue and digital is a central theme in contemporary moving image creation. The space of contact between analogue and digital opens up the infinite possibilities offered by the hybridisation of mediums and languages on the one hand, and reclaims the necessity of the preservation of analogue materials and technologies as a living source for contemporary creation on the other.

Catriona Gallagher and Léna Lewis-King, in conversation with Luca Peretti and the On Site team, will present their own research and artistic practices that explore, in different but assonant ways, the territories of transition between analogue and digital, the creation and re-signification of the archive, and the city of Rome in which they have lived and worked for a period of residence.

During the talk archive materials from the 16 mm medium will be screened, in addition to a selection of the artists’ projects.

We thank Graziano Schiano for the archival films.

Photo credits: Silvia Calderoni for the BSR

Thursday 9th March - Saturday 11th March, British School at Rome, via Gramsci 61, Roma

The artists will be present with some of their work to answer visitors’ questions and share their research: Maeve Brennan – Sainsbury Scholar, Luke Burton – Abbey Fellow in Painting, Hardeep Dhindsa – Leverhulme Study Abroad Scholarship, Catriona Gallagher – Bridget Riley Fellow, Holly Graham – Sainsbury Scholar, Sharon Kelly – Arts Council of Northern Ireland Fellow, Lucy Tarquinio – Abbey Scholar in Painting, Laura White – Ampersand Fellow 2022-23.

The Winter Open Studios 2023 will be an opportunity to highlight some aspects of the research that underpins the artists’ work, including reflection on Rome and its connection to food; the urgency to re-visualise our relationships with plants and the ‘beyond’ world; painting as a narrative device; the usage of colour to critique the myth of Whiteness in classical sculpture; creativity as a support for the processing of personal or collective trauma; forms of repair and reparative histories; the malleability of memory and the subjective nature of collective experience; and visual research into the connection between Mannerism and Cosmatesque mosaics.

The event represents a different way of experiencing research in progress, that aims to give the audience a broader insight into the artists’ work, to discover their residency projects, their creative practices and, most importantly, to understand how a new environment, meetings and network with the local artistic community, can give rise to new experimentations.

Photo credits: Luana Rigolli

photos by Luana Rigolli

Meet the Artists: Catriona Gallagher, interview part two on the BSR blog, March 2023

Bridget Riley Fellow at the British School at Rome from September 2022 - March 2023, researching human-plant metamorphs. 

Meet the Artists: Catriona Gallagher, BSR blog interview, December 2022:

Catriona in the studio at the BSR, November 2022, photo credit: Luana Rigolli

Autumn Open Studios

December 2022, British School at Rome, via Gramsci 61, Roma

photo credits: Luana Rigolli

Available for purchase from Corner House Publications and VARC.

182 pages, full colour publication that expands on some of the conversations and ideas sparked by the ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. programme and reflects on VARC’s 21 years as an arts charity based in rural Northumberland. Authors include: Dave Pritchard, Susan Trangmar, Lucy May Schofield, Lesley Guy, Mike Collier, Alexander Marr, Ingrid Pollard, Julie Crawshaw, Ysanne Holt, Cynthia Morrison-Bell, Mike Pratt, Corrine Fowler, and Menelaos Gkartzios. There are also pages dedicated to each of the ENTWINED artists: Andrew Burton, Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges, Sam Douglas, Shane Finan, Catriona Gallagher, Bridget Kennedy, Emily Ketteringham and Kate Liston.

ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art. is a multi-partner project, organized by VARC (Visual Arts in Rural Communities). The book is published alongside an exhibition that was held at VARC, Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland (4–12 September 2021); Assembly House, Newcastle upon Tyne (1–11 December 2021); and The Sill: National Landscape Discovery Centre, Hexham (edited version, January 2022)

stills in log from new filming in the West of Ireland, July 2022

“Roscommon Arts Centre is delighted to announce its Creative Ireland “Wings” Resident for 2022 is Visual Artist Catriona Gallagher.

Catriona Gallagher is a British-Irish visual artist based in Athens. Her work moves between film, drawing, writing and installation and navigates the overlooked details in our physical surroundings and the psychological landscapes mirroring them.

Catriona is currently developing a new film work Forest AI (working title) which uses a documentary approach to research forest ecology in commercial plantations across the British Isles. Walking interviews with foresters, ecologists, volunteers and local residents are overlaid with a speculative narrative exploring the not-so-distant future of AI technologies being used to manage commercial forests. A series of drawings and models sit alongside her film work, depicting the rhomboid shapes of Sitka Spruce plantations from above and emulating the increasingly digital mediation of the landscape. During Catriona’s residency at Roscommon Arts Centre, she will be collecting new film footage of forestry practice in the West of Ireland, developing her film narrative, and working on drawings and models in the studio.”

https://roscommonartscentre.ie/catriona-gallagher-announced-as-creative-ireland-wings-resident-for-2022/

They met under a ceiling of sky (2020) in New Shorts: Experimental: Void Mirror

Sunday 16th January 2022, 3pm, ICA, London

London Short Film Festival 2022

A learning algorithm hallucinates flowers while Andra8 lives a solitary life in the virtual void. Automated sensory enhancement reveals the prevalence and proliferation of data. These works confront our interaction with (and perception of) new technologies, acknowledging the digital realm as a reality.
Exploring the paradoxes and rules within the online wellness movement and artificial ecologies, these shorts overlay archive, sonic landscapes and digital materials. In a strand that always champions innovative visual forms of storytelling, we select new work from artist Alison Nguyen (My Favourite Software is Being Here) and Wei-Chia Wu (Erica).

Curated by Emma Bouraba

Programme:
Scientists now discover new evidence to reconstruct the ecology of A.D.2021, dir. Wenqing Yao, China 2021, 4 min.Mode Collapse, dir. David Witzling, USA 2021, 4 min.Cabo Tuna or The Management of the Sky, dir. Unidad de Montaje Dialéctico, Mexico 2021,13 min. In no Rush to Get Anywhere, dir. Pepe Sapena, Spain 2021, 13 min.darkness within darkness, dir. Chia-Yun Wu, UK 2021, 6 min.Enough, dir. Andy Sowerby, USA 2021, 2 min.Erica, dir. Wei-Chia Wu, Taiwan 2021, 5 min. They met under a ceiling of sky, dir. Catriona Gallagher, UK 2021, 21 min.my favourite software is being here, dir. Alison Nguyen, 2021, 20 min.

Assembly House, 55 Westgate Road, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 1SG
Open 11am-3pm Thurs 2nd, Fri 3rd, Sat 4th, Thurs 9th Fri 10th Sat 11th Dec 2021

Featuring Andrew Burton, Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges, Sam Douglas, Shane Finan, Catriona Gallagher, Bridget Kennedy, Emily Ketteringham, Kate Liston plus films about the artists’ work by WeLove Media

Special viewing and ENTWINED publication launch Weds 1st Dec 6-8pm
Refreshments provided, all welcome!

Access: The exhibition at Assembly House is on two levels with stairs.

About: Over a two-year period, disrupted somewhat by the pandemic, seven artists, Sam Douglas, Catriona Gallagher, Shane Finan, Emily Ketteringham, Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges, and Bridget Kennedy, as well as two associated artists Andrew Burton and Kate Liston, took up residencies, some based at Highgreen for ten months, others shorter month-long residencies hosted by local organisations: Unison Colour, The Heritage Centre, Tarset Village Hall and Kielderhead Wildwood Project (NWT).

This exhibition is the culmination of the ENTWINED programme which sought to take a closer look at the interconnection between all things. Through the artists’ eyes and imagination, informed by research gathered from readings, personal observation, embodied experience and shared knowledge, the works unveil what lies within, beneath and beyond the tangible or intangible realms of what makes a ‘place’.

The exhibition was first exhibited at VARC’s home of Highgreen in September 2021. The show now tours to an urban context and coincides with the launch of the ENTWINED publication and online conference.

The publication, edited by Mike Collier and Helen Pailing, expands on some of the conversations and ideas sparked by the ENTWINED programme and reflects on VARC’s 21 years as an arts charity based in rural Northumberland. Invited authors include several partners from the ENTWINED Steering Group.

ENTWINED Online Assemblage is an asynchronous conference, hosted by Newcastle University’s Institute of Creative Arts Practice, and takes the form of a series of pre-recorded conversations and presentations. These videos will be released during the lead up to the exhibition at Assembly House and will remain online.

4th - 12th September 2021

VARC, Highgreen, Tarset, Northumberland NE48 1RP
Featuring Andrew Burton, Robbie Coleman & Jo Hodges, Sam Douglas, Shane Finan, Catriona Gallagher, Bridget Kennedy, Emily Ketteringham, Kate Liston plus films about the artists’ work by WeLove Media
Sun 5th, Sat 11th & Sun 12th Sept 11 – 3pm

Minibus from Newcastle available on Sat 4th Sept, bookable via VARC’s website or eventbrite link here
The two year, multi-partner ENTWINED:Rural.Land.Lives.Art. programme will culminate this September with an exhibition at VARC’s home at Highgreen, rural Northumberland NE48 1RP. In this exciting, multidisciplinary show curated by Cynthia Morrison-Bell, you will find work of the ENTWINED artists installed in the barns and outbuildings around the estate.

The exhibition opens on Saturday 4th September and will run until Sun 12th September. All welcome!

NORTHERN FOCUS SHORTS 

Halo Showroom Cinema 3 Sun 13 June 14:45 - Sun 13 June 16:02 

Incidental phone videos from the artist’s camera reel are edited into the poetic form of a villanelle. Portrait-format clips - filmed to send to distant loved ones or to capture instances of caught attention - show fragments of events that lie between movement and stasis. Two lives between two countries follow an A-B-A rhyming structure, with sequences of birds in flight appearing as repeating refrains. Swallows above an Aegean beach at sundown and a murder of crows against northern skies, streetlight glow by motorbike and puddled lanes by bicycle; a hand clasping a leaf and sunlight over bare knees in transit. When and why do we choose to capture such moments? Can a life be lived between places in a year of lockdowns and the end of freedom of movement? Video Villanelle (for distance) reflects on changing relationships to home during lockdown. 

Video Villanelle (for distance) will be followed by an in-person Q&A with Catriona Gallagher which will be live-streamed from the cinema to Selects.

Saturday 24th April 2021 

We are pleased to welcome a limited number of visitors in person to this Work in Progress Open Studios event at Highgreen on Saturday 24th April 2021. The open studios will feature works in progress by Catriona Gallagher, artist in residence at Highgreen since July 2020, and Shane Finan, artist in residence during April 2021 with Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Kielderhead Wildwood project. The event is free to attend, but it is essential that you book one of the available time slots for your visit, using the Eventbrite online booking system, or by contacting lorna@varc.org.uk who will be able to book a time on your behalf. 

Catriona Gallagher and Shane Finan are part of the ENTWINED: Rural. Land. Lives. Art programme. Work shown as part of the Work in Progress Open Studios day will be documented and hosted online for those unable to attend. The ENTWINED programme will also culminate in an exhibition in September 2021.