23/7/2010
Two Exhibitions
The Model, Sligo
Jack B. Yeats' artistic output reveals a fascination with characters that lived on the margins of society - those who in his own words had "something of the living ginger of life in them." Over a career spanning 7 decades, Yeats repeatedly painted the tramps, travellers, circus performers, drunks, sailors and gypsies. The filmmaker Duncan Campbell's new work "Make It New John", tells the story of the DeLorean car, its creator and the workers of the Belfast-based car plant who built it.
Jack B. Yeats
The living ginger
Jack B. Yeats’ artistic output reveals a fascination with characters that lived on the margins of society – those who in his own words had "something of the living ginger of life in them." Over a career spanning seven decades, Yeats repeatedly painted the tramps, travellers, circus performers, drunks, sailors and gypsies that populated his youth in Sligo. These characters are often represented as lone figures in scenes that set them apart from the rest of society.
Yeats watercolour period lasted twelve years; starting in 1898 and coming to an abrupt end when he moved into oils in 1910. This exhibition looks at the characters that populated his early work in watercolours. These works, as with his early experiments with oils in the 1920s, and his later wildly romantic, apocalyptic visions of the forties and fifties – often have at their heart a sense of dislocation and displacement. It is from these early works that the roots of his later mystical and allegorical works in oil began to grow.
This exhibition is an exploration of Yeats beginnings as an artist in the watercolour medium and it examines themes and techniques which developed throughout his career. The same themes will be examined in greater depth in a major exhibition entitled Jack B Yeats; The Outsider guest curated by Brian O’Doherty which will open on 5 February 2011.
The Yeatsian Legacy Project is delivered by Sligo Arts Service, The Model & partners. The project is supported by the PEACE III Programme, managed for the Special EU Programmes Body by Sligo County Council on behalf of Sligo Peace & Reconciliation Partnership Committee.
Related Programming
25 Jul: Inside Out/ Outside In
25 Jul: Duncan Campbell Make It New John
04 Sep: Travelling Suitcase Theatre & Magic Workshop
11 Sep: Symposium Sectarianism and Identity in Ireland Today
05 Feb: Jack B. Yeats: The Outsider
--------
Duncan Campbell
Make It New John
24 July - 3 October 2010
The Model has co-commissioned Irish-born filmmaker Duncan Campbell’s new work Make It New John, which tells the story of the DeLorean car, its creator John DeLorean and the workers of the Belfast-based car plant who built it.
Also opening on the 24th July alongside the Jack B. Yeats Exhibition, this film deftly contrasts the DeLorean dream with its spectacular downfall during a critical period in Northern Ireland’s history, and the canonisation of the car – the DMC12 – as a symbol of the American myth of mobility.
An ambitious work by this acclaimed Glasgow-based artist, Campbell’s multi-faceted film takes the viewer on an accelerated tour through the history of the second half of the twentieth century, highlighting the urge for technological innovation and personal reinvention that shaped the post-war period and reflecting how these new and often unformed desires found increasing expression in the seductive iconography of the American automobile industry. One of the prime movers in this new-model consumer economy was the engineer and entrepreneur John De Lorean, whose rise, first in one of the top jobs at General Motors, and then at the helm of his own sports-car company, marked him out as one of the key myth-makers and trail-blazers of the American dream.
As with the earlier works such as Bernadette (2008) and Falls Burns Malone Fiddles (2003)-which is also being shown in Sligo- in Make it New John Campbell fuses a documentary aesthetic with fictive moments, using existing archive news and documentary footage from the 1980s as well as new 16mm footage which imagines conversations between DeLorean factory workers.
Commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella, Chishenhale Gallery, Tramway and The Model, Make It New John won the prestigious International Competition at the Courtisane Festival, 2010.
Image: Duncan Campbell, Make It New John
Press contact:
Denise Rushe +353 (0)71 9141405 deniserushe@modelart.ie
Opening receptions on Saturday 24th July at 6pm
The Model
The Mall, Sligo, Ireland
Hours
Tue – Sat: 11am – 5:30pm
Thu: Late until 8pm
Sun: 12 – 5pm
Admission to all exhibitions is free
Tickets for performances may be purchased at reception or via tickets@modelart.ie