LABOUR

Curated by Chrissie Cadman, Amanda Coogan and Helena Walsh

March 09 - March 10 2012

LABOUR, a live exhibition, features eleven leading female artists from the island of Ireland, offering audiences unprecedented access to a huge body of live performance work by some of the most radical and exciting women artists emerging from an Irish cultural context.

Following an average working day, the artists will perform for an 8-hour duration on Saturday, 10th of March at The LAB Gallery. The site of The LAB Gallery, Foley street, in the historic Monto and around the corner from the Gloucester Street Magdalene Convent layers the composition of the eleven bodies of the artists with potent shadows. LABOUR explores the female body as a political site.

Live Performance from the visual arts in Ireland is currently a vibrant practice, grounded in responding with the physical body and psychological self. LABOUR is a group show providing multiple viewing experiences as individual works collide and speak to each other. The medium of live embodied practice can be a powerful tool for change. LABOUR is about transformations.

‘LABOUR is of great historical significance. Issues of labour and gender are particularly critical within an Irish context, and at the same time Irish women artists or women artists based in Ireland are creating some of the most exciting and challenging performance based work of our times. - Lois Keidan - the Live Art Development Agency

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A Symposium on Live Performance from the Visual Arts

for International Women’s Day

11:00-17:30 Friday 9th March 2012

Co-curated by Amanda Coogan and Sheena Barrett

This symposium will be held in conjunction with the Live exhibition, LABOUR, taking place on the following day, Saturday 10th March. It will provide an opportunity to consider Performance Art by contemporary women artists working in Ireland or from Ireland. Among the issues addressed will be the formal strategies and the conceptual themes of Performance Art practice from an international perspective and an exploration of the form as practiced in Ireland. The presentations and discussions will also explore themes including Identity, Duration, Remembrance and Repetition.

10.30 am Registration opens

11:00-11:15 　　　 Welcome – Amanda Coogan

Women, Live Performance and Labour.

9th March 2012 - The LAB, Foley street, Dublin 1

11am - 5pm

Session Chaired by Amanda Ralph

11.15 – 11.45 - Keynote Address – Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others　(with thanks to The Smiths and Aine Phillips), Lois Keidan, Live Art Development Agency, London.

11.50 – 12.00 Caitriona Reilly (Phd candidate, Queens University, Belfast)

- the female body as a political site, views from the practice of Live Art.

12.00 – 12.10　Helena Walsh (Phd candidate, Queen Mary University of London).

Performing Processes: Live art and Irish culture

12.10 – 12.20　Brenda Farrell, researcher

- Beckettian echos in Irish Performance practice.

12.20 – 12.30　Evelyn Glynn and Aine Phillips, Artists

- the Magdelene Laundries - Research becomes practice.

12.30 – 12.40 Ciara Murphy, researcher (UCD)

- 'World’s End Lane' Live Art; Reading into the Site

12.40 to 1pm Discussion, chaired by Amanda Ralph

Lunch

2pm – Welcome back – Sheena Barrett

2.05 – 2.45pm Keynote Address - : 　'Nice work if you can get it?' Thinking about Women and the Global Labour Market, Ailbhe Smith, Director of the Women's' Education, Research and Resource Center in UCD

2.45 – 3.15pm Kate Antosik Parsons – The Guerilla Girls in Ireland

Q&A chaired by Sheena Barrett

3.45 – 4.15

Workshop – Abramovic/Rainer/LA MoCA - Precarity and women’s work, Performance Art and work.

Workshop/discussion groups chaired by:

Sheena Barrett, Amanda Coogan, Lynnette Moran　and Liz Burns.

Facilitated by the reporters from MAVIS/IADT

4.20 – 4.25 Live Perfromance from Tanya O’Keefe and Olivia Hassett

Title: Talah, Duration: 5 minutes

4.30 – 5.15 Closing –The three Curators – summing up from the three perspectives and looking to the following day of Live Performances.

Helena Walsh (Queen Mary University of London) - Labour; History, Action, Identity.

Chrissie Cadman (University of Ulster.) - Labour; remuneration and the Art market.