The Sacred Seminar 2010

 

The Sacred Seminar was organised in conjunction with the Sacred Exhibition as a series of conversations focusing on the relationship between visual art, religion and notions of Sacred.

 

Panel one

Rev. Gary Mason, Fr. Turlough Baxter and Philip Napier (Artist and Head of Fine Art, NCAD) in conversation

 

Panel two

Karl Burke & Miriam De Burca (artists commissioned to create new work for the Sacred exhibition) and Daphne Wright

Chair:         Helen Carey (Independent Curator)

 

Performance

Seamus Nolan (Artist), John Zerzan (Philosopher/writer)

The artist Seamus Nolan will be conducting an interview with the anarcho primitivist John Zerzan. Seamus has invited him to re read his text ‘The case against art’ which looks at art as a language of symbolism, a mediation which distances us from a sensual embrace of reality, from our capacity to realize ourselves within the moment.

 

The essential element of liveness, of the ritual of performance, the visitation of this cultural thinker being an important aspect of this event.

 

In terms of the sacred, this performance looks at the idea of the symbolic communion with the ideological moment, the word of god from which we bear testament in the Bible and the text as sacred ‘what is written is divine’. That the reenactment of the text is paramount to communion with the original moment, a belief in the ritual,as a link to the divine and sacred.

 

This critique of art and symbolic culture, of religion and industrialization and its enactment for the exhibition, proposes an essentialist reading of cultural and religious belief systems and their impact from the perspective of this anarcho primitivist cultural thinker.

Info

Biography

Linda Shevlin has curated, facilitated and managed both large and small-scale visual arts projects including the 53rd Venice Biennale where she was project manager for the representative artists Gareth Kennedy & Sarah Browne and is Tulca Festival curator for 2018.

In 2017 she was the invited curator for the Hennessy Art Fund, purchasing new works for the IMMA collection and also curated the visual art programme for Bealtaine Festival 2017/2018 where she developed projects, commissions, residencies & exhibitions. with numerous Irish artists including Vivienne Dick, Kathy Prendergast, Kevin Gaffney, Pauline Cummins and Frances Mezzetti.

In 2016 she curated Radical Actions at RMIT Galleries, Melbourne as part of Culture Ireland’s 2016 International Programme ‘I Am Ireland’. The exhibition featured works by Duncan Campbell, Jesse Jones, Kennedy Browne and Seamus Nolan.

Other recent independent curatorial projects include Americana: Future Rural featuring John Gerrard (IE), Brian Duggan (IE), Kim Shively (USA) and M12 Studio (USA) at The Dock, Leitrim and Amharc Fhine Gall X commissioning Ella de Búrca, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Morriarty.

She has been awarded the Arts Council of Ireland’s Visual Arts Curatorial Residency award for three consecutive years (2013 – 2016) and in that time has produced a series of events and exhibitions in County Roscommon including newly commissioned works by Maria McKinney (IE) and Sean Lynch (IE); public art projects by Sean Rafferty (AUS), Ruth E. Lyons (IE) and Deirdre O’Mahony (IE), exhibitions by Martin Parr (UK), Duncan Campbell (IE) & Eamon O’Kane (IE) and a symposium titled The Workers with contributions from Adam Sutherland of Grizedale Arts (UK) & M12 Collective (USA) among others.

Shevlin is currently curator in residence with Roscommon Arts Centre & Solstice Arts Centre.

Contact

Linda Shevlin
Tivanagh School
Cloonloo
Boyle
Co. Roscommon
Ireland
 
linda@lindashevlin.com
+353 86 605 2571
+353  71 966 4606