The Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Jimmy Deenihan TD, will today (19 April 2013), be joined by artists, curators and invited guests at the Dublin launch of Ireland's representation at the 55th International Art Exhibition in Venice. Ireland at Venice is an initiative of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht's Culture Ireland division in partnership with the Arts Council, the Irish Government agency for funding and developing the arts.
Richard Mosse has been selected as the artist to represent Ireland at the Venice Art Biennale and Anna O’Sullivan, Director of the Butler Gallery is the Commissioner.
The Venice Biennale has for a century held its place as the most important international showcase for visual arts and in recent years has attracted 400,000 visitors.
Speaking at the launch in the Royal Hibernian Academy, Minister Jimmy Deenihan TD., said "the Biennale represents an immense opportunity for Irish artists to present their work at the leading visual arts showcase in the world and to gain international exposure to high profile curators and collectors.’ He went on to say that this showcase is not only a focus on Richard but is also an opportunity to attract attention to the depth, strength and diversity of a generation of visual artists working in Ireland. "I am confident that Richard’s work will be highly regarded alongside that of the other international artists in Venice’ added the Minister.
Commissioner, Anna O’Sullivan added ‘Richard Mosse will deliver a truly memorable presentation for Ireland. The work entitled, The Enclave, is a multiple-screen film installation, a series of photographs, and a monograph - the culmination of Richard’s three-year exploration of the conflicted landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This immersive non-narrative installation delivers a pure and unapologetic approach to understanding the unseen humanitarian tragedy of the Congo.’
Mosse will present his work at the Irish Pavilion at the Fondaco Marcello, San Marco. La Biennale di Venezia which will be open to the public in Venice from June 1st to November 24th 2013.
Since 2005 the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and the Arts Council have partnered on supporting Ireland's representation at Venice given the importance of the Biennale for artists' development and for curators to work in an international context.
ENDS
Notes for Editors:
The 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia – runs from June to November 2013 and is widely regarded as one of the most important events on the international visual arts calendar, attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors, curators and international programmers and presenters of contemporary arts. The exhibition remains a key opportunity for the international art community to engage with Irish contemporary art practice and for Irish artists to showcase their work on an international stage.
Previous artists who have represented Ireland at Venice include Corban Walker, 2011, Sarah Browne and Gareth Kennedy 2009, Gerard Byrne 2007, Stephen Brandes, Mark Garry, Ronan McCrea, Sarah Pierce, Isabel Nolan and Walker and Walker, 2005 and Katie Holten 2003.
The Irish Pavilion will be based at the Fondaco Marcello, San Marco. La Biennale di Venezia which will be open to the public in Venice from June 1st to November 24th 2013. The exhibition will open for press and invited guests in Venice from May 29th.
BIOGRAPHY DETAILS
Richard Mosse - artist
Richard Mosse’s (b. Kilkenny, Ireland, 1980) practice resides at the intersection between documentary photography and contemporary art. Drawing from the Romantics, Surrealism, psychedelia, punk, and modern military reconnaissance technologies, he seeks to challenge and transgress traditional conventions of war photography through unmitigated aesthetic strategies in situations of tragedy and conflict. His work has been exhibited at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Barbican Art Gallery, London; Bass Museum, Miami; Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Kunsthaus Munich; Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Open Eye Liverpool; and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Mosse has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Leonore Annenberg Fellowship in the Performing and Visual Arts, and a Visual Arts Bursary from the Irish Arts Council. Mosse holds an MFA in photography from Yale University and a postgraduate diploma in fine art from Goldsmiths College, London. He also holds a first-class BA in English literature from King’s College London and an MA in cultural studies from the London Consortium (ICA, AA, Tate, Birkbeck). Aperture Foundation and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting co-published his first monograph, Infra, in 2012. Mosse is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. He will represent Ireland
at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia in 2013.
Anna O Sullivan - Commissioner and Curator
Anna O’Sullivan (b. Dublin, Ireland, 1958) is the Director and Chief Curator of the Butler Gallery, in Kilkenny, Ireland where she also manages the Butler Gallery Permanent Collection. Prior to joining the Butler Gallery in 2005, O’Sullivan spent over twenty years in New York, first as Performance Curator at the avant-garde arts venue Franklin
Furnace and then as Director of the Robert Miller Gallery and Danese Gallery. O’Sullivan has worked with many internationally-renowned artists and artists’ estates to realize projects and exhibitions including Alice Neel, Eva Hesse, Lee Krasner and Patti Smith at the Robert Miller Gallery, and Hans Op de Beeck, Ian Burns, Louise Bourgeois, Werner Herzog, Tony O’Malley, Barry McGee, Jeanne Silverthorne and Eve Sussman at the Butler Gallery, Kilkenny. O’Sullivan has published several catalogues on Irish artists including Tony O’Malley, Barrie Cooke, Michael Beirne and Gypsy Ray. O’Sullivan graduated from the National College of Art & Design Dublin and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program in New York. She will be Commissioner and Curator of the Pavilion of Ireland at the 55th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale de Venezia in 2013.