All Humans Do

description

“I don’t even know who I am anymore. Who am I? Do you know who you are?” Hari asks. “Yes, all humans do,” Kelvin replies.

It is a function of our biology to strive to survive day to day. Our futures – and our forming identities – depend on the choices we make. Once we make a choice, we are oblivious to other possible futures; but we sometimes remain transfixed by the path not taken, its unknown and unfilled potential. We can have regret, imaginings and even memories of that unknown possibility.

In Andrei Tarkovsky's film of the sci-fi classic Solaris (1972), psychologist Kris Kelvin meets his dead wife on a space station in mysterious disarray. She is confused and asks Kelvin who she really is. Michel Foucault wrote in The Politics of Truth, "One of the main moral obligations for any subject is to know oneself, to tell the truth about oneself, and to constitute as an object of knowledge both for other people and oneself.”

All Humans Do is a cutting- edge group show of some of the top contemporary Irish artists practicing today. Currently running in the renowned non-profit project space White Box in New York’s Lower East side through the 19th of February 2012, these twelve artists - David Beattie, Rhona Byrne, Brendan Earley, Aleana Egan, Fergus Feehily, Mark Garry, Kevin Kirwan, Bea McMahon, Dennis McNulty, Locky Morris, Niamh O’Malley and Tamsin Snow- have presented work in all media to look at the processes and attributes of what shapes and defines our shifting sense of humanity. The artists’ processes and the physical outcome is the telling of their journey, and the choices and mistakes made are perhaps analogous to getting to know oneself.

Curated by Aoife Tunney with associate curator Chris Fite-Wassilak, All Humans Do is an exciting gathering of new and recent work brought to an entirely new audience. The show will run for a month, and will in April 2012 travel to take on a new shape in The Model in Sligo.

To realise this ambitious show coming to Ireland, we need your help! Your generous support will go towards transport, materials and the production of work to be newly configured for its installation in Sligo. The exhibition in New York has been generously supported by Culture Ireland, and to bring this high quality exhibition to The Model we need lovers of Irish art everywhere to get involved.

Thank you in advance for your help in making this happen!

Aoife Tunney, Curator
Chris Fite-Wassilak, Associate Curator

Curatorial Panel members:
Gavin Delahunty, Head of exhibitions & displays, TATE Liverpool.
Seamus Kealy, Director, The Model. Sligo.
Declan Long, Course director, Art in the Contemporary world, NCAD, Dublin.
Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith, critic & curator.