With Gerard Byrne (IE)
Curated by Tessa Giblin (IE/NZ)
In creating his multimedia works, Irish artist Gerard Byrne draws on a range of different sources including literature, pop culture, art history and contemporary history, selectively borrowing images and stories and viewing them by present-day standards. He analyses and works on them in order to gain an understanding of the construction of the present in general. So far he has not only considered Samuel Beckett, André Breton or Donald Judd, but also the Playboy Magazine and even the mystery of Loch Ness.
steirischer herbst has moved into the GrazMuseum
with its festival centre, where the permanent exhibition
“360 Graz. The City in All Times” examines the history of Graz from different perspectives. Gerard Byrne has now been given carte blanche not only to engage with the permanent exhibition with its extraordinary display, but also to react to the museum’s extensive collection according to his own ideas.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst
In collaboration with GrazMuseum
Project supporter Culture Ireland & mondriaan fund
Gerard Byrne (IE)
Gerard Byrne was born in 1969 in Dublin, and works as a visual artist whose main focus lies on photographic and video installations. Using these media, Byrne aims to depict the ambivalent relationship between visual language and the documentation of time, so calling into question established thinking patterns concerning history. Following his studies at the Irish National College of Art & Design and the New School of Social Research in New York, in 2005 he received the “ Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award”, and his works were shown at venues including MUMOK Vienna, the Statens Museum in Copenhagen and at the ICA Boston. In 2009 Byrne was an artist-in-residence at the Augarten Contemporary in the Belvedere Vienna. His latest exhibition, entitled simply “Gerard Byrne”, was staged at the Lisson Gallery Milan in 2014. Byrne lives and works in Dublin.
Tessa Giblin (IE/NZ)
Tessa Giblin was born in 1978 and is a New Zealand curator living and working in Dublin. Having graduated in fine art from the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts in Christchurch in 2001, from 2002 to 2004 she worked as the director of the urban installation project “Gridlocked”. Giblin curated her first exhibition in 2003 at the Jonathan Smart Gallery in Christchurch before working on the curatorial programme at the De Appel Arts Centre in Amsterdam from 2004 to 2005. Tessa Giblin has been curator of visual art at the Project Arts Centre in Dublin since 2006. She is currently in the middle of planning the group exhibition “Riddle of the Burial Ground” as well as solo exhibitions by David Claerbout and Gretchen Bender.
