In The Gallery

A screendance exhibition at Limerick City Gallery of Art spanning dance, visual art and film.

Orchard Portraits

Rosemary Lee & Roswitha Chesher
2023 | 7 Screen Video Installation

Orchard Portraits by Rosemary Lee & Roswitha Chesher

Choreographer Rosemary Lee brings her unique approach to both landscape and people to create a new video-work made in collaboration with filmmaker Roswitha Chesher. Filmed through the four seasons of a year, Orchard Portraits is inspired by, and shot in a historic wild orchard. Bringing the beauty of outside in, the resulting seven-screen video installation will occupy an upstairs space at Limerick City Gallery of Art. Five senior performers (Nancy Budd, Violet Clare, Andrew Hamel-Cooke, Jim Tucker, and Helen Scalway) are each captured in a meditative and elegant duet with an ageing tree whilst in contrast 60 school children (pupils from The Raleigh School, West Horsley, Surrey) burst through the orchard in moments of joy and discovery. Reminding us of nature’s cycles of regeneration, Orchard Portraits conjures up a sense of our deep and ancient connection with trees. With sound design by Douglas Murray.

Commissioned by Arts Partnership Surrey and the Surrey Hills National Landscape. Supported by Arts Council England. Produced by Surrey Hills Arts and Artsadmin.

Swinguerra

Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca
2019 | 2 Channel Video Installation | 2K, HD video, colour | Stereo Sound | 21’

Swinguerra, 2019
Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca

Swinguerra was commissioned for the Brazilian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale and comprises a two-channel video installation and a series of photographs. The work was developed in close collaboration with dance groups from the outskirts of Recife, Northeast of Brazil, and follows their intense routine of rehearsals performing rhythms such as brega funk, batidão do maloka and swingueira – referenced in the work’s title, but with a slight spelling twist that makes the word end in “guerra”, which means “war” in Portuguese. Although apart from the mainstream, these dance styles are a popular phenomena in their communities and their origins date back to the country’s cultural traditions.

Amidst the current tensions concerning the political rights of minorities – mainly black people, women, and transgenders, like many of the characters portrayed –, dance becomes a platform for issues such as social integration and self-representation. Once in front of the camera, the dancers play the role of themselves, thus revealing the knowledge carried in their bodies.

Swinguerra Cast and Production Credits.

Everything Was Singing

Robin Parmar
2023 | 2 screen | Sound | 13’18”

Everything was Singing by Robin Parmar

Giuliana is the protagonist of Red Desert (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964), her existential anxieties predicated on the industrial landscape she inhabits. For his first colour film, Antonioni painted scenes to correspond with Giuliana’s psychology. Everything was Singing repurposes this footage to demonstrate how Red Desert represents a breakthrough in ecological thinking. Giuliana resists every attempt at erasure by making herself an integral part of the places she inhabits, refracting landscapes both interior and exterior, transcending the extractive relationship to nature that dominates the film’s imagery.

Somewhere In The Body

Áine Stapleton
2022 | 2 screen | Sound | 32’24”

Áine Stapleton, Somewhere in the Body, 2022. Photographer: José Antonio Muñoz

Somewhere in the Body is a film centred on Lucia Joyce – a talented dancer and artist, and daughter of the Irish writer James Joyce. The production examines how Lucia, as well as dance, influenced the creation of her father’s book of the dark Finnegans Wake, in which she can be seen to appear in various guises. The theme of light runs through this work as it did throughout Lucia’s life; her name, taken from Saint Lucia the patron saint of the blind, means ‘light giver’. Featuring exquisite performances by Katie Vickers and Colin Dunne, the film offers intricate insights into the real and psychic spaces inhabited by Lucia and her father.

Funded by The Arts Council of Ireland | An Chomhairle Ealaíon, Fondation Jan Michalski, and Dublin City Council. Co-produced with Project Arts Centre and Dance Ireland. Supported by the Permanent Representation of Ireland to the Council of Europe.

Dance and Eye

Oguri, Andrew Macpherson, Richard Nielsen, Atiba Jefferson, Ricardo Vidana, Tali Maranges
& Roxanne Steinberg. Curated by Morleigh Steinberg, ARCANE Space
2022 | Photography | Video Installation | 45’

Oguri photographed by Atiba Jefferson

Described as ‘riveting even in static’ and ‘a master at redirecting the way one sees and encounters the physical environment’, Oguri is photographed by fi ve photographers from the fi ne art, sports, rock, pop culture and fashion worlds. The photographic exhibition is accompanied by a 45 minute film, documenting the commitment of Oguri, and each photographer in their one-on-one sessions, as they move together through the space subsequentially creating their own serendipitous duet.

Progression (freestyle)

Anna MacDonald
2017 | Single screen | Sound | 24’38”

Progression (freestyle) by Anna Macdonald

To make Progression (freestyle) Anna Macdonald invited an entire primary school to move through a free-standing doorway, in any way they wanted, organised from the youngest to the oldest. The children were recorded using a single static shot and the resulting film continues the artist’s fascination with the relationship between movement, time and progression. The work was originally commissioned by Queen’s Hall Digital. Anna would like to thank all the children and staff at Pikemere Primary School, Cheshire and assistant artists Paige Harrison and Ryan Wilkinson for their generous work on this project.

This Endless Sea

Chloë Smith & Lucy Cash
2022 | 6 Screen | Sound | 14’

This Endless Sea by Chloë Smith & Lucy Cash

New moon, full moon: spring tides.

First and third quarter moon: neap tides.

Grief has tides too, rising and falling in our bodies. This Endless Sea is a meditative six-screen moving image work exploring a relationship between grief, the body, and the sea. Rooted in Chloë’s personal loss, the work leaves space for the viewer to refl ect on their own experiences of grief, and their relationship to landscape.

This is a specially adapted version of the work for Light Moves Festival.

Feature image: Everyhthing was Singing by Robin Parmar.

Download our Festival Brochure here.