A WEEKEND OF EVENTS AT PIGEON HOUSE HOTEL & PRECINCT

NEW WORK BY SVEN ANDERSON, AOIFE DESMOND, FIONA MCDONALD, EMA NIK THOMAS

How to get there: directions, map, transport

Over the weekend of Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th of May 2013, Landing Place presents a series of contemporary art works by Sven Anderson, Aoife Desmond, Fiona McDonald and Ema Nik Thomas, which explore the Pigeon House Precinct and its context in the Poolbeg Peninsula, Dublin Bay. Through collaborative work, a series of small research events and the activation of a studio space at Pigeon House Hotel, four new pieces of work in sound, film, installation and performance have been developed between January and May 2013. Landing Place is a Commonage commissioned project, curated by Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch and developed in partnership with Dublin City Council Heritage Office.

The Pigeon House Precinct, which includes remains of the Pigeon House Fort, Poolbeg Harbour, Dublin Electricity Generating Station and Pigeon House Hotel is situated on reclaimed land, and is a series of registered monuments largely under the custodianship of Dubin City Council. Central to Landing Place is the idea of activation and access. Pigeon House, and specifically the Dublin Electricity Generating Station complex, and environs are significant public lands, currently inaccessible to the public due to dereliction. Layers of usage at the site, both current and historical shape the complex site’s ecology, geography and architecture. This project takes place at a pivotal time, a juncture between its maritime and industrial past, and possible futures. Landing Place is not an all-encompassing or indeed ‘monumental’ scale project to compete with the overwhelming physical scale of the buildings and nostalgic landmark that the Pigeon House site and adjacent smoke towers occupy in the Dublin Bay shoreline, but rather a series of cumulative, small scale activities led by a slowed-down, research-led process.

Sven Anderson’s sound installation invites the public into the space around the most inaccessible building on the site, the former Dublin Electricity Generating Station, questioning the building’s silence through a subtractive logic derived from Max Neuhaus’ Moment Works.

Passage Migrants is a Super 8 film work by Aoife Desmond, documenting Poolbeg peninsula. Utilising the camera as a walking diary, the work explores movement and aspects of the physical and transitory landscape. A narrative narrated by voice artist Regan O’Brien and written by Aoife Desmond accompanies the silent film. The work will be presented in the active steel fabrication workshop onsite highlighting the relationship to the daily life of the peninsula.

TRADINGTIME by Fiona McDonald is a floating architectural intervention in the publicly inaccessible Pigeon house harbour. The work invokes site-specific links to packet ships, tenders, shipping trade and the economic development of Dublin port and through its inbuilt camera will create a visual representation of the temporal nature of the site. Ema Nik Thomas will present Lacuna, the outcome of a two-week residency, in collaboration with Ruud Panhuysen at a former ESB chemistry lab on site, exploring the physical labour of energy production.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS

SVEN ANDERSON

[sound installation]

Sat 25th, 11:00 – 14:00 and 17:00 – 19:00 at 30 minute intervals

Sun 26th, 14:00 – 19:00, at 30 minute intervals

AOIFE DESMOND

Passage Migrants [film work]

duration: 30 mins

Sat 25th, 12:30 and 18:00

Sun 26th, 15:00 and 17:30

FIONA MCDONALD

TRADINGTIME [architectural intervention]

Sat 25th, 11:00 – 19:00

Sun 26th, 14:00 – 19:00

EMA NIK THOMAS

Lacuna [performance]

duration: 2 hours

Sat 25th, 12:00 – 14:00 and 17:00 – 19:00

Sun 26th, 16:00 – 18:00

TALK SERIES 14:00 – 17:00, SAT 25TH MAY

Speakers include: Fiona McDonald, Charles Duggan, Jesse Jones, Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch, Grainne Shaffrey and more.

An afternoon talk series on Saturday 25th of May from 14:00 – 17:00 will consider the contemporary significance of the Pigeon House site from a number of perspectives: contemporary art, urban planning, public access and heritage. Fiona McDonald will present ‘From Poolbeg and the green patch, to place’, a discussion of the natural landscape formations of the area and the resulting physical and economic development in order to facilitate shipping trade with Dublin in the 1700s to the present day. Artist Jesse Jones will discuss her ongoing interest in the Dublin Docklands and its specificity to her long-term projects 12 Angry Films in 2006 and currently with The Prosperity Project. Commonage curators Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch will discuss their research into custodianship and access in relation to the Pigeon House site, and with particular reference to the Landing Place project. Dublin City Council Heritage Officer Charles Duggan and architect Grainne Shaffrey will present work and research carried out through the Pigeon House Precinct Conservation Plan (2012). Further speakers will be announced in the coming weeks.

The talk series event is free, but booking is essential, please contact: info@commonagecallan.com

LUNCHEONETTE [Landing Place]

Context specific hospitality treatment by Jennie Moran serving food and drinks.

Not free but not expensive.

Open: Sat 11:00 – 19:00 and Sunday 14:00 – 19:00.

Further information: e: info@commonagecallan.com t: 087 991 2001