Superprojects in partnership with Forerunner, The LAB Gallery and the Liberties Training Centre

Superprojects in partnership with Forerunner, The LAB Gallery and the Liberties Training Centre is pleased to present Let’s Get the Hell Outta Here, a group exhibition by participants in the Digital Media Art & Design (DMAD) course at Liberties Training Centre, opening on Saturday 29 June and running until Saturday 24 August 2024 at The LAB Gallery in Dublin.

Let’s Get the Hell Outta Here is the result of a two-year research project between DMAD and the artistic practice Forerunner, beginning in January 2023. Superprojects in partnership with The LAB Gallery invited Forerunner to develop an artistic programme with a group of young people. The group has spent more than a year working together in a series of site visits and workshops, exploring hidden and public spaces and online worlds as ways to create images and art together, as well as creating objects and systems. Centred around so-called ‘free’ spaces and public shared spaces, the project is inspired by a collective probing of installation art, asking what makes a ‘space’, and how can spaces be manipulated and understood through use. Let’s Get the Hell Outta Here is an opportunity to present the results of this collective research.

Contributing artists: Josue Alejandro Pena Argueta, AJ Brownlow, Jonathan Carley, DRIFT2K, Shannon Gascoigne, Ghostlegs, Toni Gumble, Dwayne Kamai, Q Kamai, Morgan McAllister, Colm Mac Bride, Daniel Matters, MuchoMistrust, Leah Mulligan, Nathan O’Brien, Georgia O’Keeffe, Aisling Sands, RosarioSlamchamp, Kian Tunstead, Dylan Whelan.

Let’s get the hell outta here. In the museum, behind glass cases and do not cross rope. In the restaurant with queues and counters and rules. In the shopping center with one-way systems, security guards and money. In the gallery with silence and glances and art history. Escape rooms are the language of the city.

Let’s get the hell outta here. Spaces constantly ask us if we know how to use them. Some have subtle hints and clues, sometimes they have angry signs and sometimes you have to know. Some spaces are stuck, they can’t be changed or made different but they could still be used differently.

Let’s get the hell outta here. Said by one character to another at the end of one scene, with hope, with a way out, with the promise of the next. All rooms are escape rooms if you know how to read them.

Let’s Get the Hell Outta Here is accompanied by an essay by artist and curator Yifeng Wei and a series of limited-edition T-shirts and prints designed by the students during the programme. The exhibition is co-curated by Forerunner and Superprojects’ Director/Curator Rayne Booth. The project will conclude later in 2024 with the release and screening of a documentary video about the programme.

About the Organisations Involved

Superprojects is a leading arts organization connecting young audiences with contemporary art and artists. Funded by The Arts Council, Superprojects’ work includes school-based workshop and artist residencies, commissions and other programmes that open up the richness of national and international contemporary art practice to young participants; whilst actively fostering their development as meaning-makers and artists. Rayne Booth is the Director and Curator; Giulia Berto is the Marketing and PR Assistant. Find out more here. 

Forerunner is a collaborative practice founded in 2016 by Tom Watt, Andreas Kindler von Knobloch and Tanad Aaron. Working within architectural form, building practices and the gallery as a staging ground, their practice seeks to quietly upgrade or criticize by fixing. Using their background as gallery and theater technicians, their work has an added feeling of temporality, hanging between a site of production (studio/workshop) and display (gallery/public) whilst at the same time allowing use value to creep into the space. Find out more here. 

The Liberties Training Centre is located on Oliver Bond Street in the heart of Dublin 8. The learners who took part in this project are part of the Digital Media Art & Design (DMAD) course QQI L4, designed to give young people from various backgrounds the chance to learn a range of digital media, art, design computer and life skills, and to help them realise and support their future goals and dreams. Find out more here.