Press for Futures 10 at RHA

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There is a piece by Aidan Dunne about Futures 10 in the Weekend edition of the Irish Times. Below is a quote:

Niall de Buitléar’s accomplished sculptures and drawings present elegant, geometric, architectonic forms. They are composed of functional, usually humble materials – corrugated cardboard figures prominently at the RHA – and built up in a slow, methodical, even obsessive way. And they are algorithmic, with simple procedural rules producing big complex pieces. Their forms, materials and methodology refer us to mass production and consumption, and to the patterns underlying organic processes and industrial fabrication.

The full articles can be read here

The Show is also featured in the current issue of Irish Arts Review.

Also here is a short blogpost by Michael Farry about Lost and Found at Solstice Arts Centre which I also have work in.

Update 16 September 2010:  There was a short  review of Futures 10 by Gerry McCarthy in this weekse Sunday Times. Below is an excerpt:

"Niall de Buitléar's cardboard ziggurats and domes have a mathematical rigour and beauty. Made by repeating identical components in large numbers, they recall the early work of David Mach."

- Excerpt from

Computer Dump in Ghana

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A photo of a partially buried keyboard in a computer dump in Ghana. It is taken from a slideshow on the New York Times website.

"In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad to get at the precious metals inside. Copper is perhaps the most desirable, then brass, then aluminum, then zinc. At the dump, the machines are dismantled and often burned to extract metals for resale. The equipment in this digital cemetery come mainly from Europe and the United States, sometimes as secondhand donations meant to reduce the "digital divide'' — the disparity in computer access between poor nations and rich.

Update: The photographer is Pieter Hugo

Exhibition at The Red Stables

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Curated by Patrick T. Murphy, Director of the Royal Hibernian Academy, the show brings together for the first time work made in a variety of media by Tadhg McSweeney, Paul McKinley, Maria McKinney and Niall de Buitléar. The exhibition showcases paintings, drawings and sculptural works made by the Irish Residential Studio Artists and highlights the value of the Award as a catalyst for the subsequent development of their practices at an important point in their careers.

Preview Thursday, 15 July 2010, 6 to 8pm

Continues until 21 August

The Dustbin of Art History

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Here is an article by Ben Lewis from Prospect Magazine which draws a comparison between trends in contemporary art and mannerist art of the past which were celebrated in their time but which are no longer as highly valued. Below is an excerpt:

There is a pattern typical of these end-phase periods, when an artistic movement ossifies. At such times there is exaggeration and multiplication instead of development. A once new armoury of artistic concepts, processes, techniques and themes becomes an archive of formulae, quotations or paraphrasings, ultimately assuming the mode of self-parody.

Over the last decade, not only conceptualism—perhaps the dominant movement of the past three decades—but the entire modernist project has been going through a similar process.

I believe that this decline shares four aesthetic and ideological characteristics with the end-phases of previous grand styles: formulae for the creation of art; a narcissistic, self-reinforcing cult that elevates art and the artist over actual subjects and ideas; the return of sentiment; and the alibi of cynicism."

Image: Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog, Stainless steel with transparent color coating installed at The Palace of Versailles

Notes For A Guerrilla War

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"In a context dominated by technological inventions and imitations, one finds oneself faced by one of two choices: either a kleptomaniac reliance on the system and the use of codified and artificial languages in comfortable dialogue with existing structures, both social and private, the acceptance of ideology and its pseudo-analyses, an osmosis into all the apparent revolutions that are immediately reabsorbed, the subordination of one’s work to the abstract (op) microcosm or to the socio-cultural (pop) and formal (primary structures) macrocosm; or, entirely at the other extreme, an option for free and individual self-development."

Germano Calant's 1967 essay on Arte Povera, Notes for a Guerrilla War