We’ve been busy working behind the scenes to bring you our new exhibition, Common or Garden, which will open when current restrictions are lifted on Friday 11 December.
Common or Garden uses the gallery as a space to propose and foster approaches based on the model of the commons in which resources, ideas and knowledge are shared and distributed democratically. By exploring processes of exchange, collaboration and learning, it asks: can we build practices rooted in collectivity?
The exhibition will include works by Chris Alton, Jérôme Bel, Emmet Brown and Aidan Wall. It will also host a zine library, curated by Bloomers, and The Library of Common Knowledge, featuring books donated through an open call which will be open for visitors to use and share throughout.
The associated programme will include contributions from Chris Alton, Bloomers, Just Books, Victoria Brunetta & Kate O’Shea (Durty Books) and Fiona Woods and facilitate discussions on topics such as self-publishing, activism, commonist aesthetics and DIY culture.
Public Programme
To join any of the events, please email catalystarts@gmail.com to book your place.
Chris Alton: Online Talk; Thursday 3 December, 7pm
Chris Alton (b.1991, Croydon) is an artist and (occasional) curator. Whether deploying disco music in opposition to fascism, proposing art schools be built over golf courses, or discussing the trident as a cypher for colonial intent, his work addresses the interconnected nature of prevailing social, political, economic and environmental conditions. He is a lifelong Quaker, the founder of English Disco Lovers (EDL) (2012-15), and a skateboarder.
Alton was a participant in Syllabus III, an alternative, peer-led, learning programme (2017-18). Exhibitions & commissions include; Throughout the Fragment of Infinity That We Have Come to Know, The NewBridge Project, Gateshead (2020); Link & Shift, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2019); Survey, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; Bluecoat, Liverpool; g39, Cardiff; & Jerwood Space, London (2018-19); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery; & Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Biennial (2018-19); The Billboard, Spit & Sawdust, Cardiff (2018); Adam Speaks, The National Trust, Croome, Worcestershire (2017); You're Surrounded by Me, Turf Projects, Croydon (2017); Under the Shade I Flourish, xero, kline & coma, London (2016); and Outdancing Formations, Edith-Russ-Haus, Oldenburg (2015).
Kate O’Shea & Victoria Brunetta (Durty Books): Online Talk; Thursday 10 December, 7pm
Durty Books is an independent publishing house by graphic designer Victoria Brunetta and artist Kate O’ Shea. It provides a critical space for voices who challenge and build alternatives to capitalist hegemony.
The first release is entitled Durty Words:
“Durty Words is an invitation to make a space for dialogue, solidarity, resistance and creation through the medium of print. In 2016, we began the journey of making this book by asking people to respond to the relevance of Anarchist thought today. The title alludes to the fact that anarchism, along with other theories and practices that seek alternatives to capitalism, are often misunderstood. There are fractures within how we organise for a better world; it is important to recognise these, and therefore we set out to create a space for debate that is built on respect. By bringing together 134 contributors from different backgrounds from all over the world, we aim to begin to map the resonances and dissonances across diverse social movements. In this time of great social injustice, protest is necessary, but there is more to resistance than protest. We are interested in the space that opens up when we create a platform for building alternatives to that which we protest.”
The second release of Durty Books is Direct Democracy, Context, Society, Individuality by Yavor Tarinski, edited by Eve Olney:
“If social activism is to realistically take on ‘the question of power’ it must be carried out from a knowing ‘holistic’ assault on all social spheres of society. This is the challenging premise that Yavor Tarinski proposes in this very timely ‘provocation to action’, Direct Democracy: Context, Society, Individuality. Tarinski traces the philosophical and political reasoning of works from Cornelius Castoriadis, Murray Bookchin, and others, in an almost pragmatically presented case for a radical direct democratic ‘organizational basis of our society’. He applies a considered focus on the ‘contextuality’ of historical as well as existing examples of direct democracy as ‘tests’ to his argument that explicitly recognizes the complex interrelationship between the individual and society. The book concludes with an open-ended sense of persistence in realizing the kinds of institutions we need to reinstitute and collectively claim power over.” Eve Olney.
Just Books: Gallery Event - Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Saturday 12 December, 2pm
The first Just Books premises in Winetavern Street ran a short-lived library but this was too much work for an anarchist collective running a bookshop, café and numerous other events. By the start of the 90s a small anarcho-syndicalist group called Organise! had started to build up a library in Belfast, a pamphlet library that was transferred from members in Ballymena to Belfast saw the start of a collection that was to grow over the years. The volume and breadth of the library grew with numerous donations over the years. Supplemented by stock left after the closure of Just Books Winetavern Street premises, by donations and by the rescue of a number of books consigned to skips by Queens University by the time we opened our Berry Street premises we had hundreds titles. While there, and subsequently in our space in Berry Street we operated a publicly accessible library and reading room. A quiet space to study and carry out research with free internet access our library quickly outgrew the space we had for it. We started with hundreds of books and pamphlets and now have over 4000 titles which need a new, bigger, home.
Our titles cover anarchism, communism, current affairs, environmentalism, feminism, gender, Irish history and politics, history, journals, labour history, pamphlets, philosophy, queer theory, resources for activists, sexuality, social sciences, socialism, sociology, transgender and transsexual literature, fiction, prose, poetry and literature and a multi-lingual section. Significant donations have been made from Jason Brannigan, Ann Zell’s daughter, John Lynch, Organise!, Sean Matthews, Mateo Loco and Mark Hewitt. Contact us if you would like to donate books, pamphlets, zines or much needed funds to the Just Books Peoples’ Library.
We care about books because we care about working class self-education, we care about radical ideas, we care about revolutionary change. We believe all of these things are absolutely necessary if humanity is to have a future.
Bloomers: Online Talk; Wednesday 16 December, 5pm
Initiated in 2018, Bloomers is an independent multichannel arts organisation that produces a printed publication (Bloomers Magazine), delivers talks, events, screenings, zine library and Bloomers Craft Market. Bloomers mission is to provide a platform for emerging artists in a curated, critical context - online, in print and through events. Issue 06 of Bloomers Magazine titled Hypertext, is a collection of perspectives exploring the interface between the organism and technology, our acceleration toward the digital sphere - emphasising how these ideas concern storytelling and languages we use. Bloomers have collaborated with Crawford Art Gallery, The Guesthouse Project and now Catalyst Arts and with festivals such as Kfest, Quarter Block Party and Culture Night to deliver events, share our zine collection and more.
Fiona Woods: Online Talk; Friday 15 January, 7pm
Fiona Woods works with aesthetics and critical spatial practice, often in a co-productive capacity with others. She employs social, public and institutional circuits to explore ideas of what we have 'in common'. Her work The Laboratory of Common Interest (2019) took the form of a 13-day event-space organised to coincide with the 12 day centenary of the Limerick soviet. The work featured collaborative actions and performances, including a temporary ‘currency’ project operating across the city to explore ideas of commons and commoning with a wide group of people from across the city. Her public art project, Walking Silvermines (2011), is part of the Arte Util archive initiated by the Cuban-American artist Tania Bruguera.
Woods is currently a Fiosraigh scholarship PhD researcher at TU Dublin, exploring resistance to the politics of enclosure through a commonist aesthetics. She is a consulting artist on the project We Only Want the Earth, (2019 - 2020), produced by A4 Sounds in Dublin. She has carried out commissions and research residencies in Ireland, the UK, Sweden, Lithuania, Australia, Canada and the US. She devised, curated and produced the Ground Up programme of rural public art for Clare County Council and co-curated Yak Yak, rural/art dialogues for the Swan Hill Regional Art programme in Victoria (AUS, 2013).
Woods lectures at Limerick School of Art & Design, at undergraduate and postgraduate levels, working across theory and practice. She is a contributing lecturer on the MA Ert and Environment, TU Dublin at Sherkin Island (2020); MA in Socially Engaged Art at NCAD (2017); MA in Social Practice, LSAD (2013 – 15) and has been a visiting lecturer at BAVA Sherkin, (DIT); the University of Newcastle (AUS) and the University of Flensburg (DE).
This programme is supported by the Arts Council Northern Ireland and Art Fund
*Please note that online talks will be recorded