Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival

1/5/00-6/5/00

The Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival was Catalyst Art’s first show of 2000. A selection of artists worked in collaboration to produce a week long show including site specific sculpture, video and installation. Featured artists included Germaine Greer, Rob Newman, Jeremy Hardy, Bill Drummond and more. The show was accompanied by a series of artist talks and music.

Gillian Wearing, who was the 1997 Turner Prize nominee, opened on May 1st. Wearing belonged to a group of young innovative British Artists making profound impact on the art scene at the time. This work in the gallery consisted of video obsessions and confessions of things people wanted to say in front of a camera. A Night with John Carson was held in Catalyst Arts on May the 10th. This was his first public appearance in Belfast since leaving twenty years prior. People Like Us was at Catalyst Arts on the 4th of May. It was the work of Vicki Bennett whose CD’s and LPs on soleilmoon Recordings, Hot Art, Straalplaat and Audioview labels featured her unique Plunderphonic styling. Die Kunst was at Catalyst Arts on May 5th this was an avant punk art surf trio Die Kunst, an art project production with a powerful analogue sentiment. This was also part of the international Language project by Grassy Knoll production. Divine Trash was at Catalyst Arts on May 7th. This was a in-depth look at the early career of the outrageous cult filmmaker John Waters. John T Davis held a screening of three of his films, I Can Be Rented, Memory Cells and Avanto. The shared theme of these works was the pure aesthetic pleasure than can be derived from deliberate irregularities both in digital and analogue imagery. Oval, on May 4th was music about media, aesthetic presence and organised sound, composed out of remnants of both music and musicality.