Catriona Leahy at Coup de Ville

So….finally…I’ve crossed the final hurdle in the long but amazing lead up to the 3rd Contemporary Art Triennial, Coup de Ville 2016.

I arrived in Sint-Niklaas last Wednesday to apply the finishing touches to my work before the VIP launch, which was scheduled for Thursday.

I removed the protective plastic covering my delicate paper-based work since its installation in July, and ensured the video projection was playing without any hitch.

The Landhuis now contained the work of the other two artists – Sanjeev Maharjan of Nepal and Dirk Zoete of Belgium. We were No. 3 on the map, which marked the way through the Coup de Ville course – a great location on the main sqaure and within 2 mins walk of WARP Contemporary Art Platform headquarters.

Sanjeev Maharjan‘s work for Coup de Ville sought to highlight the loss of traditional modes of farming within Nepal and by extension the loss of its associated and accompanying rituals and cultural traditions, through an ambitous installation seen here.

Dirk Zoete is fascinated with the language of theatre, the puppet, the mask, the baton, the skeleton, and what these might imply or serve as conduit in his work for ideas of concealment and transformation. Appearance and being , fact and fable do not automatically cancel each other out in Dirk Zoete’s work and in this way he creates theatrical truth, a kind of mock reality, constantly being described and rewritten.

To see the work now in situ, and within the context of the other artists exhibiting within the Landhuis, one can understand the sensitivity in approach to the curatorial decisions of Stef Van Bellingen. And this sensitivity is prevalent across the whole exhibition and its various sites. One draws parallels between the participating artists on multiple levels, drawing you closer in understanding to the themes, which are at the core of Coup de Ville.

I have chosen a selection from the participating 35 artists here, to give a sense of the scope of media and themes within the work.

Jonas Vansteenkiste‘s (Belgium) work deals with our perceptions of home/house. The Bourgeois ideal of a sublimely happy home acts as the ultimate temptation, but is at the same time (perhaps even literally) a trap. For Coup de Ville, Jonas presented a video in the out-building of a private home. The video presents to the viewer an image of a puppet, Mr. House who speaks in a low, menacing tone, as if being situated on the dark side, like a ‘groomer’ on the internet. It reads like a continuation of “Housetrap”, a scale model of a house balancing sideways on a stick – ready to capture anyone or anything that might venture underneath.

Situated in the attic or loft of the out-building, above Jonas’s work, is the work of Erik Nerinckx. The immersive sound installation “Koeren” (cooing) created for Coup de Ville gives an eery presence to the absent doves. Erik utilises hand-crafted and found objects reminiscent of bird cages or aviaries, several loudspeakers propped up on stands, as well as the raw technology itself – the entrails (electrical cords) of which are strewn across the floor. The work invites the viewer to linger for a while in a world of almost nothing, and to be at peace with the passage of time through the interplay of materials, sound and light.

Chantal Yzermans is fascinated by the human body, which in our society is open to constant historical, socio-political and cultuural change, both as subject and object. The performance ‘Partner/You’ is the result of her artistic research into loneliness and privacy on the worldwide web.

Above is just a flavour of some of the artists within Coup de Ville, which oficially opened to the public with a wonderful reception on Friday 9th September. The full list of artists are:

Michaël Aerts (BE) – Katja Aufleger (DE) – Leyla Aydoslu (TR / DE) – Amadeo Azar (AR) – Younes Baba-Ali (MA) – Tim Baute (BE) – Clare Benson (US) – Ignace Cami (BE) – Anton Cotteleer (BE) – Sylvie De Meerleer (BE) – Paul De Vylder (BE) – Ella de Búrca (IE) – Karin Ferrari (AU) – Buntu Fihla (ZA) – Joris Ghekiere (BE) – Wannes Goetschalckx (BE) – Wieteke Heldens (NL) – Žiga Kariž (SI) – Fatou Kandé Senghor (SN) – Catriona Leahy (IE) – Dana Levy (IL) – Sanjeev Maharjan (NP) – Erik Nerinckx (BE) – Mairead O’ hEocha (IE) – Joris Perdieus (BE) – Stefan Peters (BE) – Bart Prinsen (BE) – Rashanna Rashied-Walker (US) – Maria Tsagkari (GR) – Katerina Undo (GR) – Jonas Vansteenkiste (BE) – Niko Van Stichel (BE) – Simón Vega (SV) – Wim Wauman (BE) – Chantal Yzermans (BE) – Dirk Zoete (BE)

The VIP launch took place the night before on Thursday 8th of September and was followed by tours to the various locations. This gave me the often rare opportunity to present my work to the viewing public.

The entire route for Coup de Ville 2016.

Finally, the catalogue is complete and available to purchase from: http://www.borgerhoff-lamberigts.be/boeken/p/detail/2016-coup-de-ville

A beautifully made book, which depicts the artists and their work with honesty and sincerity. Kristof Reulens, Director of the Emile Van Doeren Museum in Genk Belgium, was the author of my text and I can honestly say he wrote a beautiful text.

An excerpt…:

“The often invisible effects of time and social evolution on apparently stable, sustainable structures percolate constantly into Catriona Leahy’s oeuvre. The ambivalence between (physical) stability and (semantic) changeability is translated using fragile materials and graphic techniques into intriguing works of art, in which the capricious nature of history and memory becomes fixed.”…

“…in the video projection, “Sedementation”, we see an illustration of the City Hall on the Grote Markt, printed on paper. The loose sheet slowly absorbs water until it is saturated. The ink runs, the image blurs. A shadowy form of what might have been remains. It is thus that Leahy reveals the fluctuating changes in the world’s physical and mental identity in each of her works.”

I am very grateful to A-N Artists Information Network for their support thoughout my preparation for Coup de Ville, to Stef Van Bellingen curator of Coup de Ville and his team who were pivotal in making it a huge success and indeed to my partner Manus who, without his help I might very well be a shadow of my former self.

Do check out Coup De Ville if you are in Belgium – It is certainly worth the trip and Sint-Niklaas will welcome you with open arms!

http://warp-art.be/coupdeville-2016/?lang=en

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Last week I returned from another visit to Sint-Niklaas – this time to install the work in preparation for Coup de Ville. I was the first artist out of a total of 4 who are exhibiting in the Landhuis to install their work. I am looking forward to returning next week for the opening and seeing the other artists in the Landhuis, not to mention the whole spread of 35 artists who will be located across various locations in the city.

Below are some work in progress/installation shots. The large black print is situated in a room in the Landhuis, which once served as the offices for city council officials. The window looks directly onto to the main city square to the site where the Kiosk or Bandstand used to be. There is also a direct view of the City Hall, which features in my video projection. The video, which last just under 39mins, depicts the slow but somewhat “majestic” erasure of the town hall, in a sense perhaps foreshadowing its demise and ultimate decay.

Material has already been in circulation to advertise the event, which expects to receive an audience in excess of 13,000 visitors over the course of its duration.

We’ve been featured on Art-Agenda.com – http://www.art-agenda.com/shows/warp-presents-coup-de-ville-2016-triennial-for-contemporary-art/

And the press were meeting some of the arists for interviews!

Once again, the curator Stef van Bellingen, was on hand to support with any issues and was keen to talk further about the context of the project and motivation for the work created.

The catalogue is almost ready for circulation and I look forward to seeing this next week when I attend the official launch.

So until then…!

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Time is ticking on and things are hotting up in preparation for the launch of Coup de Ville on 8th September (VIP launch…official public launch on 9th Sept.). I visited Sint-Niklaas again this July during which time I discussed the timings and logistics of installation of the work. It was suggest I return in mid-august to install the work so that it is ready for press reviews ahead of the launch in September.

As always, my visit was met with the most amazing hospitality. I met Simon Vega, another exhibiting artist from El Salvador http://simon-vega.blogspot.co.uk/

Simon was already creating, on site, the work he will present for Coup de Ville. “Simón Vega creates drawings, ephemeral sculptures and installations inspired in the informal, self made architecture and vendor carts found in the streets and marginal zones of El Salvador and Central America. These works, assembled with wood, cardboard, plastic and found materials often parody famous Modernist and mythological buildings and cities, surveillance systems as well as high-tech robots and satellites developed by NASA and the Soviet Space Program during the Cold War, creating an ironic and humorous fusion between first and third world, while commenting on the effects of that conflict in today’s Central America.” (http://www.fountainheadresidency.com/simon-vega/)

His work is inspiring and I am already starting to see very interesting themes which some of the artists share.

The content of the catalogue is being collated and and will be printed soon. It was imperative for me that I had some finshed work with some high quality photographs to include and luckily I was able to deliver on this. I liaised through email and conversation with Kristof Reulens, Director of the Emile van Doren Museum in Genk who will write a text about my work in the catalogue. I met Kristof while I was artist in residence at FLACC Workplace for visual artists in Genk in 2014 http://www.flacc.info/en/projecten/2014/206

He first came in contact with my work at the WARP artists village, which is also where I first met the Curator of Coup de Ville, Stef Van Bellingen. He and Eddie Guidolph, director of CMine Cultural Centre subsequently invited me to exhibit in the amazing gallery space at CMine Cultural Centre (a former coalmining site) in 2014. I am delgithed that Kristof now has this opportunity to respond to my new work which, although still continues with themes of redundancy of cutlural phenomena, but is within a completely new time and context.

I look forward to reading this when it is published.

The Landhuis, where I will be exhibiting was well under way in terms of its temporary makeover. All exhibition sites for Coup de Ville are located around the city. They are existing shopfronts, businesses, galleries, museums and in the case of the Landhuis, listed/protected buildings which are none-the-less unoccupied and falling in to disrepair. It is so exciting to see these spaces becoming gradually replensihed, ready to play host to the work which will be on display within them.

The flyer promoting the event is complete and already in circulation. 35 artists from around the world are taking part this year. All of the artists are listed in it below.

My next visit to Sint-Niklaas will be in August to install the work in the space. Here’s a sneak preview of some of the finished work.

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I will be making a flying visit to Sint-Niklaas to meet curator Stef Van Bellingen on July 3rd and 4th. This meeting will predominantly be about the logistics of installation and also about the catalogue.
Here are the previous ones from 2010 and 2013.

I’m making some progress with the work for Coup de Ville – It’s extremely time consuming and labour intensive but the results are good and I am getting closer to what I want.