Neither Time, Nor Material: Performance, Installation, Drawing, Video 1982-1995 - Softcover

Nick Stewart Et Al

9780907797890: Neither Time, Nor Material: Performance, Installation, Drawing, Video 1982-1995

Softcover

ISBN 10: 090779789X ISBN 13: 9780907797890

Publisher: Orchard Gallery, 1996

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A monograph on the work of Irish artist, Nick Stewart, covering the period 1982 - 1995. Documentation of exhibitions of drawings, installations, performances and videos. The book includes written contributions by, Guy Brett, Sharon Kivland, David MacLagan and John Jordon. With 125, black and white photographs. Designed by Bridget Roseberry.

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About the Author

I am … … an artist from Ireland. I was brought up on the north coast of Northern Ireland in a landscape of swift flowing rivers, beaches and cliffs. I spent much of my childhood happily lost there, but just occasionally I would hear a news bulletin and words from another world, that of the Troubles, would enter my awareness. This contrast between the beauty of the landscape of Ireland and the traumatising reality of its religious and political divisions remains a formative perception of the place that still informs my art today. My work developed in direct response to these cultural tensions. Modernist idealism was tempered by the socio-political reality of life in the context of a near civil war. Performance art seemed like a way to address these realities and between 1982 and 1991 I made over one hundred works, often site or place specific, in this medium. The immediacy of performance matched the immediacy of city life in Belfast at that time. It offered a way to get to grips with events literally, on the ground. In 1989 I spent four months travelling, coast to coast, across Canada, being hosted by a series of artist residencies. Becoming increasingly disillusioned with performance I began using a video camera. My first tape, (no discs in those days), was completed during the that trip. Vancouver Tree Line was built from sequences shot during seven days of walking the streets of that city. Subsequently I completed numerous video commissions for video installations and video pieces. Works such as, Flat Earth, Beyond The Pale, The Needle's Eye and Landscape With Watchtowers, continued to reflect aspects of my memory and experience of those earlier years in Northern Ireland. In 1996 I moved to London. I viewed the City of London, the Square Mile, as a vast performance site. The swarms of business types striding through its streets seemed choreographed by some unseen hand. An exhibition, Currency, at Platform Gallery in Spitalfields, in 2001, drew heavily on this preoccupation. In the basement space there I also screened a video sequence that derived from recordings I'd made in some of London's many and varied parks. Endless Park, was shot on Primrose Hill and functions as a provisional portrait of park life in London. In the mid 1990s I attended many large firework displays in London in order to record the enraptured faces of those watching the spectacle. Face Up, was a work that grew from this obsession. I could easily have continued to develop it as each display provided me with an endless variety of extraordinary faces. However I rapidly tired of the huge crowds at these events. The rewards for my efforts were also somewhat meagre. I shot approximately two or three minutes of useable footage at each one. In 2003 my video camera finally packed in after eight years continuous use. Not having enough cash to invest in a new one I decided to 'steal myself' to pursue some other way of working. My father died that year and for the first time in my life I felt that my Irishness was not overshadowed by paternal influences. Someone once said to me that when your parents die you can see the 'horizon' for the first time. Starting in 2004 I began recording a series of extended conversations with Irish artists. Though these were informal, social meetings they were, nevertheless, governed by a concise set of protocols. After three years recording, editing and designing, the book, no-one's not from everywhere, was published in 2007. (Available here on Amazon).

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