EXCHANGE DUBLIN Collective Arts Centre

14th to 27th of June 2010

With a sudden surge in spontaneous expressions affection between strangers such as; the Free Hugs movement and Amma the Hugging Saint, the artist wondered, what is the origin of this need for contact? Is it due to an increase in communication online and increasingly segmented communities, are people less used to communicating face-to-face?

The artist is equally intrigued with science and pseudo-science, the work of noted autistic author and scientist Dr. Temple Grandin, and her creation; an apparatus called the squeeze machine. The machine applies a pressure over a large part of the body and has a positive effect. This same logic is re-appropriated in this project to attempt to simulate the positive effects of a hug with the use of a wearable device within the gallery space. The project comments on the need for human contact, dislocation of communities, and our intertwining relationships with machines.

H.U.G.S Workshop

Date: Friday June 25th at 1 pm

• Participants: 8-10
• Price: free
• To book email hello@emmawade.com

In this fun 90 minute workshop, participants will learn a bit more about the H.U.G.S. Jackets. They will gain an insight into how the jackets were made and work together to create a giant collective hugging jacket.

About the artist:

Emma Wade

Emma Wade is a dublin based visual artist and educator. She works with installation, digital media and performance. Her work is playful, interactive and audience focused. In 2008 Emma received an MA from NCAD and subsequently completed an internship in New Media Education at the Guggenheim Museum New York. Her work uses play and humour as tools to provoke thought, and to entertain. Science and Pseudo-science heavily influence her practice. The conflict between scientific fact and common belief fascinates her. Defining proof, the notion of what is real and who decides. Her current research investigates the physiological effects of deep pressure and cellular memory in a fine art context.

gallery.exchangedublin.ie

In Exchange Gallery

10th – 30th May 2010

Taking Place is an exhibition by resident artist James Ó hAodha.

Since Monday 10th of May, artist James Ó hAodha has been occupying Exchange Gallery, which is being used both as a working space and a base for a series of interventions being conducted in the streets around Exchange. Appropriating commercial waste materials left in the street for collection, Ó hAodha has erected barricades in the exhibition space which will be disassembled and reassembled over the period of the occupation, playing with visibility and accessibility of the space from without.

These waste objects populate the street-scape in mass on a daily basis, taking an ambiguous position in public space. In this they provide a unique material in-point to the particular economy and circulation of which they are part. Working tactically within the timescales and practicalities of placing and collection, the artist hopes to reinvest these objects with a more tangible communal value and to activate the political potential of their ‘taking place’. The interventions are centred around the tools of resistance, meeting and organisation, teaching and dissemination of information, in an attempt to suggest or prompt a return of these tools to common use.

Exchange Gallery will be reopened to the public on Friday May 21st from 7pm-10pm, and Taking Place will run until Sunday May 30th.

Beginning Thursday 22nd April.

Resident artist Paul Maguire invites people to the Exchange Gallery to participate in a confidential one-on-one cognitive therapy and screenwriting session with the artist.

The artist is researching spaces of intimacy and personal disclosure. The sessions will involve experimentation with confessional and interrogation architecture to investigate the relationship of visibility and interaction between the artist and the participant.

Participants are invited to confess secrets and to answer questions about their memories and daily thought patterns. The techniques of cognitive psychology and processes of screenwriting will be utilized to attempt to locate aesthetic moments and images within memory and thought structure.

To take part, visit Exchange between 11am to 7pm or text the artist at 085 7401147 to arrange a meeting.