Livestock Weekend Workshops with Áine Phillips and Rae Goodwin at MART Gallery Rathmines – 12-13 May 2018
Rae Goodwin is concerned with maternal ancestry as it influences the construction of identity, assumptions of strength and notions of agency. She is very concerned with the individual grandmothers in our society, after a whole life they are seen thru the lens of their role or perceptions of their archetype and vastly undervalued. When Goodwin asks people about their own grandmothers many confess they do not know her first name, how she grew up, nor her favourite music. Many people do not wonder about her until after she has passed. The absence in presence and presence in absence of this grandmother figure in the social lives of families, leads her to think about relationships, relationality and vulnerability in the work.
In all of Goodwin’s works, be they performance, social practice, videos, drawings or sculptures, she uses objects and materials that evoke a nostalgic sense of grandmother, drawing from a New England “yankee” aesthetic and her love of France.
Goodwin received an MFA from Winthrop University and has shown work at the Glasshouse, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, McColl Center for Visual Art, Dimanche Rouge in Paris, 10/12 Gallery in Brussels, defibrillator gallery, Panoply Performance Laboratory, Grace Exhibition Space, SUPERNOVA, BIPAF and MPAB festivals and other venues. Rae also serves as Associate Professor and Director of Art Foundations at the University of Kentucky, College of Fine Arts, USA.
Dr Áine Phillips has been making performance art and experimental theatre in Ireland and internationally since the late ‘80s. Over the years her practice has engaged with auto- ethnography, feminism and activist performance in public spaces. She has created performances with and for diverse communities such as educational institutions, historic sites, night clubs, rural contexts, town and city street populations. Curation of performance events and teaching (fine art, performance & theatre) are significant aspects of her varied practice.
As a writer, Áine’s research is founded in visual performance art and Live Art, its histories and contemporary manifestations. She published Performance Art in Ireland: A History (Intellect/ Live Art Development Agency UK) in 2015.
