Ireland, Buncrana : Jim Ricks: Photo Exhibition on #Gaza from 15/7/10

New work by Jim Ricks: Exhibition on Gaza 

Artlink 'New Art Award 2009' and the Earagail Festival





Fort Dunree, Buncrana, Co. Donegal
The Hospital Gallery & Saldanha Galleries, Fort Dunree, Buncrana, Co Donegal
Opening Hours: Thursday - Saturday 2pm - 5pm
July 15 – August 11, 2010
You are invited to the opening reception on Thursday 15th July at 7-9pm
"Yes, Israelis deserve security. Twenty Israelis dead in 10 years around Gaza is a grim figure indeed. But 600 Palestinians dead in just over a week, thousands over the years since 1948 – when the Israeli massacre at Deir Yassin helped to kick-start the flight of Palestinians from that part of Palestine that was to become Israel – is on a quite different scale. This recalls not a normal Middle East bloodletting but an atrocity on the level of the Balkan wars of the 1990s. And of course, when an Arab bestirs himself with unrestrained fury and takes out his incendiary, blind anger on the West, we will say it has nothing to do with us. Why do they hate us, we will ask? But let us not say we do not know the answer." – Robert Fisk
Jim Ricks uses a collection of Associated Press images dated from 14th January 2009, the time of Israel's invasion of Gaza, as the starting point for 14th January 2009 (We will say it has nothing to do with us). The work negotiates an uncomfortable compromise between the provincial spheres of fashion and High Street vis-a-vis the daily reality of Palestinians living in Gaza.
The work re-creates fragments from news photographs as sculptural objects and uses this process of re-fabricating as a vehicle for exploring the one of the most urgent political issues of our time, as well as to investigate the role of documentary photography in an age of consumerism, de-sensitisation and cultural tourism.
Ricks’ work aims to disrupt mainstream narratives. In his practice the tangled stories of capitalism are re-wired and re-created using real-world fragments, forming a new narrative. By selecting and linking the quotidian and re-fabricating or re-contextualising them, the seemingly indisputable real objects do the story telling. By creating links, associations and synchronicities between objects he includes a wide range of ideas through associative conceptual and formal relationships. Or rather, by using a methodology close to that of conspiracy theories he connects and creates a new history. As such his work can be seen as a semiological investigation into context, combination, disintegration, and the gap between real stories and ‘manufactured’ identities. Ricks’ work is influenced by his background as a prolific graffiti artist and a political activist.
Born in California, Jim Ricks received his MFA from the National University of Ireland, Galway and Burren College of Art programme and his BFA from the California College of the Arts. Ricks has exhibited nationally and internationally. He has upcoming shows with MART's An Instructional: A European Tour, 2010 (Dublin, London and Berlin), Enrage, Galway Arts Festival, 2010 and solo shows at Occupy Space, September 2010 (Limerick) and Pallas Contemporary Projects, Winter 2010 – 2011 (Dublin). In 2009 he exhibited in The World Shrinks for Those Who Own It, with Oliver Heinzenberger, Galway Arts Centre and The Life and Times of Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, Monster Truck Gallery and Studios (Dublin) participated in Frieze Projects’ COPYSTAND: Autonomous Manufacturing Zone (London). He is currently working on a touring public work, Poulnabrone Bouncy Dolmen, which is part of the Ground Up Artist Collective’s ‘Aughty Temporary Art Projects’, Spring – Autumn 2010, as well as collaborating on a project with Cause Collective (US). He was chairperson and responsible for the curation of 126, Artist-run gallery (Galway) from 2008 – 2009.
The Artlink 'New Art Award' projects were selected from an open competition in 2009 by the following selection panel: Dave Beech Art Critic & Artist, UK; Maoliosa Boyle Manager, Void Derry; Brian Duggan Artist and Founder of Pallas Heights, Dublin; Elaine Forde Former Director, Artlink Donegal: Adrian Kelly Curator, Glebe Gallery Donegal: Mark Wallinger Artist, UK
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www.jimricks.info