Cream cheese and pretty ribbons!
Galerie Martin Janda, Vienna
14 September - 13 October 2018
David Bestué, Sean Lynch, Eulàlia Rovira & Adrian Schindler, Batia Suter
Curated by Latitudes, Barcelona
OPENING 13 September, 6pm
PERFORMANCES 14 September, 6pm
“One motif says to the other: I can’t take my eyes off you” - Adrian Schindler and Eulàlia Rovira
“A Blow by Blow Account of Stonecarving in Oxford” - Sean Lynch.
“Two strains of intellectual vulgarity: defenselessness against content and defenselessness against form. The one experiences only the material side of art. It is of German origin. The other experiences even the rawest of materials artistically. It is of Romance origin. To the one, art is an instrument; to the other, life is an ornament. In which hell would the artist prefer to fry?” — Karl Kraus, Viennese satirist (1874–1936), in “Heine und die Folgen” [Heine and the Consequences], 1910.
‘Cream cheese and pretty ribbons!’ is an exhibition that ventures into the apparently perilous middle ground between too much content and too much form, between too many nouns and too many adjectives, between too much everyday and too much artiness. Are objects or statements that are laden with information – or those that are concerned with utility above all else – at risk of appearing aloof and extorting their own importance? Undoubtedly. Just as art in an abundantly ‘poetic’ mode might be deemed just too delightful and refined.
Drawing on strategies such as disposition, wit, redundancy, or storytelling, the artists and artworks of this exhibition conspire with seemingly mundane things and images to somehow find and invent ways to rebuff, circumvent, surpass, or mitigate this spurious alternative between indulgent contents and bad Romance.
Upcoming
Appointed Visiting Professor of Sculpture
2019
Carnegie Mellon School of Art, Pittsburgh
Visiting Research Fellowship
Henry Moore Institute, Leeds
Curated by Jon Wood
November – December 2018
A Murmur, Repeated
Citywide performance, events and exhibition
John Hansard Gallery, Southampton
Curated by Woodrow Kernohan
October 2018
Artists Books
Seminar, exhibition
Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Umbria, Italy
Curated by Jo Melvin
September 2018
PAST
Cornwall
May 5 - June 3 2018
Solo exhibition at Helston Museum
Curated by Teresa Gleadowe
Groundwork is an unfolding season of international contemporary art, opening in May and continuing through the summer, featuring artworks and commissions by Francis Alÿs, Manon de Boer, Janet Cardiff, Adam Chodzko, Tacita Dean, Andy Holden, Rosemary Lee, Sean Lynch, Christina Mackie, Steve McQueen, Abigail Reynolds, Abel Rodriguez, Steve Rowell, Simon Starling, Semiconductor and Laureana Toledo.
What Is An Apparatus? 2018
Douglas Hyde Gallery @40
Dublin
May 17 from 6.30pm
2018 marks the fortieth anniversary of The Douglas Hyde Gallery. The first public gallery dedicated to contemporary art in Ireland, it opened on March 1, 1978.
To celebrate this milestone, artists Gerard Byrne, Willie Doherty, Sam Keogh, Sean Lynch, Isabel Nolan and Mairead O'hEocha take part in a discussion loosely based around their memories of and reflections on the space over the past four decades. The talk will be chaired by academic and art writer Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith.
An Evening of Technocracy
Lo Orto
at
Héctor
Carlos B. Zetina 137, Escandón, Mexico City
Lecture and solo exhibition
Beginning March 23, 2018, 7.30pm
Curated by Catalina Lozano
Devil In The Detail
Solo exhibition
Ronchini Gallery, London
November 2017 - January 2018
Idea Home
MIMA Middlesborough
Group exhibition with Artist Tea Towel Company
Artist Talk
Leeds Art Gallery
January 2018
Artist Talk
Chelsea School of Arts
London
November 2017
Solo exhibition
February - April 2017
International Film Festival Rotterdam
24 January - 4 February 2017
Charles H Scott Gallery, Vancouver
Solo exhibition
November 2016 - February 2017
Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence
Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Vancouver
Autumn 2016
Solo exhibition
September – December 2016
Solo exhibition touring in Ireland throughout 2016
The Model. Sligo / Royal Hibernian Academy & Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin /
Limerick City Gallery of Art / Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast
Solo exhibition at Spacex, Exeter Phoenix and Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter
May – July 2016
Bandits Live Comfortably in the Ruins
Curated exhibition at Flat Time House, London
March – April 2016
Adventure: Capital
Irish representation at the 56th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia
solo exhibition, 56th Venice Biennale
9 May - 22 November 2015
See the exhibition at Google Cultural Institute
Read Chris Fite-Wassilak in Art Review
Interview with Artslant
Interview with Art Review
Interview with Sherman Sam at Ocula
Reverse!Pugin
Curated exhibition
Lismore Castle Arts
October - December 2015
Lismore Castle Arts presents Reverse!Pugin, an exhibition curated by artist Sean Lynch.
Playfully titled after nineteenth century architect and critic Augustus Welby Pugin, Lynch’s exhibition explores the attitudes that underpin human relationships to the environment. Pugin’s catholic sensibilities, as expressed through large-scale architectural and ornamental design (seen throughout Lismore Castle and London’s Houses of Parliament) promoted the idea of glorified unity and strict coherence to a singular vision. With this belief, all the forces of nature, human perseverance and morality would fuse together into an energised whole. Reverse!Pugin imagines a different kind of legacy, deconstructing Pugin’s ideals to dwell in the conflicts and frictions found in how environments are shaped and mediated. There’s no hierarchical masterplan or spiritual identity to be found here - rather the artworks and objects selected by Lynch bargain, hustle and improvise with a variety of particular locations and social formations. In this accumulation, featuring postindustrial landscapes and garden design, Hollywood movies and Internet infrastructure, casinos and antiquarian watercolours, there is little holistic certainty. Rather, the devil resides in the details...
An overview of filmic representations of Skellig Michael rock is presented, contextualising the Irish governments’ capitulance of the World Heritage site to Disney’s latest installment of the Star Wars franchise. Celtic Tiger recollections include a large model of 1996’s proposed Sonas (translated as “Happiness”) Centre in Dublin, featuring a bespoke replica of a megalithic stone circle. Fiona Marron and Sam Keogh question today’s communication systems and devices. Stephen Brandes, John Latham and Diarmuid Gavin exhibit various approaches to the construction and ideology of monuments. Stonemason Philip Quinn presents materials he uses each day in restoration work at Lismore Castle and Michele Horrigan updates antiquarian representations, while Daniel Knorr fervently collects rubbish from around the streets of Ireland and turns it into books. In these and other instances, Reverse!Pugin proposes a version of geography far away from tranquil uniformity and the comforts of identifying with history and heritage. Instead, everything constantly mutates and nothing ever stays the same.
Reverse!Pugin features contributions by Gabriel Beranger, Stephen Brandes, Burke Kennedy Doyle architects, Central Bank of Ireland, Kenneth Clark, Diarmuid Gavin, Werner Herzog, Sam Keogh, Daniel Knorr, Michele Horrigan, John Latham, Fiona Marron, David A. Paton, Philip Quinn, Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and Bold Puppy Multimedia Productions.
Interview
with Wayne Daly, Bedford Press
published in A Circular Journal no. 2
Ce Qui Ne Sert Pas S’oublie (What is not used is forgotten)
group exhibition curated by Catalina Lozano
CAPC musée d'art contemporain de Bordeaux
January - May 2015
Artists: Mathieu Kleyebe Abonnenc, Sven Augustijnen, Mariana Castillo Deball, Sean Lynch, Pauline M'Barek, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Uriel Orlow, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Jorge Satorre, Museo Comunitario del Valle de Xico.
The exhibition explores how objects, along the circulation that constitutes their life, accumulate
information thus becoming part of a historical process marked by the effects of colonialism.
Even though objects do not strictly carry meaning, it cannot be said they are not significant.
It is through language however that we as humans try to integrate them in the constant creation of
meaning we embark ourselves on. This exhibition tries to celebrate their agency and capacity to
affect others, both human and non-human. What cannot be used is forgotten seeks to understand
how our relation to the material world entails endless processes of assimilation, acculturation,
re-appropriation, and ritualization.
Interview with Michael Asbury, TrAIN Research Centre, London
A blow by blow account of stonecarving in Oxford
Exhibition graphic, designed by Fraser Muggeridge Studio
Featuring
The Cat Window,
Oxford University Museum of Natural History,
1859 by James O'Shea
Chuckie logo of Favorite Chicken and Ribs
1986
unknown artist
Modern Art Oxford
Solo exhibition
14 April - 8 June 2014
A blow-by-blow account of stonecarving in Oxford is an installation by Sean Lynch exploring the work of the nineteenth century stone carvers, John and James O’Shea, whose naturalistic renditions of animals and plants are still visible in the architectural detail of buildings in Oxford and Dublin. Sean Lynch investigates distinctive and often overlooked moments in history that have left fragments of evidence, objects and narratives. He explores these sidelined histories through photographic and sculptural installations, prefabricated or found artefacts and small-scale publications.
The O’Shea brothers had completed a series of notable stone carvings in Dublin during the 1850s before accepting an invitation from the University of Oxford to work on the new Natural History Museum. Controversy quickly surrounded the O’Shea’s carvings of primates on the museum’s facade, as many people interpreted the work as a representation of Darwin’s theory of evolution, a contentious and powerful subject within theological, intellectual and social debates of the time. Following a quarrel between the O’Sheas’ and the University, James O’Shea attempted a series of impromptu carvings on the entrance to the museum intended to caricature the authorities of Oxford as parrots and owls. These carvings are still visible on the building today.
Lynch activates this story through a variety of objects sited throughout the exhibition. Subtly placed into the shop and café, a collection of material is exhibited about Favorite, a fried chicken outlet now found on what was once the site of Britain’s first public museum, the Ark, in Lambeth, London. Artefacts from the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Natural History Museum and stone carvings by Dublin-based Stephen Burke each evoke the playfulness of the O’Sheas’ work. In Lynch’s accompanying slide projection, these seemingly unrelated objects come together to weave a narrative about museum culture, public space, individual agency and the construction of history.
Never the Same River (Possible Futures, Probable Pasts)
Camden Arts Centre, London
2010-11
Group exhibition curated by Simon Starling
Camden Arts Centre is delighted to present a new exhibition curated by British artist Simon Starling, the latest in a series of artist-selected shows.
Conflating works already exhibited at Camden Arts Centre during the past five decades, the works in Starling’s exhibition will be installed in the exact position they occupied the first time around. These fragments of the Centre’s history will be staged alongside new works by Sean Lynch, Michael Stevenson and Jeremy Millar, which represent an imagined prospective programme: the probable past and possible future of Camden Arts Centre momentarily coming together in an unstable present. Never The Same River will redeploy fragments of exhibitions such as Hampstead in the 30’s (1975), Photography into Art (1973), Environments Reversal (1969) as well as a number of previous artist-selected exhibitions.
Artists: Francis Alÿs, Francis Bacon, Christian Boltanski, Matthew Buckingham, Harry Burton, Tony Carter, Keith Coventry, Andrea Fisher, Stefan Gec, Ernö Goldfinger, Graham Gussin, Susan Hiller, Douglas Huebler, Des Hughes, ISOKON / Marcel Breuer, Patrick Keiller, Hilma af Klint, David Lamelas, Sean Lynch, Mary Martin, Jeremy Millar, Jacques Monory, Henry Moore, William Morris / Liberty & Co., Mike Nelson, John Riddy, Michael Stevenson, Katja Strunz, Paul Thek, Francis Upritchard
Lost and Found
neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Group exhibition, 2010
Artists: Franz Ackerman, Pawel Althamer, Lothar Baumgarten, Nina Beier, James Benning, Tacita Dean, Jeremy Deller, Mark Dion, Jimmie Durham, Pierre Huyghe, Louise Lawler, Sharon Lockhart, Sean Lynch, Mike Nelson, Jorge Pardo, Manfred Pernice, Simon Starling, Mario Garcia Torres, Danh Vo, Ai Weiwei
DeLorean: Progress Report
Solo exhibition, 2010
Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin
A public conversation with art critic Caoimhín Mac Giolla Léith took place in the gallery.
