Ghosts of the garden city
Collaboration with Dennis McNulty and Ellen Rowley.
Collaboration with Dennis McNulty and Ellen Rowley.
Dennis McNulty in association with Green On Red presents Ghosts of the garden city, a live event which will take place in the gallery on Thursday 28th of October at 9.00pm. A collaboration with architectural historian Ellen Rowley and musician David Donohoe, Ghosts of the garden city emerged from conversations between McNulty and Rowley, relating to Rowley’s current research into twentieth-century Irish architecture, and explores the history of mid-twentieth-century public housing in Dublin.
Images uncovered by Rowley in the course of her research will be woven together with recordings of her voice and the distinctive timbre of Donohoe's DX7 synthesiser to create a hybrid of lecture, documentary and musical performance. The influence of the British Garden City movement on the expansion of twentieth-century Dublin provides a backdrop for a meditation on public housing. We move from inner city developments like the Townsend Street flats, which share the same side of Lombard Street as Green On Red, out to Crumlin and Drimnagh, the second wave of Dublin suburbs, created in the thirties and forties following housing developments at Marino and Drumcondra in the twenties.
Donohoe has recently been working to unlock the under-explored potential of the Yamaha DX7 as an expressive instrument for live performance. This most evocative of synthesisers defined the sound of the 1980s, gaining notoriety due to its employment of the highly unpredictable FM (frequency modulation) form of synthesis. It is deeply embedded in the music of that particular era. In Ghosts of the garden city, Donohoe’s performance acts as a filter through which Rowley's research is re-contextualised and imbued with particular emotional and psychological resonances.
Ghosts of the Garden City is presented as a companion to The Driver and the Passenger, McNulty's current solo show at Green On Red. He has worked with both Rowley and Donohoe previously, the former when she made a presentation as part of the AFTERTHOUGHTS seminar at the gallery in 2008 and the latter as part of electronic music experiment serverproject. With this project, roles are shuffled slightly as the nature of these collaborations continues to mutate.
Bios
Ellen Rowley is assistant editor of Irish Architecture 1600 – 2000, Volume IV of Art and Architecture of Ireland (Royal Irish Academy, Yale University Press, 2014). She is an award-winning lecturer on the subject of architectural history and theory with the School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin (2003 – 2008). She is completing her PhD (2010) on the history of architecture in Dublin 1940 -1970, and has lectured extensively as well as published many articles and chapters on this subject.
David Donohoe's solo music practice is focused on synthesizer improvisation based on modal structures. He also coordinates Rainfear, a vehicle for both layered self-improvisation and collaborative work. With Eamonn Doyle he is working on String Machine, a collaborative music project, seeking to open dialogue between acoustic and digital traditions and practices.
Dennis McNulty's practice is concerned with memory, potential and flow. His work emerges from research, suggesting possible narratives through the overlapping of fragments in various media. Recent group shows include ‘Nothing is Impossible’, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, USA (2010) and ‘Mixtapes’, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2010). In 2004, he represented Ireland at the São Paulo Bienal. He is represented by Green On Red, Dublin.
Images uncovered by Rowley in the course of her research will be woven together with recordings of her voice and the distinctive timbre of Donohoe's DX7 synthesiser to create a hybrid of lecture, documentary and musical performance. The influence of the British Garden City movement on the expansion of twentieth-century Dublin provides a backdrop for a meditation on public housing. We move from inner city developments like the Townsend Street flats, which share the same side of Lombard Street as Green On Red, out to Crumlin and Drimnagh, the second wave of Dublin suburbs, created in the thirties and forties following housing developments at Marino and Drumcondra in the twenties.
Donohoe has recently been working to unlock the under-explored potential of the Yamaha DX7 as an expressive instrument for live performance. This most evocative of synthesisers defined the sound of the 1980s, gaining notoriety due to its employment of the highly unpredictable FM (frequency modulation) form of synthesis. It is deeply embedded in the music of that particular era. In Ghosts of the garden city, Donohoe’s performance acts as a filter through which Rowley's research is re-contextualised and imbued with particular emotional and psychological resonances.
Ghosts of the Garden City is presented as a companion to The Driver and the Passenger, McNulty's current solo show at Green On Red. He has worked with both Rowley and Donohoe previously, the former when she made a presentation as part of the AFTERTHOUGHTS seminar at the gallery in 2008 and the latter as part of electronic music experiment serverproject. With this project, roles are shuffled slightly as the nature of these collaborations continues to mutate.
Bios
Ellen Rowley is assistant editor of Irish Architecture 1600 – 2000, Volume IV of Art and Architecture of Ireland (Royal Irish Academy, Yale University Press, 2014). She is an award-winning lecturer on the subject of architectural history and theory with the School of Histories and Humanities, Trinity College Dublin (2003 – 2008). She is completing her PhD (2010) on the history of architecture in Dublin 1940 -1970, and has lectured extensively as well as published many articles and chapters on this subject.
David Donohoe's solo music practice is focused on synthesizer improvisation based on modal structures. He also coordinates Rainfear, a vehicle for both layered self-improvisation and collaborative work. With Eamonn Doyle he is working on String Machine, a collaborative music project, seeking to open dialogue between acoustic and digital traditions and practices.
Dennis McNulty's practice is concerned with memory, potential and flow. His work emerges from research, suggesting possible narratives through the overlapping of fragments in various media. Recent group shows include ‘Nothing is Impossible’, The Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh, USA (2010) and ‘Mixtapes’, The Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork (2010). In 2004, he represented Ireland at the São Paulo Bienal. He is represented by Green On Red, Dublin.
15.11.2010 |
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date: 2010
Green on Red gallery, Dublin
Live improvised score
Green on Red gallery, Dublin
Live improvised score
Video still by Peter Maybury
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