The Model

The Descendants - A review by Lee Hayden

My name is Lee and I am working at the Model for the last two weeks as part of my TY work experience. I had the entire Model Cinema to myself yesterday as I watched The Descendants. Here is what I think of it.

The director Alexander Payne tells a tale of Matt King (George Clooney) and his difficult journey as he attempts to do good by numerous family members, become the sole career for his two daughters, and please the community, all while finding out his wife’s secret life after she suffers a serious boating accident.
The story, set in Hawaii, meant that throughout the film we are shown shoots of some of the most beautiful blue skies and sunny beaches, this brought together with Hawaiian music allows us to become totally immersed in the life and home of the King family.

Clooney gives a brilliant performance throughout the film taking on every impossible decision, he’s full of anger and incredible sadness as his character fights to keep his head above water in this confusing time. But it is also worth remembering other performances of Matt’s children, Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) and Scottie (Amara Miller). Shailene takes on the role of a rebellious teenager turning young adult with ease, while her character helps and supports Matt through some of the film’s more difficult scenes. For Amara, this film is her very first performance as an actress on the big stage.

Considering she worked alongside one or two industry giants, Amara seems unfazed as she sinks into the role with confidence, and delivers some truly funny lines.
One of the most memorable moments is a shot of Alexandra King, screaming in despair underwater in her pool. The Descendants is an inspiring film with brilliant acting. It has a very good story line and its well thought out.

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Launch night of Double Vision, an exhibition by Young Curators.

It is a rare opportunity for young people to get in real contact with an art collection, gain experience working as a curator and to learn about collections and collecting. This is what the Sligo/Antrim Young Curators cross boarder project did. The group curated an interactive social history exhibition; which included a Silent Disco Room in the Model’s galleries.

On the night of the launch two local bands played live– The Complaints and Eusocial on the acoustic stage at the Model. It was very loud rock music with their fans dancing and singing along to the bands. There were over 250 young people at The Model so you can imagine the energy and the steam coming from the room.
The students involved in the Young Curators programme came from local secondary schools all around Sligo including the Grammar, Summerhill College, Ursulaine College, St. Claire’s comprehensive, Manorhamilton and St. Mary’s Ballisadare,
The exhibition Double Vision was developed over two years by the two groups with support from curators from The Model and The Mid-Antrim Museum service Co Antrim. They choose the content of the exhibition The Model’s Niland Collection and the Mid-Antrim Museums Braid collection, Ballymena.

The Young Curators designed the exhibition so the public could interact with the show by writing up their reaction on the Talk Wall. They asked them what music they liked; here are some of their replies, Black-Eyed Peas, Take That, Britney Spears and Blink 182. They also asked them what they thought of their exhibition and they said it was brilliant and that the paintings and artefacts were really good together. More said the exhibition was thought out really well and that it gave them a new perspective on art.

The Silent Disco, in the gallery has music from bands that once played at the Flamingo Ballroom, Ballymena including Rory Gallagher, Undertones, Rolling Stones, Thin Lizzy and many more.

The Hot Dogs and Milk shakes were served for free from the Slice Café at The Model they were so tasty that some people were looking for seconds.
There is a teachers guide for Double Vision which can be down loaded on line at www.themodel.ie/education. Double Vision is a very interactive exhibition for people of all ages. The exhibition continues until May 06.

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TY students go behind the scenes at Isabel Nolan’s exhibition.

During the week, Liam and I (Wacky) have been helping out with some of the preparations for the Model’s next big exhibition called, ‘A Hole Into The Future’ by Isabel Nolan. This exhibition features many great pieces of Isabel’s work including many sculptural pieces of art. Most of her work is very abstract and mainly consists of many different shapes. We had a great time learning how Isabel approached the design of the sculptures for example how she developed her various techniques. Her attention to detail was amazing especially on one of her Blanket’s, which is extended out from the wall, which for Liam was a pain to put up. We had a great experience during our time at the gallery as we got an insight of what it’s like to be a curator, it was a pleasure working for Ollie and Isabel.

The experience included not only an insight into the work of modern artists, but it gave us a feel of how work in a real working environment is in fact difficult. Wacky, when left with no job to do attempted to hunt down any form of work available, although when doing so he ended up with near frost bite due to holding a cold ladder in the freezing Irish weather. The weather itself had become a major problem with a lot of the installation work being postponed due to its effect on certain jobs. For example Isabel’s new commission for The Model called The Outward Form had got slightly damaged when the men unloaded it from the truck.……… When installing the piece Isabel tried to paint the Blue sculpture outside but unfortunately for her she had gone out thinking the weather was nice enough to work in in-fact just after having the paint mixed it started to rain. ☹

Besides these mishaps, our other work went fine, such as the many covers of paint we placed upon the walls of the exhibition. However, some paint ended up on the ground leading to hours of scrubbing and cleaning with Richard’s arsenal of cleaning tools. My least favourite out of the cleaning jobs was scraping paint from the ground, as a lot of it didn’t come off that easily. In all both Liam and I found the week interesting and fun filled with some ups and downs along the way.

On the final day of preparations, we managed to get up both posters for the exhibition with only one minor mishap with Liam nearly dropping the poster, which thankfully didn’t end up being damaged. One worry for the second poster was that it could buckle since it’s located in a very cold area, although Isabel assured us that she could reprint the poster if such a hazard were to occur. I(Wacky) enjoyed Friday probably the most because I had a lot to do

Blog written and directed by Karl Wacky Coleman.

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Young Model visit Dublin Contemporary

At 7 o’clock this morning, it was still pitch dark, it was raining, there was absolutely no traffic on the roads and the Young Model were going to Dublin Contemporary again.

After stopping in just about every town in Ireland we eventually arrived in Dublin’s bus station. We taxied over to Dublin Contemporary mid eighteenth century building once home to UCD and adjoining . The National Concert Hall

We would be meeting the groups from Dublin Contemporary and The Butler Gallery Kilkenny , but in the meantime we checked out some of the legal graffiti walls.

After a while the Dublin group arrived, we awkwardly introduced ourselves over a cup of tea before each group did a 15 minute presentation in one of their lecture rooms.

The Dublin group went first; a flawless, structured, practiced presentation followed by none other than Sligo’s very own, hailing from the Young Model Oisin and Kevin.

While their presentation wasn’t perfect it was at least funny,at most interesting or “sexy” as Cormac would say.

After the Kilkenny group (who came fashionably late) conducted their presentation we meet with Jota Castro Lead Curator of Dublin Contemporary who talked about his work . This is it below.

We walked upstairs and were shown around by the Dublin group after our tour we soon found ourselves and the other groups in a pre-school function room, which was the only room available for light refreshments and Tea.

The one and only Wacky (Karl) gave us a constant source of entertainment throughout the day. After our tea we dosed off and went up to a piece by Wang Du. One thing that I thought was good at D.C was how most of the pieces were interactive. Visitors to Dublin Contemporary can actually jump, walk or run on this giant cradle which is roughly the size of a basketball court. Newspaper designs are printed onto its sheets and pillows and international news broadcasts are shown on TV’s hanging from the ceiling.

We learned that the idea of it is how the western world neglect acting on global issues like war, poverty and human rights disasters which they see so often in the media that they are oblivious to it; this is to do with DC theme of “terrible beauty.”

We left just as the seven presidential candidates were about to make an appearance. Although Kevin was almost reduced to tears when he heard we would not get a chance to see Dana we did however get free SpunOut bags and pencils. We stopped at Subway before we got the bus and now here I am on the bus writing this blog.

Ciao for now,
Laura
Young Model

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REFLECT Lab Co-Mentoring at The Model

Last Thursday, The Model hosted a train the trainer programme run by Helium with The Sage Gateshead, Newcastle.

The train the trainer programme is linked to the REFLECT Lab Co-mentoring project which is currently running in the Northwest. REFLECT Lab is bringing together 11 artists and 11 healthcare staff over the course of a year to reflect on their own practice and to investigate how their co-mentor’s perspectives can enhance approaches to their work with children and young people. Participants are given the opportunity to pause, reflect, reconnect, and reappraise their professional practice from a new perspective.

The aim of the REFLECT Lab cohort in the Northwest is to advance arts and health partnerships in the provision of services for children and young people in healthcare settings. The long-term objective is to roll out the REFLECT comentoring programme throughout the Irish health sector. Sligo County Council Arts Service has said of the REFLECT Lab initiative, “We are committed to working with Helium, the HSE, the artists and our partners to ensure the REFLECT Lab model will contribute to a sustainable Arts and Health partnership programme for young people and the wider population in Sligo and the North West area into the future.”

The train the trainer element of the programme is designed to share the skills of the trainers from The Sage Gateshead with practitioners in Ireland with a view to replicating the process on future programmes. Helene Hugel, whoseorganisation Helium, children’s arts and health, is leading the Irish cohort, has said of the programme, “REFLECT Lab provides a unique opportunity to develop a cross-sectoral professional learning opportunity, to build sharedunderstanding of arts and health contexts and to connect the skills and vision of two diverse sectors in benefitting artistic practice and the quality of the healthcare context for children. Through the REFLECT Lab programme, Helium hopes to advance understanding of the mutual benefits of arts and health partnerships.”

REFLECT Lab is a model of cross-sector co-mentoring devised and delivered by The Sage Gateshead (UK). This REFLECT Lab cohort is led by Helium under the Arts Council of Ireland Local Partnership Scheme with Sligo County Council Arts Service , Donegal County Council Arts Office , HSE West (Sligo, Leitrim, Donegal), Letterkenny General Hospital, and Sligo General Hospital. Thank you to the Sligo Park Hotel for sponsoring accommodation.

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Want to become a young curator? Young Model are looking for new recruits.

Young Model youth programme are looking for new recruits for it’s new programme Young Curators.

Do you want the chance to have your say about what goes on display at The Model? Do you want to learn about how exhibitions are put together?

The Model’s Young Model (14-20 years age) group is embarking on a cross-border project with a group of young people from Ballymena Co. Antrim. The two groups will come together to curate, examine and explore themes in both The Niland Collection andThe Braid Museum’s unique Social History collection in Antrim, and ultimately will stage an exhibition in both The Model’s and The Braid’s galleries, full of the works that they have chosen.

Starting this summer and running until Spring 2012 both groups have a great opportunity to decide what goes on display at The Model’s Niland Gallery. The Young Curators’ exhibition will be on display in Sligo from February – April 2012, and later in the Braid in Antrim.

So what does a Curator do? We asked artist and Young Model facilitator Andy Parsons to explain:

“A curator for art is a bit like a DJ is for music. A DJ selects tunes to create a set, which is an event for a group of people to participate in. Some people will like some of the tunes better than others, there might be some floor fillers and some floor emptiers. There might be old mixed with new. There might be classics alongside cheesy tunes. If the DJ does a good job, he or she has created something new from something that already existed.

The Young Curators from the Braid and The Model will create an exhibition by choosing objects from two collections, one which is based on Fine Art and one based on Social History. Their choice of objects and the design of the exhibition will form new thoughts about these objects and their relationship to the world. The exhibition will create a host of new connections, which will range from the purely visual to thoughts about history, culture and society.”

At the end of the process the Young Curators will have experience in working with collections and understanding the role of a Curator. They’ll develop their critical thinking and visual literacy, and will learn about both groups shared histories and political geographies.

Supported by The International Fund for Ireland, this is a rare opportunity for young people to get in real contact with art collections, and to learn about the collections and each other’s cultural backgrounds while also exchanging perspectives on living in the North and in the South.

If you or anyone you know is between 14 – 20yrs, interested in art, film and technology get in touch with Linda Hayden at The Model on 071 914 1405 or via email to lindahayden@themodel.ie
This programme is FREE.

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