Sanctuary 1, theme: Home [Launch Event]

Exhibition:

A selection of photo-montage (collage), mixed-media paintings, cut-up art-fine art exhibition.

Some of these pieces directly relate to the subject matter of the event but others form the body of work we have created over the years since completing the PhD under the guise of Manchester Penetrated.

All work is for sale, with a mixture of elaborate and quite pricy fine art and smaller, much more affordable gift sized art.

Opening piece:

Dr Patrick Baxter will do a short recital from an excerpt of his PhD dissertation Ghost Developments on Film: An experimental ethnographic exploration of place and space in post -Celtic Tiger Ireland (Baxter 2017) to provide context to the film that follows.

If you’re feeling really adventurous you can access the full PhD dissertation online here: https://tinyurl.com/javsspwc

DJ Set [x2- start & end]:

A lively, uplifting yet thoughtful selection of the cream of Irish popular sonics featuring not only the usual suspects (The Dubliner’s ‘Seven Drunken Nights’, Enya ‘Orinoco Flow’, and The Undertones ‘Teenage Kicks’ come immediately to mind), but also some forgotten and/or overlooked treasures (Kerbdog’s ‘Sally’ or the sublime, singular ‘Endless Art’ from A-House neatly fit this description), to the utterly obscure (Wormhole ‘Lay It On’ or Agitated Radio Pilot anyone?).

The set is split in two with the second half of the set providing a relaxed background atmosphere for people to have some refreshments, chat, network and absorb some of the Art on exhibit.

Screening:

A Place Where Ghosts Dwell (2017 Baxter, 71mins), is an essay-film that explores the relationship between a marginalised place and its vacant spaces in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland. The film results from four years of research in my hometown of Longford; one of the places that suffered disproportionately as a site of what became popularly known as ghost estates – or unfinished housing estates.

Filmed principally in 2015 in and around Longford town, the film not only ventures through the strange, eerie and haunted environs of unfinished houses and vacant commercial ghost developments but furthermore questions why Longford has historically, economically and socially become marginalized, using the place a as vehicle for understanding inequality, uneven development, and positive social change in Ireland.

...Where Ghosts Dwell employs an innovative narrative structure that creates a clash of approaches and cinematic forms - poetic and subjective essayist devices merge with methods that are more commonly associated with ethnographic film. The result is a highly stylized video-reflexive piece that celebrates the creativity of a small, dismissed place and the otherworldliness of its abandoned, ruinous spaces.

You can watch the trailer for the film here: https://tinyurl.com/mr7kf6dz

Discussion:

Rather than a standard Q&A we will aim to open up the floor for a more inclusive conversation not solely about the film (the ideas, representations and arguments it raised), but people’s wider feelings of home, memories of Ireland that the images and sounds relayed in …Where Ghosts Dwell may have provoked.

Or perhaps the attendees would like to chat about their experience of migration, displacement, and being an ethnic minority in post-Good Friday Agreement, post-Brexit Britain.

Nothing is off the table so let's see where the conversation goes.

Closing Act:

To draw the evening to a close we would be delighted to present to you a short recital of a few, somewhat unconventional poems.

This will be followed by an experimental dance performance to My Bloody Valentine’s Glider (Extended 12min cut) - themselves in actuality an Irish band, though this aspect of their brilliance is rarely spoken about.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Irish World Heritage Centre Manchester, 1 Irish Town Way, Cheetham Hill, United Kingdom