Modern & Contemporary Art Exhibitions in Belfast

UsFolk Ten years ago, Belfast-based illustration agency UsFolk set out to champion illustrators – both local and international – whose work communicates ideas, tells stories, and imagines worlds. A decade later, this exhibition looks both forwards and backwards, celebrating illustration's unique ability to move through time. Long before the future arrives, artists have imagined it. They have populated tomorrow with impossible machines, unlikely inventions, distant planets, and utopian cities, while also reflecting on the hopes, anxieties, and everyday moments that define life in the present. Illustration allows us to revisit futures once promised while continuing to imagine those still to come. Bringing together artists from across the UsFolk roster, this exhibition explores time in all its forms: memory and nostalgia, retro-futurism and science fiction, anniversaries and milestones, time travel and alternate realities, imagined futures and the ever-changing present. Drawing on the visual language of science fiction, cinema, and popular culture, the exhibition asks a simple question: What does tomorrow look like today? Marking UsFolk's tenth anniversary, this exhibition is both a celebration and a snapshot: a record of where the agency is today and an invitation to imagine where illustration – and the world around it – might go next.

Reconstructions: A Room for Mike Kelley is a series of collaborative works by artists Mary McIntyre & Robert Anderson, made in response to live performances by the late artist Mike Kelley (1954 –2012) produced during the late 1970’s and early 1990’s. When artists Mary McIntyre and Robert Anderson first encountered the performance works of Mike Kelley (1954 – 2012) it was through a series of small black and white photographs. Disconnected from their original context, Kelley’s performance documentation constituted a bemusing series of images, which left them intrigued. The discovery of these photographs led McIntyre and Anderson to a growing fascination with the act of recording the 'live event' and how a photograph, with the primary function of faithfully documenting such an event, when divorced from context or supporting information, can take on an altogether different set of possibilities. It is that proposition which forms the basis for their collaborative project, ‘Reconstructions: A Room for Mike Kelley’. Over a period of 10 years, McIntyre and Anderson have studied Kelley’s performance documentation and set about meticulously reconstructing the studio environments in which Kelley enacted his live works, from the basic plywood door that sits ajar, to the exact positioning of an odd collection of objects that lie strewn on the studio floor. These objects, constructed to mimic those found in Kelley’s performance documentation, which range from the strange to the familiar, from the plausible to the bizarre, act as potential cultural signifiers that can be read as both significant and mundane. However, in McIntyre and Anderson’s series of reconstructions, the figurative elements present in Kelley’s performance documentation, have been omitted. Without a protagonist, their possible interpretation has been left deliberately open to allow for fluid shifts in meaning, depending on their perceived status, cultural context or individual readings stemming from viewer experience. In ‘Reconstructions: A Room for Mike Kelley’, McIntyre and Anderson present an empty stage, ready to come alive with myriad fictional histories, potential narratives and associations, made possible in the viewer’s imagination.

A Feeling in the Blood by Belfast based artist and fiddle player Susan Hughes is an exhibition across a range of media including video, sculpture and installation. Susan has travelled across Ireland having conversations with musicians, dancers, singers, researchers and archivists gathering stories from the rich and complex world of Irish music, song and dance. This exhibition presents some of the mystery, myth, obsession and collective transcendence she has encountered along the way. A Feeling in the Blood is programmed to coincide with Belfast Trad Fest and Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann and is a fluid, participatory and collaborative space. Displayed within the exhibition are a range of loaned objects from members of the public who responded to a call for artefacts and belongings which had a history relating to a personal experience of traditional Irish music over the years. Also present is a purpose-built stage which will be activated by ad-hoc performances by visiting musicians to the Fleadh, as well as a curated programme of performances throughout the run of the exhibition. The title ‘A Feeling in the Blood’ is sourced from an archival recording of fiddle player Néillidh Boyle from Dungloe, Co. Donegal. “If you notice every note seems to have a sad, a crying effect. That note has to be embellished. It’s done with a slight grace note which can’t be seen with the movement of the fingers. It’s done with a feeling in the blood. It can’t, this thing can’t be written and it’s very hard to explain it on paper.” (1953)