THE Light Moves Festival exhibition Screendance in the Gallery continues at Limerick City Gallery until Sunday January 28. This is the festival’s fourth exhibition of screendance works at the gallery, and is the most expansive one yet.
The works on display, which have been drawing crowds and fantastic feedback, include seven compelling and thought-provoking installations by prominent artists in the fields of dance, visual art, and film.
Limerick’s biennale Light Moves Festival celebrates adventurous dance, film & media arts presenting vibrant experiences bridging dance, new media and screen-based practices that reward and stimulate audiences and artists.
From an international perspective, Swinguerra by Bárbara Wagner & Benjamin de Burca is a two-channel video installation that was commissioned for the Brazilian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019. The work was developed in close collaboration with dance groups from the outskirts of Recife, Northeast of Brazil, and follows their intense routine of rehearsals performing rhythms such as brega funk, batidão do maloka and swingueira – referenced in the work’s title, but with a slight spelling twist that makes the word end in “guerra”, which means “war” in Portuguese. Although apart from the mainstream, these dance styles are a popular phenomenon in their communities and their origins date back to the country’s cultural traditions.
Among the Irish works on display at the gallery is Somewhere in the Body, a film installation by choreographer and filmmaker Áine Stapleton, centred on Lucia Joyce – a talented visual artist, musician and dancer and daughter of the famous Irish writer James Joyce.
The work, featuring filmed performances by Katie Vickers and Colin Dunne, combines movement, sculpture and sound, to examine where Lucia appears in various guises in her father’s book Finnegans Wake.
Orchard Portraits by internationally-renowned choreographer and filmmaker Rosemary Lee with Roswitha Chesher is a stunning 7 screen film installation presented on easels and inspired by and shot in a historic wild orchard. Five senior performers are each captured in a meditative and elegant duet with an ageing tree whilst in contrast 60 school children burst through the orchard in moments of joy and discovery. Reminding us of nature’s cycles of regeneration, Orchard Portraits conjures up a sense of our deep and ancient connection with trees.
The other featured works and artists are Everything was Singing by Robin Parmar, Progression (freestyle) by Anna McDonald, This Endless Sea by Chloë Smith & Lucy Cash, and Dance and Eye by Oguri, Andrew Macpherson, Richard Nielsen, Atiba Jefferson, Ricardo Vidana, Roxanne Steinberg, Tali Maranges and Morleigh Steinberg.
Opening Hours: Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm and Sunday 12-5pm.
