Biography
Grace Weir works mostly in film and video and is interested in making a critical appraisal of film through the actual making of film. Her work is wide ranging, from structural cinematic works to more personal experimental video works, installations and web projects.
Grace Weir is interested in aligning a lived experience of the world with scientific knowledge and theory, in making work that examines and transcends reason through rational means. She is interested in researching facts not as self evident objects in the world but as processes, in the complicated mediations by which facts acquire their immediacy. In her work, she explores where the rigor of fact finding ruptures into the speculative, subjective, and cinematic through a critical usage of film documentation that fuses reality with highly authored situations.
Solo Exhibitions
| 2010 | Déjà vu, The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon |
| In my own time, Screening series, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork | |
| 2009 | The Golden Bough: In my own time, Dublin City Gallery, The Hugh Lane |
| 2007 | In My Own Time, The Science Museum, London |
| Dust defying gravity, Furini Arte Contemporanea, Arezzo Italy | |
| 2005 | The coffee cup caustic, Feint and Gallery for One, Dublin |
| 2004 | A Fine Line, The Experimental Art Foundation, Adelaide, Australia |
| 2003 | A Fine Line, Cornerhouse, Manchester UK |
| Meanwhile Elsewhere, Percy Miller Gallery, London | |
| A Fine Line, Newlyn Art Gallery, Penzance | |
| 2002 | Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo, Ireland |
| Around Now, John Curtin Gallery, Perth, Australia | |
| 2001 | Around Now, Irish pavilion, 49th International Venice Biennale, Venice |
| 2000 | Around Now, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin |
| 1996 | Man on Houston St., Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin; Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast; Model Arts Centre, Sligo |
| 1992 | Phase, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork; City Gallery of Art, Limerick |
| 1990 | Phase, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin |
| 1989 | Timescales, Project Arts Centre, Dublin |
Commissioned Web and Film Projects
| 2008 | Transect, film commission by Sculpture in the parklands, Lough Boora, Co. Offaly, Ireland |
| 2007 | From here to, new media installation commissioned by GMIT, Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology |
| 2006 | Up on the Greenfort, film commission by Unravelling Developments, Sligo Borough Council |
| 2005 | Sight unseen, collaboration with Graham Parker, film commission by Breaking Ground Ballymun, Dublin |
| 2003 | Dust defying gravity, film commission Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK. Funded by the Arts Council of England. |
| Bending spacetime in the basement, film commission by Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK. funded by the Arts Council of England | |
| 2001 | Little Bang, web-project commission by NIFCA, the Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art |
| Cloud, web-project commission and installation, 5th Storehouse, Dublin | |
| 1996 | Identity in Cyberspace, pilot web-project for a European Cyberspace Collegium. Arthouse, Dublin; CAIIA, Wales; CEDIM, Barcelona. |
Group Exhibitions
| 2010 | What happens next is a secret, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin |
| Brittanica and other stories, Killruddery Film Festival, Killruddery House, Bray, Co. Wicklow | |
| Sacred, Enniskillen, Co. Fermanagh | |
| 2009 | Gracelands, Dromahair, Co. Leitrim |
| 2008 | Discussions in Contemporary Sculpture, The Dock Carrick-on-Shannon |
| Singing the real, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin | |
| Through the Lens: New Media Art from Ireland, Beijing Art Museum of Imperial City - BAMOIC, Beijing | |
|
Endlessness (for Roger) consists of a number of tiles of two distinct shapes that are magnetised and can be moved about on a wall painted with magnetic paint. It is accompanied by a video of the artist attempting to fill in a monitors viewing plane with these two tiles.
In 1974 Roger Penrose discovered two shapes that could tile an infinite plane aperiodically i.e. with a nonrepeating pattern. A Penrose tiling has many remarkable properties, most notably, it is nonperiodic, which means that it lacks any HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translational_symmetry" translational symmetry. More informally, a shifted copy will never match the original exactly. The original Penrose tiling was proposed in 1974 in a paper entitled the Role of aesthetics in pure and applied research. Not more than one fifth of the paper deals with it but Penrose admits that the tiling was its real point. Later Penrose acknowledged inspiration from the work of HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler" Johannes Kepler. In his book HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonices_Mundi" Harmonices Mundi Kepler explored tilings built around pentagons and it was shown that his construction can be extended into a Penrose tiling. Earlier traces of this idea have been traced to HYPERLINK "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Durer" Dürer's work.
“Blackboxing: the isolation, acceptance and application of a body of knowledge outside of one's comprehension... If the term blackboxing means to accept a function or an application but not a method(ology), what is it - both scientifically and socially - that compels us to peer inside black-boxes?Brought together in the exhibition Blackboxing are a number of artists and intellectuals who have at the core of their practice a hunger for knowledge, and from whom this term has emerged...The Penrose non-periodic tile is the subject of Grace Weir's (IRL) installation Endlessness (for Roger), and we are treated to the evidence of her own efforts to complete the unsolvable puzzle. It is a mathematical certainty that the repetition of these specific tiles will never result in a repeating pattern - while they may lock in together, which is in itself a formidable challenge - the closer one comes to solving the puzzle the closer they more they activate its futility. As Weir says - 'is that not a portrait of the universe?'...”
Tessa Giblin, curator’s notes, Blackboxing, Project Arts Centre, Dublin
HYPERLINK "http://www.projectartscentre.ie/index.php/archive/archive-va-detail/290-blackboxing" http://www.projectartscentre.ie/index.php/archive/archive-va-detail/290-blackboxing
Gracelands, Dromahair, Co. Leitrim, Ireland | |
| Loop '08, Fundació Joan Miró, Barcelona | |
| 2007 | Singing the real, Iziko South African National Gallery, Capetown, South Africa |
| Blackboxing, Project Arts Centre, Dublin | |
| The last blue sky, Mother's Tankstation, Dublin | |
| 2006 | The Square Root of Drawing, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin |
| Up on the Greenfort, Cinemobile, Sligo | |
| Sight Unseen, Howth station, Dublin | |
| Feint magazine, The commitment issue, Dublin | |
| 2005 | Himmelsbilder, Dommuseum zu Salzburg, Austria |
| Biennale! Artist film and video, Temporarycontemporary, London; Dashanzi International Arts Festival, Beijing; BizArt, Shanghai; Tankloft Art Center, Chongqing; Redskyart Space, Haikou China | |
| The West, as metaphor, Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin | |
| Rooms for waiting in, Galway Arts Centre, Galway | |
| Street Archaelogy, PS squared, Belfast | |
| Sight Unseen, Dublin Airport; Axis Arts centre Ballymun, Dublin | |
| Red, White, Blue, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York | |
| 2004 | Missing Time, Agnès b. cinema, Hong Kong, |
| Tir na nOg, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin | |
| Retreat, Citylights, Melbourne Australia | |
| Necessary Journeys, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin | |
| 2003 | As Heavy as the Heavens, Kunsthallen Brandts Klaedefabrik, Denmark |
| Necessary Journeys, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin | |
| The Edge of Science, Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Idaho USA | |
| Permaculture, Project Arts Centre, Dublin | |
| Affinities, Broadstone, Dublin | |
| Web3D Art 2003, Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK http://www.web3dart.org | |
| 2002 | Something Else, Turku Art Museum, Finland; Amos Anderson Art Museum Helsinki Finland; Oulu City Art Museum Finland; Joensuu Art Museum Finland |
| Locws International 2, Swansea, Wales | |
| Flights of Reality, Kettles Yard, Cambridge; Turnpike Gallery, Leigh, UK | |
| 2001 | Are we there yet?, Glassbox, Paris |
| Video Jam, Palm Beach ICA, Florida, USA | |
| The Last Lines of Waiting, Fenderesky Gallery, Belfast | |
| Above, Fenton Gallery, Cork | |
| Propositions, Locks Gallery, Philadelphia, USA | |
| 2000 | The Sea and the Sky, Beaver College Art Gallery, Philadelphia; RHA, Gallagher Gallery, Dublin |
| Tracking – in search of objects, Artemesia Gallery, Chicago, USA | |
| In-Consistency, Arthouse, Dublin | |
| 1999 | Freeze, Arthouse, Dublin |
| Utopias, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin | |
| MultiplesX2, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin | |
| The Grotesqueness of Desire, InsideArt Gallery, Chicago | |
| Contemporary Art Works from the Arts Council Collection, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; City Gallery of Art, Limerick; Athouse, Dublin | |
| 1998 | 8 Cities – Temple Bar International Print Show, Arthouse, Dublin |
| 1997 | Graduate Show, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin |
| Banquet Show, RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin | |
| 1996 | Babel: Multimedia – the connection conflict, Massana Fine Arts, Barcelona, Spain |
| EVA ’96, City Gallery of Art, Limerick | |
| Sligo Connections, Model Arts Centre, Sligo | |
| Crossover, Arthouse, Dublin | |
| 1993 | Fields of Vision – Works by Contemporary Irish Artists, Trout Gallery, Pennsylvania, USA |
| New Work, Fitzwilton Square, Dublin | |
| 1992 | Encounters with Diversity, PS1, New York |
| 1991 | 2nd Annual Victor Treacy Award Show, Butler Gallery, Kilkenny |
| Art Inc., Guinness Hop Store, Dublin | |
| C.O.E., Claremorris, Mayo |
Awards
| 2007 | Projects Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland |
| Culture Ireland Award | |
| 2006 | Artist-in-residence, St. John’s College, Oxford, UK |
| 2005 | Projects Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland |
| 2004 | Visual Art Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland |
| 2002 | Cultural Relations Committee Award |
| Projects Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland | |
| 2001 | Co-represented Ireland , 49th Venice Biennale, Italy |
| Projects Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland | |
| 1999 | Film and Video Award, Arts Council of Ireland |
| 1998 | Best Project Award, M.Sc. Graduate Show Dublin |
| 1994 | Artist-in-residence, Virginia Center for the Arts, USA |
| 1992 | Fellowship, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, NY USA |
| 1991 | Artist-in-residence, Triskel Arts Centre, Cork |
Education
| 1997 | M.Sc. in Multimedia, Trinity College, Dublin |
| 1984 | National College of Art and Design, Dublin |
