Sarah Pierce: The Artist Talks

The Artist Talks is an exhibition of new work by Dublin-based artist Sarah Pierce, co-commissioned by Book Works and The Showroom. It is the final part of a year-long project undertaken by the artist as part of Book Works’ tour of new commissions and archival presentations, Again, A Time Machine.

Pierce repositions the convention of the artist’s talk as an open system with the potential to disturb or reinvent past artworks and received ideas. Using new video work, photographs, sculpture and performance, the exhibition contains a range of material and references that open up the relation between speech and archives. A stage is the setting for a choreographed ‘artist talk’, which has been developed as a group performance in collaboration with art students and uses fragments and gestures from past artworks. An arrangement of props, objects, video and photographs will frame the event with material that includes a film of students describing uncompleted artworks, and a set of small clay studies based on the unsigned sculptures that became known as ‘unknown Rodin’s’.

Drawing from these references, and the fleeting asides, verbal punctums and interruptions that often disturb the conviction of a ‘finished’ work or the flow of prepared speech, The Artist Talks is an assemblage of actions and objects that mediate artworks.

During the exhibition the work will be animated and revised through an evening of talks prepared by Dave Beech, Melissa Gronlund and Grant Watson, and a day of events including the performance The Artist Talks and readings hosted by The Happy Hypocrite. Readings from Dora García’s All the Stories will also be performed.

Upstairs, Book Works will display Make the Living Look Dead, a fictional archive of material formed by contemporary artists’ interventions and additions to Book Works’ own archive. Jonathan Monk’s A Poster Project will also appear alongside a moving image presentation of Book Works’ Archive.