Club Chroma, 2019
A new installation by Niall Sweeney (Dublin) of Pony Ltd.
At Club Chroma, Niall Sweeney turns the gallery into a glittering stage — a temple of transformation that embraces colour and vibrancy. Through interactive props, projection, and do-it-yourself queer club theatrics, Club Chroma explores the power of dressing up and having fun, through parade, protest, and masquerade. At Club Chroma, no colour is the wrong colour, no vision is impossible, no state fixed, no history inevitable, no destiny assumed, no one is less.

Gaze Against Imperialism, 2019
A new artist’s book project by Padraig Robison.
With contributions by Cathal Kerrigan, designed by Yin Yin Wong. Metaflux Publishing 2019.
Gaze Against Imperialism by Padraig Robinson is written in the form of a rehearsal for a film never intended to be made. This built-in absence defers to the imagination of the reader, who, far from filling a gap, becomes a potential producer (as overhearer). The narrative begins in the Irish Queer Archive in 2014, where Robinson initially tracked tensions between legal reform activism and the social economy of the emerging gay scene in 1980s Ireland. Eight ‘scenes’ of dialogue script feature with University Librarian Cathal Kerrigan, co-founder of the small 80s lobby group, Gays Against Imperialism, documented in the final section of the Archive listings. By articulating the homonym Gaze and Gays, the title not only refers to the generative misunderstandings in any public utterance, but also to the space between reading and listening.

Gaze Against Imperialism was supported by the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon. Research at the Irish Queer Archive was supported by Kildare County Council Arts Office.

Niall Sweeney (Pony Ltd.) b.1967, Dublin. Lives in London. Pony Ltd. is an award-winning, internationally-acclaimed creative studio based in London and is the collaboration of Niall Sweeney (Dublin) and Nigel Truswell (Sheffield). Output at the studio ranges from popular culture to the avant-garde, from high-brow to low-brow — in art, design, print, theatre, film, performance, installation, music, publishing and writing. With a keen interest in words, pictures and the chance of a dance, Pony’s work has been published, exhibited, performed, collected and screened around the world.

Niall was no sooner out of school when he started an eternal relationship with the transformational power and politics of dressing up and having fun, through which he invigorated over 30 years of Dublin’s heart beat with graphic ephemera and radical spaces. From the early days of SIDES Danceclub in 1985, Flikkers at The Hirschfeld Centre, the first Alternative Miss Ireland in 1987 through to the last in 2012. Through the daytime clublands of Makullas, D-Side and the seminal and very nocturnal new technologies of ELEVATOR, D1 Recordings — and on — with a burgeoning family of collaborators — licking 1990s Ireland into shape and into an unapologetic outrageous frock with GAG, POWDERBUBBLE and H.A.M. Then on through the 2000s with the emergence of AMI and Panti as a combined national queer force (in the process AMI become a significant fundraiser for Irish HIV/AIDS organisations), reaching its apotheosis in The Queen of Ireland and as participant on the road to Marriage Equality. A belief in the power of glorious outsiders and their ability to change the world just by dancing together is played out in life-long collaborations, work and love affairs. AMI is a family concept that continues to grow, with Niall now collaborating with ThisIsPopBaby through its radical festivals Where We Live and Queer Notions, the performance/art/club WERK and the internationally touring hit show RIOT, and so much more. All of Sweeney’s output is touched by the revolutionary dancefloor we built for ourselves, of the people and places of our own disco beat, and of the ecstasy of tomorrow. See the artists website here

Padraig Robinson (b. Athy 1985) is an artist writing books and screenplays, inquiring into pre-queer histories and the contemporary economy of the image. Robinson’s first novella size book, 6 — 9: Notes from the archive of Dan Kane was published by Publication Studio Rotterdam in 2016, and in 2017 he was a contributor to the twelfth edition of the annual publication Caderno_Sesc Videobrazil 12, São Paulo. Robinson is based in Berlin and Stuttgart, where he is 2017 — 2019 Visual Arts Fellow of Akademie Schloss Solitude. Robinson studied sculpture at Limerick School of Art and Design graduating in 2008 and received an MFA at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI) in 2013. See the artist website here.

IMMA Programmes

CHROMA is a public discursive programme that brings together artists, creative practitioners, educators, activists and designers to respond to methodologies of queer thinking and ideas of ‘intersectionality’ and ‘Protest’ as it relates to IMMA’s current programme Desire: A Revision from the 20th Century to the Digital Age; Derek Jarman, PROTEST! and IMMA Archive: 1990s, From the Edge to the Centre.

CHROMA Events

Reactive Practices
An Evening of Artists’ Responses
16 Jan 2020 / 18:30
Project Spaces
Through modes of thinking, making, writing and publishing, contemporary artists and writers consistently respond to other artists. The reactionary tool of ‘response’ has also become a familiar curatorial device and lens, for galleries, museums and archive programming. To explore this join us for an evening of artists and writers responses by Laura Fitzgerald, Ashley Taggart, Joanna Walshe, Suzanne Walsh, Emma Wolf-Haugh and others. More details here

Queering the Archive
Talks and Performance
Sat 1 Feb 2020 / 13:00 onward
Lecture Room
A special series of talks and events featuring artists who are working with queer archives, where processes of archive reclamation, disruption, interrogation and care will be discussed, performed and explored. Contributors include Sara Greavu (Outburst Arts, Belfast) ; artists Padraig Robinson, Eimear Walshe and Karol Radziszewski; Anu Production (Louise Lowe, Owen Boss, Lynnette Moran), and Nathan O’Donnell (Researcher, IMMA/TCD).

Glitter HOLE: Protest!
An Evening of Cabaret and Club Performance
Friday 14 February 2020, 19.00 – 21.00
Project Spaces
Glitter HOLE presents an evening of performance on the theme of Protest! and the pursuit of personal and collective freedoms, responding to and interacting with the work of Derek Jarman. With contributions from Chris Hinojosa, Rosa Tralee, Smilin’ Kanker, and Stefan Fae, we will celebrate the legacy of underground queer performance and collectivity in Dublin’s past, present and future.

Keynote Lecture by Sara Ahmed
Complaint as a Queer Method
Wednesday 18 March 2020 / 18:30 – 19:30
Offsite at JM Synge Theatre, Trinity College Dublin
IMMA presents a keynote lecture by internationally renowned feminist scholar and writer Sara Ahmed, who offers a critical reflection on the role queer methodologies play in disrupting the normative use of our public institutions.

Club Chroma On Tour
Saturday 21 March
Off Site at Project Art Centre
THISISPOPBABY invites you to join the Where We Live artistic family for a love in and shake out to mark the end of festivities. We’re yoinking Niall Sweeney’s sublime exhibition Club Chroma from IMMA and transposing it to Project Bar for one night only. Add to that a live soundtrack and pepper it with guerrilla performances, and together we’ll dance our way to a soft-landing post festival. Presented in partnership with IMMA and THISISPOPBABY.

Reading

Karol Radziszewski: Queering the Archive in Eastern Europe
By Nathan O’Donnell
Read an IMMA magazine article the prefaces Karol Radziszewski’s talk at IMMA on 1 February 2020.