Time

3-5pm

Its Performance

Hugh O'Donnell, Mineki Murata; initiated by Sinead O’Donnell

Ends 13 April 2013

Japanese domestic food will be served for the audience after the performances with an opportunity to meet and discuss the artists works.
‘Its performance’ is a loose series of performative events initiated by Sinead O’Donnell. Her curatorial guidelines are based on her personal choice and contacts through her international travels. She meets and works with many artists often within a very different cultural background and a different understanding of performance.
In a kind of spare room residency, Sinead O’Donnell invites artists to Belfast, enables contacts to local artists and stages a performance. A personal initiative based on friendship, good will and no budget.

Born in Dublin, Hugh O'Donnell studied art, design and mixed media at Ballyfermot Senior College before moving to Belfast, where he specialized in sculpture and completed a Master's in fine art. His residencies have included the ETNA foundation Transylvania Romania (2006) as part of the ARES project. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries, non-profit organisations and alternative and site-specific locations Hugh O'Donnell describes his work as performance art, installation, drawing and video. The main focus of his work is concerned with themes of sexuality, gender and human rights.
He is currently a committee member of the performance organization Bbeyond in Belfast and has recently completed a six-month residency at Fire Station Artists' Studios, Dublin.

Mineki Murata: performance still. Photo: Shiro Masuyama

Hugh O'Donnell: performance still. Photo: Shiro Masuyama


Mineki Murata was born in Maebashi, Japan. He lives and works in Saitama, Japan. He performed in major international exhibitions in Japan such: Echigo Tsumari Art Trinnale 2009 ; Aichi Triennale 2010; Yokohama Triennale 2010.
Solo exhibitions include: Art Centre Ongoing, Tokyo, 2012 and Bank Art Mini Gallery, Yokohama, 2009.

Mineki Murata states about his work

'With straining my own body, I make performances which expresses the physical sensation. As the result of my performance, an installation is created. By touching, changing and relating with place for a long time, I believe my performance can create not temporary “Space”. In my performance entitled “No Comments”, I make drawings of my expression which is difficult for me to put into words on every page of a dictionary. Because of this simple action, the dictionary loses its original form and function. Words spread and the wreck change into material'.
Text: Miniki Murata

Slavka Sverakova: review Mineki Murata

Rarely, a performance has a clean beginning and end. By clean, I mean not polluted by hesitancy of theatrical or political statement. On a table a pristine hard copy of a book, cover removed. In hand a stylus with a sharp end. A body. A voice. A repetitive movement. Energy. Duration fitting exactly a chosen idea. Murata offered a masterpiece, a quality I witnessed with a few of the Fluxus artists, and once with Dominic Thorpe. Gently opening the book, he circled the stylus on a page until he penetrated the paper, continuing page after page until the last one. The beginning was slower, benign, accompanied by a murmur. I thought of a children playfully scribbling over printed pages, innocent of the destruction they caused. He removed that possible meaning very soon. By increasing the speed, by frantically thrashing the book into smithereens, and stronger volume of his voice, something between a combat cry and a complaint.... To continue reading see