The LAB, Dublin is pleased to invite you to Public Gesture, an exhibition of projects by students of the MA in Visual Arts Practices (MAVIS) at IADT. Public Gesture opens from 6:00 to 8:00pm Friday 13 May 2011, and continues from 10:00am to 5:00pm Saturday 14 May until Thursday 19 May 2011 (closed on Sunday). bit.ly/findthelab

The exhibition includes new work by Rachael Agnew, Debora Ando, Clare-Louise Bligh, Terence Erraught, Aoife Flynn, Jessica Conway, Trish McAdam, Siobhán McDonald, Ann Murphy, Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Jane Queally, Sarah Roche and Dorothy Smith.

The 2011 iteration of Public Gesture has been conceived in the spirit of limitation and collaboration. Working within a condensed timeframe, and with limited resources, the artists, curators and critics have composed an experimental exhibition that seeks to highlight methods for interdisciplinary cooperation. With divergent responses, including video, installation, photography, performance and sound works, the exhibition provides a platform for new works to be tested in the public arena.

Public Gesture is curated by Rosie Lynch, Seán O Sullivan, Rowan Sexton and Kate Strain.

Download the Public Gesture PDF with texts by Curt Riegelnegg, Ciara Moloney and Rowan Sexton. Design Seán O Sullivan. Editor Curt Riegelnegg. Also includes summary descriptions of the exhibited artworks.

Public Gesture includes a programme of parallel discussions featuring invited guests who have contributed to the legacy of the MAVIS programme, or who can contribute to its ecology by creating progressive dialogues for the future.

• 12pm Saturday 14 May 2011: As part of 'In these Troubled Times' Jesse Jones and Fiona Marron will present on delinquency.

• 1pm Wednesday 18 May 2011: Mark Garry and Curt Riegelnegg in conversation. PLEASE NOTE: The conversation between Curt Riegelnegg and Mark Garry, programmed as part of the MAVIS Public Gesture exhibition, will now take place at The LAB on Wednesday May 18 at the earlier time of 1pm.

• 3pm Thursday 19 May 2011: Dr. Ed Krčma 'Shaman or Sham: The Myth and Materials of Joseph Beuys'.

Places for the talks are limited. Please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for bookings.

	Rachael Agnew | The Possibility of Microscopic Happenings Through my practice I am trying to comprehend the variety of structures at different scales of life. Within the limits of the gallery walls, I am attempting to visualise some of the invisible structures and activities only seen through a microscope of my thoughts. There are constant atomic activities which surround us.  My work addresses the visuality of what this constant flux looks like at any given moment. It is situated between the boundaries of chaos and order, known and unknown, visible and invisible. The installation is a representation of my thoughts on the possible stuctural activities within this space.
	Debora Ando The action will take place on a daily basis from beginning to the end of the show but it won't be scheduled for the public to spectate, as her intention is to remain anonymous during the process. She will document each stage of the project, and at the end intends to have a sequence of images reflecting the process. The materials used: masking tape and/or coloured tape. The length of the lines projected outside the Lab are based on the measures on the building.
	Clare-Louise Bligh | Baba Yaga This work explores the tenuous place between anxiety, comfort and fear of inner and outer worlds. Through dipping into the well of archaic imagery that has been embedded in the human psyche from mythology and story, i hope to create a vehicle of estrangement that  leads the viewer through the uncanny connections between the dream world and the physical world.
	Jessica Conway Ehmm...
	Terence Erraught The male pushes his sweaty body up to the window’s stern, firm unbluffing pane. The pane, unreacting, initiates the man’s curiosity as his exhaled breath begins to steam up his view. A difference between the two. The heat of the interior, exaggerating the condensation, and his sense of wanting to be inside…
	Aoife Flynn My current research takes as its starting point the narrative of science fiction, opening up imaginary worlds and alternative spaces where different social, political and personal possibilities can be explored.This installation investigates the claims made by Walter Benjamin when discussing contemporary existence as a spiraling series of technological advances, turned to waste by its own obsolescence.
	Trish McAdam | Have you signed the Ai Weiwei release petition? If not, why not? A 30 second, animation loop, aimed at advertising a petition for the release of the internationally acclaimed Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei on http://www.change.org/. The petition, started by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, is in response to the detention, on April 3rd 2011, of Ai. His whereabouts remain unknown and he has been denied due process under Chinese law. A Mavis student created this as a public gesture. It will be screened at the exhibition and made available on youtube as a copyright free download for use by others wishing to advertise/support this petition.
	Siobhan McDonald 826 is a collaboration between artists Siobhan McDonald and Rachael Gilbourne. It is a score written in indian ink as a response to the sounds and movements of the atmosphere on the Killaun Bogland Reserve on 16/3/2011.
	Ann Murphy | Untitled (Provisional) Responding to site and space, this work is concerned with materiality, individual perception, the visual, and the sensory, as having the potential for making meaning outside/beyond language. It investigates the paradoxical nature of polarities and oppositions, such as order/disorder, freedom/constraint, compression/expansion.
	Vukasin Nedeljkovic | My dear son The Railway hostel, an accommodation center for asylum seekers has been closed in the summer of 2009 after operating for more than 5 years. The people who lived here are gone but their children have left their traces-drawings on the building of the hostel, their memories, pains, anxieties, fears and hopes. The hostel (hotel ) is for sale now as a 23 bedroom property. The footprints of the cultures and community that existed for a significant number of years is being erased in this moment of time.
	Jane Queally  | No. 2 Polaroid This work involves  an experimental approach in considering  the representation of the photographic  image as document, in relation to the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear explosion in Japan on 11th march 2011. Through the manipulation of mass media imagery I play with the creation of a hybrid  image  which examines  notions of truth and fiction. The resulting images are a series of polaroids which attest to an ‘Eye Witness Account’.
Image courtesy of Space Telescope Science Institute	Sarah Roche  | Searching For Dark Matter In A Galaxy Cluster Cantata for the Observatory – What is the place of non-quantifiable, non-linear kinds of knowledge in contemporary society? I’m interested in types of knowledge that can’t be contained in thought alone, and only become fully known to us through ‘doing’, such as artmaking and singing. I’m exploring the idea of dark matter - unknown matter that makes up 80-90% of the universe - as an analogy for this kind of knowledge. This converges with my interest in the idea of darkness and ‘unknowing’ as used in the writings of St. John of the Cross.
	Dorothy Smith  | Private Lives Private Lives explores the places and spaces of the built environment; home, with its physical manifestations, the markings of the passage of time, its confining yet supportive structure; and neighbourhood, its private lives and public signs.