This film – directed by Oisín Byrne and produced by Vaari Claffey – takes as its starting point (artist and late director of the NCAD) Noel Sheridan’s performance work, Why be an artist?. In the work, filmed by Leigh Hobba in 1994, Sheridan talks through a series of reasons NOT to be an artist, most of which come down to commitment, integrity and an unwillingness to instrumentalise art.
Knowing that this has great resonance for artists, and bearing in mind that artists are very far from a homogenised or cohesive set of practitioners with shared goals or approaches, this project invites practising visual artists (with varying relationships to Sheridan and NCAD) to respond to Sheridan’s s provocation on film – using his rhetorical device as a means to explore their own concerns, be they political, social, aesthetic or ecological.
The invited artists; Kevin Atherton, Isadora Epstein, Gary Farrelly, Séamus Nolan and Grace Weir, respond to the work in a variety of registers, both paying homage to and challenging Sheridan’s narrative content and performative approach. Starting from this blend of humour and pedagogy, the responses are scripted and performed by the artists and interpreted and staged by the filmmakers to produce an intimate but expanded reflection on artmaking.
Contact: Anne Kelly, Curator, NCAD Gallery, gallery@staff.ncad.ie