Culture Night at Galway Arts Centre

Museum of Everyone (MOE) Communal – The Art of Coexistence

Galway Arts Centre and Museum of Everyone invite you to celebrate culture night on Friday 22 September 2023, at Galway Arts Centre – Nuns Island Theatre.

Culture Night Schedule of Events:

• 5:30pm: Artists Round Table Discussion – Sarah Edmondson, Pradeep Mahadeshwar, Ella Bertilsson, Thaís Muniz, Joselle Ntumba, István László, Basil Al-Rawi will be in conversation with Jess Raymon        
• 6:30pm to 9pm: Durational Performance by Ella Bertilsson
• 7:30pm to 8pm: Performance by Pradeep Mahadeshwar
• 9pm: Music by Black Magic Rawr

ABOUT THE EVENTS

5:30pm MOE Communal: Artists Round Table Discussion

Join the artists of the Museum of Everyone for this round table discussion exploring ideas of culture, belonging, memory and place with Sarah Edmondson, Pradeep Mahadeshwar, Pradeep, Ella Bertilsson, Thaís Muniz, Joselle Ntumba, István László, Basil Al-Rawi in conversation with Jess Raymon.

Sarah Edmondsons an interdisciplinary artist, museum and gallery educator, lecturer at NCAD, and studio member at MART, Dublin, Pradeep Mahadeshwar a visual artist and LGBTQ+ activit originally from India working with writing, illustrations, performance and moving images Ella Bertilsson is an artist who combines elements of sculpture, video and performance, developing fictional characters that are humorous but dysfunctional,, Thaís Muniz is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the territories of identity, belonging, memory, displacement who builds bridges and open conversations to propose reconnections, change and healing, from an anti-colonial, community-oriented perspective, Joselle Ntumba is a cultural producer of Congolese-heritage and was raised in Galway City with a background in social science from Trinity College Dublin whose work centres both community and memory work  as part of the collective Éireann and I, István Lászlo is a Romanian visual artist whose work explores the relationship between physical and digital artefacts and their role as mediators in remodelling experiences of collective memory, Basil Al-Rawi is an Irish-Iraqi multidisciplinary artist working primarily with photography, moving image, and simulation whose practice is concerned with the landscapes of memory, identity, politics, and mediated reality. 

Jess Raymon writes fiction. She is currently working on a psychological horror novel set at a seaside fertility clinic, haunted by sea creatures and bodies that contain moons. Her work has been published in Winter Papers, Crannog, From the Well anthology and she has received Irish Arts Council bursaries as well as awards from the Canada Council for the Arts. Her story Latch won the 2023 Cuirt short story award.

No booking required, but places are limited.

6:30pm to 9pm:  Ella Bertilsson Durational Performance

Ella Bertilsson’s practice combines elements of sculpture, video, performance, drawing

and sound to stage installations as a form of enquiry into bizarre and quotidian

experiences and events that shape our character and define our identity. With playful live acts, happenings and through performance for camera, she develops fictional characters that are humorous but dysfunctional. Disused obsolete items, personal belongings and analogue technology are often utilised as props. These materials can also conjure generational experience as an 80’s kid,

recalling collective memories, and evoking a sense of place. Moving between the Personal and the Universal, Bertilsson’s practice seeks to reimagine art historical tropes such as Absurdism, Surrealism and Dadaism to form a contemporary treatise on the human condition.

Ella Bertilsson (b. Umeå, Sweden) is a visual artist based in Dublin since 2003. She is a studio artist at Rua Red until 2024 and is a recipient of the Visual Arts Bursary Award and the Project Award 2022-2023) from the Art Council of Ireland. She has 1st class honours in Fine Art Print (BA) and MFA both awarded from the National College of Art and Design, Ireland (2009, 2015) and Comparative Literature Studies from Södertörn University SWE (2011-2012).

Forthcoming solo exhibitions; at Ballina Art Centre (2024) and The Dock (2023); recent solo show; CUT THE CAKE WITH CLAWS, The Complex (2022).

No booking required, but places are limited.

7:30pm to 8:00pm:  Pradeep Mahadeshwar Performance  

Pradeep Mahadeshwar (he/they) is originally from India and is now an Irish citizen. He graduated from Buckinghamshire New University MA in Printmaking in 2011. They are a visual artist and an LGBTQ+ activist; writing, illustrations, performance and moving images are among their mediums.

Their work explores identities by collecting written and spoken words, moving images and illustrations based on surreal-looking satires of sexual racism and absurd meditative images to fantasise alternative emotional landscapes with infinite new possibilities for sexual expression and gender identity. Through art practice, he is researching the effects of sexual racism on the mental and sexual health of Queer People Of Colour living in Ireland.

Their recent work, “Skin To Skin Talks”, was screened at the 31st GAZE International LGBTQIA Film Festival, 2023. This film project also got selected for FRINGE! Queer Film & Arts Fest, London and Queer Lisboa – International Queer Film Festival, Lisbon.

Pradeep is a Museum of Everyone Associate Artist and is currently an artist in residence at IMMA and Galway Art Centre as part of the Museum of Everyone – Communal project. 

No booking required, but places are limited.

9pm: Black Magic Rawrr (BMR) 

Collective of Black Artists crafting Afro-futurist Art

Black Magic Rawrr (BMR) are sound artist, DJ, Curator, writer-activist Karen Miano, lesbian rapper Cami and musician and spoken word artist Osaro. Their most recent performance was at Centre Culturel Irlandais in June. Black Magic Rawrr was given centre stage this year at the Alternating Current Festival with Dublin Digital Radio this autumn at The Complex.

Karen is Co-founder of Origins Eile, a grassroots community responsive organisation dedicated to creating safe spaces & platforms for QTIBPOC (Queer Trans Intersex, Indigenous Black & People of Colour). Origins Eile recently ran an array of events with the theme: Queer Afro-Futurism: DESTINY programmed in the Dublin Fringe Festival 2020. Origins Eile have also put together a critical publication to highlight the vast narratives of Queer Black people, in association with Black Pride Ireland, entitled – TONGUES.

Cami is an Irish, lesbian rapper based in Dublin who has slowly and steadily crafted a comfortable and versatile rap style by working on experimental/complex beats. Cami was named one of GCN’s artists to watch in 2019. Her latest single Tipsy, produced by S.E.M.I, is available to stream on Soundcloud and Bandcamp.

Irish-Nigerian artist and activist Osaro’s work focuses on musical and spoken-word performances hoping to change the experiences of under-represented minorities, through her own brand of “cozy activism.” Earlier this year, she resided in Paris at the Centre Culturel Irlandais to collaborate with the French composer Nicol Faer on a live soundscape, based on the biblical lore of the Age of War in the Kingdom of Heaven. Later in October, Osaro’s first-ever audio-visual piece ‘Obsidian Black’ was hand-picked for a special screening at GAZE International Film Festival 2022. She recently performed at Hot Brown Honey: Hive City Legacy at Dublin Fringe Festival.

No booking required, but places are limited.

This event is supported by the Creative Communities Award,  Creative Ireland Programme 2023, Galway City Council, Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.