Radical Arcadia Special: Works on Paper Isabel English, Michael Hanna & Hayley Gault 3 October - 13 October 2019 Launch: 3 October 2019, 7-10pm Radical Arcadia is an interdisciplinary and offsite project of Catalyst Arts, that investigates and questions the idea of Arcadia as the poetic shaped space of harmonious living between human and nature. This special exhibition contemplates what Arcadia means today, as opposed to 100 years ago in Ireland; and what types of space hold this imagery. As a point of reference, artists draw on ideas that respond, reflect, or contrast to the artist Paul Henry who painted the pastoral values of rural Ireland. Visitors are encouraged to make use of ideas from these works to approach a holistic interpretation of other exhibits in the gallery space. Radical Arcadia opens on the same weekend as the 2019 Lisbon Architecture Triennale. Kindly supported by British Council NI and Culture Ireland. -- Isabel English is an Irish artist currently based in Belfast. Her work revisits and extends on the architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, a precursor of utopian city. She deconstructs architectonic elements from the ideal space and objects, natural or constructed, to envisage a contemporary arcadia where space can be indefinite, spontaneous or moveable. Michael Hanna is a Belfast-based artist and co-founder of the artist-run organisation AMINI (Artists' Moving Image Northern Ireland). His photography reads beyond the surface of Lagan Weir, the main river in Belfast, and focuses on how the function and symbolism of the river is shaped and co-created by man-made system and activities in time. Hayley Gault is a freelance curator, rural practitioner and farmer who lives and works between Belfast and Magheramorne. Her aim is to form a sustainable practice which expands concepts of artist, curator, researcher, producer, farmer, writer, and one which centres around environment, its ideologies, its futures, its realities and its practicalities, tracing contemporary modes of production of art, culture and food.
