The people and places of The Liberties are at the heart of FACETS, an upcoming exhibition at The Digital Hub

Mandy O’Neill is a multi-award winning artist and photographer and The Digital Hub’s artist-in-residence since July 2018. Mandy will have a work-in-progress exhibition based on what has emerged from her responses to the people and places in The Digital Hub campus and surrounding neighbourhood in Dublin 8.

Mandy has been working in one of The Digital Hub’s enterprise spaces on Thomas Street since mid-2018, and FACETS is the culmination of her work as artist-in-residence, the first time The Digital Hub has hosted such a programme. The site-specific nature of the residency, with particular reference to Digital Exchange, the former Guinness Hopstore and venue for the 1984 ROSC contemporary art exhibition, have resonated with Mandy and are referenced in the work.   Mandy has also been using her residency to expand her thinking about themes in her wider photographic practice and to explore new approaches to how she works and presents her photographs.

 

 

Fiach Mac Conghail, Chief Executive Officer of The Digital Hub said: 

“I was delighted when Mandy O’Neill accepted our invitation to become The Digital Hub’s first artist-in-residence. We invited her to explore how The Digital Hub was located within our Liberties communities. The purpose of the artist-in-residence programme is to support artists in their digital practice while assisting us in understanding and appreciating the physical and social environment of our community.”

Talking about her upcoming exhibition, Mandy said:

“The exhibition brings together a number of elements, all of which are part of my response to The Digital Hub and surrounding area, and to the residency itself. With a very open brief, the residency allowed me to explore the multifaceted environment of The Liberties and engage with local communities, while also developing new approaches to my practice and identifying possible new methodologies. The installation at the Digital Exchange draws on studies of light, colour and form, as I experienced on multiple walks of the area. Expanding on my wider practice with young people in education, it also includes a projection and separate text piece, developed in collaboration with 5th class boys at Francis St CBS.  Further facets of the work consider the context of the site of The Digital Exchange as the host of the important ROSC exhibitions of the 1980s, and ideas around exhibition making, site specificity, history and place.”

FACETS is a distillation of a number of themes and Mandy’s everyday engagement with the city. Another element of the exhibition speaks to a particular interest in young people’s experience of formal education. Working in collaboration with the 5th class boys at Francis St. CBS she has produced a series of portraits, text works and recordings.  Elements of this will feature in the installation.

FACETS is a presentation of work-in-progress, based upon these emerging themes, that is also part of the development of a larger exhibition at the Gallery of Photography, Dublin, in September 2019.  A continuum of Mandy’s work, as it evolved over her residency can also be viewed on Instagram for the duration of the exhibition.

EVENT NOTICE:

FACETS – A Work-in-progress exhibition at The Digital Hub by photographer Mandy O’Neill.

  • Artist Talk:  28th March, 5:30pm – 6:00pm
    • Poet, critic and journalist, Gerard Smyth, who was born in the Liberties, will mark the opening of FACETS with a reading.
  • Preview and Reception:  28th March, 6pm – 7:30pm
  • Exhibition Dates:  29th March to 6th April (excl. Sunday and Monday)
  • Exhibition Time:  12pm-5pm daily
  • Location:  Digital Exchange, Crane Street, The Digital Hub, Dublin8, D08 HKRS

Members of the media wishing to attend the preview and reception can email frans.vancauwelaert@ogilvy.com to confirm.

Further Information:  www.thedigitalhub.com/FACETS  and  www.instagram.com/photomando7/

ENDS

Editors Notes:

For further information, please contact:  Frans Van Cauwelaert, Wilson Hartnell

Tel: (01) 669 0030 / 087 947 6743     Email: frans.vancauwelaert@ogilvy.com

About The Digital Hub

Based in the historic Liberties area of Dublin city centre, The Digital Hub is an enterprise cluster for growing technology companies.  Almost seventy-five established businesses operate in The Digital Hub. Together these businesses employ over 750 people. The Digital Hub is the largest cluster of digital media, technology and internet businesses in Ireland, providing a space for indigenous enterprises such as Bizimply, Good Travel Software, Sonru, and Xwerx to scale and grow. Major global companies like Eventbrite, Lonely Planet, and Software AG are also based in The Digital Hub along with industry organisations such as NDRC, Silicon Republic and Tyndall National Institute. The Dublin International Film Festival are also based at The Digital Hub.

Since the project’s inception, over 200 companies have progressed through the enterprise cluster at The Digital Hub, generating thousands of skilled jobs. Some well-established alumni include Amazon, Athena Media, Boomerang Pharmaceutical Communications, Distilled Media Group (Daft.ie), eMaint, Etsy, Havok, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Riverdeep), Kavaleer, Lincor, MTT, Slack, Stripe, TIBCO and VSware.

The Digital Hub is a supportive partner of the local community, by running several learning initiatives for people of all ages. Community learning programmes are run with local partners.  For example, the Future Creators programme and the Future Creators Cadets programme are run with the National College of Art and Design and H2 Learning, to give children and young people the 21st Century Digital Skills that are so necessary in today’s world. The Liber8 Music Project is run with BIMM Institute Dublin to give young people who may have limited exposure to music and digital media, an opportunity to immerse themselves in a creative programme, whilst also developing skills to support their future careers.

The Digital Hub Development Agency is the Irish state agency that manages The Digital Hub. The Agency was established by the Irish Government under the Department of Communications, Climate Change and Environment and plays a key part in supporting the implementation of the National Digital Strategy.

Further information is available at: www.thedigitalhub.com or on Twitter: @TheDigitalHub.

About Mandy O’Neill

Mandy O’Neill (1968) is an Irish Visual Artist, living and working in Dublin Ireland. She holds a Masters in Public Culture Studies from the IADT Institute of Art and Design and a BA in Photography from the Dublin Institute of Technology. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally and is held in public and private collections. Most recently she has exhibited at the Center Culturel Irlandais Paris, National Gallery of Ireland, Dráiocht Blanchardstown and RHA Dublin.

Her projects have featured in a number of publications and a monograph of her Promise series was produced in 2016 as part of the PhotoIreland New Irish Works initiative. She has been a finalist in the Julia Margaret Cameron Awards (2012 and 2014) and the Hennessy Portrait Prize (2014 and 2015), and has received Visual Arts and YPCE bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland. In 2018 she won the Zurich Portrait Prize at the National Gallery of Ireland, which includes a commission for the permanent portrait collection.

For the past two years she has been Artist in Residence at Larkin Community College, Dublin, and more recently at The Digital Hub, Dublin 8, where she is currently and is developing this work towards an exhibition at the Gallery of Photography in 2019.

About Gerard Smyth

Gerard Smyth has published nine collections, including A Song of Elsewhere (Dedalus Press 2015), The Fullness of Time: New and Selected Poems (Dedalus Press, 2010) and The Yellow River (with artwork by Seán McSweeney and published by Solstice Arts Centre, 2017).  He was the 2012 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Poetry Award from the University of St Thomas in Minnesota and is co-editor, with Pat Boran, of If Ever You Go: A Map of Dublin in Poetry and Song (Dedalus Press) which was Dublin’s One City One Book in 2013. He is a member of Aosdána and Poetry Editor of The Irish Times.