GESTURE is a new space within Our Thriving Tribe Project (OTT) where arts professionals were commissioned to consider entrepreneurship from the perspective of the arts in Ireland and respond with a gesture.
Each Gesture was digitally documented: this documentation became part of Our Thriving Tribes research materials. Each unique Gesture remained with the arts professional. The commissioned documentation from GESTURE will be exhibited online, shared through the OTT & AHEH projects digital platforms and published in the Our Thriving Tribe publication.
Susan Buttner is an artist based in Ireland, concerned with bodily experiences of knowledge and power, identity, politics, alienation and difference. This practice involves sculpture, film, performance, painting, writing and collaborative projects. Recent group exhibitions include Highlanes Gallery Open Submission, 2020, curated by Joy Gerrard, Sean Kissane, Jerome ODrisceoil, Drogheda; ARRANGEMENTS, (Orphans 6) 2019, curated by James Merrigan, Pallas Projects Studios, Dublin. Cairde Visual, 2019, The Model, Sligo; RHA 189th Annual Exhibition, Dublin; Periodical Review #8 2018, curated by James Merrigan, Aisling Prior, Gavin Murphy, Mark Cullen, Pallas Projects Studios, Dublin; Sirens Part II/III, 2018, by Celina Muldoon, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and Temple Bar Gallery and Studios; Floats in the Aether, 2018, by Amanda Coogan, National Gallery of Ireland; Strange Foreign Bodies exhibition, 2017, by Sarah Brown, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow; Report to the Academy exhibition, 2017, by Sarah Brown, Marabouparken Show, Stockholm.
Current project Chewing gum in my hair, (which began 2019 at the RHA) explores vulnerability, injury and pain, the health impact of mesh surgery on the individual and collective body and the politics of female subjectivity. This work involves close collaboration with women impacted by the mesh. It will culminate as a live performance, choreographed by Buttner with dancers Rebecca Reilly and Ella Clarkson, creating a synergy between sound, film, sculpture, and the body. It will form part of the PLATFORM 2020 exhibition curated by Sharon Murphy at the Draíocht Arts Centre. Recent awards include Inaugural Janet Mullarney Prize 2020, (Highly Commended); Draíocht Incubate residency award 2020; Fingal County Council bursary award 2020; Arts Council of Ireland bursary award 2020; RHA Peer studio residency award 2019; RDS VAA 2018, curated by Amanda Coogan; RDS VAA 2016, curated by Alice Maher.
Buttner is founder of Temporality and Collapse Collective, which regularly meets in public spaces, making temporary sculptures with artists and non-artists, expanding the reach of sculpture, and opening conversations.
Susan Buttner’s website: www.susanbuttner.com
Susan Buttner, spatial-temporal gesture, 2020 – Artists interpretation of digital documentation in relation to a gesture.
The artist transforms her interpretation of gesture into a spatial-temporal gesture structure, creating an environment that virtulises a project of interactive viewer behaviors. This work considers how Gesture can be an unconventional, de-authorised form of action, locating the body, at the interface between linguistic and performance, the gesture becomes event, motion and stillness a decomposition of the speech act.
Susan participated in the OTT Zoom Room Sessions which can be viewed here.