iArchitectures - Roadscore

Fiona Hallinan curated by Ian Russell
in collaboration with the students of Designing Heritages

30 April - 25 October 2010, Open: M-F 2-5pm
Carriage House Gallery (MAP)
John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage
Nightingale-Brown House
357 Benefit Street
Providence, RI

Official opening reception
5-7pm, 1 May 2010

Invisible String is the first iteration of Roadscore, a new series of works by artist Fiona Hallinan exploring mobility, memory and materiality. It takes the form of a site-responsive installation of materials and sounds relating to the demise and demolition of the original stretch of highway I-195 in downtown Providence, RI. Throughout a residency at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Fiona collaborated with Ian Russell and the students of his ‘Designing Heritages’ course to explore methods of chorography, deep mapping and contemporary antiquarianism, creating drawings, photographs, narratives and audio recordings relating the life of old I-195. Exploring new media applications of traditional Irish storytelling (seanchaí), Fiona’s work activates relations between the artist’s studio, memory, stories and material traces and absences of the monumenal architecture of the American highway. More information is available online at: www.iarchitectures.com/roadscore.html.

Special thanks to Mike Hebert, Peter Hocking and the Rhode Island Department of Transport.

Voices featured in the work: Brent Bachelder, Maureen Keaveny, Tim Sandiford, Manuel Pedroso, Bochay Drum, Johnny Costa, Betty Adler, Mike Hebert & Nick Horton

Fiona Hallinan is an Irish artist, born in 1984. She holds an MSc in Multimedia Systems from Trinity College Dublin (2007) and a BA in History of Art and Architecture with Classical Civilization. She is currently artist-in-residence and creative facilitator with South Dublin County Council Youth Arts Office. From 2008-2009, she curated The Joy Gallery, an artist-led art space in Dublin city centre. She works in a range of media, including drawing, photography, sound, installation, collaborative projects and the organization of relational art events. With a playful approach to new technologies she works with people and memories to create and question understandings of perception, experience, progress and recollection. Notably in 2007, she undertook an internship in New Media Education at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Collaborative projects include It's an Audio Detour, a series of site-specific audio pieces re-developed for various locations Cork city, Kinsale, Limerick and Dublin. She has created relational projects for a number of festivals in Ireland as well as Conflux in New York City. Exhibitions include An Exhibition in 5 Chapters at the Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius 2007 & Ladyfest, Cork 2008), Life at The Joy (Dublin 2008), The Life and Times of Virginia Mountweazel at Monstertruck Gallery and Studios (Dublin 2009) and The You That Is In It (Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2008-2009). Most recently, she created the solo exhibition The Making Of: Memories Made Manifest at the Mermaid Arts Centre in Co. Wicklow (2009), where in an open studio space over five weeks she gathered stories, documents and memories from the people of Bray relating to the local film studios, Ardmore. She created an audio tour based on recordings gathered, which is on permanent display at the gallery, and several relational events to commemorate the exhibition. More information on Fiona’s work can be found at: www.notalittlepony.com.

Ian Russell is an international curator and researcher working between Ireland and the United States. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Public Art and Cultural Heritage at Brown University's John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage where he is teaching and developing collaborative arts projects in Providence, Ireland and Japan. He has previously collaborated with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the Green On Red Gallery, Dublin, the National College of Art and Design, Trinity College Dublin, University College Dublin, CREATE and the Here Arts Center in New York. He has published widely on contemporary art, anthropology and heritage, and since completing his PhD at Trinity College Dublin, he has held major research fellowships both in the United States and Ireland. Recently a series of his collaborative arts interventions were featured at the 2008 World Art Forum in London. Academically, he specialises in contemporary art and design, visual and material cultural theory, intellectual history, anthropological and archaeological theory and heritage studies. His upcoming volume Unquiet Pasts (2010) and his previously published volume Images, Representations and Heritage (2006), both explore these interests. Also an Associate Fellow of the Humanities Institute of Ireland at University College Dublin, he maintains a number of projects relating to new media applications for digital humanities research. More information on Ian's work can be found at: http://www.iarchitectures.com.