Amie Siegel: Imitation of life

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios is pleased to announce the line-up for its 2016 exhibition programme. This year, the gallery will present five exhibitions with work by eight different artists, starting with Imitation of Life the first solo exhibition in Ireland of the American artist Amie Siegel.

This exhibition, guest curated by Megs Morley, brings together two of Siegel’s recent film works that both delve into the world of architectural construction and luxury real estate to expose uncanny relationships between art, labour and value.

In her recent work Quarry (2015) Siegel traces the source of marble from a dark, cave-like underground quarry in Vermont to its high-end destination in Manhattan real estate developments. The orchestral soundtrack forms an emotive underpinning to the sleek interiors, echoing at times the aspiration of the luxury rendering. White marble, with its association to classical renaissance sculpture, is shaped and constructed into the interior surfaces of these luxury apartments, designed to bring even the most mundane spaces in closer proximity to the materiality and values of art.

In The Architects (2014) the ceaseless tracking of the camera slices transversally through the city of New York, moving through various architecture studios, creating a seamless timeline that merge spaces and times. The camera takes in vast office spaces and gazes uncompromisingly at the highly networked production of global architecture. Our view into this world is obscured by surfaces and layers of representation; facades, paintings, models, screens, windows—the very architectures of looking and seeing.

Exhibited together for the first time, these works underline Siegel’s distinctive tracking shots and sudden tableaux, to reveal and montage increasingly elaborate layers and strategies of re-creation and simulation. Ultimately the representation of living or “life” exposes a complex economy of production and speculation.

Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago) works variously in photography, video, film installation, performance and feature films for the cinema. Her work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions including Amie Siegel: Provenance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Amie Siegel. Part 2: Ricochet at Kunstmuseum Stuttgart. The artist has participated in group exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Hayward Gallery, London; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; MoMA PS1, New York; MAXXI Museum, Rome; Kunst-Werke, Berlin; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; as well as TULCA 2011, Galway, and, currently, Everything Must Go at the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, Ireland. Her films have screened at the Cannes, Berlin, Toronto and New York Film Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and The National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Her work is in public and private collections including the Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. She has been a fellow of the DAAD Berliner-Kunstlerprogramm and the Guggenheim Foundation, a recipient of the ICA Boston’s Foster Prize, a 2012 Sundance Institute award, the 2014 Forum Expanded award at the Berlin Film Festival and a 2015 Creative Capital Award.

Quarry was originally commissioned for the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin and The Architects by Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York as part of OfficeUS.

Related events:

Amie Siegel in conversation
February 23, 5pm
Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, 5-9 Temple Bar, Dublin 2

Screening: DDR/DDR (2008) by Amie Siegel
February 23, 6:30pm 
Irish Film Institute, 6 Eustace St, Dublin 2 

Screening: The Daisy Chain (1990) by Polly Devlin
February 24, 6:30
Irish Film Institute, 6 Eustace St, Dublin 2 

Complete 2016 exhibition programme at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios:

Amie Siegel
Imitation of Life
February 19–April 2, 2016

The Hopeless End of a Great Dream
A new film commission by Declan Clarke
In partnership with Belfast Exposed, Centre Culturel Irlandaise Paris, Trinity College Dublin and The Arts Council
April 22–June 18, 2016

My Brilliant Friend
Michelle Browne, Ella De Burca, Avril Coroon, Lisa Marie Johnson, Jesse Jones
July 1–September 10, 2016

Orla Barry
Breaking Rainbows
November 25, 2016–January 28, 2017

Barbara Knezevic
25 November 2016 - 28 January 2017
 

Temple Bar Gallery + Studios (TBG+S) is an artists’ community in the heart of Dublin city, comprising 30 artist studios and a public gallery presenting a programme of exhibitions by Irish and international artists. The extensive series of talks + events invites further engagement with the work that takes place in the building.

In 2016, the exhibition programme at TBG+S is full of collaborations, co-commissions, partnerships, cross disciplinary practices and performative interventions. Reflecting the ethos of TBG+S as a studio organisation, most of the work on display will be commissioned or co-commissioned in partnership with others, thus highlighting TBG+S’s commitment to the production of new work.

In 2016 there is a clear emphasis on solo exhibitions, with a strong representation of Irish and international artists. Political undertones, both subtle and overt, are somewhere present within the exhibitions, in some cases reflecting upon the artists’ place in today’s Ireland, as well as offering reflection on the last 100 years of Irish history.