Join us for a screening of The Sea Inside Us, by Ruth E Lyons and Colm Hogan, and Last Things by Deborah Stratman at the Lighthouse cinema, Smithfield.
In partnership with Light House cinema, we are delighted to present the premiere screening of The Sea Inside Us, by Ruth E Lyons and Colm Hogan; and Last Things by Deborah Stratman (50 minutes) at the Light House cinema, Smithfield Square on Tuesday 10 February at 6pm.
This film programme is part of Hugh Lane Gallery’s Explore & Learn offsite education programming during the gallery’s period of temporary closure.
The screening will be introduced by film curator Alice Butler, who will also mediate a post-screening Q+A with artist Ruth Lyons.
The Sea Inside Us:
What is food without salt? Food without flavour? Life without emotion?
There is the remains of an ancient ocean under the countries of northern Europe, a bed of salt that extends from Ireland to Russia. For 10 years Lyons has been tracing this seam making carvings from rock salt of various colours. The film follows the artist into mines 300 metres underground, and across the snow- capped peaks of vast mountain ranges. Against these epic backdrops salt becomes a prism through which she formulates questions that fathom the unknowable while reaching for the eternal. The film is shot in sites of salt production in Northern Ireland, Switzerland and Sicily and at the artist’s coastal home in the west of Ireland.
Last Things
What happens to us / Is irrelevant to the world’s geology / But what happens to the world’s geology / is not irrelevant to us. – Hugh MacDiarmid
From before the beginning until after the end; evolution and extinction as told through the prism of minerals. The geo-biosphere is introduced as a place of evolutionary possibility, where humans disappear but life endures.
Catalyzed by two novellas of J.-H. Rosny, joint pseudonym of Belgian brothers Boex who wrote sci-fi before it was a genre, the film takes up their pluralist vision of evolution, where imagining prehistory is inseparable from envisioning the future. Also key are Roger Caillois’ writing on stones, Clarice Lispector’s Hour of the Star, Robert Hazen’s mineral evolution theory, the symbiosis theory of Lynn Margulis, Donna Haraway’s multi-species scenarios, Hazel Barton’s research on cave microbes and Marcia Bjørnerud’s thoughts on time literacy.
In one way or another, these thinkers have all sought to displace humankind and human reason from the center of evolutionary processes. Passages from Rosny and interviews with Bjørnerud accompany us through the film. Stones are its ballast. We trust rock as archive, but we may as well write on water. In the end, it’s particles that remain.
Location: Light House Cinema, Market St S, Smithfield, Dublin 7, D07 R6YE
Map link HERE
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Ruth E Lyons is an artist based in Co. Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. Lyons is best known for her dramatic and standout public sculptures. She works on ambitious expansive projects exploring geologic time and questioning our place in the universe. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including Talbot Rice Gallery, Scotland, Broad Art Muse-um, US and ExtraCity, Belgium. Lyons has created numerous public works, most recently Wave Junction, Quantum Logistics Park, Dublin and SUPERUNIFICATION, Honeypark, DunLaoghaire, Dublin. Lyons’ art works are included in the permanent collections of National Gallery of Ireland, Arts Council of Ireland and Office of Public works.
Artist and filmmaker Deborah Stratman makes work around issues of power, control and belief, exploring how places, ideas, and society are intertwined. She regards sound as the ultimate multi-tool and time to be supernatural. Her projects have addressed freedom, surveillance, public speech, sinkholes, levitation, orthoptera, raptors, comets, street drag racing, tight rope walking, evolution, extinction, exodus, sisterhood and faith. Stratman’s films and artworks have been exhibited and awarded internationally. She lives in Chicago where she teaches at the University of Illinois.
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