Tuneful Places
Image: John Carson, American Medley, 1981-6
Tuneful Places
John Carson / Martin Folan / Max Guy / Léann Herlihy / Niamh Schmidtke / Frank Wasser
Curated by Michele Horrigan and Sean Lynch
Opening reception Tuesday 7 April, 4-6pm
In April 2026, Ireland’s Askeaton Contemporary Arts continues a growing relationship with the city of Chicago, presenting a series of exhibitions bringing together artist-led activities of the Irish art scene and American Midwest. As part of this initiative Co-Prosperity host Tuneful Places, a group exhibition exploring artists that disrupt and challenge representations of geography, state and capital within an Irish idiom.
John Carson’s American Medley embodies a tour to fifty locations in the United States famed in popular music, from ‘What Made Milwaukee Famous to ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ and more in-between. Postcards and Polaroid photographs were initially sent back to Carson’s native Belfast, displayed during the conflict of The Troubles of Northern Ireland in the window at one of Carson’s favourite haunts, Delany’s ‘American-style’ diner. Carson’s chase of the American dream is one of myth-busting – Frank Sinatra’s crooning ‘Chicago is my kind of town’ is juxtaposed with an image of a mound of rubble from a demolition site that constitutes what Carson actually saw when he visited here.
Martin Folan (1955-2014) worked with the Traveller community of Limerick, realising collaborative artworks that addressed the inherent racism towards indigenous ethnic communities in Ireland. At that time, and today throughout the island, large stone boulders are placed at roadside parking and traffic lay-bys as barriers to prevent Travellers practicing a traditional nomadic way of life. The boulder, in this form, represents exclusion. In 1991, Take Away The Stone was realised - a large fiberglass replica of a rock pushed over seven days in the Irish landscape, followed by a pilgrimage of hundreds demanding civil rights and respect for Traveller identity.
Max Guy’s No Reason sees him annually film Chicago’s Saint Patrick’s Day Parade and the famous ceremony of dyeing the city’s river green. The green dye is mixed by Plumbers Union Local 130 and is so saturated that its colour can be easily altered in video post-production technology. Guy enacts this alchemy, as a mediation on the cultural significance and shrinking of Chicago's Irish diaspora and the ecological implications of the water’s flow.
Léann Herlihy’s The Long Internecine Quarrel is an account of the artist’s court case against Ireland’s taxman, the Revenue Commissioners. In a whirlwind of administrative chaos, Herlihy was denied a tax break offered by the Irish state for art. Their public billboard artwork was categorized by authorities as an advertisement and form of self-promotion, devoid of artistic merit. After several unsuccessful appeals, Herlihy gathered a folder of evidence and initiated legal proceedings, winning their case in the latter half of 2024.
Niamh Schmidtke’s Drafting communication, drafting climate, drafting futures is a fictional exchange between the wind, represented as Aos Sí (the supernatural race in Celtic mythology considered true spirits of nature) and a multinational venture capital firm. Mimicking passive-aggressive corporate chatter and policy Schmidtke researched while on an artist residency at the European Investment Bank in Luxembourg, they ask how value is ascribed to nature, and how global finance’s role in climate breakdown becomes evident.
Frank Wasser debuts a new video and salvaged sculptural arrangement, recalling the recent closure of The Complex, one of Ireland’s key experimental cultural venues. Falling prey to the increasing gentrification and profit-seeking of the Dublin’s inner city, Wasser salvaged pub signs from the venue and transports them to Chicago, while onscreen he creates a spiralling narrative, addressing the intrinsic desire for grassroots cultural production and artistic communities to rally against the blatant aggression of contemporary city policy and corporatization.
A programme of audio artworks and interviews with exhibiting artists will feature on LUMPEN FM, broadcasting WLPN-LP 105.5FM and at www.lumpenradio.com 24 hours a day.
Askeaton Contemporary Arts is an artist-led organisation based in the west of Ireland since 2006. An ongoing residency programme creates critical cultural encounters in the midst of the Irish countryside each summer, while public programmes and exhibitions in Askeaton and elsewhere over two decades have found innovative public contexts and resilient relationships for new forms of artmaking to emerge.
Tuneful Places is supported by Culture Ireland, Hyde Park Arts Center’s Jackman Goldwasser artist-in-residence programme, EXPO Chicago and The Irish Consulate of Chicago
