Opens this Saturday 29th June
Special Guest Speaker -Vincent Woods

This summer artist Tilo Schulz joined The Model for an artist residency and a site-specific project resulting in a thought provoking contemporary piece that has been afloat on the Garavogue River for the past week. His exhibition, ‘Tied Up and Down, How to consider force a privilege’ opens this Saturday at 6pm with a wine reception and opening words by Vincent Woods.

‘‘The sculpture on the river is closed up and is an object of speculation posing questions: what is underneath the ropes and plastic, where does it come from. ‘’ Tilo Schulz

The boat’s presence alone over the last week has caused an air of uncertainty and mystery. Through this existence and placement the boat sculpture touches on the artist’s main topics of influences for this project: Dislocation and Movement. He addresses the issues of compulsion and volition in connection with flight and expulsion, in terms of the relation between the political and the personal.

Schulz has captured a video of the sculpture and its surroundings that will run as part of the installation in The Model. The beauty of movement of that boat sculpture mirrors the every day life with people passing, water flowing down the river and cars passing by. It as well evokes images of migration, immigration, restriction and disloction.

Based in Berlin, Schulz is known for his conceptual installations, which often take on socio-political histories (such as the Cold War or Iron Curtain politics) and their respective aesthetic “memories,” which the artist re-casts into a contemporary context. He has coined the term “social formalism” for this style of art production and engagement with aesthetics. His project at The Model, entitled ‘Tied Up and Down, How to consider force a privilege’ results from his time in residence at The Model and is a response to the Sligo urban area and landscape.

This exhibition opens alongside the work of renowned artist Rabih Mroué. Rabih is a Lebanese artist and theatre director based in Beirut. Mroué has taken the art world by storm over the past few years. From his feature film project Je Veux Voir with Catherine Deneuve to his celebrated, hard-hitting project The Pixalated Revolution, Mroué produces art work and film that steer from theatre practice to politics, and involve problems of representations to elements from his private life. Mroué‘s search for ‘truth’ begins via documents, photos, and found objects, fabricating other documents, other ‘truths’: it is as if the work becomes a dissection table for the dubious processes of politics, interpretation and reality. Mroué incorporates radical criticism, particularly in his video work, where The Pixalated Revolution powerfully represents and the people’s resistance in present-day Syria through an analysis of mobile phone images and video taken by Syrian civilians.

Funding provided by the Arts Council Ireland, Sligo County Council, Goethe Institut Irland, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.