23 Aug 2012

Dennis McNulty: PRECAST

'As far as I know, there were other buildings here before,
but they were demolished. A couple of friends of mine studied
architecture and I think this mound is actually made from what
I've heard them call, the spoil of those demolished buildings.'


PRECAST is an exhibition structured as series of hour-long performative events set in the environs of Robin Hood Gardens and the Preston Road roundabout, in Blackwall, East London. The event draws on cinema, sculpture, music and performance, knotting material and immaterial circuits, replaying past and present 'signals' to create points of constructive and destructive interference.

At the edge of Canary Wharf, submerged in the concrete island of Preston Road roundabout, is a pedestrian thoroughfare fashioned as a semi-enclosed amphitheatre, criss-crossed, surrounded and given form by successive waves of spatial imaginings and re-imaginings. Docklands Light Railway line and the A13 motorway pass overhead, and the Blackwall Tunnel snakes through the earth under foot. In close proximity: a McDonald's; a recently constructed apartment block; several hotels; Reuters' Data Centre, designed by Richard Rodgers Partnership; and the Brutalist Robin Hood Gardens Estate, designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, which was completed in 1972 and is currently scheduled for demolition in 2014. Transportation and accommodation. Infrastructure and architecture. Silicon, copper, concrete and magnets.

PRECAST is Dennis McNulty's first solo presentation in the UK, curated by Chris Fite-Wassilak. Following his multi-faceted performances at Performa 11 and the Irish Museum of Modern Art 20th Anniversary Season, PRECAST is a new work developed in response to this complex urban situation.

For booking and more information visit www.precast-project.net

FURTHER INFORMATION

'Dennis McNulty's output crosses disciplines and upends conventional procedures.'
- John Gayer, 'On Density, Flow and Destabilizing the Visual: Dennis McNulty in conversation with John Gayer,' Art Papers, Vol. 35, Issue 2, April 2011


'McNulty's works get into the layered histories of the city through its planned, unplanned, and unbuilt possibilities.'
– Jeff Derksen, 'The Flaneur Could Not Take The Monorail,'
Obscure Flows Boil Underneath: Dennis McNulty 2004 -2011, IMMA Associated Press, 2011


Dennis McNulty's work is generated through an investigation of embodied knowledge in relation to other forms of knowledge, in the context of the built environment. Beginning with detailed research of various kinds, and informed by his studies in psychoacoustics, the works often take hybrid forms, drawing on aspects of cinema, sculpture, sound and performance. Past projects include Another Construction, Irish Museum of Modern Art(2011); The Eyes of Ayn Rand, Performa 11 (2011); and alpha60.info, São Paulo Bienal (2004). He is represented by Green On Red, Dublin. www.dennismcnulty.com


Chris Fite-Wassilak is a writer, curator and critic based in London. He is a regular contributor to Art Monthly, Art Papers, Art Review, frieze, and Monopol. Past curatorial projects include the Hayward Touring exhibition Quiet Revolution, and Open; Wait: Margrét H. Blöndal and Silvia Bächli, i8 Gallery, Reykjavik. Forthcoming projects include Loving The Alien at Maria Stenfors, London. www.growgnome.com

PRECAST is supported by Culture Ireland, Space Panda, and The Bow Arts Trust.