The Last of the Red Wine (the prequel/sequel) - exhibition at Project Arts Centre, Dublin

The Last of The Red Wine (the prequel/sequel)
Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar, Dublin

Running: 11 Nov 2011 to 14 Jan 2012

PARTICIPANTS: Doug Fishbone, Hayley Newman, Kim Noble, Sally O'Reilly, Michelle Owoo, Colin Perry, Caroline Smith and Bedwyr Williams
CURATORS: Tessa Giblin and Sally O'Reilly

More info and photos @ http://www.projectartscentre.ie/programme/whats-on/1449-the-last-of-the-red-wine

What sort of artists would allow themselves to be involved in a sitcom based in the art world? According to common clichés, they would perhaps be narcissistic or arrogant or obtuse or opportunist. You might think that art is given a hard enough time in the media without 'insiders' holding themselves up for ridicule too. Early in 2011, however, an unlikely group of artists, comedians and writers worked together on The Last of the Red Wine, a radio sitcom based in the artworld. Used to being the subject of their own work, the collaborators instead cast themselves in a collective farce, written and performed in the course of one week.

Put together quickly, this sitcom was never going to be of industry standard. It was quite amusing in places and embarrassingly not in others; but the main point of interest was how a group of people with such different ideas of what is funny worked collaboratively, without anyone incurring too heavy an insult or injury. The next instalment of the sitcom at Project Arts Centre, The Last of the Red Wine (the prequel/sequel), dissects the mix of people and personalities involved in the original project and examines the processes of self-representation in their individual practices.

This collection of videos, audio, photographs and sculptural installation ridicules, jokes and pokes fun at the character of the sitcom artist. Compared with the clichéd representations of artists garnered from television programmes -- screened here in clips edited by O'Reilly and Colin Perry from such classics as Upstairs Downstairs, Blackadder and General Hospital -- it reveals further absurdities about art and acts as a pastiche of the artworld.

There are a range of colourful characters including Doug Fishbone, who it turns out is a smooth-tongued chancer, Hayley Newman a resourceful exhibitionist, Kim Noble a divisive wrangler, Sally O'Reilly a relentless absurdist, Michelle Owoo a coercive trickster, Caroline Smith an over-emancipated housewife and Bedwyr Williams a disgruntled ghost.

The exhibition is rather like the mythical lion with the head of one lion and the body of another - it is not entirely clear which bit is in earnest and which bit is just plain ridiculous.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Project Arts Centre
• Gallery
• Exhibition
• Visual Art
• Doug Fishbone
• Hayley Newman
• Kim Noble
• Sally O'Reilly
• Michelle Owoo
• Colin Perry
• Caroline Smith
• Bedwyr Williams
• Tessa Giblin
• Dublin
• Ireland