The Memory Room

Danny McCarthy

The Guesthouse, 10 Chapel Street, Shandon, Cork

12 noon – 3pm, or by appointment  

Cork Midsummer Festival,  25 June – 29 June 2012

Publication launch and Sunday lunch at The Guesthouse

3pm, Sunday, 24 June 2012

The Memory Room is a project by the Cork-based multimedia artist Danny McCarthy, whose pioneering art practice explores a combination of visual and auditory experiences. This new work consists of an ongoing series of installations in conjunction with a new book and CD published by the Irish sound-art label Farpoint Recordings.

Through the use of personal materials gathered from his past and by using other related ephemera, the artist seeks to reach back in time on a 'psycho-sonic' journey, re-establishing old connections and reviving random fragments of lost memories and locating them in the now. This is achieved through the use of sounds, text and found objects that are installed in specially chosen locations throughout the space.

While these explorations may often connect specifically with aspects of McCarthy’s youth and early adulthood in his home-town of Mallow, Co. Cork (his father’s life as a blacksmith/farrier, nights spent playing rock-and-roll in the local dance-hall, early forays into improvisation), there are also meditations of a less specific and more abstracted nature. These are fleeting and often loosely threaded together, but always accessible, thus encouraging people to explore their own inner soundscape.

From 25 to 29 June the exhibition room in Shandon's The Guesthouse will play host to a further exploration of the themes from this project. Residing ‘memories of place’ and past histories caged within the old structures of The Guesthouse building will mesh and play alongside the gentle reverberations of this latest instalment of The Memory Room. The installation, curated by Anthony Kelly, will be subject to daily change.

The Memory Room project (which had its first airing at Hilltown New Music Festival in 2010) is scheduled to travel to Sound Fjord (London) and The Room (Turin, Italy) during 2013.

Please note:

Since audience capacity at the venue is very limited, please book by emailing: 

guesthouse.project@gmail.com.

About The Memory Room publication and Launch Event

A new book accompanies The Memory Room installation and CD published by Farpoint Recordings. This book and 3” CD extend the experience of the installation itself, a further creative layer that can be taken away and absorbed by the viewer/listener at their own pace and in their own personal circumstances. Colour and black & white photographs, drawings, and layers of text printed onto papers of varying opacity, read in combination with a sound composition contained on the CD, bring McCarthy’s ideas into the realm of the tangible.

The publication will be launched with Sunday lunch at The Guesthouse, at 3pm on Sunday, 24 June. This event is made possible through the generosity of its guests and host chefs, and all who have donated to the larder for previous events. Please bring some tasty bread and cheese, and your own wine or beer.

The Memory Room Book and CD will be available from www.farpointrecordings.com from 25 June onwards 

…

www.theguesthouse.ie
www.dannymccarthy.ie
www.farpointrecordings.com

Danny McCarthy is a pioneering multimedia artist whose main interest lies in combining visual and auditory experiences. He continues to be a leading exponent in performance art and sound art, exhibiting and performing in Ireland and abroad. Some of his recent projects include Strange Attractor and A Rocky Road (both  Crawford Gallery, 2011). During August 2012, the Strange Attractor project will travel to venues in Boston and New York. He has curated many exhibitions and audio CD projects, including Sound Out (with David Toop), Bend it like Beckett and Rediscovering Locality (A sonology of Cork Sound Art). In early 2006 he founded The Quiet Club, a floating-membership sound performance group, with Mick O’Shea. A track from their Tesla CD was included on a recent Wire magazine Tapper CD. McCarthy’s book and CD LISTEN hEAR was published by Farpoint Recordings in 2009.

Anthony Kelly is an artist who works in a variety of media including sound, video, painting & print. His work concentrates on the shifting and fragmentary nature of sensory experience. Since graduating from Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT) with a degree in Fine Art he has exhibited nationally and internationally, including Ireland, England, America, Australia & Canada. He maintains an ongoing collaboration with David Stalling. Together they make sound & video installations and also run the sound art label Farpoint Recordings. Over the past few years David Stalling and Anthony Kelly have organised sound- and video-related programmes & events for Hilltown New Music Festival, Solus Film Collective and Farpoint Recordings.