REAL
presented by crux
FRANCES HENNIGAN
LANA MAY FLEMING
LUKE VAN GELDEREN
Vernissage: Thursday 11 July 2024, 6pm-10pm
w/music from Debt Collector
In Collaboration with Kultuforum Witten
Exhibition Run: 12 July - 2 August
Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 12pm-6pm
Sunday, 12pm-4pm
Real. explores the TikTok trend of raw, unfiltered content set to emotional music, highlighting the crafted nature of 'reality' in the social media landscape. This exhibition delves into how identities, emotions, and beliefs are performed for attention in intense, competitive environments. By examining phenomena like interspecies looksmaxxing, celebrity-driven politics, and the intertwining of others trauma narratives with our own, Real. invites you to reflect on the impact of endless content streams and the blurred lines between the sad, ironic, pornographic, and true.
Finnisage: Friday 2nd August, 4pm-6pm
Real. is part of Zeitgiest Irland 24’, an initative of Culture Ireland and the Embassy of Ireland in Germany.
Production reisdency towards Real. was kindly supported by Culture Moves Europe and Kulturforum Witten.
Previous Project
CRUX, an artist-run collective founded in 2020 in Dublin by Frances Hennigan, Lana May Fleming, and Luke van Gelderen, is dedicated to digital and nomadic art projects. Notable recent endeavours include the off-site exhibition and accompanying website ‘crux.project’ at Rathmichael Ringfort, Dublin (2020), and inclusion in "Return to Disintegration—Periodical Review 11" at Pallas Projects/Studios (2021).
Frances Hennigan works with painting and video, examining the relationship between glamour, scandal and truth in online politics. Her work teases out topics surrounding the thirst for internet fame such as; misinformation, performative political activism and celebrity political influencers. Frances completed an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dun Laoghaire in 2022 and was awarded a fellowship of Digital Culture with Kulturforum Witten in 2023. Recent exhibitions include: ‘Dead of Night’, Saalbau Witten, DE (2024); ‘Internationales Digitale Kunst Festival’, Kultur im Bunker, Stuttgart, DE (2023); ‘Wax Rhapsodic’, The LAB Gallery, Dublin, IRE (2022). She lives and works between Essen and Duisburg and is a current studio member of Atelier66.
Lana May Fleming is a visual artist based in Dublin, working across video and performance. Her practice explores the modification of food imagery and the female body highlighting the pressure women face to physically and digitally alter their bodies for social media, comparing it to the historical sexualisation of food in commercial imagery. Fleming was the recipient of the Fingal Residency Award with Mart Gallery and Studios and the IADT and Pallas Projects/Studios Mentorship Award (2020) and an awardee in ‘you breathe differently down here’, Draíocht (2022). Solo exhibitions: Watering Hole, DIVA, Dublin (2022) and meat clown, aerial, Bergen, Norway (2022). Recent group exhibitions: MILF (Mother I’d Like to Eat) prøverommet and the Bergen centre for electronic arts (2022), LOCKJAW, Ranelagh Arts, Dublin (2023), FAKE BODY, Platform Arts, Belfast (2023).
Luke van Gelderen works across video, sculpture, and digital media, creating immersive installations that examine the performance and mediation of contemporary identities through technology. Converging celebrity culture, alienation, masculinity and violence, his work is grounded in his own experience of recurring intrusive thoughts and images amplified by the internet. Recent solo exhibitions include: 'HARDCORE FENCING', Pallas Projects/Studios (2024); 'unrecognisable (spillway)', Ormond Art Studios (2020); 'My Activity', Rua Red (2019); 'Chatroulette', K4 Galleri, Oslo (2019). Recent group exhibitions include: 'this is perfect, perfect, perfect', Transmediale, Berlin (2024); 'Manslows Hammer–Periodical Review 13', Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (2023); 'LOCKJAW', Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin (2023); 'FAKE BODY', Platform Arts, Belfast (2023); 'you breathe differently down here', Draíocht Gallery, Dublin (2022) and 'Rendering New Realities', The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2021). Recent screenings include Toxi Space, Zurich (2024) and Terrarista TV, online (2020). He lives and works in Dublin and is a current studio member in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.