Late Night Art is celebrated in Belfast and Dublin the first thursday of every month with many of the galleries open. This week, Belfast is running two comics themed events.
The Arts and Disability Forum from 5-7pm launches Andy Luke's In Time six week event – a retrospective of three acclaimed comics, and the first installment of his groundbreaking Newszoom supplement. The first edition has a piece on animal rights and frothing desktop activists, but most everything else is improvised. There'll be free booze and you can ask me all sorts of questions such as, "Why don't those small pressers want to make comics like Stan Lee makes his?",and "Can I have your chocolate?" Here's a link to a rather good write-up about the show.
Then from 6-9pm PS2 (aka Paragon Studios), runs an exhibition based on images of Wonder Woman. Based in Donegall Street (around from The Cloth Ear), PS2 is a clear shop-front gallery and the exhibition features the mighty amazon fat and thin, made from sculpture, clay and card, and other materials. "The New Adventures of Wonder Woman" examines origins and physical transformation consists of sculpture
From the gallery website,
"“Get us out from under, Wonder Woman!”
Opening with explosive bursts of fire and the howl of a siren, Dara Birnbaum’s ‘Technology/Transformation: Wonder Woman’ (1978-79) is supercharged, action-packed and visually riveting, and has lost none of its visceral impact despite its thirty years of age. Appropriating imagery from the 1970s television series, ‘Wonder Woman’, Birnbaum isolates and repeats Diana Prince’s magical transformation into the iconic superhero. Through stuttering edits, Wonder Woman spins dizzily like a music-box doll with her arms outstretched, pursues her foes, and deflects bullets with her metal bracelets. "
More details at http://www.pssquared.org/BenCrothers.php
PS2 is consistently one of the better galleries in the city.
This comes a few months after after an East Belfast artist, Deirdre Robb, took part in the Billboards exhibition, through the Creative Exchange ensemble (Often seen at the Black Market) Images of a 1950s Wonder Woman appeared some 10ft tall in several locations to bring people's attention to the arts. ICN talked to Dierdre Robb about an interview but she couldn't respond. It was about the same time fine art pilferage and re-appropriation was a hot point in the comics community. Then again, that probably had nothing to do with it.
Also on the late night art trail is Catalyst, who last year organised a comics themed exhibition. This month, PRESS START, features a fetish for the retro; video games such as Pong and Doom are re-programmed with a Multi User Dimension. The end result is kind of cool. They've also got the WABfm radio dome – an open internet DJ-ing platform were anyone can sign up as I've just done for following Thursday.
To round the Thursday off, the Belfast comics pub meet starts at the Cloth Ear, just around from PS2, on Waring Street at 9pm. There you can expect to hear talk about at least three upcoming anthology titles due in the next month. The group is fairly open, not at al in-bred egoistic sycophantic opinions or cliquish. We couldn't be bothered with solo keyboard mud-sling. In any case, you're welcome.
