This show has at its core an ambitious new piece, In a World Like This, made in Sligo during the artist’s 2006 Model Fellowship. This multi-projection installation was shot at Eagles Flying, The Irish Raptor Research Centre in Ballymote. Co Sligo.  In a World Like This is concerned with the question as to how we might best proceed in circumstances which are not perfect but are possibly the best they're ever likely to be. At the raptor centre birds of prey sit out in the garden, and are at once both surreal and beautiful. Some of the birds have been damaged through misuse at other holdings, and have grown overly aggressive or are physically damaged as a result. Others arrived at the centre having been found with broken wings or other injuries.  Here, alongside healing limbs and infections, new relationships have been built up with great care and patience. Tracing the sometimes hesitant flights and landings of the different birds to and from their handlers, the fragile lines between damage, beauty and trust slowly reveal themselves.

This new work is being shown in the context of a number of key earlier films and videos including Eyelashes, The Actress and Ivana’s Answers. These films, rarely exhibited together in Ireland, are being shown as a series of screenings at the Model.  Two of Irvine’s earlier films Star and Sweet Tooth will be shown as 16 mm projections which will alternate on a weekly basis

Irvine’s films and videos create elusive yet absorbing narratives that explore human interaction with the natural world, with the built environment and with other humans. Using a combination of image, sound and voice-over her films suggest fragments of larger untold narratives and evoke a place where the boundaries between realities and dreams, past and present and animal and human become fluid and permeable.
Jaki Irvine currently lives and works in Dublin having spent many years in London and Italy. Her recent solo exhibitions include Towards a Polar Sea at Frith Street Gallery, London and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds in 2005.  Earlier this year her major video installation The Silver Bridge was shown at Dublin's Irish Museum of Modern Art. Irvine has also shown at the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden-Baden, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and represented Ireland in the 1997 Venice Biennale. She has been exhibited in group shows at the Centrum voor Hegendaagse Kunst, Maastricht, Kunsthalle Bern, and the Stedilijk van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven. Her film Eyelashes was shown in One Hundred Years of Artists' Films at Tate Britain in 2003, while a more recent work, The Actress was shown as part of the Art Now series also at Tate Britain. Her work is included in the collections of the Arts Council of England, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Moderna Museet, Stockholm as well as in numerous private collections
The  exhibition has been produced in collaboration with Chisenhale Gallery, London. A major new publication to mark the exhibition will be published in early 2007. 

This show has been sponsored by AVA Systems Ltd, Finisklin.

Jaki Irvine
Film Season

On the occasion of her exhibition In a World Like This  Jaki Irvine has selected four films that have informed her practice as a film and video maker. Running over four Sunday afternoons the season offers an opportunity to experience a range of influential and groundbreaking film from around the world.

Sun 3 Dec I 3.00pm I €5
Hana-bi I Takashi Kitano I 1997 Japan

Sun 10 Dec I 3.00pm I €5
L’Eclisse I Michelangello Antonioni I 1962 Italy/France

Sun 7 Jan I 3.00pm I €5
Aprile I Nanni Moretti I 1998 Italy

Sun 14 Jan I 3.00pm I €5
Solaris I Andrei Tarkovksy I 1972 USSR