Project Ability : Exhibitions

Let the Games Begin Part 2

Dates: 21 Jul 2012 - 25 Aug 2012
Preview: 21 July 1-3pm
Location: Project Ability Gallery, Trongate 103
Admission: Free

Project Ability is pleased to present an alternative exhibition on the theme of sport, victory and success in timing with the various festivals and cultural events happening around the London 2012 Olympics. With little thematic connection to the Olympics, the exhibition represents the temporal period in the lead up to the Games; approaching them with playful scepticism and loose association.

The concept of offering art as a side dish to the Olympics is said to date back to the early 1900s where the founder of the International Olympic Committee staged a competitive artistic prize-giving for various art forms. The concept of both the team and the individual is apparent in this exhibition with the exhibiting artists adopting collective gamesmanship in the way that they work; most of the artists have been associated with the artist collective ArtTrek for a number of years and the works themselves demonstrate individual play as well as team effort.

A key activity in the preparation of this exhibition is collecting, analysing and repositioning image and text fragments from sporting personalities, games and disciplines with the artists acting as visual interpreters to the everyday images of televised and watched sports, their fortunes and misfortunes; capturing the ball in play, the swimmer in the water or poised on the edge, the gymnast or dancer in mid-air, the cyclist in motion, the weightlifter under strain. The movement of sport in all its most graceful and unpredictable, seemingly random, yet structured and highly skilled through discipline and poise is what this exhibition is all about.

Exhibiting artists are John Cocozza, Robert Cornish, Gerard Deighan, Edward Henry, Doreen Kay, Tommy Mason, Robert McCamley, Jonathan McKinstry, John McNaught, Cameron Morgan and Steven Reilly.