Paul Rooney: Lowry and New York @ Bluecoat 6/10/09

Artist Talks @ The Bluecoat
Under The Volcano; An Exhibition for Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957)
Paul Rooney: Lowry and New York
6th October 2009
6.30pm
The Bluecoat
School Lane
Liverpool

Paul Rooney, who is exhibiting his film Bellevue at the centenary festival for Malcolm Lowry, will be giving a talk about Lowry and New York on Tuesday coming.

Paul Rooney's Bellevue

Paul Rooney's film Bellevue draws on Lowry's time in a psychiatric ward at New York's Bellevue Hospital in 1935, which informed his novella Lunar Caustic. Published posthumously in 1958, the book focuses on a failed English musician who befriends two other patients. Rooney was interested in the book's 'study of the disorientation of addiction and intoxication, but also in the idea of Lowry's voluntary attendance at Bellevue (he could check out when he liked), which parallels the privileged position that art has in relation to real life: it is always easier to visit desparate places when you know that you can leave at any time'.




Paul Rooney Biography

Born Liverpool 1967 Studied 1986-1991 MA Fine Art and BA Painting Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh Solo Exhibitions and Projects 2006-07 Lucy Over Lancashire, BBC Radio Lancashire, Radio 1, 6 Music, BBC Cymru and Resonance FM 2004 Know Your Place, firstsite, Colchester 2003 There Are Two Paths, off-site performance, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, Meadow Gallery, Shropshire and Birmingham ArtsFest; Songs and Routines, Reg Vardy Gallery, University of Sunderland 2002 The NWRA Variety Night, Cubitt Gallery, London 1999 Rooney 'Peel Session' John Peel Show, BBC Radio 1FM Group Exhibitions and Projects 2007 Cine y Casi Cine, Museo Reina Sofia, Madrid; Locale - British Artists in Residence, 1a Space, Hong Kong; Nachtschicht, Kulturzentrum K4, Nürnberg, Germany; Women at the Crossroads of Ideologies screening, Stara Gradska Vijenica, Split, Croatia; 2006 Single Shot, Tate Britain and other London venues, touring to fourteen other cities in the UK and Europe; TV Ergo Sum, PULSAR 2006, Galeria de Arte Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela; Walk On, Salon Vogue, Shanghai Biennial; Work in Progress, Freunde der Deutschen Kinemathek, Kino Arsenal, Berlin 2005 Variety, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea; British Art Show 6, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; Angel Row Annex at Beatties, Nottingham; and Arnolfini, Bristol 2004 Pass the Time of Day, Gasworks Gallery, London, Angel Row Gallery, Nottingham, Castefield Gallery, Manchester and Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Shrinking Cities, Kunst-Werke, Berlin 2003 Let Us Take You There, Site Gallery, Sheffield, and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool; You Are At Home Here, Lokaal 01, Breda, Netherlands; We Go Round and Round in the Night and are Consumed by Fire, Comme Cá Gallery, New York; Fragmentos, Galeria Casa Gaia, Havana, Cuba; Electric Earth, a British Council show, touring to The State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Radio Laboratory Museum, Nizhni Novgorod, Yaroslavl Museum of Fine Art, Yaroslav, Na Solyanke Gallery, Moscow, and venues in Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Turkey, South America 2002 Shopping (as Common Culture), Tate Liverpool; Palestine International Video Festival, Birzeit University, Qamariyeh Gallery and various venues, West Bank, Palestine; Mappin Open, Mappin Gallery, Sheffield; 2001 Merry Movement, Laforet Museum Harajuku, Tokyo 2000 Pixelvision, Royal Museum Of Scotland, Edinburgh, Lost and Found, Amsterdam, Red/Hull Time Based Arts, Waygood Gallery, Newcastle, Catalyst Arts, Belfast, B16, Birmingham, Dick Institute, Kilmarnock, First Floor, Melbourne 1999 My Eye Hurts, Thread Waxing Space, New York; Perspective 99, Ormeau Baths Gallery, Belfast; EAST International (as Common Culture), Norwich Gallery, NSAD, Norwich