Vicky Langan
"There are some musicians who entertain us, fine; some who stimulate us, better; and then some who immerse us in something so powerful that, almost, primal emotions surface instantly; making us ultra-defensive, or, finally open to illumination. One of the latter is Vicky Langan” - Bernard Clarke, RTÉ Lyric Fm
Vicky Langan (b.1986) is a Cork-based artist whose practice operates across several often overlapping fields, chiefly performance, sound, and film. Langan both embraces and projects vulnerability, offering an intimate territory loaded with personal symbolism and unguarded emotion. With a focus on the sounds of the body and its functions, involving contact-miked skin, amplified breath and live electronic manipulation, Langan’s work sits between sound and performance art. Using simple raw materials such as domestic objects, hair and magnetic tape, she layers physical gestures and scraps of sound to create intensely personal imaginary landscapes. Mundane domesticity is explored as a temporal space where the material body and sensual inner worlds mesh. In opening herself emotionally, she creates warm yet discomforting rituals that at once embrace the viewer and remain resolutely private, exploring the limits of what can be shared between people and what must remain mysterious.
As a curator, Langan is known for Black Sun Cork, a platform for world-class underground music and experimental cinema in Ireland that she founded in 2009. She has DJed for numerous festivals and venues such as Cúirt, Café OTO, Wildscreen, Tusk, the Cork Film Festival and the Contemporary Outsider Art Festival, Limerick. She is a recipient of bursary awards from Cork City Council and the Arts Council of Ireland.
Since 2010, Langan and Cork-based experimental filmmaker Maximilian Le Cain have been working together in a unique creative audio-visual partnership. This is built on the strikingly fitting match between Langan’s magnetic, often troublingly intense presence as a performer and Le Cain’s distinctively jarring, disruptive visual rhythms. So far, they have completed ten moving image works together and have been awarded a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, for August 2017.
Langan is currently under the mentorship of Gare St Lazare Players Ireland, an Irish theatre company dedicated to the novels, prose & plays of Samuel Beckett.
http://www.vickylangan.com/
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh is a viola player from Ireland who takes influence from improvised, folk and early music. She has played with a variety of groups which include Woven Skull, Circuit des Yeux and Josephine Foster and Irish improvisers David Lacey, Aonghus McEvoy and David Donohoe. Her first solo recordings were released on Fort Evil Fruit last year under the title Oreing and feature four semi-improvised pieces for viola and tape delay.
‘Nic Oireachtaigh’s virtuosity is immense, but her ability to weave fully fledged compositions out of thin air is downright unique.’- The Wire
‘like an over-packed bowl of noodles explosively hitting a kitchen floor.’
https://www.ailbhenicoireachtaigh.com/
https://soundcloud.com/ailbhenicoireachtaigh
NAWR ANOIS
NAWR ANOIS is a series of 7 concerts, running from February to July 2018. The series showcases the diverse music of contemporary Irish, Welsh and international artists. The series aims to develop deeper connections between Irish and Welsh composers, sound artists and musicians. The concerts will take place in the historic BBC Building in Swansea Studios at UWTSD. The series will feature: Mick O'Shea, Softday, Vicky Langan, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Analog On, Rachel Ni Chuinn, and Clang Sayne.
Supported by Culture Ireland as part of GB18: Promoting Irish Arts in Britain.
Supported by Swansea College of Art, University of Wales Trinity Saint David.
