Works at : Seoul Art Space_Geumcheon
Stays in : 2013
Website : www.alanbutler.info
Profile
Education
2008-2009 Masters of Art in Fine Art, LaSalle College of the Arts, Singapore.
2000-2004 BA Fine Art, National College of Art and Design, Dublin, Ireland
Solo exhibition
2010
‘I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant’, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Ireland.
‘In the Bedroom OMIGOD Subscribe!!! KTHXBAI XXX’, G126, Galway, Ireland.
‘Can’t Operate Properly ‘Til Eyes Refocus, Cake Contemporary Arts’, Co. Kildare, Ireland.
Group exhibition
2013
Circulation, FLOOD Gallery & Black Church Print Studio.
Nine, The LAB, Dublin. Ireland.
Beyond the Frontier, Wexford Council Arts Department, Ireland.
2012
Group Show, 13 North Great Georges St., Dublin 1, Ireland.
E.S.P. TV, Pallas Contemporary Projects (Dublin) / E.S.P. TV (NYC).
entrance, entrance, Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin.
Glitch, Rua Red, Dublin.
182nd RHA Annual Exhibition, Royal Hibernian Academy, Ireland.
2011
2011
1.7 Trillion Euro, Solas Nua, Washington D.C., USA.
Death & Sensuality, Mina Dresden Gallery, San Franscisco, USA.
Futures 2011, The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin, Ireland.
Dublin Contemporary 2011, Earlsfort Terrace.
14 - 5 = 126, G126, Galway, Ireland.
Free Art Stand, Emerge Art Fair, Peacock Projects, Washington D.C.
Upstart, The Dock, Leitrim, Ireland.
You remind me of a poem I can’t remember, to a tune that might never have existed,
in a place I’m not sure I’ve ever been to, Influx, Limerick. UM, Block T, Dublin, Ireland.
The Swimming Naked Prophecy, Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford, Ireland.
The New Connections, RuaRed
The Swimming Naked Prophecy, Riverbank Arts Centre, Kildare.
Upstart, Public Art Project, various locations, Dublin, Ireland.
2010
2010
Free Art Stand, O Cinema, Miami, USA.
Free Art Stand, SEVEN Art Fair (Winkleman Gallery), Miami, USA.
The Swimming Naked Prophecy, Mermaid Arts Centre Bray, Co. Wicklow.
Bizarre Bazaar, Pallas Contemporary Projects, Dublin, Ireland.
Unbuilding, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow, Ireland.
“Le Weekend de Sept Jours” (Seven Day Weekend), Galeries d’exposition de l’Ecole nationale superieure des beaux-arts, Paris, France.
2009
Meme, Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore,
It Goes On..., Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
The LASALLE Show 09, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore
This Must be the place, Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin, Ireland.
Town and Country, Across the Way Gallery & Studios, Kinsealy, Co. Dublin.
The La La, Praxis Gallery, Singapore.
2008
XMAS Show of some sort, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
Works on Paper, Tickleart, Citylink Mall, Singapore.
Winter Salon, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
Art is Good for You, A Bluetooth project around Thomas Street, Dublin, Ireland.
Snappy Close-up, Praxis Space, Lasalle, Singapore.
Straylight, Darklight Film Festival, Dublin, Ireland. Off-site video art exhibition.
ArtSwap, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
The Garden of Digital Lies, The Lab Gallery, Dublin, Ireland.
Bigfoot, Royal Hibernian Academy & Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
Flat Earth Society, The Substation, Singapore
Flat Earth Society, The LAB, Dublin, Ireland
2007
Hindu Cow Meanders On Towards the Slaughterhouse, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Dublin
Pass it On, Group Show, Monster Truck Gallery & Studios, Dublin
Screening: Play, Group Show, Studio 6, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
Pass it On, Cula Space, Gorey, Co. Wexford, Ireland.
Pass it On, Castlepalooza, Tullamore, Co. Offaly, Ireland.
CE@Xperiments: ‘Contact’, ASEF 10th Anniversary, Singapore.
Awards
2011 Visual Arts Bursary, Arts Council of Ireland.
2008 Travel & Training Award, Arts Council of Ireland.
2007 Bursary Award, Arts Council of Ireland, Ireland.
2006
New Work 2007 Project Grant, Arts Council of Ireland, Ireland.
Seeder Funding Grant, Dublin City Council, Ireland.
ASEF 2007 Project Grant, Asia Europe Foundation, Singapore.
2003 ASEF Creative Creative Camp, Asia-Europe Foundation.
Residency
2011-2014 Membership Studio, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland
2013 Seoul Art Space Geumcheon, Artist Residency, Seoul, South Korea.
2012 Tumblr.com, ‘Reblorg’ online residency, NYC, USA.
2011 Solas Nua Residency, Wshington D.C., USA.
Alan Butler
I fabricate mixed-media artworks and installations that exploit and reflect cultural vernaculars and political apathy. Through transformative appropriation, my work examines the lineage of ideologies through signs, cultural artifacts, history, banal by-products of technology and the unintentional political dispositions these produce.
Alan Butler and the Internet
Rayne Booth (Program Curator, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios)
Alan Butler probably does not like to be called an ‘Internet Artist’. He would not like his work to be pigeon holed or categorized in that particular way. The term ‘Internet Artist’ implies someone who works only with the internet and whose works are only locatable online. Butler’s works all exist very much within the ‘real world’. Despite this, there is no getting away from the fact that, for Butler, the Internet is a particular obsession; muse, medium and the constant object of critique. It is what allows him to access the news, what enables him to obtain 100 marker pens in a particular shade of pink, to make a vinyl decal of a never ending pepperoni pizza topping, to get paintings commissioned from factories in China and to access 3D-printable designs for semi-automatic weapons; just to let us know that these things exist. He filters the internet through his own particular mesh, processing the information so we don’t have to.
Using material gleaned from the online world, Butler remixes ideas and objects, mashing them together to form art objects, videos and installations that help us to come to terms this new reality in which we suddenly find ourselves. Butler’s works give us an excuse to form opinions on things we have been trained not to question, and to imagine how we can locate ourselves within this new paradigm of global information.
While working towards his Master Degree in Singapore in 2008, Butler put aside technical aids and computers to work on paper, obsessively creating huge multicolored drawings which produce nauseating optical illusions in the viewer. Interspersing these with mass media references and doctored global branding. The effect is sensory overload. This aesthetic carries through in all of his work. By bombarding his audience with references, noise, color and images, he mimics the way in which we have become used to receiving our media messages; a barrage on the senses.
His 2010 solo exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, was entitled ‘I know that you believe what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant’. This line is attributed to U.S. State Department spokesman Robert McCloskey at one of his regular noon briefings during the worst days of the Vietnam War. This example of double speak is reminiscent of other ‘feedback loops’ in Butler’s work. It has the effect of baffling and confusing the reader in much the same as his drawings do. As part of this show, the walls were covered in black vinyl squares, equally spaced in a grid all over the gallery, creating a giant version of the famously nauseating optical illusion which elusive fuzzy dots appear between gridded black squares on a white background. This treatment of the audience, almost a testing of them, reflects the artist’s attitude towards the art world in general; a push/pull relationship where he is almost disgusted by the systems in which he is embedded.
The ubiquity of the internet in his work reflects its ubiquity in our lives in the developed world. Like electricity or running water, the availability of Broadband is now seen as a necessity for industry and for everyday life, but Butler questions if we are really receiving information as freely as we think we are, and makes us ask ourselves, ‘what we should do with all of this information anyway?’
