Things left undone
unsaid uncelebrated
unplanned unfinished
15 Feb 2024
18.30 – 20.30
FormaHQ
140 Great Dover Street
London
SE1 4GW
Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished
Jes Fernie, published by Askeaton Contemporary Arts
Thursday 15 February 2024
18.30 – 20.30
Forma is delighted to present the UK launch of Jes Fernie’s new publication Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished. In discussion with editor Sean Lynch, Jes will outline her research trips to Ireland during which she gathered stories about uncared-for artworks, forgotten writers and unsuccessful careers.
"This is a selection of mad, frayed, totally normal stories about undone, uncelebrated, abandoned things. They are spectacular, strange, problematic, hurtful, funny, ludicrous tales. They tell a bigger, messier story, rather than one that has been honed or finely crafted."
Jes writes about how art gets made, what happens to it, and how world affairs, personal circumstances, and misfortune bump up against dreams and hard graft. Her aim is to recognise, and even celebrate, the vulnerability, the strangeness and the arbitrariness of artistic endeavour and much of life in general.
Featuring Flemish-Irish artist Lily Van Oost, filmmaker Bob Quinn, the adventures of American artists Lawrence Weiner, Richard Serra and James Turrell in Ireland, sculptor Eilis O'Connell and writer Maeve Brennan, the publication is on sale at a special discounted price of £10.
Things left undone is published by ACA PUBLIC, an initiative of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Limerick, Ireland and is designed in partnership with Daly & Lyon.
Jes Fernie is a UK-based independent curator, writer and lecturer, interested in the social, political and environmental context in which art is made, situated, and viewed. In 2021, she launched the Archive of Destruction, an international research project that brings together narratives around public sculpture that has been destroyed by rage, boredom, fear, greed and love.
Sean Lynch is co-editor, alongside Michele Horrigan and Niamh Moriarty, of ACA PUBLIC, with over a dozen titles now available. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015 and has presented prominent exhibitions at Edinburgh Art Festival; City of Melbourne; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds and Modern Art Oxford.
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Bob Quinn, The Family, 1979. Video still
Jes Fernie, Things left undone unsaid uncelebrated unplanned unfinished, 2024. Launch at FormaHQ, London. Photo courtesy of Jes Fernie.
15 Feb 2024
18.30 – 20.30
FormaHQ
140 Great Dover Street
London
SE1 4GW