Rolfe’s early performative works – without the term “performance” already having entered the discourse – were deepened in the 1980s with regard to the media of sound, video and photography. In parallel, Rolfe began to develop political and activist works: In powerful images and performances (e.g. “The Rope That Binds Us Makes Them Free”, 1983), he addressed the Irish Civil War (The Troubles), colonial oppression or even his own identity conflict as a British artist in Ireland – debatesthat have not lost their relevance to this day. Atthe latest since the release of his album“Lament”, 1992, on Peter Gabriels music label“Real World Records”, Rolfe is also known as amusician and producer. Rolling StonesMagazine named “Lament” “one of the bestworld music albums of all-time”.

The versatile artist is currently working on new sound works and his album “Island Stories” is recently rereleased by All City Records/Bandcamp.
Performance art itself always remains central to his multimedia work: The finite, spatially situated body in exchange with the textures of the world. “I’ve been shown in many museums and retrospectives, but, in recent years, I am performing outside, returning to first principles, putting my body and self into the work, live and present. Why do this? Some ground rules for myself to share: be direct, don’t rely on habit, stay fresh, live firsthand, always make work about something”, says Nigel Rolfe.

Major retrospectives of Nigel Rolfe’s work have been shown at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and in 2018 in the Red Brick Museum in Beijing He has been part of the São Paulo, Busan, Venice and Gwangju Biennials and has been widely represented in international solo and group exhibitions. Rolfe has been a professor at the Royal College of Art in London and a lecturer at many universities in the USA and Europe and Asia, as well as a visiting professor at Yale University.

The spectator only recalls the parts kept in color in which Picasso is painting on a glass slab, he does not remember that the movie is mainly in black and white.

The exhibition The Real World is in black and white leads to the questioning of the notion of truth in color. A new found unity between night and day can be perceived.

The exhibition presents pieces from different artists working around black and around white, or using color in a way that unexpectedly, doesn’t give the spectator the immediate impression to be in front of color.

Born in the Isle of Wight in 1950, Rolfe has lived and worked in Dublin, Ireland since 1974. He has worked intensively and made significant contributions as an artist, curator, activist and scholar. Rolfe is an elected member of the Irish association of artists, Aosdana. His work—spanning live performance, ( since 1975 ) photography, ( since 1979 ) video ( since 1980 )  and sound—has received international acclaim and has been presented in five continents, in more than 30 countries. Rolfe has created live performances throughout Europe, in the former Eastern Block, in North and South America, in the Far East—in China, Korea and Japan. De Appel in Amsterdam, Franklin Furnace in New York, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in London were early champions of Rolfe’s installation and performance work. Major retrospectives of his work have been held at the Irish Museum Of Modern Art in Dublin and at the Musee D’Art Moderne de la Ville De Paris. He has exhibited in the Dublin, Paris, Sao Paulo, Busan, Kwangju and Venice Biennales and presented in numerous international art fairs.

PRACTICE
The central contention of Rolfe’s practice is that art making is a live and vital engagement. He studied sculpture and in the 1970’s used the term « Sculptures In Motion » to describe his work using materials across time—long before the term performance was put forward as any descriptor. Later these direct material engagements became highly produced and staged. Rolfe employed multi-media to articulate his largely political and activist voice as an artist. The demands Rolfe placed on large-scale production 1980s led to his ongoing research and engagement with audio and video/film production. Hand on Face was shown worldwide to an audience of 600 million people in 67 countries at the Concert To release Nelson Mandela in 1988 at Wembley Stadium in London. Rolfe continues to install sound and video work produced at broadcast standard.

He employs video not as a tool of documentation but to investigate and test his own physical and psychological limits, using his body as a site for challenging his limitations and revealing vulnerability.

Nigel Rolfe’s work engages sociopolitical concerns of have and have-not and fault lines in society. Since moving to Ireland he has been consistently involved in such issues both locally and directly. At the time of the death of Ann Lovett, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl from Granard, County Longford, who died giving birth beside a grotto on 31 January 1984, Rolfe wrote Middle of The Island. Recorded by Christy Moore and Sinead O’Conner, this song has become a world music classic and epitaph as monument and marker to her short life and sad end. Rolfe’s work with sound and audio production includes a number of internationally distributed recordings that have widespread recognition, notable Lament on Real World Records, 1992. Lament, a recording of traditional musicians created as a monument to the loss of life in Irelands urban war « The Troubles », was listed as one of Rolling Stone Magazines best albums of all-time, and described as « a stunning piece of work…each track is a call to the spirits of life in the face of devastation. »

Meeting with the artist at Polaris Galerie on  Friday May 29 at 5 pm

And Saturday May 30 from 12 to 6 pm