Details
Chosen from more than 800 submissions, this year's shortlist includes artists from Ireland, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Croatia Austria, France, Turkey, Palestine, USA and Canada. The artists featured in MAC International 2018 are:
Anca Benera & Arnold Estefan / Ali Cherri / Larissa Fassler / Nikolaus Gansterer / Invernomuto (Simone Bertuzzi & Simone Trabucchi) / Ronan McCrea / Aisling O’Beirn / Vesna Pavlović / Renata Poljak / Larissa Sansour / Özge Topçu.
The works in MAC International 2018 take many forms; from photography and film, through to installation, sculpture and painting. Conceptually, they address some of the main concerns facing artists, and wider society, today. Many of the artworks in this year’s MAC International address issues around land, borders and territory; some through an investigation of urban spaces, others through geological or archaeological enquiry. Other works critique the legitimacy of dominant historical and political narratives or call into question the very nature of fact and fiction in our apparently ‘post-truth’ world of fake news and social media. Other works explore more material concerns, providing investigations of particular mediums and modes of artistic expression.
What will be evident as you move through the gallery spaces is that not only do the works in MAC International 2018 provide an overview of contemporary artistic practice, but in engaging with dominant social, cultural and political concerns, they also provide a global perspective on the world we live in today.
One of the 13 artists featured in the project, deemed to have made an outstanding contribution to the exhibition, was awarded the prestigious MAC International Prize of 20,000 GBP. This is the largest art prize in Ireland and one of the few major art prizes in the UK. The MAC International Prize 2018 was awarded to Austrian artist Nikolaus Gansterer for his piece Wor(l)ding: a mesh work of sense of flux.
Previous winners of MAC International are Mairéad McClean (2014) and Jasmina Cibic (2016).
The MAC International jury for 2018 was comprised of Hugh Mulholland, Senior Curator at the MAC Belfast; Anne Barlow, Director at Tate St Ives; and Başak Şenova, Curator, CrossSections (Vienna, Helsinki and Stockholm).
For an easy to read guide to the exhibition, why not check out our map? We make it easy to explore our galleries whether you have 5 minutes, 20 minutes or an hour to spend.
We highly recommend you download our audio guide here to accompany your tour of the exhibition. It is completely free and gives a curator's insight into the major themes of the exhibition.
The exhibition runs from November 9, 2018–March 31, 2019.
Supported by Arts Council NI, Belfast City Council and Tourism NI.
About the Artist
About the Artist
Vesna Pavlović
Vesna Pavlović (b. 1970, Serbia/US) holds MFA degree in Visual Arts from Columbia University. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Phillips Collection Washington DC, Frist Art Museum Nashville, and Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade. Group shows include Untitled, 12th Istanbul Biennial, Württembergischen Kunstverein, Düsseldorf Germany, KUMU Art Museum Tallinn, Estonia, New Art Gallery Walsall UK, Bucharest Biennale 5 Romania, Photographers’ Gallery London, UK. She is a recipient of Fulbright Scholar Award, George A. and Eliza Gardner Howard Foundation fellowship, and Art Matters Grant. Vesna Pavlović’s Lost Art: Archive, Photography, and Display, by Morna O’Neill was published in 2017.
Meet the Judges
Meet the Judges
