For this artist talk, Jackman Goldwasser researcher-artist duo Vagabond Reviews will discuss their upcoming project throughout their residency, Missing Titles Chicago. This project invites participants to send a missing title for an unwritten body of work. These titles are meant to illuminate the artists’ understanding and way of thinking about Chicago. This project is intended to be both urgent and needed as a way to reconsider a city’s transformation.

Based in Dublin, Vagabond Reviews is an interdisciplinary arts initiative established in 2007 by artist Ailbhe Murphy and independent researcher Ciaran Smyth. Their practice meets in the territory where art and social science encounter each other as particular forms of inquiry. As an interdisciplinary platform, Vagabond Reviews seeks to bring those two registers together by developing creative and collaborative models of knowledge production, representation and distribution through a combination of art practice, research strategies and critical review.

While in Chicago (July 14 –August 24), they hope to engage with a wide variety of researchers, artists and practitioners around topics including architecture, urban planning, socially engaged art and others avenues of exploration that critically consider the landscape of Chicago.

Vagabond Reviews

Co-founded by Ailbhe Murphy and Ciaran Smyth, Vagabond Reviews is an interdisciplinary platform combining socially engaged art and research practice. They are interested in engaging broader publics in alternative forms of cultural participation and knowledge production.

Recent projects include Scientia Civitatis: Missing Titles for the exhibition Phoenix Rising, Art and the Civic Imagination at the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery curated by Logan Sisley and the Arcade Project, which explores arts-based pedagogy in youth work with the Rialto Youth Project, Dublin 8. Other projects include (In)Visible Labour Factorium for the National Women’s Council of Ireland’s Legacy Project, curated by Valerie Connor. The Legacy project exhibition ‘Still, We Work’ was launched in the Gallery of Photography in Dublin in November 2014 and is currently on tour in Ireland. Also the Sliabh Bán Art House (2011-2012) a participatory public art project commissioned by Galway City Council’s Arts Office and the Cultural Archaeology (2009 – 2010) an arts-based research initiative in collaboration with the community development project Fatima Groups United, Rialto.

Upcoming projects include Temporary Institute for the Study of Contemporary Systemic Violence at Workhouse Union in Callan Co. Kilkenny curated by Hollie Kearns and Rosie Lynch. Murphy is also Director of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts in Ireland.