Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas) 2007

The two Dust Storm works (Dalhart, Texas and Manter, Kansas) both derive from a single archival photograph, dating from the 1930s and depicting one of the legendary dust storms that ravaged the American middle West during that time.
The Dust Bowl, as the region was thereby deemed, has been identified historically as a central player in the economic slump of that time – the Great Depression.

In the works, a dust storm permanently looms on the contemporary landscape. Unfolding according to an autonomous and unscripted pattern, it is conceived by the artist as a sculptural form.

Each Dust Storm required the recreation within the virtual of up to ten square miles (16km) of real landscape, including all the windmills, farms and fences found therein. Built from an archive of thousands of on site photographs, together with publicly available satellite data, the works each required over six months to produce, time which was devoted to being as accurate and rich with detail as the technology implemented would allow.

Producer: Werner Poetzelberger
Programmer: Matthias Strohmaier
Modelling: Daniel Felsner
Additional modelling: Christina Pilsl
Presentation design: Jakob Illera / Inseq, Vienna

Exhibitions

Dust Storm (Manter) at Irish Museum of Modern Art, Ireland, 2011

27 May- 16 October 2011
'Twenty'
Group exhibition

As part of the celebrations marking the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s 20th anniversary,Twenty, presents a younger generation of Irish and international artists whose work is seen increasingly on the international stage. Commonalties and dialogues appear between the artworks in Twenty, but the exhibition seeks to allow sufficient space that each artists’ work may be viewed as an individual practice.
The show includes installations, photography, painting and sculpture, and featured are artworks from IMMA’s Collection by Orla Barry, Stephen Brandes, Nina Canell, Fergus Feehily, Patrick M FitzGerald, John Gerrard, David Godbold, Katie Holten, Paddy Jolley, Nevan Lahart, Niamh McCann, Willie McKeown, Perry Ogden, Liam O'Callaghan, Niamh O'Malley, Alan Phelan, Garrett Phelan, Eva Rothschild and Corban Walker. The exhibition also features a borrowed piece by Irish artist Sean Lynch.
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ww.imma.ie

Dust Storm (Manter) at Ivorypress, Madrid, Spain, 2011

7 February – 2 April 2011
'John Gerrard'
Solo exhibition

Ivorypress Art + Books Space I will be hosting an exhibition of John Gerrard (Dublin, 1974) from 7 February until April the second 2011.
This multidisciplinary artist's work combines new technologies with photography and poetic language, while also reflecting on political and social issues.
Among the works on display figures Cuban School (Sancti Spiritus), 2011 – comissioned by Ivorypress – a work that deals with the actual situation in Cuba out of an artistic perspective. Through hundreds of photographs of a school on the outskirts of Havana, Gerrard has constructed a 3D model and generated a software that allows the viewer to see the building from any distance and perspective. The work changes throughout the day and shows the lighting it would have in Cuba at the same moment we're seeing its image in Madrid. The condition of the building, which still functions as a school even as it falls to ruin, is a way to speak about melancholy and to envisage the effects of time on structures, whether architectonic or human.
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www.ivorypress.com/

Dust Storm (Manter) at PICA, Perth, Australia, 2011

16 February - 3 April 2011
'John Gerrard'
Solo exhibition
3000 cm x 2625 cm site–specific projection

The Perth Institute of Contemporary Art in partnership with the Perth International Arts Festival presents the first Australian solo exhibition by highly acclaimed Irish artist John Gerrard.

Gerrard has fast gained international recognition for his innovative work with slow-moving animated images of stark landscapes, which he describes as 'virtual sculptures'. The exhibition features meticulously created animated video works that depict in chilling realism infamous dust storms in Texas and Kansas during the 1930s, 24-hour circumnavigations of a fully automated pig farm in Kansas and the relentless movement of a lone oil derrick in Colorado. These scenes, which appear astonishingly real, are entirely fabricated by the artist and his studio using the new temporal medium of Realtime 3D, a technology principally employed by the gaming industry.
...
www.pica.org.au

Dust Storm (Manter) at Temple Bar Gallery and Studios, Dublin, Ireland, 2008

12 April – 24 May 2008
'John Gerrard / Joy Gerrard'
www.templebargallery.com

Research

Response

Press

Artner, Alan G.: "A New Medium Emerges at Resurgent Artropolis", Chicago Tribune, April 26, 2008

2011 · DUST STORM (MANTER) / IVORYPRESS, MADRID, SPAIN
2011 · DUST STORM (MANTER) / IVORYPRESS, MADRID, SPAIN
2011 · DUST STORM (MANTER) / IVORYPRESS, MADRID, SPAIN
2011 · DUST STORM (MANTER) / PICA, PERTH, AUSTRALIA
2011 · DUST STORM (MANTER) / PICA, PERTH, AUSTRALIA
Working Drawing for Dust Storm (Manter, Kansas) 2007 giglee print on hahnemuehle photorag 80 x 51 cm Edition of 15 + 5AP
Courtesy The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Courtesy The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin
Courtesy The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin

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