A neosuper closing party for the Pharmacy

The Model are delighted to announce the final New Spaces for Music gig later this month featuring the awesome Neosupervital. On February 27th the Wolf on Arm Studio space will rock/pop one last time before we return to our brand new building on The Mall.

Neosupervital ( aka Tim O’Donovan from Dublin) makes pop music for dancing and related activities.  Set to release his second album later this year this Sligo gig will be a chance to catch his toe-tapping inducing live set before he heads off to the prestigious Canadian Music Week in Toronto in March.  Want a free download? Course you do – just head on over to his Myspace page to download his latest release mp3 for ‘Dance With You‘ for free .

Do What you Feel- video

Neosupervital’s self-titled debut album was released in late 2006 and it’s success resulted in Tim sharing the stage acts like Tom Vek, Money Mark, and Telepathe among many others.

The video for Rachel was picked up by MTV2 and this was swiftly followed by a tour with the Human League through Ireland, the UK and Europe. If you’ve seen him do his thing on stage it’ll be no surprise that the live show is where it’s at for Tim  “I want to taste the sweat and feel the people”, he says.

Here’s a review of him doing just that:“…The place was rammed with punters in seconds. Clawing our way to the front was well worth the wounds, Tim O’Donovan never fails to entertain and this evening’s performance was no different. Working his way through the sea of sweaty dancing bodies to serenade them while standing on the bar and inviting adoring fans to join him onstage, that Neosupervital magic got every foot in the venue stomping. Those flashing shades, the infectious electro beats coupled with O’Donovan’s witty banter and boundless energy make for an aural and visual experience to be contended with. . . .He’s like a cross between the energiser bunny and Bowie!  Unpredictable? Yes, but we can’t wait to see what he does next!”.

RSVP the event here on Facebook. Tickets are on sale now at €10 with a complimentary free drink upon arrival. To book call The Model now on 071 91 41405. Early booking is advisable.

Model success on ‘follow a museum day’

On Monday February 1st, the ‘Follow a Museum Day‘ was established by Jim Richardson who blogs over at Museum Marketing. The initiative was set up to encourage more people to follow museums on twitter, and throughout the day recommendations were tweeted from all over the world. We’d like to say thanks to everyone who recommended us to follow (though we are technically a gallery!). Looking at our stats, it would appear that we gained around forty new followers in one day. This usually takes about two-three weeks to gain this many, so it was tremendously successful for us to participate in. We currently have 771 followers tweeting with us.

Over one million people are following museums on Twitter.
What if each of these people told a friend about a museum that they enjoy following?
What if someone who hasn’t visited a museum for years was inspired to engage with art by Twitter?
What if more people used Twitter to tell museums what they think about their exhibitions?

During our redevelopment phase we have used social networks, and specifically twitter to let people know what exactly has been happening behind the scenes, as well as keeping them up-to-date on our extensive offsite programme at The Model satellite. Twitter has also been a great tool to connect with audiences much wider a field  than Sligo and the Northwest. More recently we have been using twitter to give previews of our exciting programme that will launch when we reopen the new building.  On Monday we can talk to people in Dublin about an artist that may be showing there who is due at The Model later in the year, or on Tuesday, we can let a tourist making plans for a trip to Ireland next summer know about our major Jack B. Yeats exhibition this July.

The Irish arts community is also widely using the site to stay in contact, and it definitely proved an important tool in the success of the National Campaign for the Arts in Ireland in 2009.

Our favourite local museums include @glucksman @thedockarts @ruared @projectarts @monstertruckGS @ngIreland.

So, Thank you to Jim Richardson, and thank you to all our new followers. We are looking forward to the exciting year ahead and tweeting with you!

-Denise-

Lara, Jack B. Yeats, and a wintery night in Mayo

Jack B. Yeats, Sea and Lighthouse, 1949, Oil On Board, The Niland Collection © The Estate of Jack B. Yeats 2005. All rights reserved DACS

Lara Byrne, Assistant Curator at The Model, recently brought a tour of  forty people around the Jack B. Yeats’ exhibition ‘ Jack B. Yeats and the west of Ireland’ currently on show in the Ballina Arts Centre in County Mayo. Below she blogs about her first experience on tour since 2007.

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I didn’t get on the road until 5.30pm and had to be in Ballina to give a tour on an exhibition, Jack B. Yeats & The West of Ireland (drawn from the Niland Collection) in the Ballina Arts Centre at seven – the only thing was the weather was pretty desperate, squalling wind and rain, making the drive down pretty hairy.  I found their temporary quarters in the Ballina Civic Centre 10 minutes before kick off. Like The Model, they are are going  through a major re-development, which includes a brand new extension to their existing premises on Barrett Street, with dance studios, an extra gallery and a 250 seat theatre.  While they are at the beginning of their new works, which will be ready in a year, we at The Model are nearly finished, with doors opening to the public in the next two months.

I hadn’t done a tour of the Yeats paintings from The Niland Collection in two years, so the evening before I had a quick recap over my notes and a flick through the world expert on Yeats; Hilary Pyle – a hefty 3 volume tome on Yeats.  I had twenty-three paintings to talk about, all drawn from The Niland Collection which I know well, but with only one slight hitch, I didn’t know how they were going to be arranged in the gallery space. So with 10 minutes to spare before the talk (thanks to the weather) I had just enough time for a quick chat with the director, Sean Walsh and a speedy run through the hang.  All the old favourites were there with a really nice cross section of Yeats’ work on display, from his earliest pen & ink illustrations, through his watercolours and his late work- the boldly painted oil paintings.

About forty interested members of the public had got into their cars on a horrible winters’ evening to come to the tour, I was delighted with the turn out and it was great to see the genuine love that the people of Mayo have for Jack B. Yeats life and work.