Suspended Temporality

The exhibition presented here by Catriona Leahy and Katsutoshi Yuasa, at the C-Mine Culturcentrum in Genk, Belgium, set out to explore the lasting impact of the recent industrial past, and the legacy the mining heritage had and continues to have on Genk’s landscape. What remains of this industrial heartland provided a contextual backdrop for the work. The works echo with resonances from the dilapidated, fragmented site, but rather than focussing on the architectural grandeur of these majestic and ruined mining shafts, Catriona’s attention is directed to the landscape, which shows an altogether different manifestation of the effects this mining industry had over time. In a sense, a latent image, that might constitute a rupture in the fabric of the present. Catriona and Katsutoshi have a background in the graphic arts and have a keen interest in the remains of cultural phenomena that have since lost their place in contemporary society. These can be both visual relics such as buildings whose function has been made redundant, but also old traditions that are slowly disappearing. Both artists spent several months in Genk drawing parallels between the situation in Genk and respectively Ireland and Japan

Time, Chemistry, Chance and Human Design

Four MA Fine Art students from the University of Northampton have raised the funds they need to be able to publish their own art book that will now be housed in the special collections library at the TATE Britain

Cediranib in patients with alveolar soft-part sarcoma (CASPS):a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, phase 2 trial

Background Alveolar soft-part sarcoma (ASPS) is a rare soft-tissue sarcoma that is unresponsive to chemotherapy. Cediranib, a tyrosine-kinase inhibitor, has shown substantial activity in ASPS in non-randomised studies. The Cediranib in Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma (CASPS) study was designed to discriminate the effect of cediranib from the intrinsically indolent nature of ASPS.Methods In this double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, phase 2 trial, we recruited participants from 12 hospitals in the UK (n=7), Spain (n=3), and Australia (n=2). Patients were eligible if they were aged 16 years or older; metastatic ASPS that had progressed in the previous 6 months; had an ECOG performance status of 0-1; life expectancy of more than 12 weeks; and adequate bone marrow, hepatic, and renal function. Participants had to have no anti-cancer treatment within 4 weeks before trial entry, with exception of palliative radiotherapy. Participants were randomly assigned (2:1), with allocation by use of computer-generated random permuted blocks of six, to either cediranib (30 mg orally, once daily) or matching placebo tablets for 24 weeks. Treatment was supplied in number-coded bottles, masking participants and clinicians to assignment. Participants were unblinded at week 24 or sooner if they had progression defined by Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (version 1.1); those on placebo crossed over to cediranib and all participants continued on treatment until progression or death. The primary endpoint was percentage change in sum of target marker lesion diameters between baseline and week 24 or progression if sooner, assessed in the evaluable population (all randomly assigned participants who had a scan at week 24 [or sooner if they progressed] with target marker lesions measured). Safety was assessed in all participants who received at least one dose of study drug. This study is registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, number NCT01337401; the European Clinical Trials database, number EudraCT2010-021163-33; and the ISRCTN registry, number ISRCTN63733470 recruitment is complete and follow-up is ongoing.Findings Between July 15, 2011, and July 29, 2016, of 48 participants recruited, all were randomly assigned to cediranib (n=32) or placebo (n=16). 23 (48%) were female and the median age was 31 years (IQR 27-45). Median follow-up was 34·3 months (IQR 23·7-55·6) at the time of data cutoff for these analyses (April 11, 2018). Four participants in the cediranib group were not evaluable for the primary endpoint (one did not start treatment, and three did not have their scan at 24 weeks). Median percentage change in sum of target marker lesion diameters for the evaluable population was -8·3% (IQR -26·5 to 5·9) with cediranib versus 13·4% (IQR 1·1 to 21·3) with placebo (one-sided p=0·0010). The most common grade 3 adverse events on (blinded) cediranib were hypertension (six [19%] of 31) and diarrhoea (two [6%]). 15 serious adverse reactions in 12 patients were reported; 12 of these reactions occurred on open-label cediranib, and the most common symptoms were dehydration (n=2), vomiting (n=2), and proteinuria (n=2). One probable treatment-related death (intracranial haemorrhage) occurred 41 days after starting open-label cediranib in a patient who was assigned to placebo in the masked phase.Interpretation Given the high incidence of metastatic disease and poor long-term prognosis of ASPS, together with the lack of efficacy of conventional chemotherapy, our finding of significant clinical activity with cediranib in this disease is an important step towards the goal of long-term disease control for these young patients. Future clinical trials in ASPS are also likely to involve immune checkpoint inhibitors.Funding Cancer Research UK and AstraZeneca

Relief in Time | Time in Relief

The title for the exhibition, Relief in Time | Time in Relief, was taken from a text by Roger Shattuck in response to Marcel Proust’s understanding of time, the sense that an accumulation of similar yet slightly different viewpoints produces a sense of volume, dimensionality and relief in time. The exhibition at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, takes a former coal mine as the backdrop for the work. Dominated by a grey monochrome palette, a fragmented panoramic image takes up a dynamic position in the corner of the room. The work extends a nod to traditional printmaking attributes, with subtle interventions of doubling and mirroring of the image, suggesting the unrelenting repetition of the daily grind of the miners. However, the image's incapacity to complete that loop in this particular instance, reminds us of the finite nature of this non-renewable resource. A series of 6 drawings on graphite transfer-paper, produced in the same way you would produce a monoprint, appear almost in relief and reference the floor installation, a map, layed down using stencils and coal dust, depicting the subterranean tunnels of the coal mine. The work tests the boundaries of printmaking within contemporary practice and brings the practice of print into the public domain within a prestigious museum context

Aesthetics of Disappearance; Social Deconstruction; Sedimentation

Coup de Ville is a Triennial exhibition of contemporary art by internationally selected artists, hosted by WARP Contemporary Art Platform in the city of Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. Continuing my enquiry into the remains of cultural phenomena that has been lost or displaced over time, the work for this exhibition responds to the history and architectural heritage of the city of Sint-Niklaas. The work reads as a melancholy look at a town where fading legibility acts as an analogy for the inevitability of impermanence and shifting social, geographical and cultural imperatives. To that end, the emphasis for the work lies within the structure of a bandstand which once stood in the main square but which was since dismantled, put into storage for 20 years, only then to be resurrected and reinstated in another location. The work is executed through printmaking processes and video. The use of fragile Japanese paper which has been hand printed with layers of black ink on black to simultaneously reveal and conceal the image of the bandstand, shows the structure "as a kind of Fata Morgana mirage, or more precisely a ghost from the past" - the piece aptly titled "Aesthetics of Disappearance". In the second piece, "Social Deconstruction" a found image of the dismantling of the bandstand has been reproduced to large scale, once again on Japanese paper and in a fragmented form. This device of fragmentation puts the vulnerability, malleability and the replaceability of the bandstand - and by extension Cultural Heritage in general - to the fore. The video projection, "Sedimentation" sees an illustration of the grandeur of the City Hall in Sint-Niklaas. The loose sheet of paper absorbs water until it is saturated. The ink runs, the image blurs. It is a meditation on time as soon, only a shadowy form of what might have been remains

Statements

The exhibition Statements features prints by international artists who have been invited to participate in the 3rd International Printmaking Symposium in a variety of ways, with lectures, demonstration workshops, panel discussions, or other forms of presentation on a wide range of topics, unified through the common ground of printmaking. All artists are experts in their profession, and will be represented in this exhibition with a selection of works that provide the visitor with a “statement” of their artistic practices. Artists include: Valerie Byrne, Paul Coldwell, Ramón J. Freire Santa Cruz, Joscelyn Gardner, Katrin Graalmann, Catherine Hehir, Tracy Hill, Catriona Leahy, Sarah Pike, Endi Poskovic, Ton Martens, Henk Tichelaar, Christoph Loos, Claas Gutsche, Ton Marten

Temporal Dissonance

"Temporal Dissonance" (23 September - 6 November 2011) focused on how the evolution of print practice has associations with notions of the anachronistic – traditions, objects, or technologies that sit outside of their normal, temporal domains. This research project in Germany was supported by Culture Ireland and culminated in the solo exhibition by the same name. Printmaking, when considered in the contexts of a means of mass communication and information dissemination, is an anachronistic modus operandi, superseded by advances in digital technology and the virtual world. However, printmaking also harnesses attributes of new technologies and fuses it with traditional processes and theories, resulting in a particular kind of hybridity. The outcome is a creative collision that is temporally and aesthetically discordant

Relief in time | Time in relief. Expanded printmaking as a conduit for temporal dissonance and the anachronistic

This paper, presented at "SNAP3", the 3rd International Printmaking Symposium, Kloster-Bentlage, Germany, discusses how the expanded language of printmaking serves as an appropriate and dynamic conveyor for my research interests into Temporal Dissonance and the Anachronistic. Through the lens of particular sites, often redundant or in a state of flux between dilapidation and development, I try to draw into focus how the past inflects the present altering our conventional understanding of time or our fixed notions of the past, rendering it unstable, malleable and open to reinterpretation. Such reinterpretations are not fixed on a linear axis nor draw from singular sources but are manifested as a multiplicity of different viewpoints with connections and disconnections, creating an image of time and a view of history as one that in the words of Hal Foster, appears to “ramify like a weed or a rhizome”. Time, in these instances, appears displaced and out of sync. Within such sites and spaces, imbued with multiple, overlapping temporalities; time becomes a thing of form, dimensionality and depth, and therefore, seen in relief. This paper was conceived of in tandem with a body of artwork richly informed by printmaking and exhibited at the Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede Holland 27th September – 15th November 2015