Hales Gallery is pleased to announce the inclusion of Michael Smith's work in a major new exhibition at the MAC Galleries, Belfast. Double Act: Art and Comedy will run from 6th May to 31st July 2016.
The exhibition aims to explore how comedy is important in shaping meaning, and how it can help us negotiate the complexities of everyday life.
What we find funny can be cruel and hateful, it can establish symbolic boundaries that divide people into distinct groups, setting those with power against those without and vice-versa. But it is also a way of binding people together; providing consolation, a sense of shared experience and a powerful weapon of resistance.
Double Act will present the multiple forms of the comedic as it is manifest through the experience of contemporary art. Drawing together artists from diverse cultural and political contexts, each of whom share an interest in humour as a resource with which to animate their art practice and connect with an audience, both local and international, this exhibition will explore questions of cultural distinctiveness in an increasingly globalised world.
The curators, David Campbell and Mark Durden, are founding members of the artists’ group Common Culture. This project stems from explorations in their own work of the comedic impulse within contemporary British culture and is part of the MAC’s Guest Curator Programme.
Michael Smith
Double Act: Art and Comedy
6 May - 31 July 2016
The MAC Galleries
10 Exchange Street West
Belfast, BT1 2NJ,
Ireland
