Past Projects

As winner of the Fire Station / Arts and Disability Ireland ‘Studio Award  for an Artist  with a Disability’ (2008/09)  during her residency Noëmi Lakmaier developed her site specific installation based practice in the Fire  Station Artists Studios, which culminated in an installation-performance  in the LAB in June 2009. Incorporating the body  into  the sculptural medium itself, playing with the role of viewer, as well as exploring issues around control and power are all central concerns  within Lakmaier’s   practice.

This installation entitled ‘We Are For You Because We Are Against Them’ invited the public to take on the role of voyeur and observe an elaborately staged dinner party. Eight pre-selected volunteer diners participated in this event which combined both elements of the uncanny and the absurd where a normally private dinner party became the object of the public gaze.

This installation, developed specifically for the LAB, is an extension of artist Noëmi Lakmaier’s earlier work titled ‘Exercise in Losing Control’ performed in 2007. This piece involved the artist wedging herself into a ‘weeble’ – a bright yellow ball 55cm in diameter- for over two hours in the gallery space. Inspired by the child’s toy marketed during the 1970’s with the slogan “weebles wobble but they don’t fall down”, this work highlighted central concerns of the artist’s practice around issues of control and power and how we assert and relinquish both.

Through inviting volunteers to partake in this dinner party performance  in the LAB, both the artist and the public become the voyeur. Notions of ‘we’ ‘them’ and ‘other’ shift as participants within a normally private dinner party become objects of the public gaze.