The truth always comes out in October, 2019 Exhibition text and info below :
Julie Lovett grew up on a dairy farm in rural County Kerry. After moving to Belfast in 2009, she spent the majority of her artistic career switching from hospitality jobs to the dole office, to the studio, and back again. Her work is born out of this situation and acknowledges that these circumstances dictate artists’ careers but can also generate material that allows them to reject, respond to, and interrogate these conditions.
“Hi there, my name is Julie Lovett and I am a professional photographer...” is a recurring statement that persistently appears in The truth always comes out in October and informs the premise of the episodic video and sculptural installations in the show. The exhibition engages with the act of identifying oneself as a ‘professional’ and with real and fictional narratives about frustration, labour, craft and performativity that underpin the everyday lived experiences of rural and urban environments.
The truth always comes out in October begins outside on the gallery window, and features video works presented as a six-part expanded monologue that were filmed in both Belfast and Kerry and sculptural objects that also appear as props in the films. The introductory titles of the films reference self-guidance books and home-help manuals from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Influenced by numbing soap-operas, an overload of self-help culture, and the subtle comedy of daily life, the works in the exhibition explore Julie Lovett’s processes, identity and sense of place. They aim to connect the banal occurrences and emotive complexities of the everyday activities of the precarious artist with those of the general public, and position the gallery as a dynamic site of display and production.
Above is video documentation of the featured exhibition, ‘The truth always comes out in October’ (2019) which was filmed during its live presentation. The location and duration of the show was at PS2 Project Space, Belfast from 7th-26th October 2019.