With its gallery space out of commission and its shows at the Project @ the Mint so successful, the Project has become more better known as a theatre than as the arts centre it really is. So it was good to see two books and a multimedia CD ROM coming from the Project stable this week. Perfor]mance: The Project Papers, 40,000m (squqred) and Skyeye made their first appearance on Monday night and were duly celebrated with a party in Life, the new bar in Middle Abbey Street.
The first is exactly what its title says - papers delivered by the likes of Mick Wilson and Elaine Sisson on performance. It's a neat little volume produced by Dogbowl and Bones, aka artists David Godbold and Finola Jones, who both came along on Monday night. Finola is just back from Poland, where she exhibited a huge red carpet made of roses as part of the Passport exhibition in Warsaw. Next stop for the pair is the US, for a "blast of that New York energy".
The other volume is a record of the work of the four artists invited by the Project to exhibit in Marseille as part of L'Imaginaire Irlandais in 1996. All four, Tina O'Connell, Rachel Joynt, Peter O'Kennedy and Conor Kelly were checking out what their work looked like after designer Ed Shipsey got his hands on it. The man behind Skeye is Tony Patrickson.
Publisher Mari-aymone Djeribi was interested in the publications - she just got an Arts Council grant to produce two art books on her own printing press later in the year. Director Jimmy Fay was full of holiday plans, having just finished an extended run of Alex Johnston's adaptation of At Swim-Two-Birds at the Peacock. He's hoping for a last minute jaunt to Morocco.