Preview 7.30-9.30
8th - 23rd September
Open Monday - Saturday by appointment

Difference Engine (DE) presents the tenth collective experiment of the evolving work of Gillian Lawler, Jessica Foley, Mark Cullen and Wendy Judge .

DE invited by artist / curator Tracy Hanna to install a context-sensitive exhibition at ONONO gallery, Rotterdam in a 20th century apartment located in the Old Charlois district of Rotterdam.
Difference Engine is the case for installations that respond to context. ONONO offers intriguing conditions that will place their work in a pseudo domestic sphere. This repurposed apartment is an enticing context to develop new improvisations together and to open up conversations at close quarters through the force of compression. Travellator offers The intersection between the realities of artistic production in this contemporary city against the jostling of its own mechanisms as a group.

Difference Engine is both an evolving exhibition and a model of artist-led curation by Wendy Judge, Gillian Lawler, Mark Cullen and Jessica Foley who have been working and touring together since 2009.

Their collective name is lifted from the 19th century work of Charles Babbage. , the world's first mechanical computational machine: The Difference Engine. Babbage was a cantankerous mathematician, philosopher, inventor, mechanical engineer and notorious collaborator with the world's first computer programmer, Lady Ada Lovelace.

Adopting the name Difference Engine as a child or poetic motto for working together creatively, pragmatically and critically, they particularly enjoy Babbage's aphorism that "Jamming is a form of Error Detection," and this is something of a slogan for collective experimentation and collaboration.
Difference Engine play with the idea of ​​'jamming' as both a way of making art and a way of life. In one sense 'jamming' signifies stasis, shock, or rupture, but in another sense it signals change, growth, improvisation and invigoration between players. Their work combines model-making, painting, multi-media installation and performance. They want this project at ONONO to force a compression, ramping up the tensions inherent in creative collaboration. They expect some sparks to fly.
Previous exhibitions include, Accumulator III, Limerick City Gallery, 2013, Accumulator II, Oriel Myrrdin Gallery, Wales, 2013, Accumulator, West Cork Arts Center, 2012, Manifestation V, SOMA Contemporary, Waterford, 2012, Manifestation IV, Wexford Arts Center, 2012, Manifestation III, CSV Cultural Arts Center, New York, 2011, Manifestation II, ESB Sub-Station, Triskel Arts Center and Black Mariah, Cork, 2010, Manifestation, Cake Contemporary Arts, Kildare, 2009.

This event is kindly supported by Culture Ireland.