Time for a long overdue update. The summer is flying by and a few things have happened since last. I was in Sweden for the second half of May. While there I made a photo project for a group exhibition in the Niland Gallery, Galway curated by Mary Conlon, Shinnors scholar at the Limerick City gallery. The title for the show was “Hammer and feather – experiments in space“. I decided to respond to this theme by making a site-specific intervention in the woods in the area near where I grew up in Sweden.
The title for the piece is “Range Lat: +58.663979 Lon: +15.099152“. Type the coordinates into google maps and you’ll get the exact location of the intervention. I was working with ideas of mapping out space, of using caution tape to mark the danger zone within range of a particular hunters’ shelter but also to use the tape to track the eye movement of the viewer . I had found the shelter when I walked in the woods last October and had been intrigued by the fact that there was an orange modernist chair inside of it. I had thought of working with the shelter in some way since then and this proved to be the perfect opportunity.
It was a joy to work with Mary Conlon, who is an excellent curator, and the exhibition, which included work by Tim Acheson, David Beattie, Karl Burke, Cecilia Danell, Angela Fulcher, Dana Gentile, Ann Maria Healy, Clare Lymer, Laura McMorrow and Victoria McCormack was praised for being interesting and cohesive. A recent review written by Michaele Cutaya can be read here: http://www.showerofkunst.com/2011/07/hammer-and-feather-experiments-in-space.html
Niland Gallery opening.
My work in the exhibition can be viewed :here:
Two out of the four images I showed in the exhibition.
Just after I came back from Sweden I received a Project Award from the Arts Council for the project “Build your own: Scandinavian Loneliness“, a flat pack series commenting on society’s promotion of happiness as a commodity. I have enlisted artist Fiona Hession, who did sculpture in college, to help me with some of the technical aspects of casting parts of the model set. I am in the middle of ordering materials and figuring out details of the production phase, and I’m delighted to have once again got the backing of the Arts Council.
A few days ago I also got a delivery of wood for two large stretchers. For those fo you who don’t know, stretchers are the wooden frames that painters stretch their canvas over. The larger one of the stretcher is roughly 130 x 160 cm in size. It’s a long time since I worked that big so I’m quite excited about getting started! Since coming back from Sweden I have also made five smaller paintings, which will form part of a larger body of work while also serving as a sort of testing ground before getting started on the larger canvases. They deal with juxtapositions between natural and man-made, modernism and romanticism, the straight line versus the free flowing organic, surrealism versus the hyper real. If this sounds confusing you can rest assured that there will be more info to follow in due course.
I have also just started off a new piece using paper clips as its main material titled “Hide #2”, so I’m about to head to a friend’s house now to use her sewing machine and prepare the ground. It will be a continuation of my work with paper clips that I did for the Live@8 at Occupy Space, Limerick in early May. (See :here:)