The opening of the Dock Discourse project in the 126 Gallery on the 11th June went really well, with a fantastic turn out. I could barely get into the gallery by the time I arrived. You can see photos from the opening here. During the course of the exhibition there has also been a discussion event in the gallery and on site installations in the middle pier of the dock by some of the participating artists. I’d like to extend my thanks to everyone who has participated, supported and visited the exhibition, which is closing tomorrow.
Video installation by Michelle Browne
There was a talk in the Galway Arts Centre by curator Maeve Mulrennan on the 29th July about the {un}familiar exhibition, which was also well attended. Over the last couple of weeks I have been making work for two other group shows which will be opening soon. The new work is a continuation of the work I made for the {un}familiar show, based around the shelter in the woods in Sweden.
The first show is called Outside: Insight and is a site specific sculpture exhibition in Brigit’s Garden in Rosscahill, Co. Galway featuring several emerging artists. My piece is entitled “Construction of self” and continues to deal with the house as a metaphor for the self. The exhibition runs from the 11th July until the end of August.
Work in progress.
I am also working on a series of ink paintings for ‘Enrage’ in the White Room Gallery, Galway. A show featuring Engage studios artists for the Galway Arts Festival. The curator is Ian McInerney from the Black Mariah in Cork. All work featured is being confined to black/white or grayscale. I’m really enjoying working within these strict parameters for a change, since I normally tend to use a lot of colour in my work. The Arts Festival runs between the 12th – 25th July.
Apart from this I will also be showing work alongside Shane O’Connor and Carolyn Walsh in the Mad Art Gallery in Dublin between the 15th – 21st July. The show is entitled “That Robot Aint Candy” and the three artists taking part are all dealing with an urban theme in their work.
The work created for this exhibition was also selected for this year’s Claremorris Open Exhibition, which I’m very happy about. It’s curated by Lisa Le Feuvre, senior lecturer in fine arts at Goldsmiths, London.
That’s it for now, a bit about what I’m up to at the moment!
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Tomorrow marks the launch of the ‘Dock Doscourse’ exhibition in the 126 Gallery in Galway. Find out more about the show on their website: www.126.ie under “Current Exhibition”.
Aideen Barry’s part in the project; “An artist’s impression”, which I mentioned about in my previous post and whick was delivered with the Galway Independent newspaper yesterday, can be downloaded as a .pdf file :HERE: for those of you who don’t live in Galway or failed to pick up a copy of the paper.
Here are a couple of pictures I took of the installation work down in the gallery today:
So we’re all set for the opening tomorrow then!
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Busy times! The {un}familiar exhibition opened in the Galway Arts Centre on Thursday the 3rd and I am very pleased with the turn out for the opening and the positive feedback I’ve got on my work and the show overall, well done to Maeve who curated it and to all the artists taking part!
I spent a while today updating the website with a section for the {un}familiar project and some photos from the opening. Check out the paint section and the studio section. Some screen caps from the ‘Doubles’ video I made for the show are up in the video section, the video itself will follow at a later stage. If you get a chance, do drop into the Arts Centre and have a look at the show, it will be on till the 2nd July and the video is being projected in a room of its own, so it looks quite good.
Today I was out at the GMIT (Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology) and looked at the degree show. I have to say I was very impressed with the paint department this year, some really good work there. I met several old college friends I hadn’t seen in a while and some other great people so it was fun!
Next week will mark the launch of the Dock Discourse exhibition down in the 126 gallery by the docks. Aideen Barry is producing “An artist’s Impression“, a publication where a handful of artists, including myself are responding to the Galway Docklands through drawing. It will be added as a supplement to the Galway Independent newspaper on Wednesday and also be available down in the gallery space when the show is on. Click the image below for more info!
I also have a few other things in the pipeline, including an exhibition featuring Engage Art Studios members in the White Room Gallery in Galway as part of the Arts Festival. The title for the show is ‘Enrage’.
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I am alive and working, just to let you know. My brother came over from Sweden and stayed with us for two weeks around my birthday and went home yesterday. He was meant to stay only one week but ended up staying two due to that well known ash cloud. Didn’t mind really, I enjoyed spending some more time with him.
Here he is visiting my studio:
I’m working on a large painting at the moment. Here are a couple of close ups, it’s still in progress.
I’ve also started a new series of paintings based om my Berlin research. The sky isn’t utopian blue anymore though…
Attended a studio meeting at Bar no. 8 this evening, and am now going to continue my current Greta Garbo DVD season with “Anna Karenina”. I truly admire that woman, so captivating on screen! Watched Mata Hari and Queen Christina last night. Check her out those of you who haven’t!
That’s it for now!
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(Un)familiar, curator Maeve Mulrennan’s group show about out of body experiences that I have work in, opened in the Red House Arts Center in Syracuse, NY USA last Thursday the 18th March. Here is a link to an article about the show from the Syracuse City Eagle.
While Maeve went to New York to oversee the installation of the show and do a gallery talk on the opening night I went over to Glasgow for a few days. Really, really liked the place and visited a few exhibitions at Trongate 103, Transmission and The Centre for contemporart art. However, it wasn’t the main reason for my going over there, but that’s for another post entirely.
I have read some amazing books recently. “Do Androids dream of electric sheep” by Philip K. Dick (the nover Blade Runner was based on), “The Journal of Eugene Delacroix”, “The Castle” by Franz Kafka (I had read Metamorphosis and The Trial a few years ago) and now I’m reading “The Double” by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, which really ties in with the (Un)familiar project so well. I see myself more and more drawn to metaphysical questions about who we are and our experience of the world and all the books I’ve been reading tie in with this. I am also a big fan of intelligent Sci-Fi movies, since they ask these same questions, such as Blade Runner, Metropolis, Planet of the apes, 2001 and Forbidden Planet.
I am well underway with making work for the Dock Discourse project at the moment as well, which is also informed by my interest in the things previously stated.
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I’ve had a busy few weeks since I last updated. I completed my pieces for the Syracuse show by the end of January. I ended up making a video as well as two paintings. The paintings are based on two models I made of locations I shot in Sweden and which also feature in the video. The video is called “Doubles” and is just over 13 minutes long. I am dealing with the notion of original vs. copy and how we can ever be sure to distinguish one from the other. I feel that I’ve gained a lot from working with this particular subject and I’m dying to show the work I’ve made to the public. I think it will influence my future practice, which is great to be able to say about a project.
The crate containing the works created by the six participating artists is now on it’s way to New York and the show will open in the Red House Arts Centre in Syracuse on the 18th of March. I am very excited about it! I will post more information about the show and the work I have in it in due course.
Now I have another project underway. It’s the Dock Discourse project, curated by architect Aoife Considine, which has been going on for about a year. I made some work for it last summer. (See Dock Discourse section of my site). Aoife is currently chairing a series of talks in the Galway Arts Centre on the notion of local/public space and its development. The talks go under the name Genius Loci. The speakers so far have included Michelle Browne, Maeve Mulrennan and Aine Phillips. Very interesting to listen to!
There will be a Dock Discourse group show in the 126 gallery in June, which we are to submit proposals for by the end of this week. I am, as before, concentrating mainly on the structure of the two multi-storey car parks in the area and the view of the dock from there. I am planning to make some large paintings. Today I sketched the motive I’m going to paint onto a 1×1 metre canvas I’ve stretched and primed over the past week.
Yesterday I made this drawing on grease proof paper over board:
I’ve been experimenting with different surfaces and materials over the past week. I am really looking forward to working large again since it’s been a while!
Improvised shapes based on structures within the car parks.
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I was asked by Aoibheann at Ard Bia Nimmo’s in Galway to put on an exhibition in their Café/Restaurant. I spent a few hours this afternoon hanging a selection of paintings I’ve made to date. I am showing some large paintings from my degree project, some work from the Dock Discourse project and some paintings from the Sthlm vol. 2 project. I am really happy to get a chance to show my large paintings again and they ended up fitting the space very well.
The exhibition will be on for four weeks and the work is for sale. Drop by Ard Bia for coffée and cake (or dinner) and have a look for yourselves if you’re around Galway.
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I am back in a frosty Galway after spending the Christmas in Sweden. This weekend selecting and uploading footage from DV tapes onto my Mac for the video I’m making. It’s colder than usual in Ireland at the moment, but I suppose I don’t suffer from the cold the same way as the Irish do since Sweden was a lot colder. I was skiing around shooting video in -20 C. On four occassions in the same week I returned home with toes and fingers burning with numbness. Fortunately the temperature had rose to -5 when we were shooting in my neighbours’ green house. I don’t think I would have managed walking around without a jacket if it had been colder than that. But I am happy with the footage I got so it was worth it.
Next week I’ll be busy editing.
Happy 2010 everyone!
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The opening of the “10×10″ show in the White Room Gallery was on last night. The turn out was great and I really enjoyed it! The fact that we sold a lot of work made it even better! Thanks to everyone who came to the opening and thanks to Anna who curated the show and the rest of the White Room crowd. And well done to the other 9 artists who participated!
Take a look at some photos from the opening here: http://www.ceciliadanell.com/pictures.html
You can view the whole series of paintings for the “10×10″ show here: http://www.ceciliadanell.com/everafter.html
However, if you didn’t make it to the opening, remember that the show will be on until the beginning of January, so feel free to pop down to the White Room in Liosban to have a look. There are still works left for sale and at €100 a piece it is really quite a bargain!
Two days ago I also had a meeting with Maeve, curator at the Galway Arts Centre, about a group show that she’s curating that I am going to take part in. It is dealing with feelings of depersonalisation and issues with the perception of the ’self’ resulting in out of body experiences, the seeing of doubles, phantom limbs etc. The material I’ve been going through so far is very interesting and I am currently planning a video piece, to be shot mainly in Sweden when I’m there over Christmas.
The show will tour to a town in upstate New York in March before being shown in the Galway Arts Centre at the beginning of the summer. Very exciting indeed!
So far I’ve done quite a bit of reading as well as collecting ideas and research material.
That’s all for now. Hope you have a lovely weekend!
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Yesterday I completed the 10th and last painting for the 10×10 show. I’m really happy to have them all done, especially since I was quite pressed for time. I don’t think I’ve ever been as productive in such a short space of time before!
The weather is miserable as you would expect in November, but today we even had thunder and lightning! At least I don’t need to feel bad for spending most of my time indoors. I will now be shifting focus to my next project which will be curated by Maeve Mulrennan of Galway Arts Centre, (more info to follow). I have been aware of this project since the summer and had it in mind, while I was in Berlin etc. but haven’t started working on it yet.
They’re the new paintings behind me, but that’s all you’ll see until the opening on the 4th December.
This evening I was at a debate in the Nun’s Island Theatre run by the GMIT in conjunction with Tulca season of visual arts about art education and how it equips artists for life after college etc. It was interesting to listen to. Helen Carey, Deirdre O’Mahony, Michaele Cutaya and Aideen Barry were on the panel amongst others and the turn out was good.
On Thursday I’m heading to Dublin for a couple of days to attend the launch of the debut album of Sending letters to the sea and I will check out a couple of exhibitions as well while I’m there.