RESIDUE
MONDAY 30 JANUARY 2023
CUSTOM HOUSE STUDIOS, WESTPORT, Co MAYO
RESIDUE is a temporary installation celebrating the end of a 3-year occupancy of a studio in the Custom House Studios in Westport by artist Ian Wieczorek. It is a recognition of the creative endeavour that has taken place there during that period.
These elements conspire to reflect a concentrated period of creative activity during that time.
RESIDUE comprises work made from the remnants of occupancy, by-products of recent artistic activity that has taken place here:
- the pots from reconstituted lunchtime ramen noodles, assembled into a 21st century ‘post-megalithic’ monument;
- the residual marks of painting that remain on the walls, framed as ‘found’ works;
- a totemic object of inspiration, with all its associations with the natural world;
- and the final pieces of kitchen roll used to clean the artist’s palette at the end of each painting session, an action that has resulted in a series of inadvertent, repeatedly iterated handprint ‘signatures’ of the artist, reminiscent of early cave painting practices.
These elements conspire to reflect a concentrated period of creative activity during that time of occupancy.
RESIDUE may be read as an indirect empirical and physical consequence of artistic process, an echo of the creative practices that have taken place within the physical space both in the recent past and as an acknowledgement of the activities of previous occupants over many years. It celebrates the nature of the studio environment, both the creative and the mundane, an artistic response and acknowledgement that perhaps in some way calls to mind the arcane ritualistic practices that exist in shamanic traditions: the art studio as a place of channelled energies.
Ian Wieczorek
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ian Wieczorek is a visual artist living and working in Co. Mayo, Ireland. His practice is based primarily in painting, lens-based media and installation. His work is engaged with contemporary cultural experience, and the transactional relationships that exist between the individual and the global. He has exhibited widely in group/selected shows in Ireland, and internationally in N. Ireland, Wales, Germany, France, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, USA, Spain, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China. He has staged solo exhibitions (17 to date) in Ireland, N. Ireland, UK, Czech Republic, and online. He has also devised and curated a number of shows in Ireland.
www.ianwieczorek.com
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
With thanks to the Custom House Studios and its excellent staff for their professionalism, support and friendship.
