GUAC Ground Up Artists

Reading cards. Pauline Beatrice Goggin

Ground Up Artists Collective (GUAC) “PLOT 2 - Untitled”. Watercolour. Monika de Bath

“Ephemera Danica”. Ink on rice paper. Marianne Slevin

“Where no people are’”. Oil on canvas. Marie Connole

Based in Co. Clare, in the West of Ireland, GUAC was formed in 2003 to create a dialogue between contemporary visual artists and local inhabitants on the implications of making work in rural surroundings and to offer a platform for multi disciplinary research and collaboration.

From this initiative, through various modes of research and representation the GUAC continues to connect with the land and its people, to highlight the issues that affect the contemporary rural/urban and personal landscapes in which we live.

The current members are Maeve Collins, Marie Connole, Monica de Bath, Trudi van der Elsen, Barry Charles Foley, Lewis Goodman, Pauline Beatrice Goggin, John Hanrahan and Marianne Slevin.

GUAC focuses on the dynamic relationships that exist between the artist and audience, practice and productions, ecology and activism and the ever evolving rural and urban.

A commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling is shared by a number of the artists in the collective for whom emplacement is a political and poetic strategy to address forms of social and environmental alienation. Currently GUAC is engaged in a practice where they meet on a regular basis. The meetings focus on individual and collaborative practice within the collective.

A number of members are engaged in research into contemporary coastal and land use in the West of Ireland. Others seek to interrupt apathy and to create space for intimate publics to voice public protest through invitational methodologies, personal and scientific research.

Projects and current practice and social engaged initiatives can be viewed on the GUAC website. www.guac.ie

Sketch for performance Ringfort. Trudi van der Elsen

“it can be... when two species get together”.

Mixed media with projection. Maeve Collins

Comhairle Contae an Chláir Clare County Council

GUAC Ground Up Artists Collective

Reflecting on the Ground Up Artists’ Collective (GUAC) as it enters its second decade, I would like to reflect on the impulse towards collective action that it represents and to consider the poetic and political strategy of emplacement which emerges as a common area of interest in the work of these diverse artists.

The urge to come together and pool resources is as old as humanity itself. We are social beings, hardwired to work in cooperation with one another, inclined to be sociable, keen to play together and to produce and negotiate the collective meanings that we know as culture. The sense that we make of our individual lives is never made in isolation, but always in relation to the lives of others.

Solidarity is reduced in an atmosphere of rampant competitiveness such as the one that shapes society at present. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi has reflected upon the urgent need to re-establish social empathy and solidarity as a prerequisite for sustainable forms of being-in-commoni. In the absence of a coherent politics of solidarity the task falls more and more to those operating in the field of culture, the visual arts in particular. For all its limitations, art remains a space of experimentation where unlikely things can still be made visible. Although its forms of action may be symbolic we should not underestimate art’s power to generate new forms of representation; in fact, a capacity to produce counter-representations is a valuable form of resistance to the ideologies disseminated through the all-pervasive mediascape.

The continuing existence of the GUAC is both recognition and assertion of the principle of mutuality. Many of the artists who are currently involved in the collective refer to the importance of non-competitive sharing and support, to the value of dialogue and critical conversation, to the exchange of information and ideas. The artist members work independently of one another and occasionally on small collaborative projects, but it is not the outputs of the Ground Up Artists’ Collective that are co-produced so much as the process of organising and reflecting on what it means to produce art in response to rural situations.

Numerous artistic practices around the globe demonstrate a concern and involvement with particular situations or places over extended periods of time. These practices understand that ‘here’ is the very place where social, political, economic and environmental contradictions can be perceived and addressed. GUAC artists share a commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling. They operate in proximity to, rather than at a distance from, the complex processes of rural existence, engaging critically with the overlaps and interactions between social realities and ecosystems. In these practices locality becomes a temporal-spatial condition existing within a dialectics of emplacement and displacement.

The impulse to intervene in situations, to engage bodily, emotionally and conceptually with a particular place over time is a way of committing to a complexity that defies representation. Many of the artists in GUAC work this way, combining actions, dialogue and representations in ways that are neither reductive nor easily commodified.

Fiona Woods 2013

i

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, 2010, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Please visit website to view the full text - http://guac.ie

Collective Intelligence Reflecting on the Ground Up Artists’ Collective (GUAC) as it enters its second decade, I would like to reflect on the impulse towards collective action that it represents and to consider the poetic and political strategy of emplacement which emerges as a common area of interest in the work of these diverse artists.

The urge to come together and pool resources is as old as humanity itself. We are social beings, hardwired to work in cooperation with one another, inclined to be sociable, keen to play together and to produce and negotiate the collective meanings that we know as culture. The sense that we make of our individual lives is never made in isolation, but always in relation to the lives of others.

Solidarity is reduced in an atmosphere of rampant competitiveness such as the one that shapes society at present. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi has reflected upon the urgent need to re-establish social empathy and solidarity as a prerequisite for sustainable forms of being-in-commoni. In the absence of a coherent politics of solidarity the task falls more and more to those operating in the field of culture, the visual arts in particular. For all its limitations, art remains a space of experimentation where unlikely things can still be made visible. Although its forms of action may be symbolic we should not underestimate art’s power to generate new forms of representation; in fact, a capacity to produce counter-representations is a valuable form of resistance to the ideologies disseminated through the all-pervasive mediascape.

The continuing existence of the GUAC is both recognition and assertion of the principle of mutuality. Many of the artists who are currently involved in the collective refer to the importance of non-competitive sharing and support, to the value of dialogue and critical conversation, to the exchange of information and ideas. The artist members work independently of one another and occasionally on small collaborative projects, but it is not the outputs of the Ground Up Artists’ Collective that are co-produced so much as the process of organising and reflecting on what it means to produce art in response to rural situations.

Numerous artistic practices around the globe demonstrate a concern and involvement with particular situations or places over extended periods of time. These practices understand that ‘here’ is the very place where social, political, economic and environmental contradictions can be perceived and addressed. GUAC artists share a commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling. They operate in proximity to, rather than at a distance from, the complex processes of rural existence, engaging critically with the overlaps and interactions between social realities and ecosystems. In these practices locality becomes a temporal-spatial condition existing within a dialectics of emplacement and displacement.

The impulse to intervene in situations, to engage bodily, emotionally and conceptually with a particular place over time is a way of committing to a complexity that defies representation. Many of the artists in GUAC work this way, combining actions, dialogue and representations in ways that are neither reductive nor easily commodified.

Fiona Woods 2013

i

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, 2010, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Please visit website to view the full text - http://guac.ie

Reflecting on the Ground Up Artists’ Collective (GUAC) as it enters its second decade, I would like to reflect on the impulse towards collective action that it represents and to consider the poetic and political strategy of emplacement which emerges as a common area of interest in the work of these diverse artists.

The urge to come together and pool resources is as old as humanity itself. We are social beings, hardwired to work in cooperation with one another, inclined to be sociable, keen to play together and to produce and negotiate the collective meanings that we know as culture. The sense that we make of our individual lives is never made in isolation, but always in relation to the lives of others.

Solidarity is reduced in an atmosphere of rampant competitiveness such as the one that shapes society at present. Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi has reflected upon the urgent need to re-establish social empathy and solidarity as a prerequisite for sustainable forms of being-in-commoni. In the absence of a coherent politics of solidarity the task falls more and more to those operating in the field of culture, the visual arts in particular. For all its limitations, art remains a space of experimentation where unlikely things can still be made visible. Although its forms of action may be symbolic we should not underestimate art’s power to generate new forms of representation; in fact, a capacity to produce counter-representations is a valuable form of resistance to the ideologies disseminated through the all-pervasive mediascape.

The continuing existence of the GUAC is both recognition and assertion of the principle of mutuality. Many of the artists who are currently involved in the collective refer to the importance of non-competitive sharing and support, to the value of dialogue and critical conversation, to the exchange of information and ideas. The artist members work independently of one another and occasionally on small collaborative projects, but it is not the outputs of the Ground Up Artists’ Collective that are co-produced so much as the process of organising and reflecting on what it means to produce art in response to rural situations.

Numerous artistic practices around the globe demonstrate a concern and involvement with particular situations or places over extended periods of time. These practices understand that ‘here’ is the very place where social, political, economic and environmental contradictions can be perceived and addressed. GUAC artists share a commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling. They operate in proximity to, rather than at a distance from, the complex processes of rural existence, engaging critically with the overlaps and interactions between social realities and ecosystems. In these practices locality becomes a temporal-spatial condition existing within a dialectics of emplacement and displacement.

The impulse to intervene in situations, to engage bodily, emotionally and conceptually with a particular place over time is a way of committing to a complexity that defies representation. Many of the artists in GUAC work this way, combining actions, dialogue and representations in ways that are neither reductive nor easily commodified.

Fiona Woods 2013

i

Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi, 2010, The Uprising: On Poetry and Finance, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e) Please visit website to view the full text - http://guac.ie

Reading cards. Pauline Beatrice Goggin

Ground Up Artists Collective (GUAC) “PLOT 2 - Untitled”. Watercolour. Monika de Bath

“Ephemera Danica”. Ink on rice paper. Marianne Slevin

“Where no people are’”. Oil on canvas. Marie Connole

Based in Co. Clare, in the West of Ireland, GUAC was formed in 2003 to create a dialogue between contemporary visual artists and local inhabitants on the implications of making work in rural surroundings and to offer a platform for multi disciplinary research and collaboration.

From this initiative, through various modes of research and representation the GUAC continues to connect with the land and its people, to highlight the issues that affect the contemporary rural/urban and personal landscapes in which we live.

The current members are Maeve Collins, Marie Connole, Monica de Bath, Trudi van der Elsen, Barry Charles Foley, Lewis Goodman, Pauline Beatrice Goggin, John Hanrahan and Marianne Slevin.

GUAC focuses on the dynamic relationships that exist between the artist and audience, practice and productions, ecology and activism and the ever evolving rural and urban.

A commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling is shared by a number of the artists in the collective for whom emplacement is a political and poetic strategy to address forms of social and environmental alienation. Currently GUAC is engaged in a practice where they meet on a regular basis. The meetings focus on individual and collaborative practice within the collective.

A number of members are engaged in research into contemporary coastal and land use in the West of Ireland. Others seek to interrupt apathy and to create space for intimate publics to voice public protest through invitational methodologies, personal and scientific research.

Projects and current practice and social engaged initiatives can be viewed on the GUAC website. www.guac.ie

Sketch for performance Ringfort. Trudi van der Elsen

“it can be... when two species get together”.

Mixed media with projection. Maeve Collins

Comhairle Contae an Chláir Clare County Council

Reading cards. Pauline Beatrice Goggin

Ground Up Artists Collective (GUAC) “PLOT 2 - Untitled”. Watercolour. Monika de Bath

“Ephemera Danica”. Ink on rice paper. Marianne Slevin

“Where no people are’”. Oil on canvas. Marie Connole

Based in Co. Clare, in the West of Ireland, GUAC was formed in 2003 to create a dialogue between contemporary visual artists and local inhabitants on the implications of making work in rural surroundings and to offer a platform for multi disciplinary research and collaboration.

From this initiative, through various modes of research and representation the GUAC continues to connect with the land and its people, to highlight the issues that affect the contemporary rural/urban and personal landscapes in which we live.

The current members are Maeve Collins, Marie Connole, Monica de Bath, Trudi van der Elsen, Barry Charles Foley, Lewis Goodman, Pauline Beatrice Goggin, John Hanrahan and Marianne Slevin.

GUAC focuses on the dynamic relationships that exist between the artist and audience, practice and productions, ecology and activism and the ever evolving rural and urban.

A commitment to the concept and experience of dwelling is shared by a number of the artists in the collective for whom emplacement is a political and poetic strategy to address forms of social and environmental alienation. Currently GUAC is engaged in a practice where they meet on a regular basis. The meetings focus on individual and collaborative practice within the collective.

A number of members are engaged in research into contemporary coastal and land use in the West of Ireland. Others seek to interrupt apathy and to create space for intimate publics to voice public protest through invitational methodologies, personal and scientific research.

Projects and current practice and social engaged initiatives can be viewed on the GUAC website. www.guac.ie

Sketch for performance Ringfort. Trudi van der Elsen

“it can be... when two species get together”.

Mixed media with projection. Maeve Collins

Comhairle Contae an Chláir Clare County Council