MA:AP 2021 MA : ART & PROCESS MTU Crawford College of Art & Design https://crawford.cit.ie/maap-show-2021/
Artmaking is a call and response informed by its context. Recent experiences have been largely defined by separation and restriction and we have limited our lives in search of safety. The artists presented here share distinct and diverse bodies of work that reference their process through these constraints. Their physical acts of artmaking have been largely solitary practices within changeable circumstances, through arrivals and departures, moving between here or there, having more or less. PLUS/MINUS is therefore about what’s been lost and found, what’s been added and subtracted during this time. This exhibition can be viewed as a grid, where corridors and walls demarcate one installation from the next. Compartmentalised, each artist occupies their own creative territory, differing in medium, scale and conceptual grounding. Passing from one area to the next, notice the contrast between each; three individual artists coming together to create one show. Through photography, painting, and mixed media installation this exhibition presents unseen fragments of the city, constitutional questions on modernist painting, and the changing nature of place and belonging. This complexity of perspectives sheds light on our individual experiences, communicating a sense of ebb and flow which defines the contemporary moment.
Jamie Ashforth Síomha Callanan Michael Hegarty
THE CALL TO EXHIBIT WORK THAT IS IN PROGRESS
I’ve the good fortune to work in a busy, dedicated studio building. One of the things I love about working here is that I’ve little idea as to what is going on in many of the other rooms. Almost anything might be being dreamt up here. And when I go and see the work, the exhibitions, that my colleagues put on, I feel kind of astonished that this extraordinary and peculiar and fascinating work has found its way into the world only meters away from where I get to work. Often I can’t begin to imagine where or quite how the work was begun and how it found the form that it has found. During undergrad, working side by side, and whilst doing an M.A., (where everyone’s personal workspace was dispersed) we were very aware of each other’s practices. When presentations and exhibitions were made, there was yet very often a sense of surprise, of revelation, that there was work to see where weeks, even days, before there had been only inklings, potential, unfinished things, a mess of ideas, or just the anxious desire to meet a deadline. The testing, provoking privilege of being a post-grad and having fellow students is that this frequently private process of working is, at crucial junctures, subject to intense scrutiny. It’s not sufficient to ‘simply’ get on with the work, one must account for it along the way. It’s hard to lay yourself open to such close examination at the times when you are struggling to figure-out what it is that you’re doing, and are maybe feeling fairly fucking lost. Or worse perhaps, to expose yourself at times of quiet triumph or surety, feeling that you are indeed onto something, only to discover your peers, students and staff, are perhaps not so persuaded that the work is doing what you yourself hoped it might be doing. But these tricky moments are I suspect the point. It is exciting to share your work. We rehearse being taken seriously in a relatively ‘safe’ if challenging environment and we rehearse taking our work, if not ourselves, very seriously. And perhaps most importantly we practice knowing that we may never feel utterly satisfied with our work, or completely resolute in our working towards. And in spite of all kinds of uncertainty we decide that we must get on with it.
I’m always curious to know if other artists really know what they are doing when they are at work. I am increasingly sure of what I don’t do, of what I am uninterested in, but I still have no wish to relinquish the possibility that work will progress in directions I could not currently expect. I defer decisions as long as I possibly can, never wishing to foreclose on alternative outcomes to an exhibition. I suppose my work is always in progress. Occasionally I wish that a certain restlessness that troubles me would abate; that I would, someday, settle down and know better what kind, precisely, of artist that I am. But I know I would miss feeling at times surprised by what comes out of my own studio. One of the things that is striking about any fine art student exhibition is the diversity of work on show; being a contemporary artist can involve doing almost anything. And though I still struggle to briefly account for what it is that I do as an artist, I know that any sense of anxiety about such things was much more intensely felt when I was an ‘emerging’ artist. It seemed necessary to determine not only where and how widely your potential might extend into the world, but that sense of limitless scope is accompanied by the powerful desire to narrow the specificity of your field, to identify the singularity of your vision. Initially, the range of work on display for this MA:AP show is strikingly diverse: Michael’s dedication to post-painterly abstraction and its relationship to ornamentation via the unexpected media of upholstery fabric; Síomha’s peripatetic, precise photography of undistinguished urban spaces; and Jamie’s commitment to transmuting touch and fleeting bodily experience into something both lasting and visible. Seemingly there is little in common here, but in 2021 when everything is so utterly inflected by the still recent experiences of lockdown, odd resonances occur. We spent a lot of time at home; we spent a lot of time in our immediate neighbourhood; we attended to the natural world with rather more intensity and regularity than we were perhaps generally used to.
Michael’s intent experimentation with colour, with drapery and texture — the both pleasing and jarring interplay of paint and shape on his oddly sculptural, oval paintings — bring both abstraction and domesticity into a critical aesthetic focus. Their compelling strangeness belies their modest scale and familiar patterned, painted surfaces. Síomha’s steady gaze anchors us in no place in particular. The weave of shadow, generic architecture and trees is caught; light striking facades that we would fail to notice a thousand times a week as we walk the same streets over and again is made dramatic by the precision of her framing. Jamie’s haptic, participatory practices include burying fabrics and gathering earth. Her diverse activities are evidenced through (re)claimed material, photography, and print. Blurring the boundary between body and world, inside and out, her installation carries a thoughtfully coordinated wildness indoors. Nature is tended to, re-arrayed but never sanitised. In each realm, the home studio, urban and nature, the quotidian is made resolute, focused and specific. And it is, at this moment of testing, made available for our privileged scrutiny.
ISABEL NOLAN
JAMIE ASH SÍOMHA CAL MICHAE HE
HFORTH A LLANAN EL EGARTY
Shelter III (detail) 2021, mixed media assemblage, 18 × 9 × 2 cm
Excavation: August 23, 2021 — Toronto, Rachel 2021, digital photograph
I am in new territory. I intentionally position myself in unknown circumstances to encounter heightened embodied experiences of discovery. The body registers this impact: when surprised, there can be a short, sharp inhale, lungs expand quickly, eyes widen, mouth opens, and everything pauses momentarily. My practice is therefore process-led and material-responsive, where I am perpetually out of my comfort zone and charting a new course. Experimental approaches to print, photography, text and installation serve to archive this unpredictable experience of reorientation. Often teetering on the edge of clarity and obscurity, this work expresses an in-between space where protective layers incubate periods of flux. Change is a hazy state. I see touch as a form of navigation through this process: a dialogue between the senses, thought, emotion, and physical sensation. Eventbased practice is a new part of how I unpack the way both tactile and ephemeral stimuli evoke embodied response. My impulse is to index events materially yet moving from object-oriented making towards temporal experiences that leave no visual trace, disrupts that form of memory recall. Instead, the work lives in the body and I’m compelled to excavate that for others to encounter. I therefore pull the viewer into the work to cultivate active participation. Recontextualising elements from the land, I build interior habitats with natural foraged debris. I initiate new ways of connecting by inviting collaborative experiences across multiple time zones: working on-site outdoors, we bury, then unearth, muddied fabric, or lay down in wild spaces. Blurring the line between near and far, and inside and outside, disrupts how the spaces we inhabit impact us sensorially. This serves to map the liminal nature of place and belonging. jamie ashforth
Shelter I (detail) 2021, mixed media assemblage, 18 × 9 × 2 cm Shelter II (detail) 2021, mixed media assemblage, 18 × 9 × 2 cm
(left to right) Excavation: August 27, 2021 — Thornhill, Laurie + Kevin 2021, wrapped photographic print, 18 × 12 cm Shelter IV 2021, mixed media assemblage, 31 × 23 × 14 cm
(left to right) Excavation: August 23, 2021 — Toronto, Rachel 2021, wrapped photographic print, 18 × 27 cm Excavation: August 22, 2021 — Muskoka, Dave 2021, wrapped photographic print, 20 × 27 cm Excavation: August 22, 2021 — Muskoka, Dave 2021, wrapped photographic print, 18 × 27 cm Excavation: August 19, 2021 — Etobicoke, Erika 2021, wrapped photographic print, 18 × 27 cm Excavation: August 27, 2021 — Thornhill, Laurie 2021, wrapped photographic print, 18 × 27 cm Shelter V 2021, mixed media assemblage, 39 × 32 × 7 cm
(left to right) Relocation 2021, debris drawing, 180 × 220 cm Supine 2021, photographic print, tracing paper, 84 × 200 cm
The Trees That Know Me 2021, digital photograph
Translate — Integrate (Home) 2021, monotype, 26 × 28 cm
Relocation 2021, debris drawing, 180 × 220 cm
Untitled, Cork City 2021, 35mm colour film
Untitled, Cork City 2021, 35mm colour reversal film
The images I create are direct extracts from the everyday world. The daily places we inhabit often go unnoticed. By moving through spaces and observing everyday details, I consider what may otherwise be seen as mundane as worth capturing. Through the act of walking I engage with the environment in a psychogeographical way, guided by the layout and atmosphere of the city. My methodologies involve exploring my surroundings on foot and photographing elements of the journey I take. I approach each walk as a moment of discovery to find something new within the familiar. I visually document these spaces in an effort to draw attention to the unseen backdrops of quotidian life. Refined through my process, a heightened visual awareness of my location deepens my connection to that place. By selecting and photographing fragments of my surroundings, I am exploring the everyday as a space of attention. Taking a closer look at the finer details of sceneries enhances my understanding of the world, giving a richer experience. It is a way of slowing down, a way of being present in a space. Capturing the images on film further emphasises the ideas behind my work, as careful consideration of each frame is a necessary element of working with this medium. I am continually investigating my environment, creating new work to add to my ever-growing archive of images. It is an exercise in observation and documentation; the main objective being to rediscover the very act of looking. síomha callanan
Untitled, Cork City 2021, 120mm colour film
Untitled, Cork City 2021, 35mm colour reversal film
Undulating Canvas (Dakota Spice) 2021, readymade eyelet curtains on curtain pole, 183 × 400 cm
Gold Shield 2021, acrylic on pre-printed fabric, 82 × 48 cm
Raw canvas became an anchoring element in my paintings. The colour of cotton became the first colour of my abstract compositions. However, the question inevitably arose; why restrict oneself to painting on cotton canvas when there were lots of other fabrics that could be painted on? I began to paint my hardedge geometric designs on pre-printed fabrics from haberdasheries and soft furnishing suppliers. This juxtaposing of painted form and patterned textile created an exciting visual incongruity. The variety of printed fabrics available to me warranted their own study, and I began to see the potential of cloth material coming off a roll with the same possibilities as paint squeezing out of a tube. Curtain and upholstery fabrics proved more useful than more tenuous cloths. Studying this material led me to study the synergies and parallels between non-objective paintings and decorative curtains. Both employ various colours, designs, and forms on fabric. The major difference between these soft furnishings and paintings, besides their function, is that the fabric of paintings is stapled onto wooden frames while curtains hang from poles. This difference needed scrutiny as does the prestige of fine art painting versus the lowliness of decorative curtains. My works explore the topographic nuances of consumer culture, the vagaries of taste in the use of found fabrics from domestic interiors and the rotations of fashion and obsolescence. The oval format I use references the quaintness of modernist abstraction; and the utopian belief in new promises and shapes of the future, a future that certainly cannot be taken for granted any more. michael hegarty
Inside the Box (Steel Frames) 2021, acrylic on pre-printed fabric, 48 × 40 cm
Maisey’s House 2021, acrylic on embossed wallpaper and pre-printed fabric, 50 × 39 cm
Orange Grass I 2021, acrylic on pre-printed fabric, 120 × 70 cm
Orange Grass II 2021, acrylic and embossed wallpaper on pre-printed fabric, 120 × 70 cm
Gold Leaf Inversion 2021, acrylic on pre-printed fabric, 72 × 60 cm
Floral Painting (Lani) 2021, pre-printed fabric on an oval stretcher, 120 × 93 cm
INTER
A
ACTIONS
JAMIE ASHFORTH
GROUNDSWELL
Groundswell Archive (detail) 2021, photographic prints, paper envelopes
Groundswell is an experimental, participatory event designed for people to make contact with one another and landscapes, across geographies. This synchronised transatlantic experience is avehicle to engage with Jamie Ashforth’s artistic practice, including her current investigations of touch and belonging. The first iteration of this piece took place on 31 October at 14:00 GMT when more than 70 participants across eight countries in five time zones blurred the space between near/far and body/ environment by lying supine in a wild space of their choice. Should you feel inclined to participate in this ongoing project, please contact Jamie: @jamie_ashforth info@jamieashforth.com
SÍOMHA CALLANAN
PHOTO WALK
Invited students from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design will join artist Síomha Callanan for a group photo walk in Cork City. The walk will commence from the MA:AP exhibition venue at No.46 Grand Parade. Through the act of walking participants will be encouraged to engage with the city by observing and photographing everyday details that often go unnoticed. The event aims to offer an insight into Síomha Callanan’s artistic methodologies and invites those taking part to view their surroundings in a new way.
MICHAEL HEGARTY
ENCOUNTER ART, ENCOUNTER ARTISTS
On the morning of December 1st, the first year students of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design will visit the MA:AP 2021 exhibition for a tour of the show, and a meeting with the artists taking part. Each MA student will introduce themselves and their work to the first years and this will be followed by a question and answer session.
JAMIE ASHFORTH @jamie_ashforth www.jamieashforth.com
MICHAEL HEGARTY www.michael-heg-arty.com
SÍOMHA CALLANAN @s__callanan siomhacallanan@gmail.com
MA:ART & PROCESS STAFF Trish Brennan Dr Lucy Dawe-Lane Pádraig Spillane Dr Helen Farrell Sarah Kelleher VISITING LECTURERS Isabel Nolan Clodagh Emoe Matt Packer Eve Olney Dawn Williams Peter Morgan Judy Kravis External Assessor Breda Lynch Facebook www.facebook.com/maap.ccad/about/ Instagram www.instagram.com/maapcrawford/?hl=en Phone Number +353 (0)21 4335222 Address 46 Grand Parade Centre Cork T12 VN56 Course URL www.cit.ie/course/CRAARTP9 Contacts Dr Lucy Dawe-Lane lucy.dawe-lane@cit.ie CCAD Enquiries ccad.enquiries@cit.ie
Installation photography by Seán Daly Design by Pony Ltd.
MA:AP 2021 ONLINE EXHIBITION https://crawford.cit.ie/maap-show-2021/ MA:AP 2021 WISHES TO THANK Nicholas Sommers John McCarthy Martin Lynch Helen Maguire Catherine Fehily Rose McGrath Carol Lynch Colin Crotty Joanna Shuks Louise Foott Sharon McCarthy Kevin Tuohy Diana McSweeney Lauren Cannon Nuala Wall Isabel Nolan Clodagh Emoe Matt Packer Eve Olney Dawn Williams Mary M. Cronin Deirdre Breen Seán Daly Niall Sweeney Paddy Rice James L. Hayes Catherine Hehir Conall Cary Liam Rice Joe O’Neill Cork City Gaol Ger Neff Backwater Artist Group Cork Print Makers The Living Commons The Bigger Picture Cork Janice Hegener Peter Morgan Judy Kravis Road Books A special thanks to all our families and friends for their love and support throughout the MA year
MA : Art & Process is a masters programme led by a teaching team of practicing artists and research active academics allowing for a vibrant and exciting learning atmosphere that responds to the dynamic field of contemporary art practice. This intensive programme enables students to investigate, develop and position their art practice. It offers a city centre studio space, innovative approaches to teaching, and professional experience through collaborative projects. The concept of process is understood in a variety of ways: as material exploration and engagement with medium and technique; as theoretical investigation and systems of inquiry without resolved or object-based endpoints; as innovative models or art distribution, including the possibilities of working outside traditional sites of art production and reception. Process also refers to the progression each student achieves over the course of the MA, which involves the observation, critique, construction, documentation and rebuilding of individual practice. MA:AP welcomes students with diverse backgrounds such as painting, performance, theatre, film, architecture, photography, installation, sound and sculpture. Process is proposed as a point of common focus for peer interaction, inviting diversity of approaches and media, and allowing the points of convergence and divergence between a range of practices to be explored. Now in its tenth year MA:AP has established itself as one of the leading masters programmes in Ireland through the reputation of its staff and alumni.
Information and application details: www.cit.ie/course/CR_AARTP_9 ccad.enquiriescork@mtu.ie +353 (0)21 4335200 http://crawford.cit.ie