switch 2022

SWITCH

SWITCH

CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ART edited by Triona Ryan, Harald Turek

CONTEMPORARY VIDEO ART edited by Triona Ryan, Harald Turek

The switch project is a continuing investigation into place, locating art in public space in a contextually focused way. International film and video artworks are back-projected for one week onto the windows of shops and other spaces throughout the town of Nenagh, Co Tipperary, Ireland.

2022 presents 8 visual artists and one poet who invite us through their works to consider the theme of PLAY.

Now in its 14th year, switch is an artist-led project funded & supported by the Tipperary Arts Office.

Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian artist who uses poetry as a tool to hide his frustration with society. He also makes use of collage and sampling techniques. His poetry has been published or forthcoming in Rumpus, Offing Magazine, Cincinnati Review, Willow Spring and elsewhere. Recently, he was selected to participate in Capital City Film Festival’s Inaugural Poetry Project, Michigan & also selected as a participant in the Poetry Ireland Introduction Series 2020. He is currently living in Agbor, Nigeria. You can follow him on twitter @ojo_poems.

Ojo Taiye

Double Dutch for Dr. KariamuWelsh

In this memory, my mother stands on the balcony watching her sister’s chant: ten, ten, ten, one ten, one twenty.

It was summer and it seemed that everyone was outside. The sinking sun was low in the sky. Her mother, Sista Mabel, granny and Miss Achor, beside the yam barn, speaking in a low-pitched voice. This was one of the earliest magical

sound she heard, they were the rhythms she never forgot: the intricacies of the ropes, and the more she played, the better she became. And like the old days, I don’t know if she can still bob and weave, go down and touch ground and go up little buttercup.

Andrew McSweeney completed a BA in Fine Art at CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, in 2015 and an MA in Interdisciplinary Design Practice in 2021 from the Limerick School of Art & Design. Recent exhibitions include his solo exhibition Alone Again, Natura Diddily at the Marina Market, Cork (July 2022), The Stars Are In The Earth at A4 Sounds, Dublin (August 2022) and Earth Rising: IMMA Outdoors: Eco Festival (October 2022) at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. He was recently awarded the Visual Arts Agility Award in 2022 by the Irish Arts Council and is a member of Sample-Studios in Cork City.

AndrewMcSweeney Drün (2022)

The exploration of my practice has strongly developed through the use of 3D software and progressed towards the creation of digital reproductions taken from my natural surroundings. My work is based around themes of nature and fictional environments. I primarily create installations consisting of neon, sound & video. By developing familiar settings, I aim to present simulated moments that highlight ongoing concerns that may impact our temporality. My work regularly involves creating hyper-realistic scans and textures that are accompanied by sound pieces.

Digital models are built alongside these assets highlighting the thin border of physical and virtual worlds amongst mixed realities ultimately creating immersive experiences that people regularly encounter. Photogrammetric processes used in my work are relevant to its potential importance on digitally archiving content for future generations spanning across multiple disciplines including but not limited to education, visual art and academic research. New technologies and realities enable artists as well as viewers to personally reflect on social issues and to have an equal understanding of important environmental discussions.

AndrewMcSweeneyisbasedinCork,Ireland.

Benna Gaean Maris is an interdisciplinary artist interested in raising awareness on metaphysical, human, social and environmental issues, expressing through a whole range of art disciplines. Main exhibitions: Tirana International Biennale of Graphic Arts 2022, Geumgang Nature Art Biennale 2022, Metaverse Biennale 2022, The Wrong Biennale of Digital Arts, Šiluva Art Biennial 2021, MADATAC XI - Biennial of New Media Arts 2020, BIENALSUR 2019 - Latin America Biennale, Triennale della Fotografia Italiana 2017.

Benna Gaean Maris short movie #2 (excerpts)

An immersion into a deep psychic, parallel and pataphysical dimension mediated by a hypothetical and estranging cinematographic device where a discouraging presence reveals our limitations, that are compulsory or self-imposed, ruled by “brownian desires.”

This short movie is concerning itself with the relation between human society and the individual. The basic difference is in the presence of a dominant hue, crimson in this case, and a richer scenographic composition combined to the use of a some sort of “periscopic” view as an estranging element .

The crimson colour is the same of previous photographic artworks, like “decrypted signs,” which is very close also to the latent significance that is the base of both: the loss of free will.

“Short movie #2” offers an alternative objectivity, repeatedly hidden inside the non-reality of the appearance that contains it, represented as a scene composition cut in three aesthetically different patterns, each containing the others in symmetric progression.

BennaGaeanMaris[stateless]

Marta Ciołkowska is a Polish artist, currently living in Italy, who works within and in between the fields of video, installation, sculpture and graphics, exploring the topics of human relations and impact on the environment and the influence that the surrounding technology has on a modern man. She hold a MA in Interior Design from the Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz (Poland). In last few years, she took part in different international exhibitions, festivals, workshops and artist in residency programs.

Marta Ciolkowska Bottlefield

Bottle caps falling on the surface of the sea like bullets hurled on a battlefield: already from its title, Bottlefied by Marta Ciolkowska, shows - through a calembour - its denunciation. The expressive capacity of verbal language, which uses homophony as a statement, reverberates with the sonic-visual one of the video.

Plastic pollution of liquid spaces is one of the most urgent environmental problems to be fully aware of, addressed and solved. The accelerated production of objects employing such material, triggered by their increasing consumption, has intoxicated and is suffocating our planet: we are drowning submerged in the waste of our society, we are victims of a disposable culture daughter of comfort. But it’s important to change perspective, to move away from the anthropocentric one, to realize how marine populations are also at risk; by feeding on nanofibers already from the larval state they face certain death.

The video ends, however, with a message of hope: a hand reaching out to bring back to the surface - to the light and to life - humanity stricken by the blows of a progress that, every day more and more, turns out, from an ecological point of view, to be a real regression.

Text by Mara Chiara Wang

MartaCiolkowskaisbasedinGiarre(CT),Italy&Warsaw, Poland.

Stacey Mulligan (b. 1998, London) is an emerging visual artist. On graduating with a First-Class Honours Degree in Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Contemporary Art at The School of Design and Creative Arts, ATU, she was longlisted for the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) Visual Art Award 2021.

Stacey has participated in group exhibitions such as “Killorglin Arts Festival”, 2022, Kerry, “Transience”, 2021, a graduate-led exhibition in the Coach Station, Galway, and “B.C.”, 2021, an exhibition in The School of Design and Creative Arts, ATU, Galway. She was also awarded a PsSqaured Belfast Short Residency in June 2022, Belfast.

Stacey Mulligan Form, Aggression, Tension, Repeat

Using film and physical action, I am investigating gender as a complex concept, questioning our understanding of stereotypes in our current society and how they impact our daily lives.

Inspired by the deceptively feminine sport of cheerleading, (traditionally an all-male activity), I am exploring the conventional, masculine characteristics of aggression and strength.

The formal qualities of balance, weight, tension, mass and time are reflective of the conditions I must master in order to successfully complete the actions of my performance in my video, “Form, Aggression, Tension, Repeat”, 2021.

Reliving an action of play from my childhood, performing 91 continuous cartwheels, it seeks to push beyond my body’s limits to reveal its true potential of endurance.

I experiment with performative action to understand the notions of strength and the resilience of the human body. Projection of the film emphasises the black-and-white world of gender archetypes.

Through the process of my practice, I hope to evolve new perceptions of what defines gender, to manufacture a contemporary understanding of what gender could represent.

StaceyMulliganisbasedinRoscommon,Ireland.

Ojo Taiye

Woman With Telethon in Her Hair

To teach myself joy, I had to teach myself belonging, another verb for play.

Eat, sleep, paint and repeat are ways I nourish my social biome. It’s still fun for fun’s sake.

A good sport is for life. Minute chatters are more nutritious than we think. Love found me and all I want for dinner is care.

Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig are Australian visual artists who use field studies and play as research tools to create video, photography, mixed-media installation and internet based art works. They have an ongoing interest in human/ environment relationships, which they try and understand from a range of perspectives. Their process is centred around collaboration, often working with their two children and practitioners from a range of other disciplines.

Rachel Peachey & Paul Mosig Boxheads

The box has always been a highly prized object for play. So simple and so endlessly transformed. A weapon, a disguise, a crash mat, a hide-out, a building block for imaginary worlds that seem simple from the outside but are often layered with impenetrable meaning.

In play, time seems to stop. It may have only been minutes or it could have been hours. In the moment it’s as if time doesn’t exist and anything could happen.

The play is mediated by the rules. They create the shape in which play takes place and they are constantly being negotiated by the players and the world outside the game.

Play does not need an immediate practical goal, we play to seek pleasure and it can provide it’s own reward by being intrinsically enjoyable. We do it in our own time for our own reasons, it’s not required by duty even if we enter into it for reciprocal benefit. We play to bond with other humans or other animals or to the places we inhabit. We play to generate new forms of behaviour and ideas, to test our limits and to fall into different patterns of thinking, feeling and acting in the world.

Here, brothers playing together, evolving secret languages in response to the boredom of day to day family life, impervious to the outside world, feelings hurt and just as easily forgotten.

Peachey & Mosig are based in Gundungurra and Darug country,BlueMountains,Australia

Roi Carmeli (Tel Aviv, 1982) is a visual artist and musician based in Tel Aviv. He graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design,Jerusalem (2010) and obtained a master degree in Fine Arts from the Glasgow School of Art, Glasgow (2015).During his education, Roi spent a year as exchange student at the California College of Art, San Francisco, as well as residencies at Corning museum for glass, NY (2012), Scottish sculpture workshop, UK (2016) and Tenjiamyama art studio, JP (2018), among other places.

During 2017-18 he was a part of Market gallery committee based in Glasgow.

Roi Carmeli One Game only

The work deals with metamorphosis over time; it generates images that represent untouchable, unrealistic moments. The visuals and sound captivate illusive moments to the human eye, providing a unique opportunity to experience lost moments of reality.

By using technical manipulation, time stretches to amorphous dimensions that do not relate to “time” as defined by man.

I wish to emphasize the understanding that we are temporary and our temporariness creates a paradox: This understanding is what makes us vulnerable but is also what makes us so human.

Techniques: glass blowing, cutting, polish, sand blasting. Video filmed with phantom HD: 1000-1500 frames per second. Year of production: 2010.

My practice

My process explores pre-religious spiritual rituals, which I see as the earliest form of artistic expression, stemming from my research in the intersections between anthropology and archaeology and what influence and meaning they have for contemporary existence. I try and find links between ancient objects, tools and habitats and contemporary culture, and express these connections by creating immersive installations, merging traditional materials, like Bronze, plaster, and clay with more advanced technological elements, such as electronics, video and audio. For example, in 2018 I created a Digital fire sculpture, from Neon and synchronized sounds.

RoiCarmeliisbasedinTelAviv,Israel.

Federica Sala is an architect and visual artist who works between Milan and Barcelona.

In 2014 she founded Geometrie da Compagnia, a multidisciplinary studio at the intersection of different fields as kinetic sculpture, interior and public design, video art and performance.

At the base of her works there is always the listening to her own inner child and the desire to reimagine the world starting from the experience of astonishment. Her projects have been presented in festivals, galleries and public spaces all over Europe.

Federica Sala Domestic Balances

Domestic Balances is a game of precision and patience. The goal is to build balance systems made out of everyday objects.

Through a very delicate, almost zen, process ephemeral sculptures emerge with unexpected and hypnotic movements.

The result is a display of these dynamic bodies that defy, not only gravity but also the common sense of boredom and normalcy attached to their integral parts. The objects no longer serve routinely expected purposes but are reinvented by breaking away from their original functions. Domestic Balances is a metaphorical exercise about the search for the inner balance and it takes you to a state of meditation.

FedericaSalaisbasedinBarcelona,Spain.

Federica Sala Miss Bubbles

Who can teach us to play better than kids?

Playing with my 4 years old son and accompanying him in his curiosity, made me remember my childhood and that wonderful ability to transform anything, even the most mundane, into an surprising game: watching my son play was like learning to play again.

‘’Miss Bubbles’’ is inspired in the human growth phase when what is considered as main use of everyday objects is just one more of the endless possibilities. Where a stick becomes a horse, a box a spaceship and the understanding of an a infinity world begins.

FedericaSalaisbasedinBarcelona,Spain.

Salla Myllylä is a visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. Her work moves between drawing, painting, and moving images, and is often site-specific. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, University of the Arts Helsinki in 2014 and is currently a doctoral student in same university. Her works have been presented in exhibitions in artist-run spaces such as Gallery Huuto, Gallery G and Forum Box in Finland, in museums such as Frankfurter Kunstverein and Charlottenborg Kunsthal in Copenhagen, in festivals such as Tampere Film Festival and Japan Media Arts Festival in Tokyo and in public space for example in health care facilities and metro stations.

Salla Myllylä Island

Cars move by behind a painted surface. A traffic island with pine trees is revealed by scratching the painted surface. Trams and people pass by.

The traffic island is a strange piece of urban nature. Isolated from its surroundings it starts to resemble a watercolour painting by Albrecht Dürer where a turf of grass has been cut out from its environment.

I filmed the video in December 2015 through the kitchen window of a gallery in the harbour of Helsinki. It was first exhibited in the same gallery as a site-specific video piece.

SallaMyllyläisbasedinHelsinki,Finland.

Ojo Taiye

LET ME JUST SAY THIS,

I love to play. This is probably

Because I think childhood doesn’t End. It’s a memory strong enough

To lead me until I am stuck.

edited by Triona Ryan & Harald Turek, © 2022 switch & the artists published by switch 2022, www.s w i t c h.org

the switch event is co-ordinated by Triona Ryan, Harald Turek & Carol Kennedy

switch pays a special thanks to the community of Nenagh and the local shop owners who have supported the project by loaning the premises for the duration.

the switch event is funded by

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