LEER

Catriona Leahy

Catriona Leahy’s work engages in sites wherein a particular dissonance manifests itself temporally, spatially or aesthetically, where anachronistic objects, architecture or particular landscape tropes usher the past into focus with the present. To that end, her interest lies in the remains of cultural phenomena that have been displaced, or have lost their significance in our “progress-driven”, globalized society. Residues on the landscape of our industrial past and by extension, the impact this human intervention has had on our environment also provide material for investigating the repercussions of a society driven by progress. Through a process of intervention in the image using print, photography, moving image, installation and sculpture, attention is drawn to transformations, latent aspects and layered histories.

More recent work has been preoccupied with the question of how to reimagine the landscape in a time of ecological crisis. To that end, the work often focuses on anthropogenic landscapes – landscapes made or transformed by man’s intervention. In an ever-evolving landscape, it is only much later that the repercussions of human intervention can be truly determined. The latency of a visual manifestation of such activities, teaches us that the consequences of our actions in one moment can have any number of outcomes – undetermined and unpredictable. It is this temporal latency that is of concern for Catriona – the ripples or tremors that are felt, experienced or perceived, only much later after the event, as traces that meld into the fabric of our present.

Catriona Leahy is an artist based at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios where she holds a 3-year studio membership. She is also member of the Board of Directors at TBG&S. Catriona received her MA in Print from Royal College of Art, London in 2013 during which time she was awarded two study bursaries. Catriona has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Recent exhibitions include How the land lies at Sirius Arts Centre, Cork (2020); Past|Ures at Library Project, Dublin (2020); Fast Slow Fast CCA Derry~Londonderry (2019); Unfolding Landscapes at De Cacaofabriek in Helmond, The Netherlands (2018); Coup de Ville, 3rd International Triennial Exhibition in Sint-Niklaas, Belgium (2016); Relief in Time, Rijksmuseum Twenthe Enschede, The Netherlands (2015). She is currently working towards a group show Agitation Co-op in December at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, curated by Michael Hill with artists Michele Horrigan (IRE), Laurie Robins (UK/IRE) and Libita Sibungu (UK). https://www.templebargallery.c...

Recent awards include Arts Council of Ireland Visual Arts Bursary (2018), Culture Ireland Award (2018, 2016, 2011), Arts Council England Grants for the Arts (2016), AN Artist Bursary UK (2016). She has been the recipient of numerous international residencies such as The Frans Masereel Centre (2015, 2014, 2009), FLACC Workplace for Visual Artists (2014) - both in Belgium and The Florence Trust in London (2015 – 2016).

Marie Farrington

My practice is an ongoing attempt to draw gentle attention to the elusive, the momentary and the residual. Tracing the intimate intersections between knowledge and making, my work unpacks the history of form and the form of history through unfolding circular processes, uncovering the subtle forces and entropies contained in materials. My works are spectral, ephemeral testing grounds revealing invisible processes and tiny occurrences unfolding in spaces and on surfaces. Through a series of iterative gestures, I use sculpture as a mode of semiotic excavation: as a means of uncovering and mapping the associative, latent or vestigial qualities in materials. In this process, I borrow from the vocabulary of geology to allude to history, memory and impermanence.

In setting substances in conversation with each other, my work evokes a tenuous sense of narrative in groups of materials that are chronologically-bound. I enable materials to act upon each other, embedding both place and time into the works to produce objects that drift between their current, provisional forms and the future existences they relentlessly suggest. Pollen, coal, milk, plaster, wax, oil and ink often coincide in my installations. The unifying consequence is that of time arrested momentarily in the process of materials expending energy. Many of my pieces, although working within a concept of sculpture, exist as flat planes and use acts such as folding, layering, polishing or covering to establish a sense of image-hood that emphasises the notion of surface as a point of intersection between sculptures, images and architectural forms.

Marie Farrington studied at DIT (BA, 2013, 1.1) and NCAD (MA, 2016, 1.1). Recent exhibitions include A Vague Anxiety at Irish Museum of Modern Art (2019); Disruptors, Highlanes Gallery (2019); Fore, fold, Pallas Projects/Studios (solo, 2019); RESORT Revelations, Fingal County Council Arts Office (2018); Cf at the Research Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale (2017); These Circular Ruins, Illuminations Gallery, Maynooth University (solo, 2016); In good faith they waited for gravity, RUA RED (solo, 2015).

Recent awards include Arts Council Visual Arts Bursary Award (2020; 2017), Rapid Residency Award, Science Gallery Dublin, funded by the Provost’s Academic Development Fund, Trinity College Dublin (2020); Graphic Studios Residency Award, funded by Dublin City Council (2020); Fire Station Artists’ Studios Residential Award (2020-2023; 2018-2020); the Arts Council Travel and Training Award (2018); Fire Station Sculpture Workshop Award and Bursary (2015); the NCAD Visual Culture Postgraduate Scholarship (2014); Academic Excellence Medal, DIT (2013). She is a practicing post-primary teacher, a member of the panel of Artists, Guides and Lecturers at the Hugh Lane Gallery, the Infrastructure Public Art Panel for Fingal County Council, has taught on the CEAD program in NCAD and has been a visiting lecturer at TUDublin. Her work is in the collection of the OPW.
http://mariefarrington.com

Padraig Cunningham

My work examines our physical displacement in the environment, focusing on the gap between what is real and what is fictional. Within this dislocation, themes of loss and absence become apparent often centering on everyday places, their reinventing and questioning their status, usage and how they have been altered to accommodate human engagement. Implied in this alliteration is a nostalgia, a longing for what has been lost. The open receptive nature of the work is an attendant to that absence.

Since graduating in 1996 I have been working as a professional artist participating and organising exhibitions. In 2000 I founded Stoney Batter Studio (www.stoneybatterstudio.com) with two other artists, this provided a creative and stable working environment for a number of years. During that time I was involved in numerous shows including an emerging artist exhibition at the Ashford Gallery, RHA and solo shows at the Cross Gallery, Dublin.

In 2005 I moved to Boyle, Co. Roscommon and was Artist in Residence in the Dock Art Centre, Carrick-on-Shannon which culminated in a group exhibition, ‘Convergence’. In 2009 I was awarded a place on the Trade residency, an international residency working with the artist Darren Almond, funded by Leitrim and Roscommon arts offices. This programme concluded with the Trade conference and an exhibition titled ‘Sequence’. Over the last couple of years I have been involved in a artist led initiative, alter/native that aims to develop, through exhibitions and
events a strong network of working artists in the area. In 2011 was invited to participate on an international project and residency in Bodh Gaya, India. The work was exhibited in Patina, India and in Galway at Tulca 2011. In 2013 I was commissioned to produce a film that responds to a poem by Peter Fallon for The Poetry Project which commemorated Ireland’s EU presidency.

In 2015 I completed SPARK residency where I collaborated with a technology enterprise center, the subsequent work Emergent Properties was exhibited as a conclusion to the project. In 2017 and 2018, along with artist Karl Burke I was commissioned by Roscommon Art Center curator Linda Shevlin to make a collaborative work with a Brothers of Charity group in Roscommon. I also collaborated with artist Anna Macleod on the Park Project; Portrait of a Lake in 2018 along with making a film with artist Mark Garry that was purchased by IMMA as a recent acquisition. In 2019 I completed a MA Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD with the thesis projuct exhibited at the Goethe-Institute Dublin.

Siobhan McGibbon

XENOPHON
To consider a good Anthropocene requires a quantum leap in imagination. Xenophon is an alter-imaginary, an eco-feminist Utopia and a place of otherness, that decenters the Anthropos (man), and it’s presumed centre stage in this epoch, and reinstates the other (Xeno). Through stories told through histories, mythologies, science fictions, science fact, situated narratives and entanglements with others, a better epoch is conjured. Activating strange and inverted scenarios that conjure other ways of being in the world- including fundamental changes in human environment relationships, values, cultures, power and gender relations. The world unfolds with each question-driven, narrative-based exhibition, as the Xenothorpians mutate with living and non-living entities to adapt to the Anthropocene. Their hybridisations provide a backdrop from which new stories emerge- a tongue-in-cheek approach to parodying the problem of humans. The stories that build Xenophon are integral to this world-building practice. To gather stories, McGibbon locates herself in a conjuncture of events, laboratories, ideas, things, people, collaborations, plants, animals, cells and technologies. To draw awareness to our kinships McGibbon draws on the hyper-connected, multispecies thinking practices of Rosi Baradotti, Vinciane Despret, Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing. Integral to this enquiry is the question of what happens when one decentres the human? How does this shift in focus bring other perspectives into view and what new modes of research, collaboration, creative production and affective quality become possible as a result? What other worlds can we world?

Dr Siobhan McGibbon is a Visual Artist & world-builder based in West-Cork. Her expression mutates, merging sculpture, animation, drawing & participatory installations. McGibbon has spent five years developing the world of Xenophon to query the possibilities of a better Anthropocene, as part of her practice-based, research-led PhD. The world unfolds with each body of work, collaborating with practitioners in specific fields to build the narrative. Each chapter manifests through experimental enquiries with traditional & cutting edge techniques to create multi-layered scenarios. Xenophon is activated in multiple contexts; galleries, labs, site-specific interventions, & virtual archives.

McGibbon has a special interest in collaborative, transdisciplinary storytelling, collaborating with practitioners in diverging fields to build the world narrative. Collaborative enquires include; a 5-year collaboration with writer Maeve O’Lynn developing Xenothorpian culture and working CURAM, the centre for research in medical devices and REMEDI, the regenerative medicine institute to imagine the origin of species. Her most recent exhibition Life with Life inside in Sirius, Arts Centre (2019), transfigured the gallery space, enveloping the audience in the alter-imaginary of Xenophon. Other activations of the world include Ubi tunc vox inauditae melodiae?,
Triskel Arts Centre (2018), 21st Century Ireland in 21 Artworks curated by Cristín Leach (2017), In Case Of Emergency, Science Gallery, They call us the Screamers, Tulca, Future Proof, LAB.

Exhibition curated by Sean O'Reilly.