PEINT

PEINT took place across a three month period spent on residency at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre. For this project Carl Giffney inhabited and performed roles that have to do with resources and their collection. The roles the artist chose to enact are common to the local area and ones that he claims 'have been both idealised and stereotyped at the same time’. They included the Arigna Coal Miner, the Scrap Metal Dealer, the Wild Cat Oil Driller, the Lithium Chemist, the Barytes Miner and the Tinker.

The outcome of PEINT is a solo exhibition that features a 55 minute HD video that documents and explains the process of engaging with three local materials: Barytes, Lithium and Coal. These three materials are ultimately manufactured into a radioactivity stopping paint (or peint) that is presented in the exhibition. The exhibition also lays out the story of this process physically in the gallery with the materials and equipment that were collected and built during PEINT.

Giffney explains, In contrast to the variety of my approaches and their outcomes, my art practice consistently aims to investigate social capital- and social capitals: how, why and when they form, change and interact. As opposed to economic capital, it does not have a monitory exchange value, and this sometimes brings it into conflict with organisations with goals of economic profit. All social capitals are formed and emerge through repeated relationships with other people. I am interested in examining the material outcomes of these encounters and systems of exchange by participating with, interrupting and activating the physical structures that typify them.

The commonality to be found across the broad spectrum of social capitals is the creation of collective senses of purpose, belonging, righteousness and security. Comparatively, in other cases the evident longing to actively build up new, more relevant models of social capital takes this place.
My investigations in this project were originally influenced by the acute fluctuations that continue to be visible in Ireland, their ongoing outcomes, and the writings of Emile Durkheim. Travel and variety continues to be integral to this investigation.