DegreeGraduation
This is an exhibition, at the Wexford Arts Centre, of some of the work of this year's graduating class on the Wexford Campus School of Art and Design. The School is part of Carlow IT, and the exhibits are part of the students' final portfolios for their BA Fine Arts Honours degree.
I did a fairly comprehensive report on last year's graduation (2013) as the exhibition was fully up and running when I arrived in the town. This year it was just being set up and would not open until after I'd left town. So I decided to drop in anyway and have a chat with some of those who were erecting their displays. This report is therefore not comprehensive and the displays are only in the course of assembly, some of them at the very early stage. I do hope to be able to include a link to the exhibition catalogue at a later stage.
There are two exhibits covered in the above photo:
(i) Lar O'Toole is responsible for the piece of a ship in the foreground. This was washed up at Carnsore near where Lar lives. He is making two points in particular. The first is that Gaia has had a bellyfull of garbage and she has regurgitated this particular piece as excessive. The age of the piece is not known, but no matter, it was a while ago. The second point is illustrated by the profusion of support strings along the line of the piece. You can see some of these against the craft behind and the dark rectangle on the wall. These reflect the fact that this particular act of regurgitation was not caused by one big wave or a night of the big wind but by the attrition of a host of smaller forces over time.
(ii) Seán's boat behind is a flat bottomed craft for negotiating the shallows in the Wexford area..
Jenny Foley's pieces are a continuum from left to right and represent the traces left by a sort of an upper half body roll from left to right while her body was coated with various adhesive substances. She then added colour to the traces.
Jenny suffered for this piece of art as she was allergic to some of the substances used, and traces of others stuck to your body for a long time. You could even wake up in the middle of the night with your head stuck to the pillow.
The piece is set against the background of people not being happy with some aspects of their own bodies while bodies in general tend to be idealised in art. It is telling it like it is, in the hope that people will eventually come to terms with how they actually are in real life.
I really don't know where these disembodied trousers are heading and I didn't have an opportunity to discuss them with the artist.
Ciaran Byrne, who lives in Wexford, was very put out by the number of vacant premises and derilect sites, in the town. For the purpose of the exhibit he was concerned with the subset which were for letting rather than for sale. The exhibit consists of paintings of some of these and of a host of to let notices.
At this stage in the mounting of the exhibit, Ciaran was undecided as to whether to mix the signs in with the paintings of the vacant locations or give them a separage grid of their own on a facing wall.
That part of the exhibition upstairs dealt with digital and illuminated exhibits and it all took place in a darkened room.
The top exhibit in the photo above cleverly uses projection into the corner of a room to get a 3D effect. This is reinforced by threads and small junction pieces across the space between the two walls.
The bottom exhibit has two hemispheres into which moving piectures will be projected.
This one clearly has something to do with film.
Sinéad Meehan's pieces are called Blind Spots and she is dealing with things that people don't notice around them, or never get a chance to observe. She is from a rural background and feels that non-rural people have many misconceptions about those on the land and are ignorant of many aspects of their lives. This is her granda's coat which has seriously degenerated over time. Meanwhile she has made herself a new coat from an old foxford blanket.
The birth of a calf is a common event in agriculture but one from which city folk often recoil. So Sinéad is sharing this event with us in two pictures. The first, above, shows the calf beginning to be pulled out of the cow by a rope tied to its hind legs..
And this is the calf just after the birth.
Earlier, Sinéad had been on a placement in with The Void in Derry and as a result this gallery has broken with tradition and, for the first time, will host an exhibition by graduates rather than established artists as has been their practice to date. Congratulations to Sinéad for contributing to extending the reach of the graduate exhibition, already a collaboration between two institutions, over the border, and also to broadening the range of activities of The Void itself.
If I have misinterpreted any of the exhibits or not done them justice I apologise. I only had a very short time at the emerging exhibition and only spoke to a small number of the artists and that very briefly.
Here's wishing the students success in their finals