Artists

Artists Biographies and Statements

 

Michelle Browne

Michelle Browne is an artist based in Dublin. She has a BA in Fine Art Sculpture and History of Art from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and a Postgraduate Diploma in Arts Administration From University College Dublin. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally, most recently taking part in Urban Wasanii, Kenya, Art@work. Roscommon, Documenta Urbana, Kassel and TULCA 07 in Galway. She is the recipient of the NCAD Student Prize, The RDS James White Art Award 2006 and has recently been awarded an artist’s bursary by the Arts Council of Ireland. Michelle is the founder and curator of OUT OF SITE, a festival of live art in public space in Dublin.

Michelle’s work is predominantly performances based and much of her recent work considers the role of the viewer in the performative act. Her practice fundamentally explores how we engage with our environment and the people around us. Her work touches on urban planning, regeneration and social structures. She is interested in looking at the frisson that is created in our engagement with the world. She looks at how the individual exists in contemporary society: where we live, how we get from one place to the other and the obstacles that present themselves. How do we negotiate and fit into the world that we live in? Her work highlights, tugs at, and pulls apart these intersections to see what can be revealed.

 

Jo Anne Butler

Jo Anne Butler graduated from NCAD, Dublin in 2005 with a joint honours degree in Fine Art: Sculpture and History of Irish Art and Design. She then worked for two years as assistant arts project manager with Breaking Ground, the Ballymun Regeneration Limited per cent for art scheme. In late 2007 she returned to full time study to study Architecture in UCD. She has maintained an art practice throughout, and has exhibited in Ireland, Poland and New Zealand as well as undertaking a number of collaborative projects with artist Eilis McDonald. In October 2008 Jo Anne Butler will curate a series of artworks across Dublin city with artist Tara Kennedy. This pilot project, in conjunction with the Architecture Foundation’s Open House event, will investigate the way in which the artist can both playfully and provocatively stimulate debate on architecture, planning and the built environment in Ireland.

‘I make work that is both playful and inquisitive – a seeming innocence masks a deeper unrest or uneasiness.  A recurring theme in my work is that of the “landscape” and its inhabitation, as mediated to us through art history, tourism campaigns and property development.  I delight in the freedom and space for creativity afforded in choosing low-tech responses, processes and methods.  I enjoy simplicity and immediacy in line, colour and pattern.

As an artist studying architecture I am increasingly aware of the value of the position of the artist.  Architecture shapes the social spaces we live in while at the same time making physical our desires, ideologies and politics.  Our history is written in our buildings.  But sometimes we are too close to see what that history is.  Right now, at a time of sharp downturn in the construction industry, is an excellent opportunity for reflection and inquiry.  For if the architecture of any period in time tells us the story of the values and aspiration of a people, what does the recent building boom reveal about the values held by contemporary Irish society.

In a recent interview by Gemma Tipton, artist Jesse Jones describes the drudgery of a daly commute as each morning she watched “25 cranes on the horizon, producing nothing. And I was thinking about the futility of the sort of production that happened during the Celtic Tiger.  It had these huge mechanisms of potential behind it, but no one was thinking about what the production of social space was actually meant to achieve”. “Art”, Jones continues, “should work as an intervention, a critique, to remind people that there is another prism to look at a situation through”.’

 

Carl Giffney

In 2007 Carl Giffney graduated from the NCAD Sculpture Department with a first class honours degree. He has studied and exhibited in Ljubljana, Slovenia and undertaken publicly funded projects on Cork Street in Dublin, in Castlecomer in Kilkenny and in rural areas of East Offaly. In 2005 he co-founded Bluebricks, a public interventionist group based in Dublin and in 2007 he co-founded The Good Hatchery. The Good Hatchery is an artist led initiative that is homed in a building sourced for free via the internet (www.thegoodhatchery.wordpress.com). Carl Giffney holds a permanent studio here and is currently completing a one month residency at Arigna coal manufacturers as part of Roscommon Arts Offices Art@Work program. Recent exhibitions include Art Horrific in Dublin, the Excursions performance festival in Limerick and a solo installation entitled Kavaliers Triadic Propitator, in Westport.

“I am fascinated by belief structures, methods of explaining our surroundings, taxonomy and history. I attempt to understand how, why and when we engage with such topics on a daily basis through my art practice. By initiating such research, in as many different contexts as possible, I hope to explore notions of personal and social identity, and ultimately the greater social cohesion that does, or does not, link us to our fellow man. Accessibility is very important to me. I believe that all audiences are unique and intelligent and that an artists approach to any group of people must be equally unique and intelligent. The outcomes of my practice often involve dead pan humour, large scale physicality, aspects of performance or interactivity and bizarre mis-truths.”

 

Daragh McGrath

 

“In his book, Experiencing Architecture, Steen Eiler Rasmussen describes an empty space as being a “cavity between the solids”. It is these ‘cavities’ that have become the focus of my work over recent years.

My interest lies in exploring the transitional lives of spaces, those in-between places where architecture, landscape and the built environment often intersect, and where a dialogue – of absence rather than presence – is created. My work takes as its starting point Foucault’s observation that spaces are “saturated with qualities” and are neither lifeless nor neutral. My practice is driven by explorations of these charged, shifting entities – buildings that have come to the end of their functionality, the changing functionality of a landscape, human interruptions in the landscape – that exist in urban, rural and suburban contexts. The process is then opened out further through an examination of how artistic intervention into these spaces informs, or even transforms them, restoring to them a new or different reality.

The resultant photo works are realised both within the structure of the gallery space and as site specific interventions/installations and collaborations.”

 

Recent exhibitions/interventions include: The Lives of Spaces, Irish Pavilion (Palazzo Giustinian Lolin) 11th International Architecture Biennale, Venice 2008, European Night, La Nuit de l’Année,Rencontres d’Arles, Arles, France 2008, Home/Visitant, Priorat Centre d’Art, 2008 Barcelona, Let Go RHA/Monster Truck Gallery 2008 (Ireland), EV+A, Limerick City 2008 (Ireland) curated by Hou Hanru, Two Minds (artist+ architect collaboration), GT Gallery 2007 (Belfast), Beyond the Country, Lewis-Glucksman Gallery 2007 (Ireland), Thru Irish Eyes, Beijing Institute of Art & Design, (China) 2007, Kaunas Photo Days 07, (Lithuania), Idensitat ’07, (Barcelona), E.U. Eyes on Japan, Iwate Museum of Modern Art (Japan) 2006. Boundaries, Uberbau Gallerie (Düsseldorf) 2005.Making Things Better, East05 (U.K.)

 

Awards include: New Work Award, Arts Council of Ireland (2008). ACNI Artist Bursary (2006) and a Travel Award, (2005). The AIB Arts Prize (2004) (Ireland).Pepenieres pour le Jeune Artistes du Europe (France) 2004.

Elaine Reynolds

Elaine Reynolds studied in the National College of Art and Design and the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is currently based between Dublin and Leitrim. Since August 2007, Reynolds has been involved in ‘New Sites-New Fields’; an ongoing experimental research project at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre. In 2008 she exhibited in the ‘Excursions’ performance festival, Limerick, ‘Never Ending Telescope’ in the Back Loft Gallery, Dublin and attended workshops at National Review of Live Art, Glasgow. Upcoming shows include a site-specific installation on the shores of Lough Allen, Co. Leitrim (as part of ‘New Sites- New Fields’) and a group show ‘The Dock’ arts centre, Carrick on Shannon.

Reynold’s practice is strongly research and process driven, investigations often include the use of live action and video. Carefully selected sites are central to the resolution of such enquiries, repetition and cyclical patterns are recurring themes in her work. Recent activities have been informed by an interest in social and economic theory, exploring industrial processes and the idea of labour as a commodity. In the past, Reynolds has made concrete blocks by hand and used cement mixers for preparing dough and washing clothes. She has toiled endlessly at impossible tasks and performed underwater for an audience of one. 


 

Dominic Thorpe

Dominic Thorpe, a native of Kildare, graduated with an MA from the National College of Art and Design in 2006. He works in various media: audio/visual recording, performance, installation as well as employing strategies of intervention and collaboration. He has shown at many art exhibitions and has recently completed a number of public projects including commissions from the Irish Youth Justice Services, Darndale Community Services in North Dublin and the Finglas Suicide Network. He has awards from the Kildare County Council, CREATE and the Arts council of Ireland. He is currently working on a public art commission for the Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council for which he has been invited to present at an international conference in Berlin titled ‘Migration in Museums’.

“In the making and presenting of work I use various media including: photography, video, performance and object based installation.  Continuing on from ideas of performance in my work I employ methods of engagment and collaboration.  I am interested in ideas of place as a catalyst for conceiving and developing ideas.  I continue to bring ideas from ‘context to studio’ and ‘studio to context’.”