Embedded Files
Preview: 6 pm, Friday 27th October 2023 | Runs to January 6, 2024
Preview: 6 pm, Friday 27th October 2023 | Runs to January 6, 2024
Beyond Boundaries is an immersive audio-visual exhibition that unfurls the interplay and explores the relationship between art, environment, and society. The exhibition features five contemporary artists, Michael McLoughlin, Alan Crowley, Conor Wickham, Richard Malone and Sarah Jayne Booth, These artists are brought together through their connecting themes and approaches to engaging with the here and now and the influence of our existing and changing social constructs. These five artists use various media to probe the intricate interplay between our lived environments and culture, perception and reality, and the individual and collective experiences that define our modern era.
Their work thoughtfully unravels how the contemporary world weaves its influence into the fabric of our lives, reshaping our expanding comprehension of societal connections and our ways of existence in an ever-expanding world. The exhibition will invite audiences to explore these works together and experience a glimpse of how they see the world and how artists are interpreting these experiences into visual and audio languages to explore, interrogate and navigate these new and intensifying realities.
Their work thoughtfully unravels how the contemporary world weaves its influence into the fabric of our lives, reshaping our expanding comprehension of societal connections and our ways of existence in an ever-expanding world. The exhibition will invite audiences to explore these works together and experience a glimpse of how they see the world and how artists are interpreting these experiences into visual and audio languages to explore, interrogate and navigate these new and intensifying realities.
Michael McLoughlin
See Hear, is a sound work made from the voices of people who live in Ennistymon. It acknowledges community, diversity, openness, and support through a simple mechanism for participation, collective activity, and testimony to a sense of belonging. With the help of artist Jarlath Slattery, McLoughlin spent time in the summer of 2023 recording the names of people from the town. The work takes the form of a 'broadcast' from two speakers outside the gallery that call out the names of everyone who was recorded. The sound can travel great distances. It travels through the air, through the streets, as a testimony to belonging and a call to friends. See Hear conceptually connects to the other work by McLoughlin, in the exhibition, Rest Here, making sense of the distances people have travelled to make Ennistymon their home, their refuge, their place to belong. Rest Here is a spatial sound installation made from the song of the Common Swift. In heraldic tradition, the swift represents the exiled, or one without land. Yet we meet it as the communal bird, drawn together by each others’ song, returning, gathering in colonies, nesting, raising young and resting before taking flight once again. The parallels between the story of the swifts’ journey and those of people taking flight from persecution, poverty, or war in search of refuge deepened. This artwork has a simple premise. It’s an invitation, an extended welcome to the landless traveller and to remind us that we are part of their journey. We can offer support, hope and a safe place of rest.
Alan Crowley
Alan Crowley is a printmaker and photographer. In his art practice he explores the natural world using photography. Carrying his heavy traditional camera equipment, he rambles through his local countryside. He revisits sites he roamed as a boy seeing them now through adult eyes layered in memory. For him, the act of photographing landscape is distinct from the results he discovers in the darkroom. Returning to photograph familiar locations often provokes an experience of having lived in the place before. He remembers the past and recognises the here and now. There are two distinct stories in these images. A private remembrance of the photographer and the many narrative layers interpreted thereafter.
He is interested in making representations of common everyday scenes, and capturing compositional arrangements that portray these banal spaces as places for the unconscious to play. Rural scenes are captured with a panoramic Linhof Technorama 6 x 17 camera usingcelluloid film. The film negative is digitalised and transferred to Silkscreen to be printed byhand.
Sites of insignificance, abandoned wasteland, sidelong views into dense forest, water ways, and secluded woodland scenes are carefully positioned within the camera viewfinder. The compositional arrangement provides a secondary assemblage of intimate forms and patterns that unconsciously re-direct attention. Familiar scenery acquires a subjectivity, and the capacity to be read into. Unaware, the viewer is positioned as central in the scene. A nondescript place has assumed meaning. A hoarding for stories and attachments. Set the scene in a particular light and the company writes the story. Just enough context and staging to lull and lure the viewer in. Photographs match our mood reflecting what lies beneath.
He is interested in making representations of common everyday scenes, and capturing compositional arrangements that portray these banal spaces as places for the unconscious to play. Rural scenes are captured with a panoramic Linhof Technorama 6 x 17 camera usingcelluloid film. The film negative is digitalised and transferred to Silkscreen to be printed byhand.
Sites of insignificance, abandoned wasteland, sidelong views into dense forest, water ways, and secluded woodland scenes are carefully positioned within the camera viewfinder. The compositional arrangement provides a secondary assemblage of intimate forms and patterns that unconsciously re-direct attention. Familiar scenery acquires a subjectivity, and the capacity to be read into. Unaware, the viewer is positioned as central in the scene. A nondescript place has assumed meaning. A hoarding for stories and attachments. Set the scene in a particular light and the company writes the story. Just enough context and staging to lull and lure the viewer in. Photographs match our mood reflecting what lies beneath.
Conor Wickham
Interested in repetition and how we make, deconstruct and remake images of the world, our histories and ourselves, Conor's work is about landscapes and memory, and it aims to initiate new memories in the viewer. Using a collection of found 35mm slides as the main source of imagery, they are projected and layered on additional surfaces, and drawn and painted images. Some images like memories are transient, but some will remain and endure. They connect to our lived experiences but also experiences we have consumed through secondary sources like television, or any moving or static media. Both the process and approach in creating the work are underpinned by chaos, disorder and unpredictability, there is no grand vision or clear narrative, and the process is responsive and nonlinear. The images presented are all new, but familiar. Our recollection of the past is a figment of our imagination. We can construct new memories.
Richard Malone
His work explores the tactile nature of textiles and the cultural significance of weaving. Malone's work encompasses knotting, binding, weaving, and draping to create unique sculptural forms. Malone's work is a reflection on the relationship between individual and collective experiences, and the social, cultural, and political implications of textiles.
Sarah Jayne Booth
A multimedia installation artist who examines domesticity, gender inequality, and bodily autonomy through a subversive feminine aesthetic. She is the founder of the r.a.g.e. collective and is on the board of directors at Sample-Studios. Her work incorporates found objects, sound, and video to create new narratives and examine social conflicts. Booth is particularly interested in feminist ideologies and material culture, exploring the female body and human ecology within the context of the home. She sees the home as both a site of constraint and a source of previously taboo imagery. For Beyond Boundaries, Sarah Jane Booth responds to the concept of civilization in a broad sense. She has abstractly considered ideas around 'going electric.' It poses the question: is it undeniably superior to its gasoline-powered cousins when assessing their emissions impact? However, a recent event in California, during one of their heatwaves, led the state to request electric vehicle owners 'not' to charge their vehicles to prevent a significant drain on the state's power grid. The political landscape surrounding climate debates is rapidly evolving, particularly with the ascent of new nationalist populism across the US and Europe. Neoliberalism, as Booth perceives it, attributes the production of carbon emissions to the individual consumer while choosing to overlook the socioeconomic factors that foster climate inequality, especially among minority groups. This approach has culminated in environmental degradation and wealth inequality, undermining the potential for collective action.Booth believes climate change is a global phenomenon that will affect all people. However, she discerns that its effects are intricately influenced by persistent and deeply rooted gender inequality. These multifaceted factors and more lead to the conclusion that as climate change intensifies, women will be disproportionately affected, with gender-based violence and exploitation on the rise as resources dwindle and land becomes increasingly uninhabitable due to the intensifying effects of climate change. To tackle these complex issues, Booth advocates for a multifaceted approach involving education, policy reforms, international cooperation, and grassroots movements. By nurturing empathy, championing sustainable practices, and advocating for social and environmental justice, she believes that society can progress towards a more inclusive and equitable future for all.
October 27 to January 6, 2024
October 27 to January 6, 2024
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse