Who Dares This Pair Of Boots Displace
This is the write up for the 126 show “Who Dares This Pair Of Boots displace”.
Who dares this pair of boots displace?
Steve Maher, Fiona Hession,Tadhg McCullagh, Anne O’Byrne, Aidan Kelleher and Brendan Hoare.
September 10th – October 2nd, 2010.
Opening reception:Thursday September 9th, 7-9pm.
126 Presents Who dares this pair of boots displace? a show by six recent graduates from Galway & Mayo Institute of Technology and Limerick School of Art and Design. The new works, responding to the theme displaced, include drawing, sculpture and video. Considering their recent transition this exhibition provides a platform for new processes, dialogue and interaction.
Steve Maher is a graduate of Limerick School of Art and Design and is a member of the artist partnership ”Like Studio” in Limerick city. His work is based around performance, sculpture and drawing. Maher considers that within the enculturation endured through the formative years of life, there exists a duality in how individuals are taught to interpret their immediate environment.
Fiona Hession, a GMIT graduate, is a Galway Based Visual Artist. Her work to date has focused on the various face of “Home” in modern society and what this term means on a personal level. Hession uses a variety of disciplines such as sculpture, print and textiles to inform her work. In this new work she has endeavoured to look beyond the traditional concept of her own home and try to understand the emotional trauma of being displaced on a much larger level.
Tadhg McCullagh studied painting at Limerick School of Art and Design. Who me? Yes you. Not me! Couldn’t be! Then who? presents moments where the instrumental attitudes that are dominant in our society can be, at least momentarily, set aside. The cogs are given a chance to turn alternatively allowing an opportunity for reflection on the system as a whole to take place. Tadhg’s practice is informed mainly by sociological studies and how these issues can be represented through art.
Anne O’Byrne studied at the Limerick College of Art and most recently at GMIT. O’Byrne’s work focuses on the engagement and observation of the mundane and the banal. Things we see in front of us every day, things we work with and places we live in are all subjects of her analysis. Working with her deep interest in all things aeronautical with conceptual ideas of construction, O’Byrne toys with the physical entity of a ‘Displaced Threshold’. The body of work consists of 4 works on paper, 3 works on gessoed board, a video piece approx. 9 mins, and a constructional piece.
Aidan Kelleher received a B.A in Fine Art Printmaking from Limerick School of Art and Design and is a member of Limerick Printmakers. Aidan’s practice studies the use of devices with which a viewer can interact. For 126 Aidan created a machine designed to evoke an emotional response. “Fear”was conceived by first researching an accurate definition of what fear meant and researching different ways that people could be agitated by the presence of danger. To create the feeling of and the image of this fear, two electrodes were attached to the controllers which are set to randomly administer an electric shock. A sense of danger and tension is generated.
Brendan Hoare, completed a degree in Fine Art in GMIT, Galway. In the work created for this show, Hoare suggests we are programmed to perceive identity in ourselves. This identity is a mask which allows us to interact and function socially. We are in fact a collection of perceptions which succeed each other with great rapidity and are in perpetual movement. Memory, which is basis of identity, is constituted of a collection of these disjointed fragmentary episodes. The unified, continuous self is an illusion. The inner life is too subtle and transient to be known to itself.
126 was established in 2006 by local artists in their own living room as a response to the need for more non-commercial gallery spaces in Galway and is currently located on Queen Street in the city centre.
