About
The RCC x MCG Exhibition was an open call exhibition in collaboration with the Regional Cultural Centre as part of a virtual artist in residence position I held. The exhibition features work submitted by artists from all over the world. The gallery will not only offer visitors a chance to experience contemporary artworks in a virtual space but to also partake in a unique shared experience while conversing with other patrons at the virtual bar or eatery.
Featured Artists
Andy Osborn
Untitled
2020
The work was made at home, in isolation, from a stock image. A blurred version of the images was projected onto a large canvas painted with black acrylic paint and then photographed and cropped.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Kathryn Maguire
Lines of Force
2020
Kathryn's practice engages questions that arise in Greek philosophy and materials to greater understand both production of artwork and the laws of the physical world. Performance is used to explore the connection between artist and scientist; creating and presenting elements in context and involving experts, rooted in real scientific methods, as a source of knowledge. "Lines of Force" seeks to reveal fundamental and invisible forces and energies.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Peter Naessens
Self Portrait
The Life Giving Tent
2020
“Self Portrait”
Identity is an Important aspect of my work and this self portrait is no exception. The image has no clear identity, allowing you to add your own or connect it to a memory of your own. Whilst making this work I was thinking about Lucian Freud’s portraits, painted from life, as he saw it, in that immediate moment granting it immortality. I used reflective surfaces to distort my own reflection in order to distance the image from its source. The work focuses on identity and memory, their temporary nature and their ability to change with time.
Identity is an Important aspect of my work and this self portrait is no exception. The image has no clear identity, allowing you to add your own or connect it to a memory of your own. Whilst making this work I was thinking about Lucian Freud’s portraits, painted from life, as he saw it, in that immediate moment granting it immortality. I used reflective surfaces to distort my own reflection in order to distance the image from its source. The work focuses on identity and memory, their temporary nature and their ability to change with time.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
“The Life Giving Tent”
Created in isolation this painting depicts an unknown, unseen person being supported by a lifegiving tent. In Isolation I've found that I have become very introspective, questioning myself, my future and past. I have used painting as a crutch to lean on and it has become essential to my well being. The shroud covering the figure is both protecting and isolating the figure. The Ubiquity Of medical equipment designed to separate people and shield was the starting point for this work.
Created in isolation this painting depicts an unknown, unseen person being supported by a lifegiving tent. In Isolation I've found that I have become very introspective, questioning myself, my future and past. I have used painting as a crutch to lean on and it has become essential to my well being. The shroud covering the figure is both protecting and isolating the figure. The Ubiquity Of medical equipment designed to separate people and shield was the starting point for this work.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Peter Naessens is an artist based in Dublin, Ireland, studying at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD). Drawing from his collection of photographs, books and documents as a primary source for his work combined with thoughts and memories. Working Mostly in Oil on canvas, he explores forgotten people and obsolete ideas often changing contexts or removing them altogether.
Mimi Seery
The Impossibility of Certainty
2018
This work is inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet, with themes of identity struggle, indecisiveness, emotional isolation and death.
I sought to portray the most terrifying death of all - the death of the mind - caused by the struggle for identity that all humans periodically suffer from. Hamlet has ruminated himself into a place where the outside world no longer exists. All that is left is his tormented mind surrounded by a terrifying darkness of an uncertain reality.
I sought to portray the most terrifying death of all - the death of the mind - caused by the struggle for identity that all humans periodically suffer from. Hamlet has ruminated himself into a place where the outside world no longer exists. All that is left is his tormented mind surrounded by a terrifying darkness of an uncertain reality.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Mimi Seery is an artist, art director and illustrator. Her work investigates social isolation caused by contemporary expectations on the individual and society. Mimi seeks to enlighten and encourage self-knowledge as a way of finding one's own identity and a deeper awareness of oneself, resulting in more meaningful connections with others.
Egert Tischler
Isolated view of the corner of my room
2020
Egert Tischler is an Estonian artist, studying in Tallinn, Estonia, using different mediums in his practice swapping between figurative images and abstract forms. His work is embedded in existential and spiritual focus.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Gavin Mc Crea
October
2018
This painting is a response to human impact on water-masses, with pours and spills of paint suggesting pollution and toxic waste. Utilising varying processes and materials I look to immerse the viewer within an Aquatic realm. Making gestural marks, manipulating paint, repeating patterns, screen print and additions of hard-edge graphic elements are all inspired by the graphics from surfboard design, the work is highly energetic, flowing and at times chaotic. Incorporating various transparent substrates; acetate, films, tapes and polythene as an alternative to more traditional materials. Transparent layering elements reference processes involved in the construction of surfboards and the translucency of the sea itself.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Visual artist, Gavin Mc Crea, grew up in Sion Mills, Tyrone in Northern Ireland. Pursuing a love of surfing he has lived in the west of Ireland for the last 32 years. Along with a 1st in BA Fine Art and being awarded The Hyde Bridge Gallery Graduate Award Solo exhibition 2017, Gavin has also been long-listed for the RDS Visual Arts Awards in both 2016 and 2017. Exhibitions include, “Innermost Limits” at The Hyde Bridge Gallery and The Alley Theatre. “Intertidal” at The Ballina Arts Centre and most recently “Speed Power and Flow” at Ards Art Centre.
Domhnall McCullough
I miss you dublin
Steps of despair
2020
“I miss you Dublin“
Dublin, Ireland is slowly losing its crusty old side streets that people tend to overlook. I believe that’s where the beauty of Dublin lies.
Dublin, Ireland is slowly losing its crusty old side streets that people tend to overlook. I believe that’s where the beauty of Dublin lies.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
“Steps of despair”
This impromptu photo, captured in Dublin, is of an unknown man seeming to be in a deep emotion state.
This impromptu photo, captured in Dublin, is of an unknown man seeming to be in a deep emotion state.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Domhnall McCullough is a photographer capturing everyday simple life, focusing on communicating the unseen emotions in all his subjects.
Kevin Callaghan
Soaring away from the home planet at high speed
2014
“Soaring away from the home planet at high speed” is a series of experiments undertaken while studying at The Royal College of Art London. Based on a sci-fi novel, ”Star Maker” by Olaf Stapledon.
|
|
|
Original
|
|
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
|
|
Block Composition
Kevin Callaghan is an Irish artist living and working in Glasgow, United Kingdom, at The Glasgow Sculpture Studios.
Diarmuid Farrell
Data Tapestry
2020
We live in an age of data abundance, passive self-quantification of our everyday actions has resulted in each of us amassing a huge store of seemingly meaningless data.
“Data tapestry” aims to highlight that rich human interactions can be found within this datastore. Weaving a tapestry which has human experiences encoded into it.
Each stitch represents a message within the data, with significant experiences being highlighted in different yarns. Interweaving the mundane with the meaningful. Crafting a tapestry which records the complex ways we communicate with one another digitally.
“Data tapestry” acts as a robust data store. The volatile nature and future focus of tech industries, means there are no adequate measures in place for long term archiving of our data.
We only have to look at a pre Web 2.0 which is almost completely extinct, a huge chunk of our history fading away. The goal of “Data tapestry” is to highlight this issue and present an alternative to conventional digital storage.
“Data tapestry” aims to highlight that rich human interactions can be found within this datastore. Weaving a tapestry which has human experiences encoded into it.
Each stitch represents a message within the data, with significant experiences being highlighted in different yarns. Interweaving the mundane with the meaningful. Crafting a tapestry which records the complex ways we communicate with one another digitally.
“Data tapestry” acts as a robust data store. The volatile nature and future focus of tech industries, means there are no adequate measures in place for long term archiving of our data.
We only have to look at a pre Web 2.0 which is almost completely extinct, a huge chunk of our history fading away. The goal of “Data tapestry” is to highlight this issue and present an alternative to conventional digital storage.
|
|
Original
|
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Diarmuid is an interaction designer who is interested in questioning the ways we interact with the world in the mixed reality space of the digital/physical. Focusing on making as a tool for experimentation and research, combining technical skill with a desire to question. Diarmuid aims to craft experiences of wonder.
Joshua Dyson
Self Portrait in Isolation
2020
A collection of images of the artist were compiled together to create a new subject to paint. The images were manipulated in such a way that they were nearly recognisable as the original person. “Self Portrait in Isolation” is in context to the previous months, for the artist, where the familiar confines of personal and working space come together.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Joshua Dyson is a sculptor and performer from Dublin, Ireland studying at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD), and ASFA in Greece. His work has evolved to use materials that are readily available to compose a narrative and create a space which can be inhabited and activated.
Dyson is creating structures, installations and objects to explore themes of digital age intimacy, western world psycho-politics and physical law.
Dyson is creating structures, installations and objects to explore themes of digital age intimacy, western world psycho-politics and physical law.
Molly Garvey
To be pollinated by beetles
2020
I collected fallen petals from an overhanging Magnolia tree on the path I now walk every day. The petals last for four to five days, slowly bruising until eventually they are the texture and colour of the bog. The Magnolia is one of the earlier forms of trees, and the flowers come before the leaves. It has survived millennia and will hopefully survive us.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Molly Garvey is a visual and performance artist based in Cork city. Her practice champions the mundane tasks and objects we encounter every day and the daily practices that we often take for granted. She uses multiple approaches including music, photography, text and body to translate lived practice. She is one of the INHOUSE 2020 residents in The Guesthouse Project, Cork City, Ireland.
Sarah Lewtas
Feíscínt
2020
“Feíscínt”, originally featured in an exhibition called “T3 T4”, is a response to the kind gesture of a friend. I became seriously ill with a thyroid condition and needed to see a doctor. I didn't have any clean underwear so a friend washed a pair of knickers and ironed them dry. She handed them to me with both hands and in my changed mental state it was as if they were a prayer shawl being presented like some sacred artefact, Feíscínt roughly translates from Irish as “insight”.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Sarah Lewtas is a visual artist working in sculptural installation. She has lived in and worked in Dunlewey, Ireland for the last 40 years. She studied fine art in London at St Martins before escaping to the wilds of Donegal, Ireland.
Meadhbh McNutt
ICXC
2019
The enduring popularity of idols speaks to a human urge to redirect grief, confusion or isolation into an object of fixation. Idolum explores the visual traces of this impulse in the artist's home, Donegal, Ireland; exploring overlapping religious ideologies and popular racing subcultures.
“ICXC” is an artefact of Christian branding—a combination of letters that form an abbreviation of the Greek name for Jesus Christ. In iconography, the fingers of Christ are often posed to spell out this abbreviation.
“ICXC” is an artefact of Christian branding—a combination of letters that form an abbreviation of the Greek name for Jesus Christ. In iconography, the fingers of Christ are often posed to spell out this abbreviation.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Meadhbh McNutt is an Irish artist and writer based in the west of Ireland. Employing a wide range of materials, her practice revolves around ideas of voyeurism, language and power. Having work published in Tank Magazine and exhibiting internationally in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, Poland and Hong Kong.
Meadhbhs words can be found in Tank Magazine, Circa Art Magazine, HeadStuff, Visual Artists' News Sheet and Thinking Catherine Malabou (Rowman & Littlefield), among other publications.
Meadhbhs words can be found in Tank Magazine, Circa Art Magazine, HeadStuff, Visual Artists' News Sheet and Thinking Catherine Malabou (Rowman & Littlefield), among other publications.
Djuna O'Neill
Untitled
2019
This work is part of a series of photographs taken on a farm in rural Normandy, France.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Rory Malone
Saharan Dust from Aughinish Co. Limerick
2017
In Aughinish, Co. Limerick, Ireland there is Europe's largest aluminium processing plant. Here, they refine bright orange bauxite dust into pure aluminium.The orange dust is spread out over the site in dunes, big enough to cover the area of multiple football pitches. This image simulates what might happen if all of the workers at this facility were to lose their jobs; the dust left on its own to blow all over Ireland.
Within his practice Rory Malone looks at the margin between science and the human. As a technologically advanced species we see science and industry in a utilitarian manner rather than connecting with these modern processes on a personal human level.Through discovering more about the world and about us, science, at its core, has the ability to alter how we perceive the connections we have with ourselves and each other.
Through adding poetics to scientific and industrial practices and processes Malone imbues them with a new element of interactability. This process unlocks the many cultural, social, and spiritual dimensions that these practices and processes hold.
Within his practice Rory Malone looks at the margin between science and the human. As a technologically advanced species we see science and industry in a utilitarian manner rather than connecting with these modern processes on a personal human level.Through discovering more about the world and about us, science, at its core, has the ability to alter how we perceive the connections we have with ourselves and each other.
Through adding poetics to scientific and industrial practices and processes Malone imbues them with a new element of interactability. This process unlocks the many cultural, social, and spiritual dimensions that these practices and processes hold.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Tom Davis
False Idol
2020
“False Idol” is based around the power dynamics of sex and desire, the complicated nature of this power and how we can be controlled and warped by it.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Tom is an illustration student at the National College of Art and Design (NCAD) in Dublin, Ireland, who incorporates elements of both digital and traditional art into his illustrations including print and collage, often using unorthodox digital mediums. While his images and inspirations vary greatly per project they nearly always feed into larger themes such as masculinity, gender roles, or power.
Sean O'Donnell
Water Tower (After Bernd and Hilla Becher)
Cell Tower
2019-2020
These images are a selection from my ongoing body of work titled “Limen”, which utilises the medium of photography as a tool to investigate the periphery spaces of contemporary Ireland that have felt the effects of socio-economic despair from previous generations.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
|
Block Composition
|
Sean O'Donnell, a recent BA Fine Art Graduate from Crawford College of Art and Design in Cork, Ireland, is currently the resident darkroom artist at Cork Institute of Technology. His work utilises the medium of photography as an investigative tool to question various socio-economic issues within contemporary Ireland.
Grace O'Leary
The Sentinel
2020
This image is one component in an ongoing series based on an unfinished building in Dublin, Ireland, which is fourteen storeys high called “The Sentinel”. The building was under construction in 2007 and due to economic collapse construction ceased and the building has remained unfinished for over 13 years.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
The images are created through pinhole photography which through its process allows for failure and chance to become an active part of the work as well as being visibly and physically tangible in the print itself. The work seeks to explore and evoke the unknown generative potentials of failure while representing the Sentinel within its dystopian reality that it can not seem to escape through the nature of the inverted image.
Damien McGinley
Back On The Block
2016
I have explored creating a more panoramic perspective to my work, while at the same time aiming to develop a concentrated, claustrophobic sensibility. This approach aims to look more intently at the dialogue between humans and the persistent urban realism that envelops them. As each component is propelled to component, they begin to influence one another. Hard edges with concrete, architecture, man and machine merge into blended essences. Constantly changing associations are inevitably released in these environments, and the observer is gradually pulled into the process of continuous transformation, in a melting pot of man, modernity, and dynamics.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Block Composition
|
Meadhbh McNutt is an Irish artist and writer based in the west of Ireland. Employing a wide range of materials, her practice revolves around ideas of voyeurism, language and power. Having work published in Tank Magazine and exhibiting internationally in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Hungary, Poland and Hong Kong.
Meadhbhs words can be found in Tank Magazine, Circa Art Magazine, HeadStuff, Visual Artists' News Sheet and Thinking Catherine Malabou (Rowman & Littlefield), among other publications.
Meadhbhs words can be found in Tank Magazine, Circa Art Magazine, HeadStuff, Visual Artists' News Sheet and Thinking Catherine Malabou (Rowman & Littlefield), among other publications.
Ian Gordon
Alluring Falcarragh from Muckish at night
Muckish Cairn at night
1997
As part of a series, I painted these pictures at night on top of Muckish Mountain in Donegal, Ireland in July 1997. Under extremely limited light I was exploring emotion and memory as part of the “plein air” experience.
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
Original
|
Displayed in Gallery
|
|
Block Composition
|
Ian Gordon is a landscape artist living in Dun Lewey, Donegal, Ireland. Focusing on plein air painting in oil on canvas. Ian also makes embroidery and buries it in beautiful places. Two different practices that compliment and inform one another.