Art & Style

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A unique and diverse exhibition of original work from 17 contemporary artists

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Fashion meets Art at Brown Thomas

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This thoughtfully curated exhibition brings together a broad collection of original work representing mediums such as print, painting, installation, video, sound and sculpture. In Dublin, the exhibition comprises more than 60 pieces from 17 Dublin-based artists. “Art & Style aims to draw attention to the vibrant arts scene that exists in Ireland. Presenting works of art in a fashion environment and on this scale is new for us but we hope visitors to our stores will find the exhibitions refreshing and stimulating. We want to celebrate the diverse range of work that is being created by these artists and help bring it to a wider audience.� John Redmond, Creative Director, Brown Thomas Group.

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Nicole Tilley David Booth Dee Walsh Raymond Henshaw Joanne Boyle CiĂşin Tracey Stephen Morris David Folan Aisling Conroy Kitty Moss Francis Wasser Miranda Blennerhassett Myra Jago Tony O' Connor Stephen Nolan Karen Donnellan Dee O'Shea

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Nicole Tilley Medium: Installation Location: Window 1 & Luxury Hall staircase

Upon graduating from the National College of Art & Design in 2009, with a joint Honours degree in Fine Art History and Fine Art Print, Nicole Tilley was awarded the Graphic Studio Dublin Graduate Prize and The Black Church Print Studio Access Award. In November 2011 she was awarded her Masters Degree in Fine Art from The National College of Art and Design and was Artist in Residence at the Cill Rialiag Project in South West Kerry for winter 2011. She is a full time studio member of the Black Church Print Studio in Temple Bar, Dublin and currently continues with her art practice and research. Nicole has exhibited her work widely in Ireland as well as internationally and it can be found in many private and public collections, including AXA Insurance, the Department of Equality and Law Reform and the Department of Foreign Affairs.

Email: nicoletilleyart@gmail.com Web: nicoletilleyart.blogspot.com

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David Booth Medium: Painting/Drawing installation Location: Window 1 & Luxury Hall

Booth predominantly paints in oil and works from digital photographic prints. The principal focus is portraiture. For every piece, Booth goes through a uniform set of procedures and applies himself to the idea of surface and the alignment of minor details to create self-imposed constraints that relate to the pixel. davidbooth72@hotmail.com

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Dee Walsh Medium: Painting/Drawing Location: Window 2, Luxury Hall & Designer Rooms, Level 1

Walsh’s work is an investigation of the structures and infrastructures that facilitate our daily urban lives and a commentary on the environment to which city-dwellers must constantly adapt. Influenced by the writings of Michel de Certeau, George Perec, Rebecca Solnit and Roland Barthes, Walsh examines the integral geometry of the environment and the everyday basic structures which are manipulated and reconstructed.

This is achieved by layering several architectural experiences and approaching it in an architectonic manner. It is intended that a space is created for the viewer to construct and deconstruct based on their own personal experiences. In this series of work she has focused on Dublin City. deirdrewalsh_9@hotmail.com

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Raymond Henshaw Medium: Painting/Drawing installation Location: Window 2, Luxury Hall & main staircase return, (lower ground floor to level 1) Raymond Henshaw is an artist and curator. Amongst notable projects during the last twelve months are “Watershed” – a curated show featuring five artists from Ireland and Hong Kong. This exhibition was part of the Hong Kong Graphics fiesta 2010/2011, and exhibited simultaneously in Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre, & Millennium Court Arts Centre, Northern Ireland. He also recently set up and managed the Strule Print Workshop, in Omagh. Dedicated to screen print and digital imagery, it is the first new print studio in the last 30 years in Northern Ireland. He is interested in social politic, with the majority of recent artworks forging relationships around ideas of civility. This subject matter is explored across a variety of mediums, but chiefly seen in printmaking installations, photography and artist’s books. His artwork has been exhibited throughout Ireland, Europe, Africa, China and USA. www.raymondhenshaw.com henshawrj@gmail.com

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Joanne Boyle Medium: Sculpture Location: Window 3 & Luxury Hall staircase

Joanne Boyle currently lives in Wicklow. She has exhibited across Ireland in both solo and group shows. In 2009 after graduating with an Honours Degree in Visual Arts Practice, Joanne was chosen for the inaugural Studio & Mentorship Award by Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. In 2011 Joanne was chosen to be part of an Artlinks Initiative curated by Cliodhna Shaffrey. Joanne also received an Artlinks Bursary in 2011. She is part of an ongoing group project entitled Tellurometer an art postal project looking at notions of non-space. Joanne Boyle’s work has featured on TG4’s Arts and Culture Show ‘Imeall’ in this last season.

Boyle’s involved and tactile approach to materials, with it’s implications of cathartic release and metaphysical intensity, generates images that, packed and agitated as they are, ultimately function as investigations into the sublime. Inspiring quiet wonder, pervaded with beauty, Boyle’s practice retreats to landscapes that present a poetic encounter with the viewer and materials. joanneboyle76@gmail.com

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Ciúin Tracey Medium: Photography Location: Window 3 & Luxury Hall

Ciúin Tracey is a freelance photographer from Dublin, Ireland who works mainly in fashion and commercial photography, with these genres influencing heavily upon her more personal fine art work. She has exhibited work in many galleries, including The Gallery of Photography, the RDS and Farmleigh House. She has also been printed in multiple publications, and is currently the resident photographer in Shutterbug, Kilkenny. Her work can be seen in the permanent collections of Olivier Cornet, Fire and Dublin Ink. The Tyranny of Beauty is a photographic narrative that explores the representation of the body and the psychological impact of the promotion of certain physical ideals in the contemporary mediasphere. The series examines peoples’ relationships with their physical being and how often, in the search for the perfect or ‘utopian’ body, a dystopian reality is created as a result of unnatural aims and expectations. ciuintracey@gmail.com

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Stephen Morris Medium: Painting Location: Window 4, Luxury Hall & Domini and Peaches at The Restaurant, Level 3

Although Morris’s work encompasses many different elements of the visual arts his primary focus is painting and it is through his favoured medium that he works in creating a dialogue between historical and contemporary painting and himself. Questioning the role of painting and the possibilities of what it can do compared to other fine art mediums in culture and society today.

Stephen has exhibited at galleries in both Dublin and The States and more recently collaborated with the Brown Thomas Creative department on their SO Parisian windows and in-store scheme. He also worked closely with John Redmond, Brown Thomas Creative Director to co-ordinate Art & Style across the Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway stores. morris.stephen@hotmail.com

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David Folan Medium: Sculpture/Photography Location: Window 4 & Luxury Hall

David Folan, originally from Donegal, is currently based in Dublin where he works as an artist and occasionally as a freelance designer. David is a graduate of Letterfrack, where he studied furniture design and manufacture.

Following a successful career as a furniture designer and maker, David dedicated himself full-time to art in 2005, and has exhibited extensively around Ireland. He is interested in investigating the emotional impact and response a viewer experiences towards images and objects.

His first solo exhibition took place in Dublin in May 2011. Most recently, David opened his first international solo exhibition in New York in April, 2012. davefolan@gmail.com

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Aisling Conroy Medium: Sound Location: Lower Ground Floor

Conroy’s work explores human perception within an autonomous zone. Her work uses artificial and optical illusionary methods to create a space of sensory experience. With this, the work engenders a sense of false transcendence and uses these sensory elements as a catalyst to transcend the participant within the space. Conroy’s work is multidisciplinary using drawing, print, sculpture, sound, video and installation. She is a resident artist at the Talbot Gallery and Studios in Dublin and has exhibited in various venues around Ireland, as well as having exhibited abroad in the US and China. aislingconroy8@gmail.com

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Kitty Moss Medium: Drawing/Illustration Location: Designer Rooms, Level 1 & Domini and Peaches at The Restaurant, Level 3

Kitty Moss was born in Dublin, galaxies ago to patient parents with artistic whiskers. Scoffing at the idea that school was to be the best days of her life she ventured into NCAD with high hopes and higher heels.

She has two honor degrees, one studying the pallets of Fine Art and the other the pleating of Fashion Design (N.C.A.D) Kitty came second in the Nokia Young Designer of the Year and has been a part of several illustration shows selling paintings and dresses to cats all across Dublin. Miss Moss worked for John Rocha for a year but left to go it alone and since then has had her first solo show published in IMAGE, The Gloss, The Irish Times, Tatler, Totally Dublin, None magazine, Le Cool and has featured in several blogs in Ireland and abroad. Kitty is currently working on her second solo exhibition which she hopes to exhibit in London for Fashion week in September. lyn@kittymoss.com

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Francis Wasser Medium: Text/Vinyl Location: Level 2, Clarendon Street Bridge

Wasser utilises processes fundamental to literature and design in the creation of work. He makes drawings, sculpture, textual works and large-scale site specific projects. He uses a variety of methods to create these works. Impromptu scenarios and situations, hyper saturated 'edit-pieces', contradictions, fictions, looping, large scale text and context specific objects imply a play out via mechanisms of paradox.

Shifting ideologies and predetermined fabricated philosophical view points do not lend to the work but are treated as material by means of production. francis.wasser@gmail.com

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Miranda Blennerhassett Medium: Site specific painting installation Location: Lower Ground Floor, Wicklow Street staircase

Blennerhassett works with painted installation to investigate the relationship between art and architecture. Using this technique she explores the subjects of contemporary architecture, urban design, ornamentation and modernism.

The work responds directly to the location’s contextual, formal and material qualities whilst also incorporating motifs and themes from the research she is carrying out at the time.

She is interested in the ways in which our society constructs environments: the way we enclose space, organise it, ornament it and navigate our way through it. Her large-scale site-specific installations use the physical structure of the location, in this instance, the Brown Thomas window, as a supporting ground for painted elements in an inclusive approach that brings the institution, and architecture in a wider sense, directly into the work. mirandablennerhassett@hotmail.com

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Myra Jago Medium: Painting Location: Browns Bar & Café at Carton House, Lower Ground Floor and main staircase return, (Level 1 to Level 2)

Using object as metaphor, Myra Jago’s work considers how we negotiate the world. Through oil painting, watercolour, drawing and sculpture, current work examines our means of assessment and notes the split in response as we parlay between mindful and instinctive analysis. Notions are described using mirroring where a thing appears apart from itself and symmetry where objects are rendered groundless.

Books behave out of character and practicality as opposite pages mirror content rather than progress in data, while images roll into and out of one another in a loop-like system. Jago’s research intersects mathematics, neuroscience, physics, psychology and contemporary art. myrajago@gmail.com

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Tony O' Connor Medium: Painting Location: Main staircase return (Ground floor to Level 1)

Born in Kerry in 1977, Tony O’Connor studied Fine Art at Crawford College of Art & Design where he also gained his Higher Diploma in Art Education.

These days, Tony can be found working in his Cork-based studio creating ever-evolving pieces of equine art. Tony is proud to be connected with the Irish Horse Welfare Trust, having designed their Christmas cards for the last 3 years.

He is also currently involved with Redwings Equine Charity in the U.K. Some of Tony’s earliest memories are those of his grand-uncle, Mossie, working in his dark smoke-filled forge, shoeing local horses and ponies.

Standing on the shoulders of six generations of Blacksmiths, the horse and the beauty of its majestic form and spirit are the basis of Tony’s work.

What better subject for artistic expression than one which embodies such power, grace, strength and nobility? tony@whitetreestudio.ie

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Stephen Nolan Medium: Painting Location: Browns Bar & Café at Carton House, Lower Ground Floor

Nolan likes to paint with the aim of documenting the world he lives in and the changing face of our society as we embark upon the 21st century. He believes that the nature of society is best expressed in its built environment and in his practice he has always been concerned with this subject. Basically Nolan’s work walks down two avenues, photography and painting, but of the two its oil painting that’s his medium of choice because he loves creating tactile things of Weight and Quality, even if he is the only one who thinks they are beautiful. When creating a piece of art, Stephen likes to build them up in layers, new paintings over old in much the same way as a town or city evolves over time. Through this process, the painting can become a living breathing Thing, a synthesis between the original meanings inherent in the images and the simple act of painting. In this way his best work evolves over months and even years, constantly changing until the day he considers it finished, for the first time. stephenolan@hotmail.com

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Karen Donnellan Medium: Video Sculpture Glass Location: The Luxury Hall The metaphysical and the potential for healing through the manipulation of energy or chi are the driving forces behind Donnellan’s work. Points of reference include the Flower of Life, Tibetan sand mandalas and the Zen eñso (pronounced encho), each of which uses the circle as a symbol of perfection, divinity and enlightenment. Much of my recent work derives from a single wooden vortex form, a shape based on the movement of energy within the body. In Working through… this object is transformed through myriad materials, processes and altered visions, which become a metaphor for the constant transformation of universal energy. Conceptually, process also becomes integral where involved, repetitive methods are treated as a meditation or mantra as seen in the short film O1. It is through these meditative practices that Karen imbues the work with healing energies. karen@karendonnellan.com

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Dee O'Shea Medium: Video Installation Photography Location: The Luxury Hall & Menswear, Lower Ground Floor

Taking its origin from the concept of the uncanny, O’Shea’s work focuses on interior architectural form and how contained spaces can create a sense of unease. Concepts of reality, memory and fiction are combined and manifest through illusion, scale and spatial articulation, creating an unfolding and adjustable space, distorting reality.

O’Shea invents, constructs and stages small scale architectural models which are often suggestive of the domestic and institutional. Evocative of the notion of the uncanny through familiarisation, the images I create possess elements of the everyday, undeniably familiar, yet totally absurd.

Hovering between the formal and informal, her work deals with theatricality, reality and the spatially absurd. This is presented using illusion and scale which manifest through photography, video and installation.

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