SCM - Photoworks/Autumn 2016
Sculpture & Combined Media Photoworks - Autumn 2016
Works produced by Sculpture & Combined Media, Second and Third Year Students at Limerick School of Art & Design, Heather English, Zoe Stevens, Aisling Mc Namara, Niamh Schmidtke, Laoise Ní Cheallaigh, Jacqueline Mc Grath, Aoibhinn Corcoran, Bríd Murphy, Dermot Claffey, Marlotte De Boer & Fiona Fitzpatrick, and third year students, Phoebe Mc Donogh, Catriona Osborne, Lauren Bickerdike, Ciara Rock, Oliwia Nowak, Jessica Mahon, Conor Coady, Aoife Lee, Gillian Mc Quillan, Melissa Burke, Niamh Dorgan, Kate O' Shea, Mary O'Sullivan, Cirán Cullen & Carey Long, in response to photography/lens-based media assignments. Autumn Semester 2016. Tutor - Martina Cleary.
Niamh Dorgan My photography work explores the relationship between body and space. Using analog and digital techniques, I document 'anonymous' spaces and note the characteristics that relate to or juxtapose these against the human body. The suburban space is the main focus of these images; they are gothic in nature. The buildings I am drawn to are solid, dense and fixed yet emit a sense of transience. My work is greatly influenced by American Film and artists such as Catherine Opie and Gregory Crewdson. This leads to an amalgamation of cinematographic techniques, framing the mundane Irish 'anonymous', noting landmarks such as petrol stations and alleyways.
Phoebe McDonogh Causality is the efficacy that connects one process with another process, where the first is understood to be partly responsible for the second and the second is responsible for the first. My work explores causality; using objects which already work off this principle. By deconstructing and remodelling these objects my aim is to create unique structures which hold their own energy. I am involved in ongoing research on concepts such as Time (space and time arps, Black Holes/wormholes, retrospection and elapsed time), the Butterfly Effect and how we perceive the world in which we live.
Mary - Joan O'Sullivan My work is based around the concept of shadow generation. Through my experiments with photograms made from various materials, I have created permanent shadows.
Ciara Rock Through my work I'm exploring the notion of love, post breakup. Love is an enigma that many find hard to put into words. From a sociological perspective, the ideal of the person 'in love' is linked to ideas of happiness. I'm using the connotations associated with roses to suggest an antidote for a broken heart. For this project I wanted a particular aesthetic for my photographs, a certain clinical or medical quality.
Melissa Burke I am currently working with chemical photography to explore alternative ways of seeing through materials such as crystal, resin and marbles. I enjoy elements of chance and error in what I find, allowing for accidental discoverines in the darkroom that allow me to use light directly to find new forms within these materials. Digital editiing of the photogram reveals further potential, in scale, composition and the installation of outcomes.
Jackie McGrath ‘A wall is beautiful … it speaks of comfort, refinement ,it speaks of power, brutality , it is forbidding or is hospitable, it is mysterious . A wall calls forth emotions’ . Le Corbosier - 1910
Dermot Claffey My inspiration comes from artists who work with light, architecture and atmospheric situations. Michael Casebere and Gregory Crewdson both use buildings with unusual light sources that often give the impression of somthing psychological and surreal. Being able to construct and set the mood of my photographic image is important to me, to have total control over perspective and light allows my ideas to become more precise and coherent. I have created a miniture prototype model of the Peppers Ghost illusion, using trapezoids that reflect images using situated lighting sources, which can later be situated within larger architectureal spaces.
Laoise NĂ Cheallaigh My photography project for this semester has both a rural and personal theme. Keeping the concept similar to previous assignments and my studio work, I decided to recreate an old family photograph. After picking the image I would use as a source, I dressed each family member in similar clothing and asked them to pose as the figures in the original photograph, gathering their reflections on the time between then and now.
BrĂd Murphy My current photography project starts with observations of contemporary youth culture in Limerick. Unlike my previous projects, this body of work is purely documentary, following my friends at night, I capture memories. These memories tell a narrative of a group of young people and their experiences. Photography is a way for me to engage with my environment using memory as the main influence. Each snapshot captures an event, a time, and an emotion as individual components of everyday experience, mapping out the creation of an identity.
Aoibhinn Corcoran Using two models that were at hand, my photographs are taken throughout the city of Limerick. They are about the friendship between the two girls pictured, and how they interact with each other. For me they personify the network each one of us is a part of. I'm thinking about how different friendship groups branch outwards and naturally others collapse.
Aisling McNamara In my most recent work, I have been creating constructed images. The thought process and photographs are based on emotionally charged objects. These are gifts given to me by my Grandparents since childhood. In the images, I wanted to evoke the sense of importance that these now have, as both my Grandparents recently passed away. By placing the objects in a different location, I hoped to evoke their protective, almost spirtual power over me.
Oliwia Nowak ‘There are unknown things concealed by what is visible, things that are hidden not in the obscure, but in the obvious.’ - Paul Virilio In my practice I am exploring the banal, ordinary structures within the everyday. Such structures are regarded as a given, and therefore go unnoticed. I photograph scenes in public spaces through indirect looking, using a black reflective surface. The photographs show the aesthetics of the street both in the reflection, and what surrounds it. The material I use shares qualities with a Claude Mirror, a device used by late 18th century painters, which added a picturesque aesthetic to the reflected images. I hope to make the viewer aware of his or her surroundings and their visual qualities, which are often regarded as unimportant and banal.
Catriona Osborne My practice archives the experience of home, through documentation by means of interviews, photography, film and recording the senses. My intention is to use these media, to re-incorporate certain elements into the context of the home, to allow viewers to perceive their own impression and relate it to personal experiences. The photographs are a re-enactment of inhabiting sites of memory, preserved through family albums.
Kate O'Shea My work looks at movement involving elements of time, space, and repetition. In my performances, videos and photography, I am barefoot, suggesting certain states of vulnerability or ritualistic gestures. My work expresses constant movement at a steady pace. This is a commentary on the progres of time. Ideas of the history of the movement of people, from colonization to emigration to pilgrimage inform my practice. I also explore ideas of embodiment, and how this is individually experienced.
Heather English My research involves looking at the absence and presence of light, focusing on the relationship between the figure, light and perception. I observes the shapes and forms of both the subjects, portrayed through light drawing, and the space occupied, without any aid of digital editing. This method allows me to analyse the importance of light, as it is the main aspect of being able to interpret and define our surroundings. Our impressions of objects can be skewed with different colours and strengths of light created from different sources. I wanted to portray the human being as a source of light, rather than an observer of it. In my photos I have created a super-human-like reality in which the subject can both emmenate and control light, unlike the light that we see as uncontrolled and unconfined.
Zoe Stevens My work concentrates on colour as a medium. I began by looking at different colours through various types of liquids, glass and plastics. I liked how the results communicate an abstractness, and I continue to include this in my studio work, experimenting with different shapes and forms that images could invoke, as well as filling rooms with different light and using photography to document the process. In my final project I was inspired by The Sausage Series, produced by the well-known artists Fischli and Weiss. My project has an undertone of satire to it and creates a childlike narrative. I used recycled materials to build a world of fantasy, and also of ambiguity.
Cirรกn Cullen My work is about gathering materials from places that I like to visit. They are natural environments, but they all have in some way a presence of human activity. I'm trying to allow the material to dictate how it should be seen in my studio. Whether it requires sculptural intervention or to be left alone. The materials gathered can also become the device through which the image is captured and created.
Fiona Fitzpatrick My recent work explores the notion of domestic environments and the relationships that occur within that sometimes fraught landscape. The ever changing concept of family is unpacked and examined under the lens of memory, real and borrowed, enriched by photographs and collected narratives. These memories expand and reinforce our sense of self, they allow for reflection and a placement within the family unit. As recorded history unfolds through these visual images we are reminded of absent people. Death is part of living, part of the changing family. So too is birth, present cannot exist without past. Time becomes less chronological, less structured and instead remains fluid, floating through inbetween spaces. Memories exist in an expanse.
Conor Coady My practice aims to explore the code of Gender and Sexuality in Western society and the conflicts that come from its confining and suppressive nature. I am interested in the notion of the public space and how this code is played out. In my work I use mediums such as Performance, Photography, Video, as well as 3D and 2 D elements. My work is currently set around the body, in particular the male body, both physical and mental, and looking at the relationship between it and constructed imbalances between Masculinity and Femininity.
Lauren Bickerstaff My photography explores the manipulations of layers and textures through the means of physical and digital modification. Working from the stills in my video pieces, I have documented the evolution of the stills as they are layered to produce movement, through submersions in different liquids with similar textures to the paint seen on the hands in the video. My work is influenced by Kerry Tribe, Basim Magdy and Sohei Nishio, and their use of content development through photography. I have experimented here with materials such as resin, gelatin, latex, inks and water in order to replicate the texture of paint in different forms.
Niamh Schmidtke Within photography, my work revolves around an interest in man-made systems. I try to expose the guide-lines and regulations we create for ourselves. I have looked closely at systems of street photography, using the closet available theme; travel. I would ‘steal’ images of my fellow passengers on my commute home, showing the everyday, revealing my own view of journeys framed through reflections, revealing the inbetween moments.
Niamh Schmidtke Within my current project, I am continuing my research into traditional modes of photography, specifically portraiture. Using medium format film, I am capturing portraits of my classmates and friends. Inspired by Thomas Ruff, I am looking into standardised and systematic approaches. I want to investigate a system of taking photographs, and the structure of traditional film modes as a conceptual construct. To show this I'm videoing myself as I take the images, as performative gesture. Each picture is taken in the same way; using the same camera settings, in the same clothing, giving the model the same instructions. I am also deviating from past projects in that now I am consciously making a photograph in collaboration with a model. The image is posed and you are conscious of the intrusion of the camera.
Marlotte De Boer The concept of augmenting and transforming a space or a subject is what I developed here. I showed the daily habits that we use, in a different context. I did this by changing everyday acts, and the feeling of security or recognition surrounding them. The body plays a big part in this transformation of the expected and known. It reveals the awkwardness that occurs from stepping out of the expected.
Aoife Lee Through photography, I'm exploring ways of expanding emotional connection between individuals and the natural world. Using inspiration from the horror genre, rituals, and nature, the body is the main focus in my work. I'm interested in the meaning of the vampire, and how it has adapted to suit the specific needs and fears of society at any given time. I began to think of a new breed of vampire reflecting concerns myself and many others have in society today. That being our disconnection from and treatment of nature. I re-imagined the concept of the vampire, altering it to crave nature instead of blood. I contemplated a future where the environment has been ravaged, and society has realized necessity of nature too late.
Carey Long My work is based on medical data from 24-hour blood pressure monitors that I have had over the course of four years. I’m aiming to give this data visual form, working also with sound as it relates to the experiences of the lived body.
Gillian McQuillan My studio practice explores exuding narratives through culture jamming, using modes of the sign. This semester I have been working with the culture of the lad mag and feminism within the media, and the fine line between objectified and expressed sexuality. I experiment with a lot of after effects in my images. I love postmodern pastiche, collage and graphic colour. Artists that influence my images are Ann Hirsch, Will Cotton, Linder Sterling, Cincy Sherman and Gillian Wearing.
Jessica Mahon I have created performance pieces to camera and made several anxious objects this semester. I want the viewer to question, analyse and form their own opinions and emotions, informed by the media I have given them. Performance through video is the sculptural medium I prefer to use, although not limiting myself to one form, I have worked with latex, digital media such as creating multiple pieces using Adobe Premiere Pro, and photography. My work aims to be odd, uncomfortable and self-imposing. Anxiety, over-thinking, stress, vulnerability, are all emotions I aim to portray. I have titled the resulting photogrpahic work, YOU ME AND IT.
Limited Edition Zine Š Students of Sculpture & Combined Media, Limerick School of Art & Design, Autumn 2016.