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Exhibition Profile
Visual Artists' News Sheet | September – October 2021
All images, p.16 & 17: Anna Spearman, ‘Loose Parts’, installation view, Roscommon Arts Centre, July 2021; photography by Dickon Whitehead, courtesy the artist and Roscommon Arts Centre.
ANNA SPEARMAN’S SOLO exhibition, ‘Loose Parts’, was on view from
Object Relations MARY FLANAGAN DISCUSSES ANNA SPEARMAN’S RECENT EXHIBITION AT ROSCOMMON ARTS CENTRE.
29 June to 30 July at Roscommon Arts Centre, the site for which the work was commissioned. ‘Loose Parts’ is a thoroughly absorbing exhibition, featuring sculptural objects that are both strange and familiar in equal measure. How can this disparate array of shapes, textures, materials and colours achieve its playful coherence? Each individual piece (all untitled) has its own personality as it were, and a uniqueness that draws the viewer into an imaginative relationship with it. When I put this to the artist and the curator, they tell me about their mutual interest in the co-existence of humans and material objects, and how this relationship has the potential for creativity and the production of new knowledge. Naomi Draper, artist and current curator-in-residence at Roscommon Arts Centre, invited Anna to create works for an exhibition specific to the venue. The commission is a reflection of Naomi’s research interest in the relationship between humans and objects, and the role of imaginative play as a generative process. The artist and curator share common ground here. Anna’s work is open-ended and responsive to the physical space and to the materials she works with. Both describe the collaboration as exciting and exploratory, likening it to a conversation. Anna created some of the works in situ at RAC, or modified others there, having familiarised herself with the exhibition space over a period of time. The positioning of the pieces involved artist and curator literally playing around with the objects within the space. There is nothing fixed or final regarding the works or their placement in the gallery. This demonstrates an interesting cohesion between the artworks and the installation process. Ultimately the exhibition’s curation involved a triadic relationship between the sculptural objects, the artist and the curator. The works, just like the materials used by the artist to make them, have a relationship with the environment in which they are placed. Naomi speaks about the sculptural objects having become active participants
