16
Career Development
Visual Artists' News Sheet | March – April 2021
Jan McCullough, ‘Tricks of the Trade’, installation view, CCA Derry~Londonderry; image courtesy the artist and CCA.
Tricks of the Trade MEADHBH MCNUTT INTERVIEWS ARTIST JAN MCCULLOUGH ABOUT THE IMMERSIVE TACTILITY OF HER CURRENT EXHIBITION AT CCA DERRY~LONDONDERRY.
Meadhbh McNutt: Can you give us a glimpse of the processes behind ‘Tricks of the Trade’? Jan McCullough: I have a longstanding fascination with spaces of construction and assembly – industrial sites, workshops, garages and so on. During my recent residency at IMMA, I became particularly interested in their arrangement and the ad hoc structures created within them. The larger studio at IMMA encouraged a sculptural approach, and when the residency was suspended due to the pandemic restrictions, Peter Mutschler and Alissa Kleist were exceptionally kind in providing space and support to further develop the project, as part of the PS² Freelands Foundation Artist Programme. My process always begins with images. When I’m in a smaller space, I make maquettes and project tiny collages on the walls, to see what they would look like scaled up. It’s nice to create an immediate, large image that can be changed in real time – a kind of 3D collage. MM: The installations actually struck me as 3D collage, even while walking through them. You’ve tapped into home design forums and vision board workshops in previous research. Did it feel different to explore a space so directly related to your own practice? JM: It really did. It was the first time I used my own photographs as a starting point for my research. I have an evolving archive of found images that I use for notes, collages and preparatory sketches. I’ve always exhibited [my own] photographs as final objects but I had a strong feeling that this exhibition wasn’t going to be just a narrative photographic series. I wanted to move beyond that to recreate the tactile experience of sculptural objects. I’m interested in the camera as an instrument for dissecting space. I use a powerful flash gun which reduces objects to outlines and colour blocks and singles out selective details. A lot of the abstract shapes in the show come from flash photography collages – the torqued metal and the steel and wooden constructions. It’s strange to look back at the source photographs. I sometimes remember them as though they all belong to the
