mindcauldron-admin

Biography

Kerry Barrett is an Irish artist, born in co. Cavan, Ireland. She is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Contemporary Art at GMIT. She is in her fourth and final year. Kerry lives in Cavan where she is surrounded by a rural landscape which influences her work. Her early artistic influences were the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters. Kerry was first introduced to their style in school and quickly became enamoured with their loose brushwork and vivid colours. Kerry also has some contemporary art influences, such as Ian McKeever, David Stegmann, and Marlene Dumas. Dumas had such an impact that Kerry began making looser, more confident ink drawings. Her most recent works explore how mental health can impact and be explored through a creative practice. This direction was brought about by Kerry being diagnosed with anxiety and OCD. Her aim is to use her creative practice as an effective outlet for her mental health, and to allow her anxiety and OCD to become a rich source for making art.

Artists Statement

My current work looks at how mental health can be explored and expressed through a creative practice. Acrylic paint, ink and digital editing are used to create these. The inspiration for these works has come from my own anxiety and OCD. My mental health is expressed in my work through creating black and white landscapes with a variety of words which relate to my own personal experience with mental disorders. My OCD causes me to check and re-check things several times. I worked this into my creative process. Once the painting is done, I then photograph the piece and then edit it digitally on my laptop. When the image is printed, I then rework it again with paint or ink, and re-edit it digitally.

Many contemporary artists have influenced this work, such as Ian McKeever and David Stegmann, but the most influential was Marlene Dumas. I used to make drawings with ink in a very deliberate and controlled way. Then I saw how Dumas works. She soaks the page and allows the ink to pool and run over the paper, surrendering a huge amount of control over the outcome of the work. Adopting a similar technique has loosened my work while also challenging my anxiety as surrendering control is something I struggle with due to my mental health.

Instagram: kerry_barrett_arty

Website: kerry1999b.myportfolio.com/

Biography

Kate McSharry (b.1998, Dublin) is an emerging artist based in Galway City. Through her studies in Contemporary Art at the Centre of Creative Arts and Media at GMIT, Kate has been involved with TULCA Festival of Visual Arts as an intern, and in 2020 worked as an Education Assistant.

Her work was recently included in a joint exhibition with Corban Walker at the Sarah Walker Gallery in Castletownbere, Cork. Upcoming exhibitions include an outdoor installation through July/August 2021 at Artlink, Fort Dunree, Donegal.

Artist Statement

My practice is currently growing and tough to concretise.] My practice tends to develop with space in mind whether that is physical, imagined, or a pursuit of my own sense of place. I work in multimedia, and my process moves predominantly through text. I have more recently been exploring relationships between art and audience; this exchange provides an intimate yet common or shared aspect to the evolving work. [Art is a universal language yet also a unique experience as our interpretations are affected by knowledge and environment.] I am interested in how we establish context collectively when engaging with art, so aim to move into a more socially-engaged and collaborative sphere. [By subtly interrogating my surroundings through unexpected use of materials, I hope to evoke emotions and -] Currently my main objective is to start a conversation with those who encounter the work.

Biography

Fiona Plunkett was born in the Bronx, New York and raised in West Cavan. She likes to use these two locations as an influence on her work. Her work is digital, taking her own photographs and manipulating them as a metaphor for the unreliability of memory.

Plunkett is finishing up studying Contemporary Art in CCAM, GMIT and has taken part in numerous group exhibitions in the college over the years.

Artist Statement

For my work I use my own photographs and the memories they evoke as a base. As a metaphor for the unreliability of memory, I manipulate the photographs digitally, using a digital pencil to erase parts of the photograph and to make my own digitally textured marks, or by disorganising the photographs & manipulating them further. I like to make use of the blank spaces and to even make objects out of those spaces. I also enjoy showing the underlying labour of making the work.

Instagram: fionaplunkettartist
Web: fionaplunkett.myportfolio.com

Biography

Born in Massachusetts, Emily Lohan graduated with a BA (Hons) in Contemporary Art at CCAM in Galway in 2021. Her most recent exhibition is her degree show in CCAM. In early 2021 she took part in the online performance art exhibition ‘RAW (Recorded Action Web-Exhibition)’ organised by Sandra Corrigan-Breathnach with Bbeyond, Belfast. During her time as a student she also exhibited with The Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon, The Courthouse in Kinvara and the 126 Gallery in Galway. She continues to take part in workshops led by Bbyeond and Pssquared, Belfast. She is taking part in an upcoming graduate led exhibition ‘Transience’ which will take place in June 2021 in The Coach Station, Galway.

Artist Statement

We live in a society that is becoming ever disconnected with nature. How can we use art as a remedy?  ​

Through a multitude of media such as drawing, performance and moving image, Emily Lohan’s work centres around the natural and the spiritual world. She believes that making art with natural materials can reconnect us with the earth and in turn the spiritual. Her practice is ritualistic, with an element of endurance, which she uses to search for a higher meaning to life and death. It is her way of attempting to understand the unknown; Where did we come from? Where do we go when we die?

Biography

I am based between Galway City where I am currently studying in GMIT since 2017 and County Meath where I am from. My work was created between the two counties. I use the facilities in the college for my ceramic work. The landscape and materials I use in my film and photography are from my family’s farm in Meath. I use raw materials to create an organic sense in my work. In my ceramic pieces I extrude and hand-build to sculpt the clay. I use terracotta clay and terra-sigillata to maintain the earthy tone of the material. The tubular forms created for the primordial creature figure are made from nylon and sheep wool. There is a diverse number of materials and space in the landscape at home which is influential on my work. The human body is significant in my work. I fabricate surreal figures of the human body by creating limbs like anatomical votives. The collation between primordial and contemporary vision is seen through the juxtaposition of my ceramic and digital work.

Artist Statement

My work combines primordial, ancient and contemporary references to the body and landscape. I am a multidisciplinary artist working in ceramics, sculpture, digital media and drawing. I generate disfigured forms in order to look at how the body can be perceived through time and varied lenses.  

Using clay, I make multiple body parts. These body parts come from the past and the present and combine realism and surrealism. Their limbs are like anatomical votives. These limbs become ancient forms in a contemporary world. They are made from clay, sheep wool, old earth and discarded garments. They come from the ground and find their ancient form in the landscape of today. They become part of my contemporary vision and are given life. 

Through drawing I imagine and visualise how the body could potentially become and see how the body would look if the limbs continued in space, were multiplied or joined together.  I amplify my vision through making. I stuff life into seemingly endless tubular forms which wrap around the body.  They virtually obscure the original figure. They t­ransform the body and move its place in time.  These primordial, elegiac figures emerge from the landscape and water dragging masses of weight and time. These figures are brought to life and move in videos of the world around me. 

Living on the farm and using raw materials around the yard and at home, the figures I imagine come to life and their texture becomes concrete, fleshy and translucent. Before the twentieth century ceramics were functional and static, but my ceramics and tubular forms are incorporated with my digital work to create motion and time-based narratives. Everything I make is hand built using materials I find around my environment. 

The notion of the ancient hand building that has been around for centuries and a narrative being told through video and photography, gives the sense of ancient and contemporary forms collaborating.

Biography

Born and raised in Galway, Críona Scannell has a deep connection to the environment and seeks to understand the effect of the Anthropocene in nature around her. Using the processes of creation as a meditation, her work seeks to find a personal understanding of existence.

Artist Statement

Climate and landscape are inescapable influences on my art practice. Not only are those things a source of inspiration, but they also provide materials for my work.

Our collective connection to the land and sea is a running thread throughout my work.To take from the earth and create.

Using a variety of media and materials, I explore the natural cycles in everyday existence. Life and death, illness and health, anxiety and peace.

Following a fascinating path through the everyday humdrum of the mundane. Exploring humour, sadness, solitude and peace.

We are the centre of our individual universes and tiny specks of stardust.

Everything we do, create, is important and insignificant.