EXHIBITION LAUNCH

WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER 1-2PM

ALL WELCOME!

EXHIBITION RUNS FROM

MONDAY 16 OCTOBER -  FRIDAY 3 NOVEMBER

OPEN MON-FRI 10-4

MON-FRI 10-4PM

Momentum, the MTU Student Engagement Exhibition 2023, selected by student representatives and MTU Arts Office, presents graduating artists from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design who’s work addresses issues important to students and an evolving society. The visual impacts and bureaucratic responses to the housing crisis, bodily autonomy and representation, human interactions with the natural environment, and the need for space to reflect and imagine.

Featuring recent graduates from MTU Crawford College of Art & Design: Rachel Allen, Caroline Bowles, Jenny Fitzgerald, Melanie Mcgrath, Andrea Newman, Conor O’Brien, Queenie O’Sullivan, Saoirse Radford, Jemima Recks, and Ana-Maria Surdu.

Presented by MTU Arts Office, AnSEO Student Engagement Office and MTU Cork Students Union, this exhibition showcases a diverse selection of artists who engage with social, cultural and environmental issues through drawing, painting, print, glass, photography, ceramic and design.

Online exhibition guide:

https://indd.adobe.com/view/b320cb6f-8499-4ab3-826c-d08dfb0f722c

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ARTIST STATEMENTS:

Ana Surdu

Microplastics have become a component of our water, soil, and organisms and they are an unquestionable intervention in our present geologic period. How will this be recorded by our knowledge and history institutions? How will our Holocene land-fields be represented in the geologic stratigraphic samples? As trilobites were the markers of the Cambrian rock formation, will bottle caps become the alternative stratigraphic marker of our Quaternary period?

My work presents small environs made up from organic replicas in ceramic and glass and the found materiality on various West Cork beaches. These environmental art pieces are an investigation of visual mutations. Curious combinations are presented where mass-produced objects washed by the sea deviously mingle with wonders which belong to the domain of Nature. Appropriating the scientific methods of a natural history museum, the illusory blends between organic and inorganic are labelled and archived. The conflicting materiality displayed in lit cabinets of curiosities (Wunderkammer) or the use of environmental photography, challenge the viewer’s perception as the divide between Naturalia and Artificialia trick the eye.

Andrea Newman

My work explores Ireland’s housing crisis through the use of photography and text-based work. As a young adult in Ireland emigration feels inevitable and through my work, I am exploring dereliction and also reclaiming lost parts of the Irish language. I use screen printing for my text-based work and I have been exploring zine and bookmaking to archive this work. I am specifically documenting the irony and classism of the use of steel to board up vacant council housing during a housing crisis. Through the use of photography and installation I am confronting the viewer with these landscapes and derelict spaces they normally would not be faced with.

Caroline Bowles

My work is mainly figurative and embodied in nature with free flowing abstracted elements. I use multiple layers of wet and dry drawing and painting media: inks, acrylic paint washes, charcoal and pastel on paper and large canvases, sometimes with audio or video elements.

Excavating my own past learnings of study and travel in Asia, of meditation, calligraphy, Qi Gong, acupuncture practice and music training, I find myself reimaging figurative and abstract postures which express something of movement, fluidity and power and how it is held emotionally in the human frame.

The embodied act of painting, touching in just enough to capture the figure in movement, allowing them to emerge on the canvas until they are barely visible keeps these images gestural, active and authentic. Through painting and drawing I explore visual expressions of the beauty of enacted truth in gesture, movement and the passage of time.

The dramatic colours and emotional expression of Francis Bacon, Sargy Mann and Paula Rego as well as the abstract movement of Judith Godwin and Zao Wou-Ki, all inspire my work.

Connor o'Brien

My work explores the relationship between marginalised queer bodies and the alien other of science fiction, pulling on representations of the incomprehensible from the cosmic horror sub-genre like the Eldritch Terrors of H.P. Lovecraft, the imaginings of H.R. Giger (Necronomicon) or the Cenobites of Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart/Hellraiser.

Trans and genderqueer bodies are being weaponised politically by right wing movements worldwide. The discussion around trans identity in media, which largely seems to ignore or underrepresent trans voices, has reduced the issue to ‘us’ and ‘them’. This dehumanises and alienates trans people, who instead become a thing to be feared rather than individuals to be understood.

My paintings act as a first contact between the viewer and this alien body. The biomorphic creations I refer to as Visitors pull on life native to earth such as fungi or marine life, informing the viewer that they are more like us than we might initially think. Fungi, due to their relationship with death and decay, are seen as unnerving or something to be feared: slowly encroaching, invading your space, like the mould on your walls. However, this invalidates their invaluable participation in the creation of new life and the crucial role that fungi play in sustaining human existence. The amalgam bodies that emerge in my paintings include limbs and visceral forms reminiscent of genitalia and internal organs. They don’t resolve into coherent bodies - they appear to fluctuate, never resting, ever growing.

My Visitors are flamboyantly coloured, overly sweet, loud and assertive. As trans and genderqueer people, we do not need to justify our existence or identity to anyone. By merely existing we challenge and dismantle preconceived notions of gender. This may frighten, disturb or enrage people who refuse to recognise us. Similarly my Visitors may evoke such a reaction, but to me they are beautiful and aspirational, defiantly and boldly themselves which cannot be ignored and is a joyous expression of the queer body.

JEMIMA RECKS

My work focuses on the topic of narrative and confession, using myself as the model but from an objective view. I am responding to the patriarchal pressures and social norms forced upon us from a young age.

I have developed a process of creating my compositions in an isolated setting, confronting my insecurities by drawing my body from life or through mirrors.

Challenging this natural instinct of fight, flight or freeze, noting my toxic narrative while drawing these insecurities.

Drawing on bedsheets to bring the viewer into the space where my process happens but also in reference to the vulnerability and sensitivity of this topic. The bedsheets being a universal metaphor for the decision making to allow someone access to your bed and the sacred relationship of humans to these materials that touch our skin.

JENNY FITZGERARLD

1914-1920 was a prominent time for the Irish rebellion against the British parliament. As an Irish woman, I am aware that there is a dearth of information about female participation in this uprising. This led me to research the establishment of Cumann na mBan and Inghinidhe na hÉireann.

Courageous women such as Countess Markovich, Ada English, and Mary MacSwiney, to name a few, rebelled, fought, and supported the free state movement. My work aims to highlight these women’s actions, recognising their contributions and roles while being aware of how they have been hidden from the limelight of our history.

The underestimation of women at the time was cleverly used to their advantage. The Wallace sisters owned a corner shop and gathered information from British Crown forces’ spies and passed on messages. The shop became the informal headquarters for the IRA in Cork.

Through the medium of oil paint on canvas, I have created a series honouring these women from a recreation of Sean Keating’s ‘Men of the South’ replacing women as the brave soldiers, but with vague facial features referencing the ways they worked and how they were seen. I also created ‘in action’ compositions derived from historical archive imagery.

MELANIE MCGRATH

My practice is a socially engaged investigation into the urban space and the culture within. In particular graffiti, marks, imprints and layers act as a sketchbook of ideas for further works. I look at these marks left behind in the city and read them as a palimpsest. I choose specific sites to research that contribute to my work. Derelict sites are of interest due to the vast amount in my surrounding area and my urge to highlight this issue. Site orientated research has led me to a number of liminal spaces around Cork City such as properties on Barrack Street, Father Mathew Street, Evergreen Street and Albert Road. From working in such sites, I gather text from the property itself, either sprayed on a wall or words gathered from found content. While researching, I gather imagery from each site and translate these photographs into screen-prints. I use building material to create an immersive installation and to capture the essence of the urban scape. By combining these three elements I recreate a site within a studio space, capturing the energy of the city. I work with large scale and three-dimensional pieces to represent the scale and abruptness of urban life.

QUEENIE O SULLIVAN

My current work examines the boundaries between fantasy and reality and deals with themes of escapism and the power held in the imaginative mind. Using drawing and a host of personal iconography I hope to create a dreamlike atmosphere in my narrative scenes. The round tower in an imagined world exists as a background to explore the emotions tied to the domestic and memory. I use a combination of textiles and installation in my work as a means of grounding fantasy in modern life. Allowing the two realities to flow into one another and coexist as two sides of one coin.

RACHEL ALLEN 

My goal is to create ceramic jewellery that is large-scale and visually impactful, while simultaneously still light-weight and stylish. The reason why I am drawn to jewellery making is that I have a deep interest in functional ceramics and fashion, and I love to create intricate pieces that are still practical to wear. My concept for these works stems from hydrangeas, particularly from their colours and their complex structures which play a big part in the construction of my pieces. I fell in love with hydrangeas as a result of learning about how the colour of the plant changes due to the ph. of the soil, and that even one plant can have an array of colours ranging from deep blues to pale pinks. I chose porcelain paperclay and limoges porcelain to create these works due to the vividness of the clay when coloured using nano-stains and the delicate and diaphanous qualities of the clay.

SAOIRSE RADFORD

My work aims to investigate the unconscious mind by means of building a world separate to that of the logical mind. Through my work, I am attempting to create a dialogue between the conscious and unconscious self by using methods related to automatism, constantly stepping away and refreshing the way that I create images. I have been using dreams as a means of research. I analyse and transfer the imagery contained in my dream journal, allowing a language of symbolism to form from these images. I work in layers, sometimes hiding the earlier images completely, forming an intricate world of shapes and symbols, using a combination of both painting and drawing. My work has elements of abstraction and realism which express the fleeting images that pass as we dream. The fast and direct medium of drawing has helped me capture these elusive images. I have been researching Sigmund Freud’s study of psychoanalysis and its subsequent effect on the Surrealist Movement from 1920-1950. Artists like Eileen Agar, Alice Rahon, and Leonora Carrington have influenced me in understanding the complex value of dreams and symbolism through art.