I Paul Cashin
I Paul Cashin
“Logos is Greater than Logic”
Oil on canvas and wooden frame, 200 x 500cm
Teak wood on wooden self, 30 x 20 cm
Paul is an Irish artist based in. His chosen medium is oil on canvas, while also engaging in photography, drawing and sculpture. Paul is interested in large scale paintings that employ a sense of embodiment to create, large complex scenes imbued with pattern and repetition in order to explore ideas of the numinous or Awe. The performance of repeating a pattern or mark acting as a mediation, like individual steps that carry one up a mountain. Pauls large scrolling works allow him to construct narrative scenes from multiple sources, incorporating a range of painting styles and techniques that reflect this range of sources. To understand space, Paul considers movement in time and such, his paintings have multiple viewpoints. The scale insists on the viewer actively moving around to engage the painting, also from multiple viewpoints, participating in the experience of time. His paintings are presented on a free-standing structure bringing a sculptural element to the work. Attention is carried laterally around the painting in its 360 degree form encouraging the viewer to actively participate. The viewer is restricted at any moment to one plain, which can then be conveniently perused. This movement must be experienced in time, like literature, because we must see it step by step, zooming in on individual parts of time and space, if we are to apprehend all its subtleties. The viewer is aware that there is a larger image, yet is denied access to this complete vista, hinting at the perceived vastness of Awe or the numinous.
Paul’s wooden pieces are created with the intention of expanding and complimenting his painting practice. The wooden form is intended to highlight the natural beauty of wood, of growth and corporeal reality. The curves are symbolic of the fluid flow of the natural world. The wooden piece extends the painting bringing the image into the physical space, giving form and establishing a tactile nature to the work.
II Thomas McNeill
II Thomas McNeill
Contained
Wood, polyester resin
70 x 70 x 190cm
Unbridled
Wood, steel, polyester resin, and silicon dioxide
100 x 150 x 185cm
Thomas McNeill works from his family farm, near the north coast of Northern Ireland. Since completing a BA (Hons) degree in 2020, he has been developing skills through sculpture, installation and video. Permeating his work, his theoretical understanding of socio-political themes, developed in the practical and business facets of agriculture, typify his appreciation of the intricacies of today’s interdependent social structures. Many of these themes and ideas represent experiences from his life, some of which date back to earliest childhood memories. Remaining vivid, these communicate deep and lasting accounts, played out within his practice. He also finds existential accomplishment in experimentation with different media. By experimenting with unusual and diverse materials he has discovered innovative and creative possibilities of representation, which are both personal and universal in his work.
III Zara Lyness
III Zara Lyness
Through the gift, my awareness penetrates yours
Silk screen prints, crate
Why don’t they get things started?
Crate, rope, ceramics
In Sight of Ithaca
Shellacked timber, plaster, rope
You are invited to touch the ceramispheres and please replace them within the installation.
Visitors to the exhibition have permission to take one screen print, through the gift, my awareness penetrates yours…
Zara is a female, Irish artist based in Co. Down. With an integrated approach to art practice, she combines sculptural, ceramic, mark making and live performance processes in her work. Alternating between themes of relationships, marginalisation, and permissions, she applies perceptions of memory and experience through a semi-autobiographic lens. This is underpinned, or undermined, with an internal cycle of dialogue regarding conceptual and material values, and the validity of outcomes, influenced by learned perceptions of what art is. Recognition, recollection, and connection are significant considerations threaded throughout her work, with the worth and consequence of objects and materials, (implied and perceived), as an underlying motive in the forms she makes. Learned notions of value influenced by collective memory can create barriers to creativity, for the practitioner or viewer. This collective memory is drawn from many directions: remembered experience, books, television, museums and although we think of memory as subjective, it is developed and located in the ways our society makes sense of things. The unreliability of memory, in addition to time and age, can reshape how we recall experiences, and our interpretation of them. Zara’s cyclical return to themes and materials permits a recalibration, unravelling and giving a fresh perspective of events. Zara aims to find ways to connect with the public, materially, visually, or emotionally, opening a space for dialogue. By slowing down and separating threads of research she chooses moments to share, these moments hold value. She tells small stories.
Zara has maintained an artistic and supportive practice within the Belfast art community since graduating from Ulster University in 2017. As a member of Pollen Studios (2017- 2022), co-curator of Goose Lane Gallery (2015 – 2019) and committee member of the Belfast International Festival of Performance Art and Bbeyond (2017 -) she has been involved in the programming of exhibition and performance work for local and international artists. She has exhibited and made performance work locally and internationally, including galleries in Belfast, Derry, Hamburg, Galway, San Francisco, and Dublin, with permanent installation work in the Tropical Ravine House, Botanic Gardens. She was a selected Bbeyond artist for the Boondocks III Festival in Hanover (2017) and selected to represent Pollen Studios for the Expanded Studios Project, Nottingham (2019). She has worked on residencies and projects for Ulster University, PS2/Black Box, Springfield Development Trust and most recently representing University of Atypical in a European project in Italy. She was the recipient of ACNI SIAP Awards in 2016 & 2018, Alice Berger Hammerschlag Award in 2022, Void Gallery Graduate Award 2023, and resident artist in R-Space Gallery between 2018 and 2022, before moving to Springmount Studio, Dromore.
http://www.zaralyness.com
@z.lyness
IV Maria Horvathova
IV Maria Horvathova
Echoing branches
1. In the summer wind II
2. I saw home in the trees
Oil on board, 106.5 x 84cm
3. In the summer wind I
4. Reminders as the mist
5. In the morning light
Oil on board, 71 x 56cm
“Painting is that other freedom, for it can put us in touch with that somewhere else.”
Frank Gehry
Maria Horvathova is a visual artist based in Co. Down. Born in Slovakia in 1996, she moved to Northern Ireland with her family in 2010 and completed a bachelor’s degree of Fine Art Painting (Honours) in 2019 at Belfast School of Art, where she has been long listed with RDS Visual Art Award. Maria has been developing her practice in drawing and painting discipline for the past several years during her degree. After a life changing move from Slovakia to Northern Ireland, where she found a strong connection to home in nature.
In her current practice she explores the reminders of landscape, in a romanticised and cherishing approach. She is interested in creating landscape oil paintings that act as an open window into the past and remind the viewer of feelings and memories by capturing the intimate moments of the wilderness. She is attached to nature as it has a significant impact on her identity. In her childhood she used to escape into nature, as it provided her with a feeling of freedom. This body of work is inspired by The Kiltonga Wildlife Reservation, Newtownards. This place holds similarities and nostalgic reminders of her childhood garden and environment. It connects her with the place that there once was in her presence. Experimental approach towards painting allows Maria to get a sense of losing herself in the painting. She uses oil paint like watercolour, fluid and fast on the wooden board surfaces. She interested in re-creating chemical reactions by applying different mediums and thinners with oil paint to create bubble “error” effects, like polaroid photographs would create during the photography chemical development process.
Since 2020, Maria began to work on online collaboration projects. In July she collaborated with John Edward Connolly on an Online Residency where the two artists exchanged their reading sources to create an art practice adaptation and response. From March 2020 she is working on ongoing collaboration with Zara Lyness by creating post card drawings as a way of coping with the pandemic isolation. This body of work has been developed into dialogue between the two artists in hope to connect and comfort each other during the unknown tough times.
Her work has been selected for many exhibitions nationally, including Catalyst Arts, Queen Street Studios, Platform Arts, Goose Lane Gallery, Engine Room Gallery, Arcade Studios, Art Cetera Studio, and she has been offered a joint exhibition in Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards in November 2023. She has been mentioned in online publication by Slavka Sverakova on the MFA 2019 cohort group show The Presence of Absence exhibition at the Queen Street Studios in December 2021. Some of her early sketchbook works have been donated in the Arts department at Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards.
http://www.mariahorvathovafineart.com
V Luke McClean
V Luke McClean
Notetaker
Wood, forest-fibre paper, printed text, postal tubes
–
Luke McClean is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Belfast, N.I.
His practice researches our fleeting relationships with and within locations; a delicate space where intuition and intimacy of thought frame the balance between an undisturbed site and the necessity of presence towards it. His practice is primarily ecology focused, and explores what could be termed speculative ecology or indeterminacy. At the heart of his work are the very brief ways that people and place interact, and the fragile collection of moments that constantly change as a result of these interactions.
His work typically involves multiple responses to a chosen location, reflecting on permanence as a translational note to the tactile problem of creation without harm. His work is based on spaces existing on their own terms, and to be empathetic to where and when he thinks through them. Ideas of non-disruption, gentleness, and patience are important handholds in his practice. They offer an understanding that to engage and be present will be to see and touch, and when all have seen and touched there will be nothing left with which to engage.
His practice aims to vocalise a moment that scuffs against you alone as a sudden flash of lived time, and then disappears.
VI Anne McAlarney
VI Anne McAlarney
anama
R-L
anama 92 x 122 oil on mdf 2023
anama 30 x 30 oil on board 2023
anama 60 x 60 oil on mdf 2023
anama 60 x 60 oil on mdf 2023
anama 60 x 60 oil on mdf 2023
anama 60 x 60 oil on mdf 2023
anama 30 x 30 oil on board 2023
anama 30 x 30 oil on board 2023
anama 30 x 30 oil on board 2023
Biography May 2023
Anne McAlarney is a visual artist based in Co. Down. Her work explores tensions between the lost and found. With a back ground in nursing and poetry, the visible and invisible always in transition, are asserted within the work she produces. Anne is a recipient of the Alice Berger Hammerschlag Award 2021, ACNI SIAP Award 2022 and ACNI Travel Award 2022, NMDDC Bursary 2023. Her poetry has been included in The Cultural Afterlife of Ruins, Making The Future Project and in the anthology Visions (The Seamus Heaney Award for New Writing). A member of Artlink Co. Donegal and Interface Co. Galway, Anne has developed cross border relationships with other artists. She is a graduate of Ulster University, B.A. Fine Art Hons. (Painting) 2013. Her work has been selected for exhibitions nationally and internationally including Catalyst Arts, Queen Street Studios, University of Atypical, Fenderesky Gallery, Waterfront Hall in Belfast, The Dock, Carrick-on- Shannon, Sarah Walker Gallery, Castletownbere and Sean Hollywood Arts Centre, Newry. She was selected for her first solo show internationally in Galleri Kronborg, Bergen, Norway in December 2022.
Statement May 2023
Change ceaselessly altering the world, is the recurrent driver within my work, integral to the method of enquiry and central to the experienced sensation of making art. Here, thresholds are irresistible constants, characterised by ambiguity, openness, and indeterminacy. These places of transition, where normal limits of thought, self-understanding and behaviour are relaxed, may lead to new perspectives. Awareness of existing parallels between language and art underlines similarity and marked differences within my practice, with poetry as the corner stone. Tension has always existed on a subjective level between the clumsiness of language and the embrace of painting. My work investigates the interrelation between these disciplines within a landscape of personal and collective narrative. Ethereal phenomena and ideas are traversed, fusing sculpture, photography, word play, painting and more recently, video. Abstraction is interspersed with reflective analytical thoughts, utilising the proximity of voice and image to construct a changed dialogue, searching for a larger definition of communication within the abstract structures made. Most recent work focuses on painting, the solar plexus of my work. This work is part of a larger series which explores caesura. The Gaelic word anama in translation offers multiple levels of discourse. anama has developed from traces of inadvertent marks, ghosts, left behind.
VII Anna Horvathova
VII Anna Horvathova
Presence II
Mixed media installation
Born in Slovakia in 1996 and moved to Northern Ireland in 2010, Anna graduated from a Bachelor degree of Fine Art (Honours) in 2019 at Belfast School of Art, where she had received Queen Street Studio Award and was long listed with RDS Visual Art Award. In September 2019 she started to study towards a master’s degree in fine art at the same University.
Visual artist and photographer from Northern Ireland has been developing her practice in photography and narrative image making throughout her bachelor’s and master’s degree where she also focused on silver-based processes in the darkroom. Following her roots and memories Anna is attached to nature and landscape where trees seem to have a sense of personal appreciation and belonging. Through her recent body of work Anna is communicating the presence of light and nature captured within a Polaroid camera. These photographs are also aimed to emphasize the concept of spiritual meaning of existence and memories that merge into each other. Anna uses photography and image making as a method of recording her experience and capturing contemporary memories that also works as an opportunity to find out the truth behind her homesickness and struggles with change.
Photography emphases her way of thinking about light and composition to communicate and perform an understanding of certain narrative. In her practice she is mostly using equipment such as a 35 mm film camera, digital camera, scanner and polaroid camera to create images with atmospheric and aesthetic quality. This is in addition her form of adaptation that merges into the constant reality of the present and appreciation of current moments.
In 2020, Anna began to work on an online collaboration project. In July she collaborated with Stephanie Tanney on an Online Residency where the two artists exchanged their reading sources to create an art practice adaptation and response.
Her work has been selected for many exhibitions nationally, including Catalyst Arts, Queen Street Studios, Goose Lane Gallery, Art Cetera Studio, and she has been offered a joint exhibition in Ards Arts Centre, Newtownards in November 2023. She has been mentioned in an online publication by Slavka Sverakova on the MFA 2019 cohort group show The Presence of Absence exhibition at the Queen Street Studios in December 2021. Some of her early sketchbook works have been donated in the Arts department at Regent House Grammar School in Newtownards.
@annahorvathovaart
VIII Christine Kernohan
VIII Christine Kernohan
“A Mother’s Protection”
Wool and cotton, approx. 332 x 332cm
Christine Kernohan is an Artist from Northern Ireland. She is currently working with textiles; a collection of large scale, flesh-coloured, soft textiles using crochet and weaved fabrics. The work is inspired by the relationship between a mother and daughter, working through generational trauma and seeking protection. I create “cloaks” that can be used as a metaphorical shield that would keep you secure; this is inspired by folklore.
She works with a direct method of weaving, meaning that she would construct her own weaving loom and weave the textile by hand, instead of using an industrial loom. Now also using circular looms to explore repeating forms and spirals within the body. Kernohan’s inspiration is derived from the relationship between the mother and the child. Creating such weaves that will be intended to be wall tapestries or wall hangings that could be draped around the mother like figure, suggesting a motherly protection or the protection of modesty for the child. Kernohan also sources her subject matter around Generational Trauma, trauma being passed on through the womb of each generation. In a way she sees textiles as a way of creating a safe environment for herself and others, she uses her practice to work through her own personal trauma. She sees textiles and other art practices as Art Therapy which she is enthusiastic about finding a way for individuals to work through their trauma.
Her artwork differentiates between these fleshy, bobbly large and intimate installations. The themes that appear throughout are emotional and continuous. The medium that Christine mostly would use throughout her practice is natural wools, fabrics, acrylic paint, and clay. She enjoys experimenting with mediums such as painting, sculpture, and photography, using a 35mm camera mostly. In terms of inspiration, usually an idea will come to her instantly when she would think back to her childhood and what surrounds her in everyday life.
Furthermore, to explain the concept of the work that Christine makes suggests the weave becoming a physical protection like a skin. The colours that she uses within her work are neutral and flesh tones that are used to counteract with the feminine and the female. Also, Kernohan works with sculpture, with this being quite textural or tactile in style. For example, from her perspective, she sees her works being entirely sculptural including the weaves and the use of embroidery involved within the process. The interest with Christine’s work is the textures that she creates through her weaves and the meaning behind them.
@christinekernohanart
IX June Hill
IX June Hill
The Gift
Installation of film, sound & props
7 mins sound 3 min film on loops
Dimension: Variable
This installation attempts to bring the outside world inside, with the use of different technologies such as projection mapping and binaural sound recorders she has resized and reframed a moment in time projecting it onto found and reconstructed objects.
The work embraces and celebrates time, opportunities and uncertainty released through movement, working with the narrative of the everyday, noticing the unnoticed, allowing disruption.
June Hill graduated from Ulster University in 2020 with a B.A in Fine Art, focusing on sculpture and video, and has continued to develop her digital practice throughout the MFA. June was selected for a Digital Arts Studio residency and has had work exhibited in The Mac International, QSS and Catalyst Arts.
Follow on Instagram @junehill000
MFA Fine Art Belfast 