Thursday 25 June 2015

Work Review

I haven't posted any of my new paintings online yet but there are a few featured in art critic, James Merrigan's review of our work during the MFA exhibition held last week, the link below goes to his site:

Billion Journal

and this link goes to the video titled Shitlist 2015.

https://vimeo.com/131089201

Monday 8 June 2015

MFA Exhibition, Dublin

Our postgraduate exhibition opens this week in Dublin. There are 25 of us graduating from the National College of Art and Design and the show takes place across 4 venues: Frawley's at 36 Thomas Street where 20 of us have our work on display, NCAD Main Campus, 4 artists are based here, 1 artist is showing at Emmett House at 150 Thomas Street, this is also where our studios were based for the year and another is exhibiting at Steambox Gallery.

The opening is taking place in Frawley's at 6pm on Friday the 12th of June and the exhibition runs until the 21st of June.


Frawley's was an old department store that closed, I think, in 2007. We have it opened for the exhibition and have spent the last 3 or 4 weeks preparing it for the show. Most of this preparation has been filling and painting MDF boards and the work is installed ready for assessments and the exhibition opening. 


The view of my space from the central area of the shop





There was a little movement with the wall boards and because of there were gaps that needed filling, I was hoping to avoid using gum tape but because the filler kept cracking we were left with no alternative.


I had to build a corner into the wall, this was done with a lot of filler


Nearly finished the setup I wanted to get a rough idea of how the work looked 


This wallpaper was up behind the stud wall and was one of the last things I removed from the space.


I didn't have too much trouble with the space, The cracking walls were a bit of a worry but I decided to use the gum tape to cover it and when it was painted combined with good lighting it wasn't very noticeable. The stress came during the final week of install and was completely my own fault. I have never used the Oiling Out technique before when painting and decided a week before the deadline to attempt it on some of the work I wanted to show. It was fairly slow drying so 4 of the 9 paintings I wanted to show spent the final week of install in the studio with a couple of heaters on full blast. Thankfully they dried the night before the deadline and were ready to hang.  

Here's a link to the Visual Artist Ireland website where the exhibition has been promoted and also has a list of us taking part: Visual Artist Ireland