COUNTER/PARTS: an exhibition, celebrating collaborations between artists and writers 5th to 8th Oct
COUNTER/PARTS: at Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay. Dates: 5th – 8th October, 10am-5pm. Opening Night: 5th October, 6pm, All Welcome!
COUNTER/PARTS is a public exhibition, celebrating a number of collaborations between artists and writers from UCC and MTU Crawford College of Art & Design.
As part of this pioneering new project, writers and artists from the MA in Creative Writing, UCC, and MA Art & Process, MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, partnered up to make and present new collaborative work. The beauty of collaboration lies in the between-space, where artists from different disciplines meet imaginatively, interact, spark. It is a risky, beautiful thing. As such, this risk-taking project combines text and materials in thrilling new ways, and its exhibition from October 5th –8th at Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, is the public moment for innovative new work.
Lucy Holme & Ava Hayes
Collaboration challenges us to interrogate how we regard and authentically inhabit the artist’s process. Do we interrupt each other’s practice or deepen it? What can we teach each other? What might we learn about ourselves during the project, about our limitations, blind spots and unique strengths?
Indian sitarist, poet, and spiritual guru Ravi Shankar once said of artistic collaboration, “In many fundamental ways, collaboration is the quintessential modern artistic practice.” The juxtaposition of visual art and creative writing has always existed to provoke and entice us and to encourage us to reach beyond the ‘apparent’. Now, more than ever, the concept of joining forces and sharing ideas feels vital, energising, and necessary. From a surface appreciation for art placed on the blank gallery wall to the pen marks or printed words upon the page, each partnership in this exhibition builds its own fresh lexicon. Each jointly curated work adds something new to the ongoing creative conversation.
Naoise McGuiness & Shane Vaughan
“a memoir un-rooted in time”
Petrina Shortt & Kieran Murphy
Petrina Shortt and Kieran Fionn Murphy explore time, layered history, and landscapes inspired by Mizen in West Cork. Together, like all before them, they wish to catch something, snare the silver colour of the sea, collect the wind, paint anticline curves that hold old earth in new, freeze the clack and splash of waves, entrap time in art and memory.
James Dineen & Orla O’Byrne
The pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in despair, against our will comes wisdom through the awful grace of God. Featured image above.
Stephen O’Shea & Kiriko Hashimoto
As part of their contribution to the wider project, Stephen and Kiriko have chosen as their subject the rise of holocaust denial, inspired by a visit Stephen made to Budapest in November 2019. Using Stephen’s writing of the experience as a template, Kiriko has fashioned a series of wood sculptures that reminds the reader of the collective responsibilities of the subject, particularly in an age where history is prey to ignorance and manipulation.