Cassandra Voices

Tag: featured

  • Featured Artist: Caleb Butterly

    As a child I was drawn to draw figures. I watched my mother paint and listened to my father tell stories. As my study and practice of art and anatomy have progressed in depth and complexity so too has my choice of models.

    As we all grow, live, love and age we acquire scars, stretchmarks, mum tums, cellulite, lines, fat and much more. All of these surface details for me have come to be the most precious parts of humanity’s patina.

    Grey Morning.

    When nude we show much of our lived story in our skin and form and my art strives to take the time to pause and explore these lives and celebrate their beauty. Paintings for me are a one frame play using light, line, value and colour that can draw out the best parts of not just the model’s unique story but in a way that most of us can relate to and admire.

    In a time where scrolling airbrushed myriad images and rapid videos is the unhealthy and unsatisfying trend, take the time to stop and look at just one image for a while and enjoy the anti-scrolling that is visual art and the cure for many of western humanities current maladies.

    Many of my models are amateur first-timers and model for me upon hearing of a friend or acquaintance of theirs having already enjoyed modelling for me. I’ve spoken to all about their motivations, and none have felt their body or story typically celebrated in mass media.

    Red Thread No. 9.

    Rather than erase the signs of aging to look like the fictional 1% that is sold to us, my art utilises the marks of aging from a genuine love and appreciation of greater complexity in forms that only comes as people age and mature. For me, the human form is the greatest narrative device and I love using it to explore and celebrate the bittersweet lives we all live through our bodies.

    I have always been driven to make things and learn through my broad range of interests, which has seen me live a somewhat fractured life professionally and educationally. I went from studying engineering to completing degrees in both sport science and psychology. My father was a fisherman, and I went from working for him to labourer, bin-man, barman, office worker, assistant psychologist in a prison, fine art metal worker in a bronze foundry and now a welder for over a decade.

    It was working in the bronze foundry with other artists that showed me making art was the one thing that united and made sense of the fractured parts of myself.

    Metal Men No.1.

    Eleven years ago after a divorce I set about researching and teaching myself the methods of realist drawing and painting in the traditional fashion.

    After building my skill set I then set about working with models to make the art I wanted to see made. I’ve exhibited and sold numerous works at art shows and events while working fulltime and been rejected by near every gallery I’ve approached.

    Nudes, even ones as good as I make, are a hard sell in Ireland. Most of the younger, less conservative people who love my work have neither the spare income to buy art, let alone a house with walls to hang.

    Eventually Giovanni from GalleryX saw my work at Artsource and offered me a solo show. This show represents over ten years of study, work, practice, rejection, small wins and unwavering passion for the human form and the importance of visual art in our lives – now more than ever.

    My Red Thread series explores a common but diverse element that to me seemed present in all of my work with female models and expressed through their connection to fabric and objects of a deep red colour.

    Red Thread No.3.

    I don’t have the words for this exploration. Hence I have nine paintings that do what words or music or film cannot. The paintings themselves, like all of my work, are only ever completed when viewed and experienced.

    The possible similarities and diversity in the experiences of these myriad completions in the mind’s eye of the viewer, and the range and overlap with the experiences of the models themselves, are what this series of works explores.

    Making a living as an artist is a challenge, but living as an artist and art lover is something that makes every living day a feast for the eyes.

    Metal Men No. 6.

    I have worked as metalworker for over a decade and two dominant colours I get to enjoy as an artist in great variety of hue and form are that of sand-blasted grey steel and orange- brown oxide rust. I have incorporated these colours into my Metal Men series which seeks to explore themes around modern fragile masculinity, violence and depression and surrender to the grind of life and one’s own demons. This series is additionally personal to me as for many of these first pieces I have used myself as model and actor.

    Both of these series of paintings, along with sixteen other figurative works will be available to view and buy as part of my first solo exhibition in Gallery X, Hume Street in the heart of Dublin from May 3rd to 18th.

    Follow Caleb Butterly on Instagram.

    Featured Image: Red Thread no.7.

  • Featured Artist: Dorje de Burgh

    My relationship with making art began aged twenty-one as a means to bolster my ego and be cool. I chose photography, mainly because I can’t draw. Also my mum and her brothers were into photography in their twenties, so there were a few nice old cameras around my house when I was growing up. 

    Maybe the ego thing is an obvious thing to say as there’s always so much ego involved in becoming an artist I think, particularly if you’re not rich. Probably if you are rich too.

    Either way, I’m quite suspicious of my reasons for choosing a really hard thing to do that most likely will provide only precarity and emotional insecurity regardless of how good you might be at it. What am I trying to prove?

    BIT ROT BULLY SHOT (2022) 9.08 mins single channel h-8/digital video w/ audio by Frank Lohmeyer & Dorje de Burgh.

    Having said that, sticking with making pictures has been the source of pretty much all the valuable learning I’ve done outside of various mistakes and some major moral failures in my personal life.

    Throughout art school and after my thinking was primarily influenced by the writing of JG Ballard. Mainly his recurring theme of any given personal or social reality existing simply as a stage set that can be swept aside at any moment.

    When that actually happened to me I didn’t handle it well. My mum’s death changed everything. We were very close and her dying was the thing I was always most afraid of, so when she was diagnosed as terminal I completely unravelled.

    But I did keep making pictures, and Dream the End, the work that formed a few years later from a combination of those pictures and her own, would be the first thing I’ve made that I feel actually had a real resonance with people. It taught me that if you try to tell the truth you have a real chance at communication and connection.

    Brain Scan (St Luke’s), archival pigment print, (2017), 820mm x 1000mm – Courtesy of PhotoMuseum Ireland collection.

    And as we move further into a mediatized landscape that seems designed to atomise and alienate us from each other, as the death machine rumbles on, any form of human connection seems vital.

    I know in some ways I’ll never move past this part of my life, I still carry many grudges and various medium to low level addiction issues that I’m only beginning to deal with, but I’m glad the last thing me and my mum did together was make something.

    Soon afterwards I learned that my father had returned from the cult they’d been living with since I was three and now lived as a woman, so inviting her to make a work together seemed like the obvious thing to do, and also a useful way of side-stepping my own fear of meeting after a lifetime apart.

    Sadly she’s pretty unwell, suffering with quite severe psychosis susceptibility syndrome, so collaboration or even direct contact wasn’t possible. But as we figured this out I began to make a film imagining what a work about our relationship might look like without her presence.

    The Sting of Love, from How to Kill Something That Doesn’t Exist, 7.07 mins single channel hi-8/super 16mm projected onto unprocessed Fuji Crystal Archive c-type paper, text adapted from Rollenspiele: Frauen über Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1992, Thomas Honickel) mit Margit Carstensen, Irm Hermann, Hanna Schygulla und Rosel Zech. Courtesy of The Arts Council of Ireland collection.

    Then the pandemic hit and I decided to move on from trying to understand my two families.

    Following the summer of 2020 I moved to a small town called Carrick-on-Suir in south Tipperary that was both uncannily familiar and totally alien. The work that resulted from living there was in part an attempt to remove myself from the equation, and confront the world in more purely formal photographic terms.

    Untitled, Carrick, silver gelatin hand print, (2021), 250mm x 310mm.

    In addition to being an attempt to somehow subvert the representations of the Irish landscape that I was familiar with, Under the Same Sky is about proximity and distance, and alienation from ourselves and each other. It is also very much concerned with my own conception of home — what home means, what constitutes it and what are the conditions of belonging.

    The best part of making this work was getting to show it in South Tipperary Arts Centre in Clonmel, the town next to Carrick. Often these kinds of loosely documentary style photographic works are made and then disappear to be shown elsewhere, and are never seen by the people local to the place the work is about. The first comment in the visitor’s book described it as ‘an excellent documentation of misery’.

    This line of thought (home not misery) continued as my life became less tethered to a particular place, and during a spell living on a small island off the west coast of Ireland and then mainland Europe I made BIT ROT BULLY SHOT.

    Bit rot is naturally occurring digital decay. A bully shot is old slang for a good shot. The film is about de-materialisation and the natural world as a home that we spend less and less time in, forgoing what can be a beautiful reality for some bullshit virtual escape. How close we are to paradise and how much we’re fucking it up.

    There’s also an element of petty revenge involved, as I was told that I wasn’t allowed to make work featuring the island I was living on by the artist friend I was then living with.

    I’ve always made work in an analogue way. This was a decision born of aesthetic taste but as our world becomes more digital I feel that this mode of working is increasingly the point.

    In terms of who ultimately controls memory, meaning and history we are in a dangerous position, and this would suggest that personal histories and counter narratives are more important and hold more radical potential than ever before.

    BORING PHOTOGRAPHS, made in collaboration with Chris Dreier of the OJAI, is a playful toe in the water as regards subversion of the de-materialised attention economy. It’s a riso publication of forty photographs accompanied by an essay on collaborative vernacular photography written by A.I..

    Convent Wall, silver gelatin hand print, (2023), 127mm x 178mm.

    We launched this work and the publication in two pedestrian tunnels in Berlin. This is very much Chris and her OJAI co-director Gary Farrelly’s longstanding m.o., but for me it was a definite light bulb moment.

    In light of the current levels of hypocrisy and moral compromise apparent across the art world superstructure in regard to the genocide in Palestine, it feels apparent that we have moved past the moment of institutional critique to one of stark institutional irrelevance.

    Steal as much as you can to survive and make the work, but forget career ladders and gatekeeping. Make it DIY.

    Still from TIMEFUCKER multi-channel hi-8 video.

    TIMEFUCKER, my new film and book about the poetics of dystopia should be finished by summer 2024.

    www.forget.rip

    https://www.instagram.com/dum_studio/

    Feature Image: the coombe (i), c-type, (2021), 260x340mm

  • Featured Artist: Gary Farrelly

    Over the last seven years, I have been reshaping my practice from being primarily hermetic, manual and materially fixated into a more fugitive, performative state. Around 2015, I had a rising feeling that my drawings, prints and collages no longer had the capacity to hold the kinds of storytelling and speculation that I needed to transmit. I was frustrated that my core desires: to communicate, speculate, pronounce, denounce, seduce and lead up the garden path, were being limited by what I had come to view as the chicanery of my materials.

    Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati in 2022, image Teresa Burkey.

    One of very few consistent back-channels to my material practice that stayed open during the rearrangement process was a project called Going Postal. In 2013 I had entered into an iron clad arrangement with the MSURS – the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska (the Serb part of Bosnia). I had solemnly committed to sending them a flat artefact, unenveloped in the postal system at least four times annually until my projected year of death in 2077.  I have faithfully maintained this undertaking over the years and when the project concludes on 19/11/2077, 256 items will have been integrated into their collection.

    Dispatch 2015112 (2015) courtesy of the Museum of Contemporary Art of Republika Srpska.

    Around the time I was taking a sabbatical from the physical manufacture of artworks, I was deep in the guts of a multi-annual film project called GLUE with my dear friend Oisin Byrne. We had both left Ireland a couple of years earlier, I went to Brussels, and he relocated to London. For over half a decade, the making of GLUE was the structure that kept us embedded in each other’s everyday lives. The final shape of GLUE was a semi-fictional concoction of my experiences of the sleep disorder narcolepsy told through manic and confessional monologues. The project was the first time I positioned my verbal and physical performativity as tip of the spear of my work. The public premier of GLUE was in Salzburger Kunstverein in the summer of 2018.

    Angry letter scene from GLUE (2017) directed by Oisin Byrne

    In January 2015, I met Berlin based photographer and sound artist Chris Dreier. We were introduced to each other over dinner in the Germany city of Wuppertal. Our first conversation was about Charleroi, the mangled capital of Belgium’s post-industrial rustbelt. Our alliance was instantaneous. Since then, we have been sending each other weekly postcard briefings obsessively focused on our shared interests in corporate architecture, finance, disasters, institutions, political assassinations and magic. From the beginning, we always understood the correspondence as a receptacle for some shared knowledge we were both trying to capture. On October 3rd, 2015 we codified our relationship into an institution and established the Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence O.J.A.I..

    A selection of Office for Joint Administrative postcard correspondence. Image Fabrice Scheider.

    Office for joint Administrative intelligence is configured as a DIY para-intelligence agency operating between Brussels and Berlin. I would describe our process as having some research components, in that we gather knowledge based on hyper-specific fields of enquiry – pedestrian tunnels, market shocks, plane crashes, dried up fountains, lonely office blocks, pornography staged in modernist architecture and public announcements (over Tanoy). The research component is not an end in itself. We use the information mined from economic, political and architectural sources as a departure point for uncanny speculation and highly subjective fiction making.

    This process manifests in the public space as performances, fieldtrips, audits, annual reports, office installations, audio wallpaper, vinyl records, architectural plans, psycho-cartography and our monthly radio show transmitting on Dublin Digital Radio and Cashmere Radio Berlin.

    In 2021, I enrolled at a.pass in Brussels, an artistic research environment coalesced around performativity and scenography. My project, in close cooperation with the office, departed from the work of deceased American conservative conspiracy theorist William Milton Cooper. Cooper’s work was a precursor to QAnon and encountered the public through the polemical Hour Of The Time radio show which synthesized economic and political ‘research’, occult knowledge, personal grievance, and manic episodes into a paranoid tsunami designed to undermine public confidence in institutions.

    During my time at a.pass, I developed various performative versions of myself as an agent for disinformation, including: the bureaucrat, the crossdresser, the seducer, the charlatan, the guide, the joker, the devil’s advocate, the instructor and the Cassandra.

    a.pass end performance, Brussels  (2022). Image Karolien Chromiak.

    My current exhibition Proximity Papers – new works from an organisational self – is my first solo exhibition since 2015 and my first major project outside the office in as many years. On the curatorial initiative of Various Artists, the show signals a reignition of my attraction to slow and repetitive processes of hand manufacture such as stitching, stencilling, typing, folding, labelling and redacting. Channeling the same set of political and architectural imaginaries that inhabit the more bombastic performance work, the pieces in the show are encoded with systemic fictions, self-referencing data, geographical imaginaries and lots of modernist ghosts.

    Proximity Papers invitation postcard

    My starting point was a series of postcards that I made for the Project Arts Centre BAE publication a couple of years back. They depict Dublin’s most iconic modernist office blocks: Liberty Hall, the civic offices, Apollo House, the Irish Life Centre etc. These were the first buildings I ever loved.

    I have always been perversely attracted to the unequivocal, disciplinarian presence of post-war buildings in cities. Even as a kid, I knew that these erections were encoded at a genetic level with simultaneously seductive and coercive political instructions. Buildings are dangerous. I have spent my adult life pondering the question: what subliminal messages are these structures asserting into the public space? What do the buildings want?

    Proximity Papers opening night at Nadine, Brussels. Image An Goovaerts.

    Most of the materials in the show were subjected to prolonged direct physical contact with my body. I carried the A4 drawings folded up in my pocket for prolonged periods, larger works were digested at the bottom of my tote bag or flattened under my mattress. I took the two main pieces of the show – a set of watercolour election result maps – into the shower with me every day for a month, carefully bleaching the constituency areas to simulate transitions of power. These processes were extremely destructive to the integrity of the materials and at some stage the works risked disintegration. The second set of processes consisted of repairing, restoring and devoting care to the surfaces. Bringing them back from the dead.

    Proximity Papers opening night at Nadine, Brussels. Image An Goovaerts.

    The work is characterised by a jaded bureaucratic, architectural sensibility. Some of the works consist of repetitive text piled up to look like tower blocks ‘IT IS OFFICIAL POLICY TO APPEAR UNMOVED’.

    The only human presence in the show is a screen-grab from a gay pornographic film where a young heterosexual male hustler is paid to receive oral sex from a gay protagonist. He doesn’t like it. I intervened in the image with delicate rows of my patented embroidery pattern the quasi-autonomous stitch. This work is part of straighsploitation – my ongoing ‘research’ into representations of straight male bodies in gay porn. Other works in the show include: Teri Garr International Airport, Grosser flughafen verspätung taurigkeit (Big Airport Delay Sadess), Systems Merger, Gray Parliament and Regional Conflict Map.

    The word ‘YES’ is recurring throughout the show, part act of self-encouragement/partially ironic. All the works are stamped on the rear with my name, date of birth and projected expiry date- Gary Farrelly (1983-2077). I will be ninety-six-years-old if the prediction is accurate. Specially constructed display units were designed and built by Remy vanderhaegen. The show was executed with the generous support of The Arts Council and Fingal Arts Office. Sincere thanks to Various, Phyllis, An and Loes and Remy vanderhaegen.

    Proximity Papers opening night at Nadine, Brussels. Image An Goovaerts.

    Proximity Paper is on view at Nadine/NOdine Laboratory for Contemporary Art at 105 Rue de Laeken, Brussels 1000 until December 8th: https://index.nadine.be/proximity-papers-new-works-from-an-organisational-self/

    Gary’s work is part of the group show ‘Why Be An Artist’ on show at NCAD gallery in Dublin from December 1 2022 to February 15, 2023: https://www.ncad.ie/gallery-event/view/why-be-an-artist

    The Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence’s radio show No Tourists transmits regularly on Dublin Digital Radio: https://listen.dublindigitalradio.com/resident/no-tourists

    Instagram: @jointintelligence

    Featured Image: a.pass end performance, Brussels (2022). Image Karolien Chromiak.

  • Featured Artist: Manar Al Shouha

    How would you define yourself as an artist?

    In fact I feel more like a researcher trying to find the truth about herself, her uniqueness and her art fingerprint. For me art is a kind of meditation where I reach the inner self.

    Each painting is not only a scene. It’s a journey through my deep self.

    I believe that the reason we are here as humans on earth is to try and reach our inner selves.

     Was there a particular moment in your life that you felt an artistic awakening?

    As a child I was slow to develop my speech and writing abilities. I always favoured drawing. Even at school, I used to sneak out of classes and go to the drawing room instead. Since I came to the realization of this art world, I can’t believe for a second that I can work in any other career.

    How did your teachers assist in the development of your artistic practice?

    My teacher is called Bassem. He taught me that my only teachers in life should be myself and books. He used to tell me that he is only there to encourage and guide me. By the time I started studying art at university, he had already left teaching because of the war conditions and had gone to another university. In order to reach him, I had to walk for miles, just to have him look at my work. His opinion was more important to me than the mark I received.

    Your mother is one of your recurring subjects. How did she influence your creativity and personality?

    She was a teacher of mathematics in the same school that I attended. She used to come and check on me during the day, any time she didn’t find me in the class. She would take me from the drawing-room. She used to get angry at my begging her to relent, but after a while she understood my nature and began providing me with materials and even booked me into art classes. She was always talking to me as a unique person and saying that when choosing anything I should follow my heart. She used to energize me mentally and physically. My mother used to help me prepare canvases before I started painting, organise my studio and tidy it up in a way that didn’t distress me. She always tried to interpret my work and was always happy with my achievements. More than I ever was.

    Ultimately, she is the reason I am here now.

     Which of your works do you feel best represents your oeuvre?

    There are two of them in particular. The first is one of a woman sitting down, painted with two colours only and a font. It’s painted in a highly impressionistic way. I completed this work in 2021.

    The second painting shows a social gathering for two women painted in a sketched style with warm neutral colours. I made this in 2016.

    In what way does politics enter your art?

    On account of my lack of freedom in expressing myself, and because the media doesn’t always show the more interesting angles in the news, I decided to reveal my nation’s suffering in my own distinctive way, through my art.

    Damascus is always appearing in your work and your thoughts, would you like to say something about this city?

    Damascus was the capital of the Umayyads, the dream of Abbasids, and is one of the oldest capital cities of the Islamic world.

    In spite of the war, I felt safe walking down its alleys and roads. This is not an ordinary city. It holds a lot of energy. Looking at the ancient monuments, I used to feel its greatness. I represent Damascus as a lady who has faced hardship through the years, but has managed to preserves an elegance. One day prosperity will return, as has occurred throughout the city’s history, for it possesses a wealth of energy.

    Has any artist from history had a particular influence on you?

    I like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Honoré Daumier and Egon Schiele.

    What particular technique is at core of your practice?

    Sketching. I like the strong impression of a sketch. I find myself attracted more to the expressive school, through the use of neutral translucent colours and heavy fonts.

    Have you integrated other disciplines or artistic forms into your painting?

    No, but in my first year of university I studied five general artistic fields. I liked sculpture and engraving, especially Honoré Daumier works. I think one day I will study this discipline more deeply.

    I particularly love your paintings portraying people commuting and traveling. What is so enticing for you about these subjects?

    Regarding the painting of the bus scenes, when I start painting, I always ask myself why I am doing it? When I used to take the bus, I watched people gazing out the windows, some were angry but couldn’t express themselves, and some were looking over their shoulders as if they were waiting for time to go back.

    I felt it was not a bus, but a boat taking us away from our country and away from our present and making us live in the past. Then I started painting it again. I wanted to apologise, but somehow I was painting to say that what happened wasn’t our faults.

    In future I want to make fingerprint through my art. I want my paintings to be alive so I can live through them. Not for a moment have I felt that I am Picasso or Goya. They are dead. But when I looked at their paintings, I always felt that I am talking to them.

    Follow Manar on Instagram

    Kindly translated by Jennifer Boktor and Nermine Abdel Malak

    Manar is preparing for a new exhibition in September in Rathfarnham Castle, and recently moved to the Lodge Studio with the organisation Common Ground.

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  • Featured Artist: Ella de Burca

    My work begins with a consideration of how one begins to look – an exercise of empathy with you, dear reader. When a work of art is placed in front of me, I have a whole range of responses as a viewer and I remember this when I start to make a new piece. I consider my role as artist and I consider your role as reader/viewer equally. They stand on an equal footing, a plateau.

    Poem #11. Tomato Poetry House Series. 2021.

    I have a friend who calls me to talk about artists and their work. We have categories for types of artists:

    The magicians, who are all about persona, their work changes or improves your life and your life was lacking until their work fixed it – think Joseph Beuys, Marina Abromovic; the factors, those whose work is inspired by or responds to something that already happened – think Goshka Macuga, Aslan Gasimov; the intelligentsia, who make you feel like you’ll never be smart enough to understand their supersoaked insights – think Seth Price, Micol Assael; and the decor (I’ll let you figure that one out).

    There are more categories that we invent as time goes on, but the purpose serves well, to open our critical and loving heads to talking art. We analyze and consider different artists and their trajectories, what they’re putting out now versus a few years ago, and where they might go down the line. The thing that stands out most, for me, is that I have been all four different types at some stage, and indeed, the more I talk about it with other artists, the more confirmations I get that the same applies to them.

    Anemic Circles. Poem (A4 page)  & Sculpture (10m). Emergency Pavilion 2013.

    The Ella who showed the work ‘Anemic Circles’ at The Emergency Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2013 is different from the Ella who had a solo show ‘Flat as the Tongue Lies’ at The University of California in 2018, is different from the Ella writing this text. I have grown as a human and as such my work has grown too. Some of my furies have tempered into cooler flames, while some of my damp wood has dried into a patient but furious kindle. The one anchored point however, is the work.

    Act II. Flat As The Tongue Lies. UCLA Irvine, California. 2018.

    I have always been fascinated with the viewing process. How ‘we’ (-who’s we?) act as ‘viewer,’ and how ‘we’ learnt to look that way, both as an individual and a community. Coming from Ireland, I am always in awe of the GAA and how in a relatively short space of time a structure was created whereby every family in every town had access to play hurling and/or football, to view it and to participate in critical conversation with peers, of analysis, predictions and strategy. The same could be done with art.

    Choir (Haar). Kunstenfeest Watou. 2021. Photo by Dirk Pauwels.

    With gestures, sculpture and poetry, I create performative work that combs through these issues. Coming from the position of being a cis-female, white woman I am inspired by the history of womanhood, the struggles, the victories. I have an imaginary coven who I sporadically turn to for strength, inspiration and help. Some have names, such as Biddy Early, Hildegaard of Bingen, Cassandra and Joan of Ark, and some don’t, such as the women in the Magdalene Laundries.

    During the pandemic I heard on the radio that the women lace makers of Headford, Galway were not affected by cholera and typhoid during the 19th Century because they had to wash their hands so often. The money they earned was crucial to their families and if there was one speck of dirt on the lace piece then it would be worthless.

    Choir (Doh Soh). Newbridge House. 2021. Photo by Louis Hawk.

    I was in awe and in shock to think about how a century after these industrious women making money from lace to feed their families, there came 20th century women who were torn away from their families and incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries, set to work knotting lace, string after string – maybe even listening to radio programmes about women from Headford, Galway while they worked.

    Now we’re here in the 21st Century, and women’s labour is still underpaid, often unpaid, and the labouring women unseen, unheard. A person’s voice is a source of great power, and those who gain from suppressing that power have spent centuries sewing throats shut. Landlords, priests, politicians, misogynists, the cast of characters hasn’t changed.

    Lettuce Síle. 2021

    I created a cast of embroidered throats standing in the gesture that fans out from headless sackcloth bodies. The headless straw women, disembodied anatomies, could represent the Headford women making lace or the Magdalene women incarcerated in the laundries, they could be representations of viewers today observing the work or they could be me.

    These voiceless throats and sightless spectators are woven into a spatial, figurative, yet ambiguous relation of dependence and power. Some of this body of work was shown in ‘Guest’ at Newbridge House, Fingal, during the Summer of 2021, a group show curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll, while other parts were shown at the Kunstenfestival  Watou, in Belgium, curated by Chantal Pattyn and Benedicte Goesaert.

    Tomtom’s (watercolour and tomatoes) 2021.

    During the Summer I also grew my own tomatoes and read feminist poems to them. You are what you eat. I would prefer to eat food that does not prop up the poisonous economic structure so harmful to our environment. These tomatoes became my audience during the pandemic, conditioned by my tastes, my carefully curated poetry show. And when they were ripe, I ate them under the full moon.

    Vodka Blue Pope. (Watercolour, eggshells and Lunaria annua) 2021

    More recently I have been imagining the potions and magic remedies created by Biddy Early while painting an inventory of the plants growing in my garden. I mash up the painted flower and add it to the image of what was there. When assembled, I imagine this body of work as an art apothecary, with different combinations of the ingredients creating different viewing cures. Some of this work will be shown online in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in November/December 2021.

    It’s easy enough to describe how I got to this point, artistically, professionally and humanly, but going forward is more opaque. Actually, in thinking of this word ‘opaque,’ I often get stuck. In photoshop there is a tool called ‘opacity,’ which, when at its highest percentage, renders the image totally visible. In real life, it means obscure of sense, invisible. But I often get the two mixed up, and I think that this strange double meaning kind of fits when I use it to describe my future. I know I’ll still be making the work, I just don’t know where you will be.

    Defiance (Roof Without Walls.) 2017. This work is in the collection of the Irish Arts Council.

    My work has been supported by the Irish Arts Council, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Fingal County Council and Culture Ireland. Most recently I was the recipient of a Platform 31 Award for County Laois. I am currently pursuing a PhD at KU Leuven entitled ‘Modes of Viewing: How to Act.’

  • Featured Artist: Turlough Rynne

    The adventure, the great adventure is every day to see something new emerge in the same face, and this is greater than any journey around the world
    Alberto Giacometti

    Finishing a piece is complicated. The decision is sometimes based on whether there are enough lines and shades on the page; everything is balanced. This generally means it is, compositionally, a good work or drawing.

    If you are fighting with it and grappling with too much shade or darkness, it can get tricky. In my process, I often cut up or crop drawings to improve their composition or remove an element that is not working – it’s the last effort at salvaging a piece – and it doesn’t always work.

    Some pieces stay in folders, unseen, invisible. Then there are drawings that can take less than ten minutes to complete – a quick adjustment in perspective or switch from pen to brush can alleviate any problems that were caused from the first attempt.  In drawing, there is no right or wrong approach, and experimentation plays a crucial role in the process.

    Seeing images from different perspectives is fascinating. It was Goethe that said every new object, well observed discloses a new organ within us.

    So something new gets created or ‘disclosed’ when I photograph River House – a concrete office block near the Liffey in Dublin.  When I collect the 35mm prints another new organ is disclosed.

    Original 35mm print.

     

    River House I.

    Same goes for when I sketch from the photographs, perhaps more than once, and when I unwrap said picture from the framer.

    Another new organ can be disclosed when I see the picture in different surroundings hanging perhaps on an unfamiliar wall.

    River House has since been demolished to make way for a hotel, another new object I suppose. Both the photograph and the drawing become part of the architectural history of Dublin, in a way an archive of an ever-changing city.

    It is often the architecture of cities that I am interested in, whether that be bridges, historical buildings, or their infrastructure.

    The Process of Creation

    Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us
    Goethe

    River House II.
    Site of River House since demolition.

    This process of creation, image-making or mark making, changes how I see the original location.  Having photographed and painted the interior of Dublin’s General Post Office or Busáras, one of Ireland’s most important modernist buildings, it is a treat to return to these spaces and see how they have changed.

    The experience of image-making changes my perception of the spaces also – having observed the object (for example the GPO main hall) I have the ‘new organ of perception’ is present when I revisit.

    Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) posited sense data as “third things”, standing between material objects and perceivers, and serving as the immediate objects of perception.

    Sense data are the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, and so on.

    Russell used the object of the table as an example: ‘The real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known.’

    Russell wanted a new connection between sense-data and objects; a new conception of objects as logical constructions built out of or referred from sense-data.

    Objects themselves cannot be viewed as substances without sense-data, they alone are invisible.  Everything we see is an image itself – a projection.

    My work is this third thing – the immediate object of perception. It is an effort to understand objects and how the brain perceives them by slowing down the process of visual perception, picture by picture.

    Turlough Rynne is an artist based in Ireland. For more information visit www.turloughrynne.com

    Further Reading

    Giacometti: Sculpture Painting Drawing, Thames and Hudson 1972
    Goethe and the Evolution of Science
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    The Great Philosophers, Arcturus Publishing 2008

    General Post Office, Dublin.

  • Featured Artist Marc di Saverio

    Marc di Saverio hails from Hamilton, Canada. His poems and translations have appeared internationally. In Issue 92 of Canadian Notes and Queries Magazine, di Saverio’s Sanatorium Songs (2013) was hailed as “the greatest poetry debut from the past 25 years.” In 2016 he received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2017, his work was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, his debut became a bestseller in both Canada and the United States, and he published his first book of translations: Ship of Gold: The Essential Poems of Emile Nelligan (Vehicule Press). On May 1st, 2020, Guernica Editions published Crito Di Volta. Di Saverio studied English and History at McMaster University, but never took a degree, due to illness. He is the son of Carlo Di Saverio, the scholar and teacher who studied Linguistics and Languages at University of Toronto (M.A.,1981). Di Saverio’s poem, “Weekend Pass”, was adapted into the movie, CANDY — directed by Cassandra Cronenberg, and starring the author himself — which was selected to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. In late 2020 he received Nobel Prize in Literature nominations, chiefly for CRITO DI VOLTA.

    1. THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME (mixed media on board)

    So, after a twenty year hiatus, I began painting and drawing again in 2018, due to a writer’s block that forced me into this earlier-studied realm of creativity. In this, one of my first of paintings, THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME, I envision Paris after the Second Coming of Christ, when peace, love and joy will reign supreme on earth, and there is no more war, famine, or strife. I portray a “Golden Age”, when Angels, saints, and believers in Christ will encompass the world during the thousand year period depicted in the Book of Revelation, in the New Testament of the Bible.

    2. A CITY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (marker on board)

    In the painting, I imagine what a city in Heaven might look like, suspended on the air, the air of the sky moving under the bridge as though water. Of course, above the bridge, and below the bridge, we see the same colours, suggesting the elevation of this city-portion of Heaven. The structure in the painting came from my imagination, completely. I began to paint by imagination after seeing some of William Blake’s inspired paintings.

    3. A FUTURE FARMHOUSE AND ITS LAND (marker and gouache on board)

    This painting was, too, generated and painted from my imagination, wherein I saw what a future farmhouse and its land might look like in a hundred years, when there is a resurgence of divisionism, but not in just painting, but in reality, as displayed in this picture. Like a work by Escher, some parts seem impossible and both visually wonderful and visually impossible to fully understand or appreciate because of certain geometric anomalies in the painting, which was executed in late 2019, during a snowstorm.

    4. CHRIST ON THE CROSS (soft pastel on board)

    Here is one of the first drawings I executed, in 2018, after twenty years hiatus from painting.  After having composed two other crucifixion scenes, in which Jesus was clearly harrowed, I wanted to create a picture of the crucifixion where Jesus Christ seems to be at peace, rather than in throes, because I wanted to be able to have a permanent vision of a Jesus who might have accepted his fate, or at least in this moment captured in the picture. The relative serenity in his face, considering his situation, expresses my aim exactly.

    5. THE PANTHEON AFTER A SNOWFALL (marker and oil on board)

    This painting was created in late 2019, during winter, in Canada. I had always wanted to see the Pantheon after a snowfall, so, I imagined just that, and then executed it upon a stretch of board. I added the white snow to lend the feeling of safety, peace and holiness to the viewer. Notice that, in contrast to the bland snow, the Pantheon and surrounding buildings are electrified with pure, neon colour, giving an updated, hyper-modern feel to the composition, while at the same time retaining the elegance and universality of the Pantheon.

    6. THE FOUNTAIN OF IDENTITA IN RACALMUTO, SICILY (mixed media on board)

    The Fountain of Identita, which not longer exists — it was demolished in the late 20th century — once stood in the centre of Racalmuto, Sicily, wherefrom my mother and her side of the family came in the 1950’s. By way of imagination, and by way of imitating an old postcard of the Fountain, I created this painting, which I wanted to be so illuminated with pure colour that no one would ever forget the fountain, despite its nonexistence, today.

    7. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH LONG HAIR (marker, oil and gouache on board)

    In this, my first ever self-portrait — i painted it in 2019 — I attempted to transmit the image of my face from a photograph onto board. The photograph depicts me at the age of twenty-seven, when my hair, unlike today, was extremely “big”, thick, and long. Though I do not have the courage to grow my hair this long again, I figured I would at least capture it in painting. As you can see, I used to do my best to dress well in those days.

    8. A VENETIAN CANAL WITH GONDOLAS (Oil on Board)

    In this, my first pure oil painting in twenty years, I successfully, by way imitating a photograph i had taken in Venice, long ago, depicted two boats in a canal, at about sunset. The boats are not gonadliered, suggesting the day is at a close. I attempted to use an impasto style in the piece, in order to portray the denseness of the beauty in that immortal city.

    9. LIAM GALLAGHER, 1995 (mixed media on paper mounted on board)

    Here is a depiction of the Irish-blooded singer and superstar, Liam Gallagher, from the band Oasis (1991-2009) — a depiction of the rock star at his peak, in 1995, around the time when Wonderwall, their biggest hit, was released to the astonishment and happiness of Oasis fans. This is one of my few works that was BEGUN tweny years ago, but finished most recently, in 2020. My greatest challenge, here, was to truly achieve semblance of Gallagher, which I believe I have.

    10. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH RED HAT AND WINTER JACKET (Oil and Pen on Board)

    Here is my second ever self-portrait, which depicts me in the present, as opposed to when i was twenty-seven, like in the aforementioned self-portrait in gray. As you can see, the Jacket almost looks like Napoleonic era military fatigues, but this was unintentional. All I wanted was to paint something that would resemble me — and my current coat — and i think I succeeded!

    11. QUARANTINE (Mixed Media On Paper Mounted On Board)

    This painting is designed to capture the feeling of isolation induced by the quarantine in which most of us have living, since the beginning of the Covid Pandemic, which has had untold effects upon the minds of so many. This painting reflects the psychological, rather than the physical effects of Covid, since, too often, the effects of the pandemic on the minds of millions have been overlooked, or, to me, underreported. 

    12. ONE BLUE FLOWER (Watercolour on Paper)

    Finally — and for old time’s sake — here is an example of one of my paintings from the old days — from tweny years ago — when I had recently discovered painting. In those days, I was in love with the delicacy of watercolour, and had not yet explored oil painting, or even drawing, for that matter. The sublime uncontrollability — the riskiness — of watercolour, enthralled me. In this particular painting of a blue flower, the viewer is hopefully taken aback by not only the precision, but the acquiescence of the colours of work therein. I consider this my first real painting. I hope that you find as much pleasure in viewing it as I had in creating it.

  • Featured Artist Annelie Carlström

    I have always been a creative person. When I was a child I loved to draw and cut paper, my kindergarten teacher was ever so impressed by my straight cutting lines!

    My grandfather painted in oil and made sculptures out of wood he found in nature. He told me that there is no tree in the world that looks like another tree. That sentence has stuck with me over the years, and I can still see his drawings of trees in my head. That sprawling line in black carbon. The drawn line is very important to me, so is the craftsmanship. I really want to feel the person behind the drawing/illustration, and when it is all digital I can’t sense the person behind it any longer, and lose interest.

    Career Options

    When I was growing up I knew I wanted to work creatively in some way, but I was not sure how.

    I started out with ballet, but after being rejected by the Swedish ballet school I began to dream about becoming an architect, living in a self-drawn house with two big dogs.

    Then, when I was about twelve I realized that I was quite good at drawing. We had a class in school where we drew onions with soft pastel crayons and that was the first time I understood that I had a true talent for drawing. I captured the onion’s expression and the wink on the surface.

    Grandfather

    My grandfather, who was such an important person to me, always said that there was no future in being an artist. He himself was from a working class background and quit school at the age of twelve, with no further possibility to study. Since I had the option to study whatever I chose, he thought I should become a doctor, or some other serious occupation where you made a lot of money and earned respect.

    So with that in mind I have tried to come up with more commercial ways of working creatively. Becoming an artist and being successful felt impossible and something that only rich people with great confident could aspire to.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Interior Designs

    When I turned nineteen and applied for art school I had a plan to become an interior designer.

    I envisaged myself strolling around in fancy suits with a leather portfolio full of brilliant ideas. It was not so much the design work I was interested in but rather the lifestyle.

    Being a successful business woman became a big goal, but it had to be in the creative industry. After a year of painting still life in oil and drawing croquis we had a class in illustration and from that point on that was all I wanted to do.

    It was the perfect mix of artistic work, while remaining in the commercial world. To become an illustrator I had to apply to the most competitive college in Sweden, so I have attended a lot of art and design schools, seven years in total. It took me a while to develop my own way of drawing, and it did not evolve fully until my last term of Design College.

    I graduated from Beckmans College of Design in 2007. Then I felt quite scared and alone in the world. I had my portfolio of pencil drawings and a well-respected qualification, but I had not done any illustration work, and settled for a part-time job at a grocery store to pay my way.

    As that summer went by I felt more and more frustrated. I suppose I am a very emotional person with little patience. Then in the beginning of autumn something amazing happened. The best illustration agency in Sweden got in touch and said they wanted to represent me!

    I could not believe my luck. From then on my career received a real push and I worked with all sorts of clients from all over the world. One of my first jobs was from a bank with offices all over the world. I got paid so much I really could not believe it!

    Some people said that I had sold out, but I think they were just jealous. My first objective was to make a living as an illustrator, but after doing so for over a decade I’m more interested in the artistic expression of telling my own story, rather than clients’.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Magic and Poetry

    In my drawings I want to create magic and poetry. I want you to sense the vibrations from the pen. I want to take you to other places, other dimensions. Where words are unnecessary.

    My favourite subject is girls and nature. Perhaps I’m just drawing myself in different versions over and over again. I don’t want to do what is expected of me. If I do so I feel I have failed.

    I don’t want to draw the happy life, the smiling girls and the cosy gardens, which can make things tricky when working commercially. Indeed, clients always ask if my characters could smile a bit more… It’s as if there is no place for seriousness in the sales department. Perhaps that’s why I’m doing more and more personal art these days.

    Like many others, I draw inspiration from many different things. I often find it in novels. At the moment my favourite author is Agneta Pleijel, I want to draw like she writes. I am also inspired by great artists like Jockum Nordström, Klara Kristalova and Lucian Freud.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Instagram

    Even though I have a hate/love relation with Instagram, I must admit that it is a big source of inspiration, even though it can be quite fast paced and homogeneous. You see so much in such a small amount of time. A true piece of art get swiped away in a matter of seconds.

    It’s such a different experience to sitting at a bench in a museum, experiencing an artwork in real life, where it is in its natural environment with appropriate lighting.

    I love going to museums. They are like churches for me, where I can find pieces and feel the love in the world. In Stockholm we have the Nationalmuseet, a place I love to visit, where there is art from all times across history.

    ©Annelie Carlström
    Detail of the above ©Annelie Carlström

    Since I was a child I have loved naturalistic portrait painting, particularly the fabric that often folds and the way the dresses fall in old paintings.

    I’m also very interested in the face, specially the eyes with their gaze and the wink in the eye. Overall I love to work with details, drawing the hair shaft, and trying to understand how a certain surface can be translated into a drawing – like a knitted sweater or a shiny plastic jacket.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    I just love to take my time, and not work under pressure, allowing the line to go on the paper; filling up the spaces moment after moment. But of course when working with illustration you have a timeline to adapt to, which can make the drawing stressful and without soul. I try hard to avoid that. It gives me a feeling of being without a purpose, where everything is meaningless.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Piece by Piece

    When I illustrate I draw everything in pieces. I draw the head on one piece of paper, the hair on another, the shoes on another etc. Then I scan the drawings and put it all together in the computer. I often say that I cheat a bit, because when you draw big and then make it smaller in the computer it looks more detailed than it really is.

    When I started out I used the mouse to work with the illustrations on the computer, but now I use a Wacom board and that makes the process so much easier, and I guess I also work more on the computer than before because it is so easy to adjust the picture digitally. But lately I’ve got more into making drawings as originals, big ones. I have not managed to finish anything yet but I hope I will find the time soon.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Collaborations

    I’m originally a lone wolf, but lately I have managed a few interesting collaborations. One is with the excellent artist Petra Börner. We had an exhibition together at The Museum of Drawings called ”Drawn to the Line” here in Sweden, and it was the most creative fun I have had in a long time.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Petra works in a completely different style that goes really well with mine. To see two artistic expression meet and create a new one was a true awakening for me.

    We are now trying to find a new location for the exhibition and I’m also working on new drawings and sculptures in ceramic that can be part of the original exhibition.

    I’ve also collaborated with jewellery artist Sanna Svedestedt Carboo. I draw her leather jewellery and invented a woman wearing them. We both love braids and pine trees so that was a natural theme for collaboration.

    The exhibition Braid.Stone.Needle that includes my drawings and Sannas art jewelry is currently being showed at MUSA, a fashion store and Gallery in Gothenburg, Sweden.

    I have also just started a artist collective together with artist Mia Nilsson called Fina Linjen. Some of Sweden’s most excellent illustrators is part of the group. I hope it will have a bright future.”

  • Featured Artist Michal Greenboim

    Growing up in a small rural town in Israel, Pardes Hanna, has shaped me into who I am today. My grandparents were part of the hundreds of thousand people who fled Europe prior to the Holocaust and settled the land of Israel in the 1930s. It was important to them that we were raised as Israelis. They instilled their love for the Jewish country into us and this is what has inspired me throughout my career as a photographer. My image making is a reflection of my childhood in Pardes Hanna; it is filled with my interpretations of the emotions and senses that I grew up with: from the breeze I felt while swinging on a tree swing to the sweet tangy flavor I tasted from our mango tree. These moments are what has influenced my work and continue to be a part of my photography every day.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I did not always notice that my photography was shaped by my childhood memories. During the years, I realized that I had been always carrying memories of the house I grew up in with the big luscious trees surrounding it deep down within. I develop these feelings further and organize my work into a book. Forming my book, The Orchard Trail, which is based on my raw childhood emotions, feelings, and memories. It was only while working on the book that I realized that most of my photographs are based on the innocence from my childhood.

    Pardes Hanna, translated directly into “Hannah’s Orchard”, is a town that was filled with orange, avocado, and mango orchards. I remember small moments such as exchanging our avocados for the neighbor’s mangos. My images reminded me of how it felt to lay on the grass under our big tree reading a book.

    Looking up to the skies and inventing stories based on the shapes of the clouds.

    Hearing the rustling leaves and picking oranges with my father in the nearby orchards.

    On a rainy day, I would set a chair under an umbrella and listen to the sound of the raindrops.

    As kids, we would walk over to our neighbor’s house for story time or a piano lesson.

    These are the memories that inspire my photographs, they remind me where I started and who I really am.

    Through the process of placing images together and choosing which ones would come together to form diptychs, I learned so much about how different aspects of my life are threaded together once they’re viewed on a deeper level.

    The Orchard Trail became a homage to the magical place I grew up in. My grandmother planted a tree in the backyard of my childhood home when her and my grandfather arrived in Israel in 1933 from Germany, against her family’s will. The tree became a symbol of growth, its roots planted deep into the ground to prove to anyone who thought they didn’t belong that they were staying. I learned who I am through the creation of my book, The Orchard Trail where I explored the importance of the family that I raised and the way I engrained my values into my children and future generations. After finishing The Orchard Trail, I began working on a new project called, Keeping the Flame.

    It was during this project that I researched more about my Jewish heritage and looked into the past to learn about the roots that have brought me to where I am today. I focused on who I am as a modern Orthodox Jewish woman, and also researched the Jewish artist, Chagall. I then moved on to learning about the Jewish homeland, Israel, a land that has held my past along with my future, through analyzing the art of Israeli painters. Lastly, I represented my relationship with the land of Israel through my photographs of ballerinas (images 12-16 ) who are always in motion but are also stable and balanced, just like I have moved away and back to Israel several times, I always know that it will be there as a place for me to call home.

    Learning about who I am in the past, present, and future has given me depth and appreciation for where I came from, the journey I am on, and for the family that I’ve raised.

    In Cuba, I was exposed to a small Jewish community, one of the smallest in the world. They serve as a proof that when a community sticks together, they can overcome anything. I realized then the importance of having a community as support, and this inspired me further to tell the story of the Jewish people. They showed me that even with limited resources, the importance that the Jewish traditions play in who they are and what they believe in. Furthermore, it showed me how vital it is for us, as a nation, to pass down our traditions even when it is difficult, because if not for us, they will not exist.

    From On Our Journey To Home 

    In my book On Our Journey To Home, I visually describe the migration of my family from Europe to Israel in 1933. This immigration story tells of the many challenges and hardships involved with such an effort to establish life in a new land. At the same time, it expresses the sense of optimism and the determination that sustained the hopeful vision. The journey involves sacrificing closeness to friends and family, learning a new language and adapting to a different culture in order to fulfill a dream of a home and better life for generations to come.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I poetically sketch the feelings and dreams of my grandparents beginning with the time of the diaspora, their fears and insecurities involved with life in Europe at the time. They dreamt of a place for a new beginning, where they could start over and shape it however they desired, a place where they would create a just and giving society. Therefore, they settled in a small town called Pardes Hanna’, where they farmed the land, and built the town from the ground up with their own hands.It was a new and optimistic beginning, but not always a smooth one, with a lot of difficulties and sadness, Life in the new land wasn’t easy. There was much fear; of the enemies around, of illness, and that their dream would not come true.

    The story continues on for five generations, to include the experience of life for my family in Israel today, which is wonderful, far beyond anything my grandparents imagined more than a hundred years ago.

    It was a journey back in time while I spent part of it searching the archives of Germany, Israel and the United States, reading letters that my grandmother wrote, or articles written about her in newspapers. I learned taught everything I could from the places where they lived, and the spirit of that period, and so this book was created, by virtue of imagination and thought.

    The title image is from Michal Greenboim’s last project “On Our Journey To Home”

    www.michalgreenboim.com/on-our-journey-to-home

    www.michalgreenboim.com/instagram

    www.michalgreenboim.com