Group exhibition in Garter Lane Arts Centre Front of House Exhibition Space • Artists: Andrew Kenny, Judy O’ Sullivan and Rory van Dokkum

‘Beyond Belonging’ explores three artists adoption of intuitive and automatic approaches to drawing and the illusive figures which emerge during their working processes. Judy O’ Sullivan’s work explores the individual’s connection to place and feelings of disconnection through loss of place. Coming from three generations of emigration, her figures suggest a sense of loss and longing for certainty and roots- though her ungrounded treatment of the figure, they suggest a rootlessness.

Andrew Kenny’s work similarly draws its figures from ghostly presences that inhabit our lives. His work explores the Sorrat (Society for Research into Rapport and Telekenesis) group who, since the 1960s, have researched the paranormal. Over the years, they apparently succeeded in creating recurrent spontaneous psycho kinesis and witnessed unexplained phenomena such as apports, Telekenesis and automatic writing. The artist encountered this group while researching a poltergeist haunting in 1910 in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, from which this series of large scale drawings will emerge to explore the unknown and unknowable presence in unexplained paranormal phenomena.

Rory van Dokkum is a recent graduate of WIT Visual Art and recipient of the Garter Lane Studio Bursary. His work incorporates both life drawing and automatic drawing in order to depict the human form as surreal and abstract. His work explored the dichotomy of the external appearance versus the internal nature of the self and how the presence of the strange influences the ‘normal’. The figures in his work play with the reactions of the viewer in evoking both the familiar and alien aspects.

Andrew Kenny has exhibited throughout Ireland over the past number of years with shows in the Mountmellick Gallery Co. Laois, Springmount Gallery Co.Wexford, Hawkswell Theatre in Sligo, Tuar Ard Arts Centre Co.Westmeath, Excel Centre in Co.Tipperary and Greyfriars Gallery in Waterford and was also Director/ Curator in both Studio 9 in Wexford and Hive Emerging in Waterford. He has completed residencies in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre and Kultiveras in Tranas, Sweden.

Judy O’Sullivan holds a BA in Fine Art and a postgraduate certificate in Art Therapy from Crawford College of Art & Design. She has had several solo exhibitions throughout Ireland including ‘Return’ in Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery, Co. Clare in 2014, ‘to arrive where we started’ in Watergate Theatre Gallery in 2012 and ‘Trace’ in Courtyard Gallery, Co. Cork in 2011.

Opening Reception: 6.30pm, Friday 4th May, alongside Tell Me, a group exhibition curated by Sandra Kelly of the work of artists Adrian McGrath, Nicholas Anthony and Paul Hallahan.