Curated by Róisín Bohan, Winner of the Black Church Print Studio ‘Recent Curator Graduate Award’, 2017

Exhibiting Artists: Daire O’Shea, Cará Donaghey, Irene Whyte, Isabel English, Margot Galvin

Homo Ludens, the title of this exhibition, is the species of people who inhabited New Babylon, a future utopian city envisaged by Dutch artist Constant between 1956 and 1974. The term Homo Ludens was originally coined by Dutch cultural historian J. Huizinga in 1938, meaning a species of people whose fundamental activity is considered ‘play’. In New Babylon, Homo Ludens were free to lead creative and imaginative lives, released from labour by the development of automated systems. Here, the inhabitants were in control of their environment, able to change it to suit their needs, moods, and behaviour through the use of “moveable architectural components such as walls, floors, staircases… [and] colour, light [and] texture..”.

In this exhibition, five artists are brought together whom each play with architectural elements such as the inhabitants of New Babylon. Traditional architectural blueprints are the starting point behind the development of Irene Whyte’s carbon paper prints. In contrast to this traditional method, these prints are without detail, isolated shapes and curvatures cast by fading sunlight in the Black Church Print Studio building. Daire O’Shea and Isabel English’s sculptural installations hint to infrastructural materials, through Daire’s steel frames and reflective surfaces, and Isabel’s sculptural objects which resemble wooden pallets and the walls of the gallery space.

Constant imagined New Babylon as a labyrinth in which the inhabitants could continually find new paths, living in a constant state of exploration. For this exhibition, Cará Donaghey presents two printed works on paper, placed separately within the exhibition, both produced from one copper plate. A pathway must be created to view the two works and the completed piece by navigating through the space and the work of the other artists. This method of exploration is also the initial step in Margot Galvin’s printmaking process. Examining Dublin city’s infrastructure, Galvin translates significant buildings and locations into abstract shapes, forms and colours.

Associated Event: A&E, Analyse and Experiment
Friday 12 January, 1.15pm

Informal floor talk between the Artists and the Curator on the exhibition and the themes it explores.
Free event, all welcome.

Róisín Bohan is an independent curator and the recipient of Black Church Print Studios Recent Graduate Curator Award. She holds an MA in Cultural Policy and Arts Management from UCD (2017) and a BA in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design (2014). Recent curatorial projects include a series of seven performance art events held between 2016 and 2017 in Temple Bar Gallery + Studios as part of their Studio 6 Open programme. She has also curated shows in the MART, Rathmines, Wandesford Quay Gallery, Cork, and Monster Truck Studios. She currently works at the RHA Gallery and has previously worked with Dublin Gallery Weekend and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios.

Cará Donaghey is this year’s recipient of Black Church Print Studios Graduate Award and is currently undertaking her year-long membership of the studio. Originally from Donegal, she is a graduate of NCAD with First Class Honours in Fine Print and Visual Culture. Working with the term ‘the archive’ in a flexible and contemporary sense, Donaghey’s current work focuses on the operative aspects of archiving – collecting, preserving, and mediating images, drawings, and objects. Photography and printmaking are a grounding point of both ‘the archive’ and Donaghey’s practice. She is interested in the emotional resonance of place, drawing on her own and other’s experience in an attempt to articulate non-specific memory and history.

Isabel English completed her BA in Fine Art from Crawford College of Art and Design in 2017. Her graduate show work, plan for the ideal city…, earned her many awards such as a 6-month residency in the National Sculpture Factory, a group exhibition at Doswell Gallery and Cork Institute of Technology Arts Festival, as well as being shortlisted for the RDS Student Visual Art Awards and a solo exhibition in Lismore Castle Arts.

Margot Galvin is an artist living and working in Dublin. Galvin completed a Masters in Fine Art at the National College of Art and Design in 2014 after graduating from NCAD in 2012 with a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art print. Her work examines the relationship between self and place, which is explored through intense interrogations of our environment. Drawing, printmaking and photography, and more recently painting are all used to explore these themes. She is currently a member of “At home Studios” group and Black Church Print Studio, Dublin.

Daire O’Shea is a writer and sculptor based in Dublin. He holds a BA in Sculpture from Limerick School of Art and Design (2016) and an MA in Contemporary Art Criticism from UCC (2017). His work Threshold Devices was exhibited in Limerick City Gallery of Art in 2017 as part of the graduate bursary programme. Recent exhibitions include a solo show entitled If You Can’t Handle Me @ My 2007 Gucci Mane, Then You Don’t Deserve Me @ My 2017 Gucci Mane in LSAD and group shows such as Soft in the Belltable, Limerick, and K-fest, in Killorglin, Kerry. O’Shea’s practice is concerned with the experience of physical objects and materials in the digital age.

Irene Whyte is an artist based in the midlands and is a new member of Black Church Print Studio. She studied foundation Sculpture at City Lit, London (2007) and holds a BA in Fine Art Print (2012) and a Masters in Fine Art Sculpture (2014) from the National College of Art and Design. Whyte’s interdisciplinary art practice uses the specifics of film, photography, and colour to engage with notions of the “gaze”.