SHELL/TER ARTIST COLLECTIVE (S/TAC): Diana Copperwhite, Allyson Keehan, Niamh McGuinne, Sharon Murphy, Geraldine O’Neill

Official launch as part of the Imagine Arts Festival 2024 Tuesday 22nd, 7pm

‘The Ties that Bind’ is S/TAC’s fourth show to date and focuses on emotional, somatic and psychological aspects of shelter, presenting the collaborative installation The Clothesline, a short film The Ties that Bind and a selection of works from each of the artists.

The Clothesline comprises approx 45 painted and printed textile pieces, each depicting a particular source of imagery, approach and palette associated with the members of the collective as individuals. While each carries the distinctive marks and gestures of each of the five artists of S/TAC, the whole work is unified through over printing using colour and stencilled motifs which reference a connecting theme of exposure and masking of internal body organs. The collaborative installation acts as a symbol of shelter, connectedness and intersection which overtly plays with notions of ‘life on view’, private versus public, acts of display and exposure, domesticity and ‘women’s work’…

Developing this concept, in The Ties that Bind, the clothesline can signify a variety of feminist and feminised ideas and is a deep reaching metaphor for the ties that bind families, communities and women together. Strung together it becomes a symbol of the chaos and intersection of lives and cultures within an imposed vertical grid. The lines can be seen to embody twin notions of shelter/ exposure; concealment/revelation; reality/fiction; conscious/unconscious.

Accompanying these collaborative works are a selection of pieces by each of the artists which provide some hints and suggestion to the particular significance/resonance to each and how that feeds into and is nourished by the participation and collaboration of a collective.