CCA is pleased to invite you to the opening of No Title, a solo exhibition by Sarah Pierce that hones in on dementia as a marked disorder which also has the potential to reorder how we structure concepts of personal narrative and subjecthood.

Pierce has been lead artist on the Our Neighbourhood project, CCA’s international residency that engages with our local context and communities. During this time, she developed a series of exercises through a number of experimental workshops in Derry for individuals with a medical diagnosis of dementia and their carers. The project explored dementia as a condition that is both intimate and shared; one that generates reluctant communities of care. The materials and concepts arising from this public project have informed a new body of work.

No Title comprises video, sculpture, works on paper, objects and ephemera. It is structured around six short videos featuring Pierce’s parents, Anne and Russell, and the exercises designed by the artist. Each video is presented among objects, props, and drawings, including a set of ceramic sculptures from Pierce’s work, Lost Illusions/Illusions perdues (2013). The processes of research and presentation that Pierce undertakes highlight a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art: the potential for dissent and self-determination, the slippages between individual work and institution, and the proximity of past artworks. The existing works and the new materials re-contextualise one another, drawing analogies between a subject as a coherent, recognisable self and an artwork as a discrete, finished thing.

The opening of the exhibition on Saturday 22 July at 7pm is accompanied by the launch of a book by the same name published by CCA with commissioned works by Karl Holmqvist, Mason Leaver-Yap, Claire Potter and Jacob Wren, and an essay by TJ Clark. Refreshments will be provided and everyone is welcome to attend.

Sarah Pierce is an artist based in Dublin. Over the last several years, she has focussed on community, less through traditional or elective groups, and more through insecure, shifting, and difficult to manage configurations we inhabit from time to time. Her art reflects a broad definition of culture, and the processes of research and presentation she undertakes highlight a continual renegotiation of the terms for making art and the potential for dissent and self-determination. Since 2003, she has used the term The Metropolitan Complex to describe a working method characterised by a wide set of circumstances, slippages between individual work and institution, and the proximity of past artworks.

CCA is grateful for the continued support of our primary funder, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. CCA also acknowledges funding and support received from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and other generous funders listed here.

With thanks to artists John Beattie and Sean Mullan for working with us on this project.

Thanks also to Creggan Day Centre and Foyle Alzheimer’s Society.