Robby Collins & Kate-Bowe O’Brien, Light Stick Project, 2017
Locale #1
30th Nov – 10th Dec | A4 Sounds Gallery
A4 Members Show 2017
Locale #1
Locale #1 is the first in a series of exhibitions responding to the local area and home of the A4 Sounds Studios. A4’s locale is North Inner-City Dublin, specifically Dorset Street and its surrounding streets. This exhibition marks the beginning of a conversation between our members and the local area. Over the coming years we hope to develop this project with follow-up exhibitions, talks and events and contribute to the developing social historical archive of our home.
Locale #1 started with a walking tour by local historian Terry Fagan, from there members were invited to go on their own ‘walks’, to find something which intrigues them and relates to their own practice. This exhibition, whilst showcasing the diverse range of artists in the A4 Family also gives us a glimpse into ways we can experience place, and some snippets of local history. We have divided Locale #1 into two sections; Experiencing Place, and People and the Politics of Place.
Experiencing Place
A4 invites you to experience the environment of our home through the eyes and ears of eight artists Holly Pereira, Eoin Whelehan, Frank Prendergast, Lieselle McMahon, Claudine Chen, Danny Brennan, Matt Hedigan and Siobhan Clancy! From the iconic signs of Dorset Street, to real and fictitious storey-telling, glitched time and the sounds of community to hunting mechanical fossils or herding ‘cats’; experiencing place will feature illustrations, paintings, photographs, maps and scavenger hunts!
People and the Politics of Place
Every place has its politics, from personal stories, community experiences, to histories only spoken about in the safety of present day. People and the Politics of Place gives us snippets of these experiences from five artists; Aoife Balfe, Yohan Walters, Christine Redmond, Deirdre Ronan and Andrea Clare Plunkett. This work includes a video game, photography and sculptural pieces exploring gender, politics, property, labour, family and personal stories.
The Artists
Experiencing Place
Holly Pereira
Brothels, Chippers & The Odd Kebab
Ink on Paper, 40cm x 50cm.
Dorset St has many iconic signs, and these are represented in this piece. The signage, be that shop signs, numbers or from hand drawn chalkboards, has been replicated by hand, thus refining our sense of what we see every day through the medium of illustration. In the repetitive process of inking with opaque washes, clarity and legibility erodes. This piece is strives to evoke memory, recall and time.
Holly Pereira is an illustrator, sign painter & animator from Wicklow. The focus of her work is illustrated typography, combining text and image to create imagery that is more than the sum of its parts. She is interested in retro typefaces and lettering, and how we engage with both the meaning of the words we see every day, and the visual landscape they present.
www.hyperpictures.com
Email: hollypereira@gmail.com
Instagram: @holly_pereira_illustration
Twitter: @_hyperpictures
Facebook: @hollypereiraillustration
Eoin Whelehan
Storeys From The City
Acrylic and gel ink pen, 10cm x 75cm.
‘Storeys from the City’ incorporates a row of reimagined buildings that explore various social realities that communities of the north inner city experience on a daily basis. The six structures are painted on miniature canvasses, while the signage adorning the premises, win reality so visually dominant, have been replaced with text addressing key local socio-economic issues, such as housing, migration, and heritage. Throughout the process of my research I unearthed information, both anecdotal, and from published sources, that have informed and enriched my experience of living and working in this locale.
Eoin Whelehan is an animator turned illustrator based in Dublin.
www.eoinwhelehan.carbonmade.com
Email: eoinwhelehanillustration@gmail.com
Facebook: Eoin Whelehan Illustration
Instagram: @EoinWhelehanIllustration
Twitter: @EoinWhelehan
Daniel Brennan
A Glitch In Time
Video Piece.
A Glitch in Time is a juxtaposition of archival and modern footage that gives us a glimpse at how Dorset Street has changed and morphed with the turning years.
Daniel Brennan is a writer and film maker. He works with Irish history and the ghosts that live there. His work has been screened at the Galway Film Fleadh and Cannes Film festival. Daniel has collaborated on feature films throughout the country and actively writes and wanders about Dublin.
Email: danny.arranges.letters@gmail.com
Frank Prendergast
Mechanical Fossils
Photographic Prints and Artist Book, 60 x 84cm.
Mechanical fossils are the remnants of our manufacturing history. Bits of machinery, jewelry, clothing and food packaging. They are captured fragments of machines in the tar pits that we walk across every day. I have tried to record them in the way an archeologist would, as it has been archeologists work to record the history that our roads and constructions exhumed over the last hundred or so years. The trap of bitumen has extended the life of these abstract artefacts of human existence and ultimately they will form part of our record in the Anthropocene layer.
Frank’s background in metalwork and sculpture but his practice samples the whole gamut of media.
No10.ie
Email: prendergast.frank@gmail.com
Instagram: @ostensiblesense
Lieselle McMahon
Earthing
Sound Sculpture
A sound & sculpture piece highlighting the importance of green space, where the seeds of community are sown, enabling people to put down roots… It has been well documented that being immersed in nature and the sense of belonging created by being part of a community enhances mental, emotional and physical wellbeing. Green space cultivates healthy growth.
An acousmatic composition with the timeless, universal sounds of community recorded at Blessington Street Park (the Basin) is played through a tube. The viewer is invited to listen closely.
Lieselle McMahon is a multidisciplinary artist living in Dublin, where she studied Music and Media Technologies at Trinity College Dublin and is currently studying Art & Design at NCAD. With an art practice incorporating sound, audio visual installation, sculpture, photography and live art, Lieselle’s primary interest is in exploring the structural nature of timbre, its expressive qualities, textures, and how it informs our interpretation and identification of sound. Also influenced by her background as a musician and songwriter, in her work she explores themes in feminism, activism, psychology, science, nature and mythology.
Email: liesellemcm@gmail.com
Facebook: @lieselle.mcmahon
Claudine Chen
Time in Place
Interactive Sculpture.
Time in Place superimposes contrasting images through time of locations in the north inner city.
Claudine is a recovering scientific researcher. She enjoys making a mess of sound, visuals, electronics, and software.
Matt Hedigan
Untitled
Handdrawn Mixed Media Illustration, 30cm x 40cm
I know this place quite well at this stage.
Matt Hedigan is an Artist and musician based in Dublin. He currently studies illustration at Ballyfermot college.
Email: mhedigan19@gmail.com
Instragram: @matt_hedigan
Buy Works
Siobhán Clancy
Herding Cats
Game & Game Artefacts.
Herding Cats is a scavenger hunt with a territorial twist. Participants can form teams on the day or take part as solo players. This is a game for grown ups that runs through dusk from A4 Sounds Studio.
The original concept that inspired this game was co-developed with Éilis Murphy, Susy – and xx at Playing Potential, a workshop event by Sheelagh Broderick and Michael Holly as part of ARt Manoevres facilitated by artist game creator Jamie Harper in March 2017.
Siobhán Clancy is a visual artist who collaborates with groups on multimedia and live works relevant to health, disability, education and social justice particularly concerning young people and women in Ireland. Agency and voice are recurring themes in a practice that straddles the fields of art, activism and engaged research.
In 2014, Siobhan completed a Masters in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at Maynooth University following a BA in Fine Arts at NCAD (2005). Her work has been funded by awards such as the 2015 Arts Council Artist in the Community Scheme Research and Development Award managed by Create (The National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts) through which home|work developed to collectively confront censorship and self-censorship through art, action, performance, conversation and camradery.
Siobhán is currently artist-in-residence for the Helium Arts ‘Fireflies’ project at Temple Street Children’s University Hospital with Rachel Tynan where they have been experimenting with games development as a creative health tool in transition experiences.
Email: siobhanclancy@gmail.com
Facebook: Siobhán Clancy
Where & When?
Sunday 3rd Dec
3pm – 6pm
Starting Point: A4 Sounds Gallery
Adults Only
Cost?
€5
Needed?
Players will need to capture photos and video as part of your scavenging tasks so please bring a fully charged phone with memory on your SD cards!
Booking is essential. To book your place please visit our online shop!
People and the Politics of Place
Aoife Balfe
No Man is an Island
Mixed media illustration. Combining ink drawing, painting with ink, guache, crayon, and monoprinting, 30cm x 42cm.
Have you tried crossing Dorset Street? It’s a pain in the arse. They even mention it on the Dorset Street Wikipedia ‘Road engineering by Dublin City Council, designed primarily to facilitate cars, continues to prove destructive – with the street now quite notorious as a hostile environment for pedestrians.’ On a street that so openly displays its Nationalistic Pride in the form of murals and flags, not many are willing to wait for the little green man.
Aoife often maroons herself in the middle of the road and she has seen countless others do the same down the whole stretch of the street. Aoife is always surprised at how quickly a motorist stops to allow safe passage across. So while we may regularly act as traffic islands, it’s never for long.
Aoife Balfe is an illustrator and animator. A real life artist living and working in Dublin.
Website: coroflot.com/aoifebalfe/portfolio
Email: aoife.balfe@hotmail.com
Instagram: @supamagdaline
Yohann Walter in collaboration with Mael Gonzalez
DORSET
Video Game
DORSET is a 2d video game essay taking place in North Dublin. Using the street as a playground and virtual environment, the art work approaches social issues through a humoristic yet creative angle.
Video games are as integral part of our contemporary culture as news, movies, and social media. If not even more. DORSET invites the visitor/player to experience the video game as a narrative vector to express, raise and catalyse societal concerns.
Yohann Walter is a French visual and new media artist currently based in Ireland. His work widely explores the landscape and the role of narration, questioning and playing with their viability, impact or decline. From photography and music video to installations and sound, his approach invites a walk-through symbolic and contemplative staging’s. Yohann Walter regularly exhibits internationally, teaches at third and secondary level and collaborates with cultural organizations, designers and music artists, on commissioned and volunteer projects.
Mael Gonzalez is a game developper at Black Shamrock. For over a decade, Mael has been working on various mobile, web and immersive reality projects.
www.yohann-walter.com
Email: yohann.walter@gmail.com
Facebook: @yohannwalter
Instagram: @yohannwalter
Christine Redmond
Monto to Magdalene
Photographic Series on wood, 40cm x 40cm
Monto to Magdalene, is a mixed media project exploring the relationship of place, religion and gender-based violence and its connection to Irish identity. The Magdalene Laundries were institutions run by the Catholic church to house fallen women – often society’s most vulnerable women and girls. The institutions relied on the unpaid labour of these women to fulfil both state and private contracts. Focusing on what was the Gloucester Street Laundry, on Sean McDermott Street in Dublin 1, Redmond pairs first-person interviews with a series of still life images, relying on the symbolic power of an object to evoke memories of the past.
Christine Redmond is an Irish visual artist based in Dublin, focused on visual narratives that examine the nature of identity using photography and mixed media. Redmond’s interests are rooted in contemporary, cultural issues and often explore themes of what it means to be a young woman coming of age in different societies. Her work combines still images with the stories of individuals. Through visual sociological methodologies, she connects seemingly unrelated objects to people and places.
Redmond graduated with a Masters in Gender, Media and Culture from Goldsmiths University of London in 2016 and is currently balancing her professional practice as a photographer and designer for international development agency Self Help Africa with her own academic interests and fine art practice, based out of A4 Studios, Dublin.
www.christineredmond.ie
Email: cred.photos@gmail.com
Instagram: @christineredmond
Twitter: @red_photography
Deirdre Ronan
Empty Nests
Mixed Media
Empty Nests is inspired by the sex workers of the local Monto area. Deirdre’s previous work has explored the nature of relationships and systems and the impact on individuals. Deidre was deeply moved by the phenomenon of “Monto Babies”, babies born to women who had been cast from their brothels and born in abject poverty in the tenements. These babies were often adopted by tenement families.
This work explores the trajectory of the life of the sex worker, from desirable ‘object’ in the brothel, to a woman preparing for motherhood, a role which she ultimately knows she cannot fulfil. ‘Empty Nests’ focuses on themes of desire, isolation, loss and grief, referring to the myriad of different relationships which touched these women’s lives. The idea of powerlessness is ever present, as it was for these women.
Deirdre Ronan is an art psychotherapist, psychotherapist and artist practicing clinically in Dublin. She currently works in private practice, and as a lecturer and trainer. For the last 8 years Deirdre has focussed clinically on working with sexual violence, namely child sexual abuse. She has worked with child and adult victims and their families and child sex offenders and their families. This has given her a 360-degree view of the impact of sexual violence on individuals and communities.
Deirdre’s art work focusses on the nature of relationships and systems and how they impact the individual.
Website: www.deirdreronan.wordpress.com
Email: arttherapyireland@gmail.com
Twitter: @IrishArtTherapy
Instagram: @IrishArtTherapy
Andrea Clare Plunkett
In-doors
Sculpture & Etchings
In-doors is a reflective piece on modern day sex work. Its starting point is the historical area of ‘the monto’. Andrea has taken the representation of the door-behind-a-door to show the blocks and barriers to ‘in-door’ sex work.
Andrea Clare, a Dublin based artist, currently working in print, community art and socially engaged explorations. Andrea’s current work is with children at risk and in crisis. She uses her art daily in a therapeutic way to help support children and youth who have lived through domestic violence. With this professional background in domestic violence advocacy, she has a passion for gender equality and women’s rights which she hopes to share through the medium of creativity, sharing of ideas and raising awareness.
Exhibition Opening
Thursday 30th Nov
7pm – 10pm
Drinks Reception & Art Print for Guests
Herding Cats Scavenger Hunt
Sunday 3rd Dec
3pm – 6pm
Cost: €5
Booking Essential
General Opening Hours
Fri : 12pm – 6pm
Sat: 1pm – 6pm
Sun: 1pm – 4pm
Find Us
A4 Sounds Gallery
St Joseph’s Parade
Off Upper Dorset Street
Dublin 1
Google Maps link.