Curated Exhibitions & Projects:
Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow
Austin Hearne
Slabs II + Whispers
21 JAN - 6 MAY 2023
Featuring an opening performance by Stéphane Béna Hanly, the exhibition is accompanied by a limited-edition DIY cut’n’paste zine hand made by Hearne, which features a newly commissioned text by writer Lily Cahill, a frequent observer of his work.
Slabs II is an ongoing, growing and open ended photographic archival project drawing on artist Austin Hearne’s extensive personal archive, collated over 20 years and including family photographs, newspaper clippings and advertisements. In its essence it consists of individual used painter and decorator wallpaper pasting tables. These damaged tables are utilised to hold photographic material on their surfaces.
Emma Roche with Small Night
Lined Out
21 JAN - 11 MAR 2023
With an idiosyncratic approach to painting encompassing weaving, knotting and knitting, Roche's unorthodox textural paintings are accompanied by a new large-scale commission of hand-screen printed works on paper by Small Night. Small Night is an art and text project by James Merrigan.
Being ‘lined-out’, according to the Urban Dictionary, refers to the kind of anxiety felt by an assembly line worker. The stress caused by simple tasks and the monotony of “the line” evokes dynamic states of anxiety and comfort, exacerbated by repetitiveness.
Roche’s preparatory drawings. made quickly and obsessively, are informed by the humdrum of repetitive daily tasks. In contrast, the processes employed by Roche in the knitted paintings are slow and arduous, where long lines of paint are prepared and dried to be used like wool or thread. The ‘should-be’ liquid material is forced to behave in an apparently impossible but measured way.