Angel Bellaran, Jennifer Brady, Liz Burns, Elaine Byrne, Dan Chester, Sinead Curran, Monica de Bath, Frances Fagan, Angela Fulcher, Fiona Fullam, Laura Gallagher, Jaclyn Gallant, Julie Gill-Frisby, Janet Healy, Kevin Holland, Laura Kelly, Simon Keogh, James P. Kinsella, Joyce Little, Anna Macleod, Paul McCarthy, Ailve McCormack, Julie Merriman, Annette Moloney, Anne Morgan, Maeve Mulrennan, Aoife O Toole, Padraig Parle, Paul Regan, Emma Roche, Kevin Ryan, Jonathan Sammon, Celine Sheridan, AoifeTunney, Niall Walsh.

Angel Bellaran

Angel Bellaran is a second generation American whose cultural and ethnic background is derived from nine separate and distinct nationalities. Bellaran’s work explores our sublime fascination with our own identity, and the role that the photographic image plays in the definition of one's self. Bellaran applies this idea specifically through the context of identity displacement due to ongoing cultural integration as a result of Globalization. The exploration of the theme of nostalgia and the imaginary in how we define ourselves through photographs and similar mediums of remembrance is an unfolding conversation in her work.

Bellaran's practice is loosely based on the theoretical concepts of Jacques Lacan’s ‘mirror phase’ in which the child creates the 'ideal self', as well as the continuation of self-identification into adulthood; especially in regards to the Freudian theory of 'narcissism' and the projection of a parent's lost ideals onto their offspring. Drawing from these themes, Bellaran creates work in the form of drawing, print, film, and photography-based installations for the discussion she wishes to engage in with the viewer.

Jennifer Brady

Jennifer Brady’s research is an investigation of popular creative cultures. She is particularly interested in the activities of marginal creative communities and creative subcultures, and her research involves examining their relationship to mass culture and ‘folk’ culture. Her work has involved a variety of disciplines, including sound, video and sculptural installation. Within this research, she is specifically interested in exploring creative and inclusive approaches to documenting such activities.

Liz Burns

Liz is interested in developing aspects of her curatorial practice within her current role for an art institution. She is currently exploring the multiple roles of the curator, with a focus on  discursive curatorial strategies. This inquiry has involved developing critique around aspects of socially engaged and collaborative arts practices. Site specific, context specific and public art curatorial projects are of interest to her, particularly those which explore relationships to places, publics and communities. Contributor to Curatorial Session: Reader—Inquiries into Curatorial Practice.

Elaine Byrne

Through photography, my work attempts to reformulate the perceptions attached to urban affluent areas over time. It is an investigation into the inner state and how the psyche could be built on many layers of identities. My work also explores multiple personalities, as a reality within the self, rather than a disorder. I am questioning the notion of the 'self' and the role of the 'artist self' over time.

Dan Chester

I am looking at the visual effect the current economic recession has on the landscape or rural Ireland. The research investigation will look at the large number of unfinished brown field sites, vacant retail parks and recently abandoned factories in satellite towns of Sligo, Leitrim and Mayo, its effects on the immediate local economy, people and the implications of past economic recessions. The main focus of this enquiry will be through the medium of drawing and film. This research project will also focus on contemporary drawing practices and its influence regarding the future direction of my own work.

Sinead Curran

My practice primarily involves working with video and photography, and engages with social concerns and the question of idealism. Through video, historical social situations are reconstructed with the intention of testing the cultural presence of the exhibition space against the social concerns addressed. My work is influenced by theatre and documentary film and it incorporates techniques derived from recent cinema.

Monica de Bath

Biodh go bhfuil mo shaothar bunaithe go háitiúl, tá tionchar ag an dearcadh faoi inscne agus tir air/While my work is sited at rural locations, its concerns are informed by attitudes and values to gender and land.

My practice explores the connections between (local) people and (the bog) land with which they work and interact. It is concerned with emotive layers that link us to previous generations, and the changing value of (this) landscape which has been shaped and reshaped by our interaction with it. Conscious that my role rotates between visual artist, audience and curator I am recording how recent work and a new body of more abstract work will visually weather the time and be interacted with locally and internationally.

Frances Fagan

I paint to express my increasing and continuous observation of my surroundings. This is communicated mostly from juxtaposed angles of architectural buildings located around the cityscapes of the manmade world. My work conveys an interest in colour relationships and the exploration of paint manipulation. The properties that can evolve from investigating these ideas are portrayed on the picture plane, either through hard edged lines or from organic-like constructs.

The examination of my surroundings focuses on the inconspicuous and overlooked details. I try to bring the non-noticed details into my work and capture the information in moments of inception or subsiding. I want to capture things so subtle and evanescent, in a moment, that the memory lies forever in my work. This ideal combined with my constant exploration of colour and paint is the basis and inspiration of my work.

Angela Fulcher

I am interested in spaces of socialization and how groups of people come together with a shared code of understanding about how to use these spaces. My artwork borrows from the design of these spaces and their abstract inference of possibilities and manoeuvres. I often combine and re-fabricate aspects of spatial design and use their visual logic to create collage, assemblage and installation works that play between different social orders.

Fiona Fullam

Fiona Fullam’s artistic practice includes installation, video, photography and writing. She investigates the concept of ‘self’, how this concept can be perceived, limited, subjugated and how self relates to the space inhabited. She is interested in mutation, the uncanny and has been influenced by writers and thinkers such as Kafka and Derrida.  Fiona also has an interest in language and how meaning is constructed. Contributor to Curatorial Session: Reader—Inquiries into Curatorial Practice.

Laura Gallagher

I have consistently been concerned with the transcendental qualities of painting, with an aim to reach beyond the space that my paintings inhabit. My current research stems from a previous project which looked at the possibility of a painting having many different outcomes depending on the choices that an artist makes throughout the process of creating that work.

I am interested in how a maker interacts and moves between works. My research involves documenting this action and my intentions are to challenge our understandings and experiences of painting, test our expectations of the materials used and explore the possibility of a painting becoming an object.

Jaclyn Gallant

Jaclyn’s research will focus on the examination and review of the existing educational outreach programmes from the Irish Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery, and the National Museum of Ireland, from a curatorial perspective. Jaclyn is aspiring to work as a curator within a programme in which the curriculum is targeted to children at pre-primary, primary, and secondary school children. In addition to the programmes run by these museums she will also explore the ‘Crafts in the Classroom’ programme operated by the Crafts Council of Ireland. This programme dives directly into the classroom and brings art and information to the students.

Julie Gill-Frisby

Through photography, I strive to create images to communicate the complexity of human conditions and issues pertaining to influences in society today. The work juxtaposes ideas and emotions that are commonly experienced in our contemporary culture in an effort to encourage deeper reflection and awareness. Ordinary, mundane common spaces act as expressive vehicles for the human body and mind, therefore, I create a dialogue between humans and their intimate architectural spaces. Most recently the subject matter has centred on ‘Home’, which universally becomes a metaphor for safety, refuge and belonging, but through globalisation/misplacement becomes a transitory place and can be seen as a helpless target of a threatening unknown culminating in complex emotional and psychological issues of adaptation, isolation, and cultural identity.

Gregory Crewdson’s gritty surrealistic cinematic compositions, the brooding questioning paintings of Edward Hopper and the interiors of 17th Century Dutch painters are influential in the staging and translation of my work, which will continue to explore the concept of identity within a place and connections to our roots.

Janet Healy

My current curatorial research centres on artists who seek active civic engagement and/or participation in the realisation of their work, and the diverse forms that these interventions take. I am currently researching the work of Platform, Critical Art Ensemble, David Sherry, Hewitt & Jordon, Josh On, the exhibition ‘Risk: Creative Action in Political Culture’ curated by Ele Carpenter, and the project Your Machines, coordinated by Simon Yuill. On a broader scale I aim, through my curatorial practice, to explore the potential for shifting the use of the word ‘community’ in relation to audiences and participants. While current funding structures, and indeed many institutions, immediately want to tie art practice beyond the gallery into a form of social responsibility and structured community engagement, I would like to explore how curators and artists might start to question and unravel how notions of ‘community’ (without the political and bureaucratic red tape) can be broadened.

Kevin Holland

My current practice is centred around the production of large-scale permanent sculpture, mainly through the “percent-for-art” schemes connected with public works. The sculpture is generally in fabricated or cast Bronze or Stainless Steel, involving a lot of time and hands-on physical crafting of the materials. Normally I would work towards a pre-destined, pre-agreed end product, but I intend during my research to explore the tangential offshoots and possibilities that I usually have to bypass. I also intend to explore areas of art that are totally new to me and to find their relevance to my art practice.

More specifically I will experiment with incorporating elements of movement, sound and humour in evolving work with references to music dance and literature. At this point my main interest is in developing Kinetic machines that produce musical noise within a thematic framework. I would also like to think that there are unforeseen possibilities that research will reveal and develop. I look forward to the opportunity that the course offers to collaborate with like-minded people involved in different fields.

Laura Kelly

Establishing territory is essential for survival in a world determined by natural selection. Territories and their boundaries allow for the provisional exclusion of chaos in order to create environments that permit continued existence. Within these varied territories, all life is characterised by both robustness (needed for continued survival) and extreme fragility (imminent death). My research project explores the notion and depiction of territory using installation. Drawing, with an emphasis on line, is central to this exploration. A combination of conventional drawing materials is used in conjunction with wire and string to create wall drawings that also intersect space.

Simon Keogh

The research involves investigating and representing the limits of perception by using the urban landscape as a starting point. A process similar to that used in creating architecture, involving photography, drawing and constructions, is transferred here. Photographic images of external elements in the existing cityscape are analysed and catalogued using a glossary of spatial terms. Drawings, tracings and free association are then used to extract new images. Meaning is layered onto these extractions to form paradigms for constructing spatial models. These models are used as a starting point to define objects which are inserted back into the cityscape. These juxtaposed objects will aim to define new relationships with the fabric of the city . By moving between dimensions and translating three dimensional spatial language to a picture plane, I aim to communicate an understanding of spatiality. These processes open up the possibility for a different perception of the cityscape and awaken a feeling of aliveness and contemplation in everyday experience.

James P. Kinsella

The main focus of my work is painting and creating architectural ‘Environments’ and part of my process is painting in public. I observe marks that are made in the work / living place and I am interested in the psychology behind these marks. I would like my practice to contribute to the discourse of painting but I want to bring in new ideas from other contemporary artists. My research into the work of Mike Nelson, Simon Starling, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Atelier Bow – Wow (Yoshiharu Tsukamoto and Momoyo Kaijima), Rachel Mason and other contemporary artists will help me to investigate my ‘environments' and this will lead to new work and may push out the boundaries of my practice. Presently I am examining and playing with surfaces and forms via painting from marks made in the workplace.

Joyce Little

Joyce is engaged in the trial and error and the process of making art. She is fascinated by texture, the smoothness of stone, dust, grain of old timber, found objects and the experimental use of various and found materials. The process of her practice is about pushing the boundaries of materials to give them new meaning and new visualization. Joyce is extending her skills to incorporate sound in her artwork.

Through their use of mixed media, Louise Bourgeois, Amselm Kiefer and Michael Raedecker inspire her practice. Joyce's main subjects of study are the taboos of the modern woman and the exploration of life, love, sex and the perfect body with regard to gender study.

Anna Macleod

Within physical and constructed landscapes Anna Macleod's work proposes the possibility of alternatives to the competing uses and values placed on land and its resources. In her sculptural and installation work she combines simple engineering and existing systems of rain water technology to question roles and responsibilities towards the infrastructure that underpins our existence. In the play between hi tech and low tech systems local solutions with global resonances are teased out. Water is the emotive tool used here to explore deeper concerns of access, human rights and civic duty.

Paul McCarthy

My work has involved photographing the landscape and the built environment. Social and historical narratives as well as conceptual ideas dealing with form have informed the choice of subjects. The  ‘typological’ search in photography for anonymous sculpture and the works of the everyday auteur are of great relevance to the work. Though my closest antecedents are Hilla and Bernt Becher and many of the artists that studied with them, an interest in subjects that are small scale, quaint, local and disused is moving the work closer in influence to Gabriel Orozco and away from Andreas Gursky. Experimentation with found photographs and other objects has begun to develop in my work. These new materials and methods have also brought about the possibilities of positioning images alongside original artefacts in the gallery. During this MA, I will be particularly concerned with acquiring the skills required to finish, complete and otherwise bring to closure a number of projects that I have in progress. Once this habit has been established and this aim at least partly achieved, I’d like to expand on my work examining the Irish environment through the conceptual documentary method and outlook outlined above.

At the moment I am working on completing and visually 'up-grading' a series of photographs of the sites of disused handball alleys around Ireland. For the next field of inquiry I have started taking visual notes on hand-made concrete structures in the rural environment. I will be taking as a further research subject the photographer August Sanders’ seventh and final categorization of photographs, entitled The Last Few People  ("Die Letzten Menschen"). This group consisted of people outside of society's normal 'comfort zone' and included portraits, amongst others, of the blind. I would like to be able to identify the qualities of his work that distinguish it from later work, particularly the photographs of similar subjects by Diane Arbus.

Ailve McCormack

My area of interest is trying to discover a fresh new way to approach exhibition design and installation. In order to do this I am going to meet with a number of curators and pose selective questions to them regarding what they have done with a particular space. Art fairs may also offer some insight into this, as some can be can be quite daring in their approach to design and installation. From meeting with artists I hope to gain an understanding of what attracts them to exhibit in particular places.

Julie Merriman

The act of drawing is at the centre of my practice and it reflects an interest I have in architecture, in particularly the phases of construction and demolition. I am interested in the idea of shadowing an architect’s work, in bringing a building back to the drawing board. Line is what interests my most in drawing; how it quickens, slows, stutters, reinvigorates, fades, overlaps….. Line is at the heart of all mark making; it can be utterly simple and yet incredibly complex. Drawing as a medium is not just used by artists but by many other professions; architects, engineers, scientist, cartographers, mathematicians… It’s a way of making all manner of information visible. I’d like to carry out research into the use of line by these other professions, extend my idea of ‘shadowing’ and develop my work in association with this.

Annette Moloney

At present my curatorial research focuses on the work of the artist as curator. I am interested in the guiding principles, ethics and particular ways of operating that the artist as curator uses when initiating creative and productive dialogue with fellow practitioners. I am interested in looking within and beyond the work that I am currently engaged in – the area of public art commissioning – and examining the different ways in which one can enter into dialogue with artists. My research into this specific area will aim to examine if these contemporary curatorial practices stem from particular global models and will assess the origins of these ways of working. Along with examining the work of the artist as curator my research interests also encompass contemporary art in everyday settings, gardening and art and rural arts.

Anne Morgan

My research interests are focused on the practice of non-commercial public exhibitions.  Having produced exhibitions of paintings and sculpture in a commercial gallery for some time, I am looking to determine my own curatorial identity and to develop a practice that does not become formulaic or static in style, but caters specifically to each exhibit, venue and audience in question.  Through my research I intend to explore alternative modes of curation beyond practical exhibitions to include unfamiliar methods such as dialogues with artists in order to equip myself with a fuller understanding of a wider range of contemporary artistic practices.  The role of the public and their response to different levels of mediation is also of interest to me. Through experimentation I want to develop a practice that stimulates audience participation, in place of factual mediation.

Maeve Mulrennan

I am the Visual Arts Officer for Galway Arts Centre. At the moment I am attempting to resolve the difference between how I currently operate and the way I want to operate as a curator in my job. I have carved out two shorter slots in my exhibition programme this year to work in the way I aspire to work in permanently. At present I am investigating the multiple roles and contexts of the curator, for example curators that work simultaneously at a local and international level. I am talking to curators who occupy these roles about how their curatorial objectives and strategies are realised in their practices.

In addition, I am considering my individual curatorial identity in relation to my current job role where I instigate and present exhibitions regularly. I am researching artists and curators who work in a site-specific context and also those who see the gallery space as a space for production and communication, not just a space where fully resolved work is displayed before a passive audience. At present I am examining the strategies employed by ‘Situations’ in Bristol and reading texts by Mary Jane Jacob. Alongside this sits my long-term interest in Heterotopic spaces, Utopia and ‘The Wrong Place’.

Aoife O Toole

I have managed a commercial gallery space located in a theatre for the past two years. Establishing the space is an interesting endeavour, particularly when commercial versus aesthetic issues arise. I wish to experiment with the space and investigate how other non-conventional galleries work with their own idiosyncrasies. I am currently in a period of research regarding methods of selection, dialogue with artists, funding application procedures and how my role as "exhibition maker" defines me and my interests outside the context of my workplace.

Padraig Parle

I work primarily in paint to convey the sensation of experiencing contemporary manmade urban environments and institutions. My main focus is the changing nature of Irish society, the gradual loss of individuality as well as cultural and moral identity, in the face of globalization. This investigation will be realized through painting, photography and drawing.

Paul Regan

The visual imagery and symbolism associated with notions of “the sacred” within religious ideologies is a major area of consideration in my work. Focusing primarily on the Western tradition of representation of the divine, my research will also explore related subjects such as the visual psychology of personal faith, ecclesiastical insignia [iconography] and the visual form in ritual. Working with religious elements raises compelling issues; one of the most significant is faith — or indeed — blind faith, which is perhaps a more accurate extension in defining the concept. In exploring this extraordinary conviction, I intend to research how historical Western ideals in representation have become the accepted visualizations of historical supernatural narratives [e.g. based on scriptures which originated in the Middle East]. By informing the resulting physical forms in my art-making practice, this research could open up new pathways. I also intend working in media such as video and installation, which would be an experimental extension of my usual practice in painting and print.

Emma Roche

I am interested in the notion of hybridity within painting and particularly a crossbreed of contemporary painting with more primitive or folk-orientated practices. Rosemarie Trockel’s knitted paintings use the traditionally ‘feminine’ craft of knitting in a context of mass production and corporate symbols (wool-mark/playboy bunny/hammer and sickle). In comparison the autonomous marks/brushstrokes in my paintings attempt to revaluate the notion of traditional homespun/cottage craft. I am not concerned with overturning 'hierarchies' between high and low culture but have a more primary concern of a physical engagement with the medium.

The idea of deconstruction of painting and its established processes and consequent reconstruction is a curious one but also a positive one. For me the conversations surrounding the ‘death’ of painting have become tedious as a mixing of the arts, leaving no one practice in a more hegemonic state than the next, is at the foreground. These paintings aim to work against the unitary, using various approaches or borrowing from multiple practices. I will continue to research artists who interrogate the meaning of painting in a practical way e.g. Fabian Marcaccio’s ‘Paintants’
www.emmaroche.com

Kevin Ryan

I am interested in critical writing as a discipline to examine art practices concerned with social inclusion and participation. What are the strategies and methodologies needed to establish a framework that will allow communities and groups to become full participants and not just spectators in public art projects? I am beginning to understand the importance of the curatorial practice as a means of enquiry into such debates, as a method of critique and a broadening out how we see and experience art. Can the exhibition space be a tool for change, a forum that allows, encourages discourse or a way of maintaining and creating barriers? My research will investigate the practicalities of writing for magazines as well as exploring practices, writings and theories around the above themes.

Jonathan Sammon

In my work I am concerned with using the moving image to create cyclical and non linear narratives through the juxtaposition of multiple strands of contrasting and overlapping imagery and scenarios. Many of the references in my work stem from science-fiction literature, particularly the work of Philip K. Dick and Frederick Pohl. Both of these authors have, in their work, posed the question of what it is to be human and I am engaged in developing narratives which explore this universal question. I am exploring different methods of installation in the conscious effort to produce a space for the viewer to engage with my work beyond the single channel projection durational model I have until now utilised. I am currently researching the practices of Diana Thater and Jane and Louise Wilson in regards to this.

Celine Sheridan

Celine's practice incorporates drawing as a medium. Celine makes this work within a framework of self-analysis, which is informed by an awareness of broader social and political issues and contexts. Her current research focuses on domesticity and place. In particular she explores issues of family and home through drawings and narration. By exploring these issues, she perhaps answers questions about her identity - her identity as an artist, as a daughter, her role as a teacher and as a member of society. One of Celine's recent projects includes a self-published artist's book entitled 'Build me a Studio' 08-09.

AoifeTunney

As a curator Aoife Tunney is interested in situational aesthetics as posited by Victor Burgin, where the details and context of the exhibition site play a large part in the nature of the objects made and shown there. Her practice involves collaborative and off-site exhibitions, providing alternative venues for the viewer, where the rules of representation are not gallery or museum specific. As an exhibition maker she engages in sociological and institutional critique. Her practice attempts to bring current political and social issues to the fore through her choice of site for that work. Her current project, 'Work-in-space' investigates human motivation and interaction and with labour, using art to intervene and challenge the state of our current work crisis and stereotypical notions of the working space.

Niall Walsh

Manifestations of political aspirations are regularly underpinned by visual and artistic movements. I am interested in looking at representations of this phenomena in the 20th Century with a particular concentration on the use of the environment as a metaphor for political ideologies. I would like to link this research to current environmental concerns, where the environment itself has become the overriding focus of current political debate. I would like to link this to my own practice through looking at other artists who are involved in this area of expression. Researching writers who are discussing how artists are involved in this area of thought and how this process can feed into a wider interaction between local communities and artistic communities.