Liam Crichton

           www.crichton-ross.com

Biography

Liam Crichton (b.1984 Scotland)

Crichton creates large-scale sculptures and installations that investigate physical space. Containing references to and elements of a post-minimal realisation, his aesthetically driven and predominately site specific work is often characterised by a sense of dichotomy that challenges traditional perceptions and cultural surroundings. In an abstract systematic reductive process he breaks down the impression of the familiar to its bare essence. He operates through a non-linear, conceptual and formal vernacular sculptural praxis. Crichton has recently exhibited in Edinburgh, London, Philadelphia, Dublin, and Belfast.

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Statement

PRESENCE // ESSENCE // TRANSCENDENCE

THROUGH THE TRAVERSE OF NOW,
I STAND IN WHAT IS NOTHING AND NOWHERE.
A PURGATORY STATE,
THE PAST AND FUTURE BECKON SIMULTANEOUSLY;
ABSTRACT REALMS THAT GIVE RISE TO FEELING AND THOUGHT.

THIS IS YOUR PASSAGE AND YOU AREN’T FREE FROM NOW.

Liliane Puthod

http://liliane-puthod.tumblr.com/

Biography

Statement

Cate Smith

www.catesmith.co.uk

Biography

Cate Smith lives and works in Edinburgh. She graduated with BA (Hons) Drawing and Painting from Edinburgh College of Art (2013) and MLitt in Fine Art (Painting) at Glasgow School of Art (2014). Her work has been exhibited in the UK, Austria and the United States.

Statement

My practice explores the fluid and constructed nature of meaning through the framework of drawing and painting. An interest in spatial and temporal relationships, composition, materiality and form provides the basis for exploring the possibilities of meaning through the process of movement and change. Using found objects and spaces as a point of departure, meaning is deconstructed and new associations, connections and possibilities are created.

James McCann

https://jamesmartinmccann.wordpress.com/

Biography

James Mc Cann is a Cork/Glasgow based artist and Royal College of Art graduate, he is currently studying for a PhD at Glasgow School of Art. His work is usually Sculpture, Video, or Performance based. 

Statement

‘In the first 3 month of 2015 I exhibited two film-based collaborations with the Catalyst Arts off- site project ‘GARRINCHA’. The first was a launch for the ’99 Music Videos’ project, which took place in The Hatfield Bar in South Belfast. ‘99 Music Videos’ was a 2 year project containing 99 separate short films averaging between 20sec-2mins.

The decision to launch the ’99 Music Videos’ Dvd in a ‘non art’ space such as the sports bars, The Hatfield in Belfast and The Rob Roy in Cork City was made for a number of reasons. One was that staging an art event in a sports bar creates a mild kind of a tension, where regulars of art world and regulars of the sports bar are made aware of routine and difference. The first launch at The Rob Roy, had my experimental video art on some screens and horse racing on the other screens side by side, and the space was almost split down the middle. At The Hatfield in Belfast, the split was time based, as the screening took place just before the evening shift change at the bar, as the experimental art lovers and the relaxed daytime drinkers were side-lined by a less sympathetic evening crowd.

The second reason was due to the nature of the piece itself. The production of a Dvd had always been the intended output for this project. I was interested in this process as I felt it lent an egalitarianism to this art piece as a product. It was a liberation in that, because the Dvd is the piece, I am as happy for it to be watched on a laptop or an Xbox, as I would be for it to be screened in a traditional art space. For this reason, all individual films are also available on youtube; they have also been ‘mixed’ live as a video based performance.

This is in stark contrast to the second piece I have screened as part of ‘GARRINCHA’, which was ‘MONOMANIA 5’. This was screened at Flax Artist Studios Belfast, as part of ‘First Thursday’ in March. ‘MONOMANIA 5’ is a 28 min video piece which contains elements from multiple projects. I have been researching theories of documentary film, and didacticism in artist made films. This film is about an idea of art making as an experiential, referential diagram. I was frustrated and inspired by ‘Cognitive Diagrams’ I had received as part of treatment for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. ‘Monomania 5’ is a culmination of a number of projects, all of which are about this gap between the referential, diagrammatic artwork and the experiential world.

The workshop at Flax Studios was chosen as it related to environments I have used for live performances. Again there was a sense of the artwork being dislocated, but ‘MONOMANIA 5’ at Flax was a far more immersive ‘filmic’ experience. The door to the exhibition was a corrugated iron service entrance, and we used an old gated lift to transport people to the top floor where the film was being screened, the result being that sounds from the film travelled down through the lift shaft.

The Projection took up almost a full wall of the workshop and was partially obscured by structural beams, the speakers were concealed in studio machinery/ debris. The Film itself start with a scan of a ‘Cognitive Diagram’ which was given to me, this shifts around the screen for the duration and is layered on top of still images I compiled to form my own ‘Cognitive Diagram’. The main element of the film, is layered footage, re-adapted from an interpretive piece I made about Samuel Beckett’s ‘FILM’. ‘MONOMANIA 5’ also contains some of the more convulsive elements of the ’99 Music Videos’ project, and a specific, original sound piece.

The re-adaptation of material is conceptual, in that it relates to the position of the artist, trying in vein to describe an unknown to themselves. It also relates to a Baroque, Horror Vacui, in trying to give real referential artistic accountancy to the experiential.’

Tom Watt

www.tomdavidwatt.com

Biography

Tom Watt is an artist born in Belfast currently living and working in Dublin. On completion of his BA degree in the National College of Art and Design, Tom Watt and a group of his peers initiated the group exhibition, Underground in Basic Space (2011), Since then, Watt and fellow artist, John Ryan, co-founded the RESORT projects in which a core group of artists move to off-site locations including a coastal region in Donegal and the Scottish highlands to conduct experiments in new methods of art making. Watt has worked individually on a number of shows outside the art institution. Most recently, Watt opened up his house in Seville Place, Dublin to the public for his exhibition TENT (Opening) (October 2013) Reviewed in Billionjournal. Tom Watt is currently a member of Basic Space Studios, Dublin.

Statement

Tom Watt’s practice often deals with altering the existing architecture of a space using methods of construction. He builds spaces in the peripheries of a given site or building. His work is informed by the off- site or domestic spaces that he chooses to work in. Interests in these peripheral spaces emerged from living in many different rented accommodations since he began Art College. These are essentially private spaces and access is only gained through the owner, Watt temporarily takes on this role and attempts to entice viewers through his controlled/ constructed experiences.

Craig Cox

www.craigcoxart.com

Biography

Craig Cox is a graduate of IADT’s Visual Arts Practice BA course 2012, specialising in 4D disciplines. Since leaving college he has come to work increasingly in theatre, in large part due to his position as a camera operator, editor and animator with Shoot To Kill productions. He is also an active contributor to Near FM, Dublin’s north east community radio station, producing content focusing on social critique and activism. Cox is a member of Mesh Projects, a peer support and skill sharing group of Dublin based creative practitioners.

Statement

Throughout the various creative realms Cox works in, his primary focus is on the relationship between the individual and their surrounding society. His gallery based work utilises multimedia, appropriation and atmospheric installation with an increasing use of sound as a primary material.

Ciaran Hussey

http://ciaranhussey.com/

Biography

Ciaran Hussey is an Irish artist based in Belfast. He received an honours degree, 2008, from the Limerick School of Art & Design and a Masters, 2010, in Fine Art from the University of Ulster, Belfast. Additionally he is a co-director with Array Studios, a collective of Artists based in Belfast. Hussey has exhibited most notably at ‘A Form In Space’,2011, as part of the 11th Quadrennial of Performance, Design & Space, The National Theatre, Prague, Czech Republic, ,’Constellations’ 2011, Eigis, Carlow Arts Festival Visual Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow, Republic of Ireland, & ‘Artisit?’ 2010, UK & Irish Selected Graduate Show, SWG3, Glasgow, Scotland. Recent exhibitions include ‘We Wear Short Shorts’ 2012, at the Riverside Studios as part of The Irish Film Festival, London, & his solo show ‘Dead Air’ at the Queen Street Studios & Gallery, 2012.

Ciarán’s work revolves around the psychological effects that contemporary capitalist society has placed upon its practitioner. Through a multidisciplinary practice he draws attention to aspects that define us in an age of technological advances and uncertainty. In a world of paper-thin representations, instant gratification and blurring of reality we are left with a sense of numbified emptiness, repetitiveness, alienation and a general lack of apathy. We have developed an agitated sense of expectation, as we await some form of salvation, in the guise of commodities, services, fame and celebrity, that will deliver some solace, but instead are left with a niggling dissatisfaction and a constraining feeling of being cheated. Currently his practice involves highlighting these aspects using the medium of film & sound installations and playing with peoples notions of aspirations, expectancy & waiting room mentality.

Tonya McMullan

http://tonyamcmullan.co.uk/

Biography

Tonya McMullan studied Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, she graduated in 2004 and has since continued to develop her practice, exploring a range of media. Tonya often works collaboratively with other artists and the public, and is currently based in Belfast where she was co – director of Catalyst Arts 2010 – 2012. She has taken part in and organised many international projects including ‘Give & Take’, an international exchange project and was selected to take part in the 2012 SPILL Festival of Live Art.

Statement

Tonya is an artist whose practice revolves around the exploration of life in the public space through context-specific, process-based, participatory and performative interactions and interventions within a place. The visual outcomes of her work are different from one project to another and the running themes always centre around the everyday experience.

Tonya McMullan

http://tonyamcmullan.co.uk/

PRIME

https://primecollective.wordpress.com/

 Andrea Theis

Biography

Andrea Theis, born 1966 in Bad Marienberg (Germany), has worked as a freelance artist and photographer since 1993, and also as a lecturer and writer since 2003. Her artistic practice is primarily concerned with context-specific interventions into everyday cultures in the public space combining the elements of process, platform and participation. Since 1993 her work has been realized in both national and international exhibitions as well as free, self-initiated projects, including POV (points of view) – Catalyst at Monster Truck, Dublin (2013), Caravan and Satellite, BBK Niederrhein; FIX’ 11, Belfast; Convergence, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast and Limerick City Gallery of Art (all 2011); Leben! (Life!), Worpswede (2007) and OUT OF SITE, Dublin (2006, 2007).

Besides a number of articles written for publications she has co-edited Connection: Artists in Communication with Susanne Bosch, published in 2012. A solo-catalogue of her photographic site-specific installations was published in 2003 with the Kunstverein Nümbrecht.

In 2009, Andrea began a practice-based PhD research in Art with the University of Ulster, Belfast (NI) being awarded a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Scholarship. She undertook training in Open Space Technology, Cross-cultural Competence as well as in Moderation and Mediation in 2008 and 2009. From 2007 to 2009, she was Assistant Professor to the MFA-Programme Public Art and New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus-University Weimar, where she had graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2006 (including a guest semester at the University of Art and Design Helsinki). In 1994 she completed a Diploma in Photographic Engineering, specializing in photography, optics, film and video at the University of Applied Sciences Cologne.

From 1998 to 2004 she was co-organizer and speaker for the artist-run studio space KunstEtageDeutz, Cologne.

Currently she lives and works in Belfast, Cologne and Berlin.

Artist Statement:

The situation is the catalyst, its context the material for my artwork. I observe and react to underlying fault lines and potential sources of friction. Using conversational, interactive strategies and aesthetic settings which move between reality and absurdity, I investigate, as observing participant, how people handle unexpected situations appearing in their day-to-day routines.

Every project means a renewal of my personal and artistic sense of place, calling for a realignment of my own position within a gridwork of socio-political coordinates. The coherence of my work lies in its individual relation to specific contexts. What links each project is the dialogue between the elements, factors and participants involved. It is an ongoing process of action and reaction. The essence of art in the public space is its intervention, its interference with people’s everyday life, the way it challenges their boundaries. Art in public arises unexpectedly; it is sometimes unwelcome, though that confrontation should lead to a rewarding experience. Such is the difficult nature of art.

As an artist operating in the public space, I must display a high degree of responsibility when entering existing structures as an outsider with the intention of eliciting a response. Therefore I consider respect to be imperative and humour a necessity.

Email: theis.andrea@gmx.de

Jacqueline Holt

www.jacquelineholt.org

Biography

Jacqueline Holt lives and works in Belfast after moving from London in 2010 to study for an MFA at Belfast Art College.

Statement

I am interested in the formal relationships within the work itself and how perspective, framing and viewpoint come into physical and conceptual play. Space, place, site and the social and political context of where I am are integral to my process and art practice.