‘PERSONAL SPACE’, HIVE EMERGING GALLERY, 2014
Hive Emerging presents its final exhibition for its Summer Program, ‘Personal Space’. This show will open on the 28th of September at 7pm and continue until the 4th of September. ‘Personal Space’ includes work by nine emerging artists, Hilda Goold, Helena Grimes, Simon Bates, Lorraine Walsh, Steph Gallagher, Justyna Gruszczyk, David Fox, Laura Wade and Kate McElroy.
‘Personal Space’ gives insight into the artwork of emerging artists nationwide. The show includes a wide variety of media. Examining how landscape and space can affect human beings and in turn how human beings can influence and shape their landscapes, this exhibition is thought provoking and accessible. It allows the viewer to wonder through the artists’ personal inscapes, and their imagined utopias and dystopias. Dealing with urban and rural environment, harking back to the past and projecting into the future, the artworks gives the viewer revelations regarding time as well as space.
Inscape, a term formed by the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, is an apt word to describe many of the pieces in this show. McElroy’s video ‘Release’ and Gallagher’s painting ‘Horizon’ could be recognised as inscapes. Though it is a term that relates itself to religion and a belief in a God, inscape also has broader conotations regarding humans and the world. Inscapes reveal the truth of objects, but can be independent of objects and be somewhere between the material world and man, something which individualises and distinguishes things from other things. Inscapes can be ‘the hidden dynamics of objects, the patterns of their development, and their “energetic form[s]“’1. Ultimately an inscape is an expression of a human being’s relationship with the hidden dynamics of an object or objects.
As already noted there are artworks in ‘Personal Space’ that engage with ideas of utopia and dystopia. Utopia is ‘an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.’2 and dystopia is a place that is ‘typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.’3 The social critic Theodor Adorno believed ‘ The dimension of utopia that art creates is not a positive one, in fact, it is a moment when a “lack” is realized. In this sense, art is negative’4. Art could be seen as a negative for society, but in reality it is a positive because it is a questioning of society. Many of the artworks in this exhibition question society at present, in the past and in the future. Goold’s ‘Phew’ and ‘Myths of the Near Future’ could be considered a melange of an imagined utopia and a future dystopia. The landscapes in Gruszczyk’s ‘Mining Damage’ and Helena Grime’s ‘Bedlam’ and ‘Anarchy’ echos one of the dystopian aspects of the contemporary world.
During this exhibition the gallery doors will be open from Tuesday to Saturday 12.30 to 5.30. An Open Discussion of the artworks and the curation will take place on the closing night, Thursday the 4th of September, at 6.30pm. All are welcome to attend. Please keep an eye on our Facebook for more details.
Personal Space has been co-curated and organised by Jessica Terry, John Dwyer and Róisín Power Hackett.
Located in the very heart of the City Hive Emerging, at 25 Michael Street, Waterford’s dedicated emerging arts space offers students, recent graduates & up & coming arts practitioners a broad choice of opportunities for the coming year. Details of upcoming opportunities are available on FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/hivegallery.
Text by Róisín Power Hackett
http://roisinphackett.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/personal-space-exhibition/
Hive Emerging presents its final exhibition for its Summer Program, ‘Personal Space’. This show will open on the 28th of September at 7pm and continue until the 4th of September. ‘Personal Space’ includes work by nine emerging artists, Hilda Goold, Helena Grimes, Simon Bates, Lorraine Walsh, Steph Gallagher, Justyna Gruszczyk, David Fox, Laura Wade and Kate McElroy.
‘Personal Space’ gives insight into the artwork of emerging artists nationwide. The show includes a wide variety of media. Examining how landscape and space can affect human beings and in turn how human beings can influence and shape their landscapes, this exhibition is thought provoking and accessible. It allows the viewer to wonder through the artists’ personal inscapes, and their imagined utopias and dystopias. Dealing with urban and rural environment, harking back to the past and projecting into the future, the artworks gives the viewer revelations regarding time as well as space.
Inscape, a term formed by the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins, is an apt word to describe many of the pieces in this show. McElroy’s video ‘Release’ and Gallagher’s painting ‘Horizon’ could be recognised as inscapes. Though it is a term that relates itself to religion and a belief in a God, inscape also has broader conotations regarding humans and the world. Inscapes reveal the truth of objects, but can be independent of objects and be somewhere between the material world and man, something which individualises and distinguishes things from other things. Inscapes can be ‘the hidden dynamics of objects, the patterns of their development, and their “energetic form[s]“’1. Ultimately an inscape is an expression of a human being’s relationship with the hidden dynamics of an object or objects.
As already noted there are artworks in ‘Personal Space’ that engage with ideas of utopia and dystopia. Utopia is ‘an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect.’2 and dystopia is a place that is ‘typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.’3 The social critic Theodor Adorno believed ‘ The dimension of utopia that art creates is not a positive one, in fact, it is a moment when a “lack” is realized. In this sense, art is negative’4. Art could be seen as a negative for society, but in reality it is a positive because it is a questioning of society. Many of the artworks in this exhibition question society at present, in the past and in the future. Goold’s ‘Phew’ and ‘Myths of the Near Future’ could be considered a melange of an imagined utopia and a future dystopia. The landscapes in Gruszczyk’s ‘Mining Damage’ and Helena Grime’s ‘Bedlam’ and ‘Anarchy’ echos one of the dystopian aspects of the contemporary world.
During this exhibition the gallery doors will be open from Tuesday to Saturday 12.30 to 5.30. An Open Discussion of the artworks and the curation will take place on the closing night, Thursday the 4th of September, at 6.30pm. All are welcome to attend. Please keep an eye on our Facebook for more details.
Personal Space has been co-curated and organised by Jessica Terry, John Dwyer and Róisín Power Hackett.
Located in the very heart of the City Hive Emerging, at 25 Michael Street, Waterford’s dedicated emerging arts space offers students, recent graduates & up & coming arts practitioners a broad choice of opportunities for the coming year. Details of upcoming opportunities are available on FACEBOOK, https://www.facebook.com/hivegallery.
Text by Róisín Power Hackett
http://roisinphackett.wordpress.com/2014/08/23/personal-space-exhibition/