Mermaid Arts Centre
6 July – 3 August 2024
The Glendarragh Studios complex is located in a tranquil setting a few minutes’ drive from Newtownmountkennedy in County Wicklow. Founded in 1999 in response to a shortage of artist spaces, its initial four purpose-built studios were constructed with the support of LEADER (European funding for rural development). Another four were added in 2002, all with double glazing, central heating, hot and cold water, plenty of light, rural views and access to kilns, power tools, print equipment, and a communal space.
Over the intervening years a diverse roster of practitioners, including painters, sculptors, weavers, glass artists and ceramicists, has passed through its doors. A screening of still images in the aptly named exhibition, ‘Sanctuary: Glendarragh Studios – 25 Years’ at Mermaid Arts Centre, shows members working alone, collaborating on projects, sharing cook-ups, interacting with resident chickens and pigs, and plucking vegetables from the land.
To celebrate the quarter-century anniversary, the unusual step has been taken of conjuring the studio atmosphere within a minimalist gallery space. By transposing and making visible the kinds of research, experimentation, sources of inspiration and spontaneous juxtapositions that underpin creative practice, it offers rare insights into how the works that art venues usually show come about. The exhibition also imparts an important message about the value of studios, which continue to be in short supply around the country.
The gallery has been informally partitioned into discrete spaces, using plants, furniture, easels, crates, ad-hoc wooden dividers, and even a wheelbarrow spilling over with weeds. In places cluttered, in others streamlined, these reflect and at times overlap the different practices of the 15 featured artists, each introduced through short bios and photographs. Such interweaving hints of the mutual benefits that can come from opportunities for social interaction.
The first display centres around an etching press on a movable trolley, with print paraphernalia and impressions of leaves scattered across its surfaces. It is flanked on one side by a sprawling cactus, dried-up paint tubes, and a metal bin, and on the other by a double-glazed window unit. Used as a palette for mixing paints, this signals a transition to the work of Paul Douglas, whose landscapes and seascapes are variously shown wall-hung, leaning against the skirting board, or resting on a floor-standing easel. Similar presentations by painters Fergal Flanagan and Brenda Malley are distributed around the gallery, among works in other mediums.
Nearby, a shelving unit is laden with jars of specimens collected by food grower and forager Jenny Dungan, along with bronze and ceramic sculptures, a bird’s nest, a small painting of a cat, and other cherished items. It borders a stretch of wall and floor replete with materials and works belonging to Yanny Petters, David Eager Maher, and James Hayes. Petters and Erica Devine, whose framed plaster casts are presented in an adjoining room, are both botanical artists. Eager Maher works across painting and drawing, Hayes through print, drawing and sculpture, including public art commissions.
A tiny feather balances delicately on the upper edge of an Eager Maher oil-on-panel, to which various wooden profiles adhere – possibly alluding to the options considered for the painted frame that became integral to the composition. Hayes’ corner, in turn, houses animal-shaped plaster moulds, a metal-casting furnace, upright metal rods (as source material), a desk with shelves displaying work, and a painted kitchen chair, softened by a pile of cushions.
It is not surprising, given Glendarragh’s setting, to find most exhibitors referencing nature. Golden Fleece Special Award 2023 recipient, Cathy Burke, uses drawing to “investigate landscape and botanical forms,” developing and deconstructing ideas to create stoneware ceramics, finished using textured and volatile glazes. A table displays glass containers, dried plants and glazed and unglazed pieces, a sense of place further evoked by the small dog bed and comfy armchair, next to which are stacks of inspirational reading. Dancing shadows, cast by a clothesline strung with cut-out paper templates, animate the wall behind.
In exploring the recreated ambience of these Wicklow-based studios, visitors can also engage with the work of Chloe Dowds, Fiona Coffey, Jean Clyne, Simon Lazewski, Heather Muir, and Helen McNulty. Many among the cohort are contributing to the second important facet of this celebratory event – a rolling programme of talks, demonstrations and workshops that help to bring their practices alive, immersing participants in activities that will hopefully continue at Glendarragh for at least another 25 years, and beyond.
Susan Campbell is a visual arts writer, art historian and artist.
susancampbellartwork.com
