LARA QUINN REFLECTS ON THE EVOLUTION OF HER EMERGING PRACTICE.
I remember the exact moment I decided to transfer from studying the History of Art to Fine Art. I was attending a class at UCC and sitting on a hard, pew-like bench in the West Wing lecture theatre. Above us, an artwork flashed on the screen, submerging the room in red light. My professor paced the floor, back and forth like a pendulum. “Red Room”, she said, “by Louise Bourgeois.”
Cloistered within a sculptural cell of dark, wooden doors were the contents of Bourgeois’s most intimate childhood memories, designed for our voyeuristic consumption. My hands, clammy with sweat, felt heavy upon my lap, and my chest was hard as a rock. My body was reacting faster than my mind could rationalise and for the first time in my life, I experienced the capacity of art to induce a subconscious, physiological reaction. I felt sick with dread. I thought the lecture would never end and when it did, I barely felt the nerve to stand. I left that class not yet realising I had decided to leave UCC for good.
Frustrated at the thought of responding to something so visceral with pen to paper, rather than paint on canvas, I had the realisation that I wanted to make art, not just study it. Having never attended an art class before I enrolled at Cork College of FET. It was there that I received the reinforcement I needed to pursue a degree in art. Last year, I graduated with a First-Class Honours Degree from MTU Crawford College of Art and Design, receiving several accolades, including the Cork Arts Society Student of the Year Award, Best Thesis Prize, as well as being longlisted for the RDS Visual Art Awards 2024.
Inspired by the work of Bourgeois, amongst many other artists, my current practice spans painting, performance and film. Informed by art movements such as Body Art and Magic Realism, my work addresses themes of identity and womanhood through an autobiographical lens, portraying myself as the character, Lilith, within the reimagined landscape of a mythological Ireland. By reprising myths in the context of my twenty-first-century experience, I hope to reconceptualise these archetypal female figures, while confronting my own sense of identity in the process.
Lara Quinn ‘Lady Lazarus’, installation view, Lavit Gallery vaults; photograph by Brian Mac Domhnaill, courtesy of the artist and Lavit Gallery.
These themes were most recently explored in my first solo exhibition, titled ‘Lady Lazarus’, which was presented in Lavit Gallery, Cork, from 3 April to 3 May. ‘Lady Lazarus’ emerged in response to the unique exhibition space of the Lavit Gallery’s vaults, a slightly subterranean recess within the main gallery interior. Imagining the vaults as a tomb or lair, I linked the space with another subterranean site of major significance within Irish folklore, namely the Cave of Crúachain in County Roscommon. Based on extensive research of caves and their symbolism, the uterus-shaped entrance of Crúachain Cave, for me, represents the opening of an ancient womb, connecting the heritage of pre-Christian Ireland with the present day. I filmed my first performance on site, where I physically assumed the role of Lilith in an embodied demonstration of rebirth, ritualising a moment of transformation in the cutting of my hair. New figurative paintings have also emerged from this project to accompany the filmed performance.
I am hoping to develop my practice as an emerging artist in Ireland before enrolling in an MFA programme abroad in the future. Later this year, I look forward to exhibiting further development of my current work in a solo exhibition at the Laneway Gallery in Cork City.
Lara Quinn is a Cork-based artist and a studio holder at Backwater Artists.
laraquinn.ie
