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The miniVAN

From gritty urban graffiti to abstract surrealism, The miniVAN deftly navigates the ever-evolving artistic landscape, reflecting the pulse of modern culture.

Inspired by the pioneering spirit of Visual Artists News Sheet, The miniVAN sets out to redefine the landscape of contemporary art, providing a comprehensive platform for both established artists and emerging talents. As we honour the roots of the past, we fervently embrace the spirit of change, envisioning a future where art continues to inspire and challenge the human experience.

Packed with captivating features, exclusive interviews, and thought-provoking editorials, each issue of The miniVAN is a collectible art piece in itself. Readers can expect insider insights, behind-the-scenes anecdotes, and a celebration of the unsung heroes shaping the artistic zeitgeist.

The visionary team behind The miniVAN comprises renowned art writers, respected artists and curators, and passionate creatives dedicated to curating an enriching experience for readers and artists alike.

The miniVAN invites you to embark on an extraordinary journey that transcends the boundaries of imagination. Whether you’re an art aficionado, a budding artist, or simply curious about the transformative power of visual expression, The miniVAN promises to ignite your passion and broaden your horizons, bringing you from the inside of an artist’s studio to the wide realm of creative practices that exist outside of how we think of visual art.

Critique

Critique: Daphne Wright ‘A quiet mutiny’

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Crawford Art Gallery, Cork15 November 2019 – 16 February 2020 ‘A quiet mutiny’ by Daphne Wright is a sculptural exhibition, showcasing the artist’s skills, techniques and competencies across the materials of clay and film. The exhibition is dominated by over 30 pieces of sculpture, made from unfired clay – the epitome of a hands-on material. In order to sculpt with clay, the artist has to touch and bring close this flexible material during the process of making. Such gestures chime with the ‘humanist’ themes that are present in the exhibition, signified in large part by the clay sculptures on display, depicting an assortment of domestic objects. A fridge door, Zimmer…

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Marianne Keating ‘The Ocean Between’

Crawford Art Gallery, Cork 21 June – 22 September 2019 Awareness of Ireland’s involvement in the history of the British colonial project is generally one-sided, with national imagination focusing on the ‘epic’ Irish struggle against England, rather than acknowledging Irish social or cultural exchange within the wider world of empire. Marianne Keating’s exhibition, ‘The Ocean Between’, fulfils a vital role in redressing this imbalance, with rigorous research and nuanced, objective presentations. Her seven film installations are the result of years of archival research relating to the largely forgotten history of indentured Irish labourers in Barbados and Jamaica, and are linked significantly to the site of display (Crawford Art Gallery served…

Sirius Bakery

‘See you tomorrow’

Sarah Long reviews 'See you tomorrow' (2 May – 7 July) at Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh.

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Geraldine O’Sullivan ‘Light Keepers’

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen9 March – 10 April 2019 The crisp depiction of County Cork’s Fastnet Lighthouse – tall and erect yet submerged in a sea of blue – opens Geraldine O’Sullivan’s exhibition, ‘Light Keepers’ at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. As one of 14 artworks on display, this painting immediately anchors the viewer in what unfurls as a world of green gushes, titanium white surf and brilliant blue horizons. O’Sullivan’s paintings are accompanied by 11 mixed-media collages that act as visual documentation of the information, stories and anecdotes the artist has encountered since commencing research into the history of lighthouse keeping in Ireland, over three years ago.…

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Tomas Penc ‘ENDUSER’

Triskel Christchurch, Cork 11 October – 22 December 2018 In large black type, the word “ENDUSER” confronts visitors, while underneath, an inscrutable text begins: “you owe me, big smooth eggs of divine fertility laid out of the window into the endless landscape.” The phrase “you owe me” is repeated throughout this text: “you owe me…snow… strawberries…colour…”. Some, but not all, of the things ‘owed’ also appear in the presented artworks. Penc presented two distinct and consecutive phases of this exhibition, each running for approximately a month at Triskel Christchurch – an eighteenth-century neoclassical Georgian church, which functions as Triskel Art Centre’s main auditorium. The titular artwork, ENDUSER, featured in both iterations,…

Klaudia Olszyńska ‘51.791384, -8.291099’

Studio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Cork 20 July – 17 August 2018 Klaudia Olszyńska’s exhibition at Studio 12 in Backwater Artists Group consists of four mixed-media works that could be best described as ‘expanded paintings’. The exhibition takes its title from the GPS map coordinates of an area revealed via Google maps to be along Fennell’s Bay Road in Myrtleville, County Cork. The resonance of the works is posited (in a paragraph-long contextualisation) as residing in the abandoned buildings present at the places with which they share coordinates. The colour scheme of the works revolves around blacks, greys, off-white plaster shades and diffused, near mould-coloured greens. All contain the downward…

Journey Through the Centuries

KIRSTIE NORTH INTERVIEWS MARY MCCARTHY ABOUT HER NEW ROLE AS DIRECTOR OF CRAWFORD ART GALLERY, CORK. Kirstie North: Congratulations on becoming the new director of the Crawford Art Gallery. I think all of us in Cork were delighted when we heard that you had been appointed. What first attracted you to the Crawford? Mary McCarthy: Well I’m now three months into the job, but a lot of things attracted me to Crawford. The first is its potential, because it really has a very important legacy in the city, and nationally in terms of presenting shows of contemporary art and shows of the collection which are culturally very significant. These are…

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What Passes Between Us

Sirius Arts Centre, 3 September – 15 October 2017 Pádraig Spillane’s exhibition of new work, ‘What Passes Between Us’, is presented across two galleries at Sirius Arts Centre. Four upright, mild-steel, modular frames, approximately adult height, stand in the centre of the floor in each space. A single sheet of clear PVC is cast across the top of one of the frames, while several wall-mounted digital prints complete the presentation. Two specially-commissioned electronic and vocal sound pieces – composed by Simon O’Connor and sung by Michelle O’Rourke – are transmitted into the galleries from speakers situated on the floor. The minimalist presentation suits these light-filled spaces. In the centre gallery,…

Gut Instinct: Art, food and feeling at The Glucksman.

Gut Instinct: Art, food & feeling

Marina Abramovic, Sonja Alhäuser, Domestic Godless, Elif Erkan, Fiona Hallinan, Siobhan McGibbon, Abigail O’Brien, Thomas Rentmeister, Neil Shawcross, Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 25 November 2016 – 19 March 2017 THIS exhibition, curated by Professor John Cryan, Chris Clarke and Fiona Kearney, draws on research by Cryan and colleagues at the Anatomy and Neuroscience department of UCC, in order to “explore how digestion relates to our mental and emotional states”.

I Have Nada So Far But I Remain Optimistic

David Fagan, Tactic, Cork, 23 June – 20 July 2016 Sometimes I find it interesting, on my first encounter with an exhibition, to pretend I am illiterate. A brightly lit, concrete-floored rectangle. A white sentence on a red floating partition. Three separate clusters of green glass beer bottles. On one wall, a black and white photograph of four suited and bespectacled persons unknown; on the opposite, a colour photograph of two men in a pub, one to the rear, one to the fore. A pedestal upon which a ticket and ticket receipt are propped, another sentence in the crook of the wall, this time in red. A video, one moment showing…

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