New wave of artists in the light

Three creatives explain their work to Tina O’Sullivan as they prepare for their graduate degree shows

AS the academic year draws to a close, art students around the country are preparing for their degree shows. These eagerly anticipated events are the summation of four years of third level art training. Gallerists, buyers, journalists, family and friends will all pour into the colleges to cast an eye over the work of the next wave of Irish artists.

The Galway Mayo Institute of Technology runs one of the best regarded textile courses in the country. Jean Power from Castletownbere, Co Cork will graduate this year before travelling to London to participate in the New Designers exhibition on Jun 27 & 28. Power has also been selected for the Volvo Ocean Race festival art exhibition in Galway in July.

Power’s work explores the intricacies of the Irish fishing industry, which dominates the economy on the Beara peninsula.

“Many of my family are involved in the industry,” says Power. “I like the applications of the net mending and knot making. They’re simple textile applications which we use in textiles but are also used in the fishing industry. It’s interesting that it’s a skill you have to learn. You can’t just pick it up, it has to be ancestrally passed down or other fishermen have to teach you. The needle that fishermen use in net mending is like the shuttle that we use in weaving on the looms, it’s interesting that there’s a connection there.”

One of the processes Power developed in making her art work was to force a knot of rope through a printing press under heavy paper. The result is a detailed imprint of the knot in the paper.

“I love old found ropes,” says Power. “Some of the drawings I worked into with different pencils, and I kept some of the original dirt or rust from the rope. I like the idea that these simple knots are in charge of the upkeep and safety of big fishing boats.”

Clear fishing buoys cast in resin, each containing a fish, a knot or a piece of parchment, are suspended from the ceiling to catch the light in Power’s installation piece.

“Resin was something used on ships to coat them,” says Power. “I did multiples of 12 buoys to represent the 12 months of the year. Each month is one month’s quota of what a fisherman is allowed catch. If they catch too much fish they have to throw dead fish back into the sea, so I thought, ‘Is there a way to make art from the stuff they’re throwing back in?.”

Gwenda Forde will complete her honours degree in Ceramic Design in the Crawford College of Art & Design in Cork. Forde, like many mature students, began her immersion in a degree programme through part-time courses. A pottery course with Carole Norman in the ’90s led her to study ceramics full time.

“That 3D interest has been there all the time,” says Forde. “I did drawing, but it wasn’t my first love at all. I’ve always been making, since I was young I was knitting and sewing and baking – always making something.”

Forde’s body of work consists of highly finished abstract ceramic forms. “The work I’m doing now would be influenced by Henry Moore and Ruth Duckworth,” says Forde. “It’s all hand-built, unglazed, inspired by organic forms in nature and sea shells. I went to see the skeleton of a whale in Kilbrittain last summer and it really took my interest. The internal form and space of it attracted me. Since I was a child I’ve been collecting sea shells and I was able to marry the two influences.

“The sense of shelter and comfort is what I’m trying to express in my work. I’m designing pieces that will fit in your hand and the tactile qualities when you hold them express that feeling.”

Forde recently had a piece of textile work featured in the Irish Wave exhibition in Shanghai. The same piece was exhibited in the textile biennale in Lithuania in 2011.

Helen O’Dea is from Dublin and undertaking her degree in the National College of Art & Design. Her work looks at our concrete jungle and reforms the material to change people’s preconceptions of it.

“I’m in the painting department,” says O’Dea. “Although it’s geared towards painting I’m doing sculptural and 3D work. I’ve been looking at decaying architecture, rubble, concrete and rocks. I’ve been researching through my thesis the fetish for ruined architecture. I’ve been putting flock wallpaper and glitter on concrete, and casting concrete blocks to look like children’s playing blocks to subvert the concept of concrete.”

O’Dea expected to leave Ireland when college finished, but now finds potential in the Irish arts scene. “I’m feeling there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on in Dublin and London at the moment,” she says.

GMIT degree show runs from 3pm June 9-16.

CCAD degree show runs from June 15- 23.

NCAD degree show runs from June 9-17.