Art Trail 24
Oona Hyland | Active Forgetting Installation
LOCATION: Punchdrunk
W: 300 x H: 300 x D: 700 cm
Oona Hyland’s interests are interlocked in the materiality of print itself and what such processes can convey towards a conceptual art practice. Her method is a vehicle to articulate processes of memory, concepts of boundary, resistance, erasure, and decay. In this sense her work tends to draw from traditional printmaking even as she expands into various other media, such as drawing, sculpture, film and video. In her works she argues that the knowledge(s) of printmaking can be applied to existential matters.
For the last three years Hyland has been working on a project called Active Forgetting based on the institutional abuse which took place in Irish mother and baby homes and Magdalene laundries, between 1922 and 1998. The work she is making is an exploration of insidious trauma both from a personal and political viewpoint. Hyland is concerned with the power of trauma, which can be intergenerationally transferred. It does not fade and can haunt the children of survivors. The unspoken grief of minority subjects is another concern. Erasure is an important theme and integral to her material process. This is a series of experimental works, primarily print, but also using film and alternative photographic techniques such as Cyanotype. The film Touching Time is a collaboration with Anna Viola Hallberg who like Hyland explores ideas of ‘otherness’, marginalisation and the scapegoat, and the legacy of betrayal involving both people and institutions of the state (as Hannah Arendt would say the ‘banality of evil’). Hyland is interested in exploring these ideas not to illustrate them but to embody them through the processes involved in making the work.
Clare Phelan | Confetti
LOCATION: Dial Arch
W: 35 x H: 800 x D: 800 cm
Clare Phelan is a visual artist using print and installation to explore the multiple dimensions of the print matrix. She has developed an interest in collecting and reworking mass produced redundant artefacts which often become her print plate/surface.
Influenced by the post industrial landscapes of Northern England where she has lived all her life, her current practice utilises many nineteenth and twentieth century coding technology artefacts such as textile jacquards, music box discs and IBM punch cards. Clare explores these artefacts as carriers of narrative, the paper creases and the rusty damaged metal tell stories of obsolete technologies. They evoke memories of those who made and used them.
The ‘confetti’ motif, screen printed across the surface of the installation piece was inspired by stories of how the ‘punched out’ physical waste from computer punch cards was used as confetti by company employees in the mid-twentieth century. The traditional analogue printmaking processes she employs echo the labour inherent in the making of these materials, while the binary language of the machine dances in rhythmic patterns through her work as a signifier of our digital age.
Winner of the Scott Creative Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award 2019, Clare was also shortlisted for the London Contemporary Art Prize in 2019, and the Flourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking in 2017.
Carol Wyss | IN SUSPENSO
LOCATION: Acosta Dance Foundation
W: 400 x H: 400 x D: 500 cm
Carol Wyss is a visual artist using printmaking, drawing and photography to create the components for her installations. She is on a concerted search for the structure of things – deconstructing existing and creating new discernible patterns. Recognizing patterns is crucial to humans, helping understand and predict what is coming. The skeleton is the basic structure through which Carol examines our relationship to our surroundings, our temporal human existence and our impact on and synergy with the planet we currently inhabit. Bones are essential in reconstructing who we are and where we come from. Abstraction is part of the process – not trying to hide the origins, rather broadening the possibilities for interpretation.
Since graduating in 1998 with an MFA from the Slade, Carol has won several prizes including the John Ruskin Prize 2012, Zealous Print Prize and the City&Guilds Print Prize. She is a member of the London Group and exhibits nationally and internationally. This piece is about a moment of suspense and of anticipation. It consists of 'cut out to shape' etchings on paper. These etchings are images of flowers entirely made up of human bones. Made of paper they curl naturally adding to their sculptural presence - although beyond their three-dimensional aspect, they are devoid of physical substance, they sway in the slightest draft, never quit still.
Rebecca F Hardy | Divergent Joviality
LOCATION: Guardhouse
W: 400 x H: 180 x D: 100 cm
Rebecca is a multi-disciplined artist and freelance creative from North Wales. From drawings to screen-prints, photography, video, live-art, sculptural forms and installations. Her work is the exploration of materials and relationships between surface and object, colour, layers, and patterns drives the process.
First solo exhibition in a institution at Pontio, a arts performance centre in Bangor. ‘Yr Hyn Sy’n Pylu’ (Of That Which Fades) is a new body of work that presents the subtle implementations of layers and loud statements of colour and form. The abstract forms are derived from her own study and understanding of her dyslexic brain. The balance between too little and too much, what is visually pleasing and total chaos, is something that Rebecca is constantly playing with.
Awarded the Eirian Llwyd Honorary Memorial Award for Printmaking 2022, showcased artwork alongside the 2022 winner Sarah Gavey, previous winners and Eirian Llwyd’s collection at Ruthin Craft Centre. Accepted to exhibit in the DAC Art Prize 2022 (Disability Arts Cymru) which toured across Wales 2022 - 2023 in 6 venues (g39, Cynan Valley museum, Galeri, Ty Pawb, Oriel Davies, Glyn Vivian).
Regan Boyce | Consume 'Enter Through the Gift Shop'
LOCATION: Woolwich Works Cafe
W: 300 x H: 300 x D: 300 cm
Welcome to CONSUME where "Happiness Comes in Packaging!" an installation project by artist Regan Boyce.
‘Enter Through the Gift Shop’ is an immersive art installation confronting a world where name and logo have become commodified and worshipped. Whether a statement of wealth, success or obsession, has the 'Brand' become more important than what it is stamped onto? The repeated tautological use of brand identity and excessive packaging questions a consumer’s desire to buy.
CONSUME was created in response to contemporary commercialism and brand idolisation, combining visual aspects of consumer culture from both
vintage and modern day brand identities and advertising. Based in North-West London, Regan Boyce is a multidisciplinary artist known for vibrant colour use and geometry in both print sculpture and installation. Focusing on narratives around the biosphere through abstract constructions and imagery in metal, light and ink.
Boyce’s work is defined by colour: vivid tones and contrast. Using dichromatic pallets, complex relationships are made from interacting layered textures, patterns and lines. Most apparent throughout his abstract series: curving lines with the use halftone gradients and textural marks allow colours to interact and form unique variations, combinations and optical effects. Present in both his sculptural and print practice the biosphere is present through geometric crops of colour, defined focus on light and shadow and the removal of segments of natural forms. Within his print work he most noticeably segments trees which hang suspended in space. These works comment on man-kind’s controlling and enforcing rule over nature.
Screen-printing has become a pivotal process in Boyce’s practice influencing (and influenced by) his sculptural work. Both facets of his work allow for experimentation with colour, composition and form; resulting in a unique approach to each.