3rd Sunday in July

Castletownroche Vintage Rally - one of the greatest days out on the calendar.  And I haven't even posted the terrible album covers I found.  I gave them a place of their own on Tumblr here.  Drove there through glorious high summer Irish countryside.

My father's photos II

I did a little digital collaging of the photos using the only photo I have of my father as a boy.  I feel that know very little about my father's early life, I know he liked fishing and cycling and had a grass snake called Cyril (or was it Cecil?).  These photos only seem to add to the mystery so I used them to camouflage his face, making him even less knowable even though his image is unchanging.

I love the results and am going to continue this, as yet untitled, series and hopefully make an artist's book out of them.

My father's photos

I am moving house soon and whilst sorting out a chest found a cigarette box full of tiny photos.  The box was with other things that I took when my Dad died, way back in 1998.  I still haven't gone through a lot of these things but I have found lots of photographs.  He must have been a keen photographer when he was younger although there was no evidence of this later when we came along.  His subjects seem all very domestic or else fishing and cycling related.  I love the one of the budgie on someone's hand.  I think these were taken on a Baldi, which I now have.  The original manual is still there as well as some tiny little round filters.  I have some artist's books to make for autumn and think these may well feature in one.

Brian McMahon - Real Hallucinations

On nearly the last day of the Brian McMahon retrospective I wandered down the delightfully named O'Curry Street in Limerick and saw one of the best shows I have seen in a long time.  Spontaneity, decreptitude, thick paint as rugged and textured as the unplastered walls that held the paintings, the building full of life and colour and resounding with exclamations and cries from visitors who recognised themselves or others in the vibrant, splashy, slashy portraits that hung on every wall.   This was a real local's exhibition but wouldn't have looked out of place in Dublin.  Still, why should they get all the best shows?

There are two good write-ups of the exhibition here and here and below are my own photographs of these stunning works.

The show was held in the Sailor's Home (above), a magnificent building that will hopefully come back to life as a cultural venue after this successful outing.

Catch-up

I have been working and visiting exhibtions and generally being a Good Little Artist but just not blogging about it.  So here's a bit of a catch up.

No. 1 - RDS Success!
These prints were selected for exhibition at the RDS Student Awards 2014

Degree Show,  June 2014

You can't see much there I know but really you have to see them in the paper as it were, which is why I think they were chosen as for the RDS you send the actual work  They are mainly black but have thread embossed into them with the digital image behind.  The images below show what I mean.

Hybrid Print, Pre-spinning

Detail of hybrid print

There is a prize-giving ceremony on July 30 at which I hope to WIN MONEY.

2.  Hospital Shop Window Festival
I should really do a separate post on this but I am part of a group organising a festival for Culture Night and beyond showcasing the art of Irish and possibly international artists in the shop windows of Hospital, where I live.  Here is the website  www.hswf.weebly.com
and here is one of the fabulous images I took for it.  I love reflections.

3.   A new studio - in Dungarvan
We are moving to the sunny South-East - when we find a house we like.  I have already procured a studio space which I am itching to use.  I think studios are like a new pair of shoes or nail varnish - you imagine that the work you will create there will be so much better because everything is new.  The truth of this remains to be seen but I am determined that this studio will not be cluttered with several projects on the desk at the same time.

4.  New Work
I made these collages for Nom Nom Cafe in Kenmare.  They are part of a project I am tentatively calling Vogueifications which use images from Vogue fashion shoots.  For reasons peculiar to me Vogue fashion images delight and dismay me in equal measure.  I think they are the best fashion imagery in the world but the stupid captions they give them winds me up and demeans the models and readers alike.  So I attack them with paint, tape or re-draw them, incorporating the offending captions.