Opening is on Tuesday 23rd November at 6pm 

 

Galway Arts Centre is delighted to announce the opening of their upcoming pop-up exhibition, ‘Put a Lid on It’. The opening is on Tuesday 23rd November at 6pm and runs for four days only until Saturday 27th. Curated by Siobhán McGibbon and Zulaikha Engelbrecht, visual artists and current Visual Arts Assistants at Galway Arts Centre, the exhibition features the work of over fifty artists from around the country. 

 Each artist was asked to address the space within a jar and to create new work specifically for the exhibition. This was an opportunity for artists of any medium to work within the boundaries of a small space. This curatorial strategy produced exciting and unexpected work which showcases the diversity of contemporary art in Galway and Ireland today.

 

The exhibition presents a diverse group of artists, ranging from established practitioners to emerging artists and promising new talent.

Artists included, Timothy Acheson, Nina Amazing, Ceara Conway, David Callan,  Killian Dunne, Simon Fleming, Magnhild Opdol, Lisa Sweeney and Alwyn Renvill but to name a few.

 

What impressed me about the exhibition was the range of different responses to the theme. Reactions ranged from the whimsical to the nostalgic to the scientific to the political. For example, David Callan made a Molotov cocktail in a jar “ It is my intention that the placement of an incendiary device in a public exhibition space acts as a provocation during these times to bring into question our level of dissent and what is a morally acceptable response”.

 

 

                  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

 

 

Nina Amazing responded by pouring sterile growth bacterial media into three jars, capturing a sneeze, the touch of a hand and some armpit sweat in each one, and then incubating each one at 37c for five days before exhibiting them. She found that the touch of a hand produced the most bacterial growth and states that “ the average human body consists of approximately ten trillion cells and many trillions of bacteria. In terms of total cell numbers, each human consists of approximately twenty times more bacterial cells than mammalian cells. We form an essential and beneficial relationship with micro organisms.” 

 

My own work was a continuation of a theme I had been exploring during the summer for my two person show in Airfield house. I was fascinated by the jar as an ordinary household container and wanted to make a miniature world within the jar, contained, yet open to public scrutiny at the same time, rather like a goldfish in a bowl.

 

 

 

 

 

 

See my Artist’s statement below for more information.

 

 

Statement 

“This Jar contains a miniature world with multiple girls wandering through a forest encountering themselves. It is set around Moore hall, a ruined house surrounded by woodland.

In this work I am looking at multiple selves and the nature of identity. These are devices that help to create a sense of unease. Firstly because multiple selves are always threatening. In repetition the girl becomes an arrested character. She loses her originality. We are threatened by difference but as Freud states, we are threatened by similarity as well. He suggests that “ far from having been an assurance of immortality it becomes the uncanny harbinger of death".  While the latter is a threat to our ego and the dissolution of it, the former reminds us subconsciously of our own demise.  Viewing multiple selves creates a sense of the uncanny and sets up an emotional vertigo. We know that logically there cannot be more than one self occurring naturally.”

 

 

 

For more information on the gallery please visit  www.galwayartscentre.ie