Stories of Art:
Selected works from the UCC Art Collection

Aideen Barry, Katherine Beug, Fatti Burke, Joe Caslin, Carol Anne Connolly, Barrie Cooke, Colin Crotty, Cecilia Danell, Peter Donnelly, Stephen Doyle, Brian Fay, Deirdre Frost, Martin Gale, Joy Gerrard, Roisín Hahessy, Sean Hanrahan, Chris Haughton, Patrick Hennessy, Elaine Hoey, Chris Judge, Mark Kent, Roseanne Lynch, Alice Maher, Samir Mahmood, Colin Martin, Julie Merriman, Dara McGrath, Leanne McDonagh, Suzanne Mooney, Mary Murphy, Peter Nash, Sarah O’Brien, Shane O’Driscoll, Emma O’Hara, Tony O’Malley, Inma Pavon, Richard Proffitt, Ciara Roche, Niamh Sharkey, S.H.E.W., Sonia Shiel, Rajinder Singh, Padraig Spillane, Amelia Stein

https://www.glucksman.org/exhibitions/storiesofart

Selected works from the UCC collection included work from qphotoseries, Acquired for the collection in 2023. Images : Digital photographs

Field Trip

Field Trip Lavit Gallery, Cork

18th April – 11th May 2024

Opening reception Thursday 18 April 5.30-7.30pm Lavit Gallery is pleased to present Field Trip, an exhibition of Backwater Artists Group members exploring themes of Landscape and Memory, Magic and Loss. Featuring Deirdre Frost, Angela Gilmour, Sean Hanrahan, Joseph Heffernan, Diane Magee, Susan Montgomery, Róisín O’Sullivan, Ben Reilly, Padraig Spillane, Isabella Szczutkowska.

Curated by Kevin Kavanagh and Alannah Murray from Kavanagh Gallery Dublin, Ireland.

https://backwaterartists.ie/field-trip-lavit-gallery/

Commissioned Text by Sarah Long on Field Trip exhibition. A flick of the wrist: The Backwater Artist Group Members show at Lavit Gallery

‘Field Trip’ is a group exhibition of Backwater Artist Group members curated by Kevin Kavanagh and Alanah Murray. A field trip is an excursion to a place away from your normal environment, and each work in this show offers a glimpse into a vision of an alternate reality. Featuring artists Deirdre Frost, Angela Gilmour, Sean Hanrahan, Joseph Heffernan, Diane Magee, Susan Montogomery, Róisín O’Sullivan, Ben Reilly, Pádraig Spillane and Isabella Szczutkowska, the exhibition combines a multitude of perspectives. The artists are grouped under the curatorial thematic framework of ‘magic and loss, landscape and memory.’ Magic is perhaps the most applicable framing device for understanding the works on display. Every painting, sculpture or art object conjures distinct, unique, rich and crafted visual worlds.

Sean Hanrahan’s combination of oil paint and silk screen printing creates silhouettes of organic forms pitched against atmospheric backdrops that resemble outer space. The three works from his Island Ruse series (2021-24) feature elongated ovals sitting horizontally in the skyline. An ominous glow of green or pale luminosity suggestive of alien-like hovercrafts surrounds each shape. The heightened and surreal colours further borrow from the tropes of science fiction. The scene is faintly dystopian; the landscapes are void of human life and suggest an elemental shift on the earth’s surface. The work’s composition, however, focuses on the staunch printed plant forms, demonstrating a robustness, if not a relentlessness, of this particular life form. In this reality, the plants, unlike humans, will be fine.

Looking fruit (Sculpture) and 3 Island Ruses
‘Field Trip’ group exhibition by Backwater Artists Group – Lavit Gallery – Cork, Ireland, 2024
Photograph Jed Niezgoda – jedniezgoda.com

https://backwaterartists.ie/field-trip-lavit-gallery/

Parklife: Biodiversity in Contemporary Irish Art

Amber Broughton, Miriam de Búrca, Kari Cahill, Michael Canning, Cecilia Danell, Rachel Doolin, Gabhann Dunne, Martin Gale, Sean Hanrahan, Martin Healy, Peter Nash, Meadhbh O’Connor

Parklife presents the work of Irish artists who consider the biodiversity of the world around us, looking at how different forms of life thrive in the urban realm as well as in more remote environments.

The selected works range from detailed drawings of the various species of animals that make their home on the UCC campus to photographic studies of birds and plants that bring contemporary resonance to the pioneering work of Karl Blossfeldt on display in our Sisk gallery. The exhibition features a series of paintings of the Scots Pine, one of Ireland’s three native coniferous trees as well as research investigations into the ways in which communities are conserving seeds to protect food crops for future generations.

Parklife includes two new commissions from artists Amber Broughton and Peter Nash who were invited to engage with UCC Green Campus and UCC CUBS to create new works for the UCC Art Collection that focus on biodiversity and sustainability.

Selection of qphotoseries UUC collection ‘Park Life’ at Glucksman Gallery, UCC, Cork – Ireland – 2022 / Photograph: Jed Niezgoda

HOLD FAST: An Exhibition By Sean Hanrahan / 3rd – 13th June, Spike Island

Backwater Artists Group studio member Sean Hanrahan presents a body of work in two of the cells, of the former Punishment Block in Spike Island. The work reflects on the maritime theme of tattoos, which are perhaps one of the most recognisable visual forms, when we think of the culture of sailors. Presented in association with Cork Harbour Festival, Backwater Artists Group & Spike Island.

https://corkharbourfestival.com/2022/hold-fast-an-exhibition-by-sean-hanrahan/

Link to interview on HOLDFAST with Ellie O’Byrne https://tripeanddrisheen.substack.com/p/holding-fast-in-cells-and-on-high#details

CLOSER Curated by Janice Hough

Lavit Gallery, Wandesford Quay, Cork 5th MAY – 2nd JUNE 2022

CLOSER brings together selected artworks by Backwater studio members which resonate with physical, spiritual, communal and environmental states. Playing with scale and materials several selected works encourage the viewer to get closer, revealing their process as an enigma, a discovery, a history or an act of intimacy. Other works conjure forces through their sense of theatre or presence in the space. In the gallery fabrics soften and domesticate the setting, with reflections sited in the exhibition to bring artworks and people closer together. In these times our collective experience on this earth has never been so intertwined. CLOSER is open to multiple contrasting readings which visitors are invited to explore and experience.

The exhibition features artworks by Ailbhe Ní Bhriain, Rachel Daly, Angela Gilmour, Sean Hanrahan, Joseph Heffernan, Claire Murphy, Natasha Pike, Ciara Rogers, Padraig Spillane and Izabela Szczutkowska.

https://backwaterartists.ie/c-l-o-s-e-r/

Memory Anthem Flag – Closer

A Radical Plot Artist residency IMMA (Irish Museum of Modern Art)

Memory Anthem Flags

July-September 2021

In the summer of 2021 Sean Hanrahan participated in IMMA’s A Radical Plot Residency, offering Hanrahan a platform to fully immerse himself in the histories, folklore, nature, and politics of a location that houses two organisations, IMMA & the OPW. Working and living within this dual function Hanrahan responded with Memory Anthem, a contemporary interpretation of a 32-point star motif inspired by the headstones in Bully’s Acre. In Memory Anthem the star motif symbolises community, spirituality and the generational human cycle of activity of the IMMA/RHK site. An impression taken from a headstone was adapted for a print which was then represented as a handmade flag for a larger project presented on the west avenue of the site. Inspired by this evolving experience of the site and to celebrate our 30^th Birthday, IMMA has commissioned 30 of these prints as a limited edition.

An exhibition of Masters and student
graphic work from Belarus

Curated by Séan Hanrahan & Roman Sustov 12 October – 02 November 2018

Preview 11 October 6pmStudio 12, Backwater Artists Group, Wandesford Quay, CorkTuesday – Friday 10am-1pm, 2pm-5pm

Visiting artist talk by Roman Sustov, Saturday 13th Oct @1pm Studio 12 Backwater Artist Studios Link to exhibition apkaexhibition.wordpress.com

apkaexhibition.wordpress.com

https://www.cultureireland.ie/gb18/event/state-of-print

More information to follow on SOP ‘The State of Print’ an ongoing project for 2018

https://www.instagram.com/p/BeIoMlKHRCw/?hl=en&taken-by=thestateofprint

The Point of no Return

As part of

https://corkharbourfestival.com/2017events/point_of_no_return/

Follow the link for Artist information

Sean Hanrahan Point of no Return CHF

In The Shadow of Half Face

elsewhere

April 28th – May 20th 2017 CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery and Elizabeth Fort, Cork City.

An exhibition of work by members of Backwater Artists Group curated by Helen Farrell.

Participating artists:

CIT Wandesford Quay Gallery – Éilis Ni Fhaoláin, Helen Horgan, Róisín Lewis, Megan and Cassandra Eustace, Ben Reilly, John Kent, Luke Sisk, Elizabeth Fort – Johnny Bugler, Angie Shanahan, Tracy White Fitzgerald, Elaine Coakley, Gerard O’Callaghan, Jo Kelley, Peter Martin, Helen O’Keeffe, Angela Gilmour, Darn Thorn, Sean Hanrahan

elsewhere

…these traces in themselves do not refer to the past: they are present; and, in so far as I find in them signs of some ‘previous’ event, it is because I derive my sense of the past from elsewhere… 1

There is an ambiguity about the word ‘elsewhere’ – it suggests somewhere else but nowhere in particular; a place as yet unknown or a place that no longer exists. It can also suggest an absence of someone or some thing, or if someone or some thing has come from elsewhere there is an absence of identity, of specificity, in their place of origin. Visual art exhibitions have the ability to harness this sense of ambiguity; even the artworks themselves are often made elsewhere, in a private place that is not usually specified, and then transported to a public arena, which could be many miles away from its place of construction. The artists in this exhibition, however, are exhibiting in sites that are in close proximity to the studios where the work was made. The place of their making to the sites they will be viewed is not so far apart, yet through their investigations of place, transience and the intersections between human activity and nature, they can bring to mind a time long since past, some other place or trace of a memory that is non-specific, allowing the viewer to look for meaning according to some ‘elsewhere’ in their own experiences. And because our sense of place is like an entity that exists in us independent of sensory cues we can feel strong emotional feelings towards, for instance, the places we grew up in or know well. We are, nonetheless, often compelled to feel empathetic to the traces left behind by others in abandoned homes, or a strong sense of curiosity to historic ruins and ancient maps; objects and images represent past and future for us in a way that our fugitive memory often fails.

Here is an article about a recent project I organized
and facilitated in Vitebsk, Belarus, as a part of the Slavianski Bazaar 2016
international cultural festival.
More images and information on this project is to follow soon!
Click on the link below for full article and images.

Странные предметы и необычные призывы

Poster for Художники здесь есть?/AaH! Artists are Here

Poster outside Tolstoy 7 Arts centre, Vitebsk, July 2016

Working with participating Artists Анастасия Ганчарова, Полина Балашова, Кирилл Дёмчев and Антон Левадний on the first of “Художники здесь есть, э?” piece’s July 2016

Here is a Clip from Время Art (83 выпуск, 06.08.2016) TV and Radio Company “Vitebsk” “Vremia ART” of our street performance as part of the Slavianski Bazaar 2016 programme.

It was our total luck and privilege to be supported by the Intuitive Music Orchestra led by Yan Bederman

Thanks also to “EKAPRAEKT” who where proud sponsers of the event and project.

This project is dedicated to Marina Karman and all those who work at the VCCA and Art-Space Tolstogo-7.