Supported by the Arts Council, The Complex presents a programme of site-responsive exhibitions in The Gallery with artists' research, development & collaboration ongoing throughout the year.
Fergus Feehily, For Harry Smith, 2018, found paper, acrylic on card, glass, oil on artist frame, 31,3 x 25,3 x 1,3 cm. Courtesy MISAKO & ROSEN, Tokyo. (Left image)
Katie Watchorn, Get Away From It All (Off Road)(Petrified)(Getting Out Of It All)(Get into grain), mixed media, dimensions variable. Leitrim Sculpture Centre, 2022. Image: Louis Haugh. (Right image).
The Complex's visual art programme for 2023 is funded by the Arts Council and commissions thirteen Irish and International artists to create site specific works in 4 exhibitions throughout the year.
The curatorial objectives of the exhibitions include the creation of a physical place, one of active enquiry and experimentation, both through the installation process and a series of events and engagements during the exhibition run. With the architectural material of the gallery space creating the foundation for each exhibition.
The programme for 2023 features an exciting range of contemporary artists including Tanad Aaron, Lucy Andrews, Louisa Casas, Isabel English, Fergus Feehily, Hannah Fitz, Glenn Fitzgerald, Sean Lynch, Jan McCullough, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Sarah O’Brien, Niamh O’Malley, and Katie Watchorn.
LOUISA CASAS / ISABEL ENGLISH / JAN MCCULLOUGH / NIAMH O’MALLEY
25 MARCH - 07 APRIL
OPENING RECEPTION 24 MARCH
Louisa Casas is a painter whose work plays within the traditional media of oil painting to explore boundaries of matter, mutation and synthesis. Conversations of edges and side to side energies explore possibilities for flexibility and divergence. MFA NCAD (2017), Listed Visual Arts Award (2017). Group shows include Excess Baggage, Artists in Arches (2016), Glasgow, PeripheriesOpen, Gorey School of Art (2017), Heavy Weather , The Complex (2018) , Matter has no Destiny, Pallas Projects (2018), and Bunker, The Complex (2019).
Isabel English is a visual artist based in Dublin. Through the combined mediums of photography, installation, sound, text, and sculpture, she endeavours to uncover ambiguities surrounding human experience; those that have to do with the fallibility of memory - like certain untruths and remembrances located in the past - juxtaposed with the images and narratives of the imagination. Having recently completed her MFA at the National College of Art and Design, English has gone on to curate and produce the event Sonic Displacements with Project Arts Centre (2022), and worked with artists Leda Scully and Charlotte Foley on the artist-initiated exhibition Caesura (2022) at Unit 44, Stoneybatter.
Jan McCullough is interested in the human acts of construction, fabrication and DIY, and the communities of interest and place that form around them. She employs the materials, and formal, visual languages associated with these activities to create sculptural installations, interventions and photographs. She was recently Artist in Residence at IMMA, Dublin and at Lightwork in Syracuse, New York (2020-2021) and participated in the Freelands Artist Programme at PS² (2018-2020). Her work has been nominated for Pla(t)form at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2018); The Deutsche Borse Photography Prize (2016); The International Centre for Photography New York Infinity Award (2016); and won the British Journal of Photography Breakthrough Award (2016). Her book ‘Home Instruction Manual’, published by Verlag Kettler, was awarded the Kassel Fotobookfestival Dummy Award and shortlisted for the Recontres D’Arles Author Book Award (2016).
Niamh O’Malley’s artwork “reveals a profound appreciation for the act of trying. Trying to catch a certain slant of light, trying to prove a pattern or uncover a composition, trying to fathom a mountain, trying to hold time still. Working with the moving image, mark making and sculptural materials such as glass and wood, O’Malley’s work attempts to contain and reflect the weight and wonder of the world in its becoming. It is the act of trying, in the face of predictable failure, that gives way to conviction and a sense of hope within the artist’s work. Full of reflection, both literal and metaphorical, filled with absence and framed by negative space, O’Malley’s work asserts something unstoppable about the human spirit, something that neither distance nor death can extinguish”. Exhibition text by Kate Strain, Grazer Kunstverein, 2018.
FERGUS FEEHILY / GLENN FITZGERALD / SARAH O’BRIEN / FT TANAD AARON
06 - 26 MAY
OPENING RECEPTION: 05 MAY
Fergus Feehily (Dublin, 1968) lives and works in Berlin. Solo exhibitions include Half Doors, Lulu, Mexico City, 2022, Cameos Calls Dust, Galerie Christian Lethert, Cologne, 2022, Early Lonesome, La Maison de Rendez-vous, Brussels, 2020, Everything is Here, Misako & Rosen, Tokyo, 2018, Impossible Things, Institute for New Connective Action, Seattle, 2017, Invincibles, Capital, San Francisco, The Suburban, Milwaukee, both 2015, The Paradise [37], 2012 and Pavilion, 2009 both at The Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Concentrations 54: Matt Connors and Fergus Feehily, Dallas Museum of Art, 2011 and Makeshifts and Endpapers, Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, 2008. Recent group shows include Equation: Günther Förg and Fergus Feehily, June, Berlin, 2022, A Minor Constellation, Chris Sharp Gallery, Los Angeles, 2022, Particularities, X Museum, Beijing, 2021, Painter Painter, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis and Why not live for Art? II - 9 collectors reveal their treasures, Tokyo Opera City Art Gallery, both 2013. Feehily’s work is included in the collections of The Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, Dallas Museum of Art and An Chomhairle Ealaíon /The Arts Council.
Glenn Fitzgerald works in painting, print, collage and concept , has an MFA from NCAD Ireland and has exhibited in Ireland, UK and Germany. The work addresses topics in art production, dissemination and the art market such as ideologies of rarefication, hegemonies, issues of social class, quality hierarchies, ownerships, authorships. Also of interest are post-humanisms, queerness, , capitalism and mental health, science-fictions and cosmology, micro and macro worlds, piracy and d.i.y.
Sarah O’Brien’s studio research includes folk art, shamanic and ‘outsider’ art traditions. The paintings are densely layered over the course of their production, taking on a sculptural form with glues and papier mâché. As such embedded in the paintings is the arc of their making. The large scale of the recent paintings offers a grand space to sustain words, (partial, reversed, upside down); to be read as active or incidental communication, decorative elements or inscrutable glyphs. As counterbalance to the esoteric references of mysticism and shamanism the work is grounded in low-grade, quotidian materials and neon hues, offering a serious recognition of contemporary disconnection from nature and overproduction. The painting as a healing practice is physically manifested in the layering of canvas strips, like gauze, then mended or bound with paint. The paintings take on a near corporeal vibration. Sarah O’Brien, Cork 1980. MFA Painting NCAD 2007. Lives and works in Kinsale, Co.Cork. Recent selected shows include: NEW LIGHT, Lewis Glucksman Gallery (2020), RHA OPEN 2020 (Invited Artist), PERIPHERIES Open 2019, Gorey Art School, Gorey, Everything is in everything, Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Wish Me a Wonder, Waterford (all 2019) and STREAM PROJECT, Limerick (2018). Sarah O’Brien’s work is in the collection of the Office of Public Works and has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland and the RHA.
Tanad Aaron (né Williams), b.1989 Stuttgart, is a visual artist based in Dublin, Éire. Tanad works with material production processes, linguistic theory and architectural form and is a co-founder of Forerunner, a collaborative visual art and architecture practice. He is the recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award 2021, Fire Station Studio Award 2019 and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios 3 Year Membership 2020. Recent exhibitions as a solo artist include core is concrete, Catalyst Arts 2022, Where is George Bulfin?, Glandwr 2022, Been in my Body for Ages, Fruit Shop 2022, Portico with Mark Swords, Complex 2021, Before the Rest (edited by Kathryn Ashill) Glynn Vivian 2020, Ask the Dust Rua Red 2019, Staring Forms Temple Bar Gallery 2019. Tanad has been an Associate Artist with Grizedale Arts since 2017 and is currently in a mentorship with artist Céline Condorelli.
LUCY ANDREWS/ HANNAH FITZ / KATIE WATCHORN
19 AUGUST - 03 SEPTEMBER OPENING RECEPTION: 18 AUGUST
Lucy Andrews’ work takes the form of sculptures and site-specific installations. It explores the point at which cultural and natural systems meet, and then collapse. The artist proposes an ambiguous materiality, which seems to fluctuate between the organic and inorganic, the grown and the made, the living and the dead. Recently she has been working with dust, soot, rocks, plastic, silicone, water, bitumen and aluminium. These materials are combined and transformed to produce dynamic arrangements in which their fundamental nature, as well as the idea of nature, is tested. Lucy Andrews graduated from NCAD in 2011 and completed her Masters at the Sandberg Institute, Amsterdam, in 2016. Recent exhibitions include Recess at Artlink Donegal (2021), Woman in the Machine at Carlow visual (2021) and Outgrowths at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2019). She was artist in residence at the Bemis Centre, USA (2018) and Est-Nord-Est, Canada (2020) and has been the recipient of several awards including the Arts Council of Ireland bursary and the DCC bursary.
Andy Fitz works primarily with sculpture, making inexact versions of figures, furniture and familiar objects. Made in series and painted in a faded, near-monochromatic spectrum, their work reflects back a departicularised version of the world in which actions are disjointed, light and shadow have form, and gravity seems less in control. Their sculptures are carefully constructed, but reject sleekness for a finish that is deliberately crude and scrappy, articulated by curling lines and uncertain wobbles. Human figures become uniform and featureless everymen, like the figurines on top of trophies, while clothing and household objects seem animated, teetering towards one another as if in communication, inhabiting a shared universe that omits us. There is a playfulness to their work, but also a sense of unease: these ambiguous sculptural forms appear suspended in time, acting more like images than objects.
Andy Fitz has had solo exhibitions at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Douglas Hyde Gallery’s Gallery Three and Kerlin Gallery in Dublin; and L21 Gallery in Mallorca. Recent group exhibitions include Elvira, Frankfurt; Spoiler, Berlin, (all 2021); Portikus, Frankfurt (2020); Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda; Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius (both 2019). Residencies include: RHA’s Clare Island Residency in 2021, International Studio and Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, New York, in 2019 and the Sommer Akademie Paul Klee Zentrum in Bern, Switzerland in 2015. I am represented by the Kerlin Gallery,
Katie Watchorn graduated from the National College of Art and Design in 2014 and is currently based in Amsterdam. Katie was a resident at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in 2019 as part of their 1000 programming and an artist-in-residence at Fire Station Artists Studios, Dublin 2019 - 2022. She is a 2023 - 2024 participant of De Ateliers, Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include Get Away From It All (2022) at Leitrim Sculpture Centre, Zero Grazing at Studio Pavilion as part of Glasgow International 2021 and From Here to There (2021), The Douglas Hyde Gallery.
SEAN LYNCH / LAURA NÍ FHLAIBHÍN
13 - 27 JANUARY (2024)
OPENING RECEPTION 12 JANUARY (2024)
Laura Ní Fhlaibhín completed her MFA at Goldsmiths in 2019 and her BA at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin in 2013. She is currently exhibiting at ‘Open Source, Belmacz, London and ‘World’, Green on Red Gallery Dublin. Recent exhibitions have included, ‘Tulca’ 2021,’Trailblazer’, Pallas Projects 2021, ’Society of Nature’,OnCurating, Zurich 2021, ‘Meet; Gorey School of Art 2021, ‘Gargle’, RAW labs, London, 2020, ’Róisín, silver, rockie’ solo show at Palfrey Space, London 2020, ‘Caol Áit1/2’, 126 Galway 2020, Burren College of Art, Ire land, 2019; Deptford X, London, 2018; Tulca, Galway, 2018; ‘Water jets were used on the four corners of the building’, Newington Art Space, London, 2018; ‘a speech that showed the chair in the middle’, Enclave, London, 2018; ‘Dodeca gon’, Space Union, Seoul, 2017; ‘Lamellae’, The Lab, Dublin, 2016. She was the recipient of the Goldsmiths MFA Graduate Almacantar Studio Bursary Award 2019, and Next Generation Bursary, Irish Arts Council 2020. Laura was awarded Arts Council England award, Developing Your Creative Practice, 2021, Visual Arts Bursary Award Irish Arts Council 2021, and Agility Award 2021.
Sean Lynch (b. 1978, Kerry, Ireland) is an artist living in Askeaton, Limerick. He was educated at the Stadelschule in Frankfurt. Alongside representing Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015, prominent solo exhibitions include Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019), Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017), Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2016), Rose Art Museum, Boston (2016), Modern Art Oxford (2014), Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane (2013). He has completed public art projects in Melbourne, Dublin and Belfast.
Sean works alongside Michele Horrigan at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, enabling over a hundred artist residencies, site-specific projects and publications to be made in southwest Ireland since 2006.
The Complex is proudly supported by the Arts Council of Ireland & Dublin City Council
For further information and images: contact Mark O’Gorman, Head of Exhibitions
mark.ogorman@thecomplex.ie / 085 1433 858