Anna Moloney, Burt Pidgin, Zsolt Basti, Salvator of Lucan, Daire Lynch, Kata Kukla, Meabh Hennelly, Niamh Hughes, Enda Burke, Jack Knowles, Ciana Firzgerald, Clara McSweeney.
- Anna Moloney,
- Burt Pidgin,
- Zolt Basti
- Salvator of Lucan
- Daire Lynch, Ties that Blind, oil on canvas 20x20inch, 2019
- Kata Kukla
- Niamh Hughes
- Meabh Hennelly
- Enda Burke
- Meabh Hennelly
- Enda Burke
- Kevin Judge, Bugz
- Chess Table series by Jack Knowles, Black and White photography
- Ciana Fitzgerald
- ‘Leftovers’ by Clara McSweeney, Cyanotype on paper and fabric dye.
- Ciana Fitzgerald
- Kata Kukla
Anna Moloney
Anna Moloney is Irish artist from county Meath based in Dublin. She studied Ceramic Design in the Limerick School of Art and Design (2013), Digital Animation Production in DkIT (2017) and Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship in TCD (2020). Anna also has a background in Creative Therapy running pottery and painting workshops in nursing homes and special needs centres since 2016. Anna is currently a member of the Complex Studios in Dublin’s Arran Street East.
Statement:
My practice of visual storytelling combines elements of the natural and the supernatural, the surreal and the real. I use mixed media to illustrate fantastical narratives that reference local folklore, ancient myth, and social and environmental issues. My work has many influences, including, popular culture, internet culture, classical art, women’s studies, and the natural landscape.
In my current body of work, I explore the possibility of access to another dimension through the bodies of water in my local bog. Over the course of the last year, while isolating in the area where I grew up in Co. Meath, I spent a lot of time exploring and reconnecting with my local bog, Emlagh bog. I have become very interested in the bog as a place where life and death co-exist simultaneously, and how somewhere can be so serene and at the same time have so much danger in its physicality. I have become fascinated by the bog’s transformative nature and by the history and secrets that it holds.
This series of work mixes fantasy with everyday societal and environmental issues. In this project I visit different alternative realities and reference the folkloric Celtic Otherworld. My work looks at the portrayal of women in folklore and mythology and the evident misogyny in the modern-day retelling of certain stories.
Zsolt Basti
Painting, for me, is not just an image. It is more like a collection of memories, flashbacks and traces from my childhood, even recollections of recent events. I find it difficult to describe these thoughts as they are closer to vague sensations and feelings that particular scenes or associations provoke in me.
More info about Zsolt Basti at https://www.instagram.com/zsoltbasti18/
Burt Pidgin
Burt Pidgin was born of that sludge found in the mid-land bogs of Ireland. Graduating from Limerick School of Art and Design with a BA in Printmaking and Contemporary Practice, Burt is no longer proficient in anything print or even contemporary. After this exploration into the schooled arts, Burt ventured to Vancouver, where he bluffed his way into being an artist production assistant for a few years before returning to Ireland. Where he now works out of La Cathedral Studios in Dublin.
It’s been 18 months since Burt sipped on a pint with their friends. Longing to worship at the altar of Dionysus, once again. The absence and presence of human interaction is a near-constant wavering thought. It is in this flux that we find ‘The Inability to Properly Convey a Point’. Burt uses portraiture as a means of storytelling. Each portrait holds the treachery of images. A congruence of personal and third part narratives. Themes of failure, longing and trickery are played out in a swashbuckle of vibrant colouring.
The underlying thesis within the show is the representation of idols. Specific interest is placed upon the very human instinct of idol fabrication. The fundamental faults in the ability to recollect and retell stories. The ongoing cycle of identity narrativization. Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The creation and modelling of idols that we inhabit. However, something is always obtuse. Askew.
As we interoperate our past selves through the lens of our present, we determine which of our past selves we were. In turn, new idols are constructed. This takes the form of sculptures, paintings, and mixed media as a means of communication. Shaping their own story between viewer and artist. Personal, singular. Familiar but wrong.
It’s just a real pity Burt can’t tell a story to save their life.
Salvatore of Lucan
Salvatore of Lucan is from Lucan. He is of mixed-race: half Bangladeshi and half Irish. He was raised by his mother, a single parent who lives with her mother, and his younger sister. He mainly makes work about his own life; often figurative domestic scenes. He always wants to represent himself as accurately as possible. Throughout his life, he has been asked where he is from, and has always replied ‘Lucan’. This is why he has recently decided to call himself Salvatore of Lucan instead of Salvatore Fullam.
https://www.instagram.com/salvatoreoflucan/?hl=en
Daire Lynch
Dáire Lynch is a Dublin-born artist who currently resides in WestCork.Born in 1980, he is a self taught painter, though he studied drawing in BCFE, Dublin. He also is a qualified sound engineer and multi-instrumentalist. Dáire has featured in several online exclusive shows with the Zhou B Art Center ,such as ‘Adorn me’ and ‘Figurative Realism’ and published in the associated issues of PoetsArtists magazine , Gormleys fine art,Dublin. His work has also being featured in group shows in RJD Gallery, New York , Abend Gallery, Denver, Colorado, Rehs Contemporary Galleries, New York and Crucible Gallery.
When not painting or creating, he can be found in the wilds of Connemara, be it woods, lakes, or the powerful Atlantic Ocean. He recently became the Alpha in a pack of wolves, by showing no fear, tenacious attitude, and willingness to fight for meat.
Kata Kukla
Kata Kukla is a visual artist based in Dublin, born in 1986 in Rybnik, Poland. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice, Poland where she majored in painting with profes-
sor Kazimierz Cieślik. Her master’s Fine Arts Exhibition displayed series of oil paintings
‘Fetishization and Phantasmagories of the City’ as well as an exhibition of 20 screen prints pieces which formed a map of the organic development of the urban tissue.
Kata’s artistic works exemplify contemporary surrealistic explorations of biological organisms, botany and all areas of human existence, combining seemingly mismatched elements and symbols in the creation of her canvases.
Using retrospective and digressive techniques she accumulates information from her personal experiences to compose a map of irregularly connected thoughts, as well as the eects of physical pains, mental torment and suering on those thoughts. In her
work, she also uses multimedia, print and creates installations which allow her to comment on the current state and anxieties of the global aairs. For a short while she has cooperated as an Artist in House of AKI-NA, started working at the project about integration of Refugee in Ireland.
Niamh Hughes
Niamh Hughes creates fantastical artworks that evoke a jocular menace. Her work is often symbolic of the delirium and existentialism that comes with finding one’s identity within a phantasmagorical time and space.
Currently, Hughes has particular interest in large scale painting. This work is quickly finding ways to become more immersive within a space, being designed to expand to walls, floors, and ceilings. The painted figure and it’s interaction with eclectic objects offers a sense of topology within the abstracted spaces. Concepts and narratives are fully fleshed out with the use of a range of processes and crafts combining analogue with digital to produce surreal paintings, moving image and costumes. Previous artworks have ranged from large scale 20 metre installations to art pieces of minute intricacy. Her practice is based in material exploration and many works are created with repurposed and recycled
materials. Scraps and excess are re-used and re-imagined into new work, leaving nothing to waste.
This imaginative visual art is inspired by a broad set of influences, from the likes of Rachel Maclean to Chloe Early. This is a practice that indulges in extensive research and utilises constant reflection to forward and enhance the work.
Méabh Hennelly
Young Dublin artist, Méabh Hennelly, from Stillorgan, Co. Dublin, has been selected through an open submission process to exhibit her photographic artwork in the prestigious 191st Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) Annual Exhibition. The RHA Annual Exhibition is Ireland’s largest and longest running exhibition of visual art. The show, running this year from 27 September to 30 October 2021, attracts large critical and public audiences, with sales upwards of €500,000 in 2020 (www.rhagallery.ie). This year a total of 3900 artworks were submitted to the open call from which just 323 works were accepted and will be exhibited throughout all gallery spaces at the RHA.
Méabh’s piece ‘When She Photographs Him, no.1’ has been selected to be part of this year’s RHA Annual show. The artwork refers to the idea of a woman as the photographer and a man as her subject, inverting the age-old trope of the male artist and his female muse. Taking inspiration from photo books such as ‘What She Wants: Women Artists Look at Men’ by Naomi Salaman (1994), she takes a considered, sensitive approach to this dynamic and the inherent power balance that exists between the photographer and the photographed. This series takes a reflective approach to a long-standing preoccupation with the human figure in visual art. The images were shot in extreme low light conditions, capturing outlines and glimpses of a male body. Inspired by collage art, historically an analogue medium, she took that style into a digital format and deconstructed my images, pushing them visually by altering the colour and opacity as well as cutting and cropping to create an atmosphere and mood in the photographs that are suggestive of warmth, intimacy and eroticism. The way the model was shot, the angle, his poses suggest a closeness, a sensuality, a comfort with the photographer.
Méabh Hennelly is media artist based in Dublin, currently completing a BA in Fine Art Media in the National College of Art & Design (NCAD). Méabh makes her art largely through 2D mediums, such as photography and video as well as web-art. She has had her work shown in Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin 8, in August 2021, the Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda having been shortlisted for its inaugural open submission/Janet Mullarney Prize 2020 and the 8th Annual Signal Open Exhibition in the Signal Arts Centre, Bray in August 2020.
Méabh attended secondary school in Newpark Comprehensive School and went on to study sociology and politics in University College Dublin. Méabh decided to take time away from UCD feeling unsure of whether or not it was actually what she wanted. Not sure what to do next but feeling drawn to art she attended the Liberties College, Dublin, studying ‘Art and Craft in Professional Practice’. This gave her the foundation to then apply and be accepted into NCAD, where she specialises in media art and is now a final year student.
‘When She Photographs Him, no.1’ is available to purchase as a Limited Edition print through her website http://www.meabhhennelly.com, along with artwork from her ‘When She Photographs Him’ series.
Enda Burke
Enda Burke is a Galway based photographer hes work was the recipient of the Bartur photo prize and Lens Culture home 21’ It has also been featured in the Guardian, Rolling Stone magazine and a host of other International publications.
The work on display at circuit is part of a ongoing series entitled ‘’Small town Big ambitions’
‘‘Our hometown is often labelled the ‘graveyard of ambition’ I wanted to explore why that is and offer a different perspective
I wanted to utilize colour, vibrancy and youth and pepper the project with catholic iconography seeing as Catholic imagery is still commonplace in our city
Exploring beauty in the mundane the series is a mixture of portraiture and street photography and features predominately friends and family. portraying how Colors can become marvels in monotonous settings’
Kevin Judge
Kevin Judge is an artist from Dublin, Ireland. Since graduating from NCAD in 2018 with a BA in Fine Art, he has been making paintings from his studio in Dublin and exhibiting work across Ireland. His work often deals with contemporary issues through traditional figurative painting techniques and primarily concerns self-portraiture whilst creating surreal often humorous scenes.
Jack Knowles
Chess Tables is a black and white project focusing on explore the skating culture and community in Dún Laoghaire. The series sets to examine the communities’ rich range of age, backgrounds, style and community. It uses still life, portraiture, and action shots to achieve this.
Ciana Fitzgerald
I am an Irish surrealist-realism painter and experimental video artist. Both my mediums of paint and film influence each other equally. Avant-garde film is a major influence on my painting work, each premeditated brushstroke on canvas relaying its own particular message through ambiguous symbolism, just as I would construct the mise en scène for filmic sequence.
My painting practice focuses on bridging the gap of modernism to fuse old with new, recalling technical command aspects of the Old Masters but with a distinctly contemporary unease. Each work is highly staged and ambiguous, charged with psychological tension. I use found images or my own photographic sources, in which I arrange the model, props, lighting and composition so that they are painting ready, adding a cinematic dimension to the work.
When I paint, I’m interested in telling stories of experiences that are both personal and universal. I don’t want my figures to be of specific individuals, they’re archetypes, so I blur or erase their faces or they look away. They become general characters, like figurative insights into a human condition. I want to generate a direct emotional connection with my audience by illuminating the collective feelings that dwell in every psyche, sharing my deeply personal experiences and the emotions that encapsulate them, emotions that are simultaneously universal. By taking something that at first seems everyday and familiar, but then to deconstruct it like a scene from an alternate universe where alien rules apply, the subject matter’s unconventional compositions and cryptic narrative enable the audience to derive their own personal meaning from the work. I’m constantly aware of the possible effect on the viewer throughout the process of creation, the psychological impact of my work is what’s most important to me.
This way of constructing a scene is also how I work in the medium of film. I prompt it to acts as a visual diary, projecting intimate parcels of self-reflection into details of current social concern, working perceptively to construct surreal worlds as intuitive responses to our world’s personality. Through film I explore forms of interpretation through manipulations of structure and reminiscent details, observing and illuminating the obscured ‘familiar,’ turning the everyday into the unexpected.
Historically, I have been influenced by performance artists of the 70s such as Valie Export, Vito Acconci, Chantal Akermann and Maya Deren. Protagonists of extraordinary cinema Andrei Tarkovsky, Bela Tarr and Michelangelo Antonioni have provided significant inspiration for my film work, whereas painters such as Mircea Suciu, Ruprecht Von Kaufamnn, Edward Hopper and Adrien Ghenie have influenced my painting practice.
Clara McSweeney
Clara McSweeney is a recent graduate from Fine Art Painting and Contemporary Practice at Limerick School of Art and Design. She received the Innovation in practice award 2020 for her degree show body of work. Clara is an active member of Limerick Print Makers and Miscreating Sculpture Studios Limerick. She is currently studying a postgrad in Cultural Event Management in IADT Dun Laoghaire.
‘Leftovers’ was created during a two-month stay at PADA studio and gallery in Barreiro Portugal. During this residency, Clara was drawn to the Companhia Uniano Fabril (CUF) indusial park, an abandoned chemicalfactory where PADA studio was based. Clara did severalwanderings around the space and each time she was drawn to many objects that were leftover from when the factory closed in the 70s. These objects included resin, iron sulphite balls, rubber, metalobjects, wire, plastic objects, and rocks. These objects were used as artistic tools to create several cyanotypes works. The climate in Barreiro Portugal was perfect for exposing these pieces. The scale of these works wasinfluenced by the tiles that cover buildings throughout Lisbon and Barreiro.
Circuit Arts Festival 