SORCHA MCNAMARA | «Lapses»
27 Junho 2024 16h00
SORCHA MCNAMARA | «Lapses»
27-28-29 June 2024, 16:00-20:00
Free entry
Free entry
Sorcha McNamara uses painting and its expanded physicality as a conduit to explore the relationship between the felt, embodied materiality of things and more calculated, methodical systems of thought.
During her time at Zaratan, she began a long-term process of reflection, recycling and excavation of her most recent work, while engaging with material encounters - both physical and subtle - in the urban ecosystem of Lisbon. She thought about the verb 'to lapse', which means both to fall from a previous level or standard, as well as to pass gradually or smoothly into something. She thought about the multiplicity of meanings placed on words, and by extension their inevitable meaninglessness, failures, and absurdities. Entirely by chance, she came across and resonated with the work of Vitor Fortes, a relatively obscure Portuguese post-war painter, whose work has been described in terms of '...algebra music...the most extreme variability of open structures within the greater regularity and continuity of systems.'
For this public event, Sorcha presents a site-specific installation/intervention taking place in the gallery corridor. Working with spontaneity and improvisation allowed her to generate material with a sense of openness and possibility. She responded and adapted to already existing conditions of the space, with the intention of guiding viewers towards a heightened state of consciousness, drawing attention to a sense of presence, absence, gesture, and the motion of making something.
During her time at Zaratan, she began a long-term process of reflection, recycling and excavation of her most recent work, while engaging with material encounters - both physical and subtle - in the urban ecosystem of Lisbon. She thought about the verb 'to lapse', which means both to fall from a previous level or standard, as well as to pass gradually or smoothly into something. She thought about the multiplicity of meanings placed on words, and by extension their inevitable meaninglessness, failures, and absurdities. Entirely by chance, she came across and resonated with the work of Vitor Fortes, a relatively obscure Portuguese post-war painter, whose work has been described in terms of '...algebra music...the most extreme variability of open structures within the greater regularity and continuity of systems.'
For this public event, Sorcha presents a site-specific installation/intervention taking place in the gallery corridor. Working with spontaneity and improvisation allowed her to generate material with a sense of openness and possibility. She responded and adapted to already existing conditions of the space, with the intention of guiding viewers towards a heightened state of consciousness, drawing attention to a sense of presence, absence, gesture, and the motion of making something.
BIO: Sorcha McNamara is a visual artist living and working in Mayo, Ireland, and other places. She holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration at IADT Dún Laoghaire (2024) and a BA in Fine Art - Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019). Previous solo exhibitions include ‘Fathomless Arms’, Ballina Arts Centre, Mayo (2023); ‘(dis)attachments’, The Hyde Bridge, Sligo (2022) and Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin (2022). Her practice has been supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Mayo County Council Arts Office. Sorcha has previously undertaken residencies at Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2024); Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (supported by Ormston House, Limerick and the Artist-Run Network Europe project, 2022); Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021); and PADA Studios, Lisbon (2020). Collections include The Office of Public Works, Dublin; The Hunt Museum, Limerick; as well as private collections in Europe and the UK.
Sorcha works as a painter, or more accurately as a maker of things. But even ‘maker’ isn’t really the right word. It’s too organic, too suggestive of the handmade, or the nobility of a craft. Instead, she is more of a conductor, a composer – the person in front of the orchestra waving their arms about, whose function and purpose you may question, but you know they are important for the stability of the whole piece.
Her intention is to tenderly transgress what painting is, or can be - specifically with a view to dismantle how it is framed, structured and positioned in any given space. As a painter, her transgressions often take the form of making low-tech, site-responsive interventions in space, using found or reclaimed material, while employing varying degrees of gestural agency and authorship in the process. She is interested in how painting, as a form, can enter networks outside of itself. How it can move, change, transform its material potential and infiltrate alternative systems of thought, while remaining in the realm of the still, mute object.
Sorcha works as a painter, or more accurately as a maker of things. But even ‘maker’ isn’t really the right word. It’s too organic, too suggestive of the handmade, or the nobility of a craft. Instead, she is more of a conductor, a composer – the person in front of the orchestra waving their arms about, whose function and purpose you may question, but you know they are important for the stability of the whole piece.
Her intention is to tenderly transgress what painting is, or can be - specifically with a view to dismantle how it is framed, structured and positioned in any given space. As a painter, her transgressions often take the form of making low-tech, site-responsive interventions in space, using found or reclaimed material, while employing varying degrees of gestural agency and authorship in the process. She is interested in how painting, as a form, can enter networks outside of itself. How it can move, change, transform its material potential and infiltrate alternative systems of thought, while remaining in the realm of the still, mute object.