The Project Twins

Visual Arts

2021- 2022

The Project Twins are James and Michael Fitzgerald, an Irish based collaborative art duo. They work across a broad range of disciplines including painting, print-making, design, illustration and three-dimensional work.

The Dock commissioned The Project Twins to create a new body of work called ‘Empty Slogans’ which consists of a series new work of eight hand painted banners. Presented in a straightforward and stark visual language, the work portrays a series of corporate slogans and taglines taken from some of the world’s largest polluters, which include a number of oil, coal, and food companies. These phrases can be seen in glossy ad campaigns, corporate branding and social media hashtags.

Reminiscent of protest banners, the work deconstructs the language of corporate ad campaigns, stripping back the glossy sheen of advertising. The black text, set in Futura Bold, sits alongside angry face emojis, flame and globe icons to create a playful sense of absurdity. The work takes a cynical and wry look at greenwashing and the language that companies use in the age of a global climate crises.

The Project Twins are a Cork based collaborative art duo. Their practice is multi-disciplinary, spanning painting, print-making, design, illustration and three-dimensional work. They have exhibited in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Glucksman Gallery, Cork and TULCA, Galway, with works held in the permanent collections of The Glucksman Gallery, UCC, OPW and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, USA. Alongside their fine art practice, they regularly produce editorial illustrations for an array of international newspapers and publications. Their work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, TIME and The Economist amongst others. With a focus on politics, economics and social work, they produce concept driven illustrations which responds directly to the themes within the articles. They are interested in the crossover of disciplines and how they can influence and inform each other.
www.theprojecttwins.com

Empty Slogans was exhibited at The Dock from June 3rd to 20th, 2022

About the Artist(s)

The Project Twins are James and Michael Fitzgerald, an Irish based collaborative art duo. B. 1982, they both received a BA (Hons) in Visual Communication from CIT CCAD 2005. They work across a broad range of disciplines including painting, print-making, design, illustration and three-dimensional work.

Humour, irony and wit pervade their work while bold and playful graphics explore ideas of absurdity, identity and the mundane. Their work presents various dualities between the serious and the ridiculous, the melancholic and the joyful. The Project Twins work together through a process of dialogue and sketching, continually reducing forms to their most basic elements. Their use of minimal forms and graphic shapes are rooted in the visual language of signs, symbols and pictograms. This universal language can be found in various systems of propaganda and control to communications and way-finding.

Recognisable and simple shapes are used as a way to build their own visual lexicon or graphic language, appearing to directly communicate while also retaining a sense of ambiguity, allowing for interpretation and inquiry.

They have exhibited in the Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Glucksman Gallery, Cork and TULCA, Galway, with works held in the permanent collections of The Glucksman Gallery, UCC, The OPW and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Georgia, USA. They have completed several large-scale public and private art commissions. Currently they are working on a permanent public art piece for Luisen-Gymnasium as part of KunstKommission Düsseldorf.

Alongside their fine art practice they regularly produce editorial illustrations for an array of international newspapers and publications. Their work has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times, TIME and The Economist amongst others. With a focus on politics, economics and social work they produce concept driven illustrations which responds directly to the themes within the articles. They are interested in the crossover of disciplines and how they can influence and inform each other.