A Knowing Nature

Group Show

30 January — 12 March 2016

About the Artist(s)

Cliodhna Timoney graduated with 1st Class Honours from Visuals Arts Practice in IADT in 2015. Recent exhibitions include Quantum Leap FIS Tullamore, IADT graduate exhibition, The Beholders Share IMMA, Have A Nice Life, Helsinki, An Awkward Encounter She is currently working at 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway, and was recently a Fire Station Sculpture Award 2016 and will take up residency in May 2016.

Chanelle Walshe graduated from NCAD in 2010. Recent exhibitions include not life / necessarily at NCAD Gallery Dublin, 2014 (2 person) and Copernicus and other systems at FLOORONEGALLERY, Temple Bar Gallery and Studios Dublin, 2013 (solo). Previous group shows include PANORAMA curated by Chanelle Walshe and Kathy Tynan at Pallas Projects Dublin 2015, Future Perfect The Hugh Lane Dublin City Gallery 2013 and On Departure The Golden Thread Gallery, Northern Ireland 2010. She has undertaken residencies at The Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin (2015) ,The good Hatchery, Co.Offaly (2011) and at Werk.Stadt.Laden, Dresden, Germany
(2013).

Phill Foley’s practice employs drawing, painting, writing and image-gathering to create two dimensional works that draw the viewer in. Through the process of making, Foley considers images and ask questions about their status, as both everyday experiences and objects of possible aesthetic contemplation.

Born and raised in the Netherlands, Anita Groener moved to Dublin in 1982 for a year. So she thought. One year grew into a life time, making Dublin her home. She was elected a member of Aosdána, the prestigious association of Ireland’s pre-eminent cultural producers. Until 2014 she was a lecturer in Fine Art in TU Dublin where she also served as the Head of Fine Art from 2004 to 2006. She is currently a member of the Public Art Committee of the Grangegorman Development Agency (2014-2021) and the Arts Council of Ireland Collection Acquisition Committee ( 2019-2020) . She holds a BA in Fine Art from Moller Institute and an MA in Paining from the de Hogeschool, Arnhem, the Netherlands.

Marking a surface, as a system of communication, has lost little of its relevance today; the means may be more varied but the essence of the act remains fundamentally unchanged. Julie Merriman’s work is a continuation and a disruption of this process. It examines the history of mark making in the context of drawn, written and programmed language. Using present-day and historical data as research material, she investigate modes of inscription, replication and transmission.

A Knowing Nature

Julie Merriman, Chanelle Walshe, Phil Foley, Cliodhna Timoney and Anita Groener

What raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language.
Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests

This exhibition brings together the works of artists at the middle and early stages of their careers. The common line that encircles them is an individualistic, focused, and determined pursuit of a personal artistic language. The exhibition looks purely at that pursuit through drawing, painting, sculpture, and installation. Artists included are Julie Merriman, Chanelle Walshe, Phil Foley, Cliodhna Timoney, and Anita Groener.

The works by artists Julie Merriman and Chanelle Walshe includes the use of archival materials to research histories, and through conversations with various experts, they explore the conventions of various drawing and painting languages. Merriman responds to the many languages of architecture, engineering, science, cartography and mathematics and examines how drawing is used to impart specific information. Walshe structures her visual language through documenting, drawing, and painting. Her work is influenced by ideas about consciousness, unconsciousness and in-between states of being. Her interests lie in the self-destructive and regenerative qualities of both earth and man.

Phil Foley started his career as an animator, he is a member of Galway based Itsa Collective. His interests are in drawing, history, and documentation.

Cliodhna Timoney’s drawings can be seen as an accumulation of data and languages deriving from a number of sources, such as the history of painting and pop culture. Her objects and sculptures are extensions of these drawings. She uses overlooked materials in an attempt to translate the drawings and transitory nature of the drawings into a sculptural setting.

Anita Groener was selected to participate in the Facebook AIR (Artist In Residence) Programme and has completed a commission within the company’s European Headquarters in Dublin. Ideas of home and displacement within modern geopolitical realities drive her artistic enquires. She makes paintings, monumental site-specific drawings, film, and animations that she exhibits internationally.