Na hOibreacha/The Works

Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork.

 

 

 

 

About the work...

 

This body of work deals with the history of the Crawford College of Art & Design, looking at the differences between the original use as a Municipal Technical Institute and now, where it facilitates Irelands up and coming artists.

 

The images used in the projection, It Came and Went in the Blink of an Eye, have been taken from the CMIT Prospectus, which document each student that graduated from the college when it is was previously the Technical Institute. The prospectus became one of the main points of reference for my work.

I wanted to find a way of documenting our year-groups time here in a way that let them also interact with my work. To achieve this I referenced the colours of 6 prospectus and recreated them in glazes, then offered each of the 62 students graduating this year the choice of one colour, which was then applied to a unique vessel. The result of this interaction is the collection titled, Prospectus (2014).

 

The Cog Sketches reference one of Cork and Ireland’s most famous sculptors, Seamus Murphy, as there are three of his plaques on the entrance to this building. Cogs and gears feature heavily throughout his work and so in highlighting this, I wanted to acknowledge his work as both a sculptor and a past pupil. The Cog Vessels are then derived from these quick sketches. These are part of an interactive installation, which uses the projection as an animated form of surface decoration that is constantly changing.

In the series Ground Floor Vessels, even though they are facing the stage with the original floor plans of the college, they feature elements of the modern day college filed into their rims. By displaying them on the drawing boards I am also highlighting the subtle traces of past artists and students that would have stood at these easels many years before.