John Graham Talk


The artist John Graham will be discussing his current exhibition Phase, which is running at the Green On Red gallery, this coming Friday (October 26th) at 5pm. The exhibition has been running since the 12th of October and is described as follows on the Green On Red website:

John Graham’s practice has its foundation in drawing and printmaking. Through a combination of autographic and mechanical process his formally reduced works unite non-representational imagery with metaphorical content. Process based actions give evidence to a contradictory sense of the haphazard and an unwaveringly austere graphic style is offset by a desire for openness and intimations of vulnerability.

His works using sound and video projections include, Projections/Plans/Elevations (Location A), 2006, a site-specific video projection that conflated the sites of production and presentation. An interest in film and the history of cinema informs Returning the DVD, 2007, where a journey to the DVD store becomes a meditation on film and how its formal devices become implicated in everyday life. The multi-channel sound and video installation, Opening Sequence … , 2008, was made specifically for the Green on Red Gallery with real and staged events being filmed and replayed within the gallery space.

An open-ended project, List, 2008 –, began with a sculpture containing a list of names. Evolving to become a host structure for a series of engagements with those listed, it provides a framework for an artistic strategy that reconsiders the emphasis on the subjective centre (the individual artist) in art making. (see www.johngraham.ie)

Other works have included social interactions, Eight Hours Project, Project Arts Centre, 2010, A Catalyst Taxi (with Rachel Gilbourne), Five Lamps Festival, 2010, and curatorial projects, Invisible (with Margaret O’Brien and Oliver Dowling) for the Black Church Print Studio, 2010, and Studio, for Formwork Studio, 2011.

Graham’s most recent work has seen a return to printmaking as a primary means. A series of large etchings, ‘Abat-Voix’, contain starkly reduced compositions exploring fundamental characteristics of the etching medium. “An etching is a trace of destruction – the acid destroys the material it encounters – a history of process evidenced by its ruins”.