Past student of Art in the Contemporary World, Susan Connolly will present a series of new works which explore the physical qualities of paint extending our understanding of contemporary painting.
The Mac, Belfast
Sunken Gallery
9 May – 22 June 2014
Mon – Sun 10am to 7pm
Opening Thursday 8th 7-9pm
Painting as a mode of tactile production is designed to be consumed primarily with one’s sight; so at first glance these paintings appear to represent surfaces which have been flagrantly abused; their distorted supports, cut away paint, stained surfaces casually hung, placed onto armature like tragic trophies of some catastrophic event.
Yet it is a deliberate and what is actually a very delicate and systematic examination from within the canvas that informs and produces these critically engaged works. This is achieved by confronting the ‘problem’ with painting by incorporating its very destruction into the work itself.
These paintings mirror the scuffed, scratched, and beaten surfaces of living, they tell stories from within the processes of the painted history. By not being limited to the wall bound traditions associated with painting, questions of surface and support lead to answers of volume and the paints new status as an object, as they protrude and project into the viewer’s physical space.
Susan says of her practice “Most of my studio work comes from time spent looking; considering and questioning much of what I see, read or experience in relation to making objects. I think it is a very exciting time to be thinking about painting, with all the rhetoric of ‘death’ within the medium proving sheer nonsense again and again.”
Susan Connolly was born in Dublin, studied at Limerick School of Art and Design (BA, 1994-1998), The University of Ulster at Belfast (MFA, 2000-2002) and The National College of Art and Design (MA, 2011-2013).
Recent exhibitions include; Three Degrees of Painting, 2013 ‘Airport for Shadows’ at The Cross Gallery, Dublin, 2011 ‘Constellations’ at Visual, Carlow, 2011 and ‘Connections’ at Red/Rua, Dublin, 2010.
themaclive.com
susanconnolly.com
IMAGE: CYM, MYC, YCM, Acrylic paint, medium gel, pine stripwood, mirror, 2014