Our poster!

Exhibition Artist statement.

This sound work explores the theme of boundaries. I recorded the sound of the crowd of two bordering county teams during a hurling match. I found the primal guttural noise intriguing.

Just thought I'd put up the names of some of the artists I've been looking at lately...Amar Kanwar, Wang quinsong, Qin Ga, Ruben Ochoa, Nina Katchadourian, Simon Patterson, Grayson Perry (really cool)..

So finally I recorded the hurling match after a lot of procrastinating, the match was between Kilkenny and Tipperary- two bordering counties. I had a great time and the sound from it turned out great! The sound of the crowd had a tendency to rise and fall when excited by something happening, this sounded really gutteral and primal almost as if they were all so engrossed by what was going on they couldn't control the noise that came from them. I decided to focus in on this and use it to give people the experience of being there of the sound of the excitement causing this deep feeling of excitement, of slight anxiety maybe? I was using the sound for a multimedia project and cut and pasted all the rising and falling sounds of the crowd together then did a little bit more editing. Now i'm using it for my class exhibiton which is on tomorrow in this cool place called Stix in Limerick! I'm really excited about the sound and the exhibition, I'm just crossing my fingers it all goes well because we're all getting a little bit more than stressed at this point trying to get everything done! P.S.: Sorry about the lack of pictures lately I'll be putting some up of the opening night soon!

While I was thinking about the previous idea I started to research the different wars that occured in Europe over the past two hundred years and bloody hell I never knew there had been so many! I was researching them so I could have more knowledge about the different borders of these countries when layering them and changing them for reworking the wire maps idea, looking at maybe changing them in terms of what would have happened if a certain war had ended differently. Because there were so many wars it was hard to think in terms of these when messing around with the different borders of the countries, in the end I knew it probably would come subconsciously anyway so I just started to mess around with the different shapes without thought. So I had drawn out the individual countries on aseotate in black marker and used a projector to really examine the effects of messing about with them and layering them. I decided to put up a large sheet of paper and draw out the projection onto them but once I did that I didn't know what to do with them. I liked them but they were so plain. I haven't really done anything with them since but I've been thinking of using them to do a print project i've just hit a bit of a wall with the european countries thing.

We started doing a sound seminar every week learning about soundscape and sound artists and sound equipment and it started giving me ideas about what I could do with the sound piece I had discussed with Mike. I'm a big follower of hurling and I thought it might be interesting to record the sound of the crowd of two bordering counties who were playing each other at a hurling match. I was thinking of having one person among one crowd of supporters and another among the other crowd recording what one said about the other or something like that I wasn't exactly sure of what I'd come out but I was excited about it. I was thinking that really its the closest thing you get to war among these two counties and people get very passionate when at these matches.

My artists statement

In my work I have chosen to explore boundaries. Under this vast theme I am, at the moment, looking into country borders involving in europe and county borders involving Ireland. I'm researching peoples feelings on where they live and the invisible but ever present borders around them and how they affect them. I'm exploring these themes in my work through sound and simple lines.

Ok so at this point it was after christmas I was getting feedback from my assessments which went well thankfully but I was told I should get more tutorials from other tutors-fine. But this became a kind of a problem because the more tutorials I got the more different ideas I had to work with and the more confused I got about what i was doing and where I was going with it all. One of the ideas I was working with were, from Mike (one of my tutors), to look into language and cultural issues and we started discussing county borders which I was already starting to look into. I talked about a conversation I had with my dad about where the kilkenny border ends and waterford begins which is actually very close to waterford city. Anyway we talked about doing a sound piece based on these kind of converastions and peoples feelings about where they live and their bordering county. One idea. Next I was speaking to Roisin, the drawing tutor, she suggested I explore the idea of the wire maps a bit more in maybe a different medium such as aseotate and marker which would be quick and easy as she felt that it wasn't easy to tell they were countries. She suggested to look a bit more at rivers and mountains which can sometimes be the outline of a border. After that I had a group crit where we spoke about the photos of the canteen and making it into a video, about maybe colour coding groups and about reserching tribes- associated values, power struggles, violence and collective mentalities. So it all got a bit confusing..the problem was that I loved all the ideas and suggestions mostly so I tried to take them all on and got into a bit of a muddle which I still feel like I haven't dragged myself out of yet.

I have found another idea that I should go back to which is making me realise how helpful doing out this blog has been, though I hope no one thinks bad of me for my obvious impatience and forgetfulness. So the idea was to give people a piece of chalk and get them to draw out their own country and to take a picture of it and amybe to make up their own laws etc. I wanted to see if people argued over places and how big the area would be, things which have started wars in the past. I will do this, I promise!

At this time i was looking at artists such as Magdalea Jetelova, Patrick Raynaud, Thomas Struth and Frank Thiel.

After christmas I started thinking about going back again to the idea of seperating up the canteen but doing it without tape but with a projection of lines instead. So I did a bit of research on where I would put the lines and why by taking a picture of the canteen every five minutes so as I could see where people were sitting and how they were moving around the space. I have already put up a few of the pictures I had, if you want to look at them they are way back when I started this blog. Anyway I was going to do this out then maybe as a video piece as the research had become more interesting than the actual idea I was planning to do but in the end I had to wait a while to learn how to do it out as a video and I became disinterested as seems to happen a lot to me!Possibly has something to do with my fast moving tv generation..

Around this time I was taking a lot of photos of my area, especially of things which I thought represented boundaries. I got a little carried away because I think around where I live is beautiful but I hope you like them.

After that I started thinking about things like owning a field and watched the film The Field, for anyone who doesn't know it it's about this man who was renting a field from a widow for the past 10 years or so the widow decides to sell it at auction and its bought by an american, the farmer isn't happy as he feels very strongly about the land that he has taken care of for years and does anything to get it back. In his want for keeping the land he loses everything else, even his sanity. So really i was going back again to the importance of ownership and how strongly people can feel about these things. I was thinking about field patterns and ownership of airspace and the sea the fact that these things are moving and ever changing yet countries claim ownership of these things, of nature itself and try to control them.

Okay so during a group crit ( where we all sit around telling each other what we are doing at the moment and give each other constructive criticism and suggestions) it was suggested that with these black squares that they become my own country which was what I was thinking and that I work them like a country as in they have their own laws, own flag etc. So I started thinking that I would base these laws on my own morals and this is what I came up with:

1. Thou shalt not kill
2. Thou shalt not steal
3. Thou shalt not commit adultery
4. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours goods
5. Treat your neighbour as you would like to be treated yourself- this last one is the most important to me as really it covers all bases- stealing, killing, adutery..

The punishment for breaking these laws is to be cast out of the country.

I was really interested with the way they all came out of the ten commandments, that wasn't intentional at all. I was brought up a catholic so I suppose thats so embedded in me that it can't help but stem out.

I'm calling my country 'The golden land' as my name in Irish means golden princess, or-laith. I was thinking the flag could be gold with a black cirlce in the middle representing unity and peace.

I started thinking that maybe the country didn't need to be a place but a state of mind and the citizens of the country would just wear a symbol to show where they are from kind of like the star of david was for the jews but obviously not so they could be persecuted! But then does it become more like a religion or a cult?I may need to explore this a bit more..

ps I will put up the pictures I took of the black squares around my area so you get an idea of what i'm thinking.

Another idea I had was to use the black tape again but to use it to make squares on the ground in public places so as to appropriate that space and say 'this is my space I own this'. I came up with idea from researching the changing boundaries of different countries, I was taking note of the fact that some rulers of a country would just decide that they wanted to own this land from another country and would plot and take it over. I wanted to take on the same style of appropriating land. I did try this idea on a small scale around the area where I live but to be honest I didn't really have the confidence to do it where I wanted to do it in towns and cities. I was afraid of being embarrassed but now I really want to make myself do this idea not only to have it as a piece of work but to force myself to come out of my comfort zone, though many might think that I'm not venturing very far outside but for me it would be a big step towards opening myself up to doing things in the public eye and not leaving things within the college.

So from here I started thinking about doing more physical interventions in a public space like I did with the wooden pallet, making people walk around something putting things in their way and so controlling their movements. I was looking at artists such as Richard Serra at the time. I started thinking about using large wooden poles (like smaller electric poles) and maybe casting them as I'd really gotten into casting things. But as these things go I went onto other ideas and put this one to the side, I'm thinking about going back to it though if I can though I might use other materials but with the same basic idea of controlling peoples movements.

I'm having problems putting up the pictures of the layouts I did with the cast but as soon as I can i'll put them up!

For our course we had to do classes in different things such as welding and casting so we could maybe generate ideas from knowing how to do these things and of course to expand our skills so I decided to cast my wooden pallet. Obviously I couldn't cast the whole entire thing so I decided to cast one plank and one wooden block and put them all together in the end. It was really interesting doing them as they turned out like the wooden planks and blocks just painted in white especially when alot of the wood splints would come out in cast. In the end I didn't put it all together as the casts weren't very strong and would fall apart when you tried to put nails through them. Amanda (my tutor) recommended that I try laying them out in this white bright space in the college so I could learn about how important a space can be to a piece of work in terms of how the work is presented. so I started trying out different layouts, different positions, I was really surprised at how much I enjoyed just working with the space I took loads of pictures but I'm only going to put up a few examples..

I decided then that I wanted to do something physical to put up an actual boundary something that would stop you in your path so I decided I'd use a wooden pallet to block peoples way. I don't really know why I decided on this object I think it was because they can be very large and heavy and so not very movable also I was thinking along the lines of it representing a fence which was originally what I was going to do, put up a long fence. I wanted to experience how people were made move around it and then to take it from there.

I started thinking about putting black lines, like I did in the sculpture area, everywhere all over the limerick city but being honest I kind of chickened out of that one but as you'll see later I did come back to it in some way shape or form.

What I was also looking at was the changing borders of eastern countries. I was interested in these as they had changed so many times over the past century that I felt that it underlined the idea that these borders, these lines have no real importance but at the same time I knew that they had every importance to the people living in these countries. I decided to do a wire piece which outlined all the europen countries I layered them over and over making the outlines of europe and the countries larger and larger so it had this kind of cobweb effect. when you look at the piece you can't make out which country is which, which then removes the importance of these borders.

Ok so from there I started thinking about seperating up a large populated area, such as the canteen which you've seen pictures of earlier; I wanted to do this so I could really see an obvious effect, I wanted to examine where different groups sat, I wanted to seperate them up in terms of discipline ie: fashion, ceramics, painting, graphic design, sculpture and print, outlining their differences. But as things go I wasn't allowed to do this as the black tape would make the floor sticky or something like that.

Boundary, Boundaries: a boundary is a line that seperates an area from other areas.

Limitation, bound, border, fence, size, joint, extremity, grammer, bisector, bordering, final.

restriction, limiting, restraint, discipline, qualification, small space, confine, edges, outlines, fringes, perimiter, imprisonment, siege, blockading.

"If you work as an artist you destroy yourself. The more you work the less you exist...its easier to make art than to live." Christian Boltanski

I began at the start of this academic year with a quote from a book which we were asked to read for our course over the summer, it was by Jimmy Carr, the comedian, on the analysis of jokes, comedy and its origin. The quote I chose was "A joke is anarchic, a little scrap of chaos from beyond the boundaries of the rational, a toe dipped in the shallow end of anti social behaviour." I chose this quote because I could easily see a connection to what has been happening within art in the past century and what this quote was saying about jokes and jesters, artists are always trying to step outside the boundaries that have been set before them and are and have been seen outside the rational, showing sides of anti-social behaviour. But instead of exploring this completely vast theme my tutor advised me that I narrow it down to just the word boundaries and to look into that, so I did. I began looking at all kinds of boundaries from personal to physical and became fascinated with the idea that some boundaries are just simple lines or just an invisible line, yet they have the same importance as a giant wall so to get me started I did this line down the middle of or studio, to physically half it and to see what happened from that.

This was a quick two day project about what changes may occur in the future. Leading from my earlier project about people becoming just numbers I decided to make my face into a barcode the idea was that people would be scanned so as to determine who they were, for example going to the airport you wouldn't need a passport they would scan your face.

This was a piece I did for a project about exploring the body and the self. It is a plaster cast of my body which I later filled with the amount of water that my body was made up of and tried to vibrate that water in the cast with the sound of my footsteps ie:me using up energy.