Collection - Work from Hopscotch Exhibition

Hopcotch 2015

Participating gallery artists: Annika Berglund, Michelle Byrne, Conrad Frankel, Hugh Cummins, John Fitzsimons, Jordi Fornies, Jason Lowe, Eoin Mac Lochlainn, Yanny Petters, Kelly Ratchford, and Adrienne Symes.

This group show was further exhibited in the Olivier Cornet gallery from 17 December - 13 February 2016.

My latest work revolved around letting my chosen materials speak in their own voice. For the Collection series of work, this was literally coming true. I was working on another series of work and found myself getting fascinated by the small bits of clay that were cut off to be discarded. I kept picking them back up, and started putting them up in a row on the shelf in front of where I was working. This line of small pieces kept drawing my eye. I started thinking of them as miniature standing stones, or monoliths. The collection grew over the next few weeks, and reminded me strongly of how we collect things as children; something small and insignificant may catch our interest and we collect, arrange and display our collections. This can be buttons, pebbles from the sea, or moshi monsters.
This collection was a start and I made several series of clay monoliths, some of various colours, some of a single hue. It fed into some larger pieces, where I felt I could play with concepts like little-big, also a factor in children's toys and play. Finally I wanted to see how my monoliths translated into other materials, giving them a new voice and means of expression This added glass and bronze to the collections.

Selected pieces were accompanied by stories written by a group of young writers reacting to the works. This was in collaboration with Fighting Words, a creative writing centre established by Seán Love and Roddy Doyle in 2009.

David Cluff (age 16) wrote a piece inspired by Collection I-III that I found very moving and evocative and added a new dimension to the work even for myself.
Thank you David.
Click here to read David's piece.