Deliverables

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Deliverables the second exhibition of our 2022 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

Deliverables is a remote collaborative exhibition project by Alex Keatinge, Bronagh Gallagher, Dáire McEvoy, Ellen O’Connor, Lorcan McGeough and Olivia Normile. Our exhibition is, among other things, the story of a postal package, an experiment in communal art making, and the celebration of a collaborative structure built over the course of one year, spanning across the Atlantic ocean.

In April of  2021, six early career artists initiated a remote collaborative exhibition project. Our physical locations are varied; Ellen is in Montreal, Bronagh in Donegal, Lorcan in Wexford, Alex in Kildare and Dáire and Olivia are in Dublin. The project evolved through weekly virtual studio sessions on various platforms; email, discord, zoom, google drive, and experiments on mock exhibition websites. We discussed what it means to produce a collaborative exhibition, ideas of remoteness and exchange, physical versus virtual collaboration and the sticky combination of formality and creativity within group work.

We decided to make physical our virtual back and forth - and started a postal exchange. On the 10th of May an order was decided. The first artist sent a ‘whisper’ of their practice to the second artist, who responded to the work, adding and expanding to the contents, and then sent it on to the third artist, and so on. After 131 days, the package ended its travels with its return to the first artist, who unboxed it via a live stream with the entire group.

This exhibition houses 6 works, one from each artist, developed collaboratively through virtual workshops, after our package completed its journey. These new works bring forward various ideas that emerged in our postal collaboration, reflective of our conversations surrounding its outward existence. Collaborative work acquisition is examined, texture is given to our timeline and communicative tensions and questions of ownership and emotive response are connected. Virtual, real world and imagined aural landscapes are entwined and the layers of our material process are celebrated. Response and exchange form the crux of our project, the fruitful to-ing and fro-ing of our shared words, sounds and shapes.

Walter Benjamin's 1931 essay Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting where he describes unboxing his collection of books in a single day, seems to ring true in relation to our project. Benjamin explains that a library is not just a collection of books (any more than an exhibition is just a collection of art works)—but that the sense of order is “a balancing act of extreme precariousness” that reveals itself as “a dialectical tension between the poles of order and disorder.” Benjamin then goes on to narrate aspects of this tension—names, places, memories, stories. A book is always for Benjamin more than a book; even its acquisition, as much as it's writing, has a history.

Deliverables aims to reveal some of the complexities of the ways our collaborative exhibition came into being. How its acquisition can be reflected in new works that respond to both the contents of our postal package, and what its existence itself has unearthed. The work we have made is unique to each of us, but importantly ingrained in the work of each other and in the story of the process we have structured around us.

deliverables website | @deliverables_

Event

Biographies:

Alex Keatinge is a Visual Artist working across sculpture and photography. With mould making and photography being key tools in her practice, her work often explores the commonalities between the two and draws upon the intrapersonal and the material extended self to create objects that pace the line between knowingness and uncertainty. Keatinge lives and works between Kildare and Dublin. She is currently supported by the Arts Council Agility Award (2021).

@alexkeatinge 

Bronagh Gallagher is a Donegal based artist working through various technological means. She considers and merges digital relationships, technology and the natural world. She explores the virtual potential of real world spaces and objects. She is interested in how we map realities in physical, natural and virtual spaces. Adaptive scale, elements of surprise and user interactivity are key components to her works. Her work often can be viewed through a digital screen, while sculptural elements may accompany the installation. Over the last year, she has been honing her skills in Augmented and Virtual Reality production.

@bronagh.gallagher

Dáire Mc Evoy is a Dublin based visual artist working in painting, photography and installation. He holds a BA from IADT in Visual art practice (2017) and prior to that was involved in community based workshops in the Highlanes gallery and Nexus arts in Drogheda. Using his photos to capture and document urban life as a visual language, he then integrates the aesthetics and concepts of graffiti to his paintings. His work is generally portrayed in strong, bold, and bright colours with fun whimsical titles.

@the93mc

Ellen O’Connor is an Irish artist who works across moving image, photography, paper works and text. O’Connor graduated from The Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT)’s BA in Visual Art Practice in 2018 and is currently based in Montreal, Canada. Her practice is concerned with enacting documentary processes across various factual and fictitious narratives. Her work reflects her interest in hybrid storytelling, duality, and rehearsals. She investigates locations, literature, myths or histories that bring various documenting techniques into conversation. Her moving image work is essayistic, narration being a consistent element of her realised works.

ellenoconnorart.com | @ellenoconnnor

Lorcan McGeough is an artist living and working in Wexford, Ireland. A graduate of the Art program in IADT, he has exhibited sonic sculptures nationally and internationally since 2017. His work is an exploration of the self through the use of the senses, particularly the sonic. Our hearing is an essential part of how we unconsciously navigate and perceive our environment; when we listen we become one with the heard, this thinking very much informs his practice. These works are not just functional objects which manipulate sound, they are spaces or conditions of seclusion and reflection in which to ponder upon the work itself: Sonic forms which cause a separation between the participant and their surroundings as they experience a change in their acoustic environment.

Olivia Normile is a Dublin based artist working predominantly with drawing, sculpture and film. They graduated from The Institute of Art, Design and Technology (IADT)’s BA in Visual Art Practice in 2018, and have since been involved with various artist-led organisations across Ireland. Her work considers human, non-human and imagined worlds through collecting opportune experiences and structured moments. This work has been supported by the Arts Council Agility Award (2021).

www.olivianormile.com | @olivia_normile

Deliverables, 2022.

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 8 x 3-week exhibitions taking place from March-November 2022. This unique programme of funded, artist-initiated projects selected via open call is highly accessible to artists, with a focus on early career, emerging artists and recent graduates. Projects are supplemented with artists' talks, texts, workshops or performances, and gallery visits by colleges and local schools.