Qualia Dublin—SPACE/s

SPACE/s is the first major group show from Qualia Dublin, featuring work from five of the group's nine members.

The artists from Qualia who are exhibiting include Paul Rosser, Laura Skehan, Sarah O'Keeffe, Ciara Donnelly and Siobhan O'Connor. All are Third Year Fine Art students from DIT Grangegorman, and have been working over the past year to bring together their ideas and curate a show which exhibits responses from researching how we engage, visualise, activate and re-create space. How do we define space? How definite or temporary is space? How do we respond to the constant transition within a space? All are questions asked within Qualia Dublin's work.

The artists work in a range of media, creating links between the works and the act of looking, attempting to engage the audience in a conversation surrounding contemporary ideas regarding space.

Qualia Dublin is an artist collective comprised of Third Year BA Honor Degree Fine Art students. Through a common interest in artistic tradition and a desire to explore the possibilities of contemporary art, the collective formed in June, 2014. All study at DIT Grangegorman, and through their work and their bi-monthly art and culture magazine, they aim to engage with the public through their ideas surrounding contemporary art and culture.

Paul Rosser deals with the transitional nature of our experiences with the architecture of spaces. Through interactive performances and installations, Rosser's work tries to convey a sense of how the space within which we are placed affects us, and how we, in turn, affect that space.

Laura Skehan works with video and sound to examine our environment and how transitionary space has an influence on the artist. She uses movement and gesture to elaborate on these ideas, and attempts to demonstrate the impossibility of capturing a moment through the editing and rearrangement of primary source material.

Sarah O'Keeffe activates a space through installation and attempts to look within the concepts of today's lifestyles and challenge what is the accepted 'norm' in particular societies.

Ciara Donnelly investigates possible compositions and perspectives of digital landscape photography independent of the original landscape itself. She attempts to produce possibilities of perspective by layering prints and physically combining different compositions to create a new sense of what space is.

Siobhan O'Connor's sculptural work and drawing explore the modern methods of construction through structured forms and space. The layering of tension, suspension and balance within structures are key research elements in her work. Her drawings are both a method to discover potential construction problems, as well as works in themselves.

Qualia Dublin website