Tadhg Ó Cuirrín—Lift Yourself

Pallas Projects/Studios are pleased to present Tadhg Ó Cuirrín—Lift Yourself the fourth exhibition of our 2019 Artist-Initiated Projects programme.

It isn't hard to see, ooh
The hangups we have today
Said we need to strive for more liberty
Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on

...and I was thinking of a mountain that was once an ocean.
Wait, what?  No.

There are other worlds (they have not told you of)

My dad used to tell me you could see Hybrasil from our house on a fine day.  My mom reckoned it was only Mt Brandon. 

I read somewhere the last day that there's a moving island made of plastic in the Pacific Ocean.  A kind of plastic Hybrasil.  Every colour, every shape.  Opaque, then translucent. Beautiful and terrible.  A monument to our own intemperance and our love of convenience.

Do you think you could go there?  Like is there enough to walk on?  Mountains and valleys and so on.  Ups and downs, peaks and troughs.  I could stand and watch the hollow hills expand and contract like a pair of lungs in a Junior Cert science experiment.
The sounds fall in to my mind.  Like rustling.  Like breathing.  The lungs of the world.  World of the lungs.  A big bag of slippery lungs. 

There are other worlds.  (They have not told you of)

I've always believed I could see things other people couldn't, ya know?  Elements falling in to place.  A design.  A shape in the chaos of things.

I mean who knows man?  What is the diameter of the earth?   Why is the earth not a cube?   Where are we really?
You don't know right?
I'm just asking questions.
I just want to hear all sides of the story.
What if they're lying to us?

¯\(ツ)/¯ 

Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on
Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on
Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on
Lift yourself up on your feet, let's get it on

Lift Yourself is a series of small watercolour works on paper that draw inspiration from the omnipresence of plastic as a material and a symbol, conspiracy theories, the mountainous landscape of northern Việt Nam, consumerism, the weather, the Crystal World and Mount Analogue, environmentalism, and Kanye West.

Event

Biographies:

Tadhg Ó Cuirrín is an Irish visual artist and teacher based in Hà Nội, Vietnam. He received an honours degree in Fine Art, Painting in the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2009. He works in a variety of different media, has exhibited somewhat widely in the past, and has worked for a number of artist-run spaces and organisations. His work is interested in the strategies we employ to make sense of the often bewildering world around us.
www.tadhgocuirrin.com
www.instagram.com/tadhg.o
www.instagram.com/christthesunonthosesaturdays

Shane Finan is a visual artist from Sligo, Ireland. He holds BA in Fine Art from IT Sligo and an MSc in Interactive Digital Media from Trinity College Dublin.
Work including painting, sculpture, mixed media installation and interactive digital media in indoor and outdoor spaces. Projects engage with community, place and technology. Works influenced by the places where they are made, and by the social and cultural aspects of these place. Proud to be a member of Visual Artists Ireland, the representative body for artists in Ireland, and a constant source of support and information. www.shanefinanart.org

Artist-Initiated Projects at Pallas Projects/Studios is an open-submission, annual gallery programme of 10 x 3-week exhibitions taking place between March and November 2019, in the context of a gallery space with a dedicated tradition towards the professional development of artists in a peer-led, supportive environment. 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.

Artist-Initiated Projects aims to act as an incubator for early careers, and support artists' practices at crucial stages, providing a platform for artists to produce and exhibit challenging work across all art forms. The model of short-run exhibitions with a relatively short turnaround time of 3–6 months is an alternative to the normal institutional model, where the process of studio visit to exhibition can take several years. Shorter lead-in times allow the programme to be quick and responsive, reflect what artists are currently making, and encourage experimentation and risk-taking.