MART Gallery & Studios – Providing Creative Platforms
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Los Angeles and Dublin
July-September 2015
Curated by: Matthew Nevin
Dominic Thorpe, Liam O’Callaghan, Margaret O’Brien, Katherine Nolan, Terence Erraught, Eleanor Lawler, Francis Fay, Aidan Smyth, Olga Criado Monleon, Kayleigh Forsythe, Marie Farrington, Róisín de Buitléar, Gearoid O’Dea, Grainne Tynan, Ida Mitrani,Patricia Douglas, Karen Vaughan, Christina O’Donovan.
“Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No, it’s deep in our minds. It’s a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky, will be with us and our descendants for as long as the human race exists.”
Denis Dutton – A Darwinian theory of beauty – Nov 2010 – Ted Talk
Curator Matthew Nevin of the Irish Visual Arts organisation MART invited 18 emerging and established Irish visual artists and designers to take part in ‘Instinct’ – a cross disciplinary exhibition showcasing work in three Los Angeles galleries: Santa Monica Art Studios Gallery, The Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and Hive Gallery, and one Irish: The MART Gallery.
“My recent curatorial research has brought my attention to artworks created through various creative processes. By engaging with artists that are responding to the idea of instinctual and personal artistic representation and production I wish to open up perhaps sometimes a confrontational visual argument with the viewer. I have collated a series of artworks that question the role of instinctual art production. These artists strive to develop their ideas through experimentation and use of formal creative training. The exhibition focuses on the process of visual art making and design in order to achieve a collective approach in analysing the current formation of art; its patterns, imagery, performative practices and digital responses artists are making.” – Curator Matthew Nevin
The exhibition aimed to celebrate and build a greater international awareness and appreciation of Irish visual art and design excellence. By building the profiles internationally it began a foundation for future development, exposure and opportunities of Irish Designers & Artists working in California and the wider USA.
