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MART Annual Awards Exhibition 2021

Opening Event: 4th August from 5-7pm

Live Performance featuring Lily O’Shea, Amber Deasy and Eibhlís Beirne at 6pm – booking link below

Runs: 5-14th August 2021 | Wed-Saturday | 1-6pm at our MART HX Studios Gallery.

VENUE NOTE: While our main gallery is being refurbished this exhibition will be held at our MART HX STUDIOS GALLERY,  18A Greenmount Lane Harold’s Cross Dublin, D12 C953

*Book here via eventbrite for limited Free tickets to see the live performance at 6pm. To avoid disappointment please reserve place as we have max capacity of 15 people in line with government restrictions

MART Annual Awards Exhibition 2021 

MART is delighted to present our Annual Exhibition Award 2021 featuring work by Lana May Fleming and Lily O’Shea. 

Lana May Fleming was selected from the MART / Fingal Graduate Award call out in 2020 and successfully received a 1 year studio at MART studios alongside curatorial and financial support for the exhibition and Lily O’Shea was selected as a recent graduate of CIT Crawford College of Art & Design. 

The exhibition has been curated by Ciara Scanlan with the aim to provide a showcase and support opportunity to emerging artists whose work is both engaging and experimental. 

The exhibition is kindly supported by Fingal County Council, CIT Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork, the Arts Council Ireland and The MART Gallery & Studios.

Lily O’Shea https://lilyoshea.wordpress.com/ 

All That is Solid Melts examines the term ‘precarity’ and reflects on changes occurring in workers’ labour processes. It considers the impact of precarious work which refers to all forms of flexible, contingent, and insecure employment.

The performative and sculptural work fixates on the circumstances of a precarious person who is often subjected to unstable modes of work which lack an occupational narrative. This type of labour is characterized by burn-out experiences, work-life imbalance, and a general lack of time. All That is Solid Melts attempts to articulate the materiality of precarity by locating each element within the ‘work-in-progress’ – a parallel temporality committed to working towards an undetermined horizon. This intends to initiate a conversation surrounding the trajectory of a precarious person who is often unable to know anything about their own future.

Lily O’Shea (b. 1997) is an artist and writer based in Cork concerned with political questions surrounding the contemporary labourer. Lily’s work utilizes performance, sculpture, and text to expand on the materiality of precarity while foregrounding various anxieties endured by the modern-day worker.

Lily is currently a graduate resident at 126 Artist-Run Gallery, Galway, an associate member of Sample-Studios, Cork, graduate resident at Backwater Artists Group, Cork, and recently completed a desk research residency at The Guesthouse Project, Cork. Recent group exhibitions include; a passive house, a publication initiated by Cork based curator Ali O’Shea involving artists Fiona Kelly, Dori O’Connell, Mary O’Leary and Lily O’Shea (2020); Rhetoric Degree Showcase, Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork, Ireland (2020); Villa the End, Berlin Gallery Weekend, Charlottenburg, Germany (2019). Recent writing include; ‘Laggard’, a text featured on The Paper website, The Paper, (2021); ‘Collaborative Survival in Precarious Times’, a text featured in Hypertext (Issue 06), Bloomers Magazine, (2020).

Lana May Fleming https://cruxproject.net/artists/lana-may-fleming 

To eat is to feel satisfied, to hunger is to seek satisfaction. This starving of desires often culminates in the personification of food. The primal want of fullness becomes intertwined with a primal searching for sexual satisfaction. The tantalising internet mogul co-exists with the stylized ‘food-porn’ that flaunts us on our instagram feeds. However, they do not ‘feed’, they leave us starved. Here a phenomenon of ‘food’ grooming exists; these ‘cyber Aphrodites’ productise their beauty, we eat it up. They work in a factory of sameness, which we strive to replicate. Mirrored in the food industry alike; grown to be appealing. They are the ugly carrots that Marks & Spencers won’t sell, as they are not appetising. Like our dinner, we’re becoming GMOs.

Lana May Fleming is a visual artist based in Dublin, with a focus on installation, video, sculpture and performative practices. In her work scenarios are created drawing a blurred line of familiarity in re-imaginations of the mundane and fantastical. Her work animates symbolic hybrids of food products and productised women. Bodily forms transgress from clay to screen; as both the objects and the body are performed their separation becomes blurred, mirrored in food grooming and beauty grooming alike. We are grown to be appealing. She is a recent graduate of the Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology BAArt programme. In November 2020 she was awarded the IADT/Pallas Projects Mentorship Award and in December 2020 she was awarded the Fingal Graduate Residency Award with Mart Gallery and Studios. Recently her work has been shown in PhotoIreland Festival 2021, Pallas Projects/Studios and Dublin Airport Control Tower for Culture Night 2020. She is a co-founder of crux.project, an experimental curatorial platform which recently held an exhibition at Rathmichael Ringfort Dublin.