2nd Symposium on Digital Art in Ireland, UCC University College Cork - 13th & 14th June 2024

‘The Lady of the Lake is Hiding in the Expanded Field’ by Sarah Iremonger 2024

Abstract:

Is it possible to be an artist in a world where everything is watching you as much as, or even more than, you are watching it? The 1981 film Excalibur by John Boorman, filmed at Powerscourt Waterfall, provides a wonderful analogy of what it's like to be an artist navigating digital technologies in the 21^st century. A loss of situatedness leads me to wonder if I am the sword ‘Excalibur’ embedded in the stone waiting to be released, to be plucked from the dilemma of the past so that a heroic potential can be realised and put to use, only to be broken, thrown into the depths of the lake (or in this case the pool at the bottom of Powerscourt Waterfall) and lost, once more to be rescued again as new and held on high by the Lady of the Lake?

Art is key to unlocking realities through the imagination, an apophenia making sense out of the noise. Painting has been a means of falling into our imaginations, reminding us that the act of experiencing is a creative act of imagination. In this paper, I will discuss ideas of representation and transformation in developing artwork through my practical and thinking processes, as part of my Horizons project. Taking George Barret’s 18th-century paintings of the View of Powerscourt Waterfall (he painted several versions - one is in the National Gallery of Ireland and another is in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool) as source material, to create drawings and paintings and develop digital 3-dimensional virtual landscapes exploring a sense of dislocation and disorientation in the situationless-ness in a data-driven digital era.

Image from film Excalibur 1981 by John Boorman

Arts Council Agility Award 2022-23 was awarded for the development of new text-based work Thinking Vessels (now Cantos) using notebooks collected over thirty years to explore ideas of reframing and reorganising text in the style of an epic non-rhyming stream-of-consciousness concrete prose poem revealing the process of creating in the artwork itself.

For the last three years and throughout the pandemic I have been working on a painting project Vessels, which was exhibited at the Oliver Sears Gallery this year (2022). During this process I kept a notebook of my thinking and process as part of a habit developed through a collaborative process with my late partner poet Derek Mahon, it was a way of sharing and exploring ideas as they developed. When he died in October 2020 it became the focus of a concerted effort to survive grief. This affected the way I wrote, which I would now like to have the opportunity to develop further, to write it up as a printed work. I have always kept notebooks and this is the first time I have felt that this process could be developed further into a text-based artwork.

This writing project Thinking Vessels (a meditation on the creative process) takes this process a step further with the production of a text work as an art project. It will explore the effect loss has had on my thinking, process and creative endeavour. This loss focused my mind, and when I reread my notes I could see and feel the effect it had on my writing. Though I do not talk about loss directly, there is a meditative feeling about the writing, focusing on ideas of being with an intensity I had not expected. My understanding of loss and life has been challenged.

As an artist, I have been able to channel my experience of loss into my practice and survive because of this habit of creating. Over the last six months, I have been reengaging with the art world through giving presentations, exhibiting, writing, making new work, applying for awards and working collaboratively with other artists. All of this practice has been slow and difficult, but it has also provided me with the possibility to move forward and exist anew.

In Residence III was an exhibition in a series previously mounted in Fitzroy Square, London. Taking place in the Pavillion Gallery at Cromwell Place, South Kensington, the exhibition runs from 20th June – 1st July 2023 during London Art Week.
 
In Residence III was a collaboration between Oliver Sears Gallery Dublin and Ting-Ying, a Hong Kong based ceramics and glass gallery founded by Peter Ting and is curated by Irish born London based Brian Kennedy. 
 
The exhibition features gallery artists and some key international artists. There are obvious echoes of East meets West as the Chinese artworks brought by Ting-Ying sit deliberately but easily with the stable of mainly Irish based artists from Oliver Sears Gallery.

Arts Council Collection 60 Years
12 November to 14 December @ Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, West Cork
A selection from the Arts Council’s Collection celebrating 60 years.
The opening event with Maureen Kennelly, Director of the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon takes place on Thursday 24 November at 2.00 pm. All welcome.
This exhibition presents a selection of work by artists who are based in or connected with Cork from the Collection going back over 60 years, celebrating the breadth and depth of the Collection as an archive of arts practice and resources across six decades.
The exhibition includes painting, installation, photography, sculpture and video by Katherine Boucher Beug, John Burke, Pat Connor, Maud Cotter, Dorothy Cross, Sarah Dwyer, Sarah Iremonger, Jesse Jones, Hina Khan, Rosanne Lynch, Kevin Mooney, Leanne McDonagh, Eilis O’Connell, Linda Quinlan, Vivienne Roche, Patrick Scott and Pádraig Spillane.

'Fragments in Constellation'
July 22 – August 1, 2022
Opening: July 22nd, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
O’Driscoll Building, Levis Quay, Skibbereen

Re:Group is an international collective of eleven visual artists, formed over Zoom
meetings during the last two years of the global pandemic. Initially brought together via online programming at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, we created an artist-led
collaborative space, in response to a time of isolation and challenging socio-economic conditions in our various locales. The artists involved are Jamie Ashforth, Lisa Blas, William Bock, Hazel Cardew, Seiko Hayase, Sarah Iremonger, Tomasz Madajczak, Kate McElroy, Mary Sullivan, Mary Ruth Walsh, and Tommy Weir.
On July 22, 2022, Re:Group presented 'Fragments in Constellation', a porous site for collaboration, experimentation and exhibition within the unoccupied O’Driscoll building, at Levis Quay. The artists in Re:Group are interested in community engagement and bridging the gap between the arts and the public at large. We designed a diverse program of events and invited the public to partake in workshops intersecting with photography, installation, performance, video / live feeds, sculpture, drawing and painting. We welcomed feedback and discussion in the gallery, by appointment and on Zoom, as an open window onto artistic process and collaborative making.

Darken our blinding light a bit
and turn the volume down so we can hear
ourselves thinking, if we’ve a taste for thought;
even now the obscure silences might survive
where an original thought can thrive.
Derek Mahon

Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to present Vessels by Cork-based artist, Sarah Iremonger, her first exhibition in the gallery.

Begun in 2019, these small-scale, meticulous compositions in watercolour emerge from a rigorous self-imposed system of image making. Taking the basic shapes of vessels in the form of silhouettes, from Turkey, Iran, North America, Sudan, Thailand, Pakistan and Syria that date back as far as 3,500 years, Iremonger uses cyan, magenta and yellow, picking out one pure colour for each vessel. By layering the vessels on top of each other, the overlapping intersections form new colours. This act of superimposition lends an appearance of a Venn diagram, the logical system devised in the 1880s by John Venn to express the relationship between sets. Iremonger says ‘The idea of the Venn diagram was an important development as it gave the work the possibility of a self-directed integrity, with an internal logic that 'generates the thing to be done' (Catherine Harty 2021).
 
It is clear that the interplay between these vessels which represent such a broad expanse of geography, politics and time is, itself an examination of multi-culturalism; how cultures evolve, influence each other or even remain isolated. As the series evolves, the works become increasingly complicated until the artist sets aside her rigid parameters. Individual colours are still visible but as fragments rather than blocks; colours as federalism ceding from nation states, perhaps.
 
And added to Iremonger’s visual considerations are the reflections she shared with her late partner, the poet Derek Mahon on the nature of reality. In Mahon’s essay Space-Time: East Cork in Red Sails, (Derek Mahon, The Gallery Press, 2014) he writes, “Seeing is believing (A New Theory of Vision, 1707); as we know, ‘to be is to be perceived’, both people and things. The often swiftly alternating sun-and cloud evolution characteristic of Irish skies….promotes a ‘now you see it, now you don’t cast of mind. At fanciful moments existence and non-existence seem to leave themselves open to question”.
 
Extract from Radiance in Washing Up, The Gallery Press, 2020. Sarah Iremonger received a Cork County Council Creative Artists Bursary 2022 towards this exhibition.

I have been awarded a Cork County Council Creative Artists Bursary Scheme 2022 towards the creation of new 'Vessels' work and exhibiting the work in 2022.

'I have been working throughout the pandemic on a painting project, ‘Vessels’ which, explores the idea of colour as a vessel of meaning. The project was first imagined as a sight-specific work exhibited at the studio of wood-turner Hillary Hale, in Kinsale, inspired by her bowls/vessels. I started to explore the history of vessels, how the shapes changed through the ages and their cultural identity from different countries worldwide, this became very exciting research. I devised a plan to reduce the vessels I found to simple shapes/silhouettes and settled on seven basic shapes from Turkey, Iran, North America, Sudan, Thailand, Pakistan and Syria, the choice was entirely aesthetic at this stage. I then started to superimpose the shapes one on top of the other and noticed that they suggested Venn diagrams.
 
The idea of the Venn diagram was an important development for this work. It allowed me to play with the idea of mixing the different vessel silhouettes in such a way that the paintings became self-directing. The basic colours are chosen, cyan, yellow and magenta, when mixed makeup all the other colours possible in the world. The colours suggested through the layering process of the silhouettes, in the form of Venn diagrams, the next colour to be used adjacent to the basic three colours. This process of development also inserted a political dimension/implication to the work. That of mixing cultures as they were placed one on top of another and through the mixing of colours at the points of contact with each other.
 
Like all painting projects, particularly with a series of paintings, the work then took on a conversation with itself and I became the facilitator of that conversation. I choose watercolour paint to make this work with as they offer a huge variety of colours to explore, and they dry quickly, so I can move on to the next painting, and develop the ideas in rapid succession. I have been collecting different watercolour paints throughout this project, with a view to mixing colours as little as possible, the idea behind this is that the companies who make artists' paints have already done a lot of research into the creation and mixing of the colours. Basically the less you tamper with or mix colour the more intense that colour will be. So an illusion of layering is created, while each colour is chosen and painted separately to create that illusion.'

Build Your Own Horizon is a site-specific, public participation project for Bealtaine Artist in Residence program at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, in association with Cork County Council, taking place during May 2022.
 
The horizon helps position us, and helps us know where we are and who we are, whether traveller, immigrant, local or refugee. Being situated helps us understand our reality. This is something we will all have to rebuild for ourselves again after the extensive disruption caused to our lives due to the Pandemic. I hope this project will be part of a process of reconnection and rediscovery of place.
 
Situated at Uillinn, this project will involve drawing workshops, one in May and another in June 2022, where participants will find ways to realize the views of the horizons through the windows at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre. We will take the time to contemplate the sense of place Uillinn occupies in Skibbereen town. A contemporary building rising up four floors in the centre of the town, it provides panoramic views of the town on several levels. This project will enable participants to explore the idea of the horizon as constantly shifting and ephemeral, depending on the position of the viewer. It will provide an opportunity for a reconnection between people, place and the Arts Centre.

Roots and Shoots participatory drawing event with Bealtaine artist in residence Sarah Iremonger Saturday 14 May at 12noon - 2pm, 2022 in association with Age & Opportunity

‘An Incandescent Connection’
 
A Studio Exhibition with three Kinsale artists:
 
Sarah Iremonger
Hina Khan
Éidín Griffin
 
26-28 November 2021
Opening Friday 6 pm-9 pm
Saturday & Sunday 12-6 pm
 
(O’Connell Street
Above Eskimo Pizza)
 
With special thanks to Kinsale businesses; Kinsale Mead Co. www.kinsalemeadco.ie and Kokos of Kinsale, artisan chocolate makers www.kokokinsale.com for their generosity and support.
---------------------------------
A Studio Exhibition bringing together the artworks of three artists based in Kinsale, Co. Cork, will be held during the weekend of the 26-28 November 2021. Their work explores issues of connectedness and community, immigration and ecology.
 
Sarah Iremonger will show a selection of watercolours from her ‘Vessels’ project, exploring ideas of cultural connectedness through shape and colour. The vessels used in this work have been sourced from different countries; including North America, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. They have been reduced to transparent silhouettes, superimposed one on top of the other and painted as transparent colour separation films, to resemble Venn diagrams.
 
Hina Khan’s art includes both intricately detailed miniatures to large community-based installations and collaborations. She believes that art has the power to connect cultures, create bridges and forge friendships. The delicate sensitivity needed to weave links and relate to cultural differences comes through in her careful works on paper in ink and watercolour.
 
Éidín Griffin has created a series of sculptural pieces using hand-gathered local seeds and recycled paper-based materials. As a seed saver and permaculture gardener, she uses her inspiration from observations of the hedgerows and coastal paths to create work that shares the abundance of ecological potential that surrounds us.  
----------------------------------
Sarah Iremonger was born in Dublin in 1965. Using a multidisciplinary approach of found, created and adapted images, including photographs, murals, paintings, drawings, badges, cards, digital media, videos and neon in her work. Early work is embedded in the romantic and modernist traditions, with epic implications. Later and recent works, include site-specific projects, which explore ideas of representation and how, as a hangover of the romantic tradition, representation perpetuates a scenario of our separation from the world around us, the nature versus culture dichotomy. By focusing on appropriation and adaptation of available material, this work is best described as a series of thought experiments through painting. By placing subject matter and personal artistic expression in the background, visual signifiers become hidden in a forest of post-representational camouflage.
www.sarahiremonger.com
 
Hina Kahn was born in Pakistan in 1980, studied there, and completed a Master's in Fine Arts majoring in Miniature Painting from Fatima Jinnah Women's University, Punjab, Pakistan, using a mixture of traditional and innovative techniques in Miniatures. Portraying social issues, about immigration, humanitarian crises like prostitution, gender discrimination, gender restrictions, trauma, child abuse & killing in my work. Choosing miniature, because of its intricacy and delicacy of brushwork which creates a unique identity. Hina’s work is a mixture of traditional and contemporary miniature, attracted by the graceful lines, rhythm and depth of colours in a miniature. Her work is the constant search for the best way to interpret the ideas expressing her ideologies through symbolism.
hinakhanartist@instagram
 
Éidín Griffin was born in Dublin in 1972. She is a seed saver, activist, maker and gardener. From creating hand-gathered and harvested seeded paper to evocative mixed media work she is enthralled by liminal edges and deeply concerned about our ecological crisis. Much of her inspiration comes from daily slow observation of local places. After many years facilitating food gardens and creative educational change-making with grassroots organisations in South Africa, she now engages with community initiatives such as Transition Town Kinsale. After a year of art at Kinsale College she is now studying eco-literacy with Dr Cathy Fitzgerald and finding ways to blend her hands-on action with an aesthetic approach. Creating positive, thoughtful change within her sphere of influence is a primary part of her ethos.
www.rebelseed.ie

Image: Submerged Horizon
2017, watercolour on paper, 49 x 66 cm

Multiple layered images of Skellig Michael, Star Wars / Storm Trooper and water camouflage, painted in the style of camouflage
Signal Arts Centre is celebrating over 30 years in existence with an exhibition in both Signal and Mermaid Arts Centres. The exhibition, entitled “Signal Arts Centre – 30 Years of Making” will open on Monday 29th March and will run until 24th April. Although the work will be hung in both galleries, the exhibition will be made available to view online due to the current restrictions.

First opened in June 1990 by a group of recently graduated artists, Signal is now entering its 31st year.  It was set up to provide an opportunity for other emerging artists to exhibit their work and to be a place of welcome and production for the many communities of Bray and North Wicklow. They aimed to establish an artist-run centre that would be a permanent part of the arts and local infrastructure. 
Since then, Signal has gone on to provide over 600 artists with a chance to exhibit their first solo show, to work with several resource centres, schools and communities of interest; to buy its building and to run a community employment programme specifically for those wishing to develop a career in the arts. It’s been some journey and it has been a privilege seeing many of those young artists become nationally recognised. 

The exhibition will show works by 30 artists selected from the 600 artists who have previously exhibited in Signal. 

Image: Build Your Own Horizon – Kinsale project, template for Build Your Own Horizon – Uillinn project. Ink on Card, scissors, 30 x 42 cm & variable, 2019
 
Updated Description March 2021
 
Build Your Own Horizon, a site specific, public participation project, as part of the Bealtaine Artist in Residence program at Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, in association with Cork County Council, was due to take place during May 2020. This project has been postponed until May 2022 due to the Pandemic, in the hope that we can once again meet in the Centre to create this project.
 
The horizon helps position us, helps us know where we are and who we are, whither traveller, immigrant, local or refugee. Being situated helps us understand our reality. This is something we will all have to rebuild for ourselves again after the extensive disruption caused to our lives due to the Pandemic. I hope this project will be part of a process of reconnection and rediscovery of place.
 
Situated at Uillinn, this project will involve drawing workshops where participants will find ways to realize the views of the horizons through the windows at Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre. We will take the time to contemplate the sense of place Uillinn occupies in Skibbereen town. A contemporary building rising up four floors in the center of the town, it provides panoramic views of the town on several levels. This project will allow the participants to explore the idea of the horizon as constantly shifting and ephemeral, depending on the position of the viewer. It will provide an opportunity for reconnection between people, place and the Arts Centre.
 
The drawings of the horizons made by the participants, will then be reproduced as cutouts on A3 card for the public to cut out, colour, install in the main gallery and take home.
 
Sarah Iremonger uses a multidisciplinary approach of found, created and adapted images; including photographs, murals, painting, drawing, badges, cards, digital media, video and neon in her work.  Based in Kinsale, Co. Cork, early work was embedded in the romantic and modernist traditions, with epic implications. Later and recent work, include site-specific projects, which explore ideas of representation and how, as a hangover of the romantic tradition, representation perpetuates scenarios of separation from the world around us. By focusing on appropriation and adaptation of available material, placing the agency of subject matter and personal artistic expression in the background, visual signifiers become hidden in a forest of post-representational camouflage.

Change “Hunters Hide” group exhibition (30.5. - 11.7.2021)

EMMANUEL WALDERDORFF GALERIE
Hofgut Molsberg
Hauptstrasse 41
56414 Molsberg / Westerwald
Germany
T: +49/6435/5483110

24/7 is one of the National Sculpture Factory’s new digital online artists’ platforms.
24/7 is a short a short visual essay presentation where each artist introduces 24 slides in 7 mins with accompanied narration. It is designed for artists to explore their artistic research or areas of interest that feed into their artmaking or art thinking. Designed to be easily assembled during these times of Covid restrictions.
24/7 is so entitled because it alludes to the fact that artistic pursuits have no definitive timelines, there are no parameters, artists’ productive time is 24 hours 7 days a week.

'Here I have created a visual mind map to explore the thought processes gone into the creation of ‘Vessels’ (painting project) 2020. Included are source
materials and other possible outcomes.'

3 Vessels / Thailand 250BC; North America 1000AD; Sudan 3500BC
2020, Watercolour on paper, 38 x 29 cm €300

Works for sale on Artsy.net as part of the online exhibition 'Time of Our Lives' with Oliver Sears Gallery 2020.

The vessels used in this work come from different countries, some are thousands of years old, some hundreds, see titles. They are superimposed one on top of the other to create the illusion of transparent colours.

(This work has since been sold)

Vessels works to be exhibited as part of Outdraw exhibition at Uillinn - 20 July until 14 September 2020

Uillinn are delighted to announce that we are working on an exhibition of drawings by West Cork artists, and as we are slowly emerging from our withdrawn period, the title of the show is Outdraw. 
 
The exhibition will be exhibited in the Stairwell and Link Gallery. The show will coincide with the re-opening of the gallery on 20 July and run until 14 September.

Review in Irish Times 5 May 2020

'Sarah Iremonger’s spare, flat-coloured composition 3 Vessels consists of three overlapping profiles of the vessels, which span thousands of years, from Sudan via Thailand to North America. In their elegance they exemplify the persistence of forms and materials in utilitarian objects across cultures and millennia, and the longevity of an aesthetic sense.'

3 Vessels / Thailand 250BC; North America 1000AD; Sudan 3500BC
2020, Watercolour on paper, 38 x 29 cm

Showing as part of the online exhibition 'Time of Our Lives' with Oliver Sears Gallery 2020.

The vessels used in this work come from different countries, some are thousands of years old, some hundreds, see titles. They are superimposed one on top of the other to create the illusion of transparent colours.

Irish Examiner - Wish List January 2020
Vessels 2019
Watercolor on paper, 38 x 28 cm
'This is a fascinating watercolour is by Sarah Iremonger, from her latest exhibition, Vessels. It it titled North America 1000AD; Sudan 3500BC. Sarah says: “My work uses a multidisciplinary approach, of found, created and adapted images. Disciplines include painting, drawing, digital media and neon.”

Based in Co Cork for over thirty years, Sarah’s work appropriates romantic and modernist traditions, putting a new twist into the dialogue.'

2019
Knsale Art Exhibition RNLI Fundraiser, Rincurran Hall, Summercove, Kinsale, Co. Cork
Press Play, Oliver Sears Gallery, Molesworth Street, Dublin
Heros and Villians, Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork

Publication projects
2019
IL Ponte Della Pioggia (The Rain Bridge) children's book written by Derek Mahon and illustrated by Sarah iremonger, this Italian version is published by Valigie Rosse 'is a story written for his son, then aged six, a tale of loss, kindness and recovery. Iremonger’s illustrations match, in their simplicity, the purity of the author’s style.' originally published by The Gallery Press 2017
Atlantis, artwork for poetry pamphlet by Derek Mahon, published by The Gallery Press

2018
Knsale Art Exhibition RNLI Fundraiser, Rincurran Hall, Summercove, Kinsale, Co. Cork
Heros and Villians, Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork
Gallery Artists and Guests, Oliver Sears Salon, Molesworth Street, Dublin
Artists of Cobh and Great Island, artist talks as part of 'This Must Be the Place' Sirius Arts Centre, Cobh, Co. Cork
Horizions continuing collaberative project with poet Derek Mahon
Work of the Week October 2018, Crawford Art Gallery, Emmet Place, Cork

Submerged Horizon / Skellig Michael and Star Wars and water camouflages, 2017, watercolour on paper, 49 x 66 cm is showing as part of the Salon at Oliver Sears gallery from July 2018.

This work is part of Horizons project, which is a continuing collaborative project with poet Derek Mahon. The project so far involves a completed prose piece, which has been published as part of the collection 'Olympia and the Internet' The Gallery Press 2017 (see statement in Horizons project). The visual work is being developed in three parts. The first part involves works based on the entrance to Cork Harbour, which investigates the idea of ‘separation’ represented through colour separations and the distant horizon. The second part is a reflection on the idea of ‘lost islands’ in this case Skellig Michael using nature camouflages and Star Wars imagery, while part three, looks at the idea of ‘beyond the horizon’ creating landscapes based on the works of Irish nineteenth century painter James Arthur O’Connor, nature camouflages and plastic waste vectors.

In this work I am investigating the separation of humans and nature, and romanticisms failed attempt to address this. Foreground and background are merged collapsing ideas about subject and object. Though the paintings are painstakingly hand painted, they suggest mechanically and digitally produced images, through the fragmentation of traced images into a kind of multilayered camouflage, as if the images are hiding within themselves.