126 Artist-Run Gallery in collaboration with Engage Art Studios are pleased to present ‘Magic, Metallic Saliva’ an exhibition of work by artists Karen Conway and Tadhg Ó Cuirrín curated by Rita McMahon. The exhibition will take place from Friday 11th March – Sunday 3rd April 2022 in 126 Gallery, Galway.
Both artists have previously been involved in 126 and Engage as artists and behind the scenes respectively and this show seeks to bring about a collaboration of work which looks at themes such as memory, fragmented narrative, decay, entropy, and surface tensions. A combination of drawing, painting and installation is used by the artists whose work shares several interests both formal and conceptual.
‘Is everything losing its edge? Everything bleeding into everything else? A pixelation or a Gaussian blur or a pornographically short depth of field creating the most abject, vivid kind of attention in me. Details (a lesion, maybe – or just its wet, ragged edges) prick my eyes like a vinegar. The rest – the blur – sloshing in corneal recesses like that tide of saliva involuntarily summoned before vomiting. Magic, metallic saliva’
- Ed Atkins, A Primer for Cadavers p.13, Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016
Karen Conway is an artist and teacher who lives and works in Galway. She received a Higher Diploma Fine Art at IADT, Dublin (1990-93); BA Fine Art at CCAD, Cork (1993-1994); Higher Diploma Art Education at LSAD, Limerick (2003-2004) and an MA Art & Design Education at LSAD, Limerick (2012-2014).
She completed a residency with the National University of Ireland and the Science Foundation of Ireland in 2019 and was awarded a Covid-19 special project award in 2020 from the Arts Council of Ireland, which enabled her to develop further subject matter focusing on the Medtech/Pharma industry in Ireland. She works predominantly through drawing and was shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize in 2021. Her work was acquired by Aerogen Pharma and Novartis, Ireland in 2021 and is also held in the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery collection and Microsoft Ireland.
Selected group exhibitions include:The Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize 2021, London (2021) & The Cooper Gallery, Dundee, Scotland (2022), Tulca, Within & Without/Golden Mountain, Galway (2006/13); Faber Studios, Limerick (2014) Solo exhibitions include: Project Y, Engage Gallery, Galway (2021); Pressure, Online Launch & Outdoor Projection-Mapping, Spanish Arch, Galway (2020); An+Aisthēsis, University College Hospital, Galway International Arts Festival (2014).
https://www.instagram.com/karenconway__/
Tadhg Ó Cuirrín is an artist and teacher based in the west of Ireland. He received a BA in Fine Art, Painting from the Limerick School of Art and Design in 2009. He works in a variety of media, and has worked for a number of Irish artist-run spaces.
Recent solo exhibitions include "The Unexamined Life" in July 2021, and "Everyone, everybody, every person, every person, every person, every person" in Septmber 2020, both at Engage Art Studios in Galway, Ireland; and "Lift Yourself", a solo exhibition at Pallas Projects/Studios in Dublin. In 2023 he will present a new exhibition at the Custom House Studios in Westport, Ireland
His recent work has leaned increasingly towards CGI and is interested in; how we process personal, cultural, and architectural memory; how we overcome blockages and breakdowns in communication at a personal level and public level; and the point at which verisimilitude fails.
His work is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Ealaín na Gaeltachta