Curated by Mark O’Gorman and Paul McGrane

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Display, Link and Cure is inspired by the Ground Floor Gallery’s new location adjacent to the Victorian Fruit Market in Dublin 7. The exhibition aims to acknowledge the unique historic nature of this area of the city, and explore themes relating to it. For over a decade, the space contained banana ripening chambers for Smyths &Co. The gallery will act in similar vein, nurturing and providing a space for Dublin’s visual culture.

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Artists’ works contemplate the nature of impermanence and perishability. The works will be presented in a temporary, ‘display-like’ way to pay homage to the gallery’s surroundings and to foster conversation about the state of Dublin’s visual culture at present, in which many spaces seem to have short expiry dates.

 

The exhibition will provide a setting for the artists’ works to live collaboratively, utilizing the exhibition as medium. 

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Puthod’s work leads to surprising connections between commodities, systems of production and fabricated elements. Her work is most interested in the previous function of the space, and her practice actively appropriates merchandise in relation to physical locations and individuals.

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Montague’s practice foregrounds the primacy of material and its ability to perform. In this case Montague’s gelatine works perform as decaying produce to evoke a sense of nostalgia. These gelatine works are presented in a display like way, encapsulating the familiar beauty of decay. The shiny quivering mass is both inviting and repulsive, while also referencing the temporary nature of Dublin’s cultural landscape. 

 

Proffitt’s work will act on the contrary, to obscure the narrative of the space through mediums including sculpture, painting, and assemblage. The works often combine to create immersive, otherworldly, site-responsive works that evoke places of worship one may imagine existing in an intermingling cosmic universe of esoteric folk religions.

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Glenn Fitzgerald’s work blurs narratives within the space. Fitzgerald’s paintings, drawings and collages depict situations that appear both natural and artificial, real and virtual, corporeal and modellistic.

 

This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

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Glenn Fitzgerald is interested in the notion of the human being, or any possible thinking being, as something inherently flawed, both universally and individually. The situation is, however, a contradictory one, because if human folly is a destructive force, it is also the condition of its creativity, invention being born out of lack. Fitzgerald’s work operates in this contradiction and thinks about personal and ecological dysfunction, natural and artificial bodies and landscapes, technics and science-fiction, micro and macro relations. Glenn Fitzgerald graduated in 2003 from the Crawford College of Art, Cork, with a BA in painting and has just completed a Masters in painting at NCAD. He has had five solo exhibitions in Ireland and London, and has shown in various group shows. In September this year he will take up a residency at RHA studios. Works are included in Bank of Ireland, UCC, and CIT collections. He currently lives and works in Dublin.

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Liliane Puthod (1986, France) is currently based in Dublin, Ireland. Subverting the frontiers between multiple and singular objects, Puthod’s work leads to surprising connections between commodities, systems of production and fabricated elements. She actively appropriates merchandise in relation to physical locations and individuals, along with constructed narratives from distinct economies, often resulting in paradoxical situations. Through sculpture, digital media and text, she explores the way forms can problematise the materials from which they are made. Puthod graduated from a Master of Fine Arts from Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD) and has exhibited extensively in Europe. Recent exhibitions include: How Long After Best Before, solo show at Pallas Projects/Studios, Dublin (2019), BINGO!, group show with Berlin Opticians Gallery, Dublin (2019), Everything Must Go, solo show at Ps2, Belfast (2019), Wish Me a Wonder, group show at Garter Lane Arts Centre, Waterford (2019), Display Only, solo show at Berlin Opticians Gallery, Dublin (2019) and The ______ Showroom of L.Cashman, solo show at Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray (2018).

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The starting point for a lot of Richard Proffitt’s work is the written word. The writing is a stream of consciousness, recollection of histories, memories, facts, factual fiction, fiction, dreams, fantasy, childhood, the political climate and self-help. The physical work is inspired by the written process and driven by an interest in found material that consists of thematically sourced objects, paper ephemera, junk and sound recordings.  This physical work exists in a range of mediums including sculpture, painting, drawing, writing and sound, with the work in each medium responding to the material nature of the influential sourced object. However, the information and imagery they are loaded with is a personal form of esoterica born from the written word, from memories and personal and artistic history. The work is not about psychedelia but informed by psychedelia, the things at the back of your brain manifesting into word, voice and image.

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Sibyl Montague’s practice involves a range of sources; vegetable and digital matter and engaging strategies of appropriation, or the (dis)assemblage and hacking of commodity goods. Her work focuses on locating generative, dissident terms from which to approach material and democratise form.Sibyl Montague’s practice includes sculpture, video and installation. A graduate of Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, she was recent laureate of the Institut Francais Residency Programme at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France (2017). Additional awards include Emerging Visual Artist Award, Wexford Arts Centre (2012) and Oriel Davies Open, Wales (2011). Recent presentations include Practicecurated by Alice Butler, New Spaces, Derry; Saplings, Pallas Projects, Dublin; My Fears of Tomorrow are Melting Away, Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris. Her moving image work was commissioned for the collection of the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Tasmania. Montague is co-founder/co-curator of PLASTIK, festival of artists’ moving image.

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PRESS

The Irish Times

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