HOT GLUE

AN EXHIBITION OF NEWLY COMMISIONED WORK BY

SOPHIE GOUGH & DAIRE O'SHEA 

CURATED BY SARA MUTHI

The German word Materialgerechtigkeit loosely translates to ‘material justice’. This principle holds that any material should be used where it is most appropriate and that its nature should not be hidden. This is a principle that is deeply held by materially-driven sculptors Sophie Gough and Daire O’Shea. 

Hot glue maintains that sculpture cannot be exhausted by perceptive experience nor reduced to any formal description of its constituent parts. The vibrancy of matter is a truth the human subject can never hope to reach. This unsatisfactory access to comprehensive materiality motivates Gough and O’Shea into deeper entanglements between sculpture and object, objects and language, language and life.

Hot glue parallels the confused nature of objecthood with the confused nature of how language relates to and labels material and social life. Hot glue is in itself a wonderfully confused exercise in what ‘material justice’ might look like.

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Sophie Gough is an artist and researcher who lives and works in London. Her practice considers a process of place-making with fragmented architectural objects. She posits the choice of holding onto an object as a spatial appropriation with which she attempts to self-preserve in unstable times.

Recently, her work has explored the application of a haptic archaeological engagement with these fragments that favours the fleeting alchemical and affectual experiences felt making with the objects over the objects themselves. Working often through site-specific material treatments, Sophie haunts, worries and re-members with the elemental materiality of objects misremembered from her past to re-situate and ground a sense of herself in a destructive present.

Exhibitions include: In Ruined Time, Southwark Park Galleries, London, UK (2022),The City is Never Finished, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Kilkenny, ROI (2021), Content, Cork Midsummer Festival, Cork (2021), Nua, So Fine Art, Dublin, ROI, (2021), The Thing That Once Was The Thing is Still Here Good Day Deli, Cork, ROI (2021), The Materialists, 126 Gallery, Galway, ROI (2018), Industry, Solstice Arts Centre, Meath, ROI (2018), Concretus:Ulterior Objects, Sample Studios ,Elizabeth Fort, Cork, ROI (2017).

Daire O’Shea is a sculptor, lecturer, writer and designer based in Cork. As a Materialist he is interested in the relationship between people, digital representations and physical objects.

Human bias and its tendency to interpret the most basic of physical realities and imbue them with literary or even romantic meaning is a fertile area of exploration for Daire. He is dedicated to exploring how tensions can be created and resolved between various forms and material properties. How materials communicate with one another through physical interaction and how humans communicate and respond to these dialogues is of prime concern.

Exhibitions include: As She Climbed Across the Table, The Gallery at 46 Grand Parade, Crawford, Cork, ROI (2019), The Materialists, 126 Gallery, Galway, ROI (2018), If You Can’t Handle Me at My 2007 Gucci Mane, You don’t Deserve Me at My 2017 Gucci Mane, LSAD, Limerick, ROI (2018), Homo Ludens, The Library Project, Dublin, ROI (2018), Framing Devices, Limerick City Gallery, Limerick, ROI (2017).

Sara Muthi is a Dublin based curator, writer and teaching assistant in the Philosophy department at Trinity College Dublin. Her curatorial commissions attempt to establish new ontologies relating to contemporary practices in sculpture, performance and interactive media.

Exhibitions include: you breathe differently down here, Draíocht, Dublin, ROI (2022) .pptx, Void, Derry, NI (2021), Foreignments, The Lab DCC, Dublin, ROI (2020), POST-DANCE, Project Arts Centre, Dublin, ROI (2019), Anticipation: Actualisation, NCAD Gallery, Dublin, ROI (2018), Anti-room, Artbox, Dublin, ROI, (2015).

Co-produced by Shaista Sosrowardoyo

Research assisted by Jessica Kelly

This work was kindly funded by Fingal County Council.