1-17 September 2022

Lavit Gallery were pleased to present an exhibition of artwork by the recipients of the Graduate Group Exhibition Award 2022. This is an annual award given by Lavit Gallery to selected graduates of MTU Crawford College of Art & Design. This year’s exhibition features artworks by Monika Kosmowska, Ronja Lagerqvist, Klaudia Lasota, Roisin Moloney, Aoife Nolan, Morag Ransley and Baibe Sisene.

Monika Kosmowska’s work deals with transience and associated disorientation. Her postcard sized acrylic paintings depict disused bus stops in a Polish landscape, evoking feelings of discomfort and nostalgia. The scenes are foreign yet strangely familiar. Ronja Lagerqvist draws attention to the systems and practices in Ireland which have led to the current housing crisis, and the ways in which it has shaped the nation’s landscape. The stationary used to hang the work mimics the political and bureaucratic attitudes to this problem.

Klaudia Lasota references art history by signifying death, mortality and the fragility of life using imagery of poisonous yet beautiful flora such as nightshade and foxgloves. An attic creates the context for a body of work by Roisin Moloney, the space and its contents acting as a physical log of a life lived. Exploring the four main rites of passage; birth, adolescence, marriage and death, she creates corresponding animal effigies in the medium of print and laser cut objects.

Inspired by nature and yogic practice Aoife Nolan’s work merges her own interior personal landscape and the physical exterior landscape. In addition to organic materials the artist uses copper, a metal found both in earth and human tissue and is known to conduct energy and enhance psychic abilities. Morag Ransley’s installation work features semi-biographical watercolour paintings inspired by dreams, time, home, and her experience of psychosis. She creates a dreamlike world where childhood and adulthood are merged to create an unsettling, uncanny atmosphere and a feeling of dissociation or detachment from reality.

Baibe Sisene explores psychogeography through the photographic documentation of places and spaces around Cork city, closely focusing on details and textures that capture her interest. She builds her own ‘dysfunctional’ city using mediums that evoke a feeling of what home means to her both in Ireland and her hometown Kuldiga, Latvia.

This graduating year is distinct in terms of its timing. These students are the first since the outbreak of COVID 19 to have a publicly accessible degree show at the art college. It is also notable that the artists would have had three years of their four year degree heavily disrupted and altered by the pandemic. In this context they have been on a challenging journey both collectively and personally and this is reflected in much of the artwork. For some of the artists claustrophobic conditions have inspired a focus on a particular space or place. For others the conditions bring about an introspective journey and in some cases the artists become their own muse. For non-nationals there is a close examination of their identity as it pertains to place. This and other exhibition opportunities allow the artists to ​emerge from the shadow of the pandemic to begin their professional art practice and engage with audiences. Lavit Gallery wishes them well in their future careers.

 

Events

Opening Reception

Thursday 1st September

5.30-7.30pm

All Welcome.

 

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For further information please contact info@lavitgallery.com or 021 4277749