Thurs 27 November – Wed 17 December

Curated by Pluck Projects
Selected artists from CIT Crawford College of Art and Design MA:AP programme: Brian Mac Domhnaill, Cliodhna O’ Riordan, Eleanor Phillips, Sarah Jayne Booth and Vena Naskręcka
and invited artist Angela Fulcher

Pluck projects are delighted to announce their participation in The Land of Zero at the Crawford Art Gallery launching on Thursday 27th November at 18.00. At the invitation of Maud Cotter, Pluck’s contribution to this multi-layered project involves commissioning new work by invited artist Angela Fulcher and curating a selection of work from the CIT Crawford College of Art and Design MA:AP students. After the success of Pluck project’s debut presentation from the artist Stephanie Hough, this opportunity to work with some of the most respected figures in the Irish art world marks an exciting progression for these emergent curators.

Intervening in Cotter’s installation for her strand of The Land of Zero, Pluck has selected work that will develop its consideration of space, potential, and material. Angela Fulcher’s Traverse Frieze (Supple Lilac & Midnight Blue), is an installation that responds to the interior architectural space of the gallery. Traditionally a long stretch of sculpted ornamentation, this frieze highlights the aspects of the selected materials chosen for their particular sculptural qualities. The work from the MA:AP students expands on this. With her background in architecture, Cliodhna O’Riordan has an interest in thephysical properties of materials. In this new body of work, a hybrid solid is created by combining two seemingly incompatible ingredients: plaster and custard. Curious tensions are illustrated in subsequent testing, documentation and display. Brian Mac Domhnaill’s practice is informed by his background in archaeology, his photographs and videos suggest history but are ambiguous and evocative, resisting conclusions and leaving their narratives open. Eleanor Phillips works with the traditional practice of drawing the figure from life, meaning that the work reflects onthe physicality and presence of a human being, complicated through erasure and fragmentation. Vena Naskręcka works with the concept of prosthesis and orthoses. Examining how the body interacts with objects through a series of process-based interactions with material, this resultsin strange and stilted video works. Sarah Jayne Booth uses objects, images and video to explore her interest in femininity and the domestic. Working with a split-screen video, Booth doubles and layers close-up footageof hand and machine sewing to create an uncanny and creaturely visual world.

The Land of Zero is initiated by artist Maud Cotter to form a moment of assessment within Visual Art culture and in recognition of a new stream of emergent practices. The Land of Zero seminar will open discussion on artistic practice in the context of the dual forces of recession and the changing landscape of artistic production. It is a radical school within a school, a hybrid of research within showing, a two-day seminar set within a composite installation in process. It is a place of questioning and examination on a threshold between national and international practitioners, MA:AP graduates of CIT Cork College of Art and Design and the public realm.