‘The portraits capture the intricacies of self-presentation and highlight a young woman’s discomfort when she sees an image in the mirror that fails to live up to her desires.’

We’re continuing our SATURATION spotlight series with visual artist Eva O’Leary and her photographic portraits featured in the exhibition.

Spitting Image (2017) comprises fourteen portraits of ‘self-identifying girls between the ages of eleven and fourteen, reacting to their reflection through a two-way mirror.’

Using a large-format 8x10 camera, O’Leary notes that ‘these girls – who belong to a generation fluent in selfies, tags on social media, and using iPhone cameras as mirrors – understand how to construct identity through images. Nonetheless, the gulf between their appearance and the commercial imagery with which they are inundated remains vast.’

Eva O’Leary (b.1989) primarily works through photography and video to navigate structural and social systems that perpetuate ideologies of fantasy, power, and control within American society. Her work specifically focuses on the impact these systems have on young women and their experience in the world.

'I approach everything as an absolute outsider. It is the only way I can break so many rules.'

- Klaus Nomi (1944-1983)

Ryan as Klaus (2021) is a photographic work by Conor Clinch that is featured in SATURATION: the everyday transformed.

Together with model Ryan Zaman and fashion stylist Giulio Ventisei, the Irish photographer channels the spirit and otherworldly 'look' of the irrepressible performer Klaus Nomi. In other works featured in the exhibition, Clinch similarly elevates fashion photography for Vogue Italia through bold and unexpected use of form and colour.

Originally from Dublin, Conor Clinch is currently based in London and endeavours to tell stories in an authentic and inclusive way through his documentary-style films and distinct fashion imagery. Referring to SATURATION, he says: ‘I am so honored to be in the company of so many amazing Irish artists.’

Click here for information on a Saturation Panel Discussion.

‘All image surfaces are ripples of thoughts and forces that shape and comprise contemporary experience.'

- Pádraig Spillane

Our SATURATION spotlight series continues with Pádraig Spillane, an artist, educator, and exhibition-maker who works across image making and installation.

Paradise Transmission (2019) and What was lost was never there (2021) are among the five works by Spillane featured in SATURATION. The artist considers ‘how images function in shared and private realms by taking them apart for reassembly and re-presentation.’

Spillane’s interest in the construction of images leads to a searching or questioning of how they function as ‘social and desire-loaded affective structures, tracing the networks that create spaces to be with images.’

You can view a recording of Audrey Gillespie & Pádraig Spillane: In Conversation below.

“During the summers of 2020 and 2021, Vis island provided shelter to my friends and I, offering some semblance of normality in a world becoming increasingly inhospitable. The underwater world became a place of play, joy and healing.

I am looking forward to having my work exhibited in SATURATION: the everyday transformed and seeing the exhibition which is unabashedly about the pleasures of seeing.”

Dragana Jurišić is a Yugoslav artist and Assistant Professor at the Dublin City University. Working primarily with image, text and video and looking at the effects of exile and displacement on memory and identity, Jurišić has shown her work extensively and won many awards, including the Golden Fleece Special Recognition Award, IMMA 1000 Residency Award and numerous Bursaries and Project Awards. Her work is in a collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, the Arts Council Collection and the Irish State’s National Art Collection.

“It is exciting to be part of the exhibition SATURATION: the everyday transformed, and I am looking forward to seeing the work installed in the Crawford Art Gallery.”

Michael Hanna’s ‘A Living Colour Index’ is a photo series produced in response to the days and weeks blending together during the first Covid lockdown in Northern Ireland. The interior of the artist’s home was lit entirely with a different colour each week, moving through the spectrum from red to violet. The colour provided a new sensory living environment within the same space, testing the idea that novel experiences play a part in memory formation and in turn set the parameters for our experience of time. An image was posted online each day with an accompanying quotation.

Hanna’s ‘A Living Colour Index’ was one of the 225 artworks that was acquired for Ireland’s National Collection of art in 2021, as part of a major acquisition fund provided to Crawford Art Gallery and the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Learn more about the National Collection here.

Hanna is an artist based in Northern Ireland. He has exhibited in group exhibitions in the UK and internationally including Multiplicity at NURTUREart, New York and Quicksilver at Freelands Foundation, London. Solo exhibitions include Short Films about Learning at Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland, and Looking Backward at PS², Belfast. He has recently completed a residency at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, and the Freelands Artist Programme, a 2-year fellowship with PS², Belfast and Freelands Foundation, London.

Michael is a co-founder of AMINI, an artist led initiative for the promotion and critical discussion of artists’ moving image in Northern Ireland.

In this video, Ruth Medjber (aka Ruthless Imagery) introduces us to ‘WORSHIP’, an immersive visual and audio experience as part of SATURATION: the everyday transformed at Crawford Art Gallery.

Medjber’s homage to Ireland's live music-loving culture is presented through photographs of 'larger-than-life-sized’ crowd scenes which are synchronised with a mesmerising lighting display, designed by Conor Biddle, and a rapturous soundscape by Alma Kelliher. See you up the front!

“I doubt that I will ever be able to reproduce my work on such an enormous scale again in my career. “ Ruth Medjber with her installation ‘WORSHIP’ at SATURATION: the everyday transformed at Crawford Art Gallery. © the artist. Ruth Medjber cut her teeth shooting documentary-style music photography for the BBC at festivals like Glastonbury and on tour with artists such as Hozier and Arcade Fire. Her work has been published by magazines such as Rolling Stone and NME and exhibited worldwide. In 2020, when faced with the global lockdown that paused the music industry, Medjber turned her lens to a new subject and photographed 150 Irish households. The resulting book, Twilight Together, was published by Penguin and has sold over 12,000 copies to date.

Click here for information on a Saturation Panel Discussion.

In this video, Audrey Gillespie introduces us to her ‘This Hurts’ series, part of SATURATION: the everyday transformed at Crawford Art Gallery.

“This exhibition carries an array of emotive work as well as being rich in colour and conception – being close to my own work’s motives, I can imagine that this exhibition will highlight each artist’s integrity and style in all the best ways.”

Audrey Gillespie’s series 'This Hurts', part of SATURATION: the everyday transformed at Crawford Art Gallery, is a multimedia series that uses analogue images, painting and silkscreen printing to translate heavy emotions through colour-saturated images. Creating blurred lines between anxiety-fuelled dreams using experimental double exposures, hallucinogenic atmospheres, soft focus and deep tones fuse the subject and backdrop in Gillespie's images before whipping it back to sun-glazed scenes, settling into a fugue state.

Gillespie is an Irish fine artist from Derry, Northern Ireland. Currently living and creating in Belfast, her media include analogue photography, painting and printmaking. Gillespie explores themes of queerness, mortality and conflict with youth and anxiety in her current series 'This Hurts'.

You can view a recording of Audrey Gillespie & Pádraig Spillane: In Conversation below.