ALL IN!

Catalyst Arts Virtual Members Show 2020

22 May - 12 June

 Initially when Catalyst Arts released the concept for this year’s Members Show, we had no idea of its relevance to our current situation. Lockdown has confined, trapped, protected us to prescribed spaces. All lived experience is limited to the architecture of where we found ourselves on that given day. These long drawn out weeks in quarantine have forced us to go about daily life in abnormal ways, adapting to unfamiliar routines and adjusting to a slower pace. Sustaining an artistic practice with restricted space, materials, facilities and togetherness has brought about bouts of experimentation, resourcefulness, but also, despair. 

 In this time of crisis where does art exist?

 We have embraced the virtual, relying on Skype, Zoom and an abundance of emails in refining remoteness into closeness, scaling the world of our nearest and dearest, colleagues and peers into the rectangular screens in front of us. The internet is infinite, and overwhelming: rapid clicks, seconds of engagement, immediate forgetting. 

 ALL IN! is Catalyst Arts’s first online exhibition. It considers the role of the body in activating the limitations of space, or, the lack of a physical body to explore measurability and geometry in the virtual; it inquires how we interact within our habitats and looks at art-making during enforced isolation. We urge you to take your time in this virtual exhibition, commit to looking and allow for engagement. 

 Artists include Michael Hanna, Maria McSweeney, Christine Kernohan, Sean O'Rourke, Brian Kielt, Clara McSweeney, John Waid, Deirdre McKenna, Seiko Hayase, Gerard Carson, Isadora Epstein, Áine Byrne, Kitsch Doom, Eimear Murphy, Edy Fung and Mollie Anna King. 

 The exhibition will be launched on the Catalyst Arts website on Friday 22 May at 5pm.