Frank Abruzzese :: Number 12 from the series "Untitled Landscapes" :: Archival Digital C-Print :: 25 x 30"

CANVAS presents “Timeline”, an exhibition of new work from three extraordinarily innovative artists, Frank Abruzzese, Anthony Collins and Miriam McConnon. The exhibition opens on Monday October 16th and continues until Friday October 27th in Bank of Ireland Head Office, Block A, Reception Area, Baggot Street, Dublin 2.

Frank Abruzzese’s enigmatic photographs push urban landscapes to a heightened sense of reality. His subjects include carparks, building sites and corporate environments. Using long exposures, he creates highly textural pieces which evoke hyper-real spaces. “Construction sites are places where sculptural lines and grids of concrete and metal contrast with displaced chaotic debris. Synthetic illumination of artificial light sources and pale blue moonlight strike an odd balance between familiar architectural form and a strange otherworldliness. Displacement highlights an engineering of intangible space resulting in a syntax of points, lines, areas and volumes tracing a landscape with shifting boundaries. A fantastical terrain seemingly not our own, but our creation nonetheless."

Miriam McConnon is an Irish painter living in Cyprus. After graduating from NCAD with a degree in Fine Art in 1999, she went on to complete a postgraduate diploma in painting in Cyprus College of Art. The source of her work covers a broad range of subjects, from archaeological sites to ancient burial tombs to domestic scenes of washing lines. Her paintings take on selected forms of the subject as the point of reference. There is a quiet delicacy to her paintings. Each form appears fragile, hanging suspended by a single line. The use of the line against the heavily worked painted surface intensifies the vulnerability of these fragile forms. The image they create is beautiful and yet evokes a still sadness.

Anthony Collins challenges the notion of artist as author by involving participants in the creation of his works. He has staged a number of interactive events in the past whereby members of the public have been invited into a designated workspace to create an image using tools he has made himself. The tools are made from materials such as sponge, rubber, twine, plastic, cardboard and metal. Their function is left up to the imagination of the user. The participants’ tasks can vary from painting a segment of a mural to sandpapering a section of a chair. Using photographs of the events, Anthony makes composites by putting together people and creations who may or may not have been present at the same time. One of his main projects is based around ‘Judith slaying Holofernes’, the painting by the 17th Century Renaissance artist, Artemesia Gentileschi. “From her introduction in the Old Testament, Judith has had a long religious/political history as an adaptable symbol for good over evil. Artists have always appropriated Judith for their own various ends. My version places her firmly in our consumer society as an odd out-of-place force with echoes of her original virtue of courage in the face of enormous odds.” Judith is also explored as a subject in her own right in some of the works. Placed in a contemporary context, she is seen shopping at Argos, her challenge being to find the best value curling tongs, vacuum cleaner or hair clippers. The pieces are drawn with ink onto the acetate, some on a single layer, others with 3 or 4 layers overlapping. The sheets of semi-transparent acetate mimic a layering of unsequential time through which ideas and images flow back and forth. The results are highly quirky narratives between the artist, participant and viewer.

Anthony Collins will be staging an interactive event on Tuesday 24th October in the exhibition area. Participation is open to all. Come along between 10am – 5pm.

ENQUIRIES TO: Ciara Garvey ciara@canvas.ie