
Communal Observances
Joanne Laws
Below are the disenchanted holidaymakers,
who have little time to bother
with the enigmatic young swimmers,
gliding over their heads.
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Cnuasach: Deep Mapping
Over decades, the artist embarks on faithful departures from one painting in search of the next, never derailed by looming interpretations but content with deeper truths that overwrite such fractal commentary. Bodies of work accumulate as clusters, yet definitive meaning is shrouded and encoded – undecipherable, even to her.
Read more…Catalogue Text – Anna Spearman, ‘Loose Parts’, Roscommon Arts Centre (Writer-in-Residence) May 2021.

Loose Parts – A Response to Anna Spearman’s Solo Exhibition at Roscommon Art Centre
If we were to observe the secret lives of art objects, we would find that they oscillate at different frequencies, depending on their environment. In the studio setting, sculptures are playfully coaxed into form, through fluid processes of material accumulation and subtraction, testing and reworking. Preceding both narrative and the imposition of meaning, these provisional forms come into being through loops of energetic feedback, according to the experimental impulses and urgencies of their maker. Conversely, in the more formal context of a gallery or museum, art objects tend to accrue a more solidified and fixed status, by nature of their public display. Here, artifacts are classified, arranged and presented according to the institution’s ontology, which serves to shape our understandings and interpretations of the objects on view.
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Into the Light
JOANNE LAWS OUTLINES SEVERAL IRISH PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITIONS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE PUBLICATIONS.
Three recent and forthcoming exhibitions are showcasing significant collections of photography, which individually and collectively foreground the medium’s archival function in recording the shifting Irish cultural landscape over the last 50 years. These important bodies of photographic work variously document Dublin’s inner-city streets and the fading traditions of country life – from pilgrimages and processions, to holidays and dances – as well as landscapes ravaged by the conflict in Northern Ireland.
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Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith (Eds.), Winter Papers, Volume 6 (Curlew Editions, 2020)
To read the published review, click here: https://visualartistsireland.com/book-review-winter-papers-volume-6

Slow Art, Embodied Landscapes
JOANNE LAWS CONSIDERS SEVERAL PROJECTS COMMISSIONED FOR GALWAY 2020 EUROPEAN CAPITAL OF CULTURE.
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John Gerrard Mirror Pavilion, Corn Work
Galway International Arts Festival, Galway City
3 – 26 September
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What is a painted curve, only a broad sweep of the arm? Offering the simplest form of composition, the curve moves through a human history of mark-making like a timeless signature – from spiraling Neolithic carvings to the sacred geometry of Christian iconography. Whether interrogating interior spaces or unifying distinct works along similar sightlines, the compositional curve can trigger a multitude of relations, not least in how the viewer is positioned.
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Catherine Marshal and Mary Ryder (Eds) Janet Mullarney (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2020)
To read the published review, click here: https://visualartistsireland.com/book-review-janet-mullarney