Natasha Pike

MEET #2 is the culmination of our 2021/22 correspondence programme at Periphery Space / Gorey School of Art. It is a group exhibition, one more attuned to a middle or beginning than an end.

Over the last six months the eight participating artists have discussed their work with mentors and most importantly, between themselves. As mentors we have tried to question the motives behind their art-making, whether personal, public, or both, and give them feedback in terms of their motives. This exhibition is the outcome of that questioning.

In general, the exhibition is a public phenomenon, which usually forces an artist to bring focus and clarity to their work before it goes public. The exhibition is a very different space to the privacy of the artist’s studio, where the necessary activities of play, risk and destruction take place. The exhibition is a celebration and commitment, but can also be a traumatic experience for the artist, as the artworks are left to the public to enjoy or dismiss.

We have asked the artists to bring all the explorative and destructive play that takes place in their studios into the gallery space. The outcome, which is not an outcome, is drawings pasted to the gallery windows (like the art students do during the academic year), a colour washed backdrop to a body of process paintings, and other floor and wall displays that question the relationships between the studio vs the exhibition, the individual artist vs the community, work-in-progress vs the finished product, the public form of the art object vs its hidden content.

Please come along to our opening reception of MEET #2 at Periphery Space / Gorey School of Art this Friday 17th June from 6-8pm. The artists and mentors will be present to chat about the work and the process involved in being part of peripheriesMEET.

ARTISTS: Polly Maher, Ciaran Bowen, Kevin Ryan, Zoë Nolan, Natasha Pike, Sinéad Lucey, Marian Balfe, Fergal Styles

The exhibition continues from Saturday 18-25th June (11-3pm, except Sundays).

We would like to thank our visiting artist mentors Mark Swords and Austin Hearne for their insights and support during the process, and Wexford Arts Office for their continued support for what is an enriching developmental and communitarian project.

Supported by Wexford Arts Office