PERIPHERY SPACE is an artist-led art space in Gorey, Co. Wexford. It is an environment where new ideas, discourses, and processes in contemporary art, film and photography will be fostered and formed.
Through workshops and training, this space will support innovation in contemporary art as well as promote public engagement and exchange.
PeripheriesMEET 2021/22
MEET #2 was the culmination of our 2021/22 correspondence programme at Periphery Space / Gorey School of Art. It was a group exhibition, one more attuned to a middle or beginning than an end.
Over a period of six months the eight participating artists discussed their work with mentors and most importantly, between themselves. As mentors we 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 was 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 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, was 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 questioned 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
In its 2nd Year, peripheriesMEET programme expanded its open submission process nationwide. The quality and diversity of applications was high, so ending up with the maximum 8 artists was very difficult. Those artists were:
Polly Maher, Ciaran Bowen, Kevin Ryan, Zoë Nolan, Natasha Pike, Sinéad Lucey, Marian Balfe, Fergal Styles
PeripheriesMEET was a blended in-person and online correspondence programme for artists, with an opportunity to exhibit at Periphery Space. From November 2020 to May 2022, 16 Wexford-based and nationwide artists took part in a blend of in-person and online discussion/feedback sessions led by artists Emma Roche and James Merrigan. Guest mentors were appointed to refresh perspectives and to accommodate the particular needs of artists working in different media. Artists were given individual written or audio feedback following each session.
This free programme offered artists critical feedback in a safe environment, and encouraged independent thought and support for individual artists who felt a little lost inside or outside the studio context.
The online sessions involved all sixteen applicants in a communal and structured feedback forum, allowing individuals to benefit from crossover experiences from group feedback. The feedback was detailed and targeted towards the individual's needs and aspirations; and the two successive midsummer group exhibition at Periphery Space was a communal and curatorial experience, helped by Emma and James' years of experience curating the space.
