We are delighted to share Pat Curran’s HOME accompanied by a timely and beautiful text by Dr. Ellen Rowley.
We have been supporting Pat to practice as a painter since 2017 beginning in studio 468 in St Andrews Community Centre Rialto, to his current residency in the Lodge, Inchicore. HOME embodies multiple meanings while we all stay at home and collectively work our way through the impact of Covid 19.
As Pat outlines ‘The source of this work has predominantly been peoples lived experience. I invite people to share with me their own images which are often of individuals on the margins, people who are often excluded from society, or have been historically made invisible in the cities visual representation’.
It has taken Pat over three years to develop this collection of work by connecting with local people. We hope you will get to see Pat’s physical paintings later this year as part of Pallas Projects Artist Initiated Projects 2020.
Many of the communities where we work and the artists we work with live consistently precarious lives. They currently live without the collective support of being present to the arts organisations, community networks and communities of place and interest they have been connecting or working with up to now. That reality is stressful and isolating.
Yesterday it was reported that 700,000 people have registered for Covid 19 payments in a time of absolute precarity and uncertainty. Last week the Dept. of Arts alongside Culture Ireland and the Arts Council made a call to artists that was ill-advised, misjudged and came from a place of privilege and continues to exclude public audiences. We need to remember that not everyone and every family has access to computers, nor does everyone use or want to access social media.
We all need to support artists in this time of crisis not require them to conjure up a creative piece of work for tokenistic funding or exclude artists whose work practice involves collaboration with local communities or groups over a long period of time.
It doesn’t matter how many digital platforms we encounter nothing beats being social, meeting people, sharing ideas and having conversations or working together in the surprise encounter or seeing the art work in the flesh. Our present everyday reality is that we all miss our neighbours, our families, our friends and our wider community.
While we stay at HOME, keep safe, keep well and we look forward to meeting you all again soon.
