Metal Matters and Folk Fiction

Exhibition

Metal Matters and Folk Fiction13 July 2013 – 4 August 2013

Metal Matters

Graduate Exhibition

Each year, the National Craft Gallery hosts a graduate exhibition from one of the Crafts Council of Ireland’s two schools, which specialise in jewellery and ceramics respectively. The schools run intensive two-year programmes designed to equip graduates with the practical skills needed to develop careers in Ireland and internationally.

This year, our graduates are from the Jewellery and Goldsmithing Skills and Design Course, based in the Castle Yard, Kilkenny City. This is a unique programme in jewellery education in Europe. The course focuses on the use of precious metals and gemstones and covers design, quantity production techniques and manufacture. Specialist subjects such as engraving, enamelling, gemmology, stone setting and silversmithing are taught by experts from within the jewellery industry in Ireland and abroad. This emphasis on craftsmanship and quality enables successful entry into the jewellery industry, with a 90% employment rate for former graduates.

Folk Fiction - translations in material cultures

A multi-media exhibition by visual artist Gareth Kennedy. The exhibition features film, photographs and objects. On display is work created over the past two years with the residents of Inís Oírr, on the Aran Islands and Gneeveguilla, Co. Kerry. The exhibition highlights material cultures both traditional and contemporary, exploring ideas around craft and social values, landscape and invented traditions.

Over the last two years, Kennedy has been developing an anthropological aesthetic to generate 'folk fictions'. These works draw on the social, cultural and economic history of a people and a place to craft work that is a meaningful and contemporary composite of these histories. This method has entailed working with such diverse professionals as archaeologists, anthropologists, film archivists, museum directors, folklorists and scientists as well as festival organizers, craftspeople, fishermen park rangers and broad based publics. He envisages contemporary art as a unique mode of generating meaningful new associations within contexts as well as producing new knowledge through its processes. He has produced and shown work both nationally and internationally. His practice to date includes public art work, educational projects, exhibitions, residencies and collaborations. In 2009, he co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale along with artist Sarah Browne. Throughout 2011 and 2012 Kennedy worked on a significant body of new work investigating landscape, craft and social values against the backdrop of the recent arrival of the IKEA global phenomenon in Ireland. This exhibition is presented at the National Craft Gallery as part of a national tour to folk and ethnological museums of Ireland in 2013.
In 2013 Kennedy will work on public projects in the south west of Ireland and in Saint Petersburg, Russia, as part of Critical Mass 2013.
Kennedy also works collaboratively with artist Sarah Browne as Kennedy Browne.

Education & Outreach